The Dynamite Room Read online

  He was swimming now and the sea glistened and prickled through his uniform, catching at his breath. Around him were Lehmann, Kappel, Diederich, Pfeiffer, and Theissen, their breaststrokes barely etching a ripple, their rucksacks clamped to their chests like limpets, their British ammunition boots tied and hanging from their necks, dragging beneath them through the water. They fanned out through the mist, their blacked-out faces half-submerged. Their breaths were taut and clipped as they pulled out a slow rhythm of strokes and passed through the scatterings of a torpedoed tug: torn scraps, empty oil cans, blasted bits of crate, and the body of a seaman, face down and bumping gently against the debris. He was hanging back, letting the others get further ahead. An occasional searchlight skated out across the sea, and one by one they slipped beneath the water as it passed over. Every time it happened, he swam off to the left, suddenly pulling fast and furious beneath the surface, edging closer and closer to one of them. Only when he came up the second or third time could he tell that it was Kappel who was nearest. He hung back some way behind him so as not to attract attention. Each of them had their eyes on the sky and the dark charcoal-lined coast: the lighthouse of Orford Ness in blackout, pointed skywards like a finger. Kappel let out a waterlogged cough beneath the drone of a single plane flying over—one of “their boys,” pregnant and sluggish with its load. Then the searchlight combed the sea again and Heiden ducked under and swam furiously. He caught hold of the man’s ankle and Kappel turned, surprised, but Heiden’s grip was tight. Beneath the water he pulled him down and got him in a lock. The man struggled, arms and legs thrashing, air bubbles foaming from his mouth. The jerk of an arm. The glint of a knife, dug in, and again, and again, blood gushing out in threads and coils and spiraling clouds that seemed to leave his body in trailing puffs. Heiden tugged the knife free from the man’s stomach, air and bubbles and blood washing out with it, then he drove it into his windpipe and Kappel went limp. He hurriedly untangled himself from the man’s arms and, leaving the body to sink down into the cold darkness under the weight of the man’s rucksack, clothes, and waterlogged boots, he furiously kicked and swam his way up to—

  His eyes opened and he gasped. The girl was staring at him. He felt at his throat and fumbled furiously in his pocket. They were still there, the seven tags. He rummaged through them, picking out Kappel’s—yanked from the man’s neck as he drifted down into the dark.

  When he closed his eyes he could still see the body, looking down at it through the bloody water. Moored contact mines hung beneath them like strange sticklebacked moons.

  They emerged from the water along the beach. Only he had glanced back but the boat and any sign of Kappel were gone. The others were already moving on. They did not speak or signal to each other. If any of them were bothered about Kappel’s disappearance they didn’t make it known. They would lose men on a mission like this; it would be a miracle if later the S-boat picked up any of them alive.

  They spread out, silently, as they headed for the radar masts at Bawdsey Manor, and one by one he hunted them down as they made their way across the marsh and into the woods. Lehmann was stabbed through the back of his heart. Theissen through the windpipe. Only Pfeiffer had struggled, grabbing Heiden’s wrist and smacking it against a tree so that the knife was dropped and then pulling out his gun, but not quick enough—Heiden had already fired.

  He buried their bodies in the woods. Only with all of them dead could he walk out of the house a different man and no one would question his disappearance. If any of them had made it back to the S-boat or were captured and interrogated, Heiden would be hunted down. That was why he had waited for Diederich. He had purposely left the youngest in the group till last, as he knew that on his own he wouldn’t carry out the Bawdsey Manor mission and, being a stickler for rules, would show at the rendezvous—Greyfriars—if Heiden waited long enough.

  He had taken the dog tags from each of them before he buried them. He looked at them now in his hand. Seven dog tags, including those of Gruber and Bürckel. He had never meant them to mean anything to him, but now he held them tight.

  You hunt or you are hunted, his grandfather said. But now he couldn’t shake the image of Kappel’s body falling away through the water, his blood seeping out of him as he went, like threads gently lowering him down. Or the surprise and fear in Pfeiffer’s eyes as they had struggled in the wood, Pfeiffer trying to smash the knife out of his hand. And then Diederich, shot in the driveway at Greyfriars, dressed as another man, but the same solemn and rugged face from the boat and the blown-out café at La Chapelle: brown eyes that were almost black, the chipped tooth shaped into a fang—a wolfman shot to the ground before he could make it to the door.

  What had he done?

  He held out his hand and offered them to her.

  “You need to take these,” he said.

  “Are they all dead?”

  He nodded. “They have families. They need to be told. You give them to someone in authority. Do you understand? Tell them that I killed them.”

  Gruber had been the easiest because he would have killed them if Heiden hadn’t shot him. Bürckel—just because by that point what did it matter? Gruber had been right: Bürckel was a liability; he would have made mistakes. In the heat of war it boiled down to such trivialities. When all sense was gone and there was no reasoning with oneself or even reason to reason, what did another bullet matter, what was another death? He had thought that in Norway almost every single day: if someone had shot him, he wouldn’t have felt it; he felt quite sure that he was dead already.

  He had broken into the work shed that first night, his flashlight sweeping hurriedly around the tools, looking for something with the smallest blade, something clean and precise. Hiding in the wood, within sight of Greyfriars, he had removed his jacket and his shirt and had heated the small hooked point of the carving knife in the flames of matches, dropping the used ones into his pockets. Stuffing his mouth with his handkerchief, he had driven the blade into his shoulder twice at right angles, so that the wound would heal puckered, like a bullet hole.

  It was unlikely that an S-boat had been sent back to look for them. With the radar at Bawdsey Point still working they would assume the mission a failure, the six men lost. Over the following days they would scan the British reports for news about spies being caught or a possible beach landing, and hearing nothing they would be pleased, relieved. Hitler would lose no sleep over it and no one would play bells for them, yet there were bells ringing.

  He opened his eyes. “They don’t usually ring,” said the girl. She was standing on tiptoes at the window. “Not even on Sundays anymore. It’s because of the war. It must be a mistake.”

  “They’re coming for me,” he said.

  “Who are?”

  “Men,” he said. “Your rescuers.”

  “From the roadblock?”

  “No, not them. They’re dead,” he said.

  She came down off her toes and looked at him. “You came on your own,” she said. “You and these men.” She opened her hand to the collection of tags. “There was never going to be an invasion, was there?”

  “No…I don’t know.”

  “Why did you lie? All the things you said and did…”

  “I couldn’t let you run away and tell anyone that I was here,” he said. “I needed to keep you in the house. I needed you to need me and be scared enough not to try to run.”

  They had received intelligence that the British were clearing out a defense zone. A ten-mile stretch of the coast would be empty but for the army. They would evacuate the area, use some of it for testing, and with the area deserted it would provide Heiden with the time to prepare for his journey inland unhindered. He just needed to ensure that he got rid of the rest of the men on the mission. The house, Greyfriars, would be abandoned, as they all were, and here he would transform himself into George Pendell, a man who lived in the defense area and who they would need to let through. From there he would change himself again and again, until
in the turmoil of war all trace of who he had once been was gone. He would escape the memories of Eva and Germany. He would rub his old self out and start anew.

  But then there was the girl…standing here now in her torn dress, her grazed legs and muddied skin. She had grown so much in these last five days. He hadn’t planned for her to be here, he said. “No one was supposed to be here.”

  “But I was,” she said. “Why didn’t you kill me?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I should have.”

  “Then why didn’t you? Aren’t you brave enough?”

  She stood over him now. She didn’t seem at all scared.

  “Did you do this?”

  She held out her hand. Held between her finger and thumb was a matchstick man.

  “Did you?”

  He said nothing.

  “You’ve seen him, haven’t you,” she said. “That’s why you’re here. That’s why you think you can take his place. That’s how you knew my name, isn’t it? You’ve seen him. Where? Is he all right?”

  “He was in Norway,” he said.

  “Norway? But how? Where is he now?”

  “He’s not coming back, Lydia. I’m sorry.”

  “How do you know? How do you know that?”

  “He was one of the men in the store with me, hiding from the storm that I told you about. We took them hostage. A necessary part of war, I’m afraid. We were stuck with them for five days. He told me a little about you and your brother, about your mother, and the house. Greyfriars. He made it sound so beautiful, so…peaceful. War opens up so many new chances, opportunities to change yourself, be something different, better. We have to take them when they come. It’s the only way to survive sometimes.”

  “But what happened to him?”

  “The two men he was with died. I shot two others, my compatriots—two of the tags I gave you—but I couldn’t shoot him. We were too similar, so similar, your father and I—and not just in how we look. We understood each other. I couldn’t kill him, Lydia,” he said. “So I sent him out into the snow. I’m sorry.”

  “Why? You let him go. Why are you sorry?”

  He shook his head. “A man can’t survive alone in that kind of cold. We were miles above the Arctic Circle. I sent him out to die, because I couldn’t bring myself to shoot him. I’m a traitor, Lydia; a coward. I wasn’t being compassionate to him. I was being weak.”

  She stared at him and then shook her head.

  “No.” She would not believe him, and yet tears welled in her eyes and ran down her cheeks.

  “I am telling you the truth,” he said. “Your father is gone.”

  “But you let him go?”

  “He would not have survived a day out there in the cold on his own.”

  “But you spoke to him. You spoke to him?”

  “Yes.”

  She stood there looking at him, her frame so small, so delicate. He suddenly wanted it not to be true, to somehow erase it all: Norway, France, the whole damn war, to take it all back to a moment with Eva, a moment in the park, her kiss on his lips, to hold it there forever, but he couldn’t. Everything was decimated. Everything that he had been was in ruins.

  “Yes,” he said again. “I spoke to him. All he wanted was to go home, to you, to his family. And…perhaps that is why I let him go. I don’t know. War is the most ridiculous thing.” He laughed. “I don’t even know what we were doing there, in Norway. We were there so you English couldn’t be.” Then he laughed again. “How ridiculous.”

  Outside, the bells were still ringing.

  He had always wanted to see more of England. He had thought, foolishly perhaps, that he could take the girl and make her his: love her as if she were theirs, his and Eva’s. They would drive along the country lanes in the Crossley Torquay Saloon with its sliding roof which they would stop to put down in the summer when the weather was warm. Up and down the Cotswold Hills they’d go. A dog called Baxter or thereabouts bouncing around in the back and barking at the cows. She would sit by him, the girl, and not be afraid. She would laugh at his jokes, the map in her lap, her fingers following the road; and they would stop in villages for tea, or a light lunch if they could find somewhere that served. Tapioca pudding. Cauliflower cheese. No one would think twice about him. How nice, a father and daughter out together on a summer’s day.

  “I could have been a good father,” he said.

  “But you’re not my father. You never will be,” she told him. “Whatever happens.”

  “I know that,” he said. “I know.”

  He could feel hot tears welling in his eyes and before he knew how to stop it, he was sobbing. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But I can’t go back. I can’t be part of that Germany. It is not my Germany anymore.” He tried to swallow his sobs. “I had a love there…” he said. “I had a love…Wherever you go, you’re always there waiting for yourself to arrive. You think you can let it all go but you can’t. It clings. No matter what you do, how far you go, how many strips of skin you tear from yourself.” He pounded at his head with his fist. “It’s in there. In your head. Inside. And you can’t get rid of it. Do you understand?” he said.

  He looked at the girl. He could hear the bells tolling their urgency; men coming with dogs.

  “I am at the end,” he said. “I have to go.”

  “Go?” she said. “But go where?”

  “I shall be caught now. They’ll come through the trees, across the fields, along the roads. They’ll find me and catch me…They’ll hunt me like one of your foxes.”

  “So what do we do?” she said.

  “What do we do?” he said. “Lydia, it’s over. This…Don’t you see?”

  “But what about me? What shall I do?”

  She turned her head and stepped away. She felt the tears running hot down her face.

  “Come on,” he said. “You’re braver than that.”

  “I’m not!” she sobbed.

  “You are. You need to find your mother, Lydia. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes.” She nodded. “I know.”

  She watched him take a deep breath. He was in pain. The blood from his hand had soaked through the dressing and she saw how badly she had put it on. It was already unraveling.

  “You’re bleeding again.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  His shirt was drenched through with blood. There were stains down his trousers and pale, drying lines of it down his arms and over his face.

  He was right. There would be men at Greyfriars soon, coming through the trees, just like she had known they would, although now it was him they were hunting. Was it his wail that she had heard that first night, before he came—the wail of a wounded beast, his cry in the night? Like a man turned into a bear. Like Bearskin, she thought.

  His smile widened and she saw the pain in his eyes. A sharp intake of air as the twinge passed through him.

  He said something but it was lost in the sound of vehicles pulling in through the gate, car doors opening and feet on the gravel. He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again, she saw for the first time that he was afraid.

  He took the pistol from its holster around his waist. His hand was shaking, tremors quaking through his arm.

  “I’m sorry about your father. I won’t ask you to forgive me because you can’t and you shouldn’t. I shouldn’t have left him. There is so much that I wish I could change.”

  She turned her back on him.

  The men outside broke into the house. She heard the front door being rammed open. There was shouting; boots running across floorboards; doors being thrown open and barged through. Voices. Lydia! Lydia!

  “I can’t let them catch me,” he said. “You know that, don’t you?”

  But what could they do to stop it? Even if they barricaded themselves in, they would have to come down from the attic at some point.

  “When they see me with you they will kill me, they will think the worst,” he said. “Men with faulty guns that don’t f
ire properly. It won’t be clean. It will be slow and painful. I’m a coward, Lydia. I couldn’t bear it. And I don’t want you to see that.”

  Already there were dogs barking. Men pounding up the stairs. Heavy boots and shouting, and someone yelling down the landing, Lydia! Are you here?

  She didn’t know whether to call out, to shout, I’m here! I’m here!

  She looked at him. He wasn’t moving. He still had the gun in his hand. She wanted to take it from him.

  Lydia! Lydia Pendell!

  She could hear them downstairs, going in and out of the bedrooms.

  “You are a very brave and admirable young lady,” he said. “Thank you for your company, for giving me some hope—no matter how short lived.” There were tears streaming down his face now and she tried to get down on the floor with him, to wrap her arms around him, and bury her head in his chest, but he wouldn’t let her.

  “No. Get back,” he said. “Stay back.”

  There was thumping at the attic hatch, men shouting, someone calling, Lydia! Are you in there? Open the hatch!

  She tried to call out to them but something was stopping her.

  “I’m sorry,” he said under his breath.

  “Why? What are you doing?”

  “Will you open the hatch now and let them in?”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t want to.”

  “Please, Lydia,” he said. “Open the hatch.”

  She shook her head. She couldn’t do it. She wouldn’t.

  He lifted the gun and pointed it at her just as he had that first night.

  “Turn around, Lydia, and open the hatch.”