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The Second Midnight
Andrew Taylor
From the No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author comes a World War Two tale of one boy’s fight for survival in Nazi Europe A secret mission…1939. As Europe teeters on the brink of war, Alfred Kendall is tasked with carrying out a minor mission for the British Intelligence Service. Travelling to Prague, he takes his troubled young son, Hugh, as cover. A terrible choice…When Hitler invades Czechoslovakia, Alfred is given an ultimatum by the Czech Resistance. They will arrange for him to return to England, but only if he leaves his son Hugh behind as collateral. A young boy stranded in Nazi terrain…Hugh is soon taken under the wing of a Nazi colonel – Helmuth Scholl. But even though Scholl treats Hugh well, his son, Heinz, is suspicious of this foreigner. And as the war across the continent intensifies, they are set on a path that will ultimately lead towards destruction…
THE SECOND MIDNIGHT
Andrew Taylor
Copyright (#u5e9191c8-236e-57bd-8e1c-1a1d3633542b)
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in the United Kingdom by Collins 1988
This edition published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Copyright © Lydmouth Ltd 1987
Cover design by www.mulcaheydesign.com (http://www.mulcaheydesign.com) © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Cover photographs © Mark Owen / Trevillion Images (https://www.trevillion.com) (boy looking over city), Shutterstock.com (http://Shutterstock.com) (all other images)
Andrew Taylor asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008341831
Ebook Edition © November 2019 ISBN: 9780008341848
Version: 2019-07-16
Dedication (#u5e9191c8-236e-57bd-8e1c-1a1d3633542b)
For C. and L.T.
Contents
Cover (#u4b99b70d-5b9e-574d-8e13-1d9d2ba2ef91)
Title Page (#u2bb768c7-a206-53c8-9f8e-fd24e14e81da)
Copyright
Dedication
I: Pre-War 1939
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
II: War 1939–45
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
III: Postwar 1945–46
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
IV: Cold War 1955–56
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Epilogue
Keep Reading …
About the Author
By the Same Author
About the Publisher
I (#u5e9191c8-236e-57bd-8e1c-1a1d3633542b)
Prologue (#u5e9191c8-236e-57bd-8e1c-1a1d3633542b)
George Farrar had his first inkling that something was wrong when he collected his room key from reception.
The manager himself was behind the desk. He was a plump Viennese, almost as small as Farrar himself, and he always wore a flower in the lapel of his black coat. He was also a compulsive talker.
Tonight, however, he produced the key as soon as Farrar reached the desk and slapped it down on the counter between them. Immediately afterwards he bent his head over the register, as if the pressure of work prevented him from exchanging pleasantries with his guests.
‘Any messages?’ Farrar said. He was hoping that William McQueen might have telephoned.
The manager didn’t raise his head. ‘No, Herr Farrar.’
Farrar noticed that the white carnation was beginning to wilt. He also noticed that the manager’s face was shiny with sweat. Still, it was uncomfortably warm in the foyer.
He said goodnight and took the lift up to his floor. A tall man wearing a camelhair overcoat came up with him. He was smoking a cigar and had small, sad eyes.
They both wanted the same floor. The tall man gave a polite little bow when they reached it, indicating that Farrar should leave the lift first. Farrar smiled his thanks.
The long corridor was empty. Farrar walked quickly to his door; behind him he could hear the soft, slow pad of the other man’s footsteps. He unlocked the door and opened it; his hand brushed against the light switch.
Everything happened very suddenly. A hand slammed into the small of his back, propelling him into the room. Simultaneously, he saw that the carpet was strewn with his belongings. Another man was lying on the bed, with his hands behind his head. He was smiling. When Farrar tripped over his own upturned suitcase, the smile became a chuckle.
Behind him, Farrar heard a click as the tall man locked the door.
The man on the bed stopped chuckling. Farrar’s stomach lurched as he recognized the Bavarian he had met last night.
The Bavarian raised his heavy black eyebrows. ‘And how is our lovely Gretl this evening?’
Farrar groped for his glasses, which had slid to the foot of the bed. Camelhair brushed his cheek. A large brown shoe stamped on the glasses and twisted them into the carpet.
The tall man sucked in his breath. ‘Ach,’ he said. ‘I am so clumsy.’
‘What a pity,’ said the man on the bed. ‘Still, accidents happen.’
Farrar got slowly to his feet; his muscles tightened, ready to receive a blow from the tall man. He moved more slowly than he needed, pretending the fall had winded him. His own stupidity angered him: last night he had assumed that the man on the bed was nothing more than a tourist who had had too much to drink; he should have known better. He remembered the manager’s behaviour and realized that his visitors must be police of some sort: German, not Austrian. He was a fool to have run any unnecessary risks before he had seen William McQueen.
‘Gretl,’ the man on the bed said conversationally, ‘won’t be lovely for much longer.’ Without any change of tone he added, ‘This room is a pigsty. Tidy it up, Farrar.’
Did they know? Had they found it?
Farrar had the answer to the second question as soon as he picked up the suitcase: it was appreciably lighter than it should have been. He scooped up a pile of shirts and threw them into the case.
Sweet Jesus, he thought. Please not the Gestapo.
‘Neatly, Farrar. You get so much more in if you pack neatly, don’t you?’
‘Look, I’m sorry about last night,’ Farrar said quickly. His German was fast and fluent, and he had a salesman’s confidence in the power of his own voice. ‘I’d had a bit to drink and the girl—’
The tall man slapped him. ‘Silence, please,’ he said politely.
Farrar picked himself up again. Some clothes went in the suitcase, others in the wardrobe and the chest of drawers. Meanwhile, the man on the bed leafed through Farrar’s order book. Farrar noticed that the thieving bastards had even been at his brandy: the bottle, nearly empty, was on the bedside table; beside it was a tumbler with a couple of inches of brandy still in it.
The man on the bed looked up. ‘Business has not been good lately?’
Farrar nodded. There wasn’t much demand for boxed sets of British Grenadiers in the Third Reich. That was one reason why he had taken the other job when they offered it to him.
‘I expect you find it hard to make ends meet.’
Again, Farrar nodded. It seemed safer to agree. Besides, the man on the bed was quite right. He wondered whether they were going to beat him up before they arrested him, or wait until they had him in custody.
Escape was out of the question. His captors’ combined weight was three or four times his own; and both men would be armed. The door was locked. Even if he could open the window and dive through, he doubted if he would survive the drop of fifty or sixty feet to the street below. Shouting for help would be useless, for it was obvious that they had the cooperation of the manager.
But they wouldn’t kill him – he was sure of that. A murdered British citizen would lead to awkward questions, even in Vienna. They would interrogate him, of course, and if he was dead he couldn’t tell them anything. But the worst he had to fear was a jail sentence and perhaps a little preliminary suffering. They might not realize the significance of what they had found.
The man on the bed tore a blank page from the order book and wrote something on it with a silver pencil.
Farrar bundled a pair of shoes into the bottom of the wardrobe. At last the room was clear.
The man in the camelhair coat patted his shoulder. ‘Gut,’ he said encouragingly. ‘Sehr gut.’
‘Have a drink,’ said the man on the bed. He beckoned Farrar closer and jerked his head towards the tumbler. ‘Go on, drink,’ he said irritably. ‘It may be your last chance for some time.’
Farrar picked up the glass. The probable consequences of throwing its contents into the Bavarian’s face chased through his mind.
The Bavarian shook his head. ‘Don’t be silly, Farrar. There are two of us.’
‘Hurry, please,’ the man in the camelhair coat said. He looked ostentatiously at his watch.
Farrar shrugged. He picked up the glass and had his last drink.
George Farrar died on Wednesday 15 February 1939.
The fact that he had died was more important than how and why, at least to Michael. But, much later, Michael became curious about all aspects of the little man’s death. This was because he came to see the murder of Farrar as the starting point for what came afterwards. He realized that this was an arbitrary choice – equally logically, he might have chosen Farrar’s birth, or the Anschluss, or even (to stretch a point) the Great War.
But, being an artist of sorts, he considered that human beings had a fundamental need to create patterns from the chaos of history and from their own messy lives. A pattern had to start somewhere: even the author of Genesis had had to face up to this problem: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
So Michael’s pattern began with Farrar’s death. If Farrar had reached London the following weekend, a World War might have taken a slightly different course; his death sent ripples even further into the future; it touched, perhaps marginally, on the rise and fall of empires.
