The Eagle Has Landed, Touch the Devil, and Confessional by Jack Higgins

Author:Jack Higgins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2010-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

At six a.m. Ferguson and Harry Fox were having breakfast in a truck drivers’ cafe on the A40 just outside Cheltenham. The bacon and eggs were the best Fox could remember enjoying since the Officers’ Mess at Combermere Barracks in Windsor. Ferguson was obviously just as impressed.

‘What about Devlin, sir?’

‘Remarkable man. Must be sixty-one now. An Ulsterman. County Down, I believe. Father executed during the Anglo-Irish war in nineteen twenty-one for serving in a flying column. Educated by Jesuits, took first class honours in English Literature at Trinity College. Scholar, writer, poet and highly dangerous gunman for the IRA during the thirties. Went to Spain in nineteen thirty-six. Served in the Washington Brigade against Franco. Captured by Italian troops and imprisoned in Spain until nineteen forty when the Abwehr had him freed and brought to Berlin to see if he could be of any use to German Intelligence.’

‘And was he, sir?’

‘The trouble was, from their point of view, he was a bad risk. Very anti-fascist, you see. The Abwehr’s Irish Section did use him once. They’d sent an agent to Ireland, a Captain Goertz. When he got stuck, they parachuted Devlin in to get him out for them. Unfortunately Goertz was caught and Devlin spent several months on the run before he managed to make it back to Berlin via Portugal. From then on, Ireland was a dead end as far as the Abwehr was concerned and Devlin took a job lecturing at the University of Berlin. Until the autumn of nineteen forty-three.’ Ferguson reached for the marmalade. ‘This really is very good. I think I’ll ask him for a jar.’

‘The autumn of nineteen forty-three,’ Fox said patiently.

‘How much do you know about the German attempt on Churchill’s life in November of that year, Harry?’

Fox laughed out loud. ‘Come on, sir, an old wives’ tale, that one.’ And then, continuing to watch Ferguson’s face, he stopped laughing. ‘Isn’t it, sir?’

‘Well, let’s assume it’s just a good story, Harry. The scenario would run something like this. Devlin, bored to tears at University of Berlin, is offered a job by the Abwehr. He’s to parachute into Ireland, then make his way to Norfolk to act as middle man between the most successful woman agent the Abwehr had in the entire war and a crack force of German paratroopers, led by a Colonel Kurt Steiner, the object of the exercise being to apprehend Churchill who was staying at a country house outside the village of Studley Constable.’

‘Go on, sir.’

‘All for nothing, of course. Wasn’t even Churchill, just a stand-in while the great man was going to Tehran. They died anyway, Steiner and his men. Well, all except one, and Devlin, with his usual Irish deviousness, got away.’

Harry Fox said in amazement, ‘You mean it’s all true, sir?’

‘A few years yet before those classified files are opened, Harry. You’ll have to wait and see.’

‘And Devlin worked for the Nazis? I don’t get it. I thought you said he was anti-fascist?’

‘Rather more complicated than that.

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