They reached Horse Guards and climbed the steps to 2 Storey’s Gate. Thorn felt a renewed surge of irritation as he sensed Seaforth’s growing excitement. They showed their special day-passes to a blue-uniformed Royal Marine standing with a fixed bayonet at the entrance and went down the steep spiral staircase leading to the bunker. Through a great iron door and past several more sentries, they came to a corridor leading into the labyrinth. Seaforth blinked in the bright artificial light and greedily took in his surroundings – whitewashed brick walls and big red steel girders supporting the ceilings. It was like being inside the bowels of a ship, Seaforth thought. The air was stale, almost fetid, despite the continuous hum of the ubiquitous ventilation fans pumping in filtered air from outside, and there was an atmosphere of concentrated activity all around them. Through the open doors of the rooms that they passed, Seaforth saw secretaries typing and men talking animatedly into telephones – some in uniform, some in suits. People hurried by in both directions, and Seaforth was struck by the paleness of their faces, caused no doubt by a prolonged deprivation of light and fresh air. Tellingly, a notice on the wall described the day’s weather conditions, as if this were the only way the inhabitants of this God-forsaken underworld would ever know whether the sun was shining or rain was falling in the world above.
They stopped outside the open door of the Map Room. This was the nerve centre of the bunker, where information about the war was continually being received, collated, and distributed. Two parallel lines of desks ran down the centre of the room, divided from each other by a bank of different-coloured telephones – green, white, ivory, and red – the so-called beauty chorus. They didn’t ring but instead flashed continuously, answered by officers in uniform sitting at the desks. Over on a blackboard in the corner, the day’s ‘score’ was marked up in chalk – Luftwaffe on the left with fifty-three down and RAF on the right with twenty-two. It was a significant number of ‘kills’ but fewer than Seaforth had anticipated, judging from the mayhem he’d witnessed in the skies over London during the day.
Seaforth’s eyes watered. The thick fug of cigarette smoke blown about by the electric fans on the wall made him feel sick, but he swallowed the bile rising in his throat, determined to see everything and to try to understand everything he saw. No detail escaped his notice – the codebooks and documents littering the desks lit up by the green reading lamps; the map of the Atlantic on the far wall with different-coloured pins showing the up-to-date location of the convoys crossing to and from America; the stand of locked-up Lee-Enfield rifles just inside the entrance to the room.
‘What are you looking at?’ asked a hostile voice close to his ear. It was Thorn. Seaforth had been so absorbed in his observation of the Map Room that he had momentarily forgotten his companion. But Thorn had clearly not forgotten him. He was staring at Seaforth, his eyes alive with suspicion.
‘Everything,’ said Seaforth. ‘This is the heart of the operation. Of course I’m curious.’
‘Curiosity killed the cat,’ said Thorn acidly.
‘Mr Thorn, Mr Seaforth. If I could just see your passes?’ A man in a dark suit had appeared as if from nowhere. ‘Good. Thank you. If you’d like to come this way. The Prime Minister will see you now.’
They passed through an ante-room, turned to their left, and suddenly found themselves in the presence of Winston Churchill, dressed not in a bathrobe but in an expensive double-breasted pinstripe suit with a gold watch chain stretched across his capacious stomach. He was wearing his trademark polka-dot bow tie and a spotless white handkerchief folded into a precise triangle in his top pocket. It was the Churchill that was familiar from countless Pathé newsreels and photographs, except for the stovepipe hat, and that was hanging on a stand in the corner. Without the hat he seemed older – the wispy strands of hair on his head and the pudginess of his face made him seem more a vulnerable, careworn old man than the indomitable British bulldog of popular imagination.
He got up from behind his kneehole desk just as they came in, depositing a half-smoked Havana cigar in a large ashtray that contained the butts of two more.
‘Hello, Alec,’ he said, shaking Thorn’s hand. ‘Good of you to come – sorry about the short notice. And this must be the resourceful Mr Seaforth,’ he went on, fixing a look of penetrating enquiry on Thorn’s companion, who had hung back as they’d entered the room, as if overcome by an uncharacteristic shyness now that he was about to meet the most famous Englishman of his generation.
Eagerness and then timidity: Thorn was puzzled by the sudden change in Seaforth, who seemed momentarily reluctant to go forward and shake Churchill’s outstretched hand. And then, when he did so, Thorn could have sworn that Seaforth grimaced as if in revulsion at the physical contact. But Churchill didn’t seem to notice, and Thorn realized that it could well be the cigar smoke that was causing Seaforth discomfort. He was well aware how much Seaforth hated tobacco, and the sight of his subordinate’s nauseated expression had been the only redeeming feature for Thorn of Seaforth’s recent inclusion at strategy meetings in the smoke-filled conference room back at HQ.
‘I don’t need you, Thompson,’ said Churchill. For a moment, Thorn had no idea whom the Prime Minister was talking to, until he turned to his right and realized that another man was present in the room. It was Walter Thompson, Churchill’s personal bodyguard, sitting like a waxwork in the corner, tall and ramrod straight. Without a word, Thompson went out and closed the door behind him.
‘Drink?’ asked Churchill, crossing to a side table and mixing himself a generous whisky and soda. ‘By God, I need one. I hate being down here with the rest of the trogs, but Thompson and the rest of them insist on it when the bombing gets bad, so I don’t suppose I’ve got too much choice. I’d much prefer to have been up topside watching the battle. Seems like Goering’s thrown everything he’s got at us today, but the brass tell me we’ve weathered the storm so far, at least. You know, I don’t think I’ve been as proud of anyone as I’ve been of our pilots these last few weeks. Tested in the fiery furnace day after day, night after night, and each time they come out ready for action. Extraordinary!’
Churchill looked up, holding out the whisky bottle. Thorn accepted the offer, but Seaforth declined.
‘Not a teetotaller, are you?’ asked Churchill, eyeing Seaforth with a look of distrust.
‘No, sir,’ said Seaforth. ‘I just want to have all my wits about me, that’s all. I’m expecting some difficult questions.’
‘Are you now?’ said Churchill, raising his eyebrows quizzically as he resumed his seat and waved his visitors to chairs on the other side of the desk. ‘Well, it was certainly an interesting report you sent in,’ he observed, putting on his round-rimmed black reading glasses and examining a document that he’d extracted from a buff-coloured box perched precariously on the corner of the desk. ‘Lots of nuts-and-bolts information, which I like, but most of it saying how well prepared Herr Hitler is for his cross-Channel excursion, which I like rather less. We knew about the heavy build-up of artillery and troops in the Pas-de-Calais, of course, but the number of tanks they’ve converted to amphibious use is an unpleasant surprise, and we’d assumed up to now that most of their landing craft were going to be unpowered.’
‘They’ve installed BMW aircraft engines on the barges,’ said Seaforth. ‘They seem to work, apparently.’
‘So I see. Five hundred tanks converted to amphibious use,’ said Churchill, reading from the document. ‘It’s a large number if they can get them across, but that’ll depend on the weather, of course, and who’s in control of the air, and we seem to be holding our own in that department, at least for now, at any rate.’
‘There are the figures for Luftwaffe air production in the report as well –