The Shameful Suicide of Winston Churchill Read online

  THE SHAMEFUL SUICIDE

  of

  WINSTON CHURCHILL

  PETER MILLAR

  Contents

  Title Page

  Praise

  Map

  OVERTURE: Zero Hour

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Copyright

  ‘Should the German people lay down their arms … over all this territory, which, with the Soviet Union included, would be of enormous extent, an Iron Curtain would descend.’

  Joseph Goebbels

  Das Reich newspaper, 23 February 1945

  ‘I must tell you that a socialist policy is abhorrent to British ideas on freedom. There is to be one State, to which all are to be obedient in every act of their lives. This State, once in power, will prescribe for everyone: where they are to work, what they are to work at, where they may go and what they may say, what views they are to hold, where their wives are to queue up for the State ration, and what education their children are to receive. A socialist state could not afford to suffer opposition – no socialist system can be established without a political police. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo.’

  Winston Churchill

  Election address, 1945

  ‘History will be kind to me, because I intend to write it.’

  Winston Churchill, 1948

  ‘… though God cannot alter the past, historians can; it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence.’

  Samuel Butler

  Erewhon Revisited, 1901

  OVERTURE: Zero Hour

  Downing Street, London, September 1949

  The house that sat at the heart of the world had no name, just a number like any other. And had long since been reduced to rubble. Like every other. War was the real great leveller. But even in destruction the semblance of similarity between this house and any other was false.

  From the centre of a global web of countless colonies, domains and dependencies, a local filigree network spread beneath the ground. Beneath the fallen masonry, the eighteenth-century brickwork that had crumbled into dust, the shards of marble from staircases and fireplaces, emerging from what once had been cellars for wine and coal, a labyrinth of debris-littered tunnels still survived, leading like a choked artery to the crippled body politic’s residual nerve centre, which stubbornly still functioned even though its life support system was slowly, surely, failing.

  Even here the dust permeated; the last tangible traces of grandeur ground to grit stuck to the skin and irritated the eyes. Dust to dust. The old man closed his eyes to shut out reality. But he could not shut out the noise, though it was more felt than heard: a dull, persistent rumbling, broken by intermittent juddering thuds. As if the earth was shaking. As well it might.

  All eyes were on him, if only surreptitiously. In the specially designed, one-piece, grey pinstriped ‘siren suit’ that he referred to as his ‘rompers’, he had so long resembled a big, bumptious, cigar-puffing baby. But not any more. He looked shrunken, wizened, as though he had surrendered at last, if only to his years. He no longer paced, not even with the aid of his stick, but emerged from his sleeping quarters to stalk the Map Room sombrely, oblivious to the flickering light from the caged safety light that with every advancing shock wave swayed above his head like on the deck of a ship in a storm.

  The telephone lines were silent now, the red, white and black on the centre table no longer linked their attendant lieutenant colonels to distant command centres that had long since collapsed. In the radio room pretty girls with drawn faces and tremblingly rigid upper lips, eavesdropped on the end of the world: a high-pitched, scratchy, chimpanzee chatter of distant voices interspersed with crackle and the soaring, dipping banshee howl as they chased up and down the frequencies for the ghosts on the airwaves. In an ever more alien ether. Tortuously twisted hairclips beside the mugs of half-drunk, cold, weak tea testified to the terrible tension that gnawed at their innards.

  Occasionally, increasingly rarely, contact would be made. And held. Sometimes, only sometimes, the voices in the ether asked for orders. The answer they were given was always the same. The same as it had been for days now: ‘Hold on as long as you can.’ No one dared address the follow-up: ‘And then?’ Just as no one dared approach the old man. The rule had, in any case, always been ‘speak when you’re spoken to’. And he hadn’t spoken now for more than twenty-four hours. The man famed for holding forth for hours on end, with no more audience than a pet dog, had been reduced to a sinister silence. At least in what passed for public.

  In recent days he had retired only rarely to the little bed in his cramped quarters off the Map Room, armed as ever with whisky, though even that was now in short supply. The champagne had long gone, the empty magnums of Pol Roger a mocking memory of better times. He slept, if at all, for no more than an hour or two at a time, emerging, glass in hand, to stare at the ‘big board’, watching bleakly as one piece after another was removed. Like a giant chess game. An endgame.

  Except that while the enemy had been playing chess, he had been playing poker. Bluffing to the end. He had taken the big gamble, and seen the cards fall against him, just as they had done more than thirty years ago at Gallipoli, on the Turkish coast. In another war. Another lifetime. Lady Luck favoured those who dared, he had believed. But Lady Luck was just another tart. All he had got was the quick fuck. And now it was his back against the wall. He almost smiled at the coarse metaphor, but the time for smiles was past. As was the time for metaphors.

  Fine phrases had not been enough. The blood had run dry. The sweat had been wasted, the toil in vain. There was nothing left but the tears. He had been defeated on the beaches, defeated on the landing grounds, defeated in the fields and in the streets. He, and those who had put their trust in him.

  On the wall next to his bed the great map of the British Isles, with its shoreline, cliffs and beaches colour-coded according to their defensiblity, was defaced with the string and pins that charted the inevitable encroachment of the red tide.

  In the Map Room it
self the great geophysical charts that had once allowed him to watch his erstwhile allies’ expansion from the depths of the steppes to Berlin and beyond had been torn down long before they became his enemies and reached the English Channel. The scale had changed by then; the global had become personal. The map now was one with which he had been familiar all his life – the map of London – one on which he had hoped he would never have to play the terrible game of war, let alone see his playing chips reduced to this. The markers with the familiar emblems of proud regiments represented little more than remnants, huddled together like sheep in a pen.

  He could barely bring himself to think of the reality they represented, the reality above his head: London’s familiar streets transformed into a battleground with bus shelters turned into barricades, taxi ranks become tank traps, the last ditch defenders – little more than boys some of them – crouching with bazookas behind Regency balustrades and East End dustbins, from Peckham to Piccadilly, in burnt-out pubs and the smoking remains of Pall Mall clubs. All equal at last, in their final hours.

  With a brusque, angry gesture he swept the markers away.

  The old man took the smouldering stub of his fat Havana cigar reluctantly from his mouth and ground it out on the fine-tooled leatherwork of his desk. Then he stood for a moment transfixed by the sight of the crumbling ash. Ashes to ashes. Like the taste in his mouth. His heart was heavy as he took down the Sam Browne belt and the holstered semi-automatic Colt that had served him so well. He knew what he had to do. There was only one way out now.

  The girls on the silent switchboard peeked out silently as he pulled on his khaki greatcoat and his peaked cap. Then, leaning heavily on his stick, he made for the door that he had not used for nearly three weeks. The door that led upstairs, to the world above, to Armageddon.

  One of the girls made to go and help him, but her colleague held her back with a restraining arm and tears in her eyes. No, her look said, though like the rest of them she said nothing. If words failed even him, what could anyone else say? Let him go, her eyes said. To do what he has to do. It’s over. For all of us. Nonetheless, the girl got up to go and wash her face, to dry her tears.

  Behind the eyes that held back tears, there was, for the first time, also fear. They had heard the stories, of the butchery, the wanton savagery and the wholesale rape. Of the women in Dover, Hastings and Brighton who had blackened their faces with coal dust, dressed in drab overcoats and pulled their grandfathers’ darned woollen socks over their legs. And still had not been spared.

  As the old man passed them, those he was leaving to their own fate, he wondered if he ought to make a gesture, to say goodbye. But he no longer knew how to face them. He prayed they would escape the worst, though he doubted it.

  Disguises would do him no good. His face was familiar the world over. Even in the benighted ranks of the ignorant enemy. He let his hand reach inside the greatcoat, settle on the familiar pistol grip. Then he turned the handle on the reinforced steel door and took the first step on the staircase that led up to what was left of the world, and to his own appointment with destiny.

  And those that watched him go, or for form’s sake pretended not to notice, knew that what they were witnessing was a death. Not the death of a man – what was one more amid so many? – but of an empire. And an era. From now on there would be a new world order.

  Already the world above looked changed beyond recognitions, a world turned on its head. His tired, bloodshot eyes blinked beneath the weary wrinkled lids and smarted from the cordite in the acrid air. A cacophony assaulted his ears, of screaming sirens, howling aircraft engines, the staccato chatter of distant machine-gun fire and the dull oppressive persistent percussion of artillery. Closer to hand, he could hear the mechanical screech of cogs and cranks that hauled heavy armour across the fallen brickwork and shattered Portland stone facades, the T-34s and the new, monstrous Stalin tanks, remorselessly grinding their way over the ruins. Coming closer by the moment.

  Stumbling, frightened – he admitted it to himself as he would have done to no one else – he peered through the dust-choked air past the remnants of Downing Street to the ruins of

  Whitehall, then turned his gaze in the other direction. Winston Spencer Churchill, First Lord of the Treasury, 41st Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Commander-in-Chief of imperial forces drawn from five continents, the man who had once boasted that the British empire and its Commonwealth might last a thousand years, wiped a tear from his eye. As he stumbled towards what had once been the green oasis of St James’s Park, its trees long since felled for firewood, he hefted the weighty revolver in his hand. He knew he no longer had a choice.

  Behind the plinth of the Clive statue, peering over the toppled bronze statue of the empire’s first great hero, the insignificant little figure, with her woolly hat and tear-streaked cheeks could not believe her eyes but the image remained imprinted on her retinae forever.

  Chapter 1

  Bermondsey, East London, 1989

  Fog makes fools of us all. You see shapes in the shadows, where there are no shadows, no shapes. In a fog, without noticing it, you can bump into reality. Or worse.

  His heart was pounding, his pulse loud in his ears. He breathed, when he dared, in short, wheezing gasps. The fog was already deep in his lungs. At his back the brick wall was cold, damp, slimy with mould, the broken paving slabs beneath his feet wet, slippery and treacherous. A wrong step risked a fall. If he fell they would be on him in a heartbeat.

  He sniffed the fetid night air, a hare seeking the scent of the fox. How far away were they? These were their streets. Their city. Their goddamn fog. It was in streets like these, just across the river, that Jack the Ripper had eviscerated a dozen young women. Was this how they had felt as the predator closed in?

  Footsteps sounded in the opaque yellow-grey emptiness behind him. Uneven. Hesitant. Those who made them were as aware as he was of the slightest noise in a world without vision. They were near. Nearer than he had thought possible. He didn’t know for sure how many there were. Three. Maybe four. Maybe more. More than enough to take him down.

  He had to move. But the sound of running feet would be like a homing beacon. Even if he knew which direction to take. He strained his hearing, moving his head slowly from side to side as if his small, tightly pinned-back ears were radar scanners. But there was nothing. Just the fine rain falling invisibly on wet streets. A sinister susurrus that seeped from the smog might have been guarded whispering. Or distant car tyres in the drizzle. It faded away.

  Hugging the slimy wall behind him, he slid his foot silently along the pavement, holding his breath, his fingers creeping along the damp brickwork, until they reached a window, a cold glass pane of unthreatening darkness. There would be no muted glimmer to betray his passage.

  Beyond the window, a door, old wood with peeling paint, fronting right onto the street. Then another window, also in darkness. Then another door. Even in bright daylight he could get lost in these alleyways that ran between ancient warehouses, punctuated here and there by a rubble-filled gap, like the remains of a rotted tooth: the lingering legacy of the Blitz. Or the Liberation. Whatever they called it. Whatever.

  He could hide amidst the rubble. But not forever. There were hours before dawn. He imagined himself crouching in frozen numbness behind some toppled chimney stack until the weak grey daylight revealed his pursuers sitting there watching him with sardonic smiles.

  He paused. And caught the ghost of other footsteps stopping too. Almost an echo, but not quite. Too close for that. Involuntarily he caught his breath. With the chilling casualness of an old friend putting a hand on his shoulder to soften the blow of bad news, someone, in terrifying proximity, said his name aloud.

  He ran then. As he knew they meant him to. Feet slapping on the wet pavement, his feet and theirs, loud after so much studied silence. The distance that separated them rapidly shrinking. Straight ahead. A wall loomed. Faceless brick. Too high to scale. Right, then left. How regular w
as the street pattern? How well did they know it? Was he running nowhere? In circles? Into a trap? Into the river?

  The river. A fool’s gamble. But the leanest odds were better than none. A mouthful of polluted water could be fatal, but less certainly than a bullet in the brain. Which way? The Thames here twisted in giant loops permeated by the docks. And in any case he had lost all sense of direction.

  He took a left. There was a distinct slope away from him. Fuzzy dark angular shapes of iron pulleys and winches protruded overhead. If he could find a way into one of the ancient Victorian structures they might never find him. But the iron doors would be locked, with steel bars on the few accessible windows.

  The street was cobbled here, treacherously slippery. The long line of warehouses curved around towards the left, broken by tiny alleyways, some barely the width of a man’s shoulders. Some, he knew, were dead ends, giving access only to locked side doors and cellars. Somewhere around here was the area known as Jacob’s Island, which Charles Dickens had called the ‘most pestilential part of the metropolis’. The villainous Bill Sykes had lost his footing here and been sucked under by the Thames mud.

  Cold sweat poured down the inside of his shirt. Too damn old for this game. But then he hadn’t expected to be playing it. Somewhere along here there was an old public house that backed onto the river. If only he could find it. From his left came a low, eerie groan of metal on metal that could have been an inn sign creaking on its chains. He stopped and held his breath and in that instant realised that he could no longer hear the sound of his pursuers.

  Was it possible? Did he dare believe, even for a second, that he might have evaded them? They would have expected him, after all, to head west. He knew, of course, only too well the temptation of the desperate man to clutch at any straw of hope and was determined not to yield to it. Even so, the emotion that flooded through him – along with sheer unbridled terror as something rough and hairy descended over his head and constricted his windpipe in a brutal choking grip – was acute disappointment.