Enraged, Strasser watched the Englishman walk over to the two truck drivers, who were standing some distance away having a cigarette. He could see from their faces that they were stunned by what Lockhart was telling them, presumably informing him that there was no way they could surrender their truck to him, even if he was a hauptsturmführer, and they mere privates. However, just as Strasser thought that Lockhart was being put in his place, he watched him take a wallet out of his tunic, and pass the men a fistful of banknotes. He was bribing them! Strasser could have him shot for that, but he knew it was impossible. Lockhart had warned him that if anything happened to him, Leni would tell the SD about Strasser’s loose tongue. Seething, he watched Lockhart walk back toward him, his expression triumphant.

“There we go, Carl, the British Free Corps now has its very own truck.”

Strasser stayed silent. Whatever it was that Lockhart was planning, it was clearly important. He wasn’t just intending to escape, because he could have done that some time ago. So what was he up to? What was it that required not only all this equipment, but the men as well?

Surely it was now time for Strasser to stop all this, stop being taken advantage of. There were three options open to him. He could simply call in the SD—that would put an end to it, but it might well put an end to him as well. Or he could turn a blind eye, and let Lockhart carry on. But that would also guarantee Strasser’s demise. The third option was simply to kill himself, but the idea of throwing his life away was anathema. Once, he would have been willing to die for the Reich, but not anymore. He felt conned, cheated. They had been swindled, all of them, sold a pup about the greatness and goodness of Germany. What had he done that felt so good and so great? Nothing. He felt ashamed, almost crippled by a lack of pride. All those bodies he had left behind, all that grief, all that destruction.

There was a fourth option, but he shrugged it off. It was unthinkable, and he felt guilty for letting it cross his mind.

That evening, Lockhart gathered the men together in their common room. A portrait of the Duke of Windsor was hanging on the wall, but there was an absence of any Nazi insignia, except for the BFC’s tattered recruiting poster showing the Nazi flag and the Union Jack side by side, held aloft by glorious marching ranks. “Our Flag Is Going Forward Too” read the caption, which seemed ironic to Lockhart, aware that the Nazi flag was going anywhere but forward. The Americans and the British were making huge advances in the west, and the Russians were thrusting forward equally strongly. It made Lockhart realize that there was no more time to lose—if the Germans were going to use the sarin, they were going to use it soon, to try to halt any further Allied advances, make them think again.