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.

The thirteen men were sitting in a variety of tatty chairs, some of which had been pinched from bombed-out buildings in town. Standing in front of a blackboard he had wangled, Lockhart looked at each of them in turn. They all seemed nervous, apprehensive. Pugh gave him a wink, Hull, Andreae and Stafford knowing nods; the rest caught his eye, save for Maclaren, who avoided his gaze. He would have to watch him, thought Lockhart, he could ruin everything.

“I’ll give it to you straight,” Lockhart began. “We leave on Sunday morning.”

They gasped as one.

“But sir,” said Andreae, “that’s not enough time!”

“You’re right,” said Lockhart. “It isn’t enough. But we don’t have any more time. If the Germans are going to use the sarin, then I suspect they’ll use it soon.”

“Couldn’t we get the RAF to bomb it?” asked Allan.

“I wish we could,” Lockhart replied. “But there are two problems there. First, as Stafford here will tell you, London has been singularly uncommunicative over the past few weeks. And even if they did order an air raid, I expect it would fail, because the gas and the rockets are buried deep within a mountain. A raid would do little more than knock down a few trees, perhaps take out some satellite camps. No, we actually have to get inside and deal with it.”

“But how?” asked Allan.

“Patience! I’m coming to that.”

Lockhart turned to face the blackboard, and spent a couple of minutes chalking up a simplified plan of Mittelbau. He had remembered every detail of the blueprint, had got Leni to quiz him repeatedly on the layout, which materials were stored in which hall, and so forth. There was no need to tell the men the complete layout—it would only confuse them. The basics were all that they required.