WC02 - Never Surrender by Michael Dobbs Read Free Book Online Page B

the neck. She had probably cut it herself. There were other signs of self-reliance about her, apart from defiant eyes her tweed suit was frayed at the cuffs and clearly designed for someone several pounds heavier, her shoes were old, her fingers unadorned by ny jewellery. She held an ancient handbag protectively in her lap.
    "You look well," he offered clumsily.
    "No thanks to you." Her vocabulary was precise, her accent stiff.
    He cleared his throat in irritation. He could still remember his surprise at their first encounter. He had received a letter from an R. Mueller explaining that the writer was a refugee from Germany, had an academic background as an historian, and wondering whether Churchill might be in need of any researchers for his forthcoming writings. The letter had added in impassioned terms that the threat of events in Europe were so imminent and the lack of understanding about them so immense in everyone but Churchill that he was the only man in Europe the writer wished to work for.
    It had been a timely letter, arriving at Chartwell at the moment when Churchill, under severe pressure from both his publishers and his multiple creditors, had turned once more to his History of the English-Speaking Peoples, a book commissioned many years previously and repeatedly pushed aside for the distractions of politics. Yet as interested as Churchill was in politics, for the past decade politics had displayed precious little interest in him. He had been a political outcast, lost in the wilderness, out of office and largely ignored. So he had picked up his pen once more, believing that his History would in all likelihood be his last endeavour on this earth, and in a typically impetuous moment had written offering R. Mueller a position on his team of research assistants.
    He was shaken when, on the appointed day, a woman had turned up. Churchill was not good with women, not in a professional sense. For him they were creatures of romance, to be admired when the moment was right, then left in their drawing rooms while the menfolk got on with business. He'd had severe doubts about giving them the vote and was aggravated beyond endurance by most of those who had found their way into Parliament. When, with some awkwardness, he had sat R. Mueller down and suggested there had been some confusion but he might have a vacancy on his staff for an additional typist, she had not taken it well. She was a qualified historian, she told him, one who had spent several years researching an authoritative biography of the Fuehrer. Her abilities had been recognized even by the Gestapo. They had visited her several times and suggested several other professional avenues for her to pursue, ranging from a teaching position in almost any other subject than Hitler studies, which she had declined, to a librarian ship in Dachau, which she had avoided only by fleeing. But even the Gestapo hadn't suggested she be a typist. She had waved Churchill's letter of appointment and insisted that she be given the proper job on his staff.
    The engagement had lasted three weeks. She was brilliant, incisive, immensely hard-working, and impossible. When she had discovered that he was spending most of his time working on a history of the English-speaking world, she had asked why he wasn't writing about the contemporary threat in Europe. He had offered many reasons: he was under considerable contractual obligation to his publishers, he had told her, and people were fed up with him going on about impending war. Anyway, it was necessary for him to think about his financial survival. She had looked him in the eye and told him that survival was about much more than his silk underwear and champagne. It had been the last time they had spoken. Until tonight.
    "Many circumstances have changed since we last met, Frau Mueller," he began, smiling.
    If he was expecting congratulation, there was no sign of it.
    "I have a war to fight. Against your Herr Hitler. I was wondering if you