Read Online Dominion by C. J. Sansom - Free Book Online Page A

all, burn all, destroy all. Recently Jackson
– who David knew now was in the Foreign Office – had told them the rumours that Germany was in political trouble were true. The reason Hitler never appeared in public was that he was
seriously incapacitated by Parkinson’s disease, barely lucid enough to take decisions, hallucinating about Jews with skullcaps and sidelocks grinning at him from the corner of the room;
hallucinations were sometimes a symptom of the latest and severest stage of the disease. Following Göring’s death from a stroke the year before Goebbels was his nominated successor but
he had many enemies. Factions representing the army, the Nazi Party and the SS were all circling and plotting.
    He learned more about the Resistance, too, an alliance of Socialists and Liberals with old-fashioned Conservatives like Jackson and Geoff, who loathed Fascist authoritarianism and who had come,
sadly, to realize the Imperial mission had failed. Their numbers were growing all the time, and violence had become necessary to destabilize the police state.
    Natalia was always there; listening avidly, always smoking. David didn’t know what her politics were, knew only that she was a refugee from Slovakia, a far corner of Eastern Europe of
which he had barely heard. At meetings she said little, though what she said was always to the point. As time passed he began to see her look at him in the way Carol did, and Sarah once had. He
didn’t respond, but something in the way she was both focused and committed, yet somehow rootless, stirred him unexpectedly.
    He stubbed out his cigarette. This Sunday he had to copy some papers for the next High Commissioners’ meeting detailing possible South African military assistance to
Kenya. Then he had to photograph a secret paper which he had heard of but not seen – about the Canadians supplying uranium to the United States for their nuclear weapons programme. It was
known the Germans were working on nuclear weapons, too, but with little success. Apart from anything else they lacked uranium; they were mining it in the former Belgian Congo but had lost a huge
consignment which the Belgians had shipped to the United States just before the colony was annexed by Germany in the peace treaty with Belgium in 1940. He also had to find anything he could on New
Zealand’s threats to leave the Empire. That made him think of his father; he was happy there, kept asking David and Sarah to join him. With a sigh, David put the camera in his pocket, picked
up the bulky High Commissioners’ file, and went out.
    He walked along the corridor, stepping quietly. He could have photographed the High Commissioners’ file in his office, but papers were best copied in bright artificial light, and the room
where the secret files were kept had an Anglepoise lamp. In the Registry, he opened the flap of the counter and walked over to Carol’s desk. There was a pile of stubs in her overflowing
ashtray. He went up to the frosted-glass door, took out his duplicate key, and opened it.
    The room was quite small, with a table in the centre and files on shelves. He knew his way around the filing system intimately now. The Anglepoise lamp with its powerful bulb stood on the
desk.
    He laid the High Commissioners’ file on the table and began taking the buff envelopes, each with a red diagonal cross, out of their places. It took an hour to find the documents he wanted,
rapidly scanning them to check their relevance, then extracting them and laying each one neatly on the desk with the papers he needed from the High Commissioners’ file. He worked efficiently,
calmly, very quietly, always with one ear cocked for sounds from outside. Then he switched on the Anglepoise lamp and carefully photographed the documents, one by one. When he was finished David
switched off the light, replaced the camera in his jacket pocket and started returning the secret papers to the files piled on the table, stringing them