The Sons of Adam (69 page)

In London, Alan faced his own torrent of work. In his letter to Neville Chamberlain, he’d offered his services as ‘a coordinator of the nation’s war effort as it relates to oil. I am willing to serve in any capacity and on any terms whatsoever.’ His offer had been immediately accepted. He’d been appointed head of the British Petroleum Board: the High Command of Britain’s petroleum industry.

From the very first day in his post, Alan had been obsessional about one thing above all else: kerosene – aircraft fuel. Alan made it a priority because he knew what all oilmen knew and most airmen knew, and pretty much nobody else cared enough to know.

Which was this.

In 1936, Shell Oil had discovered a way of making 100-octane fuel. The new substance was abominably expensive and didn’t seem to have any obvious buyers. A lot of people would have considered the discovery worthless and done nothing about it. But not Shell. Convinced the product had a future, they built a plant in the United States. They were right to do it. It wasn’t long before the Western air forces understood that the new fuel was dynamite. Compared with lower octane alternatives, the 100-octane offered up to thirty per cent more speed, more acceleration, more manoeuvrability.

And it was available only in the United States.

Alan fought to get that fuel to England. Cash was found for it. Tankers were filled with it. Destroyers were snatched from other duties to escort it over. When the Battle of Britain began to break over British skies, the RAF were flying a 100-octane war, the Luftwaffe was not.

The advantage was a narrow one.

It took the skill and commitment of brave men to press it home. But, whatever the reason, the statistics told a consistent tale. For every British plane lost in combat, the Germans lost two and, on some days, three. Tiny as the British Air Force was, it inflicted losses too great for the war planners in Berlin to bear. Nazi attention turned away from England. The projected invasion of Russia took priority.

The Battle of Britain had been won.

But every month brought new perils. In 1941, the German U-boat campaign threatened to strangle the shipping routes that gave Britain life. German submarines, hunting in wolf-packs, sunk the huge, heavy and slow-moving tankers with insolent ease. British naval supplies of oil were down to just two months. Stocks of motor oil were sufficient for just five weeks. The country was silently and invisibly drawing to the point of collapse. Alan did everything he could. Everyone did everything they could. Even so, the task seemed impossible.

Seemed, but wasn’t.

Somehow, anyhow, the country survived.

Then, sometime late in 1941, things began to turn. It was Hitler’s turn to become desperate.

The attack on Russia had been an oil disaster. Russian roads were so much worse than German ones, that the invading tanks had used fuel at double the expected rate. Although the Germans had captured vast amounts of Russian fuel, the booty was useless. Russian tanks ran off diesel. The German ones needed petrol.

Then winter had started.

It was appallingly cold. German tanks had never been designed for such work. They wouldn’t start. They were literally frozen, just like the heavy artillery pieces that wouldn’t fire. The Russians threw fresh troops into counterattack. For the first time since the start of the war, the German armies were halted and rolled back.

Hitler had two options and he tried them both.

He sent an army to attack the Russian oil fields of Baku, fighting desperately over the mountains of the Caucasus. The army never arrived. Hitler’s successes had always relied on devastating speed and surprise, but speed needs petrol and the German supply lines were infinitely overstretched. The German armies battled forward, but they moved too slow. Trucks carrying petrol to the front ran out of petrol themselves. The Germans put oil cans on the backs of camels and drove them forwards. But it was far too little, far too late.

In the search for Russian oil, the Germans had run out of fuel.

The second option was North Africa. Through Libya. Through Egypt. Through Palestine and Transjordan to the abundant oil of Iraq and Persia. That was the theory and the theory was sound. In February 1941, just as the British had been on the point of driving the Italians out of North Africa, a German commander, General Erwin Rommel, had been sent to help. He succeeded brilliantly. With victory after victory, he drove the British back. By August 1942, he was within a few miles of Cairo. The British rulers burned secret papers in preparation for escape. In the winding bazaars, merchants had portraits of Hitler and Mussolini ready to plaster over their pictures of Churchill and George VI. But the tide of war was about to change.

Rommel urgently needed fuel, but the British had cracked the German codes. Though tankers were sent from Italy to supply him, the British knew when the ships were coming. When and where.

One by one, with devastating accuracy, the RAF and the Royal Navy sank them all.

Rommel pleaded for petrol. He flew to Germany to intercede directly with Hitler. His armies had to have fuel. Hitler listened. He was passionate about oil. He knew the history of every oil field. He could quote by heart how much fuel a plane needed, how much fuel a tank needed. He listened. He gave Rommel a field marshal’s baton and a set of promises. The baton was useless. The promises came to nothing. There was no fuel.

Then, at El Alamein, Montgomery attacked. Rommel fell back. Often he saw opportunities to turn on his enemy and deliver devastating counterattacks, but attacks need fuel and Rommel had none. He retreated. And even the retreat used petrol that he couldn’t afford.

In the search for Middle Eastern oil, the Germans had run out of fuel.

War is a strange beast. With a single flick of its paw, it can destroy a man or be the making of him. It can find the worst in humans and magnify it, but it can also find the best and raise it to an intensity unthinkable in any other circumstance. The First World War had taken Tom and Alan and had all but destroyed them. It had smashed a friendship, left Tom half-crazy in prison camp, brought Alan to a state of near collapse. It had found that darkness and preyed upon it.

This second war, terrible as it was, was proving different from the start.

Tom in Washington and Alan in London were both keenly aware of the other’s existence. Because of Tom’s concentration on the Pacific war and because of Alan’s all-absorbing focus on Europe and the home front, the two men had never been obliged to meet. And yet, each was enabled to look sideways at the other man’s activities and did so with a kind of fascination.

Alan saw Tom’s work and saw that it was extraordinary. Tom saw Alan’s work and knew it couldn’t be bettered. In a time of crisis for the whole of humanity history called upon all good men to do their utmost. Neither Alan nor Tom would let history down.

The two men kept their distance.

They were as far as ever from forgiveness, still less from reconciliation. And yet something else happened. The two men came to admire in late adulthood precisely those things that they had nourished together in their childhood and early manhood. They both knew that if the war ended and they went back to their respective companies, the oil feud of old would never be reborn. They would live and let live. As long as they could live apart, they would live happily. It was only if they had to meet that there’d be an explosion.

But war allows no time for introspection. On the Eastern Front, Stalin’s armies were beginning, finally, to smash their German attackers. The great advance, from Moscow to Berlin, had begun. To any sober observer of the war, it was clear that Hitler would never now be victorious.

But that raised a pressing problem of its own. From the point of view of the Western Allies, it had become time to take the war into Europe. It would have been a calamity to free Europe of Hitler, only to turn it over to his cousin in dictatorship, Uncle Joe Stalin. Of course, a land invasion would be a massive undertaking. It would need fine generals. It would rely on brave soldiers, courageous airmen and dedicated sailors.

And oil.

It was going to take an awful lot of oil.

It had been back in April 1943 that the topic had first come up.

The air-raid sirens had begun their wailing more than five minutes before and the Whitehall that Alan hurried through was all but deserted. A military policeman on a bike shouted, ‘Hurry up, sir. Look lively.’ Alan ran down a side street, down a short flight of stone steps and came to a sandbagged wall and steel door. A sentry stood outside.

‘Alan Montague, Petroleum Board,’ said Alan, ‘I’m here to –’

‘Yes, sir. Right on in, if you would.’

‘George Street’, as the complex was invariably called, looked like nothing at all. It
was
nothing at all. In its former life it had been a depot for maintenance men and janitors. Not now. Not any more.

Alan hurried on through a smoke-filled corridor. The air throughout the underground suite stung with the prick of tobacco smoke. The smoke hung bluish-grey in the air, so that walking forwards was like swimming in an aquarium. Alan was reminded of a Flanders dugout he’d once shared with Tom …

His ruminations were interrupted. A gum-chewing American colonel, James Renwick, stood in front of him.

‘You Montague?’

Alan admitted as much.

‘Alan Montague? Got a brother in the War Office?’

‘That’s right. Guy.’

‘Yeah. He’s a good man you got there. We think a lot of him.’ Renwick nodded, as if to confirm the point to himself. ‘Say, I’ve got a call to make back to base. Is there a phone … ? In here, maybe?’

He swung open a door. The room was cleanly painted, but bare except for a phone, a desk, a lamp and a wooden armchair. If it looked like a converted broom cupboard, that should have come as no surprise. It was a converted broom cupboard. ‘Can I use this?’

Alan laughed. ‘If you want to reach your president, yes.’

‘President
Roose
velt?’

‘I believe that’s the name of the man.’

The American looked at the claustrophobic little room in amazement. He pointed to the office next door. ‘Does he … ? I mean, is this … ?’

Alan nodded. The American had opened his mouth to say something further, but a secretary in WREN uniform came to interrupt. ‘He’s ready for you now.’

Alan and Colonel Renwick were ushered into another cramped and unlovely room. There was a single bed made up in one corner, a big desk in another, a microphone, a water decanter, a box of cigars, a phone. Behind a cloud of cigar-smoke, sat Winston Churchill. He was smartly dressed and his face wore the mixture of tiredness, charm and pugnaciousness with which Alan had grown familiar. It was the face of the British people, a guarantee of victory.