Graham Hurley - So why give a bed to someone you hate?

Dead Ground is the ninth novel in my Spoils of War collection. Hunting for one of those backwaters in the seven-year swirl of World War Two violence, my eye alighted on something called Operation Felix, of which – to my shame – I had never heard.

Felix turned out to be Hitler’s bid to bring his year of sensational victories to a pleasing end. In just two brief months in the summer of 1940, he had brought country after country to their knees. Norwegian, Danish, Belgian and lastly French clocks were all readjusted to Berlin time, and now came the icing on the German cake. With Franco’s help, Werhmacht troops would head south through Spain and kick the Brits off the Rock of Gibraltar. And so, the Mediterranean would become a German lake.

Perfect. Except it did not quite work out that way. Assuming Generalissimo Franco’s compliance was a mistake, and months of wrangling would follow but Felix, like any bold idea, had an afterlife that was hard to extinguish and so plans went ahead regardless.

My job as a historical novelist is to nurture a bunch of fictional characters, introduce them to individuals who actually existed, and then see where the chemistry leads. Thus, the pages of Dead Ground partly belong to Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr, Germany’s military intelligence network; to Sir Samuel Hoare, our ambassador in Madrid; to Heinrich Himmler, in charge of the SS; and to Franco himself. 

But exalted company like this must make space for Tam Moncrieff, an ex-Royal Marine poached by MI5; for Carlos Ortega, a mercenary sniper hideously disfigured by a rebel bomb in Madrid; and for Annie Wrenne, a young bi-lingual nomad recovering from a disastrous affair. Together, this cast of worthies – some fictional, others not - must somehow keep Gibraltar safe in British hands.

What to do? Lin and I boarded the ferry to Santander, and thence a series of Spanish coaches that took us in a vast seven thousand kilometre circle the length and breadth of the country to check out key locations. The trip swallowed nearly a month and was unforgettable.

I could bore you with a series of traveller vignettes: the lengths we went to in search of bullet-pocked monastery walls, of views from this key trench location or that, of the remains of a seven-building in Murcia that had once housed thousands of Republican refugees, of the afternoon a shelf full of wine bottles fell on my head, but all this fluff would miss the point.  Because no one really wants to admit that the years of Spanish violence ever happened. Go to museum after museum and the timelines on the wall leapfrog the years between 1936 and 1939. There’s just a blank.  Whoever wants to celebrate the Spanish killing each other?

And so, the diligent researcher has somehow to coax native strangers into talking about something they would prefer to forget. Bad Spanish does not help, and neither does age, but somehow the itch of memory has to be addressed, and just occasionally it works.

We were in Alicante. Terrible things had happened there but no one these days could possibly believe it. Except, if you look hard, there are clues. On 25 May 1938, the Fascist Italian bombers levelled the Mercado Central, killed around three hundred people and injured nearly a thousand more. That single attack spilled more Spanish blood than any other raid.

Alicante has restored and opened one of the city’s bomb shelters and amongst the commemorative plaques on the wall of the current market square is a clock stopped at precisely 11.20, the moment the first bomb fell. This kind of remembrance is exceptional in today’s Spain, and we were looking up at the clock, when I felt a light pressure on my shoulder. The Spanish are very polite, and the stranger was very old.

‘You want to know about the war?’ His accent was thick.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Why?

For a long moment I was robbed for an answer. Then I began to explain about the book, the books, the series as a whole. His eyes never left mine.

‘Why?’ he asked again. ‘What business is it of yours?’’ He gestured towards the clock. ‘These people are all dead. Either then or since. So, leave them in peace.’ He smiled. ‘War is never our friend. So why give a bed to someone you hate?’

So why give a bed to someone you hate? Good question. Oddly unresolved. 

Dead Ground by Graham Hurley (Head of Zeus) Out now in Hardback £20.00

1936. Anglo-Breton translator Annie Wrenne is working in Madrid when the Spanish Civil War breaks out. Annie becomes a nurse on the front line, but after falling in love with a patient, she ends up pregnant – and abandoned – by a man she thought she knew. Annie passes the rest of the war in a haze, her only consolation her relationship with mysterious Republican fighter Carlos Ortega. Annie finds herself caught up in Ortega’s world, a web of intrigue, which leads to her recruitment into MI5. On her first mission, Annie must pose as Ortega's wife and head to Algeciras. Hitler’s Operation Felix – his plan to control the Mediterranean and force Churchill to the negotiating table – has been set into motion, and the 'couple' must help prevent the Nazis from seizing Gibraltar. But Ortega has secretly been working for the Nationalists, part of Madrid’s Fifth Column. If it falls to Annie – and Ortega – to save the day for the Allied cause, can she trust a man who has changed sides yet again?

 You can find more information about Graham and his books on his website. You can follow Graham Hurley on X @Seasidepicture