Fall of Giants Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE - INITIATION

  CHAPTER ONE - June 22, 1911

  PART ONE - THE DARKENING SKY

  CHAPTER TWO - January 1914

  CHAPTER THREE - February 1914

  CHAPTER FOUR - March 1914

  CHAPTER FIVE - April 1914

  CHAPTER SIX - June 1914

  CHAPTER SEVEN - Early July 1914

  CHAPTER EIGHT - Mid-July 1914

  CHAPTER NINE - Late July 1914

  CHAPTER TEN - August 1-3, 1914

  CHAPTER ELEVEN - August 4, 1914

  PART TWO - THE WAR of GIANTS

  CHAPTER TWELVE - Early to Late August 1914

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN - September to December 1914

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN - February 1915

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN - June to September1915

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN - June 1916

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - July 1, 1916

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - Late July 1916

  CHAPTER NINETEEN - July to October 1916

  CHAPTER TWENTY - November to December 1916

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - December 1916

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - January and February 1917

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - March 1917

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - April 1917

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE - May and June 1917

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX - Mid-June 1917

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN - June to September 1917

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT - October and November 1917

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE - March 1918

  CHAPTER THIRTY - Late March and April 1918

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE - May to September 1918

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO - October 1918

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE - November 11, 1918

  PART THREE - THE WORLD MADE NEW

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR - November to December 1918

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE - December 1918 to February 1919

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX - March to April 1919

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN - May and June 1919

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT - August to October 1919

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE - January 1920

  CHAPTER FORTY - February to December 1920

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE - November 11-12, 1923

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO - December 1923 to January 1924

  Historical Characters

  Acknowledgements

  Also by Ken Follett

  The Modigliani Scandal

  Paper Money

  Eye of the Needle

  Triple

  The Key to Rebecca

  The Man from St. Petersburg

  On Wings of Eagles

  Lie Down with Lions

  The Pillars of the Earth

  Night over Water

  A Dangerous Fortune

  A Place Called Freedom

  The Third Twin

  The Hammer of Eden

  Code to Zero

  Jackdaws

  Hornet Flight

  Whiteout

  World Without End

  DUTTON

  Published by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.); Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England; Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd); Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd); Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India; Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd); Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Published by Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First printing, October 2010

  Copyright © 2010 by Ken Follett

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Follett, Ken.

  Fall of giants : book one of the century trilogy / by Ken Follett.

  p. cm.—(Century ; bk. 1)

  eISBN : 978-1-101-44355-2

  1. Domestic fiction. I. Title.

  PR6056.O45F35 2010

  823’.914—dc22 2010009279

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

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  To the memory of my parents,

  Martin and Veenie Follett.

  Cast of Characters

  American

  DEWAR FAMILY

  Senator Cameron Dewar

  Ursula Dewar, his wife

  Gus Dewar, their son

  VYALOV FAMILY

  Josef Vyalov, businessman

  Lena Vyalov, his wife

  Olga Vyalov, their daughter

  OTHERS

  Rosa Hellman, journalist

  Chuck Dixon, school friend of Gus’s

  Marga, nightclub singer

  Nick Forman, thief

  Ilya, thug

  Theo, thug

  Norman Niall, crooked accountant

  Brian Hall, union leader

  REAL HISTORICAL CHARACTERS

  Woodrow Wilson, twenty-eighth president

  William Jennings Bryan, secretary of state

  Joseph Daniels, secretary of the navy

  English and Scottish

  FITZHERBERT FAMILY

  Earl Fitzherbert, called Fitz

  Princess Elizaveta, called Bea, his wife

  Lady Maud Fitzherbert, his sister

  Lady Hermia, called Aunt Herm, their poor aunt

  The Duchess of Sussex, their rich aunt

  Gelert, Pyrenean mountain dog

  Grout, Fitz’s butler

  Sanderson, Maud’s maid

  OTHERS

  Mildred Perkins, Ethel Williams’s lodger

  Bernie Leckwith, secretary of the Aldgate branch of the Independent Labour Party

  Bing Westhampton, Fitz’s friend

  Marquis of Lowther, “Lowthie,” rejected suitor of Maud

  Albert Solman, Fitz’s man of business

  Dr. Greenward, volunteer at the baby clinic

  Lord “Johnny” Remarc, junior War Office minister

  Colonel Hervey, aide to Sir John French

  Lieutenant Murray, aide to Fitz

  Mannie Litov, factory owner

  Jock Reid, treasurer of the Aldgate Independent Labour Party

  Jayne McCulley, soldier’s wife

  REAL HISTORICAL CHARACTER
S

  King George V

  Queen Mary

  Mansfield Smith-Cumming, called “C,” head of the Foreign Section of the Secret Service Bureau (later MI6)

  Sir Edward Grey, M.P., foreign secretary

  Sir William Tyrrell, private secretary to Grey

  Frances Stevenson, mistress of Lloyd George

  Winston Churchill, M.P.

  H. H. Asquith, M.P., prime minister

  Sir John French, commander of the British Expeditionary Force

  French

  Gini, a bar girl

  Colonel Dupuys, aide to General Galliéni

  General Lourceau, aide to General Joffre

  REAL HISTORICAL CHARACTERS

  General Joffre, commander in chief of French forces

  General Galliéni, commander of the Paris garrison

  German and Austrian

  VON ULRICH FAMILY

  Otto von Ulrich, diplomat

  Susanne von Ulrich, his wife

  Walter von Ulrich, their son, military attaché at the German embassy in London

  Greta von Ulrich, their daughter

  Graf (Count) Robert von Ulrich, Walter’s second cousin, military attaché at the Austrian embassy in London

  OTHERS

  Gottfried von Kessel, cultural attaché at the German embassy in London

  Monika von der Helbard, Greta’s best friend

  REAL HISTORICAL CHARACTERS

  Prince Karl Lichnowsky, German ambassador to London

  Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg

  General of Infantry Erich Ludendorff

  Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, German chancellor

  Arthur Zimmermann, German foreign minister

  Russian

  PESHKOV FAMILY

  Grigori Peshkov, metalworker

  Lev Peshkov, horse wrangler

  PUTILOV MACHINE WORKS

  Konstantin, lathe operator, chairman of the Bolshevik discussion group

  Isaak, captain of the football team

  Varya, female laborer, Konstantin’s mother

  Serge Kanin, supervisor of the casting section

  Count Maklakov, director

  OTHERS

  Mikhail Pinsky, police officer

  Ilya Kozlov, his sidekick

  Nina, maid to Princess Bea

  Prince Andrei, Bea’s brother

  Katerina, a peasant girl new to the city

  Mishka, bar owner

  Trofim, gangster

  Fyodor, corrupt cop

  Spirya, passenger on the Angel Gabriel

  Yakov, passenger on the Angel Gabriel

  Anton, clerk at the Russian embassy in London, also a spy for Germany

  David, Jewish soldier

  Sergeant Gavrik

  Lieutenant Tomchak

  REAL HISTORICAL CHARACTERS

  Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik Party

  Leon Trotsky

  Welsh

  WILLIAMS FAMILY

  David Williams, union organizer

  Cara Williams, his wife

  Ethel Williams, their daughter

  Billy Williams, their son

  Gramper, Cara’s father

  GRIFFITHS FAMILY

  Len Griffiths, atheist and Marxist

  Mrs. Griffiths

  Tommy Griffiths, their son, Billy Williams’s best friend

  PONTI FAMILY

  Mrs. Minnie Ponti

  Giuseppe “Joey” Ponti, her son

  Giovanni “Johnny” Ponti, his younger brother

  MINERS

  David Crampton, “Dai Crybaby”

  Harry “Suet” Hewitt

  John Jones the Shop

  Dai Chops, the butcher’s son

  Pat Pope, Main Level onsetter

  Micky Pope, Pat’s son

  Dai Ponies, horse wrangler

  Bert Morgan

  MINE MANAGEMENT

  Perceval Jones, chairman of Celtic Minerals

  Maldwyn Morgan, colliery manager

  Rhys Price, colliery manager’s deputy

  Arthur “Spotty” Llewellyn, colliery clerk

  STAFF AT TŶ GWYN

  Peel, butler

  Mrs. Jevons, housekeeper

  Morrison, footman

  OTHERS

  Dai Muck, sanitary worker

  Mrs. Dai Ponies

  Mrs. Roley Hughes

  Mrs. Hywel Jones

  Private George Barrow, B Company

  Private Robin Mortimer, cashiered officer, B Company

  Private Owen Bevin, B Company

  Sergeant Elijah “Prophet” Jones, B Company

  Second Lieutenant James Carlton-Smith, B Company

  Captain Gwyn Evans, A Company

  Second Lieutenant Roland Morgan, A Company

  REAL HISTORICAL CHARACTERS

  David Lloyd George, Liberal member of Parliament

  PROLOGUE

  INITIATION

  CHAPTER ONE

  June 22, 1911

  On the day King George V was crowned at Westminster Abbey in London, Billy Williams went down the pit in Aberowen, South Wales.

  The twenty-second of June, 1911, was Billy’s thirteenth birthday. He was woken by his father. Da’s technique for waking people was more effective than it was kind. He patted Billy’s cheek, in a regular rhythm, firmly and insistently. Billy was in a deep sleep, and for a second he tried to ignore it, but the patting went on relentlessly. Momentarily he felt angry; but then he remembered that he had to get up, he even wanted to get up, and he opened his eyes and sat upright with a jerk.

  “Four o’clock,” Da said, then he left the room, his boots banging on the wooden staircase as he went down.

  Today Billy would begin his working life by becoming an apprentice collier, as most of the men in town had done at his age. He wished he felt more like a miner. But he was determined not to make a fool of himself. David Crampton had cried on his first day down the pit, and they still called him Dai Crybaby, even though he was twenty-five and the star of the town’s rugby team.

  It was the day after midsummer, and a bright early light came through the small window. Billy looked at his grandfather, lying beside him. Gramper’s eyes were open. He was always awake, whenever Billy got up; he said old people did not sleep much.

  Billy got out of bed. He was wearing only his underdrawers. In cold weather he wore his shirt to bed, but Britain was enjoying a hot summer, and the nights were mild. He pulled the pot from under the bed and took off the lid.

  There was no change in the size of his penis, which he called his peter. It was still the childish stub it had always been. He had hoped it might have started to grow on the night before his birthday, or perhaps that he might see just one black hair sprouting somewhere near it, but he was disappointed. His best friend, Tommy Griffiths, who had been born on the same day, was different: he had a cracked voice and a dark fuzz on his upper lip, and his peter was like a man’s. It was humiliating.

  As Billy was using the pot, he looked out of the window. All he could see was the slag heap, a slate-gray mountain of tailings, waste from the coal mine, mostly shale and sandstone. This was how the world appeared on the second day of Creation, Billy thought, before God said: “Let the earth bring forth grass.” A gentle breeze wafted fine black dust off the slag onto the rows of houses.

  Inside the room there was even less to look at. This was the back bedroom, a narrow space just big enough for the single bed, a chest of drawers, and Gramper’s old trunk. On the wall was an embroidered sampler that read:BELIEVE ON THE

  LORD JESUS CHRIST

  AND THOU SHALT

  BE SAVED

  There was no mirror.

  One door led to the top of the stairs, the other to the front bedroom, which could be accessed only through this one. It was larger and had space for two beds. Da and Mam slept there, and Billy’s sisters had too, years ago. The eldest, Ethel, had now left home, and the other three had died, one from measles, one from whooping co
ugh, and one from diphtheria. There had been an older brother, too, who had shared Billy’s bed before Gramper came. Wesley had been his name, and he had been killed underground by a runaway dram, one of the wheeled tubs that carried coal.

  Billy pulled on his shirt. It was the one he had worn to school yesterday. Today was Thursday, and he changed his shirt only on Sunday. However, he did have a new pair of trousers, his first long ones, made of the thick water-repellent cotton called moleskin. They were the symbol of entry into the world of men, and he pulled them on proudly, enjoying the heavy masculine feel of the fabric. He put on a thick leather belt and the boots he had inherited from Wesley, then he went downstairs.

  Most of the ground floor was taken up by the living room, fifteen feet square, with a table in the middle and a fireplace to one side, and a homemade rug on the stone floor. Da was sitting at the table reading an old copy of the Daily Mail, a pair of spectacles perched on the bridge of his long, sharp nose. Mam was making tea. She put down the steaming kettle, kissed Billy’s forehead, and said: “How’s my little man on his birthday?”

  Billy did not reply. The “little” was wounding, because he was little, and the “man” was just as hurtful because he was not a man. He went into the scullery at the back of the house. He dipped a tin bowl into the water barrel, washed his face and hands, and poured the water away in the shallow stone sink. The scullery had a copper with a fire grate underneath, but it was used only on bath night, which was Saturday.