The Baltic Run

by The Baltic Run (retail) (epub)

  ‘I hope so,’ she answered, her bright blue eyes sparkling with fun and mischief. ‘But I am a Polish patriot, too.’ She drew herself up proudly and now Smith could see the small breasts rise beneath the leather tunic.

  ‘Your English is good.’

  ‘It should be. It cost my father a lot of money during the war. Cheltenham. You know, cold baths and lots of hockey.’

  Smith groaned in mock disbelief. ‘What next? Cheltenham Ladies’ College of all places!’

  ‘It wasn’t all that bad.’

  Walker cleared his throat noisily. Now he was very businesslike once more. ‘The Countess’s father is one of the leading landowners in Upper Silesia. It is his group which is organising the defence of this Annaberg place.’

  The girl looked suddenly very serious. ‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘and time is running out – fast! The Germans have already crossed the old border. They are not fighting at the moment, but trying to get the local German population to join them in a general revolt in all of Eastern Poland. But they are moving. Once, however, von der Goltz marches on the Annaberg and achieves a victory there, they’ll join him.’

  ‘You say that as if a German victory is a foregone conclusion,’ Smith said swiftly.

  She nodded her pretty head. ‘It will be if we don’t get modern weapons soon. All our peasants have got is old shotguns, and a few rifles which they brought home with them from the war. The rest are armed with spears, sabres, knives and the like. We need artillery to keep the Germans at a distance.’

  ‘And you shall have them,’ Walker said hurriedly, trying to appear more confident than he felt. He knew that if the Germans still possessed a single illegal warship in the Baltic, the Polish fishing smacks didn’t stand much chance. ‘Smith here has his orders and he can sail as soon as he gets you to the Swordfish, his ship.’

  Smith looked aghast and at the door Billy Bennett said, ‘Blimey, what a turn-up for the books!’

  Walker shot him a stern look and he clamped his mouth shut rapidly.

  ‘Did you say, take the Countess to my ship, sir?’ Smith asked.

  ‘Of course, I did, Smith! What of it?’

  ‘But you know what matelots are like, sir,’ Smith said. ‘They’re like old women with their superstitions. You can’t say this word or that. It’s bad luck to sail on Fridays and the like. But women on board.’ He shook his head. ‘That surely will bring bad luck they think.’

  ‘A lot of nonsense,’ Walker snorted. ‘What about ladies on cruise ships or all those females who regularly go out to India and Egypt on troop-ships in order to join their menfolk in the garrisons out there? No, Smith, can’t have that kind of business.’

  The blonde looked amused at the exchange. She curled up her hair once more and tucked it away beneath her cap. ‘Then I shall be a young man,’ she announced. ‘Will that satisfy the crew, eh?’

  ‘There is a question of the heads, sir,’ Smith began a little helplessly and then stopped. He could see from the grim expression on the attache’s slablike red face that he was wasting his time.

  Walker held out his hand. ‘You are a brave young woman, madam. I should like to wish you good luck and Godspeed.’

  She took it gravely and said simply, ‘I believe that Poland is worth fighting for – and dying for if necessary. Thank you, Captain Walker.’

  Smith’s heart went out to her. They were not idle words. He knew instinctively she meant them. She was pretty and definitely mischievous, but she was brave too. He knew he’d be able to rely on Countess ‘Chris’ Oleksy in a crisis.

  ‘Well, Smith,’ Walker held out his big paw again. ‘It’s all up to you now, m’lad. I wish you well. ’Spect they’ll give you another bit of tin to pin on your manly chest if you pull this one off. But remember, going into the Baltic’s no picnic. In the last spot of bother the Germans controlled the only entrance and exit. If they have got a single warship left patrolling those narrows, well,’ he tugged the end of the his big red nose grimly, ‘it’ll be like putting your head into the lion’s cage with the Hun holding the key…’

  Five minutes later they were back in the little dinghy, with Bennett pulling away heartily. Behind them, at the crane, the man in the leather coat watched them go. He was talking softly into the phone in Russian.

  But Smith and the Countess knew nothing of this as they sat a little awkwardly in the little boat, knees pressed together, and trying both to look as if they didn’t know it. She said, ‘When will we reach the fishing boats? Their skippers won’t want to stay off the mouth of the Elbe too long now that the Germans know their barges have been stolen. If the Germans do not have any warships left, they do have a sizeable fishing fleet off that coast – at Emden, Wilhelmshaven and the like. They could use them, I suppose.’

  ‘They could,’ Smith agreed. He looked at the sky. It was grey and overcast to the east, but there was no wind to speak of. ‘Well, the weather doesn’t look too bad. If we put on a bit of speed, we could be off Cuxhaven in four, say four and a half hours’ time.’

  She nodded and looked pleased. ‘Time is so precious,’ she said, as if there was no need for any further explanation.

  ‘Yes, but we must conserve fuel a little too,’ he explained. ‘I’m only going to give Swordfish full power in an emergency. Once we’re in the Baltic there’ll be no chance of refuelling.’

  ‘Swordfish? Is that the name of your boat?’

  ‘Ship!’ he corrected her automatically. ‘She’s my ship all right. And there she is.’ They had swung to port of the old oiler, streaked with red rust as if it were suffering from skin disease, and now they could see the little craft, dwarfed by the size of the other ship.

  ‘She’s not very big,’ said the Countess, with the strange lack of tact that all the women Smith had ever known possessed when it came to seagoing craft.

  ‘It’s big enough for the job it’s got to perform,’ he said stoutly.

  She laughed softly and pressed her delightful knees harder to his. ‘Of course it is,’ she said merrily.

  At the oars Bennett raised his eyes as if appealing to the heavens.

  Now, as they slowly got closer to the sleek motor torpedo boat, Smith could hear the crew were singing, under the leadership of the Chief Petty Officer no doubt. For a while he was unable to make out the words until Bennett paused on his oars for a moment’s breathing and said in a funereal voice, ‘Cor, they ain’t half right.’ Then he could hear them well enough and understand the reason for Bennett’s comment. They were singing: ‘We’re poor little lambs who have gone astray, baa, baa, baa… Little black sheep, who have lost their way, baa, baa, baa… Gentleman matelots all, we are doomed from here to eternity… God have mercy on such as we, baa, baa…’

  ‘A strange song,’ the Countess commented, her pretty face abruptly puzzled. ‘God have mercy on such as we… Why?’

  Smith didn’t answer and Bennett continued rowing once more. They passed the rest of the way to the Swordfish in a heavy brooding silence.

  Seven

  Now that the German petty officer had taken off his cap and jacket, a miserable Per Kersten could see by the yellow light of the single naked bulb in the cellar to which they had taken him that he was almost an albino. His yellow hair was cropped to the scalp so that it looked as if he were wearing a yellow skullcap and he had no eyebrows above eyes that were the pale blue of a glacier. It was the face of a murderer, the Eider Dane thought.

  Kapitanleutnant von Horn took the thin cheroot out of the side of his cruel slit of a mouth and hissed in that feline, dangerous manner of his, ‘Well, it’s your last chance. Are you going to tell me who took those barges… and for what purpose?’

  Per Kersten shook his battered head – they had already worked him over in the back of the car as they had brought him to this little naval barracks just outside Hamburg. He didn’t trust himself to speak.

  ‘Na gut, then be it on your own head.’ For some unknown reason, von Horn found the statement funny. He giggled, hidi
ng his teeth with a dainty white hand with lacquered nails like a schoolgirl might.

  ‘Jetzt, Kalo?’ the second of the two petty officers asked.

  ‘Yes, now.’

  The albino smiled thinly. He nodded to the second petty officer. He stepped forwards, grabbed hold of Kersten’s hands expertly, as if he had done this often enough before, twisted them behind his back and in an instant had tied them with a piece of cruelly thin wire which dug deep into his wrists. Kersten’s eyes filled with tears. He bit his bottom lip until the blood came to keep himself from shouting out.

  The albino gave him a slight push. Kersten collapsed onto the straight-backed wooden chair which the second man had placed in position behind him.

  ‘Weitermachen,’ von Horn ordered. ‘Carry on.’ He lit another cheroot casually, holding it in an affected manner, as if he took part in torture sessions every day.

  The albino seized the enamel pail that stood in the corner of the cellar, together with a wooden broom, and thrust the bucket over the helpless man’s head, blocking his vision tightly and filling his nostrils with the stink of stale urine. He tensed fearfully, wondering what was now to be done.

  The sudden blow struck the pail like a thunderbolt. His ears seemed to burst and he felt the hot blood begin to stream from his ruptured nostrils, as he almost fell from the stool. But the second petty officer had been expecting this. He caught him just in time.

  He tensed again for the next blow. He knew it must come. But they took their time. He guessed, even in his fear and apprehension, that this making him wait was part of the torture. The waiting would heighten his tension – and they were right.

  With startling suddenness the broom handle slammed into the side of the pail once more. He reeled, deafened by the noise. Blood spurted from his ears and he knew instinctively that they had burst his eardrums. He’d never hear properly again. That knowledge strengthened his resolve. ‘Bastards,’ he spat out against the side of the pail. ‘German bastards!’

  Now the blows came raining down on him mercilessly, first from one side then from the other so that he reeled back and forth helplessly, being caught each time by the other petty officer. The blood was spurting now. He knew, too, and was ashamed of it, that he had evacuated his bowels. Now he squatted in his own muck. And still they beat him relentlessly, over and over again.

  Then it stopped, as abruptly as it had started. Still his head continued to ring, the echo of those terrible blows against the pail going on and on. Water was fetched. He gasped with sudden shock as ice-cold water was thrown into his poor tortured face. In shocked agony, he peered through the puffed-up, blacked slits of his eyes.

  Von Horn was standing there, legs spread masterfully, cheroot tucked into the corner of his thin sadistic lips. At his side the albino, his pale face now crimson with exertion, his brow lathered in sweat, was greedily gulping down beer from the neck of a brown bottle. Slowly, making a deliberate act of it, von Horn removed the cheroot from his mouth and levelled the burning end at Per Kersten’s battered, blood-smeared face. ‘You will talk now,’ he commanded icily. ‘You are a fool to have suffered at all. You will be an even greater fool if you continue this charade. Klaus, here,’ he indicated the sweating albino, ‘can make even a mummy talk.’ He giggled at his own attempt at humour. ‘You will, therefore, talk!’

  Per Kersten shook his head numbly, the drops of blood splattering to the floor on the side of him.

  Klaus paused in his drinking. ‘Dirty treacherous pig. Messing up the floor like that. A right piggery.’ He raised his fist as if to punch the prisoner, but von Horn stayed him with a delicate gesture of his manicured woman-like hand.

  ‘You will talk,’ he said in the same insidious manner as before. ‘We have simple, but even worse, methods, you know. Klaus could force you to squat above that upturned chair upon which you now sit. For hours on end. You know what would happen in the end? I shall tell you. One of the legs would penetrate your rectum. Go deep in.’ Suddenly he licked his lips with almost sexual pleasure, as if the thought gave him great delight. ‘You’d be like you are now, never capable of holding your own body wastes – for ever. Or, we could make it even simpler. Put out one of your eyes – just like this.’ He jabbed the glowing end of his cigar forwards suddenly, as if aiming for the prisoner’s right eye.

  Hastily Per Kersten thrust back his head, flinching at the sudden heat on his eyeball.

  Klaus laughed and von Horn said, ‘Well?’

  Per Kersten broke at last. ‘I’ll talk,’ he gasped, the tears suddenly streaming down his poor battered face. ‘I’ll talk… No more… Please!’

  Von Horn looked at Klaus triumphantly and said, ‘Excellent work, but as usual you always do excellent work.’

  Klaus stiffened to attention and barked, as if on a parade ground, ‘Danke, Kalo!’

  Von Horn turned his attention to the prisoner once more. ‘Come on, man, don’t waste any further time,’ he snapped, iron in his voice now. ‘We’ve wasted enough. Who are these people who have stolen the property of the German Reichswehr?’

  ‘Eider Danes,’ Per Kersten said in a voice that was broken and almost inaudible.

  ‘So that bunch of renegades and traitors. Bismarck should have dealt with them once and for all in 1864. But what are a bunch of wet-tails like the Eider Danes going to do with our weapons?’ He smirked. ‘You’re not going to start a revolution, are you?’

  The two petty officers laughed at the absurdity of the question.

  ‘No, we stole them for someone else.’

  ‘Someone else… who?’

  Per Kersten hesitated. His life was forfeit, he knew that already. When they had squeezed him dry, they wouldn’t let him live. Soon they’d find his dead body in one of the fleets, the waterways off the Hamburg docks, which flowed into the Elbe, and say he was another seaman killed in a brawl in the Reeperbahn red-light district. But the longer he hung on, the greater the chance of the barges reaching the open seas beyond the reach of the Germans.

  ‘The British,’ he said, and then let the bile rise up in his throat and threaten to choke him. Thickly, he said, ‘I’m sick… Have you a place to let me vomit… please!’

  ‘Verdammte Scheisse!’ barked von Horn. ‘All right, Klaus, take the wretch outside and let him spill his filthy guts. But make it quick. I want more out of him.’

  Klaus put down his bottle, snapped to attention and grabbing hold of Kersten by the scruff of the neck, dragged him roughly to his feet. ‘And don’t you damn well dare spew over me,’ he warned and propelled the prisoner to the door, with the latter retching miserably as he was propelled forwards.

  The albino flung the door open. Outside there was the cold dimly lit corridor down which he had been dragged into the torture chamber in the cellar. Even as he retched and prepared to vomit, Per Kersten’s brain was racing electrically. He knew he hadn’t a chance of escaping. The albino swine would be too quick for him. Besides, the barracks outside were packed with sailors and there were armed sentries on the gate.

  ‘Los, come on,’ Klaus growled. ‘I haven’t got all day. Piss or get off the pot, you swine!’

  ‘Is there a lavatory?’ he asked thickly. ‘It’s both ends, you see.’

  ‘Heaven arse and cloudburst,’ the albino complained. ‘You’ll want me to put talcum powder on your arse next. Yes, over there.’ He thrust the prisoner forwards to a door marked with the ‘OO’ of a German lavatory, ‘And don’t think you can escape through the window, ’cos you can’t. It’s got good steel bars in front of it. Now hurry up!’

  Brain racing, he staggered to the door and opened it, retching all the time, feeling ill and miserable. These were the last moments of his life, he knew that. But he had to do what he intended. He stumbled inside and looked round wildly. It was the usual sort of place – the silent little place, as the Germans called it. A lavatory, a chipped washbasin, complete with enamel pitcher containing water, neatly cut squares of newspaper spiked on a hook and crude pornograph
ic invitations and drawings pencilled on the whitewashed walls. It was the sort of things he had seen in the older boys’ latrines when he had been a schoolmaster in what seemed now another age.

  ‘Where… where… where is it?’ he muttered frantically to himself. Then he saw what he wanted – the steel spike stuck in the wall skewering the pile of makeshift newspaper.

  ‘Hurry up,’ the albino called from outside in the corridor. ‘You can’t shit for ever.’

  ‘I’m coming… in a second,’ he replied thickly, pulling away the papers and scattering them on the floor. He bent, gritting his teeth, and ripped the length of the spike deep into his shoulder wound. The pain was horrific. For a moment he thought he would faint with the agony. But he didn’t. He was fighting for death and he was going to win that last battle, come what may.

  Now the blood was dripping from the newly opened wound in great gobs, splattering in scarlet blotches on the floor about his feet, as he swayed and shook and tried to remain upright. He made his final decision. With all his strength he brought his right wrist down straight onto the spike. It went deep into the inside of his wrist. He could have screamed with pain. He didn’t. Instead he ripped the transfixed wrist to the right, tearing through the flesh and veins. Blood welled up instantly. He looked down at it with a kind of grim pleasure. He was tricking the swine. They’d get no more information from him.

  Outside an angry Klaus cried: ‘Man, haven’t you shit your rotten guts empty yet? I’ll give you exactly ten seconds and then I’m pulling you out, finished or not. The Herr Kapitanleutnant doesn’t like to be kept waiting. Nun scheiss!’

  He didn’t reply; he no longer had the strength. The blood from his slit wrist was beginning to jet out of the ragged wound in a scarlet arc.

  ‘Now,’ he commanded himself and brought his left hand, inner wrist first, right down upon the bloodstained spike. The point bit deep into the soft flesh. But he no longer felt the stab of agony. He was strangely exhilarated, filled with a kind of crazy happiness like when he had drunk too much aquavit – the few times he had ever done in his lonely schoolmaster’s life.