The Baltic Run

by The Baltic Run (retail) (epub)

  The Baron mustered them as the men drove them into a little cowed group on the road where he stood, listening to the dying whimpers and moans of those still in the tank. They were a hardbitten bunch, as he had noted already. Most of their faces were vicious and scarred from the battles they had fought in the war, and since. They looked as if they’d rape their own grandmother at the drop of a hat, he told himself.

  ‘All right,’ he said calmly and flatly in order to reassure them. ‘You are in perfect safety. No harm will come to you. But I don’t think my men would like it too much if you refused to co-operate with us.’ He indicated Andrej with his giant bulk and hands like steamshovels. ‘He wouldn’t – for one.’

  The prisoners cowered. To them the farm labourer looked like one of those dumb unthinking Polacks who would tear you from limb to limb mindlessly. The one who spoke German, however, was a gentleman. He wouldn’t do anything like that.

  ‘Now then,’ the Baron said, pointing to the smallest of the prisoners, a runtish creature with a sharp red nose from which a dewdrop hung, ‘you. Tell me how far the mass of the Iron Division is from here?’

  The runtish German hesitated, looked at his comrades and then at Andrej, who was rolling up his sleeves to reveal massive muscled forearms, each twice as big as his own skinny neck. ‘About ten kilometres,’ he quavered, ‘sir. We’re from the Totenkopf Battalion’ – he meant the Death’s Head Battalion which went into action with a white death’s head and a swastika for luck painted on their helmets – ‘We’re in the lead.’

  ‘I see,’ the Baron said doing some rapid calculations. ‘Have you got any date for the attack on the Annaberg?’ He turned and pointed to the Holy Mountain just glimpsed now in the shadows of an early dusk which was beginning to sweep across the plain.

  The prisoners’ faces set stubbornly and the Baron knew instinctively that they had. Now all of them were casting furtive glances out of the sides of their eyes at the little runt. The Baron guessed they were threatening him if he talked. ‘Come here,’ he said to the little man, and beckoned with his finger. The runt wiped the dewdrop off the end of his pointed, red nose with his sleeve and then, after a moment’s hesitation, came forwards.

  The Baron lowered his voice. ‘Listen, they can’t harm you. They’re going with us. Tell me what you know and you go free. Your comrades back at the Division will never know why. Just tell them that you escaped from the ambush and that the rest of the reconnaissance party was captured or killed. Easy.’

  The little runt licked suddenly dry lips, while across the way, his comrades looked at him with veiled hatred. They knew what the Polack was up to. ‘You won’t shoot me in the back or anything?’ he asked, ‘when you let me go?’

  The Baron shook his head, feeling an inner sense of triumph. ‘I give you my word as a Polish gentleman – and a major in your own Fourth Guards Regiment to which I belonged until nineteen seventeen.’

  ‘All right then.’ The runt lowered his voice so that the Baron had to strain to hear him. ‘Our job was to recce this road. We’ve been at it now for a day and a half. Wherever we judged it safe, the Division has established a small defensive position.’

  The Baron nodded his understanding. If the snow came, and it could still do so in this region in March, this would be the only supply road available to von der Goltz. It would be vital to him. Therefore, he was establishing his supply route before the main attack came in. Von der Goltz, he knew, was a veteran of the fighting in Russia. The German general knew that no attack in winter in the east could succeed unless you had an open supply route for the men at the front. ‘Go on,’ he urged. ‘The rest.’

  The runt cast an anxious glance over his shoulder before saying, ‘Our Battalion Commander estimated three or four days before the recce would be finished and the outposts set up.’

  ‘Thank you,’ the Baron said gravely, and pondered the information. That would mean von der Goltz would probably take another day before he got his mainly horse-drawn division moving. The attack on the Annaberg would then probably commence in six days’ time.

  ‘Can I go?’ the runt whined.

  ‘Yes, yes, you may go.’ The Baron waved his hand at the little German like one might shoo away an unpleasant animal. ‘You will come to no harm.’

  Head buried into his collar, the German slunk away, not daring to look at his captive comrades, who stood there with burning eyes and balled fists. For a few moments the Baron watched him, wondering a little on what his fate might be. Then he dismissed him. It was imperative that they got back to the Holy Mountain with the information he had obtained this day. They might even be able to squeeze out some more details of the strength of the von der Goltz division from the other prisoners. It was remarkable what twenty-four hours without food and water would do to a prisoner’s resolution.

  But by the time they had got the cart moving again, with the bound prisoners trailing behind, on the road to the Annaberg, Baron Oleksy’s good mood had vanished. Certainly he had the information he had set out to get this day. But now he realised that the information on the start of the German assault only heightened his feeling of urgency.

  Von der Goltz’s Iron Division was composed of trained, battle-hardened soldiers. It probably had a few more light tanks and it certainly had artillery. The defenders of the Annaberg were mainly miners who had spent the war underground, or peasants who had been kept behind to work the land. They possessed neither tanks nor artillery. Indeed they didn’t even have decent rifles, most of them. How long could they hold the Holy Mountain against a full-scale assault by the Germans? Fervent patriots that the defenders were, they would eventually succumb to the enemy.

  He stared glumly as the Annaberg started to disappear in the evening darkness, assailed by a sudden feeling of despair. As he sat there in the straw, with the others chatting softly among themselves or smoking the cigarettes taken from the prisoners, he wondered where exactly his beloved Krystyna was at this minute. He knew she was a very brave and capable girl, but could she get those precious weapons to the defenders in time? Desperately he willed her to do so, as finally the Holy Mountain disappeared into the darkness as if it had never existed…

  Two

  The little fleet rode at anchor south of the Danish island of Bornholm. The storm had passed and now the night was calm, if freezingly cold. All the ships were anchored without lights. Smith didn’t want to run the risk of attracting another German U-boat to them, and he felt he could chance other boats running into them. For the Polish skippers had told him that, due to the tides, little fishing was done in this part of the Baltic: the shoals were too small.

  So they sat together in the comfortable fug of the wardroom, drinking Chris’s vodka for the want of the traditional pink gin, with Dickie Bird smoking yet another de Reske in the elegant ivory cigarette holder, telling tall tales of the fighting at sea during the war, punctuating his anecdotes with ‘absolutely good egg, he was’, ‘whizz-bangs and Jack Johnsons on all sides’ and the like, while Chris listened open-mouthed and barely comprehending.

  In the soft light of the overhead bulb, as he sat on the small padded, black leather seat, Smith listened to the soft lap-lap of the waves on the hull and a scratchy gramophone being played in the crew’s quarters, and watched her.

  She had got over her anger and outrage at his refusal to pick up the survivors of the sunken fishing smack. Now she was her old relaxed, charming self, bubbling over with that Polish joie de vivre, interrupting Dickie’s outrageous anecdotes with an excited ‘But that can’t be possible!’ or ‘Did you really do that?’

  But there was a purpose and an urgency beneath it all, Smith could see that. When they had anchored for the night she had protested, ‘But couldn’t we sail through the night?’ to which he had replied, ‘No, not without lights. I just might lose some of your skippers and it would be the devil’s own job finding them again.’ Even now, entranced as she was in Dickie’s tall tales, she kept looking at the clumsy man’s wristwatch she
wore around her thin wrist, as if she couldn’t wait for the time for them to sail to come again.

  De Vere Smith was a very patriotic young Englishman. He had been brought up to put service to his country and the King Emperor first and foremost and if that patriotism entailed a certain amount of adventure, all to the good. But his was a quiet sort of patriotism. Hers was altogether different, a burning fervent love for her country, Poland, that seemed to him sometimes almost sexual. It was something which he found hard to understand. Perhaps it was because her country had been conquered and broken up so many times in centuries past. If that had happened to England, perhaps he would be same, he didn’t know.

  He took another sip of the fiery vodka, as Dickie was saying, ‘So in we jolly well went. The Boche was throwing everything at us, including the kitchen sink. The stuff was falling into the drink all around us. Jolly soaked to the skin we were, I can tell you—’ He stopped short and held up the long, affected cigarette holder like a conductor raising his baton to attract the orchestra’s attention. ‘I say, you chaps, what’s that?’

  ‘What’s what, Dickie?’ Smith lowered his glass.

  Chris turned her pretty head to one side and said, ‘I think… I think it is an aeroplane.’

  ‘By jove, you’re right,’ Dickie exclaimed. ‘What’s a bally plane doing out at this unholy time?’

  Smith said nothing. He cocked his head to one side, too. To port there was the steady drone of a slow plane’s engine, coming towards them. He acted. ‘Put out the lights, Dickie. We’re off on deck.’

  ‘But it’s bally cold out there,’ Dickie protested.

  ‘Shut up, you ass. Let’s get going.’

  Dickie switched off the light and they opened the wardroom door. Now they could hear the drone of the lone plane’s engines quite clearly. It was coming in from the east. An anxious Smith, instinctively aware that the aeroplane meant trouble, flung a glance at the fishing fleet, as it rode at anchor. Not a light. They were keeping blackout discipline very well. They’d be damn hard to spot.

  ‘What do you make of it, Smithie?’ Dickie asked, the bantering tone vanished from his voice now.

  Smith hesitated and searched the velvet star-studded sky for the plane, but without any success. ‘Don’t know. Civvie planes, as you know, don’t fly at night, so it must be either a smuggler or military. If it’s military then whose is it?’

  Dickie sniffed. ‘Dunno, quite frankly.’

  Suddenly Chris flung up her arm. ‘Look – over there. Can you see?’

  The two young men strained their eyes. Then Smith saw it vaguely: a two-engined biplane, silhouetted a stark, sinister black against the bright scarlet of the engine exhausts. ‘Got it.’

  ‘Me, too!’ Dickie said excitedly.

  The plane came closer. It appeared to be turning and, now by the light of the stars, Smith could make it out. ‘It’s Harry Tate,’ he exclaimed.

  ‘What?’ Chris asked.

  ‘He’s an English music hall entertainer – comedian. Well, during the last show they nicknamed the RE82C twin-engined bomber after him. Perhaps it’s rhyming slang or something. The chaps of the Royal Flying Corps like that sort of thing.’

  ‘But the Harry Tates have been obsolete for ages now,’ Dickie objected.

  ‘I know, that’s why we shipped them off to Southern Russia back in eighteen when we were helping the Whites fight against the Bolsheviks down in that part of the world.’

  ‘Do you mean it’s a Bolo?’

  ‘It looks like it, Dickie,’ Smith answered quickly as the twin-eninged plane came lower, but still turning in a circle. ‘And if I’m not damnwell mistaken it’s looking for us.’

  ‘Us?’ Chris said in surprise.

  ‘Yes.’ Swiftly Smith explained how the Russians had attempted to get on to the purpose of their mission back in London and how the head of the British Secret Service suspected the Reds had tried to keep track of them from Hull, adding, ‘So you see, it’s not only the Huns we are up against, but also the Bolos. They wish the Huns to have this Annaberg of yours. It will help their drive on Warsaw.’

  Dickie whistled softly. ‘So that’s it, is it? Now we’ve got to face up to the Bolos again.’

  ‘They’ve got to find us first,’ Smith reminded him softly, as the Russian plane droned round in another circle. ‘With a bit of luck they won’t spot us. If he had a searchlight like the Zeps’ – he meant the German zeppelins in the last stunt – ‘well, he’d be using it by now. But he hasn’t. So it depends on how good his eyes are and he doesn’t have the sound of motors, like we have, to guide him.’

  Silently they stood now on the gently swaying deck listening to the whisper of the wind and the sound of the motor, which grew louder and then fainter again as the biplane changed course in its search. On the fishing boats they could see dark shapes standing on their decks too, staring upwards into the night sky. But the Polish skippers as well were aware of the danger. Not a light showed. There weren’t even the faint red glows of cigarettes which deckhands usually lit when on duty on deck at night to relieve the tedium of their duties. The Poles were doing very well, Smith told himself, pleased.

  Suddenly there was a hush. Smith started. A stream of white smoke had shot into the sky from the dark silhouette of the biplane. Crack! A tiny explosion. Next moment there was a blinding burst of brilliant silver light that had them blinking furiously, momentarily blinded. Abruptly the whole sea was lit up as the flare began to descend slowly to the water below.

  ‘That’s deuced well torn it!’ Dickie exclaimed angrily. For he had seen what the others had not yet observed. A twin-engined seaplane, painted in what the Royal Navy called ‘crab grey’, had come in silently; the only sound it was making was the hiss of the wind in its wings, its twin props turned off, and out of the side of the cockpit, a dark helmeted figure poised with a heavy box camera. ‘They’ve got us with our pants down well and truly.’

  ‘What?’ Smith asked, then stopped short when he, too, saw what the photographer in the seaplane was up to. ‘Ginger,’ he yelled frantically at the red-haired Liverpudlian who had taken his usual place on the monkey island behind his beloved Lewis guns. ‘Knock the devil out of the sky.’

  ‘Ay ay, skipper.’ Ginger needed no urging. He swung the twin machine gun round and pressed the trigger. The drums revolved. Bright gleaming brass cartridge cases tumbled to the deck. Acrid burnt cordite stench filled the air. Tracer headed for the seaplane, which was almost touching the sea now, like a flight of angry red hornets. In the silence Smith heard the satisfying sound of slugs ripping the plane’s metal fabric. He willed Ginger to knock it out of the sky. But that wasn’t to be.

  Suddenly the plane’s twin engines started up with a roar. The unseen pilot jerked back the stick. The photographer, his mission completed, thrust his head back into the cockpit. Steeply the seaplane started to rise as the white star flare fell to the sea with a hiss. Total, blinding darkness descended upon the scene for a moment, while Smith cursed and cursed. Then his vision returned and the three of them stared at each other in the loud echoing silence which followed the departure of the two planes.

  For what seemed an age the three of them were transfixed there, as if frozen in that tense, angry pose for eternity. Finally Dickie broke the spell with, ‘Come on, chaps, let’s get back into the wardroom. It’s too parky for Mrs Bird’s handsome son out here…’

  Fifteen minutes later the little convoy was under way again, venturing hesitantly into the unknown, each man wrapped in a cocoon of his own dark thoughts – and apprehensions…

  * * *

  Angrily Captain Rurik tossed the still wet aerial photograph on the deck floor. ‘Absolutely no good at all!’ she snapped, taking the long cigarette holder out of her scarlet lips. ‘You lost your nerve, comrade, and this is the result.’

  The photographer, a young soldier with tousled hair and a plump girlish face, trembled.

  Next to her Under-Lieutenant Shukov, one of the Red Amazons’ mos
t experienced pilots, said, ‘But Comrade Captain, it was not altogether her fault. The Red Fleet pilot’ – she meant the pilot of the two-engine biplane – ‘got rattled with the machine-gun fire. He nearly collided with us. It was a very touch-and-go situation. And after all the comrade is only eighteen.’

  Captain Rurik gave Shukov a wintry smile. ‘Your loyalty and comradeship are a credit to you, comrade. But we must maintain discipline of the highest order in the Red Amazons because we are what we are. As they used to say, before Comrade Secretary-General Lenin freed us from religion as the opium of the people, we must be more papal than the Pope.’

  Shukov frowned. She knew she could do no more for the poor girl photographer, who had tears in her eyes now. ‘What are your orders, Comrade Captain?’

  ‘These. You noted the position of these ships, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, Comrade Captain.’

  ‘Then please have the radio people on the tender transmit them immediately to Comrade Aronson in Leningrad. He has an urgent need of the position and probable course of those ships so that he can do his planning.’

  ‘Immediately, Comrade Captain.’ Shukov clicked to attention and raised her clenched fist in salute. She gave the poor wretched girl one last look and hoped Rurik wouldn’t hurt her too much, before chanting the usual slogan, ‘All power to the people.’

  ‘All power to the people,’ Rurik echoed the slogan and waited till Under-Lieutenant Shukov had left before turning to the girl. ‘You realise that you must be punished? I could send you away from the Red Amazons but I think you have some good in you. So it is punishment or transfer.’ She glared fiercely at the pale-faced girl. ‘What is it to be?’

  The girl wet her dry lips. ‘Punishment, Comrade Captain,’ she whispered.

  Rurik looked even fiercer. ‘Speak up girl, I couldn’t hear you,’ she snapped harshly, while Sergeant Markova stepped across to the steel cupboard of the little cabin which they had been allotted in the tender.