“I’ve just killed a man so I could have this shower,” I said.
Trevelyan gave me a sympathetic shrug but he didn’t clap me on the shoulders.
Then we heard an officious knock on the dead Colonel’s door. We froze, listening. “Colonel, your presence is requested in the Feast Hall as soon as possible. The General must make a final decision on balloon shape and colour in the next hour, or all is lost.”
Boot heels clicked together smartly, and the footsteps receded, clipping down the corridor.
I realised that my opportunity to shower had passed. There was nothing I could do but crack on. I slicked my hair back and with a towel wiped away as much of the surface muck from my face and neck as I could. Then we grabbed some uniforms from the lockers. Now we were dressed as Captains of the Wehrmacht, the perfect rank to walk around the castle untroubled.
It is difficult to hatch a plan from nothing, particularly when my mission – to find the mysterious Klung Hammer – was so vague. As Trevelyan’s commanding officer I told him that we would walk smartly around the castle as if on important business, until an opportunity presented itself to take a prisoner, steal documents, or anything else that would give us a steer as to what it could be. We set off on our tour of the castle.
We kept ourselves away from the busy thoroughfares, which were full of red-faced administrators rushing around with manila folders and crepe paper. Hitler’s birthday had everyone in a tizzy. Secretaries were putting up balloons and there were bouquets of fresh flowers and displays of fruit all over the place. We found that we were free to make our way around for now, but knew we were on borrowed time. When the Colonel’s corpse tumbled out of the wardrobe, we’d be in all sorts of bother.
We marched down several stone corridors before we chanced upon the administration offices. They were deserted. No staff. Maybe we could find some references to the Klung Hammer, whatever it was. Then I noticed something about the glassed-off corner office. It was full to the ceiling with brightly wrapped presents. Adolf’s presents.
For a moment we were transfixed, admiring the sheer volume of gifts he’d been given. I wondered what you buy an insane dictator for his birthday, as I picked up a small package at random, and tore it open. Inside was a small velour box containing a pair of gold swastika cufflinks and a card marked ‘From Benito with love.’ Trevelyan caught my gaze, understanding that here was an opportunity to do some mischief.
But before we could tamper with anything else a reedy German voice stopped us in our tracks. “Halt! Put your hands up in the air, and slowly turn around…”
Major, the clock has just chimed midnight so I think I’ll leave it there. I’ve promised Baxter two hours of capoeira in the morning and I need my rest.
I’ve discovered that it takes a brave man to talk about his past without adding any varnish, which is why I wanted to be candid about my unpleasant ascent into Castle Klunghammer. There is no glory in ingesting the enemy’s turds, an indignity you escaped. Thankfully due to my cast-iron constitution and the wonders of modern medicine I am still here to talk about it.
I’ll leave it to you to write about the wardrobe.
Yours sincerely,
Major Victor Cornwall
Nimbu Towers
Pullen-under-Lyme
Gloucestershire
22nd October 2016
Dear Major,
It’s not my fault I was quicker on my feet than you were. I found dodging the scheissebergs rather fun, as it happens. Once you found the rhythm it was easy. You’ve always had two left feet, Cornwall.
I shall continue, as what happened next is of great historical import, and needs to be dealt with properly.
Please find my recollections of the worst game of sardines in history.
__________
CHAPTER 12
Klunghammered
Castle Klunghammer, 1943
Cornwall and I turned around with our hands up. A Lieutenant, physically unimpressive with owlish glasses and a bad case of eczema, had his Luger pointed at me, then Cornwall, then me, then Cornwall. He couldn’t make up his mind. He looked tense, an office jockey. Not cut out for this kind of caper.
“You must show me your papers, Kapitan,” he called out, for want of anything sensible to say. I gambled and went straight on the offensive, “I suggest you lower that pistol Lieutenant, put your heels together, and address us properly. Have you never seen a senior officer covered in shit before? Clearly you weren’t at the Fuhrer’s birthday party last year.”
The Lieutenant’s wrist sagged a little. “Show me your papers,” he said again, “please, it is a matter of security.”
He said ‘please.’ Pathetic. This chap was not going to shoot us. I stepped forward, clapping slowly.
“Well done Lieutenant. You’ve confused vigilance with insubordination. And now you’ve landed yourself a posting to the Afrika Korp.”
Cornwall, hands still up, appraised him. “Maybe. He’s a pretty pathetic specimen though, he wouldn’t last ten minutes in the desert.”
“Agreed,” I said, stepping smartly forward past his aiming radius, locking his gun hand and head-butting him on the bridge of his nose. He went down like a sack of kartoffel, and stayed there.
We pulled the unfortunate sop into the room containing the presents and left him slumped on the floor. We spent ten minutes jumping up and down on the presents until they were tatters of shiny paper with rubble inside. Then I found a kit bag stuffed full of birthday cards in garish envelopes. We began tearing them to pieces before putting them back in their envelopes. Then we found a blank birthday card on a desk, which gave us another idea.“Let’s write him our own card.”
“Better yet, we’ll write it from The Big Lad.”
I thought for a minute, and composed the following message, in my free-flowing cursive:
Castle Klunghammer
by hand
Dear Adolf,
Thanks for inviting me to your wonderful party. I’m afraid I can’t make it, as I’m busy plotting your downfall and the destruction of the Third Reich so that Europe may breathe again. Looking forward to making Germany a safer place, after your demise,
Best regards,
Winston Churchill, Prime Minister, Great Britain.
(p.p. Arthur St. John Trevelyan and Victor Montgomery Cornwall.)
“That’s pretty classy,” said Cornwall. “I think he’d approve.”
We woke the administrator up for long enough to question him about the mysterious Klung Hammer. Cornwall broke his fingers one by one, but it was clear he knew nothing about it, whatever the hell it was. We suffocated him and dragged his body into the cupboard and locked it. Killing administrators gives me no pleasure, and I’ve often spared a thought for the poor lad, but there are always casualties in war and he was just unlucky.
Cornwall kept lookout while I went through the desks. Nothing about the Klung Hammer weapon, but I found a schedule for the party, which was the next afternoon. Along with the many deliveries of Kugel and balloons, we could see that Storm Eagle, Hitler’s overblown codename for himself, was supposed to arrive in just one hour’s time. This explained the atmosphere of hushed intensity that we’d experienced upon arrival.
So we had no time to lose if we wanted to put the cat amongst the pigeons. We went down into the kitchens and rounded up every chef and kitchenhand, locking them in the walk-in freezer. We dropkicked the birthday fruitcake. Then Cornwall added his sewer-smeared socks to the simmering tureen of bouillebaise, which was sure to cause all sorts of tummy trouble.
The mischief continued. Cornwall called the German National Opera and asked them to prepare The Lark Ascending by Vaughan-Williams instead of the Wagner they had planned to perform at the party. Knowing that Hitler was a vegetarian, we even fixed the passieren das Paket game so that the last layer would
reveal a raw beefsteak.
We authored many petty, obnoxious misdeeds, each guaranteed to set the Fuhrer’s teeth on edge. We rubbed some repulsive French cheese onto the underside of the tables in the grand dining room. We removed one place setting and chair from each of the circular tables. I did a shit in a General’s hat, and hung it back on the same peg. The experience of a decade of English boarding-school prankery was soon writ large all over the castle.
So far, so fun. But we’d taken our eyes off the ball and our real mission was in danger of being a blowout. We needed to track down the Klung Hammer, whatever it was, and either break it or steal it, quick smart. I reasoned that heading up one of the towers would enable us to look down on the grounds, which might provide us with some clues.
Cornwall agreed. We headed up the nearest flight of stairs.
Before long we found ourselves in the eaves of the castle, which was deserted. Through a window, I spied what we were looking for: a slim circular tower, which added another forty feet to the castle’s formidable structure. We decided to get up there for an even better view.
We scooted up the spiralling staircase, to find a heavy oak door. Cornwall steamed through it into the room at the top, ready to clobber anyone he found up there, but it was empty.
The room was sparsely furnished. The walls were whitewashed, and the flagstones unadorned with the thick rugs and carpets we’d seen in the lower rooms of Klunghammer. There was a small Ottonian tapestry of a bull locked in combat with a griffin. A colossal wooden wardrobe crouched by the wall, framed between thin slices of blue sky from two arrow-slit windows. The wardrobe was so vast it must have been built inside the room. Peculiarly, a circular table, of the type found in a Parisian pavement café, sat in the exact middle of the room along with three chairs. On the table was a cardboard manila file.
I flipped open the file to find twenty or thirty pieces of flimsy paper, with inconsequential notes both handwritten and typed. As I rifled through these papers, I caught a whiff of something dangerous, a very faint chemical nastiness. Carefully, I turned the papers over, until I found a tiny cellophane packet sealed with adhesive gum. It looked like amphetamine sulphate, but I knew better. I flicked the packet and took a tiny exploratory sniff.
Almonds.
Cyanide.
Why would the most remote room in a Nazi castle contain an innocuous file hiding a deadly poison? I asked Cornwall for his remarks but at that very moment we heard the ring of jackboots, two pairs, ringing on the steps up to our tower. Oh bugger.
There was only one sensible option. Silently, Cornwall pulled open the wardrobe door, and we hid inside. He pulled the door closed with a click. There was plenty of room for the pair of us. I crouched down, and peered through a knothole, which afforded me a near perfect view of the table. Cornwall found a knothole of his own on the other side of the wardrobe. We didn’t have long to wait.
I immediately recognised Friedrich Olbricht, head of the General Army Office in Berlin, who perched his slight frame on a chair. Why did I recognise him? Well, as war began, Winston had been good enough to send across to Scoundrels a box of portrait photographs of senior Nazis of whom he particularly wanted rid. Lunk Snr had the bright idea to pin them up in a sort of impromptu rogue’s gallery in the downstairs lavatory. Winston knew that Scoundrels get about a bit and that we might come across one or two of these chaps on our adventures. We were to make merry with the garrotting wire if so.
Olbricht was a man under pressure. His hands wrung together, and the tension in his face was palpable. His companion, a pensive bear of a man, lumbered across the floor to look out of the window. “Do you see him?” called Olbricht, as he lit a cigarette with shaking hands.
“There is a convoy approaching the outer fences. It could be him.” The bear slumped into a chair. I could see his face from my spyhole. Major General Henning von Tresckow. Another big hitter: Chief of Staff of the Second Army.
Cornwall whispered. “Your thoughts?”
“Sit tight.”
“Agreed.”
Almost immediately the Generals stood up and greeted a third person entering the room. But there had been no ringing jackboots on the flag-stoned floor. The footfalls were light.
It was Eva Braun.
Eva drew a slender cigarette, and waited for Olbricht to fumblingly light it for her. She blew a plume of smoke towards the ceiling. Fortunately, she’d sat so that I could see her face, as well as both Generals in profile. This was lucky, as she was enormously expressive. Her beady eyes glinted with malice. Her body language said much before she’d even opened her mouth. She was in charge of this meeting, whatever it was about.
“Speak then. Why am I up here gentlemen?”
Von Tresckow bowed his head. “Thank you so much for coming to this conference, Fraulein Braun. I will come straight to the point, as I know our Fuhrer is expected any moment. We represent a contingent of senior men concerned about the Fuhrer’s wellbeing. He is very distracted these days. So much so that the war is beginning to go against us. Our armies go unquartered, and we are expected to fight in the East, the West and North Africa at the same time. Our orders are issued and then rescinded, and then reissued, and then countermanded again. Questions must be asked, however difficult. With the greatest of respect, have you any insight into the Fuhrer’s mental condition?”
History tells us that Eva Braun exerted no political influence on Adolf Hitler. She was considered inconsequential and feather-brained. Sources told us she left the room whenever war or matters of state were discussed, and had never been heard to utter an opinion about anything other than soft furnishings and the prettiness of flowers. But that was not my take on her at all. Through my knothole I spied a shrewd operator.
“I could have you shot, Major General von Tresckow, for saying such a thing. And have you shot, General Olbricht, for listening.” She continued to smoke, and her eyes flashed at von Tresckow to continue.
“Of course, dear lady,” said von Tresckow. “Please understand that we speak from a position of acute embarrassment and discomfort. Our glorious Third Reich will grow in strength until our enemies are vanquished, but to do so it needs our strong and heroic leader to be firing on all cylinders.”
Eva thought for a full minute, during which the Generals shifted uncomfortably in their chairs. I was beginning to find my semi-crouching position decidedly painful too.
A loud buzzing noise came from overhead, and a dark shadow blotted out the light from the windows. An aircraft. I recognised the engine noise as a Junckers J252, a workhorse of a plane. It sounded as if it were coming into land. But how could it? This was a castle on a precipice with forest all around. I put these thoughts away as Eva spoke.
“I’m not saying he is distracted, but imagine my Adi was experiencing some… mental turbulence. What would you want to do about this?”
“May I speak frankly, Fraulein Braun?”
“I wish you would Major General.”
“We would want you to replace him. We would want you to become the Fuherin.”
A silence descended. Eva Braun finished her cigarette. She flicked the butt off into the corner of the room, her eyes never leaving the face of von Tresckow. “I’m listening,” she said.
Inside the wardrobe, I looked up at Cornwall. It was bloody dark, but I could see his brain was working overtime as he digested this astonishing scene. Well, it explained the cyanide, that’s for sure. It was intended for Adolf! Eva Braun as the new leader of Nazi Germany? Would that leave them weaker or stronger? What should we do? Report back to Whitehall, or kill everyone?
“We would need you to put the Fuhrer out of his apparent misery, Fraulein Braun, and assume the reins of power immediately. The Fatherland trusts you, and together we can win this war.”
“You want me to kill him?”
“It’s the only way.” Gen
eral Olbricht pushed the manila file towards Eva. “In here you will find something to slip into his bedtime milk. His passing will be painless, and Germany will only know that the great leader has died in his sleep. You will then be confirmed as Chancellor and Fuherin. Then we can get the war back on track.”
Cornwall looked at me and raised his eyebrows. It seemed that we weren’t the only ones who knew that Hitler was a liability.
“Poison Adi?” Eva smiled uncertainly. She sat for a moment in silence.
“I’d also need a gun,” she said, “just in case.”
The Generals each breathed a sigh of relief. But before even a moment had passed, they were panicking again as a horribly familiar voice echoed up the stone stairs and into our tower.
“Eva! Where are you?” The voice sounded strained. “I need you please. Where are you?” The last time I’d heard that voice it had been addressing Nuremberg.
Eva went as white as a sheet. “He’s come!” Olbricht and von Tresckow were too stunned to move. “He wasn’t in the convoy, he was on that plane!”
They stared at her in panic. “By god, you know how jealous he is!” she said. “He’ll assume we are up here making love! You’ll both be shot.”
“Mein Gott! What can we do?” moaned Olbricht.
“Quickly! He’s coming up here! Into that wardrobe!” Eva jumped up and smoothed down her dress. Then she rushed to the window. The Generals raced towards our wardrobe and, without looking inside, pulled open the door. Olbricht was first in followed by von Tresckow, who pulled the door shut.
“Guten abend,” whispered Cornwall, his hand already on Olbricht’s windpipe. “Keep schtum.”
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