The Vogels: On All Fronts (The Half-Bloods Trilogy Book 2)

by Jana Petken

  “Get up, Willie. They’re Finns, our allies,” Haupt shouted.

  Wilmot rose on shaky legs, struck dumb like a wide-eyed idiot as he stared at two horse-drawn sledges carrying artillery. He counted ten men dressed in white garb with ski poles, skis, and rifles. They reminded him of explorers until he noticed the dead reindeer on a wooden wagon on skis instead of wheels. He let out a long, relief-filled breath, still coming to terms with this rescue. He was finally liberated from the Russian yoke that could have so very easily carried him to his death, but he couldn’t quite believe it.

  Haupt was speaking to one of the Finns. Wilmot was largely ignored until a man approached him and handed him a loaf of bread – a full loaf – stale but perfectly edible baked food. He nodded his thanks and shoved as much of it as he could into his mouth, ripping into the crusty dough with his teeth. He had just been given more bread than he’d had in a week while he was a prisoner of war.

  “Thank you … thank you,” Wilmot finally mumbled tearfully to the men. Words couldn’t adequately describe his feelings of joy and relief, but his wet eyes spoke louder than gratitude.

  When he came to his senses, Wilmot walked through the centre of the group of men to Haupt and the man he was talking to. Unlike Wilmot’s emotional state, Haupt was behaving like the perfect officer; calm, focused, authoritative, but with all the visible signs that he had gone through hell and was struggling to stay on his feet. Wilmot, wanting to follow his friend’s example, drew himself up and listened.

  “… and get you to our line … Germans there,” the Finn was saying in broken German.

  Haupt finally addressed Wilmot. “We’re going with them, Willie. From what I can gather, we’re only three kilometres from their lines. This is a reconnaissance party.”

  “They’ve been hunting as well, I see,” Willie responded by pointing to the reindeer on the ski wagon. Then he asked the Finn, “Where are the Russians?”

  The man took off his mittens, put up eight fingers, and pointed south. Then without a word, he gestured Haupt and Willie to follow him to the wagon.

  The Finn pointed to the back of the wagon, which boasted a bed of furs. He and two of his men helped Haupt to get in. Willie followed suit with another two men hoisting his emaciated body onto the wagon. Willie was handed a flask while still clutching his partially eaten loaf of bread. He took a long slug, and then coughed when the alcohol burnt his throat. “Haupt … try this stuff,” he croaked. “It’ll blow your head off.”

  The Finn in charge, said, “Sleep,” then the group moved off towards the Russian bomber.

  Haupt curled up under the furs and said to a worried looking Wilmot, “Don’t worry about a thing, Willie. They know what they’re doing and where they’re going. Get some sleep. We made it.”

  “We did, didn’t we?” Willie choked, his bottom lip trembling. We bloody did it, but all our men on that prison train are probably dead by now.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Max Vogel and Romek Gabula

  London, England

  30 March 1942

  Max and Romek sat down to breakfast in their shared house in Camden, North London, paid for by the Abwehr. Romek’s two guards and Max’s driver had already eaten, and Mrs Mullins, the housekeeper tasked with looking after the men, was supposedly going to visit her sister then call in at the grocer’s shop to pick up the weekly rations. The busty woman in her early fifties, who seemed to permanently have rollers in her hair, was an MI5 agent on loan to Heller. The headscarf covering the rollers, the lack of makeup and dowdy clothes were all part of her disguise, she’d explained to Max, who’d first met her at MI6 headquarters looking and talking like a well-to-do, smartly coiffed lady.

  She had the acting skills of a female Laurence Olivier, mothering the occupants, gossiping about and with the neighbours in her soft cockney accent, which came naturally to her, being a Londoner. She feigned ignorance of what was going on under her nose and managed to hover around Romek while being unobtrusive. Yes, Mrs Mullins played her part well, Max thought, watching her flipping a fried egg in the pan.

  The previous housekeeper, the woman employed by German intelligence to look after the house and see to Romek’s needs, had been arrested after Max, in the guise of Romek, had gone to meet her. It had taken only five minutes for her to mention the Abwehr and give the Nazi salute of Heil Hitler, giving Max the go-ahead to arrest her and put Mrs Mullins in her place without the Abwehr or Romek getting a sniff of the change-over.

  Max had commented to Heller that Mrs Mullins was a remarkable woman whose reality was very different from the one she was portraying. She was the eyes and ears in the house when Max was absent. She reported directly to Jonathan Heller, was married to a retired Colonel who was still very much alive and commanding his local Home Guard troop, and she lived in a large six-bedroom house with a permanent housekeeper of her own. Romek, although he never said, was probably aware of her British Intelligence background and the true purpose of her job, but she was not there to fool him; she was to fool the neighbours by projecting an air of normality around the Polish occupant and his housemates.

  “What time do you think you’ll be back, Mrs Mullins?” Max asked her when she’d served Romek and Max a plate of one egg, a sliver of bacon and a slice of dry bread.

  “I don’t know. I’ve got a lot to do. It’s ‘ard trying to fit everything in, what with only ‘aving one day off a week. I just don’t know ‘ow we’re supposed to manage with these new decreases on rationing. As if things weren’t bad enough already, we’re now getting less electricity, coal, and gas, not to mention clothing coupons. I lost my George in the Great War. The poor man will be turning in his grave to see us going through all this ‘ardship again. And for what? I’ll tell you for what, that little upstart in Berlin with his silly moustache and arm going up and down like a bleedin’ fiddler’s elbow! Hah, you mark my words, my George would’ve gone over there and put a stop to ‘im before this terrible war even broke out.”

  “Don’t worry, Mrs Mullins, I’ll make sure you don’t go short of anything.” said Romek wagging his finger.

  “Aww, Son, you and your lot are good people, you Polish are. I can’t think of a bad word to say about any of you, ‘cept I wish you ‘adn’t ‘ad to get out of yer own country for those Nazis. It breaks me ‘eart, so it does.”

  This morning, Max planned to conduct business at the house. A transmission had come in from the Abwehr with their latest list of questions, to which Max had already written brief answers. It was a tricky business. He and an assembly of other devious minds had to devise solid ripostes that met the Abwehr’s demands while not giving away information that could be detrimental to Britain, or her allies.

  When the house was quiet, and they’d cleared the table, Max got out the file and typewriter, and as always, advised Romek about how he should sound in the messages to Matador, his handler in Madrid. “Your answers must be written in a personal way, as you would speak them to a friend. But don’t overplay your hand or be too informative. It’s vitally important in deception work that you forget what you know and what you would do. This is all an act to make the Germans think they’ve got to work hard to reach their conclusions. If the intelligence is too easily given, they’ll suspect it…”

  “You’ve told me that a dozen times, Max,” Romek interrupted.

  “And I’ll tell you a dozen more,” Max snapped. “I don’t think you grasp just how vulnerable this programme is. One stupid error, one blown agent and the whole thing could come tumbling down around our ears.”

  After MI6 and the Twenty Committee had decided to try Romek out as a double agent, his first task had been to request new codes from the Abwehr and to confirm that he was in place in the house without encountering any issues. By changing the codes, MI6 and their counterpart, MI5, who would at some stage take over Romek’s case since he was a domestic agent, were able to halt the exiled Polish government’s interference in Romek’s operations, and at the same time, bloc
k any security leaks that might come from the Poles’ London headquarters.

  The Poles had swiftly retaliated, telling Heller that Romek was their man by right and insisting that they owned him body and soul. They’d capitulated, however, after Heller had reminded the crippled Captain Kazcka that all Poles living in Britain were enjoying the hospitality of the British government, and as such, they were guests and had no right to demand anything.

  Thus far, Romek had been kept on a tight leash. He could communicate only the routine information given to him by the British and was not permitted to take part in any operational deception. He was rebellious, sullen, disappointed, and extremely angry with Max who had not demanded that his agent be shown more respect for past loyalty. Their relationship had reached an all-time low with both men avoiding conversations of a more personal nature. Indeed, Klara’s name was rarely mentioned.

  Max worked diligently with Heller to come up with a suitable backstory for Romek, but their responsibilities didn’t stop there. Romek also had to be fed, clothed and sheltered, which was no longer an easy job because of the growing number of double agents in Britain and increasingly scarce supplies.

  As part of his long list of duties, Max was responsible for managing and organising Romek’s day to day life, and for providing him with an identity card, ration cards, and clothes coupons. But breaking through Romek’s wall of surly and unpredictable mood swings was proving difficult, for it went much deeper than their professional differences. The atmosphere between them had become increasingly tense and was alleviated only when other members of the household were present; those being the two guards, using the covers of civilian dockyard workers, and an officer with a car who brought and collected Romek’s information and occasionally drove Max into the West End for meetings.

  Max had also been charged with coming up with a notional job to give the impression that Romek was self-supporting. Romek had been quite happy when handed the employment card stating he was a librarian at the Islington North Library. Books had always interested him. He was an avid reader, and looked forward to reading in English, he’d told Max who’d recalled the full bookcase in Romek and Klara’s Warsaw flat. Thank God something made him happy, Max had thought at the time.

  Angry at Romek’s continuing belligerence, Max tapped his fork on his plate then threw it carelessly on the table. “You don’t have to like me, but if you don’t take this seriously and show me you’re enthusiastic, you’ll be disposed of.”

  Romek’s lips twitched with his own barely concealed anger. “Charming. You’ve changed, Max, and I’m not sure I like who you’ve become. We used to be friends, have a laugh and a beer, talk as equals, but look at you now, all stiff and uppity like most of the English I’ve come across in this country. I think you left your sense of humour behind in France along with your faith in me.”

  Max agreed, for much of what Romek said was true; he wasn’t the same man at all. He was tired of keeping secrets and still furious with Paul. He was scarred with family dramas and a barely-healed broken heart.

  Looking across the table at Romek, who was scraping the last bit of yolk from his plate with a crust of bread, Max came to a decision. “We’ve both changed, me with my secret and you with yours. Why don’t we get this over with, then perhaps we can move on with a clean slate?” he asked.

  Romek tossed the thumb-size crust of bread onto the plate, then sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Go on then, get it out. I’m not going to help you,” he said.

  Max exhaled and sat forward. “All right – I want to come clean…”

  “About you and Klara? Yes, go on.”

  Chilled by Romek’s monotone voice, Max focused on the Pole’s fingers, now tapping the table very close to the bread knife. He had just confirmed that he knew about the affair, yet for months he’d borne that knowledge in silence. Why? The more important question was, now that it was out in the open, what would he do about it?

  Max, keeping his own tone steady, asked, “How long have you known about Klara and me?”

  “I suspected your affair a long time ago, but I knew it was true when I met her at Duguay’s farm. She defended you when I called you a bastard for abandoning us, which you were by the way, and don’t try to deny that you hung us out to dry.”

  “There was a good reason I couldn’t…”

  “I don’t want to talk about your reasons. What’s important is the way my wife talked about you. Her eyes betrayed her feelings. I never saw that look of love when she was married to me. It was then that my mind went back to our time together in Warsaw and Paris. I’m stupid. I should have seen the signs, the smiles, the hours you and she spent together while I was working, the way you looked at her when you said goodbye, and the day of the first German air raid on Paris when both of you arrived back at the flat only minutes apart – yes, Max, I knew on that day.”

  Max shook his head. “If you knew, why didn’t you tell my bosses about it as soon as you arrived in Britain? You could have torn into me and no one would have blamed you. I took your wife to bed. I made love to her under your own roof and betrayed our friendship.

  Max was deliberately goading Romek to illicit a more emotional response from him and, in doing so, finally diffuse the tense atmosphere between them. Thus far, his approach wasn’t working. “What I did was unforgivable, yet you said nothing and aren’t saying anything now, either; in fact, you look as though you’re gloating. What do you want me to do? Should I stand still and let you punch me or stay silent while you tell me what you think of me? I’ll do it, whatever you want, just get on with it.”

  Romek’s expression was neutral, no trembling lips, or angry frown. “You’re asking me what you should do? Hmm, I don’t know, Max. You had sex with my wife with not a thought for your good, old friend, Romek. You accepted my hospitality in Warsaw, ate at my table, and had my meagre possessions at your disposal. I watched your back and risked everything in Poland and France to please you, to make you proud of me, and you repaid my kindness and diligence by thumbing your nose at me with whom I thought was my darling, faithful wife. You tell me, Max, what can you do for me when you’ve already done it all?” Romek swallowed the last of his coffee.

  No point in denying the accusations when they were all true. Max pondered the Pole’s strange quiescence. The only question now was what was Romek planning to do about it? So far, he hadn’t moved, pulled a knife, yelled or threatened; instead, he continued to drink his coffee as though Max wasn’t even in the room.

  “I apologise, Romek. I am deeply sorry for the pain I’ve caused you and for being an arsehole. I’ll put my hands up. I was a selfish bastard, and you’re right, I did betray you. If I could go…”

  “Aw, shut up, Max. Shut up! Don’t insult me with your if I could take it back I would, shit. You prised Klara and I apart like a wishbone. You witnessed our marriage breaking, but you still encouraged her to be with you.”

  “I never wanted to hurt you or lose your friendship.”

  “Friends, you and me? You’re not worthy of that word,” Romek sneered. “You’re the man I work with, that’s all. You and Klara are in the same filthy box of infidelity. You’re both dead to me … dead.”

  Max cringed at Romek’s mention of Klara being dead. Weeks earlier, the two SOE agents on the ground with Duguay had confirmed her death, and a fiery debate between Max and Heller had ensued about whether they should they give Romek the news or allow him to continue believing she was alive.

  Max had been devastated when he’d heard about the accident, and although he was not a man given to tears, he had sobbed like a baby in the privacy of his bedroom. Klara had meant the world to him for a long time, and that his love for her had recently begun to fade and then turn in another’s direction only hardened the blow and accentuated his guilt.

  She had died alone, a twenty-four-year-old woman with a difficult past behind her and her future full of hope, albeit she’d known the risks of war. She’d had a quick death; a kindne
ss, Heller had stated matter-of-factly. Death, quick or not, was never kind to the young, Max had retorted, finding no comfort in the agents’ reports that her neck had probably snapped in an instant. He recalled his own final, terrifying seconds before hitting the rocks on French soil. She would have felt the same terror just before whichever part of her body hit the ground. Heller had never jumped out of an aeroplane in his life. What did he know about it?

  “… I won’t give Klara a divorce, so don’t make plans to marry her,” Romek was now saying. “Jezus Chrystus, I can just imagine the two of you laughing when I was captured. You were probably hoping I’d be executed and out of your hair for good. Well, sorry to disappoint you both…”

  “That’s enough! You’re wrong. Klara was beside herself with worry. Come on, Romek, you know that’s not true.”

  “I know she loved you. She admitted it to my face.”

  Max had rehearsed his denial a hundred times for just this occasion, but now, when it mattered, he had no idea what to say.

  “The great Max Vogel is stuck for words, eh?” Romek taunted.

  “She and I are not together now … it’s over,” Max stuttered, his head bowed.

  “Aw, poor Max and Klara, boo-hoo. Shall I send you flowers, shed tears for you?”

  Defeated, Max sighed, “Can we move on from this? We have to live together…”

  “Yes, we do. And we will do our jobs well and hope this war ends sooner rather than later.”

  Romek pushed his chair back and got to his feet, poking his finger in Max’s face. “Make no mistake, Max Vogel. I will knock you into next week and tell your superior officers all about your betrayal. I will stamp on your head until the handsome face my Klara loves is crushed to pulp. I will ruin you, but when I do those things it won’t be because you’re sitting at this table, giving me your permission. And this,” he said, pointing to his own face, “this is the new Romek … this face full of disgust … it’s all you’re going to get from now on.”