Cold War Trilogy - A Three Book Boxed Set: of Historical Spy Versus Spy Action Adventure Thrillers

by William Brown

  “Shot them down? Koch?” Bruckner lost his temper. “How dare you accuse…”

  “I swear it!” Stolz dropped to his knees. “They forced my truck off the road just outside the gate and those Brown Shirts of his herded all of them inside an old warehouse. It was horrible — dark and cold with nothing but the headlights and spotlights of that damned Mercedes of his to light the place up. Koch began to beat them and kick them, screaming and hitting them with that riding crop of his. But it wasn’t until that SS Major and some of his men showed up that the shooting started.”

  “That SS Major?” Bruckner stammered, shocked by what he was hearing. “You mean Sturmbannführer Kruger? He was there, too? And he didn’t try to stop them?"

  “Stop them? He was the one who started the shooting!” Bruckner heard the words, but he still didn’t believe them. “I swear it, Kapitan! That look in his eyes — all cold and lifeless. He grabbed a submachine gun from one of his SS troopers and began firing, and he didn’t stop until he ran out of bullets.”

  Bruckner reached back and slapped Stolz across the face with a powerful backhand, knocking him flat on the deck. Kruger might be a hard case, but he was an officer and Bruckner refused to listen to wild accusations like these from a filthy truck driver.

  “It’s God’s truth, Kapitan,” Stolz rose to his knees and begged. “I couldn’t believe it either, not until I saw the bodies falling, then I believed. I believed, and I ran outside into the night as fast as these old legs would carry me. You were the only chance I had.”

  “The only chance? What are you saying, man?”

  “Kruger would have killed me, if I’d stayed there. I’d have been next. I could see it in his eyes. It’s all about those crates, the ones we stowed below deck. That’s why he killed those Russians. He killed them to shut them up, so no one would know what’s inside this U-boat. It’s their secret — their big, bloody secret — and they’ll do anything to keep it quiet.”

  Bruckner raised his arm to strike Stolz again, but the truck driver screamed, "There!" and pointed back inside the dark submarine pen. "See? See what I told you? They’re looking for me; they aren’t finished killing yet.”

  Bruckner’s eyes followed Stolz’s arm back into the submarine pen and froze in mid-swing. He saw a set of high-beam headlights and the dim outline of an automobile, a large one, coming slowly down the pier toward them. Above the headlights, a pair of spotlights swung back and forth probing the dark corners of the submarine pen. They sent an icy chill down the Kapitan’s spine. There was only one car like that in all of Königsberg, maybe all of Germany, and it belonged to Gauleiter Eric Koch. It continued rolling slowly forward until it reached the end of the pier and stopped. The headlights and spotlights were switched off and the car sat there looking like a big cat whose dinner had just slipped away.

  The Kapitan’s arm fell limp to his side. His mind told him the truck driver’s story was utterly absurd, but in the pit of his stomach he knew every word was true. That left him deeply ashamed for himself and for Germany.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Hours later, with Königsberg far below the horizon, Bruckner finally left the bridge and went below. He was frozen to the bone, but his anger continued to burn white-hot. Grabbing the side rails of the ladder, he dropped down to the conning tower, then to the control room below, ignoring everything and everyone. He tossed his white hat on the chart table, slid wearily onto the stool, and picked up the thick packet of orders Kruger had left for him. Those damned orders, he thought. That was when he saw Kruger’s silver cigarette case. Bruckner remembered Kruger took it out and laid it on the table just before Koch showed up and Kruger made his mad rush to the bridge. Bruckner picked it up and ran his fingers across the engraved surface. Nice workmanship, he thought as he opened the clasp and saw the ornate swastika and the engraved inscription inside. “My strong right arm?” “From a grateful Martin Bormann?” Oh, for God’s sake! Bruckner swore as he flung it against the bulkhead only to watch it bounce off the painted steel and fall back onto the table exactly where it began, taunting him even more. You really stepped in it this time, didn’t you, Eric. Now how the hell are you going to get yourself out of it?

  Finally, he picked up the envelope and ripped it open. Like it or not, it held his destiny, so he spread the neatly typed pages out and read them one at a time.

  Argentina!

  It was all so painfully clear, he realized as the last sheet dropped from his fingers. This is no combat patrol. There were no “wonder weapons” in the forward torpedo room and he would deliver no crippling blow against London or New York. He was an errand boy delivering Bormann’s war booty to some backwater jungle coast in Argentina. What did Kruger call it? A “milk run,” that would “save the lives of you and your crew.” But at what price, Bruckner wondered, cursing these new orders and the devious hands that wrote them. Yes, they had painted him into a tight little corner, cutting off all his options one by one until he had no choice but to do their bloody bidding. Clever, but this time they picked the wrong man. Eric Bruckner was no shop clerk, no delivery boy. By God, as Admiral Schwanger said, he was a naval officer, first and foremost.

  “Karl!” he shouted into the intercom. “Meet me in the control room and bring that fool Stolz and a couple of crowbars with you.”

  We’ll see who has painted whom into a corner.

  The three men stood at the round, watertight door of the bow torpedo room as Bruckner grabbed the locking wheel and gave it a turn, then another, until it spun free. He pressed his shoulder against the thick steel door, pushed it open on its well-oiled hinges, and stepped inside. After the other two men joined him, he closed it behind them. There were too many curious eyes on a small boat, and not nearly enough secrets to go around.

  They found themselves in a narrow aisle that ran between dozens of wooden crates of every conceivable size and shape that were braced and lashed to the bulkheads. Some of the wood still had a raw, green hue and the boxes looked crudely made, showing hurried saw marks and hammer blows. The taller ones were lashed and braced against the bulkhead near the bow and the longer ones along the side. By far the most numerous were dozens of small ones, perhaps one foot square and six inches deep, lying in two parallel rows down the center aisle. Bruckner remembered how the Russian prisoners struggled with them, usually two men to each box, as they carried them up the gangplank, set them on deck, and lowered them down through the hatch. Even up close, the only visible marking on them was a black Nazi Party eagle and swastika stenciled on the top, but there was nothing else to indicate where they came from or what was inside.

  “Start with that one, Stolz,” he said, pointing at one of the smaller crates. “Use the crowbar and pop off the top. Let’s see what got those men killed.” Stolz jammed the tip of the bar into a narrow crack beneath the lid. As he pressed down with more and more weight, the long carpenter nails squealed in protest as they came out of the green wood. With a final grunt, Stolz dropped all his weight on the bar and the board popped off.

  They say you can always tell the real thing, and they were right, Bruckner realized. The box contained two layers of freshly minted gold bars, gleaming like liquid sunshine. “Gott im Himmel!” Stolz exclaimed as he picked one up and cradled it in his arms like a newborn child. “It is gold, Herr Kapitan, pure gold,” Stolz said as he raised the bar to his nose and sniffed at it, almost giddy. “It even smells rich!”

  Bruckner knelt and examined the box more carefully. There were three bars in the top row and three more lying beneath them. Looking at the parallel rows of boxes that ran the length of the compartment, there must be at least a hundred more just like this one and probably as many in the aft torpedo room. Doing the quick math in his head, he realized there were perhaps twelve hundred gold bars between the two compartments. No wonder the U-boat was wallowing like an overloaded barge. Those idiots.

  He took the gold bar from Stolz’s reluctant hands and turned it over. “Look at the surfaces, Karl. There�
�s no mint mark, no weight stamp, and no bank symbol. The edges are rough, almost homemade, as if someone was in a big hurry to pour it and pop it out of the mold.” Someone? He could guess who.

  “Thieves used to do that,” Stolz offered. “Gold, jewelry, things they don’t want identified later; they would melt it all down.”

  Bruckner nodded. "Well, we know what’s in the small ones. Let’s see what’s in the rest of them." Bruckner picked up a crowbar and turned his anger on one of the tall crates near the bow. He jammed the steel tip under its top edge, and with a quick twist and a pull, the board broke and popped off in pieces.

  “Well, we’ll never get that one back together,” Karl laughed.

  Bruckner smiled too, as he dug his hand inside. Beneath a thick layer of excelsior, he found bound rolls of canvas. They were oil paintings, a thick roll, and there were dozens more like it. Under the rolls of paintings, he saw a tangle of jewelry — gold crucifixes and icons, mixed with necklaces, tiaras, bracelets, and strings of pearls. Karl popped open another crate and pulled out jeweled menorahs, antique vases, and several large tapestries. They were old, with that musty smell of museums, wealthy homes and royal palaces, and every piece looked like a collector’s item. Many of them still had small tags attached, hand lettered in what looked to be Russian or Polish. Whatever the language, it sure as hell wasn’t German.

  “Kapitan,” Karl said as he looked inside the crate. “This is unbelievable. You could outfit half the fleet with this jewelry.”

  The gold bars? A fortune in art? And all this jewelry? It was a king’s ransom. No, it was enough to buy a dozen kings. Better still, it was enough to buy a dozen countries where Martin Bormann, Heinz Kruger, and their ilk could be kings. Bruckner felt ill just looking at it. He had always been proud to be a German and a German officer, but it would be a permanent stain on his nation’s soul. Admiral Schwanger was right; these people were the traitors, not Stauffenberg.

  On the far sides of the compartment lay stacks of long, thin crates, which Bruckner remembered the Russians having a particularly difficult time fitting through the hatch. He pointed to the top one and said, “That one, Karl. Open it.” The young officer wedged his bar under the board and began working it around the edge. With the nails finally loose, it took all three of them to pry the top up. Underneath, he saw gray, army issue blankets. Pushing them aside, the three men were stunned to see an iridescent, honey-colored panel, inlaid with gemstones. Brown and gold, they looked like molten honey, highlighted by carved red, green, and blue stones. Bruckner ran his fingers across the surface. The pieces of amber had been carved and glued together to form a flat, wall panel. In this crate lay two more panels, and there were twenty more crates like it.

  “What is it, Kapitan? I’ve never seen anything like it,” Karl asked.

  “I remember this, from school,” he said. “They’re Russian, from a room in one of the Czar’s palaces outside St. Petersburg. They’re old, from the early eighteenth century, a gift from the Prussians to the Czar, I think, and they’re priceless.”

  “From Russia? Koch probably grabbed it as he was leaving,” Stolz said.

  Bruckner nodded as he stared down at the panel. “I suspect the gold, the art and jewelry, and these amber panels are what he and Kruger were arguing about this afternoon. What did he call it? The trinkets and souvenirs he brought with him?”

  “More like thieves falling out,” Karl added.

  It all made perfect sense now, a sick and very perverted sense, Bruckner thought. They knew Königsberg would soon fall, so they diverted an operational fleet submarine from the North Atlantic and their black-garbed palace guard from Berlin to make sure their loot got safely away ahead of the Russians. No wonder they were willing to kill anyone and anything that got in their way to keep it secret.

  Karl pointed to a row of sealed metal boxes lying along the side bulkhead. “What do you make of those, Kapitan?” he asked. They were about one foot wide by three feet long and one foot deep, with metal handles.

  “Looks like an ammunition box,” Stolz said.

  “No, I don’t think so.” Bruckner knelt next to one and pulled up on the handles. The top popped off. Inside lay file folders and official documents, most with a Nazi Party emblem at the top. He pulled the top off another and found stacks of five by eight index cards. “These are party records from Berlin — personnel cards and financial records. It is ammunition, all right, ammunition for those maniacs to start the next Reich.”

  Kruger! The oil drums on the aft deck. The gold, jewels, and party records. And Argentina! That cold-eyed blond bastard knew exactly what he was doing. The U-582 faced at least eight weeks of hell skulking across the North Atlantic in the dead of winter, where they would no doubt be greeted by more of Bormann’s henchmen. Then what? Eight more weeks fighting their way back home? By that time, all the north German ports would be overrun and there will be no more U-boat bases. Besides, there would be no return trip; that was never part of the plan. They had enough fuel oil to make the long voyage to South America, but a return trip would be impossible without an equally large cache at the other end, and it wouldn’t be there. Kruger never intended for the U-582 to return to Germany, now or ever. This time, it wouldn’t be the SS. Some pleasant diplomat with a gray homburg hat and a cold banker’s smile would pull him aside and give him the bad news. “Terribly sorry, my boy, but petrol is rationed here. We’ve been working day and night, but there is simply no hope of getting any now, none at all.” After the cargo was unloaded, he’d be told that the only choice was to scuttle the U-boat. “You and your men will be well taken care of here. You have our word.” Taken care of? Their word? No need for the rear wall of a storage shed like the Russians got back in Königsberg. With no money and no papers, he and his men would be stranded there under Bormann’s thumb until long after it no longer mattered. Dead men tell no tales, but neither do hostages.

  Bruckner’s thoughts suddenly returned to the forward torpedo room as he swore he heard a faint scraping sound up near the bow between the last crates and the bulkhead. Stolz heard it, too, because the burly truck driver raised his finger to his lips and crept slowly forward. With a final rush, he reached into the shadows, hands out and fingers spread. To Bruckner’s astonishment, Stolz came back out dragging a tall, ragged man with a full head of shaggy hair and a filthy beard, wearing a filthy gray overcoat. It was one of his prisoners.

  “You sneaky bastard!” the truck driver screamed as he slammed the poor wretch up against the bulkhead. Stolz raised an angry fist to hit him, but the prisoner’s arm was faster and as strong as spring steel. He caught Stolz’s fist in mid-swing and hit him flush on the chin with a straight right. Stolz’s knees buckled and he sat down hard on the deck. The prisoner stood over Stolz, daring him to get back up, as Karl stepped forward with a steel prying bar in his hand.

  “That is enough!” Bruckner snapped. The prisoner turned and glared at Bruckner, but the Kapitan didn’t flinch as he realized these were the eyes that looked at him through the rear window of Stolz’s truck that morning. The truck driver got back up, his face flush. "Randall, you bastard, you hid out down here when the rest of them went back to the truck, didn’t you, you weasel?” Stolz went for the man’s throat again, but with a desperate, animal-like growl, the prisoner grabbed Stolz’s shirt, lifted him off the deck, and bounced him off the bulkhead.

  “I said that is enough!” Bruckner interceded.

  "But, Kapitan, he has been hiding back there, spying on us the whole time. He saw everything; and he isn’t one of those ignorant Russians… he’s an American."

  “An American?” Bruckner asked as he eyed the man with new interest. “Is that true?” The man said nothing, but he didn’t need to. It was obvious from Stolz’s reaction that there was more going on between them than the truck driver had let on.

  “He is a spy, I tell you. An American spy!” Stolz argued.

  “A spy?” Bruckner laughed as he looked at the threadbare overcoat
and filthy hair. “Well, if he is, they don’t pay very well. Besides, if he hadn’t hidden out here, he would be lying on the floor of that storage shed back in Königsberg with the rest of them.” The prisoner’s eyes flashed when he heard the words. “Ah, you understand some German, my friend,” the Kapitan said.

  “Some,” the man answered as he pushed his shoulders back, shedding the rest of his half-wit prisoner pose.

  “He understands more than that!” Stolz threatened.

  “Enough!” Bruckner cut Stolz off. “Now what’s your name?” Bruckner asked. He saw the deep lines around the man’s mouth and eyes, but the fellow wasn’t nearly as old as he looked. He couldn’t be much more than in his early twenties.

  “Randall,” the man finally answered. “Sergeant Michael Randall, US Army Air Corps.”

  “See! A spy, like I told you,” Stolz shouted.

  “Go to hell, Stolz,” the prisoner shot back.

  “Why else would he be in Königsberg?” Stolz argued.

  “Trying to stay alive… and away from bastards like you.”

  “Don’t make me laugh, Randall,” Stolz shot back. “You’re an American spy. I knew it all along.”

  “I was a waist gunner on a B-17 bomber.” Randall turned and looked at Bruckner again. “We got shot up over Berlin and came down somewhere north and east of there.”

  “If you were caught, why didn’t they put you in a Luftstalag, a proper POW camp?”

  “I guess you’ll have to ask the SS. The next thing Eddie and I knew, we were in a penal battalion here in Königsberg digging tank traps.”

  “Who is Eddie?” Bruckner asked.

  Randall’s eyes turned on Stolz again. “My friend. He’s dead now.”

  Bruckner looked at Stolz. “And you knew about all of this?”

  “They had no papers, no identification.” Stolz turned his eyes away. “And the SS didn’t ask what I thought, Herr Kapitan.”