A steel rung ladder protruded from the far wall, which Neil climbed, struggling to use only one arm while the other held his grip. He unlatched a hatch at the top, cautiously emerging into a well-lit hallway. He spent a moment dusting off his clothes before walking to both ends of the hall, finding a squat door at the second end. Neil took several deep breaths, emerging from the door onto a bustling street. The late afternoon streets teemed with men and women heading home or to their second-shift job. It was the perfect time for Neil to blend in and disappear.
Keeping a lookout for police, Neil stopped an affable-looking older man, asking him how to get to Shoreditch.
“Ah, an American,” the man said with a smile and a wink. He personally guided Neil a block south, stopping at a wide avenue and pointing east. “This is Oxford Street, m’friend. Stay on it with the sun to your back. It’s only a few miles to Shoreditch.” The man clapped Neil on his back.
“Will the street be this crowded the entire way?”
“In this fine weather? Billy-o, arseholes and elbows,” the man replied, tugging on the brim of his hat.
After thanking the Englishman, Neil pulled his new fedora down tightly, keeping his head down as he carried his grip smartly to the east.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
WILHELM KRUGER WAS NEIL’S AGE, older by only six days. In the Great War he had been a pilot, flying a Fokker D VII in missions over France and Belgium. On one particular summer day back in 1917, one with the correct weather and wind, one that he had awaited for many weeks, Wilhelm, or “Willi” as he was known to most people, took off after his mission brief, his Fokker loaded with a hundred-kilo bomb underneath and two senf-slathered bratwurst rolls in his lap. He had munched one of the bratwurst sandwiches, chewing happily as the cool wind at altitude added to his sense of well being over what he was about to do.
Willi waited until he passed the forward line of battle before jinking to the right and diving to the treetops. After running at full throttle and skimming the leaves on the tops of the elm trees, he jettisoned his bomb directly into a non-threatening rear echelon area of the Allied forces, banking so he could watch the volcanic explosion that sent tents, rifles, legs and heads spinning high into the air. Willi leaned his head back, cackling before he throttled down to save his precious fuel. He flew on the deck, pressing ahead to the east of Dunkirk, feeling the air cool and thicken as he popped out over the grayness of the famed strip of water the Brits called the English Channel. Arrogant bastards.
After what seemed an hour, with the aid of the tailwind he had been waiting weeks for, he sighted land just as his Fokker began to wheeze and sputter. Before his tank was completely dry, Willi climbed high enough to spot a lumpy field. His engine quit shortly thereafter, sending him gliding in for a bone-shaking landing. He got the wheels down for a hundred meters, but the overgrown grass had prevented him from seeing the marshy underbelly and, once the landing gear was seized by the water, it sent the Fokker keeling forward, hammering Willi’s large nose directly into the hard leather-padded rim of the cockpit. Figuring he would be overrun with soldiers, he clambered clumsily out of the airplane. After attempting to stem the blood from his thoroughly broken proboscis, he began waving the once white hankie, unaware that it now looked like the flag of the Japanese Empire—white with a blood red orb centered in the middle.
Willi’s assumptions, as usual, were incorrect, because the only onlookers he garnered that afternoon were two boys who had been out playing, coincidentally, a game of war. They approached him fearlessly, running their hands over the taut skin of the Fokker and openly making fun of Willi’s broken English—and nose.
Once again using the handkerchief to stem the free flow of blood from his nose, Willi asked to be taken to their parents. As it turned out, one of the boys, the owlish one with oversized eyes, was the son of the town constable. The constable locked Willi away after beating him with a rake handle. Two days later, the constable and a group of other locals hogtied Willi before driving him into London, like farmers with their prized fattened pig. After another beating from his new captors, they deposited him in a hole that smelled fouler than Willi’s pigpen of a barracks back in Hannover.
Willi stayed “in the hole” for the better part of six months, eagerly telling the military brass everything they wanted to know about his airplane, his training, the collective mission, and the general state of turmoil in his motherland. When repeatedly asked about the rogue bombing of a medical detachment well behind the front line of battle on the day of Willi’s defection, Willi had shaken his bullet-shaped head, claiming it was done by Klaus von Wieseck, a radical ace from his squadron who flew the exact same type of aircraft Willi did. While Willi knew good and well that he, himself, had done the dirty deed, he hated Klaus with a passion, even providing the investigators Klaus’s home address in the hopes they might send a spy to kill him.
Before Willi’s defection, Klaus had taken every pfennig of Willi’s poker money. Willi suspected Klaus had done so by marking the cards. He spewed Klaus’ address so many times it got to where the investigators would open every interrogation with the phrase, “We know all about Klaus von Wieseck...”
Before and after every beating, before and after every interrogation, Willi expressed an interest in becoming a full-fledged English citizen. He told them he was married with no children, but that his wife had sampled every man in Hannover. This wasn’t exactly true. Willi suspected Katarina might have once sent a postcard to her teenage beau, but that was about it. He, on the other hand, was well known to every nurse and attendant at the airfield in Koblenz. And he could easily be identified due to a small birthmark he’d been bequeathed in a particularly private place.
Such rampant philandering was Willi’s primary motivation to defect. He’d been tipped off that his wife’s father, a full colonel in the tank command, had gotten word of Willi’s indiscretions and was going to have him drawn and quartered as soon as the war was over.
Drawn and quartered—or British food for the rest of his days?
Willi did not have a difficult time coming to his final decision.
Now, more than twenty years later, the limited English citizen was well known in the Shoreditch area because of his inner-city farm. Between two rows of buildings, Willi Kruger had developed a market garden that was capable of producing impressive quantities of needed produce, especially when considering the conditions he was forced to operate in. His three farm hands, including his freckly Irish wife—she happened to be fifteen years his junior—worked their collective fingers to the bone. They bottled milk, collected eggs, imported hay and feed, and spread manure at a pace that would make even a good, hard-working German farmer proud.
On this particular day, a grimy-faced Willi Kruger had just finished selling a half-dozen eggs to a sixteen-year-old English girl from two blocks over. As he gave her a few coins of change, he winked at her and told her to come back “any damn time she wanted…for any damn thing she wanted.” No sooner had the teen hurried away than a tired-looking man wearing a serious expression and a soiled pinstripe suit appeared.
“Can I getcha?” Willi asked, wiping his hands on his canvas apron while speaking in an adopted English accent that was still quite German.
The man whipped out a five-pound note, pinching it between his two fingers. “Fifteen minutes of your time, in private.” The man spoke German.
“Nellie!” Willi screamed, stripping off the smeared apron as his other hand dug in his pockets for his cigarettes. “Take over,” he said, hitching his thumb to the cash box.
“Where ya goin now?” she asked in a tone somewhere between weary and pissed off.
“Never you mind, woman. Do what I tell you, when I tell you,” he answered, leveling a rigid finger at her. Willi turned to the man and winked at him. “Gotta treat ‘em like livestock to get ‘em to produce.”
His visitor seemed unimpressed.
They walked through the back alley, with the visitor tiptoeing over the s
lop and the manure. Willi entered the rear of the bordering house through a screen door, motioning his guest inside. The room was dim, with a small table and an aluminum counter on the far end. This was the back of Willi’s small home, the working end. He reached into the icebox and retrieved a beer for himself, biting the top off.
“Getcha a beer?”
“Have any coffee?” the man asked, eyeing the pot on the stove. Willi didn’t ask if he took cream or sugar, instead just splashing the burnt coffee in an ancient mug. The visitor sipped it and winced.
“The money,” Willi stated, making a pulling motion with his fingers. He took the bill, eyeing it before cramming it into his shirt pocket. “What do you want?” he asked, no longer trying to speak with a British accent.
“I understand you have an airplane,” the man said. His German was odd.
Willi narrowed his eyes at the funny accent. His wife knew a kindergartener’s German, and this man’s accent wasn’t too dissimilar from hers. “Who told you that?”
“The very first person I asked when I walked into this neighborhood.”
Willi frowned. “And who are you?”
“That’s not important,” the man answered, tossing the coffee into the sink and leaving the mug. “What is important is the amount of money I’m willing to pay you to fly me to Innsbruck, Austria.”
Willi had been in mid-swig, and he quickly lowered the beer to keep from spilling any more than he did. He coughed several times before wiping his mouth and foamy moustache with the back of his sleeve. “If I did have an airplane, stranger, getting you to Austria would be next to impossible, and would cost more than you’ve ever dreamed.” He narrowed his eyes. “I don’t have an airplane, and it doesn’t matter anyway because—”
The man pulled several bands of twenty pound notes from his pocket, stacking them one by one on the table. By the time he was finished stacking, Willi was staring at more money than he had made in the past three months.
After Hitler had seized power in Germany, and the German economy had roared back to life, Willi had seen a sufficient need to create a smuggling business. He’d first utilized an old boat and a series of train hops through France. Several years ago, he’d invested in a rattletrap airplane, an old Curtiss. He used it to fly into Germany and bring back human cargo, Jews mainly. He brought them, their babies, gold bars, paintings—they always carried something he didn’t expect.
But in the past year, just after he and his partner shelled out all of their savings for the new airplane, the smuggling business had begun to sour. There were now numerous competitors, mostly military, from Germany. They had the equipment, the know-how, and they were on the inside—able to get clearance for their flights. Subsequently, Willi’s funds had all but dried up. But, today his ship might have come in. If this fellow, who was by no means a German, had enough loose cash to throw on Willi’s breakfast table like it was nothing, how much more might he have?
Trying to focus on the man and not the money, Willi allowed his hand-rolled cigarette to dangle as he softened his face. “Your German sounds strange, friend. Where are you from?”
“I’m not from Germany,” the man answered. “I’m from Austria.”
Willi chortled. “Well, either you lived on the top of a mountain and never spoke a word to a soul, or you’ve spent the last thirty-five years of your life in New fockin’ York, ‘cause I know an American accent when I hear one.”
The guest nodded with closed eyes. “Yes, I’ve been away for a while.” His eyes opened. “Now, can you get me safely to Innsbruck?”
Willi studied him through slit eyes. “You a bluebottle?”
“What?”
“Police? Polizei? Government man? Law enforcement?”
Neil shook his head. “I have no interest in you, at all.”
“Are you?”
“No,” the visitor with the odd accent answered. He tapped the money. “Five hundred pounds for flying me to Innsbruck, Austria.”
Willi ran his hand through his thick mop of tangled hair, collecting a coarse film of grease and oil. He used the collection of human lubricants on the ends of his moustache, twirling them until they curled, glistening. “Double,” he said loudly.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me, Kumpel. I want double.”
“If I agree to that…we leave today.”
Willi’s face opened into a wide, harrowing grin, exposing rounded, rotting teeth. He grabbed for the money before the visitor swiped it away.
“You get paid when we get there.”
“Come on, I need a down payment,” Willi protested.
“Not a coin before we fly.”
“But I need to buy petrol for the flight.”
“I’ll pay for it at the airport.”
“We won’t be flying from an airport.”
“Where do we fly from?”
“A private strip.”
Relenting, the man asked, “How much?”
“Fifty quid’ll do me for now. Then half before we fly. We’ll have to refuel along the way.”
“Where?”
“Wherever we happen to be when the engine starts sputtering,” Willi answered dryly.
“How’s that?”
“Relax,” Willi said. “I’ve got secluded refueling spots scattered all over Germany.” Cocked his eyebrow. “And, if you’re interested, I’ve got Muschi spread all over Germany, too. For a small price, I can set you up with a nice lady friend to come to Innsbruck and look after you. She might even help you get by with that horrid accent, all while servicing you during the evening hours.”
The man frowned at Willi’s ribald suggestion. “Forget the women. When can we fly?”
Willi removed a tattered silver watch from his shirt pocket, glancing at it. “Can’t go in the daylight. Need to wait till dark. Maybe midnight?”
“I can’t wait that long.”
Willi eyed the man. “Seem kinda skittish, you do. Got the heat on ya?”
“I’m paying you so how about I ask the damned questions?” The man rubbed his dark stubble and glanced around.
“Speaking of paying me…”
The man smacked fifty pounds into Willi’s grubby hand.
Willi performed the same moustache-rubbing ritual as before. “If we fly during the day, we’ll get shot down. Trust me. Both sides are on high alert. My bird’s a night flyer.”
The man nodded. “You know somewhere I can get a bite to eat without drawing any attention?”
“Pub right around the corner…Compton’s,” Willi replied. “Sit in the back. Tara there’ll fix you up.”
The man edged closer. “We’re not waiting till midnight. We go at first dark, and no funny stuff.”
“We’re far north here, friend. Be at least eleven before it’s dark.” Willi’s horrid smile reappeared. “Just settle yourself a bit, okay? As long as you’re payin’ me, I really don’t care who you are…even if you’re Jack the focking Ripper.”
He hitched his thumb. “Pub around the corner?”
“Compton’s. Get the corned beef hash—best in London, owner is some sorta meat expert. I’ll be by just before sundown. We’ve a nice little drive ahead of us.”
The man stared at Willi for a moment before picking his way back through the muddy garden.
After the man rounded the corner, Willi danced a silent jig in the small kitchen and removed another of his beers, biting the cap off and drinking with fervor. The man was American—Willi would wager the entire 500 pounds on it. Willi also again wondered how much money the man had on him if he was willing to pay five times the going rate for such a flight. Yes, Austria was farther than Willi had ever ferried anything or anyone; but he had flown in and out of Munich before. And Austria, depending on their destination, wouldn’t be much farther.
This isn’t a setup of some sort, is it?
Willi rubbed his chest, feeling the tightness that occurred when he considered what might happen if the Germans ever caught him. He thoug
ht about the man who had just visited him. He wasn’t police. No, that ignorant Arshloch was some sort of profiteer, into something illegal. That’s why he was slipping deep into the heart of the Reich like a cat burglar. And it was quite obvious that he wanted to keep his presence in England undetected.
Willi pulled open a kitchen drawer, sliding out a false back to display a poorly hidden rear compartment. He moved away several stacks of bills, each in different currencies, before removing his moldy-green Parabellum P-08 nine-millimeter pistol and a falling-apart box of green bullets. Letting him keep his service pistol had been one of the only concessions made by his captors upon his release. And since that time, Willi had only fired the pistol once, killing a massive cat that had been enjoying nightly feasts of his hens. But that had been years before and the Luger-designed product, given to him at the end of flight training, desperately needed to be taken apart and cleaned piece by piece. Willi chugged his beer, finishing it before retrieving a small, oily wooden box that held his cleaning utensils.
He sat at the kitchen table, cleaning the weapon, drinking a fresh beer, and pondering exactly how, and when, he was going to kill this fancy American and take all his money.
~~~
It was just past lunchtime in San Francisco. The manic weather of the past week continued as a blinding rainstorm had just given way to a mild and sunny afternoon. The extreme warmth was unusual for the bay area, the strong rays of the sun pulling visible vapor from the damp streets. Sal stepped from his unmarked car and inhaled the smell he associated with his childhood—rain on heated macadam. Smiling, he walked to the locked gate at Hillside and peered through the decorative iron bars.
Surely Agnes Gentry still lived here. Sal was almost to the intercom when he heard footsteps.
“Who the hell are you?” a rough voice asked.
Sal turned, watching as two men in suits approached from the street. The shorter of the two men had obviously endured at least one broken nose in his time. He had reddish hair and a boyish face that belied his age of probably mid-30s. The taller one, at least 10 years older than his friend, fancied himself as a ladies’ man, based on the cut of his clothes and his swagger. Sal guessed they might be with some branch of law enforcement.
Final Mission: Zion - A World War 2 Thriller Page 16