The more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that money was the key to his problem. Without ready cash to distribute as need be he was like a boxer who has been handcuffed. Somehow he had to have funds, and considerable funds at that. But how could he possibly secure them? Not by remaining in the countryside. That was evident. Trees that grow golden apples flourish only in towns. They were banks, prosperous businesses and rich people who had big money and could be persuaded or tricked into parting with a wad of it.
He must, then, make for a city. And there was another advantage in that. Once the hunt was up the roads would all be scanned for him and the stolen motor-cycle, whereas in a city he would be able to lose himself in the crowds. But to go to Warsaw was no good, or to any other Polish city, since he could not speak Polish and he must get out of Poland as soon as possible. Czechoslovakia was no good either. To establish a new identity that would hold water he must get into Germany.
His mind ranged over the map which from long study he was able to visualize easily. In the north one city stood out beyond all others. It was the German capital.
For a moment Gregory shied away from the idea of endeavouring to seek safety in the heart of the Nazi Reich, for in it were concentrated the headquarters of every police organization that played a part in controlling Hitler's empire. Then an episode in a story he had read many years before recurred to him. It was by that great short-story writer C. E. Montague, and opened with the small son of a British Ambassador playing in an Embassy garden. He had been given a tortoise and his nurse said that beyond all things to eat tortoises loved cockroaches. A cockroach was procured, presumably from the Embassy kitchen, and set down in front of the tortoise like an early Christian before a lion. Realizing its peril, the cockroach lost not a second but leapt into the armpit of the tortoise, thus making it impossible for the tortoise to snap it up.
Having strapped the hold-all containing his clothes on to the motor-cycle behind the saddle, Gregory kicked the starter, mounted the machine and set off for Berlin.
15
The Armpit of the Tortoise
The track ran north-east and after bumping along it for a mile and a half he found that it came out on the road to Rozan. Turning west he increased his speed and two minutes later passed the place where the aircraft had landed. A few miles further on he struck the broad main road where it made a sharp angle. During the past week he had imprinted on his mind a map of the area, so he knew that the left-hand fork led south to Pultusk and Warsaw. Thinking it wise to keep well away from the more highly populated area round the capital, he swung right and, now that his powerful machine had a good surface to move on, roared away to the north.
After about six miles he passed through a silent village, and another twelve brought him to a small town that he decided must be Przasnysz. There the trunk road continued straight on through the market square but, feeling that he was now sufficiently far north of Warsaw, he took a side turning that led west.
Now that he was over thirty miles away from Malacou's cottage he was entering territory that he had not memorized; so a little way outside the town he pulled up, got out the map he had found at the cottage, shone his torch on it and spent some minutes studying it for the best route to take. He saw that the second-class road he was now on wound about considerably, but its general direction was westward and in a little over twenty miles would bring him to the town of Mlawa. From there it curved north-west through two villages, then ran west again to the railway junction of Brodnica.
When he reached Mlawa the summer dawn was breaking and there were lights in the windows of some of the houses, but no one was yet about. A church clock struck five as he passed on his way out of the town. For the next hour he still met no traffic, but from some of the farms men and women were trudging off to work. At about half past six he entered Brodnica. There were a few people in the streets and a Polish policeman on duty in the square; but after a hasty glance at him everyone looked quickly away, afraid, he guessed, that he might see in their eyes the hatred they had for everyone in the uniform he was wearing.
From Brodnica he took the road to the provincial city of Turum, which lay another forty miles away to the south-west. Owing to petrol rationing the road continued to be free of traffic except for an occasional farmer's cart, but by the time he was half-way to Turum he was feeling very tired. A little less than twelve hours had elapsed since he had left Brindisi in the aircraft, and he had slept for a good part of the flight, but the past five hours had put a great strain upon him. Although it was eleven months since his leg had been smashed it continued to be a disability when used in strenuous exertions. Disposing of the two S.D. men's bodies had taken a lot out of him and between half past three and seven o'clock he had covered over a hundred and ten miles.
He would have given a lot to lie up for a few hours somewhere that side of Turum, but he felt it imperative to take the utmost advantage of the lead he had secured; so he made up his mind to keep going until he had passed through the provincial city. He reached its outskirts about seven-thirty. By now, although it was most unlikely that the bodies of the S.D. men would have yet been found, it was possible that their failure to report had led to a general call being put out for them; so, as a precaution against the number of his motor-cycle being noted, instead of going through the city centre, where it was certain that traffic policemen would be on duty, he turned off to the right and made a wide detour through the suburbs until he got on to the main highway that led to the city of Bydgoszcz.
As soon as he was clear of Turum' he began to look about for a suitable place to lie up during the day; but, as so often happens when looking for a good place to picnic, his luck was out. The country was as flat as a pancake and open fields stretched away on both sides of the road as far as the eye could see. With faultless rhythm the machine carried him on mile after mile until he was so weary that he feared that he would not be able to control it for much longer, and it was not until he was within twelve miles of Bydgoszcz that he drew near a wood that would serve his purpose.
Slowing down, he turned off up a track through the trees, then began to look about for a place where he might hope to sleep for a few hours without anyone coming upon him.
Several hundred yards from the road he reached a wooden bridge over a small stream. Having dismounted and scrambled down to the water's edge he found that there was just enough room to conceal the motor-cycle under the bridge on one bank and for him to stretch out and sleep on the other. To get the heavy machine down and into its temporary garage took all his remaining strength. Straining and cursing, he managed it; then unrolled the hold-all to lie upon and used the country clothes in which he had flown out from England as a pillow.
In the five hours since he had left Malacou's cottage he reckoned that he had covered some hundred and sixty miles, so he was well out of the danger area and felt he could consider himself extremely lucky. His main worry for the moment was the thought of Erika's distress when she learned that he had not returned with the aircraft. At the moment, as it was half past eight, he thought it certain that she would be awake. Visualizing her in bed at Gwaine Meads, he thought of her with love and longing; but he was so exhausted that after a few moments he fell fast asleep.
When he awoke a glance at his watch showed him that it was getting on for four o'clock in the afternoon, so he had slept for over seven hours. Although he felt much refreshed his bad leg was very stiff, and it was not until he had exercised it gently for some minutes that he turned his thoughts to other matters. Anxious as he was to put more miles between himself and Rozan, he decided that, now the hunt must be up for the missing men, it would be wiser not to make another start until dusk had fallen; for after dark there would be much: less likelihood of a policeman-chancing to notice the number on the motor-cycle, and connecting it with any call that had gone out.
He felt ravenously hungry but the only food he had found in the cottage larder was the half of a small wild duck, a lump of sausag
e, a thin wedge of cheese and a loaf of rye bread. Putting aside the duck and cheese for his dinner, he slowly masticated some of the coarse bread and sausage then made a more thorough examination of the two S.D. men's wallets. Both contained permits to buy petrol, but he knew that if he produced one of them at a garage the number on the card would be entered in a book and he would have to sign for the petrol in the name of the man to whom it had been issued. Sooner or later such a forgery would be discovered, giving away the direction in which the stolen machine had been driven, and enabling the garage man to give a description of him and that might prove his undoing. His strongest card was that although every effort would be made to trace the machine, unless Malacou was caught and squealed the police could not have the faintest idea what the person who had made off on it was like. To protect this most valuable anonymity he decided not to use _either of the permits unless all other ways of securing a further supply of petrol failed.
In both wallets there were also identity cards, but to have made use of one of them would have been acutely dangerous, as the names of the missing men would, anyway for the next few days, be in the minds of every policeman in north, Germany. However, as he was wearing the uniform of an S.D. trooper no-one, other than an S.D. officer, had the authority to challenge him, and it was very unlikely that he would run into one until he reached Berlin. In the capital, though, as the badges he was wearing would show that he belonged to a formation stationed in occupied Poland, he might well be challenged and if he were the fat would be in the fire.
This thought made him wonder if it would not be wisest to put on his civilian clothes while he had the chance, but the uniform was such an excellent protection from any form of interference while on the road that he decided not to change out of it as yet.
As he had nothing else with which to occupy himself, the next few hours seemed interminable. He thought a lot of Erika, wondered what had happened to Malacou and cursed the day he had met him; then speculated on possible ways of obtaining money when he reached Berlin, but gave that up as futile for the present.
At length the shadows began to fall. Still hungry after his last unsatisfactory meal he ate the rest of the rye bread and every shred of the duck, then set about the job of getting the motor-cycle up the steep bank of the stream. Slipping, holding, cursing, it took him a good ten minutes, and when he did get the heavy machine on to the level he had to sit down for a while to recover from his efforts. Then, kicking the engine into life, he wheeled it, just ticking over, to within twenty feet of the road. Having made certain that nothing was approaching from either direction, he mounted it and set off.
He still had another twelve miles to go to Bydgoszcz and the petrol in his tank was getting very low, so he was uneasily aware that somehow, soon, he would have to get it filled up. Slowing down at two villages through which he passed, he kept a sharp look-out for a possible source of supply but, apart from garages, failed to find one. By that time he was nearing Bydgoszcz and was getting worried; so when, outside a Fair-sized villa on the outskirts of the town, he saw a car, he pulled up beside it, dismounted and sounded the klaxon.
After a few minutes a short plump, elderly man came out of the house, walked down the garden path and asked him in German what he wanted. In the harsh, dictatorial voice habitual to S.D. thugs, Gregory said that he had run right out of petrol and must have some. The man suggested that he should go on into the town and, as it was only a little after nine o'clock, knock up a garage. Gregory replied that his tank was almost drained, that he was on urgent duty and could not afford the delay should his machine fail before he reached the pump. The man protested that he was a doctor and about to visit a bad case at a farm some miles away, so could not spare any petrol. Gregory said he could not help that. Petrol he must have, and at once. He would give the doctor a chit to secure more, but unless he met the demand he would find himself in trouble.
Under the threat the doctor quailed, became ingratiatingly polite and hurried back to the house to fetch a piece of rubber tubing. While he was absent Gregory took from the breast pocket of his uniform a notebook and fountain pen and scribbled on one of the pages: Commandeered from Herr Doktor -, seventeen litres of petrol for urgent requirements, then signed it: Albrecht Schmidt, No. 4785 Sicherheitsdienst. Ten minutes later the petrol had been siphoned from the tank of the doctor's car into the tank of the motor-cycle and Gregory had filled in the doctor's name on the chit.
During this transaction Gregory kept the peak of his uniform cap pulled well down over his eyes and, the light from the headlamps by which it had been carried out having been well below the level of his face, he felt sure that the plump doctor, if ever called on to give a description of him, would be able to give only a very vague one. With an abrupt word of thanks, he set off again to go through Bydgoszcz.
By luck he found a bypass that took him round it to the entrance of an autobahn signposted ` Berlin '. He roared along it for sixty miles. Then it joined the Danzig-Berlin highway with a signpost that said ` Berlin 160 Kilometres'. Down it he continued to let the powerful machine rip, and when he had covered three-quarters of the distance he could see a glow in the sky ahead that was evidently over Berlin.
As he drew nearer he realized that an air-raid was in progress. The glow was from fires and the scores of searchlights that swept the sky. A myriad tiny sparks flickered at the extremities of the beams as hundreds of anti-aircraft shells exploded, and in the distance he caught the continuous rumble made by the crashing of the bombs. By the time he neared the end of the autobahn the raid was over and only a lurid glare from raging fires lit the sky.
By then it was half past one in the morning. Slowing down, he looked out for a suitable spot in which to abandon the motor-cycle. Not finding one he took a side turning to the north along which, interspersed among fields, back lots and orchards; there were small factories and short rows of small houses. A mile or so along it he came to a humpbacked bridge beneath which ran a railway culvert.
Pulling up at the side of the road he took a screwdriver from the tool kit, removed the number plates from the machine and put them in his pockets. Then, making certain that no-one was about, he wheeled the motor-cycle some distance off the road, unstrapped the hold-all and pushed the machine over the brick edge of the culvert, so that it crashed on to the railway line fifteen feet below. Pleased by the thought that the next train that passed would render Germany the poorer by one powerful motor-cycle and that, with luck, it might even derail itself, he picked up the hold-all and returned to the road. Five minutes later he threw the number plates into a deep ditch which was screened by a fine crop of nettles.
He now felt very tired and after half an hour's tramp through the blacked-out deserted streets of the suburb he was limping again. But about two o'clock he came upon the sort if place for which he was looking. It was an unpretentious inn, somewhat older than the majority of the buildings in the neighborhood, with a tea garden beside it and large enough to have eight or ten bedrooms.
Several minutes of ringing and knocking roused and brought sown the landlord, a very fat, elderly man with a patch over one eye, wearing a threadbare dressing gown. After giving him a Nazi salute and a loud `Heil Hitler', Gregory said in a disgruntled voice
`I'm on leave from Hamburg. My girl lives in this neighborhood and I'd planned to spend my leave with her. But she left her digs two days ago and her letter telling me where she's moved to must have missed me. Her bloody landlady either doesn’t know or won't tell me on account of a quarrel they had, end I've spent half the night trying to trace her without any luck. I'll find her tomorrow through mutual friends, but I've peen up since five this morning, so I want a room to sleep in.'
The landlord shook his head. `I'm sorry, Herr Reiter, I'd be pleased to oblige you. But the bombing has destroyed so many people's homes that every room I've got is taken.'
`Teufel nochmal!' Gregory groaned. `What hellish luck. Still, it can't be helped. As I'm nearly out on my feet I'll doss down on a
sofa in your lounge.'
To that the landlord readily agreed, ushered him in and locked up again. As they passed through the saloon bar Gregory noticed two glass covers with Brцtchen under them and a jar of biscuits. Announcing that he would have a snack before going to sleep he asked the man to fix him a double brandy and Apollinaris.
While Gregory munched and drank they carried on a desultory conversation. The landlord asked how things were in Hamburg and Gregory told him that the bombing had been perfectly bloody. His companion replied that the bombing had been perfectly bloody in Berlin, too. Then, obviously for Gregory's benefit, he endeavoured, not very successfully, to say how convinced he was that the Allies would soon be driven out of France and the war brought to a victorious conclusion by the Fьhrer’s `Secret Weapons'.
Having eaten his fill Gregory asked the man what he owed him, then took out his wallet and paid. As he did so he fixed the landlord with a steady stare, silently daring him to ask for a ration slip. To ignore regulations of that kind would, he knew, be in keeping with his role as an S.D. trooper, and the man accepted his abuse of his uniform without comment. Eager to please, he offered to find a rug for Gregory to wrap himself in, but the night was warm, so Gregory told him not to bother. Five minutes later he had stretched out on a sofa in the inn Parlour and the landlord was on his way back to bed.
As an old soldier Gregory possessed the ability to wake near any hour on which he had set his mind and before he dropped off he set his mental alarm clock for half past five. Rousing at that hour he felt stale and shivery, but he found the cloakroom and a wash revived him. In there he also shaved in cold water and changed from the uniform into his own clothes, packing the uniform into the hold-all; but he stowed the shaving kit into one of his pockets.
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