by Jack Higgins
There had been only one such transmitter left in action in Berlin for some time now and that only because, under Max Winter's orders, transmissions to Moscow had been at irregular intervals. The location of the equipment had always been moved immediately after each period of use.
The present situation was at Hoffer Brothers, which was what the firm was called although there was only one brother still alive: Otto, who had lost a leg at Verdun and had been a member of the Communist Party since 1920.
Max had gone straight there on leaving the club. Had sent for the radio which had been delivered by van together with the operator, a young man named Haupt, a new recruit who suffered from tuberculosis and had therefore avoided army service.
And then a dreadful error had occurred: Haupt, in a moment of mental aberration, had mistakenly switched the set, which worked on alternating current, onto direct current, rendering it unusable. He was out now trying to obtain replacement parts. In fact, when Max heard the door open, he thought it was Haupt returning, and then he went to the head of the stairs and saw Hannah.
She sat drinking the coffee Otto Hoffer provided, aware of her uncle's voice on the phone in the next room, muted through the wooden wall.
“A miracle,” Otto Hoffer said. “To walk out of Gestapo Headquarters just like that. That's really left those bastards with egg on their faces. God, but I wish we could splash it across the front page of the Berliner Zeitung, just so people would know.”
The door opened, and Uncle Max entered. “It's all fixed. You leave for Paris in one hour by road. From there, you'll be taken on to Spain by special courier. From Madrid, you can take a train to Lisbon—no trouble.”
“But how?” she said. “You make it seem so simple.”
“There's an underground route I've used to get important Jews out of Berlin many times before. The people I use aren't idealists. They're crooks who do the whole thing strictly for cash. I like that. It means you know exactly where you are.”
“I see.”
He took a man's trench coat from behind the door. “Wear this. A little big, but you can belt it up tightly.” He took the envelope she had last seen in his office from his inside pocket. “Train tickets—no use now, of course. Both passports, francs, pesos, and the letter of credit for Lisbon.”
“You've thought of everything.”
“Not quite.” He took a pistol from a drawer, a Walther PPK. “This thing is loaded with seven rounds. If you want to fire it just yank back the slider at the top like this. After that, you just keep pulling the trigger. I'll put the safety catch on. Flick that off, and it's ready for action.”
“Do I really need it?”
“You might. I'll give it to you later. Now let's get moving.”
They walked through a series of back streets, crossing the River Spree on an iron bridge at one point, and finally turned into a street very similar to Rehdenstrasse. Mainly warehouses and office blocks.
A faded sign said, Eagle Wine Company. Import-Export. Max knocked at the gate. It was opened instantly and a small, bald-headed man in a brown overall coat looked out.
“Hello, Scherber,” Max said and moved through, followed by Hannah.
“Five minutes,” Scherber said. “That's all you've got, then I want you off the premises.”
“Understood.” Max passed him a wad of hundred-mark notes held together by an elastic band. “Are the boys ready?”
“Over here.”
Hannah saw that they were in a large, dimly lit warehouse. A tanker stood at the far end by huge double doors, and two men stood beside it, smoking cigarettes.
“The Dubois brothers,” Max said quietly. “Paul is the older one with the bad teeth. Henri is the one who does as he is told.”
Henri was young, no more than twenty-one, and wore a tweed cap and leather jacket. “So this is our cargo?” he said in bad German. “Delightful.”
His brother said sourly, “What about our cash, Max? Two thousand francs, that's what we agreed.”
Max counted it out. “The boys transport wine in bulk.”
“And anything else going,” Henri said.
“I used to deal with them extensively before the war. Then there was a gap for obvious reasons. But they're back in business now.”
“All those Krauts in Paris like German wine,” Henri said. “And we aim to please.”
“Cut out the funny stuff and show her where she goes,” Paul Dubois told him. “And let's get out of here.”
Henri opened the cab door, pulled back the double seat, and lifted out the liner. There was a trap door behind, and he reached inside and switched on a light.
“All the comforts of home: mattress, coffee in a thermos, ham sandwiches. I hope you're not too Jewish to eat them, but it's all we've got and I didn't know you were coming until an hour ago. Sorry about the boxes. A few special items for the Paris black market.”
“I'll be fine,” she said.
“Twenty hours,” Paul Dubois said. “We take it in turns to drive.”
Hannah turned to Max, who took out the Walther and handed it to her. “You'll need this now.”
Henri said, “Don't you trust us?”
“Not really,” Max said. “She's killed before. She can again if she has to.” He kissed Hannah on the forehead. “When you get to Lisbon, go straight to the man himself.”
“I won't let you down.”
“I know you won't, Liebchen. Go with love. Stay well.”
She was crying now, as if aware by instinct that she would never see him again. She clambered through the hatch into the narrow space inside the tank. She had one final glimpse of him standing there, and then Henri shut the trap. She sat down on the mattress and looked around her as the engine roared into life and the tanker lurched forward.
7
It was ten o'clock when Irene Neumann finished the meal that had been served to her in the comfortable room they had taken her to after her bath. The gray-haired woman who had looked after her had been quite solicitous.
“I think they must have made a mistake, dear. It happens,” she said.
Certainly the meal had been excellent, and Irene, wrapped warmly in a toweling robe, had enjoyed it in spite of the fact that she ached from her beating and could barely sit down.
Fried chicken, potatoes, real coffee, and a cognac to finish off. She started to come to life again, and then the door was kicked open with a crash and Berg and two SS men rushed in and grabbed her. They threw her into the corridor, and Berg pulled her head back by the hair so that she could look up at Heydrich.
“Oh, no, Irene,” he said. “Not you. You've done your share. It's the turn of the person in the next cell now.”
They dragged her along the corridor to the next door, and he opened the metal gate so that she could look inside. An old, gray-haired, frail-looking woman sat on the bed.
“Frau Gerda Neumann, your mother, I believe—age seventy-one,” Heydrich said. “Is it true she has a bad heart?”
Ten minutes later, Irene was sitting in front of the desk in his office, telling him everything she knew.
It was just after midnight when Haupt returned to the Hoffer Brothers” warehouse with the necessary spare parts. Max Winter had been back for a good three hours.
“My God, it took you long enough.”
“I was lucky to get what I wanted at all,” Haupt told him.
Max yawned, went to the window, and peered out through the curtain. He stiffened suddenly, aware of a movement down there among the monuments.
“Otto,” he called to Hoffer, “I think we have company.”
“I'll check the front,” Hoffer said.
He opened a cupboard, took out a Schmeisser machine pistol, and went down the rear stairs to the main warehouse. He didn't bother to switch on the light, but cocked the gun and walked toward the doors in the darkness, and then the night was filled with the roaring of an engine and the doors smashed inward as a heavy troop carrier burst through.
The offsi
de front wheel caught Hoffer a glancing blow, bouncing him against the wall. His fingers squeezed the trigger of the Schmeisser convulsively, and at least half a dozen weapons fired at him in reply, tearing him apart.
Max, at the top of the stairs, knew that it was over. He stood there waiting for them, the Walther ready in his hand. He started to pray aloud, that most common of Hebrew prayers recited three or four times a day by any Orthodox Jew; the last prayer he utters on his deathbed:
Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God,
the Lord is one.
The first stormtrooper who appeared he shot through the head, then someone shoved a Schmeisser around the corner and fired a long burst, hitting him several times so that he fell down the stairs.
The rest of the attack group trampled over his body and went up the stairs on the run, followed by Major Berg. A moment later they reappeared, dragging Haupt.
Heydrich was standing at the bottom of the stairs looking down at Max Winter. He glanced up as Berg descended.
“He's dead, which is a pity. What have you got there?”
“Radio operator. An incompetent, by the way, who switched a set that works on alternating current onto direct. He was in the middle of trying to repair it.”
“So, you've transmitted messages today?” Heydrich demanded.
Haupt was terrified and showed it. “No—not a thing.”
Heydrich turned to Berg. “No sign of the girl?”
“None, Obergruppenführer.”
Heydrich said to Haupt, “Has there been a young woman here this evening?”
Haupt looked bewildered. “A woman? No—no one like that.”
“All right, Berg. Take him back to Prinz Albrechtstrasse, and see what you can get out of him. I'll take the men with me and see what we turn up at the other address the Neumann woman gave us.”
But the Eagle Wine Company was in darkness, and there was no sign of Herr Scherber, the proprietor, at his small apartment near the Charlottenburg Station where he lived alone. His next-door neighbor indicated that he frequently stayed out all night.
The interrogators at Prinze Albrechtstrasse worked on the unfortunate Haupt for most of the night. He told them nothing because he knew nothing.
It was seven o'clock in the morning when Scherber was finally located in a steam bath off Kurfürsten-damm, a place much frequented by homosexuals. Once caught, he sang his heart out.
There was quite a crowd in Himmler's office for nine o'clock in the morning: Heydrich, Schellenberg, Major Kleiber, and Sindermann.
Himmler said, “So, we know Winter didn't have time to pass on any information about the Windsor affair by radio, and the missing copy of the report is in our hands.”
“Which means that the only other source of information on the subject is that damned girl.”
“At present on her way to Paris in the company of two French black marketeers,” Himmler said.
“We have the address where they are to deliver her at the other end,” Heydrich said. “A café called the Golden Coin in Montmartre. I'll arrange for the Paris office to provide a reception committee. They'll be delighted. Quite a coup. This should uncover an entire underground courier service for them.”
“No, tell them to wait,” Himmler said. “I have a better idea.” He turned to Schellenberg. “You leave for Spain this morning, flying by way of Paris.”
“I was under the impression that you didn't want me to have anything further to do with this Winter affair, Reichsführer.”
“True, but Major Kleiber here could take charge most adequately.” He looked up at Heydrich. “Arrange it with the Paris office. When does your plane leave, Schellenberg?”
“Eleven o'clock from Tempelhof.”
“I wish you luck then in the venture that lies ahead. Naturally I shall expect daily reports.”
“Of course, Reichsführer.”
“Kleiber, you will please stay.”
Schellenberg and Heydrich went out. In the anteroom, Heydrich paused to light a cigarette. “God, what a night. Still, it all seems to be working out in the end. You see, Walter, all you have to do is live right.”
Himmler said to Kleiber, “In the matter of the Winter girl's escape last night. The fact that she was able to ask the sentry if the Reich Chancellery messenger had gone through shows an intimate knowledge of procedure here that can only indicate that she had inside help.”
“General Schellenberg, Reichsführer?”
“Watch him closely, Kleiber, and report to me daily. You can phone from our Lisbon Embassy. Here is the necessary authority.” He passed Kleiber an envelope.
“I understand, Reichsführer.”
“Let's hope you do,” Himmler said. “You may go now.”
Kleiber went out, and Himmler picked up the old-fashioned pen with the steel nib that he always favored and started to note the details of the conversation meticulously in his diary.
At that moment, the wine tanker was turning off the road outside Alf on the road to Trier. Henri was at the wheel; his brother, asleep beside him, came awake instantly.
“Why are you stopping?”
“Come off it, Paul. The young lady needs a turn in the bushes like the rest of us, and if she doesn't, I do.”
Hannah had slept surprisingly soundly considering the circumstances, but she was awake now, aware of the truck slowing down and bumping over rough ground.
The trap was opened, and Henri grinned through at her. “Time to stretch your legs—or whatever else you want to do.”
She was instinctively wary, ready for anything as she scrambled through. When she jumped to the ground, she slipped a hand into her pocket and gripped the butt of the Walther.
“Where are we?”
“On the road to Trier. Luxembourg after that.” There was a rustling in the bushes, and Paul Dubois appeared, fastening his trousers. Henri waved a hand, “The other side of the wood is yours. Quarter of an hour, then we move on.”
He climbed back into the cab, and Hannah turned and walked away through the trees, going some considerable distance before she stopped.
Afterward, she moved back in a half-circle, attracted by the sound of running water, and came out among pine trees on a small promontory above a river. It was pleasant standing there, the early morning sun playing on the rushing water. There was a movement behind, and she turned to find Henri approaching.
“Ready to go?” she said.
“Time for a cigarette.”
He offered her one, and she accepted it, her right hand clasping the Walther firmly, pushing the safety catch off with her thumb. He was standing very close now.
“That's the Moselle River behind you. Pretty, isn't it?”
“If you like that sort of thing,” she said in French. “Personally, I'm a big city girl.”
His eyes widened. “Heh, you've got a Parisian accent. How come?”
“I sang at a club in Montmartre for six months in thirty-eight. Club le Jazz. Do you know it?”
“I used to go there all the time.” He ran a hand up her right arm and pushed his body against her, his voice thickening. “Hey, listen, cherie. How about you and me …”
She slipped the Walther out with an ease which surprised herself, but then she was not the girl she had been forty-eight hours before, not by any stretch of the imagination. For a moment, she could smell again the cordite in the passageway of the Garden Club as she rammed the barrel of the Walther into his stomach.
He grinned, “Now don't be silly. You know you wouldn't,” and kissed her.
She fired into the ground between his legs and he jumped back with a cry of fear.
“Careful,” she said calmly. “You almost lost something.”
Paul Dubois arrived on the run, crashing through the bushes. “What is it? What's happened, for God's sake?”
“Nothing,” Hannah slipped the Walther back into her pocket. “A slight misunderstanding between Henri and me, but I think we know where we are now.”
Paul Duboi
s slapped his brother across the face.
“Will you never learn? Anything in a skirt and you're like a dog in heat.” He turned to Hannah. “It won't happen again, I guarantee. Now let's get out of here, and fast, just in case some inquisitive farmer heard that shot.”
The Ju-52 transport was the aerial workhorse of the German army during the Second World War and it was used extensively for troop, freight, or passenger transport. Its three engines gave it a distinctive appearance, and the corrugated metal skin earned it the affectionate nickname of Iron Annie.
Schellenberg had traveled this way many times before, but in pleasanter company. Kleiber had positioned himself halfway along the plane with Sindermann at the rear by the steward's compartment, as if to emphasize the difference in rank.
Which at least left Schellenberg alone at the front, but it was hot and rather stuffy, and he was glad, after a while, to accept an invitation from the pilot to visit the flight deck.
Afterward, he went back to his seat for coffee and sat there, thinking about Hannah Winter and the trap which would be waiting for her at the Golden Coin in Montmartre. There was nothing he could do this time—he was already in too deep. There was always the possibility that she would reveal his part in her escape for, under the kind of pressure applied in the Prinz Albrechtstrasse cellars, most individuals broke in time—or died first.
He felt curiously indifferent. It was all one in the end, and he leaned forward and peered out of the window as Paris loomed below.
Kleiber appeared beside him, looking excited. “Le Bourget, General. The Führer flew in here at four in the morning of June the twenty-third with Keitel and a handful of his staff. When most Parisians were still in bed, our Führer toured their city. What a moment for Germany!”
“Marvelous,” Schellenberg said. “I hope it kept fine for him.”
* * *
A Gestapo major named Ehrlich was waiting for them when they went through into the VIP lounge.