The Rift

by H Schmidt

  David and Christina Housman spent a great deal of time with the man and the boy the next few days. They often had meals together. David would watch Christina with the boy, and how she would watch him as he moved about the steamer. It was Christina who would knock on Jim’s cabin door and invite the man and boy to join them. They were now only a day from Leopoldville.

  ---

  Inspector Millet examined the telegram. He turned to the sergeant who had delivered the message to him.

  “The boat is arriving in five hours. There is a man in cabin fourteen. Our men will board the boat and take him before the passengers begin leaving. That way he will not get away in the crowd. His name is Fleming. James Fleming. He is over six feet tall. Approximately sixty years of age. He could be dangerous.”

  “What has he done, Inspector?”

  “He is wanted by the Germans for a diamond robbery in German East Africa.”

  In Africa, the European countries were engaged in a race to claim African territory for themselves. The French and Belgians had competed for land in the Congo. Germany, a latecomer to African claims, now laid claim to German East Africa, and large blocks of land on the Atlantic Coast. Despite the competition, international financiers had secured the cooperation of their respective countries regarding the diamond trade. Prices depended upon the careful control of supplies, and crimes involving diamonds were one of the rare cases where the Belgian and German authorities worked closely together. Through ship to shore communications, the German authorities in East Africa had asked for information about a Harold Boatwright. The Belgian authorities, investigating in Stanleyville, had connected Boatwright with Fleming. They had discovered that Fleming was on his way down the Congo to Leopoldville. The German authorities were not privy to the messages going downstream that a small white boy accompanied Fleming, nor that the small boy had arrived with Fleming when he returned from his trip with Boatwright. By the time the message was sent downstream, there remained only the last stop. The Belgian police had only to worry about Leopoldville.

  The passengers had been informed that they were thirty minutes from Leopoldville. Those passengers who had boarded in Stanleyville anxiously crowded the railing, watching for the first sight of the town. Jim Fleming’s heart was beating rapidly as he watched from the rail on the upper deck. He had trained his field glasses on the river ahead. He could see the town coming into view. He was looking for Jacques Boutin, who made the arrangements for the sale of all but the diamonds in the port of Matadi. Now the crowd was getting closer. At the back of the crowd, a group of policemen stood. One had field glasses. As the field glasses of the inspector met Jim’s, he saw the man turn quickly and talk to the men in uniform. Quickly, they began to move toward the dock. Only the man with the field glasses stood, the glasses at his side.

  It was at that moment that Jim decided. He turned to look over the passengers and spotted David and Christina Housman. Billy was on David’s shoulders with his field glasses. He walked quickly toward the three.

  “David, I need to see you in the cabin right away.”

  The geologist looked at the worried face of the tall American. “Of course.” Christina and Billy watched the two men hurry away from the railing.

  ---

  It was November 1900. Little Willie had been gone for sixteen months. When Gustav and Maria von Mecklenburg were asked about their son, they could only say their son had been kidnapped in August 1899, and they had not given up hope. Somewhere, their son may be alive.

  ---

  They had hurried to Leopoldville, hoping the Belgian gendarmes would hold the boy. They watched sadly as the Belgians took Jim Fleming off the boat, while the boy was escorted by the Housmans past the Belgian customs officials.

  “I thought it would end here, Sir Gustav.” Sir Gustav looked into the tearfilled eyes of his friend.

  “I, too, my friend. We should be getting back to Moshi. At least the boy is safe. There is still hope.”

  PART FOUR

  Chapter One

  It was a heady time for kings, emperors, prime ministers, and presidents. For the men who were the hereditary and elected leaders of Europe and America, the tasks befit the métier de roi, the work of kings. It was a time when the stroke of the pen in the grandeur of their palaces sent men to die in the muddy trenches and no-man’s-land of France, the forests and fields of Eastern Europe, the rocks of Gallipoli, and the wadis and hills of Palestine. We should not delude ourselves, however. It was a heady time for all men in Europe and America. For not reluctantly, but with their blood racing, and dreams of glory in their minds, officers marched men to battle, men who themselves were uplifted by their freedom from the back-breaking work on their farms and dreams of places they had never seen. It was the summer of 1914.

  What no one could fully comprehend then was what the power that man had harnessed in the latter half of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth would do in war. As war loomed, the strategies and tactics of the generals showed that they understood the new technology, for it was part of their armies. But like the rest of the world, they stood in awe as that power was unleashed. In the war to come, the dead would not be counted in tens, hundreds or even thousands, but in tens and hundreds of thousands and finally in millions. As the European leaders planted the seeds of war, their generals prepared to fight it. For the French, who in the lifetime of many of their citizens had been humiliated by the Germans, the plan was to strike at the heart of Germany. In their plan, the closest distance was a straight line. The task of the German strategy was assigned to General von Schlieffen, whose plan was to strike with its main force at the left flank of the French, to encircle their armies. Conceived two decades before the war, it remained the only plan until August 1914.

  On August 4, the German Army swept into Belgium and the war had begun. The orders to attack Prussia were given by the cousin of the czar, the Grand Duke Nicholas. One of the men who questioned the czar’s choice was the grand duke himself. There was a story that when the grand duke was informed that the czar had appointed him commander, he put his face in his great hands and wept. While such a story might be true, most agreed that he was as able a man as there was in Russia. His appointment had come as a surprise to many in the court of the czar, nevertheless, because he had thrown his support behind the reforms in the Russian government after the 1905 revolution.

  The grand duke gave the orders to march with great misgivings. The army was still weeks away from full mobilization. Food, clothing, others supplies were short. Artillery rounds had to be rationed. But the French prime minister had convinced the czar of the urgency of the situation on the western front. Without pressure from the east, the French had insisted, the Allies’ situation was desperate. If the Germans dispatched the French as they did in 1870, Russia would surely be next. If Germany could be defeated, the opportunities for land and overseas markets would be almost limitless. The czar’s advisers were quick to remind him that half the foreign debt owed by Russia was to Germany.

  To keep in touch with his armies, the grand duke had set up the Stavka, the Russian general staff, at the midpoint of the railway from St. Petersburg to Warsaw. He appointed General Jilinsky to oversee the northwest sector of the Russian front which included the First and Second Armies. It was Jilinsky that the grand duke relied on to coordinate the attack.

  The plan approved by the grand duke was a simple one. If it worked, the Russians would play the pivotal role in the war against Germany, and its allies, Austria and Turkey.

  Rennenkampf would attack from the east with the First Army, while Samsonov’s Second Army would attack from the south. The objective was to flank the outnumbered German Eighth Army and cut it off from its retreat to the Vistula River. While the main body of the German Army was occupied on the western front, the Russian Army would be unimpeded in its drive to Berlin.

  August 17, 1914

  The commander in chief of the German Army, General von Moltke, listened nervously to t
he reports from the eastern front. Unlike his uncle who commanded the German Army when they defeated the French in 1870, he was a man ill-equipped to carry out the vernichtungstrategie, the war of annihilation of the Von Schlieffen Plan.

  Dealing with the unexpected, what the father of modern warfare, Karl von Clausewitz, called the frictions of war, often determined its outcome. In choosing von Moltke to command the attack on France, the kaiser had chosen a competent man. But what was needed was a riverboat gambler determined to walk away from the table with everything, understanding that he may walk away with nothing.

  In the east, the general staff counted on Russian mobilization in September when their calculations showed them having crushed the French Army. The elaborate rail system would enable them to shift troops quickly to the eastern front to meet the Russians. As fighting intensified on the western front, Prussian refugees fled from the East. Influential Junker families began to plead for reinforcements to protect Prussia. The success of the Von Schlieffen Plan depended upon continued, intense pressure to collapse the left flank of the French Army. Von Moltke felt his neatly constructed world crumbling in his hands.

  ---

  It was a large room, simply furnished. Two large tables and straight-backed, wooden chairs were the only pieces of furniture. On one table, a great map. Men were standing around the table. On the other table, telephones were placed, with men sitting in chairs, relaying the orders and asking the questions of Der Dicke. Outside, staff cars waited. Beside them, saddled horses, curried to glistening satin, danced as if they sensed the moment.

  At the large table, the map the officers of the German Eighth Army were looking at of eastern Prussia and the Russian border. Der Dicke, the fat one, commander of the Eighth Army, General von Prittwitz und Gaffron, seemed agitated at the news. The Russian First Army, with two hundred thousand men, on a sixty kilometer front, had crossed the border of Prussia, the forces of their commander General Pavel Rennenkampf moving west around the Rominten Forest. The presence of the Russians was not a surprise; the Russian cavalry had moved into Prussia five days earlier, on the twelfth of August. They had occupied the small town of Maggrabowa, eight kilometers inside the border.

  The battle plan drawn up by Lieutenant Colonel Max von Hoffman had anticipated the crossing. The Deputy Chief of Operations Prittwitz and his Chief of Staff Count Waldersee had come to rely on the arrogant colonel, who relished the game of war. Hoffman spoke calmly to the generals.

  “The advance by the First Army here,” pointing to the eastern boundary where Rennenkampf had crossed, suggested the attack plan drawn up by the Russians over ten years ago was still in effect. “We know the Russian Second Army under Samsanov is now almost four days march from this area,” pointing to a stretch of the border in the south. Von Hoffman knew that all in the room were familiar with the attack plan the Russians were likely to follow.

  The fat general turned and spoke sharply to his chief of staff, Count Waldersee. “Where is General Francois?”

  The orders from General Prittwitz were to stop his First Corps at Gumbinnen, to allow the Russian First Army to move forty kilometers into Prussia before attacking it. Colonel Hoffman, in working on the battle plan, had reasoned that the terrain was more suitable for defense at Gumbinnen, and the superior artillery of the Eighth Army and their defensive positions would decimate the Russians.

  The day before the Russian First Army crossed the border, the German First Corps of the Eighth Army had passed Gumbinnen and taken positions in front of Stalluponen, eight kilometers inside the border. When the Russian Third Corps came into view, General Francois gave the orders for the First Corps to attack. From the church belfry, Friederich von Mecklenburg, as a member of the Francois staff, watched the battle unfold through his field glasses. He watched the dark canopies of exploding artillery shells spread across the front, as the First Corps artillery began its barrage. Below him, he watched the columns of soldiers moving quickly to the front. Riders on horses, motored cycles, and men on foot were moving in all directions, carrying instructions, orders, information, requests.

  “There is a gap in their lines. Send the Third Brigade to the right. Move behind their lines to the right,” Francois spoke on the telephone. “Push the men, Colonel. The Russians are tired. Hit them hard, Colonel. Push your men.”

  The smoke had thickened. Huge columns began to appear in the sky as ammunition trains were hit. It was the Twenty-Seventh Division of Rennenkampf ’s Third Corps that was being battered by the thrust of the First Corps. As the First Corps’ main body moved against the Twenty-Seventh, the Third Brigade had moved unopposed around the Russian left flank, and began collecting pockets of dazed prisoners, and bringing artillery and machine gun fire on the columns of men and horses behind the Russian front line.

  In the midst of the furious fighting below them, the First Corps commander and his entourage seemed in an almost serene setting. From the church they could see the flat ground with its occasional hill on every side. To the east, the roads were filled with soldiers and equipment moving to the border, and refugees and livestock slowly working their way toward them. To the west, the roads were filled with frightened families, pushing their livestock in front of them, carrying what they could on their backs, heading toward the Angerrap River.

  Friederich smiled when he thought of the irony of the war. On the one side, a Russian general with a German name, on the other a German general with a French name. Friederich watched the Huguenot, Francois, calmly looking through his glasses, asking for information, receiving it without asking, issuing orders, making requests.

  “How is your mother, Friederich?”

  The question by the general confused Friederich for a second. Prussia had been invaded, they were fighting to throw the Russians back, and, as if from another dimension, he heard the question. He looked at the general, who had a gentle look of concern on his face. His momentary silence caused the others to turn to look at him.

  “Much better, thank you, my General. The voyage was a trial for her, but she is doing much better now.”

  “I am sure seeing her grandchildren helped, don’t you think?”

  General Francois was looking at him, signaling his genuine interest in what the young attaché had to say. In the distance, Friederich saw the billows of smoke, and could hear the roar of machines, the sound of men shouting below him. He thought of Marburg, only fifty kilometers from the front.

  “Yes, she has six now, you know. She arrived in time to witness little Anna’s birthday.” Anna was Friederich and Erika’s third child. Friederich thought about his father, still in Moshi. In his last letter, he spoke of the new German commander, Colonel Lettow-Vorbeck. His father had asked to be placed on active duty, but the German government had asked that he continue his task of supplying Germany with materials from the colony.

  “General, it is General Prittwitz.” The major who held the phone started toward Francois, who raised his hand.

  “I am not here.” Francois watched the eyes of the major widen. Nowhere in his training or experience did he witness the dismissal of a superior officer. But somehow, everyone in the belfry knew that war changes everything. No longer a game to be played as actors play parts, but a war with its deadly reality.

  As Francois stared steadily at the major, the younger man took a deep breath and spoke to the party on the other end. He watched the major’s face turn red. Friederich found himself smiling with his general.

  “He says he knows you are here, and demands that you withdraw at once.” The major had taken on the voice of Prittwitz.

  “Inform the general that General Francois will break off the engagement when he has defeated the Russians.”

  Friederich could feel the electricity in the air, as several of the young men seemed ready to leap from the belfry, to personally join in the battle. They watched the white-faced major, whose feelings were far different as he suffered the abuse from the other end of the telephone line. He put the receiver down and b
egan the smallest of smiles.

  “Well?” Francois seemed interested in the reply.

  “He did not have a high opinion of me or of my family. He said he would deal with you personally, General.”

  All eyes were on the general, who had picked up the phone. “How is it going up there, Colonel?” Francois listened without interrupting. “Good, keep pushing. Steady the line, Colonel. We don’t want them behind you.” He turned to Friederich. “Captain, get down there. Get in touch with the colonel. It is now 1543 hours. At 1700 hours, unless it is impossible, have the colonel disengage and begin the pull back to Gumbinnen. We have made our point. It is time we listened to our commander.”

  Friederich thought he detected a wink from Francois.

  The staff car that carried Friederich to the front moved slowly through soldiers and supplies moving toward it and the frightened people and animals moving away. For the first few kilometers, the scene stayed the same. But soon, the sounds and feel of war reached the young captain’s ears. Overhead the reconnaissance planes helped place the battle, like vultures above carrion. The ground vibrated with the exploding shells, still falling to the rear of both armies.

  Friederich knew he was approaching the line where the Russian soldiers first felt the slam of high explosives and shrapnel shells. From reports, he knew the line was now almost two kilometers farther to the east. Viewing in his mind the size the Russian front, now almost fifty kilometers, he worried about the danger of his First Corps being swallowed, disappearing as the shapeless enemy simply flowed around them. He thought about his general. Was it courage or the madness that grips men in war?

  The road was now empty of civilians. Now, only the wounded returning, and the reserves moving forward. Beside the road, the broken bodies of Russian soldiers, the gutted bodies of horses, now mercifully still. He found himself staring at one beautiful black animal, saddle and bridle still in place. At first, he saw no signs of wounds on the animal. Then, he saw a small hole below the animal’s right eye. A tiny piece of shrapnel, he guessed, or a merciful bullet. Death came quickly. Coming toward him was a long column of men guarded by men of the German First Corps. He could see the white blouses, billed caps, and black boots of the tall men, walking, almost wandering to the rear. As they began to pass, he could see that many had long, black beards. Large men, they seemed defiant as they looked at the young officer. At the head of the column, an officer no older than Friederich. He looked impassively at his German adversary, then saluted sharply. Friederich returned the courtesy.