Night Crossing

by Robert Ryan

  Erich went for the gun, fumbling with the catch on the glove compartment. As the cover flopped down Schuller leant across and elbowed him in the face. Erich felt his cheekbone crack. The car slammed to a halt. Another punch, this time in the side of the head, and Schuller grabbed Erich’s collar and thrust him hard into the metal of the dashboard. Erich’s mouth filled with blood. Schuller pushed him aside and pulled out the weapon.

  ‘You lying bastard.’

  ‘I don’t want you shooting policemen.’

  Schuller put the gun’s muzzle against Erich’s temple. ‘It’s not policemen getting shot that I’d worry about if I were you.’ Erich closed his eyes until he felt the pistol’s barrel lift away. ‘If I didn’t need you for the submarine …’

  He couldn’t signal. That was why Erich had been entrusted with the flashlight—Schuller didn’t know how to use Morse.

  ‘If we kill anyone they’ll hang us,’ said Erich. ‘That’s all I was thinking. I want to get to that sub as much as you. To get home.’ He put all the emphasis that he could on the next phrase, hoping that the lie wouldn’t reveal itself, ‘To serve the Fatherland once more.’

  Schuller said, ‘Then pull yourself together. We go on. And don’t think. That’s my job.’

  Schuller pushed the gun inside his jacket, restarted the car and carried on east. Erich wiped the blood from his lips and touched the swelling on the side of his face. Well, at least he now had a good idea which of the two of them was better at unarmed combat.

  They ran out of fuel on a country lane, just after they had skirted Stowmarket. There were probably thirty miles to go to the coast, but trying to obtain petrol without the proper documentation was highly risky even if there’d been a garage open at this ungodly hour. It was nearly dawn and the pair of them pushed the car to the side of the road. Schuller indicated a barn, several fields away.

  ‘We’ll sleep in there today. Tonight, we carry on. Perhaps there’ll be a train we can jump.’

  Erich nodded, too tired to argue. They tramped along the scruffy gravel path that led to the fields, crossed them and entered the barn. It was sagging in the middle, stank of old manure and was full of ancient agricultural machinery that hadn’t been used in years. They found some moth-eaten blankets that smelt strongly of animal, and Eric prepared to settle down.

  ‘Wait,’ said Schuller. He had found a length of baling twine. He tied a loop around Erich’s wrist, and then one round his own. ‘Just in case.’

  ‘In case of what?’

  ‘In case I’m wrong about you. In case you lied to me.’

  They bedded down as best they could. Erich, despite the chafing of the twine on his wrist, was asleep within minutes.

  Thirty-Three

  16 DECEMBER 1944

  Cameron Ross had a hangover. Even as he opened his aching eyes, he knew that this was going to be a bad day. Then it started to come back to him what a bad night the previous evening had been. Perhaps Uli was homesick and melancholy. Perhaps, as his police colleagues used to say about a difficult WPC, she’d had the painters in. Whatever the cause, he could have handled it better.

  It began with an argument over her violin, after he had fallen over the music stand, which sat in the middle of his living room most days despite the fact that Uli had barely lifted the instrument since her father had died. Then she complained about the pub he had taken her to, comparing it unfavourably to the Kneipen in Berlin. His comment that these were probably rubble by now had not been the most tactful way to respond.

  There’d been plenty of pained silences during dinner. She’d hardly touched anything. To compensate he’d drunk too much of the rough Portuguese wine.

  Now she was a mere foot away from him, wrapped so tightly in the blankets she could be mummified. He knew he had a lot of ground to make up today. Luckily, it was Sunday and they didn’t have to go to that bloody London Cage and play cat and mouse with yet more Germans.

  Ross could feel his goodwill towards the Germans eroding. He’d argued long and hard with both Uli and his father that you couldn’t tar one nation with a single blood-soaked brush, but he was finding it increasingly hard to live up to his own rhetoric.

  The telephone, still out in the hallway, started its brittle ringing. Ross swung out of bed, crossed into the hall and put the receiver to his ear. Nothing.

  After a second he could sense his father at the other end of the line, trying to collect his thoughts.

  ‘Dad? Take your time. I’m here. It’s seven-thirty on a Sunday morning. What’s so important, dad?’

  He looked back and Uli was sitting up, concern on her face. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so uphill after all.

  ‘Fucking hell, Cameron.’ He’d never heard his father swear quite so forcefully before.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘It’s all hands on deck, boy. Get your arse down here.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We’ve lost Schuller. We’ve lost hundreds of them, Cam.’

  Erich awoke, shivering. The temperature had dropped sharply. He levered himself up, teeth chattering. Schuller was sitting a couple of metres away. He’d undone the baling twine round his wrist and was opening a can of bully beef.

  ‘Good morning.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘About eleven,’ said Schuller. He passed over the tin and spoon. ‘You first. Do you know that you snore?’

  Erich took a mouthful and handed the tin back. The inside of the barn was still dim, but the shafts of light here and there indicated a bright day outside.

  ‘I’ll go and do some scouting later,’ the SS man said. ‘But I don’t think we can move till late afternoon. We should be able to cover a lot of ground tonight if we can stick to the road.’

  ‘Where did you get the map? There are no road signs anywhere. I can’t imagine they sell maps to PoWs.’

  ‘It was on the wall in the carriage of the train that brought us from Southampton. What an oversight, eh? More?’

  Erich waved the bully beef away.

  ‘Can I take this off?’ He held up his wrist, its baling-twine restraint dangling.

  ‘Certainly. If you give me your word that you won’t run away.’

  ‘To where, exactly?’

  ‘Back to the British. For a decent breakfast.’ Schuller finished the rest of the can and smacked his lips. ‘I’ve eaten worse.’

  ‘How many do you expect will make it to the U-boat?’

  ‘Not too many. Ten, maybe. The rest will be recaptured or killed.’

  ‘Such a futile waste of life.’

  Schuller stood and began a series of stretches, paying attention to each major muscle group and tendon block in turn. ‘You think I’m just a fanatic, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know what you are, Schuller. I don’t even know if I believe that you were sent over here deliberately.’

  Schuller knelt down in front of Erich. ‘It may be foolhardy but there is a logic behind it. When our counter-offensive in Europe succeeds, and the British and Americans find that they have two armies cut off, surrounded, and there is total chaos in this country too, then the Allies will realise that Germany isn’t finished. She can fight on, one way or another. And they will sue for peace.’

  ‘Peace?’ asked Erich, shocked. ‘Is that what you want?’

  ‘An honourable peace. Not like Versailles. Something that leaves us with dignity.’

  They heard a dog bark in the distance, and a whistle. Schuller took the pistol from his waistband and walked across to the door, peering out. After a few minutes he shook his head and came back. ‘A kilometre or more away. I don’t think they’ll come. Look at this place.’ He snatched at a cobweb. ‘It hardly sees daily use.’

  ‘They won’t give you a peace while Hitler is still at the top.’

  ‘You think not?’

  Erich shook his head. ‘Not a chance.’

  ‘I agree.’

  Erich smiled. Schuller wasn’t quite the blind fool he had taken him for. ‘So, what
are the Führer’s choices?’

  ‘Exile,’ said Schuller. ‘Perhaps South America. Like the Kaiser. They let him live out his days in Holland.’

  ‘I wouldn’t give you good odds on Hitler surviving to a ripe old age, even in South America. What else?’

  There was the sound of a shotgun, again some distance away. A few pigeons rustled nervously in the roof.

  ‘I believe that the Führer will do whatever he has to do to save Germany. If that means taking his own life, I am confident he will have the strength to do so.’

  ‘Let’s hope he doesn’t leave it too late.’

  Before Schuller could reply, they heard a police-car bell sounding in the lane and then the screech of tyres as brakes were applied, followed by the distinctive whine of reverse gear.

  ‘Damn,’ said Schuller. ‘They’ve seen the car. They are coming to take a look.’

  The enormity of the disaster became clear as the morning went on. Twenty-seven camps had seen escapes or escape attempts. In nineteen of them at least one German had got away. The numbers from roll-calls were still coming in, but Colonel Ross estimated that there were three hundred fugitives on the loose. It could have been worse. Things had gone wrong for the Germans—tunnels collapsing, dogs discovering them, alert guards. It looked as though they’d been trying to get thousands out.

  Specialist interrogators had been dispatched all over the country, with the big hitters going to Devizes—Colonel Scotland was already there—and Stanhope, which was in Colonel Ross’s patch. He drove there with his son and the girl, brooding on the other bad news of the day.

  The Germans had started a new offensive. Tanks had blasted a hole through the American lines in the Ardennes Forest of Belgium, focusing on a weakly held section where the front ‘bulged’ away from Germany. They were relying on more than just regular forces, however. There were reports of infiltrators—German commandos and paratroopers in US uniforms creating havoc by changing road signs and issuing false orders. They were being shot when they were caught, of course, but the damage was already done. He thought back to the lunch at Rules with Dansey. That was what Skorzeny had been up to with his English-speaking volunteers.

  They drove in silence, and the Colonel thought he could detect a frostiness between the girl and Cameron. Or maybe it was just the rude awakening he’d given them. Someone, somewhere would get a rocket up their arse for this debacle, that was for sure.

  As they branched off the A11 and across the acres of frosted farmland, Cameron Ross finally asked: ‘Will this be released to the public?’

  ‘Good question,’ the Colonel said. ‘If we do broadcast it, then the public will be more vigilant, more likely to report suspicious characters pretending to be foreign workers.’

  ‘And you also risk widespread panic and making the security services look incompetent,’ said Uli. The Colonel nodded, not liking to have his thoughts confirmed by her.

  ‘What are the losses from Stanhope?’

  ‘There were thirty-two missing at roll-call. Apparently the hole in the wire was discovered by accident on a walk-round by one of the guards. It could’ve been the whole damn’ lot from the officers’ camp otherwise. There’ve been some recoveries. From goods trains. Railway stations. One cheeky lot climbing over a US bomber base’s fence.’

  ‘Leaving how many at large?’ asked Ross.

  The Colonel dug the list from his briefcase and passed it across. ‘I’ve put a line through those confirmed as apprehended.’

  Uli and Ross both scanned down the list and saw the name, but only Uli uttered a sudden exclamation. Erich Hinkel. Her old fiancé was out there somewhere, making mischief for Adolf Hider.

  ‘Nothin’ in here, sarge.’

  ‘Give it a proper look.’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘Who’s that with the shotgun?’

  ‘That’ll be Mullins.’

  ‘Oh, bloody hell. Do you think we ought to tell him that if he sees one of the sausage-eaters he shouldn’t shoot ’im?’

  ‘He told me he considered any bloody Nazi on his land fair game. “Not worth any more than a partridge,” he said. ’Cept you couldn’t eat a Jerry.’

  Another boom. ‘There he goes again. Let’s go and have a word.’

  ‘What about the car?’

  ‘You stay and keep an eye on it. Case they come back with some petrol, like.’

  ‘Sarge … what am I meant to do then?’

  ‘You’ve got a whistle and a truncheon, boy. Use ’em.’

  From their perch up in the roof space, Erich watched the two coppers leave, the younger one all but tripping over the empty bully-beef can as they went, and breathed a sigh of relief. Schuller was shaking and Erich realised that he was laughing. ‘I suppose all the good ones must be in the army,’ he whispered at last.

  Colonel Ross’s party reached the camp just after midday. Stanhope was in uproar. Carlisle, the camp’s Intelligence Officer, was pale with embarrassment at the thought of retribution for his slackness. Roebuck, the commander, was threatening mass punishment for the PoWs, even for those who’d stayed put. The Colonel had to convince them that postmortems and tribunals were for later. They had to apprehend the fugitives; then they could worry about who had planned this and, most importantly, why.

  ‘How do you want to play it, Colonel?’ asked Carlisle, glad to be spared a dressing down.

  Ross looked across the compound. All the prisoners were locked in, with four sentries round each hut, except for the structure nearest him.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Recreation centre for the prisoners, sir. Out of bounds now, of course.’

  ‘We’ll set up in there,’ said Colonel Ross, indicating that Uli and his son should go on in. ‘Ten minutes with each prisoner, then I want them transferred to the main house to make a written statement.’

  ‘All of them?’ asked Carlisle.

  ‘All of the officers, yes. We can piece together a lot from such things, even if the accounts conflict.’

  ‘It’ll take weeks.’

  ‘And you’re going somewhere, are you, Carlisle?’ asked the Colonel.

  ‘No, sir.’

  Inside the rec hut, Ross and Uli shifted furniture into the configuration appropriate for the interviews. Ross suddenly stopped and stroked his beard, bothered by something.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ whispered Uli. ‘Look, I know we had a bit of a falling-out last night—’

  ‘No, it’s not that,’ he said quickly.

  ‘It isn’t Erich? You don’t think …? I was as shocked as you were.’

  ‘No, don’t be ridiculous,’ he said, in a tone that he instantly regretted. ‘There’s something here, in this room,’ he said, looking around the hut, ‘that isn’t quite right. I can’t put my finger on it.’

  ‘We’ll need that bloody thing moved.’ It was his father, pointing at the billiard table. ‘Shift it.’

  Ross walked across and put a hand under one corner. ‘If this is—’ He grunted as he tried to lift it. ‘It is, it’s slate. Take more than Uli and me to move it. And you’ve got a bad back, dad.’

  ‘Sergeant!’

  The sergeant poked his head round the door. ‘Sir.’

  ‘Get me six prisoners from the nearest hut. In here. Now.’

  The PoWs trooped in, their gazes fixed on the floor. Under the Colonel’s direction they heaved the table flat against one wall, making room for him to set up his desks for the three of them plus Carlisle, facing a single chair where the PoW would sit.

  As the six were leaving, Ross noticed one of the prisoners glancing at the dartboard and looking puzzled. Ross followed the man’s gaze and snapped his fingers at him.

  ‘You.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Ross reminded him.

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Dietrich.’

  ‘Dietrich, stay behind. I need to talk to you first.’

  The Colonel was about to obj
ect that he alone would determine the running order when he caught Uli’s look and she inclined her head, her eyes flashing a warning. The old man sat down on his folding chair, crossed his arms, and waited for the show to begin.

  Thirty-Four

  17–18 DECEMBER 1944

  It was on the third night that they finally smelled the sea. Erich and Schuller should have made it to the shore in the early hours of the morning, but there had been roadblocks and troop movements to thwart them. So they spent a cold, miserable day in a lean-to on the edge of a sluggish river that was thick with reeds. To make it worse, Erich’s cheek still throbbed where Schuller had elbowed him.

  ‘Do you have a girl, Hinkel?’ asked Schuller suddenly in the middle of the afternoon.

  ‘Yes. You?’

  ‘No. Not really. Never settled. Where is she?’

  Erich hesitated. If he told Schuller the truth, that he thought she was here in England, the SS man would suspect his motivation immediately. ‘Berlin. At least, I hope she is still there. Still alive.’

  ‘She hasn’t written?’

  ‘I don’t think she knows if I am alive or dead.’

  ‘Have you written to her?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said truthfully, thinking of the unposted letters he had in his jacket.

  ‘Tell me about the U-boats.’

  A pair of Thunderbolts roared across the wood in front of them, bristling with the drop tanks that enabled them to penetrate deep into Germany as fighter escorts. ‘I sometimes wish I’d been up there,’ Erich said.

  ‘You think you’d still be alive if you’d been in the Luftwaffe?’

  ‘The odds can’t have been worse than in the U-boats,’ said Erich. ‘Towards the end, on the last shore leave before we were rammed, we heard that the losses were at two out of every three.’

  Schuller reached into his jacket and brought out a half-bar of chocolate. ‘I was saving this. Now is as good a time as any.’

  They nibbled at the squares slowly, savouring each bite. Erich told the story of U-40, their stuttering start when they couldn’t sink a buoy, the movement into the Happy Time, when the hunting was good, then the gradual reversal of fortune as the Allies became stronger, more numerous and far more cunning.