by Nick Cook
“Not that way,” Schell stammered. “There is a basement exit that leads to the garage at the back of the house.” He ushered them through to another room and unlocked the solid wooden door that was set in the far wall.
The cold, dark night, filled with the sounds of a dying city, forced the last traces of fatigue from Kruze’s body. He could see another door across the little courtyard and pushed Herries towards it.
“The garage opens up onto Seitz Strasse,” Schell said. “From there, it is only a short drive back to the Cornelius Bridge. If you are in luck there will be no barricades up yet.”
Kruze started for the garage, but Schell held him back, gesturing towards the dim figure of Herries across the yard. “I have lived among Nazis long enough for them all to look very much alike,” he whispered. “But with him, it is not just the uniform he wears, there is evil deep within him too. I do not know what passed between you just now, but take care of yourself. He is out to do you harm, I felt it.”
“You and Joseph must come through this,” Kruze said. “Thank you for everything.” He did not know what else to say, so turned and ran for the garage.
The air inside was so thick with dust it almost choked him. For a moment, Kruze felt dangerously exposed, for he could sense Herries close by, causing the hairs on the back of his neck to rise. Then the traitor lit a match, the sulphurous flare catching the anger and bitterness on the gaunt face beneath the black peaked cap. They stood for a moment beside the Mercedes, eyeing each other cautiously, before Kruze moved towards the double doors.
“Kill the light and drive,” the Rhodesian said, maintaining the authority in his voice. The one thing he did know about Herries was that he seemed to respond to orders.
He threw open the doors of the garage and cast a quick look down the street. Some troops were attending to a fire that was raging in a house fifty yards away. He jumped in beside Herries, handed him the key, and held his breath as the man’s finger pressed the ignition button.
The Mercedes started first time.
“Get us to Oberammergau,” Kruze shouted over the surging engine.
Herries maintained the revs, but made no move to engage first gear.
“I should kill you, flyboy,” he said, a wild look in his eyes. “How long have you known about me?’
“If you want to talk, then let’s do it on the road. Or do I have to use this?” He brought the Luger out from his coat pocket and cradled it in his lap. “Now drive!”
Herries swung the big car onto the cobbles and picked his way cautiously through the craters, fallen masonry and broken water mains that had marked their drive into the centre of the old city that morning. To Kruze’s horror, he realized that dawn had merely seen Munich whimpering from the wounds it had received during the night; now it was crying out in agony. Citizens of every age rushed around with hoses, or buckets, doing what they could to keep their city alive, but the fires seemed inextinguishable as the Mercedes swung round every twist and turn of the old town.
They crossed back over the Cornelius Bridge with none of the fuss of the morning. Young troops ushered them along, glancing quickly from the car and the man at the wheel, to somewhere beyond the smoke and the flames, their eyes focused on the night sky. It was only when they were some way from the bridge and Kruze stole a glance at a nearby 37 mm flak gun, its barrels patrolling the heavens, that he realized they had come through the worst part of the city unchallenged.
When the RAF was coming from the night sky, what was there to fear from the Americans on the ground?
Herries coaxed the car into the middle of Grünwalder Strasse, manoeuvring his way between the streams of refugees pouring from the city and the truckloads of reinforcements coming in. He put his foot down on the accelerator and the Mercedes leapt forward, its tyres spraying the exhausted and bedraggled citizens with foul-smelling water that bubbled up from the shaken foundations.
The Rhodesian looked at his watch in the receding glow of the fires. It was coming up to eight o’clock. Only ten hours to go till the Meteors swept over the tarmac at Oberammergau.
* * * * * * * *
After telling the Meteor pilots to stand down, Fleming was left to himself in the props room. Stabitz suddenly seemed a very quiet, lonely place.
The call-back signal from Staverton was due at any moment. It sounded as if the Archangel emergency was finally over. A coded message to say their mission had been terminated was all that he had received, but he took that as good news.
The phone bell was on its third ring when he picked up the handset.
“Robert?” The voice at the other end was faint but unmistakable.
“Yes.”
“Thank God.”
There was an interminable pause. Fleming thought the line had gone dead. When the AVM spoke again, the words came rapidly.
“Guardian Angel, Robert, it’s gone horribly wrong.”
“This is an open line, sir, don’t you think -”
“There’s no time for security precautions. He’s got to be stopped.”
“Who?”
“Kruze. We’ve been trying to raise Nazareth for the past three hours to tell our man it’s off. Shaposhnikov has got chemical weapons beside his HQ in Branodz. And Kruze has not acknowledged the termination signal.”
“Chemical weapons -”
“As you said, Robert, this is an open line. Think about it afterwards, work out the permutations. I’m telling you we can’t take any chances. We’ve got to stop Kruze in his tracks.”
“Isn’t it possible he might still call in?”
“SOE is monitoring all channels, just in case. But if there is no word - and we should have heard by now - I want the Meteors to go in as planned. Is there any chance of pulling it forward, destroying all - and I mean all - the aircraft on the ground before 0600?’
“The strike was timed to coincide with first light. It would be immensely risky sending the Meteors in any earlier.”
“See that it’s done.” A pause, then: “You’ll be going with them, Robert.”
“What?”
“You’re the only one who knows just how important it is that Kruze does not get through. You’ve flown the Meteor, haven’t you?”
“A couple of sorties at Farnborough, but -”
“Good, then lead them in. I want no aircraft left on the ground at Oberammergau for Kruze when he arrives there at dawn tomorrow.”
“He might already be dead, or captured. If he hasn’t called in . . .”
The seconds ticked by before the static was broken and Staverton gave his reply.
“I have to brief the special advisers in an hour. Robert, Kruze is still out there, I know it. He must be stopped, at all costs. That’s an order.”
With that, he hung up.
“I wouldn’t give much for your chances of concluding this deal,” Kruze said, breaking the silence that had hung between them since Herries turned the Mercedes into the wood and switched off the engine.
“Is that some sort of threat?” Herries’ tone was mocking. “Do you have orders to kill me, flyboy, is that it?”
“Not me,” he said. “But if you make it back to England, you’ll have to look over your shoulder for the rest of your life. I wouldn’t count on that being a very long time.”
“It’s a distinct possibility, but look at my options. I never amassed the sort of wealth my ex-colleagues did by pilfering from the vaults and art galleries of Europe. The only money I’ve got is locked up in my father’s estates. When you’re cashless, dear boy, South America is an awfully hot, sticky and unpleasant place. It had to be England. Archangel gave me the excuse to come back and claim what was rightfully mine.”
“There was I thinking that you’d just got sentimental about a warm pint of English beer the last time you were in Berlin,” Kruze said.
“Go fuck yourself, flyboy. From what I heard you’re no angel either. Fancy knocking off Fleming’s wife. He seemed like such a nice man, too.”
; Herries knew he’d caught him off guard and moved in for another jab.
“Luftwaffe accommodation is so cheap, such thin walls.’ He smiled. “It’s remarkable what you overhear sometimes.”
“Don’t push me, Herries.”
“Oh, I’m not trying to unsettle you, old boy. I want you in tip-top condition when we go into Oberammergau. You’re the one who signs my end of term report, remember? I do hope you haven’t forgotten the code word.” He rubbed his legs, massaging some feeling back into them after the long drive from Munich. “And you and I will be heroes when we return - not perhaps the sort that make the newspapers, but heroes nonetheless. You’re Whitehall’s last hope, the only man who can stop the Red Army from marching across Europe. And when you pull it off, with my help, they’ll be kissing the ground we walk on. I think that my past misdemeanours will soon be forgotten in all the excitement.”
“You seem very confident in my abilities.”
“They tell me that you are the best. Why should I disbelieve them? The difficult part will be getting into the airfield, but I know I can do it. After that it’ll be downhill all the way. Shaposhnikov will be dead in under four hours and Archangel with him.”
Kruze swung round to face him.
“Then let me inject a little realism into this conversation. I’m to take an Arado jet bomber, the only aircraft in the world that stands a chance of getting through the Russians’ air defences - so I have got that going for me. But there are just one or two minor problems to overcome first.’ He let the words hang between them for a moment. “I’ve never flown the Arado 234, so even if I make it to the aircraft, I still have to familiarize myself with the controls before some observant Kraut realizes that I’m not the bloke who’s meant to be in the cockpit. Then there’s the matter of the engines. German turbojets have a nasty habit of blowing up - shedding their turbine blades if you want to get technical. I know, because it happened to me once at Farnborough when I was flying a Messerschmitt 262. Then, even if I manage not to get blown up on the ground by one of the Meteors, I still have to contend with Allied and Soviet aircraft trying to shoot me out of the sky all the way to the target. Finally, when I’m over Branodz, I’ve got to find Shaposhnikov’s HQ on the first run-in, because that’s the only way I’m going to catch him with his trousers down.”
He studied Herries carefully in the moonlight and saw a thin bead of sweat trickle from his hairline down his forehead. “Still think I can do it?” he asked.
“Perhaps I’d better hand you over to the Luftwaffe at Oberammergau,” Herries whispered.
“You’d have a hell of a lot of explaining to do,” Kruze said.
“So would you.”
Kruze reached over slowly and gripped the coarse material of Herries’ jacket. “If you show any sign of putting this mission in jeopardy by pulling a stunt like that, I’ll kill you with my bare hands.”
“Fighting talk, flyboy. Keep that spirit up and I’m home and dry.” Herries pulled away and looked at his watch. It was 0330. He turned the ignition and gunned the engine into life.
“We’d better be on our way,” he said.
CHAPTER SIX
The Mercedes bumped along the tree-lined approach road, its black-out lights picking up nothing to indicate the presence of the airfield, even though their map told them they were there. The next moment a tower rose up out of the predawn mist, its legs throwing eerie shadows as the car headlights played over its criss-crossed supporting structure.
In almost the same instant, night turned into day.
Herries swore, shielding his eyes with one hand from the searchlight beam that illuminated them from the watch-tower.
The light went out, leaving spots dancing before Kruze’s eyes. The next thing he saw was the striped red and white barrier at the foot of the tower. Herries began to slow the car.
“Remember,” the traitor said, “not a word unless you’re spoken to and even then, keep it simple. If they’re regular army or a Luftwaffe field regiment this will be a piece of cake. If they’re neither, that leaves the SS . . .”
“God, you’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
Herries shrugged. “There’s no choice, flyboy. As you were kind enough to point out, I’ve nowhere to go.”
A soldier stepped out into the road, MP 40 at the ready in one hand, a torch in the other. Herries stopped the car a few yards short of him and left the engine running. Out of the corner of his eye Kruze saw him scan the guard for identification, but the camouflaged smock he wore over his uniform and the netting that covered his helmet obscured his rank and service affiliation. Beyond the barrier Kruze could see a machine-gun emplacement ringed with sandbags and two pairs of eyes shining beneath dark, coalscuttle helmets in the glare of their headlights.
Kruze tried to take all the details in slowly, as if he were used to passing through high security checkpoints every day of the week, but the images flashed before him like film shown on a projector running out of control.
A dog’s bark close by. The Rhodesian turned his head. The Alsatian seemed to leap from nowhere, growling ferociously. It pressed its nose against his wound up window, the breath that steamed through its slavering jaws mingled with the mist around them. A second soldier appeared from behind and pulled the dog away from the car, slipping a leash round its collar as he did so. Harsh, guttural commands quelled the dog into silent obedience.
That’s two in the road, two in the gun emplacement and probably two more in the tower, Kruze thought. And a dog. Hardly what he had anticipated for a top operational squadron so close to the front lines. Then it crossed his mind that the 234s might have moved on to a new location . . .
Herries wound down his window. The first soldier flashed his torch at the front of the car, his expression hardening the moment he saw the civilian number plates.
“Was ist los?” the soldier shouted, waving his torch at the driver and his passenger.
The beam swept across the two occupants and then fell back with unshaking precision onto the gleaming Obersturmführer’s flashes on Herries’ lapels. The soldier doused the light and walked over to Herries’ door. In the dull glow from the instrument panel Kruze saw the faded eagle stitched on the tunic and had to stifle a sigh of relief. Oberammergau was defended by Luftwaffe troops and not the Waffen-SS.
“We have been told American commandos are in the area, Herr Obersturmführer,” the guard stammered, “and when I saw the plates -”
“Requisitioned transport,” Herries interrupted. “I didn’t catch your own identification, soldier.”
“Obergefreiter Giesecke, sir, Molders Regiment, 5th Luftwaffe Field Division.” He snapped to attention.
“Open the gate, Giesecke. If you keep us waiting much longer the Americans will be here to do it for you.”
“No one enters without the right authorization, not even the SS.” As if the officer was likely to take his remark as impertinence, he added: “Orders from the OKL.”
“If it weren’t for the Oberkommando der Luftwaffe I wouldn’t be in this God-forsaken hole at all,” Herries spat, passing across his documents.
Kruze kept out of the guard’s line of sight, taking the opportunity for one last look around him before the moment when he would be asked for the transit papers that Schell had prepared. He peered ahead, taking in the guardroom beyond the barrier, the barbed-wire surrounding it, the road that led from their present position into the heart of the base.
“What brings you to Oberammergau?” the guard asked. Kruze felt his muscles stiffen.
“Herr Krazianu needs air transport,” Herries said, jabbing a thumb towards Kruze. “I am his escort. Oberammergau is one of the few air bases left open in this damned country. And that’s all I am allowed to tell you.” He looked the guard straight in the eye. “It’s in the documents.”
Herries snapped his fingers at Kruze and barked something the Rhodesian did not understand. For a second he froze, disorientated, then he realized that Herries was asking hi
m for his papers.
“Rumanian,” Herries said disparagingly to the guard.
Giesecke tried to look sympathetic, but he distrusted the SS as a rule and liked the look of the one in the car even less. He leafed through Kruze’s documents, shining his torch from the photograph on the carnet to the Rhodesian’s face and back again.
“I have not been told about any Rumanian,” he said.
“Is that so? Security here must be worse than I thought,” Herries snapped. “If you look carefully, you will see that this man’s passage through the Reich has been authorized by the Air Ministry in Berlin and countersigned by General Riegl at the OKL. Now I suggest you let us through, or he will miss his aircraft and you will be answerable to the General personally.”
The guard hesitated, looking round for someone with whom he could confer, but the other soldier had disappeared into the warmth of the hut, taking the dog with him. Kruze looked anxiously at his watch. The Meteors would be coming in a little over an hour.
The Obergefreiter shook his head. “I will have to put a call through to the Kommandant, I have no choice. Switch off the engine and come with me please, Herr Obersturmführer, and bring your passenger with you.”
Kruze understood enough to open the door and step out on to the road. There was something reassuringly familiar about the place, something he could not immediately identify, but it lifted his spirits. He followed the Obergefreiter and Herries to the guardroom.
Giesecke pushed the door open. The second guard, a boyish soldier who would not have looked out of place on the sports field of a junior school, was playing happily with the dog. He looked up and smiled at his corporal. The dog let out a low growl as soon as it saw the two strangers in the shadows.