Dead Man Falling: A Johnny Fedora Espionage Spy Thriller Assignment Book 3

by Desmond Cory

  “Good evening, Comrade,” he said, blinking in the direct light of the adjustable reading-lamp.

  “Good evening, Comrade chief. Forgive the intrusion, please. But a report has this moment arrived from our agent in Oberneusl. It is perhaps urgent enough to warrant your immediate attention.”

  Makarov suppressed a yawn. “Very well. What does it say?”

  “It states that a climbing party set out from the inn at Oberneusl” – the tall man hurriedly scanned the paper he clasped – “the Hunting Horn. Its intention appears to be to scale the mountain.”

  “That possibility,” said Makarov coldly, “has often to be borne in mind when one deals with climbing parties.”

  “Quite, Comrade chief. They started shortly before six o’clock this evening.”

  “Most entertaining.” Makarov’s next yawn overwhelmed him completely; he surrendered himself to it luxuriously. “Thank you, my dear Ardinin. Is that all?”

  “Er… no. It is certain, our agents states, that the British Intelligence operative Trout is among their number.”

  “Heigh-ho.”

  “He further adds that an unknown agent of the rotting Capitalist Powers – not inconceivably this same Trout – murdered his brother this morning.”

  “Really?” Makarov allowed himself the briefest of glances towards his file. “He has, of course, our deepest sympathy. Nevertheless, if he imagines that the fortunes or misfortunes of his brother are likely to cause us of the NKVD any concern whatsoever, I fear he enjoys a mistaken conception of our function.”

  The tall man sniggered sycophantically. “Naturally, Comrade chief. I imagine Comrade Aigen assumed that the information might be of relevance in its context.”

  “It is possible. But it is most unlikely. We really expect more satisfactory service than this… Has he no further information to offer on this climbing party of which Trout is apparently a member?”

  “No, Comrade chief.”

  “The man is worse than useless.”

  “He states that he has been laid low with an unfortunate illness, which has made the gathering of information very difficult.”

  “The man seems to have been a mine of information on every subject but that which we particularly required of him. I am not satisfied.” Makarov frowned malevolently. “And now, just what am I supposed to do with this miserably inadequate report?”

  Ardinin stifled the reply that immediately rose to his lips… This, er, this mountain; chief. It is well within the zone of the People’s Democracies. If you consider it desirable that these people should be rounded up, doubtless the military will prove capable of apprehending them.”

  “I consider it highly desirable,” said Makarov. “But if the military are able for once to perform an exercise of even such childish simplicity as this, I shall be pleasantly surprised. Nevertheless, I thank you for the suggestion, Comrade.”

  The tall man went pale.

  “That will be all.”

  “Yes, Comrade chief. Thank you, Comrade chief.”

  Ardinin turned and hurried out, with the intention of immediately reporting to a High Authority his superior officer’s anti-democratic depreciation of the all-conquering Red Army. On arrival at his own small office, he picked up the telephone and demanded to be put through to Colonel Vorogin, officer commanding the Army detachment at Winterbach.

  He was curtly informed that the line was in use by a Top Priority number; which meant that Makarov had got in first. Again… Ardinin replaced the receiver and sighed deeply.

  Sometimes he wondered how he was ever going to get on…

  Not half a mile from the Commissariat and at almost exactly the same time as this little interlude, a Cockney corporal of the Lancashire Fusiliers passed along the corridors of the Intelligence Branch, Army H.Q., Vienna. After much routing about, he discovered the officer of the day – whose name was Basie – asleep, with his head on a small and rickety card-table. The corporal eventually managed to wake him up.

  “’Scuse me, sir. Sorry to disturb you, I’m sure. We got a note what the sergeant thinks you ought to see at once.”

  “Eh? Oh,” said the gallant lieutenant. “Read it out, there’s a good feller.”

  He leaned back in his chair and, with difficulty, restrained himself from falling asleep again while the corporal read in a high, surprised little voice:

  Ref.: 7/38/IB

  From: I.O. 24 Det RASC

  Mariazell.

  To: I Branch HQ Wien.

  Class: SECRET

  IMMEDIATE ACTION.

  Time: 200724.

  At 1952 hrs. message in sealed envelope addressed OIC BRITISH ARMY UNIT MARIAZELL was handed to guard sergeant by young civilian, who was unfortunately allowed to depart without questioning. Message enclosed in envelope, written in pencil, text as follows:

  Quote

  Please inform Intelligence Vienna soonest; Eva Braun and boy of 14 believed to be son of Hitler, the well-known Führer, now residing at Hunting Horn inn, Oberneusl. Suggest instant action. Am proceeding in pursuit of ex-Nazi agent Mayer, possibly living under name of Mann. E.B. also goes under this name, passes as his wife.

  Trout.

  Unquote.

  Info re Trout promulgated this office 27/483/IB in which he is classified as FO agent att WCC. Am therefore passing on this message immediately by DR. Am retaining original pending further orders.

  J. C. Fender

  I.0. 24 Det RASC.

  “Um,” said the lieutenant. “Gimme.”

  He read it through slowly; and then once again.

  “Who the hell’s this Trout feller when he’s at home?”

  “Wallah from E.I., sir. Remember, we ’ad notification of his arrival last week. Got high rating, sir; that’s why we called you.”

  “Oh, yes. Oh, absolutely. Quite right, ah, corporal. Um, ah, er, what am I supposed to do? I mean, doesn’t sound my cup of tea at all. I’m not up to this laddie’s weight.”

  “P’raps you ought to tell the Colonel.”

  “Ye-es, perhaps I ought. Right-oh. Get the Colonel on the scrambler, will you?”

  “V’good, sir,” said the corporal, saluting.

  “… And when you’ve done that, come back and wake me up again.”

  At first, Johnny had doubted the advisability of lighting a fire. The spot where they had elected to spend the night was admittedly sheltered by a high line of trees, but it was also very close to the towering cliffs of the Lovers; and Mayer, several thousand metres higher, might be able to observe the glimmer far beneath him and, perhaps, put two and two together. But Martin was convinced that there was no chance of this; and, now that the evening had almost passed into night, Johnny realised that lighting the fire had been a move of great practicality.

  For the wind dropped gradually as the light faded from the sky; and, with the calm, the vast cold of the ice cliff above came falling upon them like the touch of death. It was a most unpleasant sensation; a damp, bitter chill that descended like an invisible blanket and struck straight through to the bones. Johnny, who had rightly expected the evening’s climbing to be strenuous, had dressed very lightly, following the expert advice of Johann Biel; he wore a flannel shirt, brown corduroy trousers, thick woollen socks and a Grenfell jacket with capacious pockets that were opened and closed by zip-fasteners. In the inside breast pocket of this jacket he carried Marie-Andrée’s pistol, which he had taken in preference to his own as it was lighter and much more compact. It was a major inconvenience in any case, but one that was unavoidable…

  The boots had also caused Johnny a great deal of trouble. In the end, he had borrowed a very old pair that had once belonged to the Baron von Knopke, studded with old-fashioned Tricouni nails, but still very serviceable. They were the only pair available that came anywhere near to fitting Johnny, whose feet were small; otherwise Johnny’s companions would have insisted on his wearing somebody else’s. Mountaineers are notoriously superstitious, and while nobody could recall an edict
prohibiting the use of dead men’s boots, it was generally considered a most distressing necessity. Johnny, needless to say, remained quite unperturbed.

  The only extra clothing he had carried in his light rucksack was a blue wool sweater, and this was the only item of his equipment – apart from his underwear and shirt – which was his own. Even in the depths of his kapok-lined sleeping-bag, he was only just warm enough to keep himself from shivering; without the fire, he would certainly have been too cold to sleep. All four of them were huddled as close to the fire as was compatible with safety; Biel on Johnny’s right, Martin on his left, and opposite him, out of his view – for they lay feet to the fire in a group shaped like a cross – opposite was Gruber.

  Johnny lay comfortably on his back, smoking a final cigarette and feeling the cold breath of the blue ice as a pressure on his upturned face.

  … In that light, and viewed from that angle, the Lovers had a strange and quite unearthly beauty. They rose from a point not three hundred feet above and rushed straight up to the sky in a smooth, unbroken line; twin sheets of cold glass that glowed as from some internal fire. They had not the hard, vindictive brilliance of pure snow, but a softer, paler, infinitely more dangerous lustre; a radiance that changed imperceptibly from a dark, unfathomable green to a clear yet fugitive blue, a colour so delicate as to seem made of air and vapour merely. The cliffs were like a mirror, a gigantic mirror that toned down and rendered infinitely more subtle the harsh hues of the world outside, turning them by a transmutation into a series of shades of blue, green, violet and pink…

  … But there was an occasional point, an occasional fissure in the surface that trapped for a few seconds some fleeting movement of light and, in those few seconds, sparkled its length of silver with the vicious cruelty of a rapier-blade. The whole edifice was like some legend; some story of the Middle Ages made distant and romantic by the turning of the years and yet showing, when the least expected, a sudden startling flicker of barbaric savagery that seems instantly close and familiar…

  Johnny’s own thoughts did not, it’s true, follow precisely this pattern; nevertheless, he found himself regarding, for a brief space of time, the Lovers as a manifestation of beauty, rather than as a bloody nuisance of an obstacle, in the surmounting of which he was likely to break his neck. But his admiration was mingled with a hatred for the mountain that had deepened since the morning; he knew it now to be one of the few things in the world of which he was genuinely afraid. He feared the mountain; he knew it even as he lay on his back examining its massive splendour; but he made no attempt to analyse the reasons for his fear.

  Johnny was no Freudian.

  Yet, had he bothered to explore his conscience more than superficially, he might have realised that his decision to climb the mountain was not principally due to his desire to find and kill Mayer, still less to his desire to find the von Huysen diamonds; but to a deeply internal resolve to beat his growing dread of the Old Man down to the earth and to trample it under his feet. Johnny was out to beat the Old Man itself.

  … For somehow, the mountain could not be regarded as a passive antagonist. It was lying in wait for him now, was as charged with cunning and malevolence as was Karl Mayer himself. And its power was not human, as was Mayer’s, but something supernatural…

  To Johnny’s right, Biel stirred awkwardly; and Johnny was suddenly conscious that he was being watched. Even as he lowered his eyes from the contemplation of the cliff’s star-swept outline, Biel spoke to him in a quiet, gentle rumble.

  “You think it beautiful, Herr Videl? – The mountain, I mean?”

  Johnny pushed himself up on to his left elbow and stubbed out his cigarette. “Beautiful?… M’m. Suppose it is.”

  “Or perhaps your mind was on more weighty matters?”

  “Such as whether I’m ever going to get on top of the thing, all in one piece?”

  Biel chuckled. “Don’t worry about that. We’ll get you to the top if we have to push you all the way. And this evening, you really did extremely well; there’s no denying it, you’ve a great natural aptitude for rock-climbing… No. I was thinking of your Nazi agent, of Herr Mann, whom it is so important to catch.”

  “I’ll worry about that when I’ve caught up with him.”

  “My impression would be that he could be a very ugly customer,” said Biel soberly, “if he so wished.”

  “Undoubtedly. But with any luck, we’ll take him so completely by surprise we’ll have the drop on him from the start… An unfortunate choice of metaphor, but you know what I mean.”

  Biel rolled suddenly over in his sleeping-bag and lay upon his tummy. “I envy you your life, Herr Videl. I should dearly love to be an Intelligence agent.”

  “Odd sentiments,” said Johnny, “from a member of such a notoriously non-militant nation.”

  Biel’s teeth flashed white in the closing darkness. “Oh, well – I do no more than dream. All the same… I’m deeply indebted to you for introducing me to this little adventure. It will be something to remember all the rest of my life.”

  Johnny grunted. “If you really were an Intelligence agent, that’s one phrase you’d never care to use.”

  “Ah. I see. Just so. Yes. – Forgive me if I am being over-inquisitive; but I cannot help feeling more than a little curious as to why Herr Mann has elected to climb this mountain.”

  “There’s something at the top that he wants very badly. Hidden in the third hut.”

  “Papers, no doubt. Documents of military importance. How very thrilling it all is. Well – I’ll ask no further questions. It’s getting late, and I am keeping you from your sleep.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Oh, but it does. It’s most important you have a good night’s rest, and the others… I think… yes, the others are already asleep. I’m sure you are tired… I wish you good night.”

  “Good night, Herr Biel. And no oversleeping in the morning.”

  A final low chuckle from the depths of Biel’s sleeping-bag commented on the absurdity of such a suggestion.

  Johnny inched himself into a more comfortable position, and zipped the Grenfell open as silently as possible. A few hours’ sleep was obviously essential, but there was no earthly reason for relaxing the more obvious precautions; and Marie-Andrée’s pistol would be in his hand as he slept, ready for instant use.

  He was tired, there was no doubt about that; tired both physically and mentally. His muscles ached and had the tautly stretched sensation that follows violent activity; Johnny hoped they wouldn’t turn stiff in the chill of the early morning. But on the whole, he thought his limbs had suffered no more than an invaluable loosening-up. There was a slight patch of discomfort beneath his right ankle where von Knopke’s boot had chafed slightly; and the ankles themselves, long accustomed to the freedom of shoes, were a trifle sore from the constriction of the leather. But these were inconsiderable ailments, in view of the amount of ground that Johnny had covered…

  More than he had expected to cover that evening. Much more than he had expected. From the inn, he had greatly underestimated both the size and the distance of the Lovers; the clarity of the air made such judgements a very difficult matter. He had thought the cliffs to be some five or six miles away; in reality, they had been more than eight, and his course to them anything but a bee-line.

  Half asleep, Johnny considered that march.

  … They had started off in single file, Martin leading the way, then Gruber, then Biel, with Johnny treading cautiously in the rear. The path they took branched off from that track down which he and Marie-Andrée and Martin had walked that morning, and turned northwards before it reached the Berghof woods; then wound steadily upwards through country rocky but still fertile, sprinkled with clumps of trees and with big, brightly-coloured patches of hepatica and crocus. They climbed gradually but steadily, religiously observing a five minutes’ pause for rest at the end of every hour.

  As they travelled, the path under their feet became rockier an
d more crumbly, was littered with loose stones that sometimes twisted dangerously underfoot. The air seemed perceptibly thinner, yet fresher; dark streaks of perspiration began to show on Johnny’s shirt, at the armpits and the collar and where the straps of the rucksack crossed his shoulders. The long, narrow valley in which Oberneusl stood spread itself out behind them, reaching slowly out to the east, constantly pursuing the pale, dusty ribbon of road that wound its way onwards in search of the plains of Hungary… And at one point, when they had been walking for almost three hours and another period of rest was approximately due, they emerged suddenly round a projecting arête; the path disappeared in a confusion of loose stones and scree; and it was suddenly possible to see right over the ridge of the Berghof to the north-east, to see miles upon miles of ominous green forests broken only by rifts of darkness… then the pale cloudy outline of another mountain range, dropping away on the horizon to a windy nothingness that was the Danube basin and Vienna.

  “We’re higher than that ridge, then,” said Johnny to Biel, who was walking beside him at that moment.

  Biel nodded. “Wonderful view, isn’t it? You know – there’s really nothing quite like this in Switzerland; except perhaps in the south, the Romansh country. It’s the juxtaposition of mountain and plain that’s so effective…”

  “We must have made quite a bit of height already.”

  “More than five hundred metres,” agreed Biel, realising Johnny’s concern to be with practical rather than aesthetic matters. “The foot of the Lovers is about as much again above our present height; but the route is more direct from now on. And correspondingly steeper and rougher, unfortunately.”

  He looked anxiously at Johnny, who appeared to find this information satisfactory. “From the inn I thought the cliffs rose almost from ground level.”

  “Ah, yes. Appearances are very deceptive. Are you tiring?”

  “Hardly at all.”