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

by Desmond Cory

  And then stopped short.

  For Eva Hitler had apparently already had much the same idea. Kurt Mann still lay face downward on the floor in the position in which he had fallen; but the bed was now unoccupied, and of his consort there was not the smallest sign.

  And as Marie-Andrée stood stock-still… listening intently… a motor-engine choked and coughed outside the building. It was not one of the jeeps arriving, but a stationary car that was starting up…

  The engine took on power, and Marie-Andrée recognised its note. It was her own car, Johnny’s car; and that bitch was stealing it.

  —She turned in a flash and made for the door. She’d be too late to catch Eva, but, she thought, she probably had time to evade capture herself… The door swung to behind her, and the room was again – apart from Herr Mann – suddenly and surprisingly empty.

  “Empty?” said the major, annoyed.

  The sergeant-major nodded gloomily. “Not a soul in the place, sir. Apart from them two corpses upstairs, of course, and Mr. Basie down below.”

  “Tck. How is Mr. Basie?”

  “Broken jaw, sir, we think. Otherwise in good ’ealth.”

  The major walked up and down the room for a few moments, eyeing the mantelpiece and the curtains. “Let’s hope that teaches him to be a little less impatient next time. What about the dead ’uns? Who are they supposed to be?”

  “One’s a man called Helmut, sir; seems to have been the owner of the place. He’s been dead some time, from the looks of him. The other one’s our old pal Kurt Mann.”

  “Mann? Are you sure?”

  “Not a doubt of it, sir. You’ll remember his name in that there report of Mister Trout’s. And you’d better take a shufty at this, sir; we found it in his pocket.”

  The major took the slip of pale paper and unfolded it cautiously. It was a telegram, and – as is usually the case with telegrams – was brief, succinct and to the point.

  VIDEL OUR MAN, it said epigrammatically. PARTY LEAVING FOR MOUNTAIN TONIGHT * HELMUT LAID * FRAU MANN FRAU VIDEL ALONE IN INN * RETURN IMMEDIATELY * CAUTION.

  There was no signature.

  “Helmut laid,” said the major. “So he is, indeed. The meaning of that expression seems fairly clear. What’s more, it seems pretty clear they’ve found this fellow Trout; he must be using the name of Videl.”

  The sergeant-major made a respectful nickering noise. “Rather makes you wonder who, ah, Frau Videl is, in that case.”

  “Well, we know who Frau Mann is all right, anyway. And if she’s not here, she’s dam’ well got to be found. Get your men moving right away. Oh, and tell Mr. Bostock I’d like a word with him.”

  The sergeant-major saluted smartly and withdrew; the major lit a cigarette, walked across the room again and opened the guests’ register. He remained studying it until the arrival of Captain Bostock.

  “… You sent for me, sir?”

  “Eh? Oh, it’s you, George.” The major eyed with disapproval the appearance of a small army corps of infantry, marching unhesitatingly through the front door; he dropped ash over the register. “Anything fresh?”

  “No, sir; we’re examining Mann’s personal effects now. Did the sergeant-major show you that telegram?”

  “Yes; I have it now. What d’you make of it?”

  “Seems pretty clear who sent it, anyway.”

  “Mayer?”

  Bostock nodded.

  The major unfolded the telegram and consulted it again. “I see it was handed in at Bretzgau just after six o’clock. What does that convey, if anything?”

  “Nothing, sir. Bretzgau is the nearest Postamt to Oberneusl. And I think we can safely infer Mayer didn’t hand this himself; he’s too wily a bird for that.”

  “So there’s a possibility, a strong possibility that Mayer and Trout are on this mountain-climbing party together. I frankly don’t understand that a bit, why the hell they want to… And, good Lord, what a situation. Judging by Trout’s report, y’know, he doesn’t know who Mayer is; he seems to have thought Mann was Mayer, for some reason. But it looks as if Mayer knows all about Trout… Poor old Trout, it looks as if he’s in a hell of a mess, and there’s damn-all we can do till daylight.”

  “So in referring to him, we may as well use the past tense.”

  “Oh, well. It may not be all that bad.”

  “… It’d help a lot if we knew who else had gone on this little excursion.”

  “That’s just it,” said the major explosively. “If only that telegram were a little more ruddy precise… I’ve just been looking at the guests’ register. Take a glance through it yourself, and see if the names mean anything to you.”

  Bostock pulled the heavy book round to face him, and scanned it anxiously.

  “Johann Biel… Not a thing. M. and Mme Videl…” He shook his head. “Erich Gruber… No. Well, if Videl is Trout, then either Biel or Gruber may be Mayer. Unless, of course, Mayer never registered at all; which is extremely likely, when you come to think of it. But who the hell is this female Videl?”

  “Another thing we don’t know, but she’s pretty obviously working with Trout, so she’s all right.”

  “And there’s the boy, too. How far does he fit in?”

  “May be up the mountain. May be with his mother. May be anywhere. You’d better carry on with the bodies, George.”

  “Right, sir.”

  “One bright spot. We’ve got Mann, and we’ve had Golling since that odd business on the railway train. That leaves only Mayer to worry about now.”

  “Yes, sir,” agreed Bostock. “But, of course, he was the only one we ever did worry about… really.”

  The shadow of the low-flying aeroplane fled over the great tracts of swaying green pine-tops beneath, and the racketing thrum of the engine sent back eddies of air that blew powdered snow from the closely packed leaves. Away to the left ran the thin thread of road that the pilot was following, and far in front was the row of serrated ridges marking the eastward slopes of the Hunting Horn. It was in that direction that the aeroplane, a two-seater Auster of Army Reconnaissance, was discreetly heading; the pilot and observer were unhappy about this.

  For quite a considerable time, neither had addressed so much as a word to the other. Eventually, however, the observer shifted uneasily in his bucket-seat and stated the obvious.

  “Well, there it is.”

  “Yes,” said the pilot, monosyllabically.

  “We’re definitely in the Russian zone now, old boy.”

  “Yes,” said the pilot, even more witheringly than before. The observer wriggled again and subsided; and the white-crested summit of the Old Man churned steadily nearer, rising slowly in front of them. Around them, the air grew more and more turbulent.

  “Watch out for bumps,” said the observer, just too late.

  The pilot swore, kicked at the rudder-bar and did unmentionable things to the flaps. The aeroplane flew sideways for a good three hundred feet, and then straightened itself out. “Phew,” said the pilot.

  He looked down at the altimeter and pushed the control column slightly forwards. “We’ll stooge all the way round below the snow line,” he said. “You’d better start keeping an eye open for ’em.”

  “Okay.”

  “An’ if you see what looks like it might be a Russki, for heaven’s sake tell me at once, don’t wait to make sure. I don’t feel like arguing with a YAK over Red territory if I can do anything to prevent it.”

  “… Whoooops,” said the observer, as the nose dropped suddenly and viciously.

  The Auster righted itself awkwardly and staggered on. It had now reached a point just clear of the Berghof Forest and north of Oberneusl; which meant that its presence had been remarked upon by at least three frontier posts of the Soviet, all of whom were doubtless telephoning like mad. The crew were well aware of this, and the Auster behaved as if it was, too. However, it chugged on with great determination, travelling due north-west, and the slopes of the Hunting Horn rose to meet it. T
he pilot banked sharply to the left, levelled off and began to follow the mountain round in exactly the way he had indicated; a manoeuvre that brought the sweat to the observer’s forehead.

  “What are you going to do,” he asked palely, “when Joe’s boys do show up?”

  “Get down lower,” said the pilot grimly, missing a projecting rock by some fifteen feet. “And run like hell.”

  “Crikey. Let’s hope we pick up these bloody people p.d.q.”

  “Well, get on with it,” said the pilot shortly. “One thing’s sure,” he added, jerking his thumb to the right. “They’re not on that ruddy ice cliff. Well turn and climb over the top of it.”

  The observer trained his binoculars towards the Lovers, this being exactly what any right-thinking observer would have done in the given circumstances, and promptly detected four minute specks apparently glued to the side of it. He rubbed at the lenses irritably, and tried again. The surface of the cliff was now smooth and glistening and quite, quite vacant. Annoying. He lowered his glasses.

  “Tell you it’s no good trying there,” said the pilot crossly; thereby immediately causing the observer to take a final look. And this time… one, two, three… yes, four… there they were again.

  “That’s what you think,” said the observer, in pardonable triumph.

  “Eh?”

  “That’s where they are. Four of ’em. About a third of the way up.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I am sure. Four of them, I tell you.”

  “Good enough,” said the pilot. “Let’s get the hell out of here.” He swung the control column over, and the Auster rolled on to its side in a bank that held him tightly in his seat. He pulled the mouthpiece of the telephone to his chin, and spoke tersely into it.

  “Able Robert Two to Control. Able Robert Two to Control. Have spotted party. Have fixed party at a point approximately one-third of the way up the ice cliff on the south-west side of the Hunting Horn. Party consists of four men. I say again, of four men. Over.”

  There was a pause while the earphones crackled in reply.

  Then the pilot sighed heavily and said,

  “I can’t help that. That’s where they are.”

  Surprisingly, not one of the climbers had noticed the aeroplane. But there were several reasons for this. Firstly, the Auster had been flying at a height rather lower than their own, and one rarely looks downwards when one expects to see aeroplanes; secondly, a strong tramontane was blowing from the face of the cliff, which had not permitted the faintest whisper of engine-beat to reach their ears; thirdly – and most important of all – their concentration on their climbing was so intense that, one might imagine, a Superfortress could have passed within fifty feet of them without their even noticing. There, however, one would be mistaken; for five minutes after the Auster’s departure, six MIG’s passed over them, going like bats out of hell, and four ice-reddened faces automatically turned upwards to watch them go. And the climbers paused before continuing their assault.

  “How horribly naked they make you feel.” said Biel to Johnny.

  “Quite,” said Johnny briefly.

  Biel’s eyes were worried, behind his thin perspex goggles. “It had never occurred to me, Herr Videl… Are we in any danger of air attack?”

  “Not now the Luftwaffe’s been disbanded,” said Johnny wearily. “I shouldn’t think those things had anything to do with us at all. A routine patrol, I imagine.”

  “But they were Russian ’planes; and we are in Russian territory now. If they were to see us, they would probably fire at us.”

  “They’ll never see us at that height and going that pace. And they certainly couldn’t fire at us, not without running into the cliff to do it.”

  “Ah,” said Biel. “Reassuring.” And he turned back to the cliff without pursuing the subject further.

  …In assuming the Russian fighters to have been totally unconcerned with their activities, Johnny was not, of course, quite correct. There was an indirect connection; and, had Johnny happened to see the little aeroplane for which the Russians were searching, he would have realised something was up. As it was, he was amazed to find himself capable of even such elementary ratiocination as that revealed in his little exchange with Biel; he had believed that he would regain the faculty of coherent thinking only when he had safely reached the top of the ice cliff. Frankly, for the last seven hours and almost without relief, Johnny had been more deeply terrified than at any other time in his life.

  It was worse than he could ever have imagined.

  Nor did his situation ever seem to improve; there was no lessening, no alleviation of his terror. It was always exactly the same; he was always strung between two other climbers by five-yard lengths of rope, was always clinging to a precipitous wall of ice with, directly beneath him, a fall of… what could not really have been more than twelve hundred feet, but which might just as well have been twelve thousand; for the eyesight simply refused to focus on the awful, misty depths at the bottom of the drop… And the surface was ice. Johnny had known that before, but his imagination had not fully grasped what that meant. It meant climbing up a two-thousand-foot ice rink that some giant had thrown on its side, an ice rink, moreover, that was melting in patches and had been broken up by great vertical cracks…

  … Well, he knew what it meant now.

  And he was doing it. Climbing up it. Somehow. Anyhow. Moving slowly, at a snail-like pace, with every muscle in his body aching and every nerve screaming at having to achieve so obvious an impossibility. His clothes, hair, face, every part of him damp with sweat and with cold, melted ice; with the ice against which his frame was always lovingly, adoringly pressed. And going up. Climbing it. Not falling… yet.

  He was conscious of two things, and of two things only.

  Firstly, of his own slippery gloved fingers that no longer belonged to him but seemed a part of the ice to which they clung. Secondly, of Biel close by him; never more than five yards away, never less than two; and of the smooth, rhythmic, everlasting movement of Biel’s right arm with the ice-pick, the tool that had become an extension of Biel himself. There was beauty in that movement, the sort of nightmare beauty that makes one sometimes reluctant to wake from the most scaring, the most ghastly of dreams. Biel swung right-handed, loosely from the wrist, every stroke a mode of perfect timing and accuracy: the first blow striking into the ice level with his knee and eighteen inches to the right, the second blow beside the first but at a subtly different angle, the third blow swinging overhand with greater force than the others: one, two, three and the hard, gleaming, triangular chip of ice leaping away past his legs, out and then down, down, down to… to…

  No. It didn’t do to look. Johnny kept his eyes on Biel; on the right foot swinging smoothly up directly into the step, never fumbling, never slipping, always straight into the notch, testing it with a firm, confident push: then one-two-three and the left foot swinging leisurely between the cliff and Biel’s body, straight into its new position: then one-two-three and so on and so on for ever and ever, except for the occasional variation in the movement; the momentary pause, the slight adjustment of the angle of hand and shoulder, and then the gleam of the axe this time over Biel’s head; one-two and the hand cautiously yet confidently reaching up to the handhold… then one-two-three and one-two-three and one-two-three again.

  And if Johnny experienced any emotion other than that caused by the permanent bitter curdling of terror in the pit of his stomach, it was admiration for Biel. Admiration for his technique, admiration at the sight of an art brought almost to perfection; watching Biel with the ice-pick was like watching the high diving of an Olympic champion or a Hutton stroke through the covers. And there was the strength, the obvious strength of the man. For even with movements so superbly economical, the muscular output of cutting those steps in the solid ice must have been tremendous; he had cut thousands of them, he had hardly halted for more than six hours. And still the great shoulders bunched and the th
ighs tensened and the ice chips were flung out like diamonds into the void; it was as though Biel had changed into a machine endowed with perpetual motion.

  And the three other men followed faithfully in the steps he had cut, like three little page-boys in the trail of a new King Wenceslaus; crawling slowly upwards like flies flattened against a wall; first Johnny, body brushing the cliff face and ice-pick swinging from its strap around his wrist, then Martin, nonchalant, whistling tunelessly under his breath, and Gruber last of all, calm, phlegmatic, his tunic hardly damped by the ice and not at all by perspiration, the main length of the climbing-rope slung loosely over his shoulders. So they went on and upwards, moving in a great diagonal towards the invisible summit, and below them the ice mists heaved and eddied in the freezing outward draughts.

  “… We must be getting near the big ledge, Herr Videl.” That was Martin’s voice; a vague, insubstantial sound apparently coming from within Johnny’s own head. And Biel, pausing in mid-stroke to glance back, said,

  “That’s it directly above us, I think. Ten metres, perhaps. Can you see it, Martin?”

  “No. Not from here. But you’re probably right; I was beginning to wonder when we were going to reach it.”

  “So was I,” said Johnny faintly, and Biel chuckled.

  “Don’t worry, Herr Videl, we’re almost there. And well over halfway up the cliff.” Chuck went the ice-pick, and another spinning sliver of light jerked away into infinity. Johnny adjusted his numbed fingers on the ice and raised his body another eighteen inches nearer its ultimate goal.

  The ledge gradually came into view above his head; a thin hair-line of shadow, with a hard, sparkling edge that grew steadily more ragged. Slowly it came nearer, painfully slowly; until it was possible to see its length stretched across the side of the cliff and out of sight; fissured with deep cavities and with smoky hollows that hissed audibly. Johnny had grown accustomed to almost all the noises the ice could make; to the sudden, sharp, nerve-shattering cracks, the slow powdery slithers, the creakings, the splittings, and – most dreadful of all – to the deep, resonant, near-human groan that sometimes swelled outwards from deep inside the cliff. But the hissing was a new sound, a sound that stood for momentary safety; and not the most mellifluous of Chopin’s nocturnes could have sounded as sweet to Johnny’s ears.