Winter's Bullet

by William Osborne

“Who’s a clever boy, then?”

  Tygo stared at Ursula. He felt so angry but at the same time he understood what she had done. Perhaps if circumstances were different he would have acted the same.

  “And when you go to get her, I’ll get my money.” She laughed unpleasantly.

  Tygo fought to keep his anger under control. “You know where she is?”

  The girl nodded.

  “Take me there.”

  Ursula frowned at Tygo for a long moment. “You want to tell me what’s so special about your girlfriend that you’d risk your life for her?”

  “No,” said Tygo. “And she’s not my girlfriend.”

  It took a while before they reached their destination. Ursula was taking no chances and doubled back on their route a couple of times. Eventually Tygo found himself in the old Jewish quarter of the town, now largely deserted and abandoned. A few solitary figures shuffled along the sidewalks, pushing the little wooden foraging carts. The two of them had made the entire journey in silence, and that suited Tygo fine.

  Tygo spotted the same three boys from Dam Square, and when they suddenly started to play their instruments he knew they must be close to where Willa was being held.

  It turned out that the Resistance safe house was in fact an old factory building with heavy industrial sliding doors to the front. Cut into one of them was a small door with a black grille and inspection hatch.

  Ursula knocked three times on the door and waited. After a moment the hatch slid back and a face appeared.

  “Bob,” said the man.

  “Hope,” said Ursula.

  The bolts were drawn back and the door opened. Tygo and Ursula lifted their bikes through. A young man with a straggly beard was standing just inside, a British Sten gun slung over one shoulder and a bandolier of grenades over the other. He looked at Tygo like he wanted to punch him.

  “Scum,” he hissed. Tygo felt his cheeks color. “Follow me.”

  It was dark inside the building, but Tygo could make out an abandoned workshop beyond and rows of what looked like printing presses. No paper, no work. The young man shoved him in the ribs with the muzzle of the Sten, and Tygo kept walking, Ursula bringing up the rear.

  “You wait here!” the guard said to Ursula.

  “What about my money?” she said.

  “I don’t know anything about that,” the guard replied. He indicated for Tygo to climb the steel staircase to the landing above the printing presses where the offices were. They stopped outside one of the offices. The words ACCOUNTS DEPT were painted on the door.

  “Inside.”

  Tygo stepped in, the door slamming behind him. Willa looked up from the cot she had been lying on and sprang to her feet.

  “Tygo!” she exclaimed. “You’re alive.”

  “Alive and kicking,” Tygo said. She was pleased to see him, it seemed, and he realized he was pleased to see her again too. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, they’ve treated me well—food, drink—I just don’t understand what’s going on. Where have you been all this time?”

  Tygo realized it had been nearly a whole day since they had seen each other.

  “Barcelona. I’ve been to Barcelona.”

  “What?” Willa stared at him, unbelieving. “You mean in Spain?”

  “I know it’s incredible, but I promise you it’s really true. There’s something really big and secret going on at the moment. We went in this special plane to a hotel in Barcelona, where Krüger gave some sort of … money, I think it was, to a woman, a very important woman called Eva Duarte. She must have been from Argentina—I heard her say Buenos Aires.”

  “I’ve heard of her.” Willa was frowning.

  “On the way back we got attacked and I shot down a plane.”

  “I don’t believe that.” Willa punched him playfully on the arm.

  “Ow!” Tygo yelped. “See? I even got shot!” He slipped off his coat and showed Willa his bandaged arm.

  “Really? Does it hurt?”

  “Yes, it does.”

  Willa looked at him. “What’s happening, Tygo?”

  Tygo sat down on the bed. What was happening? He tried to make sense of everything.

  “It’s complicated, Willa,” he said at last, “but I’m pretty sure there’s some big plan happening with Krüger, something to do with”—he lowered his voice—“Adolf Hitler and a general called Müller. He’s head of the Gestapo. I heard him say the words ‘Operation Black Sun’ and tomorrow’s date. Krüger needs to find the Red Queen by then, or he’s in big trouble. He’s sent me to find you—he’s convinced you know where it might be.”

  Willa shook her head. “For the last time, I don’t know.”

  “Are you sure? Anything … some little thing your mother may have mentioned, a place she used to go? If I can get him the stone I know he will set me free, and we can get away from the city together; we’ll find a way, and two’s better than one. Do you trust me?”

  But before she could answer, the door swung open and a heavily built man in his twenties with a scruffy beard marched in. He was smoking the stub of a thick cigar and had a Colt .45 tucked in his belt. He was wearing a red velvet shirt with a white silk scarf tied around his neck. Tygo thought he looked like the Laughing Cavalier from the famous portrait by Frans Hals.

  “Ah, how touching—the Nazi ferret comes to save his girlfriend.”

  Tygo got up. “For the last time, she’s not my girlfriend!”

  The man drove his fist into Tygo’s stomach, and he pitched backward. “That’s enough from a stinking stooge. I do the talking here.”

  Tygo tottered to his feet, winded. “Who are you?” he said, rubbing his stomach.

  “Who am I?” boomed the man. “Who are you?”

  “You know who I am.”

  “Do I? Are you some Nazi-loving collaborator who seeks to save his own skin by helping the Gestapo rob and plunder? Is that who you are?”

  “You know I have no choice! It’s that or get shot!”

  “We all have a choice, Tygo Winter.”

  “Let us go,” said Tygo.

  “Let you go?” laughed the man. “Why on earth should I do that? And don’t worry, I wouldn’t waste a bullet on you, either. Come with me, both of you.”

  There was no choice. No time to wonder what was happening. Numbly, Tygo and Willa followed the man out of the room and along the metal walkway to the office at the end. This one was marked SALES. The man stopped outside the door.

  “But first,” he said, “there’s someone who wants to see you, someone who made the right choice, Tygo.”

  Tygo tried to imagine who that might be. The man pushed open the door and shoved Tygo into the room.

  Sitting behind a desk was a young woman. Her hair was cut very short like a boy’s, and there was a livid red scar on one side of her face. But there was no doubting who it was.

  It was Alisa, Tygo’s sister.

  The small electric train rattled along its narrow-gauge lines, taking its precious cargo from deep beneath the Austrian town of Sankt Georgen back up to the surface.

  General Müller was sitting in the first open-topped wagon, his face pouring with sweat. The heat deep in these caverns was terrific, but he had insisted on seeing the incredible workshops and laboratories that slave labor from the nearby Mauthausen concentration camps had built deep underground.

  Entire factories were operating here; the new jet planes were built in special galleries. But most vital was the small, top-secret facility that had created the bomb now strapped to one of the wagons behind Müller. This bomb was just the first wonder weapon, the head scientist had assured him. They would produce many more. It seemed fitting to Müller that such a hellish thing had been made deep underground.

  Ahead the tunnel was widening out into a large gallery, which linked up to other tunnels, all with their own narrow-gauge railways. Thousands of prisoners were being marched in and out through the entrance, their shifts beginning or ending. They wer
e dressed in ragged striped pajamas and their faces were skull-like, nothing more than skin and bone. The facilities operated twenty-four hours a day.

  So this was the policy of “Vernichtung durch Arbeit” in action.

  Müller caught the acrid smell of the men as the train went past them and for a moment a wave of nausea seized him. He fought it back and only allowed himself to breathe freely once they were outside.

  An army truck was waiting with escort jeeps and Müller watched as the wooden crate containing the bomb was carefully loaded onto the back of it. There was the usual paperwork to be signed in triplicate, and then Müller saluted the head scientist and climbed aboard the truck.

  It was a short trip from the underground laboratory to the nearby airfield at Linz, and thankfully no daylight air raids to worry about. He had left Eva Braun and her sister Gretl there to have lunch. Gretl’s husband, Hermann Fegelein, was the liaison officer between Hitler and Himmler.

  The small convoy was waved through the police checkpoint at the airfield and drove directly into a hangar where a bomber was waiting. Once again, Müller supervised the loading of the wonder weapon into the plane. It would take off later that day and fly to Peenemünde, where it would pick up the rocket that would carry this precious payload. From there both bomb and rocket would be taken to the secret airfield outside Amsterdam, and then, finally, everything would be in place.

  Müller checked his watch. There was just time for him to join the ladies for some strudel perhaps, and then they too must be on the road. He marched briskly across the snow-covered tarmac to the small cafeteria, smoke billowing from its cowled steel chimney.

  The two women sat at a corner table, their lunch finished. A cozy fire blazed in the stove and pleasant folk music was playing on the radio.

  Müller took off his hat. “Perhaps I might join you for a coffee?”

  “That would be delightful,” said Eva. “Did you conclude your business, Herr General?” Her eyes were bright and hard, her lips a line of deep vermilion.

  Müller sat down. There was a small posy of flowers in a vase and a pretty linen tablecloth on the table. He remembered the hell on earth for hundreds of thousands of prisoners just a few miles away, then shrugged.

  “Most satisfactorily,” he said.

  The thickset man, Tygo discovered, was called Pieter, and he was the leader of this particular Resistance cell. He left them alone. Just the three of them. It was an emotional reunion, and for the first time in as long as Tygo could remember, he had cried, broken down and really cried, great hacking sobs. He felt embarrassed that Willa was there, but he couldn’t stop himself. It was like a great weight he hadn’t realized was pressing down on him had been suddenly lifted.

  After that, he felt calmer, and he and Willa sat together on a battered sofa. They listened as Alisa explained what had happened the day she was transported from the city.

  “After they had gathered us all together, they marched us out of the city to the east. All the men and boys in one column and the women and girls in another. We must have walked thirty miles that day. It was scorching hot and there was no water. Anyone who protested was shot. Anyone who stopped walking was shot. Finally we arrived at the railhead. They herded us into two sheds and left us there for twenty-four hours. Then the train arrived with the wooden boxcars. They had to hose the insides down and pour gasoline inside—it was horrible, God knows where they’d come from. They issued each of us with fresh identity papers and informed us we were being sent to Germany as ‘guest workers.’ Well, that was when I knew I had to escape, or die trying.”

  Tygo and Willa listened, wide-eyed.

  “Just as we were being loaded I saw my opportunity—there was a great crush around the loading ramp and I managed to roll underneath the wagon. Then I was able to wedge myself up over the wagon’s axles, out of sight. They checked under the train before we left, but they didn’t find me. It was night by the time we pulled out, and I managed to hang on for a few miles, then before the train could pick up speed, I let go and fell into the middle of the tracks. Unfortunately I hit something in the dark—might have been a nail head—and sliced my face.” She pointed to the livid scar. “Anyway, I didn’t hang around. I ran through the night and ended up hiding under a railway bridge. That was where the Resistance found me. They had come there to plant a bomb. That man, Pieter, he saved my life. He carried me all the way back to their safe house, got a doctor to stitch me up, found me penicillin when the wound went septic, nursed me back to health. When I was better, I knew two things: I couldn’t go home, and I wanted to fight. I’ve been part of Pieter’s unit ever since.”

  She stood up. “So that’s why you’re here. I wanted to get you away from that criminal Krüger and protect you before some other Resistance group really does shoot you down in the street. The war is nearly over, Tygo, and accounts are going to be settled. I got Pieter to agree to do it for me a few days ago—you’ve been a hard man to track down, haven’t you? Ursula nearly got you a couple of times, but Willa here proved to be the bait we needed.”

  So Ursula was never going to kill him, Tygo realized. He didn’t know how he felt about her now.

  “Krüger has been keeping you busy, has he?”

  Tygo nodded again, then he stood up too. “Thank you, Alisa.” He stepped toward her and they hugged. “What you’ve done is amazing. You always protected me, didn’t you?”

  “You’re my little brother.” She pinched his cheek. “You’re safe now—well, safer anyway.”

  Tygo looked at her and shook his head. “If only that were true, Alisa, but Krüger has ordered me to do one last thing for him. If I don’t, he’ll hunt me down.”

  “Oh, Tygo …”

  “It’s not my fault, and I need Willa with me—but I can’t say why. I just need you to let us go. Please help me one more time.”

  Alisa sighed. “All right, let me talk to Pieter.”

  They found him down among the printing presses, cleaning a stripped-down Bren gun.

  “Why on earth would I let some Nazi collaborator slink back to his master only to tell him where he can find a group of Resistance fighters?” he said.

  “I wouldn’t do that!” Tygo said indignantly.

  “And I’m supposed to take your word for it?”

  “Don’t take my word, take my sister’s. She’ll vouch for me.”

  “Your sister is a very brave young woman and the only reason that you are still standing in front of me and not strung up from a lamppost!” Pieter withdrew the cleaning rod from the barrel and held it up to the light to check it was clean. Satisfied, he started to reassemble the light machine gun.

  Tygo’s mind raced; there had to be something he could offer this brute.

  “Information—what if I could get you some information?”

  “Like what?”

  “There’s … there’s a big operation being planned—it’s called Black Sun. I’ve heard Krüger and General Müller, the head of the Gestapo, talking about it. Adolf Hitler is involved.”

  “Hitler!” Now Tygo had Pieter’s interest. “Here?”

  “I think so. Krüger has papers in his safe—I can look at them, find out more about it.”

  “And how do you propose to get into his safe?”

  Tygo dug into his pocket and produced the shiny new copy of the safe key.

  Pieter glanced at Alisa, who nodded.

  “All right, Ferret, go and see what you can find. If it’s any use, I’ll let you go.”

  “Thank you,” Tygo said.

  “But the girl stays here till you get back.”

  Tygo frowned, but he knew there was nothing he could do. “All right, agreed.” He crossed to Willa. “I’ll be back as quick as I can.”

  Willa nodded and, to his surprise, quickly kissed him on the cheek.

  “What was that for?” Tygo said. He felt himself blush, and Alisa laughed.

  Willa looked a bit awkward now. “Why do you care?” she said. “You’re not my
boyfriend.”

  The light was beginning to fade in the sky as Tygo left the printing works on his bicycle. It must be almost four o’clock, he thought as he pedaled furiously through the deserted streets. A nearby clock tower confirmed that by striking the hour, and he made it back to HQ pretty fast, only being stopped twice and asked to produce his Gestapo warrant disk to Dutch and German police patrols. Tygo could see they were becoming more nervous, their tempers shorter. Since the New Year he felt an underlying anxiety running through the city. Everyone knew the end was near. The south of the country, beyond Antwerp, had been liberated since Christmas.

  Once inside the headquarters, he sprinted up to the third floor and along the corridor to Krüger’s corner office. He hadn’t quite worked out what he would do if Krüger was there, but luck was finally on his side: The corridor was empty and the office was dark. Perhaps Krüger was down in the cafeteria, or resting after the rigors of the Barcelona trip and all the extra work of the last few days.

  Tygo tried the office door. It was locked. He was carrying his set of picks as always, but his heart was going a mile a minute. He had the door open, and then closed and relocked from the inside, in a trice. He was behind Krüger’s desk just as quickly, slotting his copied key into the safe. He took a deep breath and twisted it.

  The lock flicked back and he turned the handle, sliding the bolt clear. He looked inside: There was the pouch of diamonds, some small ingots of gold, a large bag of gold sovereigns, and lots of documents and certificates. Tygo quickly shuffled through them until he found what he was looking for. Right in the middle of the paper pile was a slim manila folder with the Reich’s eagle on it, and the German words for “Black Sun”: Schwarze Sonne. Next to that were printed the words ABOVE TOP SECRET. This was the information he wanted.

  Tygo took the file and opened it on Krüger’s desk. Inside were a series of typed sheets. He scanned the pages as fast as he could, his heart pounding. If Krüger caught him now, no amount of excuses or pleading would save his skin. Tygo flicked to the last page, a Teletyped message on thin tissue-like paper.