The war suited Eisner: he wanted it to go on and on. In a sense he’d been relieved that the Axis hadn’t captured Egypt: it looked unlikely now that it ever would. In fact, things weren’t going well for Hitler anywhere. First Alamein, then the Anglo-American landings in the Maghreb, the defection of the Vichy French in Tunisia, and, just last month, the most devastating event of all – the defeat of Axis forces at Stalingrad, and the capture of 90,000 soldiers. True, they seemed to be holding off the Allies in Tunisia, but it was only a matter of time before they were kicked out.
The war in Egypt would continue, though: at least, Eisner hoped so. That was Calvin’s mission. To create a fifth column of Allied deserters, who would strike from within, at both military and economic targets. The beauty of it was that the deserters wouldn’t even know they were working for the enemy: they would be convinced that their operations were being carried out in the glorious name of private enterprise. It was Calvin who had planned this scheme, who’d suggested using Eisner’s family business – trading in women – as a way of sponsoring the project, as well as moving in on smuggling, drugs, gun-running and prostitution. Despite having been bedridden for months, Calvin had also been instrumental in devising the STENDEC operation, a complex Abwehr plan to destroy Allied command in Egypt.
Eisner lifted his hand to knock on the door, hesitated. He was still chary of telling Calvin that Nolan was alive. Calvin had his own reasons for being satisfied that Eisner had finished her off: he’d even complimented him on it – a rare honour. Eisner suspected that Nolan had had something to do with the state Calvin was in – the crippled, scarcely human shell that lurked in these basements. Calvin had always thought him incompetent: he would be consumed with vitriol when he discovered that Eisner’s claim was empty – that he hadn’t succeeded in killing Nolan after all. He raised his hand again: before he could knock he heard a sibilant whisper. ‘Come in, friend Sayfaddin.’ Eisner opened the door.
The cellar stood in shadow, apart from the corona of light around a single oil lamp. The walls were covered with faded hangings, the room dominated by an ancient four-poster bed, draped with mosquito nets. The place smelt of mildew and wet rot. On one side there was a wireless cubicle, partitioned by curtains, and on the other a desk, bookshelves and a dilapidated leather armchair. The armchair was occupied by a Buddha figure in dark clothes, visible only in outline.
Calvin usually kept his face hooded, but Eisner had glimpsed it once and had been appalled. The features were so hideously disfigured it might have been a mask – a composite of scars, burns and skingrafts, brittle jawhinges, relict scabs of nose and ears, a mouth like a sphincter, eyepits concealed behind round lenses of dark glass. Calvin’s right leg was a stump: he had shrapnel in his trunk and knees, and his right arm had been amputated at the shoulder. His remaining arm tapered down to abnormally long fingers, like thin spiderlegs. Eisner knew that it was these fingers that had given rise to Calvin’s nickname, the Black Widow: his real name was Heinrich Rohde.
Rohde watched Eisner strut into the room. Despite his mutilated body, his senses were acute – more acute than ever: he was perfectly aware that Eisner had hesitated for a long time before coming in: that meant he had bad news to impart.
Rohde had been in Egypt for only a few months, yet he’d already begun to whip the deserter bands into shape, had already set in motion the STENDEC op. His recovery had been nothing short of miraculous. On that last job in Libya his hand had been almost slashed off: his throat had been cut from ear to ear. He’d been exposed to an explosion so powerful that it would certainly have killed him had he not been shielded by the bodies of his men. He’d been careless, though. He should have suspected that Caine’s team had set charges secretly among the Olzon-13 cylinders. Thanks to the SAS, the entire supply had been destroyed. Not that it would have made any difference to the Allied offensive. The SAS mission had, in the end, been part of a deception plan aimed at giving the Panzer Army the impression that the advance would start later than it did. The British had made a fool of him: all that had kept him going during his months in traction was the desire for revenge. He’d dreamed up STENDEC while lying in his hospital room: if it succeeded, it would be the ultimate payback.
Eisner was standing nervously in front of him, clutching what looked like a photograph. Rohde let him squirm. Eisner was no fool: his special skills and attributes gave him unique value. Yet he had a fatal flaw. Rohde had suspected it for a long time, but now, living under the same roof, so to speak, he had proof. He knew about the girls who’d vanished in transit to the palace, the breathing holes in the boot of Eisner’s car, the grottoes where he played his horse-and-jockey games, the shallow graves in the desert. Rohde had served in Heydrich’s Einsatzkommando in Russia: he’d done his share of butchery. Eisner’s penchant for sodomizing and murdering girls, though, was an addiction he couldn’t control. Rohde guessed that, on a conscious level, he was hardly even aware that he was doing it.
He wondered what had perturbed Eisner – if he, too, had had news of STENDEC. It was unlikely: Rohde had never revealed the full details of the STENDEC scheme to him, knowing that the man, though a professed German, was actually Egyptian at heart: he would be horrified by what the contents of the black box implied.
‘What’s that you’re holding? ’ he enquired abruptly.
No matter how often Eisner heard Rohde’s voice, he never ceased to find it chilling. Rohde spoke German with a breathless lisp that to Eisner sounded effeminate, as if Rohde himself wasn’t there – as if some queen possessed his husk of a body.
He took a shaky breath. ‘It’s a photograph, delivered by a messenger from the palace this morning. There’s no doubt it’s genuine. It shows the Nolan girl. It was taken the day Tripoli fell – 23 January 1943. That means she was alive three months after the crash. She survived.’
‘Give it to me.’
Eisner handed him the photo: there was a long pause. Eisner popped sweat, waited for the explosion. Calvin’s hollow rasp of laughter made him jump. It wasn’t what he’d been expecting: it sent a shockwave down his back.
‘So, all this time you’ve been telling me that Nolan was at the bottom of the Nile, when she’s actually alive.’
Eisner rubbed sweat off his forehead with a handkerchief: it angered him that Rohde could make him feel this vulnerable.
‘How could I know? There wasn’t even a hint. The current intelligence is that she’s living with deserters.’
‘Women like Nolan don’t desert.’
‘No, that’s true. She’s had some kind of breakdown, I think.’
Rohde didn’t answer. The shadows, and his hooded, expressionless face, masked the fact that he was fighting back absolute fury – a rage so acute that for a moment he was tempted to slip out his weapon and shoot Eisner in the guts. He’d let her get away. Again. He would pay for that.
Nolan had been responsible for Rohde’s fall from grace with Rommel. It was Nolan, not Caine, who’d been the chief architect of the Olzon-13 debacle: her sudden arrival had changed everything. Caine and his big gorilla friend had been happily ripping each other apart before she’d turned up. Rohde desperately wanted her dead, but he’d learned patience lying in those hospital beds. It would come: that was certain, and this time he wouldn’t have to leave it to Eisner.
He let the anger drain out of him. What mattered now was STENDEC. If it succeeded, STENDEC would do for them all.
‘If Nolan is with the deserters, we will find her. Until then, forget about her: STENDEC is more important.’
If Rohde’s tone was intended to put Eisner at ease, it had the opposite effect. The Abwehr man was as vindictive as they came, and this dismissive attitude was unnerving. Eisner was quite aware that his blunder would come back to haunt him, just when he least expected it.
He pocketed his handkerchief. ‘Why, is there a hitch with STENDEC? I thought it was all going according to plan.’
‘Yesterday I received a disturbing report from my sourc
e in Panzer Army command in Tunisia: a battalion of the Totenkopfverbande has been tasked to retrieve the black box.’
‘What?’ Thoughts of Nolan vanished abruptly from Eisner’s mind.
‘I didn’t know the Totenkopf Division was even deployed in North Africa.’
‘It isn’t. This is just one unit – a motorized battalion. Officially, it’s scouting ahead of 164 Panzer, east of the Matmata Hills. I don’t believe this is a coincidence. My latest report confirms that the battalion’s recon company caught up with a small British commando group just short of the el-Fayya pass. They were in possession of the black box.’
‘You mean Caversham’s squad?’
‘I’m assuming so. There was a contact: the British escaped. The Totenkopf gave chase, but something unexpected happened. The Tommies made a defensive stand at el-Fayya bridge.’
‘Against an entire Totenkopf company?’
‘Yes, and they held it for a night and a day. That looks to me like a classic holding operation: keeping the enemy at bay while they sent the black box on ahead. We must salute them, my friend. They risked their lives in order to make sure our black box is transported behind their lines.’
Rohde grated a chortle. Eisner shook his head in apparent confusion. He smiled inwardly: now Rohde was praising British courage in defeating German soldiers, who were going all out to impede an operation against the British. It was going from the sublime to the ridiculous. He knew that the Abwehr had set up the STENDEC op with infinite care and great expense. How incredibly irritating for them that the black box should be intercepted by their own side.
‘I don’t understand. Why would the Totenkopf interfere with an Abwehr operation?’
‘I can only speculate. Their orders come from SS command, of course. Himmler and his cronies have been trying to discredit the Abwehr for years. There’ve been arrests, even allegations of treason. Now things are turning sour on every front, they may be trying to put the blame on us. If STENDEC succeeds, it will be a major coup. It will reinstate us in the eyes of the OKW. Their objective may be to prevent that.’
‘So what can we do about it?’
‘Nothing. We can only hope that whoever has the black box now is good enough to elude the Totenkopf. We can also pray that they don’t open it. At least, not before they get it inside GHQ.’
36
SS-Sturmscharführer Gert Lohman had confiscated the Tommy-gun that No. 2 Platoon had found in the blockhouse tunnel. The rifleman who’d picked it up had been reluctant to hand it over. ‘A souvenir, that is, sir. That Brit potted three of us with it before we got him. I reckon he was already wounded: stayed behind to hold us off.’
You had to give it to the Brits, Lohman thought: they were stubborn in defence. There’d been only a handful of them, yet they’d inflicted more than seventy casualties on the recon company, and taken out all five of the armoured cars they’d had in support. Their position had been favourable, of course, and they’d had a bit of help from the Desert Air Force, but still, you had to admit it – they were good.
Lohman’s No. 1 Platoon had been held in reserve during the assault – rightly so, in his judgement, because they’d suffered a battering in the ambush at the foot of the pass and had had an entire night patrol wiped out. They’d moved up after the battle, traversing the killing zone on foot: in those five hundred yards Lohman had come across some of the worst carnage he’d ever seen: headless bodies, limbless torsos, men with their guts spilling, men grovelling in gore, begging to be put out of their misery. The place was dotted with wrecked armour: the whole place reeked of sulphur and burnt meat.
Bloodshed didn’t unnerve Lohman. A 32-year-old warrant officer of the Totenkopf Division, he’d been with them since the time they’d cleared the Warsaw Ghetto, since the days when all his comrades had been blond-haired, blue-eyed Nordics like himself. In those days the Waffen SS had been an elite: it was only their high casualty rate that had obliged them to accept any riff-raff – even Slavs. People they’d originally been told were subhumans were now wearing the Death’s Head badge.
Lohman had been a camp-guard before the war: he’d learned early that authority was force. He didn’t think of himself as a dishonourable man, but he had no namby-pamby ideas about chivalry. The aim of war was to kill the enemy in any way possible: he’d been with the Div. in 1940 when they’d machine-gunned almost a hundred men of the English Norfolk Regiment, after they’d surrendered. Orders were orders: war was war.
Lohman had taken command of 1 Platoon when his officer, SS-Obersturmführer Franz Mueller, had copped it in the ambush. He wasn’t exactly heartbroken over Mueller’s demise. The man had been a conceited little prig who, in Lohman’s opinion, would sooner or later have dropped them in the crap. He’d insisted on riding with the motorcycle detachment rather than hanging back with the riflemen: he hadn’t listened when Lohman had warned him about the possibility of ambush. He’d been one of the first to get blitzed.
Then there’d been that ridiculous business of negotiating for the black box, instigated by the commander of the armoured-car unit. Lohman knew there were strict orders not to damage the box but, after all – seven men in jeeps – they could easily have bagged it without having to wave a white flag. It had all gone cockeyed anyway: the AFV commander had got scragged, and the Brits had hopped it.
Lohman’s men had gone over the gunpit and the blockhouse with a fine toothcomb: they’d found a field-gun, smallarms, three heavy machine-guns, a mortar and a rocket-launcher, but no trace of the black box. Now, they were assembling in the blockhouse yard, smoking and slurping water. Lohman squatted by his wireless operator, wondering what message to send Company HQ. 1 Platoon had been tasked to find the black box, and he was loath to report a failure. If the box wasn’t here, it must have been moved – but when? They’d found two dead Brits in the blockhouse, one dead and two wounded in the gunpit. Another had been blown to smithereens when he’d rammed the sfz60 with a Bren-gun carrier. Two had been seen bunking it just before the RAF bombers had come in. That made eight, but Lohman knew for certain there’d only been seven after the ambush. At that point, they must have left at least one man at the bridge. At the ambush site, too, he’d seen three jeeps. One was still lying on her side on the field: two were missing. It was possible they’d dispatched the black box by jeep before the contact at the bridge was even initiated. It could easily be behind enemy lines by now, in which case the game was up.
Lohman hoped so. He didn’t know what the black box was, only that it was trouble: he didn’t want to waste any more time on a wild-goose chase. He had a feeling that the whole strategic situation had gone batshit. Forward elements of B Company, who were supposed to secure the bridge, had reported that 164 Panzer Division had turned back: the el-Fayya position they’d fought so hard for was going to be abandoned. Lohman didn’t know exactly what this meant, but he had a damn’ good idea: the enemy must have broken through.
He watched a solemn procession of stretcher-bearers trooping in with the two wounded Brits. He’d already seen them at the gunpit: one was a plump type with a face like a fish, the other a seven-foot giant with shaggy black hair, grizzled features, an overhanging cliff of a forehead, limbs like crane-gantries. He looked like an ogre out of a nightmare: Lohman remembered drawing a bead on him after the ambush, thinking that he couldn’t miss such a target.
He told the wireless operator to wait for him, got up, ordered the corporal in charge of the stretcher party to halt. He unstrapped his helmet, tipped it back, peered at the two POWs on the stretchers. He had wanted to interrogate them back at the gunpit, but neither had been fully conscious, and the corporal had been busy patching them up. He noted that their eyes were open now: the plump one had been laid face down: his back was covered in bandages that were seeping gore. The big man stared vacantly at the sky.
Lohman glanced at the corporal-orderly, a slightly built, milk-skinned farm-boy who’d probably been recruited straight out of school.
‘Gi
ven them any morphia?’ he asked.
‘Not yet.’
‘They say anything?’
The corporal grinned. ‘The big one said Fuck off, Fritz. That’s all I understood, anyway. I don’t speak English, do you?’
‘A little. Find anything on them?’
The corporal hesitated. He took a short-barrelled firearm out of his belt, handed it to Lohman. The Sturmscharführer made a tsk tsk sound. It was a British-made shotgun – a twelve-bore, with its barrels sawn short. ‘Is it his?’ he demanded, nodding at the giant.
‘Must be. Found it right next to him.’
‘This is an illegal weapon. You could get in trouble for having this.’
He weighed the shotgun in his hands, eyed the orderly questioningly.
‘Take it,’ the corporal said. ‘I was going to hand it in, anyway.’
‘Any ammunition?’
The corporal dipped in a pouch, brought out a couple of twelve-bore cartridges, gave them to Lohman. He waved the stretcher party on into the tunnel. Lohman watched them until they disappeared, paused for a moment, then followed in their footsteps. He found them in the makeshift aid-post in one of the blockhouse rooms. The stretchers were on the floor: the corporal-orderly was preparing to give the giant a morphia shot.
‘Wait,’ Lohman told him. He crouched next to the prisoner. The man glared at him: his eyes were black nails deepset in shadowed pits.
‘Name, rank and number?’ Lohman said in passable English.
‘Wallace,’ the man coughed. ‘Frederick. Private. 811610.’
Death or Glory III Page 23