by Noel Hynd
Cochrane came to the side of the house. He held his weapon aloft and peeked around the house. Goff had been correct, there were two of them. Long coats, fedoras. Mulish and sadistic looking. There was an old French car behind the Benz, something they had requisitioned or stolen. As Cochrane studied them, they had the doors of the Benz open and were inspecting it, poking through book that Frieda had left in the back seat. One of them pulled out her suitcase.
Unexpectantly, Frieda arrived beside Cochrane. Ilse was with her. At first some anger flashed in Cochrane. The girls were taking an unnecessary risk by being there. Then Cochrane thought again. He pulled Ilse close to him.”
“Did you see the men who came before?” he asked in German.
She nodded, still half crazed.
“Tell me if those are the men,” he said.
Ever so slightly, she peered around the corner. She recoiled. With wide eyes, she nodded. She held up two fingers.
“That’s two of them?” he asked.
She nodded again.
He signaled to the girls to step back a few paces. Then he looked again and the two Germans had stepped away from the car. They were each carrying their pistols by hand and were in the open space between the two vehicles and the cottage. They were about twenty meters away.
Cochrane stepped out enough to give himself a good line of fire. With no warning, he aimed and fired. He hit Adelman full in the chest and a half second later pulled the trigger a second time. He was screaming, wounded badly but not dead. But the second man, Bauer, was already in a crouching position from having seen Cochrane jump out from the side of the house. Cochrane’s bullet missed completely.
By instinct Cochrane’s aim went back to Adelman and the second shot hit him in the chest, too. But Bauer’s shot came close. It shattered the wood a foot from Cochrane’s head. Shards and splinters flew across his face as he ducked back behind the house. He might have been killed, but he heard Goff shout from the other corner of the cottage. There was a barrage of bullets and then return fire. Cochrane reached his weapon around the corner again, looked, and saw the Gestapo agent dancing backwards from the impact of Goff’s shots.
Cochrane fired two more shots and dropped the man.
Goff emerged. So did Cochrane. Adelman was bleeding profusely and gasping. He was lunging for the gun he had dropped. Goff reached him first, grabbed the gun and kicked the fallen man in the head.
He turned to Cochrane. Goff was crazed. “Stay away from me, Bill, God damn it,” he said. “I’ll finish this.”
Cochrane knew to give Goff the space he wanted.
Goff dragged and pushed each of them to a propped up position against their car. They were both still alive and still had some struggle in them.
“You did this to this family?” he screamed at them in German. “You did this?” he howled. “You won’t do it again!”
He walked away from them and then returned from the barn area with a canister of gasoline. “Sons of fucking bitches!” he screamed in English. He doused both the men in gasoline. He stepped back as they looked up at him with imploring eyes. He took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one.
“Bastards!” he screamed.
He took a deep draw on his cigarette and threw the match on the gasoline. They ignited in screams and spasms. Their car went up in flames and died with them.
He stepped many meters from the car and came to Cochrane’s side. Frieda assembled there too with Ilse.
Goff was strangely calm again.
“There,” he said. “That felt real good. Let’s get to France before the flames draw a crowd.”
“Will your resistance people be ready?” Cochrane asked.
“I need to make one phone call along the way. They’ll be ready. Let’s move.”
Chapter 54
Germany and France
Merch 1943
From there, leaving the burning auto behind them, it might have been considered a downhill run. They drove at a foolhardy speed across the southwestern region of Germany. The sky was clear but there were icy patches. Once, when Goff was at the wheel, the car skidded off a narrow road and was only returned to service by all four of the travelers getting out and pushing. Freida, being the lightest, was at the wheel to guide the vehicle back onto its proper path.
There was little time to dwell on the horror of the afternoon. All of them knew that there were huge potential hazards with crossing into France. Odds were that not all of them would survive. Worse, time was of the essence. Goff’s French contacts would only be out between one and two thirty on this frigid morning. They would be waiting across the Rhine on the outskirts of a town called Village-Neuf.
Cochrane was at the wheel for the final half hour, navigating a winding back road heading south parallel to the river. They were in an area that Goff knew well. He had made similar crossings before, he explained, though by makeshift raft of skiff, not across ice. But the two female passengers were growing impatient.
Eventually, they ditched the car. They grabbed what bags they could carry and continued along on shoe leather. The footing by the edge of the road was treacherous, as was the cat and mouse game with local police. Fortunately the area was remote and police patrols were minimal. Black market people, by spreading around some hard currency, had made sure that certain patrols were minimal.
“Which way is the river narrower?” Cochrane asked the girls.
They both pointed to a stretch to the south. There were a few lights from Village-Neuf across the water to peg the location. Goff gave a nod of agreement.
“Come on back up to the road,” Cochrane said. “It will make our footprints more obscure. Go as fast as we can. Let’s move a hundred meters.”
The girls were surprisingly fast. Ilse led the way at a moderate sprint. They arrived at an area where the path to the river was partially obscured by a stand of trees. Frieda went second, Goff third, Cochrane fourth. Cochrane was also positioned as the lookout. Every twenty meters or so he would look over his shoulder. Eventually he saw what he didn’t want to see.
On the hill above the road, he saw a car, a single pair of beams, then a second, then a third, fourth and fifth and a couple more. He stopped counting. German police, a local militia or Gestapo. It didn’t matter. They had somehow left a trail and were being followed.
“Cross the river! Now!” Cochrane said.
They made their way among the trees. Frieda stumbled. Cochrane tried to pick her up by the arm. He stumbled. Goff grabbed them both steadied them. They continued through the snow and a tangle of underbrush until they reached the edge of the river and the ice that covered it.
“I’ll go first, Cochrane said. “If the ice supports my weight, we’ll be okay. I’ll go on the far right side; Irv take the left. Keep the girls between us. But spread out. We don’t want too much weight on any stretch of ice.”
“The ice will be solid,” Ilse said. “When it got this cold when I was young a hundred people could skate.”
“My French friends are up the bank to the right,” Goff said. “There’s a road by the river. Go up there. Our friends will find us if we don’t find them. The code word is, “égalité.” Say it loud and clear or you might get shot.”
Cochrane went onto the ice, slipped and fell hard. But the ice held. He got up and slide-stepped about a hundred feet from Frieda. Ilse went closer to Goff. In the quarter moon he could see them, dark conspiratorial figures moving low across grayish-black ice.
They were halfway across the frozen river when an armada of vehicles flooded the German side of the river, the area that they had just left. The Benz that they had abandoned had marked their exit. They had managed to stay downriver by a hundred to a hundred and fifty meters. But now car lights swept across them.
Shooting began. There was a stray shot or two at first from their pursuers, then a fusillade. Cochrane knew that the four escapees were the targets. He could hear bullets hit the ice several meters from his left. He figured he was at the midpoint of crossin
g the river. He tried to run but the ice was rough and uneven. He kept falling. He glanced to his left. His three cohorts were still moving. They had maybe about fifty meters to go. It was impossible to know.
Then a number of things happened at once. A staccato blast of machinegun bullets blasted from behind and swept across the ice. They hit about ten feet apart and went around Cochrane, one hitting to his right, the other to his left. They missed him completely. Then there were tracers sweeping down the lake, more machine gun and then two flares from the contingent on the German side. Suddenly it was as bright as day, only worse.
Cochrane stopped and drew his pistol. He lay low on the ice and fired two rounds. The headlights from the German side were still flooding the lake. Suddenly in the full glare of two beams and he had the horrifying thought that none of them would make it to the French side alive. He hoped his shots would draw fire so at least the girls could make it across. He heard no shots from Irv’s direction. He feared that Goff had been hit and possibly killed.
He zigzagged in and out of a shadow but when another shot came it was far off. He was within ten feet, then five of the riverbank. He glanced to his forward left and saw Frieda arriving on the riverbank. Ilse was in front of her. Ilse turned and extended a hand. Frieda grabbed it and the two girls were safely ashore.
Cochrane fired again. Then all hell broke loose from the French side of the river Cochrane had no idea who was there in their support or how many there were, but the resistance had arrived with automatic weapons.
They had positioned themselves with cover, Cochrane assumed, and now, using the illuminated headlights as targets, were throwing barrage after barrage of bullets across the river. The seven pursuing cars were now on the dangerous end of a shooting gallery.
When the first barrage hit, Cochrane could hear screams from the German side. Several cars were hit, two of the fourteen headlamps went out, then a third. The German guns redirected from the four escapees to return the fire.
Cochrane scurried to his feet, slip-stepping on the ice and moving forward, first in the edge of beams, then beyond them. A stray shot came very close to him. It buzzed by his head. The ice in front of him was pock marked with bullet holes. He looked to his left and saw the two girls but no Irv Goff.
He struggled forward, slipped and fell again, almost lost his bag, but continued onward. He was within twenty meters of the shore when two bullets hit within a meter of him. He expected to be zipped by a third, but no shot came. The gun battle across the river continued, however. Single shots came from rifles, fusillades from automatic weapons.
He looked to the shore and saw a dark figure come down the riverbank to the girls. He recognized Irv Goff’s hulking figure. Cochrane was the only one of them still on the ice.
“Bill? You okay?” Goff called.
“I’m all right!”
“I’m getting the girls to a car!” Goff called back.
Goff took each by an arm and hustled them up the shoreline. Two Maquis figures emerged from the darkness, stooped low. Cochrane could see the outline of three vehicles. The shoreline was alive with French gunmen hunched behind trees. There was one car moving without headlamps. Goff protectively pushed the girls into the back seat.
Cochrane arrived on the shore, clutching his bag. At some point on the ice, he had banged his knee. He staggered. His foot landed on a tree branch thick with ice and he stumbled and started to fall. From somewhere out of the darkness two arms appeared. They were strong as a bear’s. The arms steadied him, held him up and caught him.
Cochrane looked up into a bold ruddy face. “Francais libres,” the man said. Free French. The man was maybe fifty-five. He wore a heavy dark sweater and a makeshift helmet. He was broad and powerful. He had a boy’s pale face, but with wrinkled skin.
“Américan,” Cochrane said. “Then, trying to remembering, said, “Liberté.”
“Eh?”
“Égalité!” Cochrane corrected.
The ruddy face laughed. “Blessé?” the Frenchman asked.
“Non! Ça va! Pas blessé” Not injured.
“Allons!” the man said. Let’s go!
The man hustled Cochrane to the lead car. There was a driver waiting. Goff stood in front of the back seat, shielding the two girls with his body. His pistol was in his belt. From somewhere he had acquired a carbine.
“You good?” Goff asked Cochrane as the Frenchman attended the doors.
“I’m good.”
“Take the passenger side in the front. Maurice is our driver.”
As Cochrane circled the car on a throbbing knee, Goff’s gaze was intent on the Germans on the other side of the river. As Cochrane opened his door to get in, Goff suddenly snarled, “Fucking bastards!” just loud enough for Maurice to hear and laugh. Then Goff, crouching near the car, raised the carbine and got off six fast shots. He hustled into the car at the same time as Cochrane. Their doors slammed in unison.
As Maurice pulled away, Cochrane saw a hothead French kid of maybe eighteen run forward to a crouching position about the riverbank and open up on the other side with a machine gun. The other cars quickly cranked their engines, the French kid finished his volley, ran and jumped in a car and everyone sped away in different directions.
“Any casualties?” Cochrane asked. There was another carbine at his feet.
“I think it was clean. No one hurt,” Goff said. “Not on this side, anyway. The other side, I think they got their noses bloodied. Look, I think our side fired five hundred rounds into a hundred foot area where they parked. We must have hit something.”
“How many people did you have?”
“Maybe a dozen. I don’t know,” Goff said. “Let me ask you something.”
“What’s that?”
“Have you ever been so glad to see a dozen Communists in your life?”
Cochrane laughed and allowed that he hadn’t. But his gaze was still on the river and any potential pursuers. Faintly, he thought he saw a familiar figure that had followed all the way from the other side.
“Son of a bitch,” Cochrane muttered.
“What?” Goff asked.
The vision of Cambulat and Skordeno filled Cochrane’s mind, as well as that of a thousand other Gestapo atrocities and unpaid debts. He reached to the carbine at his feet. “This thing loaded?” he asked.
“Wouldn’t be much use it if wasn’t,” Goff said.
Cochrane grabbed the carbine and opened his door. “Have Maurice wait fifty to a hundred meters up the road,” he said. “I’ve got some business.”
“Don’t get killed, meatball,” Goff said amiably. “Your weapon has six rounds and the first shot is already chambered. Have fun.”
The van slowed. Cochrane jumped out of it and took a position in the snowy busies along the side of the road. Maurice cut his lights and speed around a bed, leaving Cochrane in the near darkness. Everything was strangely silent, then Cochrane could hear footsteps, that of a heavy angry vicious man who was so maniacal in his devotion to his filthy job, that he had come all this way in pursuit.
He stopped thirty meters down the road. He raised an automatic pistol and sprayed bullets in the direction in which the van had disappeared. At the same time Cochrane took aim.
Wesselmann was walking forward now. Then he must have sensed something. He stopped. He cocked his head. His eyes were probably adjusting to the dim night. He drew a second weapon and from what Cochrane could see, which wasn’t much, he sensed danger in Cochrane’s direction.
Cochrane squeezed off a first shot and must have winged Wesselmann, because the figure in the dark staggered backwards, but began to fire the second firearm. Then Cochrane squeezed off a second shot, then a third and a fourth. He thought he saw Wesselmann sprawl, or spin or maybe he dived for cover. But he disappeared into the shadows of some frozen trees.
Cochrane waited for several seconds, then turned and ran. No shots came after him. He looked ahead toward the van and saw another figure standing in the road. At first he w
as torn with fear, but then he recognized Irv Goff, who was also holding an automatic rifle.
“Come on,” Goff said. “Got to move, Bill.”
“It was Wesselmann. I don’t know whether I got him or not,” Cochrane said.
The van doors opened and they slid in. This time Goff was up front next to Maurice and Cochrane was in the back seat with the girls. Maurice had a heavy foot and got them out of there in a hurry.
Several minutes passed. There was a heavy silence in the vehicle. Finally, Goff turned to
Cochrane.
“You got him, all right, meatball,” Goff said.
“How do you know?”
“From where I stood, from my angle,” Goff said, “I saw his head explode.”
Several seconds passed. “Jesus,” Frieda said.
Chapter 55
Vichy France to Switzerland
March 1943
From there, the strategy was basic: get as far away as fast as possible and don’t look back. Maurice was a prince of a driver with a touch of a daredevil tossed in. He wore a beret and a heavy scarf up around the lower half of his face. He knew the backroads and drove by the quarter moon, never stopping, infrequently slowing. They were about five kilometers northwest of Basel, but Maurice had no use for normal border crossings. He had his own way of getting to Switzerland. He drove parallel to the city on secondary roads, then cut sharply and went through a farmer’s field as the sky was lightening with dawn. The next thing anyone knew, they were in commercial neighborhood which sold farm products.
Cochrane knew the fix was in and was highly appreciative of it. Maurice drove into a barn. He hustled them all out of his car. There was a milk truck waiting. A new driver greeted them with a cigarette and a nervous tick to his left eye. Cochrane, Goff, Frieda and Ilse and crowded into the back of his truck. Then the milkman was out the rear door of the barn and soon on another street that had no connection to the first.
The other street had a high brick and cement wall on its other side, topped with broken bottles and barbed wire. The milkman wore a pistol. He drove parallel to the wall, then stopped and tooted his horn twice. He indicated that everyone should step out. Cochrane glanced at his watch. It was 5:47 on a freezing morning.