by Alex Gerlis
He found a cupboard with chef’s whites hanging like men standing to attention and remained in there until seven o’clock. The few people in the hotel as he left it were busy clearing up the bomb damage and no one paid any attention to him. He peered into the bar as he walked past it and saw the bodies were still there.
He had now adopted the identity and what he hoped was something approximating to the appearance of a Pierre Martin from Geneva. The Swiss was just a few years older than him but Prince felt the similarity was just about passable, especially with the help of Martin’s spectacles. Dressed in the smart coat, with the label of a Lausanne tailor and unlike a British one reaching closer to the ankle he felt the part. The hat helped too as did the shoes which had been caked in dust from the explosion but he’d polished with a towel.
Leaving the hotel he headed south, putting as much distance as possible between himself and the scene of the crime. The damage from the raid was substantial and it was clear it would take days for them even to begin to start coping with it. He then changed direction, towards the main railway station. It was clear the place had taken a direct hit in the air raid: parts of the roof had caved in and civilians were being press-ganged into helping clear the rubble. The ticket offices on the main forecourt were unscathed and a clerk was waiting in one of the booths, seemingly oblivious to the chaos around him He shook his head when Prince asked when the next train would be to Zurich.
‘Certainly not today, sir. We may have some local services running later this afternoon, but any mainline trains… not before Saturday, I would estimate. The main tracks have been very badly damaged. I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but then you can see for yourself.’
‘Oh dear, you see I need to return to Switzerland as soon as possible… my wife…’
‘You’d need to travel via Stuttgart anyway and, as I say, I can’t see that service running before Saturday. I hear the bus station was hit also last night so there are no buses running to Stuttgart. You could walk to the north-west of the city and you may find a local bus going to Augsburg and go from there to Stuttgart, but I doubt it.’
‘Is there no other option?’
‘You could fly, I suppose – I believe the airport is still operating.’
‘Ah yes, could you remind me how to get to the airport?
‘Riem airport sir, on the other side of the river – there’s always less damage on that side of the river. Now if you give me a moment I’ll check… here we are… there’s a Swissair flight at three forty this afternoon direct to Zurich, arrives there just before five… Can you imagine, less than an hour and a half from here to Zurich! These planes will be the death of the railways.’
Prince wondered what would be the best way to get to the airport.
‘Well sir, the trams aren’t in a good way this morning either, you understand – not on this side of the river at any rate. My advice would be to walk to the river, cross a bridge and then see if there’s a bus or a tram to Riem.’
Prince thanked him very much and said he probably wouldn’t bother; he’d wait until the trains were running again.
‘Don’t blame you, sir. For the life of me I can’t see why people bother to fly. Beats me how those things stay in the sky!’
* * *
A block away from the Swiss consulate on Ottostrasse, on the corner of Brienner Strasser and Türkenstrasse, was the Wittelsbach Palace – the former residence of the kings of Bavaria, though its current occupants were altogether less regal. It was now the headquarters of the Munich Gestapo and by eleven o’clock that Thursday morning arguments raged throughout the building, not helped by the absence of most of its windows thanks to the air raid of the previous night.
Normally the Gestapo wouldn’t dirty their hands with a common or garden murder. The head of security at the Bayerischer Hof hotel had been shot dead, discovered in a laundry cupboard in the basement of the hotel that morning. There was nothing to suggest it was a political crime – it was the kind of thing the Kripo routinely handled. But the murdered man was a Nazi Party member and quite a senior one – going all the way back to Hitler and the beer hall days apparently – and the local Party chiefs were putting pressure on the Gestapo to find out who was responsible.
An exhausted Gestapo second lieutenant called Jacob Schmidt was put on the case and thanks to the chaos in the city it was noon by the time he arrived at the Bayerischer Hof. Because of the air raids and his newborn son, Untersturmführer Schmidt had barely slept for the past fortnight and for the first hour at the hotel he fought back tiredness. But then the manager gave him a large cup of strong coffee with a shot of Bavarian brandy in it and Schmidt felt revitalised.
He organised a detailed search of the basement and just before one thirty there was a breakthrough. In a cupboard near where the dead man’s body had been hidden were a briefcase and a backpack concealed at the back of a cupboard. The briefcase contained the wallet and papers for a Swiss national. The hotel manager confirmed that the papers were those of a guest at the hotel.
‘Can you find him, please?’
‘He’s in the bar, sir.’
‘Well bring him to me, you fool!’
A short while after that Untersturmführer Schmidt was looking at the corpses of the four Swiss nationals, shoulder to shoulder by the bar, their faces an unusual shade of yellow and the rigor mortis setting their limbs at an unusual angle.
Only three of the dead men had their papers on them.
‘This must be Pierre Martin, sir – they were a group of four, always together.’
‘Describe him to me.’
‘Late thirties, sir, I’m sure that’s him.’
‘Half of his face is missing – how can you be sure? I need to be certain. Go to his room and see if his papers are there.’
Later that day and for quite a while afterwards Untersturmführer Schmidt bitterly regretted taking what turned out to be another hour to establish the fourth corpse was indeed that of Pierre Martin, a thirty-nine-year-old businessman from Geneva, and that his papers had disappeared. By then it was three o’clock and when he rang through to the Wittelsbach Palace to let them know they should put a Pierre Martin on an urgent watch list he was informed this would take a while to process.
‘Are you mad? We have a man who may well have murdered a senior Party member and then stolen and assumed the identity of a Swiss national – we need to find him.’
The duty officer promised to fast-track the alert. He’d make sure the Kripo knew, ‘…all the different branches of the police, the railway police, the—’
‘Just get a move on.’
Which he did, but only after he’d read a report from the Gestapo office which watched the foreign consulates:
A man who may have escaped from Prague turned up at the Swiss consulate the previous day. If it was of any help there was a description.
The duty officer decided it was, but it was still three thirty that afternoon before the alert reached all the relevant people in Munich and then throughout Bavaria. At Riem airport it was a quarter to four before someone saw the alert.
‘Have you seen this?’
‘No, sir.’
‘You’d better deal with it.’
‘Now?’
‘It says “urgent”, doesn’t it?’
It was fifteen minutes later before he reported back to his superior in the police office at the airport.
‘We may be able to help with this, sir.’
‘Really… in what way?’
‘They’re looking for a Pierre Martin, a Swiss national with an address in Geneva. Well, a Pierre Martin purchased a ticket for today’s Swissair flight 41 to Zurich.’
‘And he was on the flight?’
‘As far as I can tell, yes, sir.’
‘What time was the flight?’
‘Er, twenty to four, sir.’ They both looked up at the clock. It was five past four. ‘Twenty-five minutes ago.’
‘And it took off on time?’
/> ‘Yes, sir.’
Over the following twenty minutes a series of frantic telephone calls took place between the police at the airport, the Gestapo headquarters at the Wittelsbach Palace, the Luftwaffe command for the area and the airport manager at Riem.
By the time the decision was made to order the plane to return to Munich it had been in the air for forty-five minutes.
It was four twenty-five.
Normally the Swissair DC3 on the Munich to Zurich flight would have crossed into Swiss airspace ten minutes later, at a twenty to five, but on that Thursday afternoon flight conditions were almost perfect. A generous tail wind meant the plane crossed into Swiss airspace a few seconds after four thirty.
Five minutes before that the pilot was instructed by Munich air traffic control to return to Riem. He glanced at his fuel gauge: he’d probably make it, but he was in no mood to do so. He increased his speed and waited a minute before replying, telling Munich he was low on fuel. He’d made sure he opened to radio channels so Zurich air traffic control at Dübendorf was across the conversation.
All this was being relayed to the Gestapo at Wittelsbach Palace where someone suggested scrambling Messerschmitt fighters from Lechfeld, but Riem said it was too late as Swissair flight 41 was now in Swiss airspace and beginning its descent. A call was put through to the Swiss border police at the airport.
‘Please stop a Pierre Martin on Flight 41 from Munich Riem. Wanted in Munich for murder.’
The DC3 landed at Dübendorf five minutes early at ten to five. As the flight’s twenty-seven passengers filed into the arrivals hall the Swiss border police duty officer was hurrying down, eager to alert his colleagues to Pierre Martin. But by the time he’d instructed them to check all the passengers rather than just allow them to stroll through, Prince was one of a dozen who were already on their way out of the terminal.
He had actually paused and turned round to go back to the arrivals hall, where he wanted to ask how to get to the centre of Zurich. As he peered through the glass door he spotted the border police calling people back and forming all the passengers still in that area into a queue. He turned round and hurried on. Outside the terminal building he found a bus about to leave for the centre of the Zurich and jumped on it as the engine started.
As the bus pulled away he looked back: a few policemen had appeared on the concourse where he’d caught the bus. He felt as if he’d been on the run since Tuesday morning, hardly sleeping, being chased through the Reich and even now, having arrived in Switzerland, he was not safe yet.
The bus dropped him on Bahnhofstrasse, opposite the station, where he found the last train for Bern was leaving in twenty minutes’ time, at a quarter past six. The ticket office even exchanged Reichsmarks for Swiss Francs, though at what was clearly a punitive rate.
The lack of security was notable; there was none of the anxiety he was so used to while waiting in the queue for the train, none of the stress about showing his papers and having to remember his name and date of birth and where he was from. Instead everything was orderly and polite, conducted in near silence and an atmosphere of calm – people actually looked at each other, nodding politely, and some were even smiling.
He bought a sausage and a rösti on the platform and relaxed in a comfortable carriage with a few fellow passengers. The train was a non-stop service to Bern, due to arrive there at nine thirty that evening. For much of that journey his companion was Hendrie, his warnings while they walked in Derbyshire constantly playing on his mind.
‘Imagine a journey of one hundred miles. Which one of those miles is the most dangerous for an agent in hostile territory?’
Prince had replied he imagined it was either the first mile or the last one. Hendrie looked slightly dejected that his student had guessed correctly.
‘Indeed – and especially the last one because by the time you reach it people may well have an idea of where you’re heading. MI9 tell us they’ve lost count of how many escaping POWs are caught at the last minute, usually because they let down their guard when in sight of the border. Be aware you’re in mortal danger until the very last minute – even in a neutral country.’
Hendrie had pronounced ‘mortal’ with a distinctive Scottish ring and now it was a word he couldn’t get out of his mind, especially as the train drew to a halt on the outskirts of Bern station, its platforms just visible through the window. Prince went over to the door at the end of his carriage and opened its window. Half a dozen police officers were on the platform and beginning to board the train. He couldn’t think of a good reason why they’d do this before the train arrived at the platform. The only reason could be the need to be sure no one left the train.
‘The last mile… mortal danger.’
He hurried back to his seat to collect his briefcase. He was towards the back of the train but could just make out voices towards the front calling for passengers to have their papers ready. An elderly couple, very smartly dressed, glanced at him but he avoided their gaze. He moved quickly towards what was now the rear and spotted the non-platform side of the train looked more deserted. It was dark, with a narrow gap between his carriage and an empty one on the next track. He knew he needed to move fast. He opened the door and climbed down two narrow steps before jumping down onto the ballast. It was a steeper jump than he’d expected and he jarred his knee as he fell over. But it was quiet; no one had seen him and he crawled under the empty train, emerging on the other side of it where the platform appeared to be deserted. Walking in a crouched position he moved to the end of the platform, where it tapered away to a slope. On the other side of it was a gate into a goods yard; he waited in its deep shadows until he was sure no one had seen him.
It was a quarter to ten when he finally left the station and clearly too late to try and find the British embassy. He’d left through a side entrance but from the other side of the road could see gendarmes gathered at the front of the station on Bahnhofplatz. Edging into a void of doorway he watched them as they stopped male passengers.
‘The last mile… mortal danger.’
The city was silent around him and he took a moment to get his bearings. Ahead of him was a grand hotel, the Schweizerhof, but if they were looking for him then a hotel of that size with all its fussy bureaucracy would be too obvious a place. As he headed west into the Old Town he worried that any hotel would be too risky. He strolled through Rathausplatz into Postgasse where he spotted a small restaurant also advertising itself as a pension.
He had to crouch to enter the low doorway and a bell signalled his arrival. The restaurant itself was deserted apart from a tall man wearing a long black apron clearing up a table.
‘We’re closed.’
‘I’m looking for a room for the night – I saw the sign for a pension.’
The man in the long black apron peered past Prince, checking he’d come in on his own.
‘The owner’s gone home for the night, he does all the registrations. You’ll find hotels around Bahnhofplatz.’
‘I was rather hoping…’ Prince took his wallet out of his jacket pocket.
‘How many nights are you looking for?’
‘Just tonight.’
He looked around suspiciously and stepped closer to Prince, dropping his voice. ‘I’ll tell you what, as a favour I’ll give you a room tonight but you must give me cash first and promise to be away by nine – the boss gets here between nine thirty and ten and it’s best he doesn’t know about this.’
* * *
Prince just about had time that Friday morning to look at the Bern telephone directory and find the address he needed. The directory even had a helpful map of the city which he was studying before the man in the long black apron appeared, looking at him suspiciously.
‘Can I give you directions anywhere?’
The long black apron didn’t seem like someone he could trust. Prince was aware this was the last mile of his journey and he was nervous about not trusting his instincts.
‘I’m fine, tha
nk you. I’m going to the station.’
The man continued to look suspicious as he furtively hurried Prince out of a side entrance just before nine o’clock and Prince headed back in the direction of the station until he was certain the long black apron hadn’t followed him. He’d passed a few cafes with a distinctive aroma of fresh coffee drifting from them but resisted the temptation. He spotted two gendarmes walking towards him so he turned a corner and headed back in the direction he’d come from until he came to the river Aare, crossing it on Nydeggbrücke.
‘Our embassies in neutral countries are invariably watched, not least by the Germans. Approach with caution!’
He headed south along a footpath by the river, spending a while sitting on a bench just to be sure no one was following him. With the image of the map from the telephone directory in his mind, he left the path to join Jungfraustrasse and from there turned into Thunstrasse. He must have passed half a dozen other embassies before the finishing line came into sight. It was a handsome villa, set back from the road, taking up a large corner plot at the junction with Thunplatz. A large Union Jack flew from the roof and, as far as he could tell, there was just a solitary Swiss policeman on duty outside, standing in front of an iron gate beyond which was a path to the steps leading up to the main entrance, where two British soldiers stood guard. As Prince approached the Swiss police officer moved to block the gate. ‘Do you have an appointment?’
‘No, but—’
‘Do you have papers?’
‘No, but—’
‘You must have papers…’ The police officer shook his head and edged even closer to the gate. He called out in French and two gendarmes began walking towards the embassy from further down Thunstrasse. Prince moved back but the policeman told him to wait. It was then he spotted that one of the British soldiers had walked down the steps and was within earshot.
‘I say… I wonder if you could help me? I’m a British citizen.’
The Swiss policeman looked confused. He looked towards his two colleagues who were now just yards away but as he did so Prince seized the opportunity, slipping past him and through the gate.