So, when I finally heard footsteps descend the stairs and that cursed hood was at last removed, I felt no solace. I was more worried about my abashed condition than any consequences from being caught a spy. I crossed my legs, attempting to hide my offence. My hands were unbound and I felt the sting of blood returning to those extremities. That pain was increased by the wounds in my palms and I could barely contain an anguished cry. I was determined not to allow my captors the benefit of my suffering.
It took a minute for my eyes to adjust and when they did I saw that I was ringed by three men, one holding my own pistol, not exactly pointed at me but his eyes were vigilant. He wore a beret and sported a Stalinist mustache that drooped at the ends. Another man, tall with a military bearing, grey hair in a brush cut, was untying my Sergeant, who sat in a chair a few yards in front of me. The third man, a dark-complexioned fellow with eyes crinkled as if smiling at a joke only he was privy to, emptied my kit onto the floor and began rifling through my possessions. I watched this with some trepidation.
He found my pipe, which was more than an ordinary Meerschaum, then examined my assortment of ink pens. I held my breath until he discarded them. But then he opened the box that contained what appeared to be a lump of coal. He tossed it from hand to hand, studied it, perplexed, then was about to pound it on the stone floor. My sphincter tightened, the action having nothing to do with my usual morning alimentary ablutions.
“Don’t!” I finally shouted in Rumanian. “Stop before you blow us all to kingdom come!”
He froze. So did the other two. They stared at me, then past my shoulder. I turned to see my Sergeant sitting behind me, similarly bound to a chair. He grinned like a tot on Christmas morning. “BOOM!” he shouted, startling all of us. I was relieved to see that he appeared to be in good condition, at least not impaired any more than before.
“And how does a lump of coal present such a danger?” a voice at the top of the stairs asked.
I stared up at the black silhouette as the figure descended. As he came into the light, I could see that he was a distinguished-looking gentleman, at least in his seventies, a large head, clean-shaven, a broad forehead with bushy eyebrows, and a wide set of intelligent blue eyes.
And then down the stairs, like an angel descending from heaven, came a young red-haired female who might have been the most beautiful example of her gender I have ever encountered. Her brilliantly red hair was long, falling over her shoulders in great rubiginous waves; startlingly green eyes peered through a profusion of bangs much like a wary jungle cat watches through tall grass. Her skin was pale to the point of luminescence. She seemed slight of figure, but this was hard to discern under the bulky sweater and baggy men’s trousers held up by what appeared to be a knotted man’s tie in lieu of a belt. Her sensual aura hung about her like the nimbus behind a sunlit cloud, and my curiosity about the form beneath that sweater overrode the circumstances of my capture.
Or the fact that she was pointing the barrel of a German Luger at my chest. It came to mind what my father said when the government announced the drafting of women into the armed forces.
“You can’t give a gun to a female,” he declared. “Women become flustered under any stress. They’re much too fragile creatures, too emotional.” At the time I concurred, despite the hearty tongue-lashing from my mother. I never conceived that I would be put into a position to test his theory.
“Who are you?” she demanded. I had never seen a human so ready to kill. The look in her eyes was frightening in its intensity. She wanted to kill me, she was eager.
“The other side of the coin is who are you?” I countered as I glanced at the lapel of my jacket where I had pinned a cyanide capsule. It had been given to me by an American OSS agent in London, to take in the event of enemy capture. The dilemma for me: Was I brave enough to take that grim route instead of revealing my secrets under torture? To my dismay, or delight, the bloody little death pill was gone, probably lost in our disastrous river crossing.
“What do we look like?” the woman asked. “If we were the Rumanian Army, you would be in shackles and on your way to Bucharest. If we were German, you’d be minus a few fingernails and blithering about what colour bloomers Churchill wears on Sunday.”
What she said made sense.
“Code name?” the old gentleman asked in English that was tainted with a dash of an accent, not German, but in that linguistic family.
“Purfleet,” I replied. I had picked it myself.
“Commanded by?” he prodded.
“Major Samuel F. Billington.”
The old man nodded. Now it was my turn.
“Code name?” I asked.
“Ledhrblaka,” he said. It was the right response; this was my Brasov contact using an Old Norse word for “leathery wings.” It fit the man; his skin was as creased as old saddle leather.
“You can call me Professor. We apologise for your rude welcome, but there have been reports of Germans and Rumanian spies impersonating English commandos in order to infiltrate the Resistance.”
“No worries,” I said. “Tithes of war and all that.”
“We waited for you at the designated drop zone,” the old man said. “What happened?”
“My pilot mistakenly dropped us up near Red Lake,” I told him. “We had to make our way here by hook or crook.”
The woman fixed me with her emerald eyes. “What are you doing here?”
“And you are?” I asked, not so much for intelligence work, but to put us on a less formal basis.
“Maybe your worst enemy.” She stepped over so that she stood directly in front of me. I suddenly became aware of the ignominy of my condition and the accompanying odour emanating from my lap.
“I am not as trusting as my father,” she continued, her dour demeanor assuring me of her conviction. “Again, why are you here?”
This was my moment. The trading of our clandestine pro formas over and done, I was finally allowed to deliver the speech I had rehearsed since the day I met Guy Gibbons at the St. James Club and he asked if I would be interested in joining the SOE.
I stood up for my recital. My wet pants stuck to my thighs in a most uncomfortable manner. I tried to put aside my odious state and concentrate on my words.
“I am here to provide an operational link between your local Resistance and Britain.”
“Why do we need you?” The young woman again.
“Please don’t interrupt.” I was afraid if she did so I would lose track of my recitation and have to start over again. “We know that the Germans only succumbed in the First World War because of a collapsing morale and an economic disintegration caused by the British naval blockade, in addition to conventional warfare. We have seen that organised Resistance movements in enemy-occupied territory, comparable to the organizations such as Sinn Fein in Ireland and the Chinese guerillas operating against the Japanese, can have a profound impact on that morale.”
“So far you’re just carting coal to Newcastle.” She was becoming less attractive by the moment.
“Um, British blockade . . . organised resistance . . . Ireland . . . Oh yes, we at the SOE plan to supply and to mobilise secret armies across Europe. For one, to tie down Axis forces when invasion eventually takes place.”
“And until that wishful ‘when’?” She was quite a corker.
“To kindle and fan the flames of revolt in the enslaved lands of Europe, using different methods, including industrial and military sabotage, labour agitations and strikes, continuous propaganda, assaults against traitors and German leaders, boycotts and riots, plus missions of strategic significance.” I was proud I had gotten the whole spiel spot-on.
“A very pretty little lecture.” She smiled sardonically.
Despite being a bit browned off, I had to admit I felt a stupefying shock to my libido when she deemed me worthy of that smile.
“You deserve a pat on the head, I suppose,” she continued, the sarcasm a tad heavier. “But one last time, what do we need
of you?”
“I can coordinate airdrops of weapons and munitions, anything else that you may need,” I replied. “For example, that bit of coal. It is really a small explosive that you can toss into the coal car of a locomotive. Thereby, say, turning an enemy train’s journey into a bit of a shambles. Or one could stash it in the stove or furnace of a military barracks and render their sleep permanent.”
The three men examined the lump of coal with a bit more respect.
“And how do you go about getting us these airdrops?” she asked.
“By radio.”
“And your radio is . . . ?”
“Um, a bit buggered at the moment,” I confessed sheepishly. “On the trek here. Lost it on a river crossing.”
She shook her head at me.
“There were wolves,” I added.
“Hopeless” was all she said, and my heart plummeted into a deep dark chasm.
“Young man,” her father addressed me in a kinder tone. “Have we met before?’
He searched my face with those penetrating eyes and I in turn examined his features.
“No,” I admitted. “I don’t recall encountering you before this moment.”
“Nevertheless,” he continued, “the acts of resistance you describe do not come without consequences. Our German occupiers guarantee reprisals.”
“We have been victims of those consequences,” his daughter added, and a pall seemed to invade the room. “This very day.”
They began to relate to me the events at the St. George’s festival in Brasov, the arrival of a certain Major Reikel, and his immediate predations on the populace.
While they did this, I watched the man called Ledhrblaka remove the bandage from my Sergeant’s head and examine the wound underneath with a professional manner that made me think he might be a doctor.
“This is a most severe wound,” he said. “I’m surprised that you are conscious and ambulatory. What happened here?” he asked the Scot, who just stared blankly into the distance.
Indeed the injury appeared worse than the first time I saw it, the skin an angry red and pulled away to reveal the shiny skull beneath.
“On our parachute drop the Sergeant struck his head on some rocks. Miles from the designated drop zone, the result of what I would call, to say the least, a distracted pilot. Since he regained consciousness he has demonstrated some mental defectiveness, a bit of a muddlehead, I’m afraid to say.”
I gave them a brief recounting. (I did not dwell upon the perilous risk of my own life rescuing the Sergeant from a precipice, though I mentioned the injury to my hands.) I added a short recitation of our trek from the mountains around Red Lake to Brasov, our encounter with a kindly old crone who tended to our wounds, the assistance of her relative as he drove us by lorry to a rendezvous with another Samaritan, who took us on a perilous trek through the mountains by horse, and the loss of our radio during a hazardous river crossing. I omitted the chase by a wolf pack so as not to sound melodramatic.
The old man ran his fingers over the Sergeant’s skull with tender precision. The Sergeant just sat there as if he were being measured for a derby hat.
“What is his name?” the woman asked. “Or code name, if you insist on your clandestine tomfoolery.”
“Uh.” I was suddenly shamefaced to confess that I did not know the Sergeant’s name. At my first meeting with him at the Egyptian airfield, the din of the airplane propellers had rendered our introductions incomprehensible, and I had heard not a word he uttered. At the time I shrugged this off, assuming I would have plenty of time later to elicit his particulars. That moment, because of his later head injury, never came. Since then he had answered no questions and I had only addressed him by the rank displayed on his uniform before he changed into his civilian spy attire.
The others looked at me, waiting for an answer.
“Uh, he goes by the code name Renfield,” I told them with as much confidence as I could muster. I thought I heard the woman gasp and the old man gave me a peculiar frown. I do not know where the name came from. Yes, I do—my preoccupation with that damned novel and its hold upon me now that I was in the land of its origins.
“Cats on the rooftops, cats on the tiles,
Cats with syphilis, cats with piles,
Cats with their assholes wreathed in smiles
As they revel in the joys of fornication.”
The Sergeant—I suppose I must refer to him as Renfield from here on—sang as in a school recital. Everyone stopped and stared at the chanticleer and I felt a touch of embarrassment. Some first impression we were giving, me in my soiled pants and a vulgarian Frank Sinatra.
“He does this,” I told them. “Ever since the knock on his brainbox. Or it may have been a habit from before I met the chap.”
Renfield continued his warble:
“The hippopotamus, so it seems,
Very seldom has wet dreams.
But when he does, he comes in streams
And he revels in the joy of fornication.”
“Are you a doctor?” I asked the Professor, trying to distract them from this quirk.
“Among other things,” he said and turned to me. “You said you injured your hands. Let’s see.”
Carefully removing my gloves, I held out my damaged hands for his inspection. I couldn’t help but wince as he removed the crone’s poultice.
“That is quite the abrasion,” the old man stated, gently probing my torn palms. “He needs a clean dressing.” The old man said this to the ginger girl. She nodded and climbed the stairs.
“I was hauling the Sergeant off a cliff by his parachute lines and the nylon slipped through my hands,” I told him. “I couldn’t let loose or he would have plummeted to his death, I’m sure.”
The redhead returned, handed her father some bandages, and began to clean the Sergeant’s wound, dabbing it with cotton swabs soaked in what smelled like Mercurochrome.
“Sounds like you had quite the hike,” the redhead commented, and I felt myself blush.
“What is this ointment?” The old man dipped a finger in the paste covering my palms and sniffed it.
I explained that the old woman in the mountains kindly applied the poultice. He smiled in admiration and told me that my hands were well on the way to healing, and to my surprise and delight they were just so. Under his questioning I described the old crone’s potion, and he mentioned his own studies of native folk remedies before his research was interrupted by the war.
Finished with my hands, he went back to Renfield. With the assistance of the woman he sewed the wound shut and wrapped the Sergeant’s skull with a very professional bandage. A great improvement over my amateur efforts.
“Your fellow traveller has suffered severe trauma to the cranium. There is nothing we can do here, nor do I think any nearby hospital or doctor is capable of handling a case such as this. Much less the danger of him serenading a Rumanian hospital staff with a ribald aria, in English, thusly revealing his origins. He would be arrested immediately,” he said. “My advice is to leave him be and hope for the best. He may improve on his own.”
As if on cue Renfield continued his tune:
“The ostrich has a funny dick,
And it isn’t very often that he dips his wick,
So when he does, he dips it quick
As he revels in the joys of fornication.”
By now the novelty had worn off, and no one stared at the Sergeant anymore. It made no matter to him. I think he sang only to entertain himself. The Professor turned his attentions to the wound on my knee, sustained in my tumble in the river. He showed no disgust as he raised my urine-stained pant leg, and I was grateful for his professional objectivity. He told me that he would need to clean the wound and maybe some stitches were required. And he promised me a bath and change of clothes.
Renfield’s head was as wrapped as King Tut’s and he beamed at everyone with an imbecilic grin.
“You revel in the morning with an upright stand
And you haven’t got a woman so you jerk it off by hand
As you revel in the joys of fornication.”
To my astonishment the Professor and the redhead broke out in loud guffaws at the last stanza and the others joined in the laughter. So did I.
The old man led us up the stairs, and on the way I probed with questions about the recent SS incursion. They expanded on the events at Brasov Square, the massacre of the civilians, and the impalement of the Mayor. I was struck into shocked silence as the others related their account of this barbaric slaughter. Everyone fell into a somber silence.
Oft-times, this is all we can give the dead, a respectful quiet. This was not so for the daughter. Her face clouded and she spoke quietly. “I will kill them all. Every one of the bastards. I will kill them all.”
It was then that I knew I was in love.
DATED: 25.4.41
TO: SS-OBERGRUPPENFUHRER REINHARD HEYDRICH
FROM: SS MAJOR WALTRAUD REIKEL
(VIA DIPLOMATIC POUCH)
MOST SECRET
Have established authority with local populace in Brasov. Rumanian military have given us carte blanche. Proceeding to root out resistance hierarchy. Detaining suspected members and through various interrogative techniques will ultimately provide linkage to leadership.
Simultaneously, public demonstrations of our principled stand concerning any insurrectionist acts have been put into effect.
Heil Hitler.
FROM THE WAR JOURNAL OF J. HARKER
(transcribed from shorthand)
APRIL 27, 1941
This SS bastard, one Major Reikel, has further demonstrated his brutality in regard to his hunt for anyone involved with the Resistance.
The first morning after the St. George’s Day massacre, nine homes were raided by the SS and a total of fifteen men, old and young, were taken to the Town Hall and imprisoned in the basement. Screams could be heard throughout that night by the women gathered outside, mothers, wives, and daughters of the arrested men. The cries of pain from inside mingled with the wailing of these poor women outside, a mournful madrigal that haunted anyone within hearing.
Dracula vs. Hitler Page 7