In Pursuit of Platinum: The Shocking Secret of World War II (Ben Peters Thriller series Book 1)

by Vic Robbie

  Weber got down on his knees to inspect the body and its wounds. Getting to his feet again, he nodded.

  A sniper.

  Interesting!

  He looked up at the hill to see if he could pinpoint what would have been the sniper’s position realising he’d be long gone.

  A flickering movement on the periphery of his vision diverted his attention. Here amidst the corrupted air and the chaos, fluttered a beautiful and fragile creature unaware of the dangers around it. Putting out a hand, he held it open palm up and smiled as the butterfly landed and he felt its light touch on his skin. Admiring the red of its wings, he stroked its back and closed his hand feeling the flickering of its trapped wings. He smiled to himself. Beauty could still be found in this crazy world. Walking over to a nearby plant, he opened his hand and placed it gently on a flower.

  They found a frightened man hiding in a cupboard and dragged him out to the poolside so he could see what would happen to him if he didn’t talk and quick.

  The civilian conducted a smooth and painless interrogation in Spanish and the manservant couldn’t stop talking, nodding after every sentence ensuring the civilian understood what he’d said.

  Yes, three people had come over the mountain – an American with a beautiful blonde woman and a small boy. They drove a Bentley car. The American argued with the Count and then suddenly two of his men and the Count were shot. By whom? He shrugged, he didn’t know. But he pointed up towards the hill.

  Weber followed his hand and his brow furrowed. Who was the gunman? He couldn’t afford any added complications now. It would have been convenient had it been a local rival intent on settling an old score, but this operator was a professional. Yet a wave of optimism helped deaden the pain in his head. He knew now the whereabouts of the woman and child and he was close to catching them. She’d get little help in Spain and if necessary the authorities would provide any assistance needed and it would be less troublesome if he could catch them before they crossed over into Portugal. Like a hunter moving in for the kill, he could smell blood.

  He wondered if Garza had known what a treasure he’d had in his grasp. Probably not. He would have preferred if he had known and then for it all to have been taken away from him.

  ‘Schnell, we must head south,’ he ordered his men and turned and swept out to the courtyard.

  The civilian started to follow before doubling back. The servant was still on his knees, hands clasped as if in prayer, and with his eyes closed. He walked up to him and tapped him on the shoulder and as the servant turned in surprise, the civilian shot him through an eye.

  56

  BEN didn’t see them coming.

  They’d skirted the towns of Valladolid and Salamanca when the Bentley started coughing and spluttering and a weakening panic spread through him. They were on the open road and with no shelter they would be defenceless if the Nazis caught up with them. The fuel gauge now showed empty and at the first opportunity he pulled over onto the grass verge and the slowing of the car awoke Alena.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked sitting upright and rubbing the sleep from her eyes. ‘Where are we?

  ‘I’ve got to put in more gas,’ he said.

  He’d no idea how close behind the Nazis were, but he had to take the time to refuel. He pulled a jerrycan out of the back of the Bentley and dragged it to the fuel cap. To his relief, the cap on the can unscrewed easily and the liquid glugged out. He wanted to force it down as fast as possible, but he took care not to waste any of the precious liquid. And all the time he kept glancing back down the road.

  It was important to put both jerrycans of fuel into the Bentley at this stop. Fetching the second can, he attempted to open it but the thread had got out of sync and wouldn’t budge. He exerted all his strength yet still he couldn’t move it so from under the Bentley’s hood he retrieved a large hammer, used for removing the car’s wheels, and banged at the cap. He was on his knees and straining hard to open it and didn’t hear a car pull up in front of the Bentley.

  For a fraction of a second, he glimpsed the butt of a rifle before he felt a dull thump to the side of his head. He fell forwards onto the road, scraping the skin from his forehead.

  It seemed as if he’d been out for an age. In reality, it was just seconds. The side of his head throbbed and was wet to the touch and when he inspected his fingers, he found blood. Shaking and dazed by the blow, he got to his feet and saw what he didn’t want to see.

  Two officers with their three-pointed patent leather hats and green uniforms – the Guardia Civil, Franco’s hated police. In Franco’s police state, the Guardia relished their main role of seeking out spies and agitators against the regime. And he realised he and Alena fitted their description perfectly as enemies of the state.

  He heard her arguing with them and Freddie crying and he stumbled as one of the officers came around the side of the car and stuck the barrel of his rifle into his ribs.

  ‘No se mueva,’ the policeman said and he stood still as ordered.

  She tried to talk to the other officer in what sounded passable Spanish, but he forced her against the frame of the car door as if he wanted her to sit back down in her seat. Although he didn’t show a gun, he was big and powerful and growing angrier as she spread her arms to stop being forced back inside.

  He said something to her in a low voice.

  And she spat in his face with a look of distaste.

  He hit her with a backhander catching the bottom of her lip and splitting it open and blood smeared her face and Freddie screamed all the louder. The officer shouted at Freddie cowing him into silence and he crouched down behind the seat in the back of the car.

  The policeman guarding Ben shouted encouragement to his colleague who grunted in reply. As she reeled from the slap and her hand went up to the wound on her lip, he grabbed the collar of her blouse and pulled down with such force it and her bra came away exposing her breasts. He paused and, encouraged by this show of flesh, his hands went to her legs and forced her skirt up over her knees and kept pushing it up her thighs until he could see the white flesh above her stocking tops.

  Again Ben’s captor urged his compatriot on and the policeman moved closer to her, one hand going around her neck and pulling her head closer to him.

  57

  WEBER opened the car’s window and flicked out his cigarette ash unperturbed it blew back into the face of the civilian sitting behind him, and the man hadn’t the temerity to object. Weber wasn’t someone to argue with and after talking to his soldiers the civilian realised his orders came from the very top so whatever he said went.

  He drew long and hard on his cigarette and coughed into his hand. He loved the smell of cigarette smoke in the fresh air. It conjured up many memories, happy memories like attending his first football match with his father where cigarette smoke lay in clouds above the spectators. For the first time, he felt he was getting somewhere and now he could almost smell the woman. They might have a faster car, but the weight of the bullion would slow it down and all it needed was a minor hold-up and they would be on them.

  ‘Faster,’ he shouted at the driver and slapped a hand down hard on the dashboard. ‘Can’t you get more out of this tin box?’

  The driver, who already had his foot flat to the floorboards, shifted in his seat and gripped the steering wheel all the harder as if it would squeeze more out of it.

  He knew it was important to catch up with them before the Portuguese border. While in Spain, he was confident the Spanish authorities would assist him if asked. With an American passport, Ben Peters should have no problem in crossing over. And, as Portugal was neutral and he believed more inclined to support the allies, he couldn’t expect any help, making his task harder although not impossible. He’d already put in place arrangements to transport the woman and boy back to Paris. Thankfully, there were still those who would do anything for a price.

  As for the platinum, he hadn’t worked out what to do about it. Every so often in an unguarded
moment, the fantasy of keeping some of it for himself presented itself and he found it beginning to appeal to him. Once he’d accomplished the task of bringing the woman and boy back to his superiors, who would decide what was to be done with them, he would return home to Munich. Perhaps they’d let him go back to work as a journalist on the Munchener Zeitung and he could try to ignore the chaos and misery happening elsewhere in the world.

  He didn’t see the point of war. Enemies now would be the best of friends in another ten years. What he saw all around him he’d experienced before. He’d been one of the lucky ones to survive the Great War campaign unscathed, apart from the memories. Memories he’d rather not remember. Memories that continued to dominate sleepless nights…

  Rain ran red like blood down his cheek. It slanted in at an angle of forty-five degrees and every drop seemed to cut his skin like shards of glass and it reduced his visibility to only ten yards or so. Night was black, yet so was day. The thick grey dirt, which they’d cursed because it blew into every crook and cranny, lay like a swamp and they sank up to their knees in an evil-smelling porridge. Choice? There were no choices at all – get blown apart by the British or drown in the sludge. They shelled hour after hour. A sentry would shout above the din. ‘Minnie up’. Pointless. A red spark traversed the sky and they sounded like steam engines as they flew overhead. They fizzed and crackled and you waited for them to come down. The explosions. Screams. Dismembered bodies. The constant downpour formed a curtain around the sandbag-reinforced shell hole he shared with Horst. And it wouldn’t let him get past the memory.

  Sea and sun all mix and run

  And the smell of ozone, gulls swooping alone

  People screaming, kids scaring

  Old men, trousers furled, white hankies on bald pates

  And deckchair spread-eagled obscenely mates

  Ice cream vendor calling his wares above the crash of the sea

  A spade and a pail and a ship with a sail

  Wet brown sand that you shape in your hand

  And candy floss and donkey rides and lemonade

  Cool, frothing waters tingling your ankles

  Sand in your sandals and hand in hand

  They trailed through halls of wax models grand

  Soft, sharp light making eyes glint and a faint smell of mint

  A premonition

  It makes her cry and gasping for air he smoothes her hair

  Iced buns and lemonade runs down their glowing cheeks

  Back to the lodging austere and spare

  Dodging the landlady and leaking sand on the stair

  He had sent the poem about their short honeymoon at Rugen on the Baltic to his wife in the first week of being in the trenches. Written on a colourful postcard embroidered in lace by local women, it amazed him such finery could exist in a place of pure barbarity. And now he kept repeating it over and over in his head.

  Because he couldn’t see beyond the curtain of rain, his mind couldn’t move forward. No matter how hard he tried, he came back to his memory like a gramophone needle stuck in a groove. In his tunic pocket, he kept a photograph of her and when he showed it to others, he saw the envy in their eyes. What marked her apart from so many were her sharp features, giving her a timeless beauty, and eyes flashing blue like streaks of lightning. A cascade of auburn curls flowed around her high cheekbones past her shoulders and down to the middle of her back. At night, he would watch mesmerised as she sat naked before her mirror combing her long tresses accentuating her slender shoulders and the narrowness of her waist. Her full lips were almost always parted as if about to say something and revealed perfect teeth like mother of pearl.

  Although he wanted to look on her more than ever so her beauty would blot out the horrors of war and inspire other memories, the effort was too great. It would mean unbuttoning his already sodden greatcoat, and his fingers were frozen rigid so if they’d been blown off he doubted if he’d have felt any pain. He’d managed to find some shelter in the lee of a makeshift wall and, although the rain hit his cap and glanced off, soaking the rest of him, he almost felt comfortable. His rifle dripped with moisture and he wondered if it would fire. He couldn’t feel his feet. He and Horst had been standing twenty-four hours a day up to their knees in mud for the last week and he wondered if his toes were rotting. They had better not because it would be a shooting offence. You coated your feet in whale oil to save your toes from trench foot and your life from the firing squad. The consolation, he convinced himself, was the wet killed off the lice infesting his body and making his skin crawl so it appeared he’d a constant nervous tic.

  The rain enclosed him in a small, unreal world he shared with Horst, the only friend he’d kept in this stinking war. Any friends he’d had before were taken away from him – blown into oblivion, broken up into pieces or carted away to the field hospitals from which they never returned. Horst was constant, still hanging in there. You struck a bond when you shared a shell hole. You both used the same tin to shit in, and it was regular because the only hot drink you had was in petrol tins. Although the tins were boiled when something hot was put in them, the petrol oozed from the creases in the tin giving you the shits.

  He wondered how mad Horst had become. One morning he’d announced an end to lice and later that night showed him his instant cure. Stripping off, he lit a cigarette and then stubbed it into the infected parts of his body.

  ‘You’re crazy,’ said Weber. ‘Doesn’t it hurt?’

  ‘Of course, although the lice don’t bother me for a time.’

  The lice weren’t going to bother Horst anymore. The back of his head gaped open.

  Weber believed something still moved inside there, but he didn’t want to give up his place of comfort to check it out. It must have happened sometime after they shared their breakfast of a third of a small loaf of bread and a slice of cold, stringy bacon congealed in a brownish fat.

  He’d no idea of the time now. Sleep would have taken him away if you didn’t mind being court-martialled and shot. Only losing yourself in memories could make this hell almost bearable and give you a reason for hoping you might survive the lottery. There again it reminded him how much he had to lose.

  Win or lose, he’d no idea how the war was progressing and any initial enthusiasm from his colleagues had been squeezed out of them. No one ran. Even when they went over the top, they no longer ran. Just walked into the guns and prayed it was not to be their day. So few of those he’d started with still survived. He wouldn’t have believed how fragile bodies were, how a living reasoning being could disintegrate before your eyes, how soon they’d rot and how obscene the stench of death was.

  Will anyone come back in the future to see what we died for – a few yards of fucking mud?

  He remembered marching to the railway station being cheered as heroes. Arriving at the barracks and soon realising there was no romance here. Collecting what gear they were given. Beers in the canteen. Lights out at ten o’clock. Sharing for the first time with other men. Swearing, farting, and masturbating under the coarse brown blankets. Brief excitement when the news came they were going into action. Living in trenches like sewer rats. Marching into enemy fire and dying like vermin. Once when inspected by aristocratic officers he could tell by the looks on their faces and their words that they were expendable. Human lives with no worth. When this war was over, he’d go back and nothing would be the same again.

  Another shell exploded to his right, the closest for some time, filling his mouth with wet mud and lifting him up and blowing him across the shell hole so he ended up embracing the back of Horst’s head.

  ‘Sorry, my old friend,’ he giggled as if it were a joke.

  And blood ran red like rain down his cheek.

  58

  THE guardia civil policeman attempted to kiss her and she averted her mouth so the fleshy wetness of his tongue smeared her cheek. ‘Come here, pretty lady,’ the policeman said in a low and insistent growl. ‘Do it proper now.’ He punched Alena in the stom
ach forcing the air out of her diaphragm and she folded into him with her head on his shoulder like two lovers meeting.

  The wind whipped up and the sky turned the colour of lead, a premonition of something terrible about to happen, even though far away across the fields the sun still sparkled and brought everything into sharp relief.

  She wanted to scream but fear paralysed her vocal chords and all she managed was a croak and she glanced over at Ben appealing for his help, knowing there was nothing he could do.

  The fleshy folds of the guard’s stomach pressed against her and, with his left hand, he pinched her face so tight her lips puckered. And he kissed her again sending a stream of saliva into her mouth. His right hand moved over her body, kneading it, feeling the weight of her breasts in his hand as if he were buying fruit, seeking out her nipples and squeezing them. Down over the swell of her buttocks and between the cleft of her cheeks and around probing for an opening. Her body was rigid, petrified and unable to move – frozen in the glare of his malevolent eyes as she waited for the attack.

  His stubby, calloused fingers bruised her as he hooked a thumb into the waistband of her panties and began to pull them down. He switched, tracing the inside of a leg hole and with a grunt ripped it with such force the silk came away altogether in his hand. Pushing the cloth into her face, he glared at her, a gleam of triumph in his rheumy eyes.

  The officer guarding Ben was so intent on watching what his colleague was doing he didn’t notice her right hand reaching behind her for her handbag lying on the car seat. Her fingers scrambled frantically as she sought the opening into the bag.

  A flash of silver.

  Ben saw her raise her arm to the guard’s chest and heard a magnified thud. The guard’s eyes changed from a look of lustful triumph to a blankness. They opened even wider at the force of the blow and his face contorted like a rubber mask left too close to the flame as he fell backwards with blood pumping out of his chest.