Chapter VI
The Horrible Dilemma
The Nazis continued to fire into the patch of shrub where von Lutz had been killed but it was difficult to estimate how many of them were still in action. Gregory did not think that there could now be more than two or three who had remained unscathed in the attack on the cottage and in the fight against Hans Foldar’s woodmen afterwards; but several of the wounded were apparently still capable of using their pistols so even such a depleted force was too large for Charlton and himself to tackle now that the woodmen had withdrawn.
Freddie had raised his revolver again and was drawing a bead on a dark hump from which a flash had just appeared when Gregory checked him.
“Don’t fire any more for the present or you’ll disclose our new position. Give me a hand here instead and help me to undress the Baron.”
“Undress him?” breathed Freddie in a horrified whisper.
“Yes,” Gregory whispered back. “Beastly thing to have to do but I want his uniform and I know he wouldn’t grudge it to me.”
“All right. But what’s the idea?”
“I mean to swap clothes with him. The ones I’m wearing were made in Germany so when he’s found in them they won’t give anything away; while in his colonel’s uniform I’ll be practically immune from suspicion if only we can get out of this blasted wood and reach a town.”
“That’s a brain-wave; but better still, dress him up in my Air-Force kit and let me have your civilian clothes.”
“No. They have no idea that the two men who were shot down on the night of the 8th are still in the district. If we did as you suggest, directly they found his body the R.A.F. outfit would give away the fact that we took shelter with him, that we’ve been here all the time and that one of us is trying to make a getaway dressed in his uniform. They’d catch us then before we could cover ten miles.”
“They’ll catch us anyway if I can’t find a change of clothes.”
“Not necessarily. One airman looks very like another and at the moment they’re not looking for airmen at all. I shall be wearing the Baron’s greatcoat so you can have the one I’ve got on. You’ll look like a flyer who’s made a false landing and been lent an Army greatcoat on account of the cold.”
When they had stripped von Lutz of his outer garments with as little noise as possible Gregory began to change. As they were both slim men of about the same height the Colonel’s uniform fitted him fairly decently. He was also able to acquire the dead man’s automatic which still had a few rounds in it and one spare clip of unused ammunition. After they had finished the grim business of getting Gregory’s garments on to the body Charlton put on the German officer’s overcoat in which Gregory had escaped from Berlin.
“I should have thought that by wearing this thing I’m falling between two stools,” the airman said in a low voice. “It won’t hide the fact that I’m an R.A.F. officer if an inquisitive policeman questions me and asks to see what’s underneath it; yet it’s enough to damn me utterly if we’re caught.”
“On the contrary. It will prevent ninety-nine out of every hundred Germans giving you a second glance and in the event of our being cornered, whereas I shall be shot as a spy whatever I am wearing, by retaining your R.A.F. flying-kit under that coat the worst they’ll be able to do to you is to send you to a prisoners-of-war camp.”
“Perhaps you’re right.”
“Of course I’m right,” Gregory muttered impatiently. “Don’t waste any more time in arguing; we haven’t got a moment to lose.”
“You’ve thought out a plan, then?”
“I wouldn’t say that; it’s just a hunch that we might be able to pull a fast one on these swine while they’re collecting their wounded. Tread as softly as you can now and follow me.”
For some moments now the Nazis had given up sending potshots into the wood. Cautiously at first, and then more loudly, they had been calling to one another until, reassured by their continued immunity from attack, they evidently believed that their surviving enemies had given up the fight and made off. The unwounded were now emerging from their hiding-places to give first aid to the wounded and to search for their dead. The woods were silent once more, except for the sound of their voices which came quite clearly and gave a good indication of their positions.
Using extreme caution Gregory and Charlton moved in a wide semi-circle round the area occupied by the Nazis, until they struck the lane on the right-hand side of the cottage and about half a mile from it. The little building was now almost burnt out and the flames had died down, but a red glow from the ashes still lit its surroundings for some distance. At the edge of the wood Gregory paused and pointed. The motor-truck which had brought the S.S. men from Dornitz was still there, parked on the roadside about half-way between the place where they stood and the remains of the cottage.
The wood was higher than the road by about four feet; so having warily tiptoed along, weaving their way in and out among the trees on the top of the bank until they were opposite the truck, they were able to look down into it.
As they paused there, holding their breath, two S.S. men, one of whom held a torch, were just lifting a dead or unconscious companion into the back of the open vehicle, and a minute later the torch moved disclosing the bodies of two other Nazis who had been laid out on its floor-boards. After the third body had been placed beside the others the man with the torch muttered something and set off at a quick walk down the road towards the cottage, leaving his helper—who presumably was the driver—just below the place where Gregory and Charlton were crouching. Lighting a cigarette he remained there, his back towards them, facing his van.
Gregory waited until the first man had climbed the bank and disappeared into the trees further along the road then, clubbing his shot-gun, he rose slowly to his feet. Balancing himself carefully he raised the gun high in the air, leant forward and let the driver have it. The heavy wooden stock hit the Nazi full on the top of the head. He went down like a pole-axed ox, without even a murmur.
“Quick!” Gregory whispered, springing down the bank. “You get the engine going while I heave this tell-tale cargo into the ditch.”
As Freddie scrambled up into the driver’s seat Gregory seized the nearest body by the boots and, with one violent jerk, dragged it out of the back of the truck. The engine sputtered for a minute, on the bad petrol, then it burst into a steady roar. Gregory grabbed a handhold, hauled himself up into the body of the van and yelled:
“Go on, man! What the hell are you waiting for?”
“You,” Freddie yelled back.
“I’m all right. Drive on, for God’s sake, or they’ll shoot us as we pass the cottage!”
The truck moved off with a jerk which nearly threw Gregory off his feet. Steadying himself with an effort he got a grip on the second Nazi and, exerting all his strength, bundled him overboard; then lurching towards the third in the wildly-rocking van he pushed him out of the back, gasped with relief and flung himself flat.
Once Freddie had shifted gear their get-away was so swift that the remaining Nazis had not enough time to guess what was happening. No shots came at the truck as it roared past the glowing embers of the cottage and in another moment it was hurtling away at the top of its speed down the road into the darkness.
Three quarters of a mile further on the lane ended, coming out at right-angles into a second-class road. As the headlights glimmered on a wire fence dead ahead Charlton jammed on his brakes and brought the truck to a skidding halt.
“Crossroads; which way do you want me to take?” he sang out.
“Half a minute.” Jumping out of the back Gregory scrambled up the bank on the corner to a signpost, which he had glimpsed outlined against a break in the clouds where the moonlight was now filtering through, and tried to decipher what was written on it. The bank brought his head within a few inches of the lettering and by holding up matches one after the other their light was just sufficient for him to read: “DORNITZ—2 KILOMETRES” on one arm and
“GLOINE—3 1/2 KILOMETRES’ on the other.
“Turn left,” he shouted as he ran back and jumped up beside Charlton on the driver’s seat. “This road will take us to a place called Gloine. Where the devil that is God knows, but anyhow it’s in the opposite direction to Dornitz and we daren’t run through there in case the police recognise this van and want to know how we got hold of it.”
The road was fairly flat and Freddie pushed the lorry along at the top of its speed through the sandy Brandenburg countryside which was broken only here and there by woods and was now, outside the glow of the headlights, hidden by the darkness. Five or six minutes later they rumbled into a straggling township. It was nearly two o’clock in the morning so no one was about, with the exception of a solitary policeman who was standing in the little square beside a memorial to the fallen of the last Great War.
“Drive straight on.” muttered Gregory as the lamps of the truck lit a road-sign reading: “GORZKE—10 KILOMETRES” and “WIESENBURG—18 KILOMETRES”.
He had never heard of these places either; but the wintry night sky was fairly clear and on their way to Gloine he had had an opportunity to get his bearing from the stars and from what he could recall of the map which von Lutz had drawn for them that evening. He now knew the direction in which they were heading and in any case it would have been madness to pull up and ask a policeman, since as soon as the surviving Nazis could reach a telephone they would report the theft of their truck and send out a general call to have it held up wherever sighted.
“Where are we going?” asked Freddie as they left the last houses of Gloine behind and headed for the open country once more.
“This road heads almost due east, which is a bit of luck for us,” Gregory replied. “Sooner or later it must get us to Berlin.”
“Berlin?” echoed Freddie. “Are you crazy? That’s the last place we want to go to! I thought you meant to head for the Dutch frontier.”
“So you’re still thinking of that girl of yours, Angela Fordyce, eh? Well, maybe we’ll get to Holland and you’ll be able to see her yet, but first I want to find out what’s happened to Erika.”
“But damn it, man! That means running both our heads into the noose. In a place like Berlin we’re absolutely certain to be captured. Besides, we must make the utmost of our start. Our only chance is to make a dash for the Dutch frontier right away.”
“Not necessarily, Freddie. And if I were doing any dashing for frontiers I should head for Denmark, which is nearer than Holland by hundreds of miles.”
“Well, I’m jolly sorry for you about Erika, and all that, but I don’t think you’re quite playing the game in boggling our only chance of escape.”
“All right, my dear fellow,” Gregory shrugged, have it your own way; just pull up and drop me here. I’ll make you a present of my half of the van and you can drive straight to The Hague or wherever it is your delightful young woman hangs out.”
“But my German’s not half good enough yet,” exclaimed the exasperated Freddie. “I’d never be able to get all that way on my own.”
“Of course you wouldn’t, dear boy. I don’t suppose this thing’s got enough petrol in it to do a hundred kilometres, and there isn’t a service station in Germany out of which you could wangle another gallon without me to help you. Even if you succeeded in reaching the frontier you wouldn’t stand a dog’s chance of getting across it. As it is, we shall have to ditch the truck in half an hour or less because once those swine we left in the wood get to a telephone every policeman in Brandenburg will be on the look-out for it. That’s why—putting both our girl-friends entirely out of the question—we should be absolutely mad to try to make a dash for any frontier at the moment; and why, even if I were not anxious to find out what has happened to Erika, I should be heading for Berlin.”
“I suppose you’re right about our having to ditch the van pretty soon,” Charlton admitted reluctantly, “but the thought of trying to keep out of trouble in a great city sends cold shivers down my spine.”
“Don’t let it. There’s an old Chinese saying which I’ve often found to be a very true one. ‘When thou wouldst be secret do thy business in a crowd’. If only we can get to Berlin we’ll be all right, but the problem is how to get there.”
Gorzke proved to be a larger town than Gloine but owing to the late hour it was almost as deserted. They had to-pull up for a moment in its central square to find direction signs but on reading them Gregory saw “WIESENBURG—8 KILOMETRES” and under it “BELZIG—19 KILOMETRES”. The name Belzig rang a bell in his mind which made him believe that it was on a main-line railway, so he decided to push on towards it.
The road now curved to the south-east but it was a good main-way, wider and with a firmer surface than that upon which they had been before, and they made better going. In this quiet country district they had not so far met a single vehicle and as they bucketed along Gregory was busy calculating distances. He reckoned that by the time they reached Wiesenburg they would have covered about fifteen miles and, as the top speed of the lorry with the handicap of Ersatz petrol was in the neighbourhood of 30 m.p.h., half an hour would have elapsed between their arrival at that town and their seizure of the lorry from the Nazis.
He had been fairly confident about getting through Gloine and Gorzke without trouble but every moment now increased the likelihood of their being held up. It was not more than twenty minutes’ walk from Hans Foldar’s cottage to the home of their late friend, Colonel-Baron von Lutz, and it was certain that the manor-house would be on the telephone. If the Nazis had set off for the house at once the police all over the district would now have been warned and be drawing cordons across the roads to catch the stolen truck before it could get further afield. On the other hand, if the Nazis had wasted time in argument or, feeling confident that the vast German police network would easily pick up the fugitives on the following morning, considered it more important to patch up their wounded than to make a dash for the nearest telephone, there was a decent chance that no emergency police-call had yet been sent out.
Gregory said nothing to Charlton but as they approached the first houses of Wiesenburg he braced himself for trouble. Peering out into the darkness ahead and holding the shot-gun that he still had with him ready across his knees he prepared to fight rather than to surrender.
Further into the town a belated roisterer lurched off the pavement and almost under their wheels. For a second Gregory did not realise that the man was a drunk and thought him the leader of an ambush who had jumped out to call on them to halt; but Freddie swerved the van, missing the fellow by inches, and it clattered on.
In the centre of the town a line of light lorries was pulled up at the side of the road and in the half-light they could see that a number of soldiers were gathered about them. Once more Gregory tensed his muscles. Perhaps these men had just been dispatched from a local barracks to bar the road; but when he saw that the lorries were all parked in line he realised that his fears were groundless. The lorries would have been drawn across the road if the men were there to stop them. It was only a company of troops engaged on some ordinary night operation.
As they passed the unit some of the men called a greeting and Gregory sang out cheerfully to them in German in reply, thanking his gods that in the half-darkness they could not see that he was wearing the uniform of a colonel. Another three minutes and they were out of Wiesenburg on the Belzig road.
The tension was over for the moment and Gregory was able to sit back while the truck rattled on for a few more miles; then he began to peer ahead at both sides of the road as far as he could see in the uncertain light. After another kilometre they came to a wood and Gregory told Charlton to slow down, meanwhile keeping an anxious eye open for any sign of a track that might lead off the road in among the trees. A white gateway loomed up. Leaving his shot-gun on the seat, as he meant from this point to rely on von Lutz’s automatic, he jumped down, opened the gate and beckoned to Freddie to drive through.
; In the darkness among the trees it was not easy to find the most suitable place to abandon the van; but a few hundred yards up the track they reached a break in the wood which on investigation proved to be a sandy patch sloping downwards at a fairly steep angle.
“This’ll do,” said Gregory; “we’ll ditch the van here. Be careful how you go, though.”
Freddie drove over the grassy verge on to the sand and the van bumped its way down until more trees became visible in its headlights. Pulling up he switched off the lights, got out and scrambling up the slope rejoined Gregory.
“It’ll be visible from here in daylight, I’m afraid,” Gregory said, “but we can’t help that; and, with luck, this track may not be much used. There’s a sporting chance that no-one’ll find it for a day or two and in any case it’s well out of the way till tomorrow morning, by which time we shall be miles from here.”
“What’s the next move?” Freddie asked.
“We’ve got to foot it into Belzig and I mean to try to get a train to Berlin from there.”
Side by side they set off back along the track and took the Belzig road. Half an hour later they reached the outskirts of the town and, taking Freddie’s arm, Gregory whispered to him to go cautiously. Over an hour had elapsed since they had stolen the truck and he felt certain that by now the police in every town for fifty miles around had been notified and would have special patrols out. Two minutes later a match flared a hundred yards ahead and by its glow the vague outline of two men’s faces could be seen as they lit cigarettes from it.
Gregory would have bet his last shilling that they were only two of an armed squad which had been posted there to hold up the lorry should it make an appearance. Although they might not regard two pedestrians with suspicion he was extremely anxious to avoid being questioned, so twenty yards further on he silently turned Charlton off the road down a path at right-angles to it which ran along a garden fence. Where the fence ended they turned again and with subdued curses stumbled across some back lots till they reached a group of buildings and a lane, by taking which they arrived back in the main street at a point well beyond the police picket.
Faked Passports Page 9