Behind Mt. Baldy

by Christopher Cummings

  The feldwebel asked: “Ver is Leutnant Witorski? How you know ihm?”

  “We captured him. He was injured. The police have him now, in hospital,” lied Graham. “They will be here soon.”

  “Vot did Schutzer Nitsky do?”

  “If he is the bloke who was with the leutnant and who just captured us then not much. He fired a couple of shots at Roger and ran off into the bush.”

  One of the men spoke in a ‘told you so’ tone and Roger saw Nitsky scowl several times while the others made comments in a derisory tone. ‘Sounds like the silly bugger can’t navigate,’ he thought. The feldwebel shrugged and the men began a discussion which seemed to be over what to do with their prisoners. Roger began to dissolve in fear again as he realized they could well be shot.

  Then the felwebel made up his mind. He gave rapid orders. One man ran off and returned a minute later with a chain saw. The feldwebel picked up a radio and began typing on a small keyboard on its face. The other man scooped up their belongings and shoved them roughly back into their map pockets. Then he picked up their webbing and the rifle and carried them down to where Roger now saw a Land Rover under a camouflage net. The soldier rolled the net up and then came back and with Nitsky hauled Graham to his feet and pushed him towards the vehicle. He was shoved in the back.

  Then it was Roger’s turn. It hurt to be wrenched to his feet by one arm but it was also a relief. Clearly they were being taken somewhere and would not be shot immediately.

  CHAPTER 28

  CAPTURED

  Roger was pushed into the back of the Land Rover beside Graham. The soldier, a kaporal, climbed in and sat opposite, with his rifle across his knees.

  “No talk,” he cautioned.

  Through the front Roger could see the feldwebel at the radio. The man stood up and called something, then picked up the radio and walked towards them. The soldier who had captured them scrambled in the back and sat beside Roger. The third soldier sparked the chain saw into life and began to attack the base of a large tree. By the time the feldwebel had put the radio into the vehicle and climbed in the tree had been cut through. It fell with a crash of splintering branches so that it lay diagonally down the road, completely blocking it. The harsh clatter of the chain saw died and the man began walking towards them.

  Suddenly he stopped and half-turned, then broke into a run, shouting. Roger understood the words ‘Polizei’ and ‘kommen’. He writhed with mortification. The police were coming but they were a few minutes too late!

  The soldier heaved the chain saw in the back, hitting Roger’s leg with it as he did. He then ran and jumped into the driver’s seat, handing his rifle to the feldwebel. The engine whirred and burst into life and the vehicle lurched out onto the road.

  They swung right towards the top of the mountain and rapidly accelerated. The driver ignored the bumps and ruts. The vehicle bounced and swayed violently so that gear clattered and tumbled. Roger felt his elbow whack against the side so hard he yelled in pain. The chain saw dug sharply into his ankle. He tried to grip the seat behind him but his hands had gone numb.

  He was also terrified that the soldier opposite would accidentally pull the trigger as they crashed and bounced over the bumps. To his relief he saw the man take his hand away from the pistol grip to hold on. The soldier shouted something and the feldwebel also shouted. The vehicle slowed down.

  Roger glimpsed the grassy clearing as they roared past and then the feldwebel called out again. The vehicle braked violently. The feldwebel got out, to reappear at the back with the pack in his hand.

  “Zumpitch,” he said, reading the name tag on the pack. He tossed it on Roger’s feet and returned to the cab. Roger met Graham’s eye but tried not to look as though the pack meant anything to them. The drive resumed.

  They were back in the cloud and a cold wind swirled through the vehicle, rapidly chilling Roger so that his teeth began to chatter. The windscreen wipers were turned on as they encountered rain. The vehicle roared down a long, greasy slope too fast for safety, sliding so much that the feldwebel spoke sharply to the driver who, much to Roger’s relief, slowed down.

  As they drove along, Roger tried to visualize the map. He was sure where they were going: to the Royal Guard HQ at the Walsh River crossing. The road wound down steeply to the left with thick jungle on both sides. They dipped below the cloud briefly before starting up a long, slippery uphill grind in low gear.

  At the top the vehicle stopped and both driver and feldwebel got out. The motor was left running. A steady drizzle started. Fear clawed at Roger. Were they to be shot and their bodies tossed over the near-vertical side of the ridge to rot in that tangle of jungle?

  The driver leaned in the back, swore, tossed the pack and loose items aside and hauled the chain saw out. He walked back into the swirling mist to where the feldwebel indicated a large tree. Roger relaxed and allowed misery to engulf him. He began to shiver so much his teeth started to chatter. The guard looked at him and shrugged sympathetically. He was cold too.

  The chain saw screamed into life and the driver went to work. In a couple of minutes a huge hardwood fell with a crash across the road, bringing down a mass of creepers and vines with it. The two men walked back to the vehicle. The chain saw was dumped on Roger’s boots and the journey resumed.

  Roger looked back glumly at the tangle of greenery blocking the road. ‘The police will never get through that in time!’ he thought.

  The Land Rover ground on, half-bogging from time to time in muddy patches, swerving to avoid fallen logs (and going so close to the edge that Roger’s heart leapt into his mouth in fright), and bouncing and slipping up greasy pinches in four-wheel drive. The road levelled off for about a kilometre, cutting around the western side of a jungle covered mountain. ‘We are definitely going north along the spine of the Herberton Range,’ Roger decided.

  The vehicle slowed and swung around a hairpin bend and began to descend. Roger caught a glimpse of a green clad man with a machine gun, an MG55 or MG3. The soldier had a belt of shining ammunition draped over his shoulder. They passed another 4WD parked beside the road with more royal guards in it.

  That vehicle began to follow them. Roger was in a state of near collapse by this. His hands and arms were numb, his body frozen, and his brain a maggot’s nest of fear. Graham appeared to be sitting there calmly, observing everything. Roger wondered if it was just a front and tried to control his own face. ‘At least I can try to die with a bit of dignity,’ he told himself.

  The vehicle slowed, to slosh through a muddy hollow where water was flowing across the road. Its wheels crunched over a rotten log. Vines and leaves slapped and scratched at the vehicle. The road was obviously not used much and the jungle was encroaching on it.

  Up a muddy slope, around and down past a road junction and another 4WD, a brown one. A royal guard in a rain coat stood beside it holding a radio handset. Roger wished the journey would end so that whatever was going to happen could.

  Then they were bumping and grinding through a swiftly flowing stream of crystal clear water.

  “Walsh River,” Graham murmured.

  The guard looked at him but said nothing. Roger felt all his muscles tense up. Won’t be long now!

  Bump! Crash! Roar! Bump! The rover lurched over rocks and runnels as it clawed its way up the far bank. The vehicle growled up a long, slippery slope, the wheels spinning and spraying mud. Roger watched the following 4WD splash into the creek behind them.

  They were stopping!

  Roger looked through the front and saw more vehicles and at least half a dozen royal guards. Suddenly his mouth went dry and his tongue felt too big for his throat. He wanted to cry out but restrained himself. He also urgently wanted to do a pee.

  The vehicle stopped and the motor died. The feldwebel came to the rear and reached in to grab Roger’s sleeve.

  “Out!”

  Roger had to wriggle over the pack and chain saw. His arms and left leg had ‘gone to sleep’ so that he slid t
o the ground and fell in a heap on the muddy track.

  Thump!

  The feldwebel kicked him in the thigh and hauled him to his feet. Another royal guard, with one stripe on his sleeve and a bayonet fixed to his rifle, appeared and pointed. Roger stumbled up the track to where a group of officers in overcoats stood. The lance corporal pointed to the side of the track. “Sit there.”

  Roger did as he was told, slumping down on the wet soil a few metres behind another green Land Rover. Graham joined him. Their webbing was tossed down near their feet. Roger was aware of other vehicles arriving, of engines switching off, doors slamming, voices, commands.

  The feldwebel marched up to a tall young officer with a moustache, snapped to attention and saluted, clicking his heels while he did so. There were three other officers there and two senior NCOs: one with three stripes across and one down though their centres; and the other with a gold crown: A sergeant major?

  The feldwebel talked rapidly for several minutes. The officers listened intently, their faces worried frowns. From time to time they looked surprised or shocked and glanced at the boys.

  Roger tried to breathe slowly to calm his heartbeat. He looked around. In the back of the Land Rover on his left was a signaller wearing earphones connected to a large radio mounted in the back. Nearby were two infantrymen lying behind an LMG facing into the jungle. Other soldiers were just visible further along, crouched behind trees. The misty rain continued to fall and there was a continual heavy dripping from the leaves.

  The squelch of boots made Roger look up in alarm. The officers and senior NCOs now stood facing them. Roger licked his lips and pressed his legs together to stop from wetting himself. He felt faint and shook with fear.

  The officer with the moustache spoke to Graham. His English was excellent and he sounded like an upper-class Englishman. “Tell us who you are, what you are doing here, and what you know,” he said.

  Graham proceeded to tell the story of the hike, explaining they were only cadets doing a map reading expedition. He described how they had started from Tinaroo and how Roger had seen Krapinski’s body. At that all their eyes turned to Roger. He met some of them and knew he had never seen harder or more hostile eyes in his life. He was terrified. A vivid recollection of Krapinski’s corpse rose in his mind and fear of death so gripped him that for a few minutes he was speechless.

  The young officer spoke: “Speak boy! Tell us. How did he die?”

  “G...G...Gun...Gunshot sir. In the... the...h...h...head,” Roger replied. He sobbed and took a deep breath and recounted how they had helped the police search at Platypus Rock; then of the meeting with the two KSS men at Robsons Creek and the finding of the badge.

  The officers exchanged worried glances and the young one snapped, “Describe the badge.”

  Roger did so. He saw that the audience was intensely interested and they all nodded in unison.

  The young officer asked, “Do you have the badge? Where is it?”

  “Inspector Sharpe has it. He took it,” Roger replied. He was trembling but managed to keep talking. He described meeting the Inspector at ‘The Chimneys’, then with the four KSS men in the jungle on Python Ridge.

  The young officer frowned. “They were digging you say?” he asked.

  “Yes sir. They were searching for something.”

  “Did they find it? What was it?”

  Again Roger sensed the question was of vital importance to these men and he could not see how lying or with-holding anything would help in any way. He shook his head and replied, “They did not find it sir. We don’t know what they were looking for. We thought it might be a treasure; perhaps the missing crown jewels or the Thigh Bone...” He suddenly stopped, realizing he shouldn’t have mentioned these things. He glanced at Graham who gave him a look of disapproval.

  A middle-aged officer with a thick grey moustache bent down and grabbed Roger’s collar. “Thigh Bone! You know of the sacred Thigh Bone of St Joris? How?”

  The group had broken into excited chatter. They turned back to hear Roger’s answer. He swallowed and broke into a cold sweat. “We didn’t know then. We thought it must be treasure they were looking for.” He described events at Mobo Creek.

  The young officer asked in a sad voice: “You say Dorkoffsky was one of the KSS men arrested?”

  “Yes sir. We spent the night in his house at Yungaburra,” Roger replied. Then he looked up. The face of the sergeant with the cross-stripe suddenly jogged his memory. “You! You are the man I saw outside our room that night. You walked off into the fog. I chased you.”

  The man looked most uncomfortable. The others all turned to look at him. The older officer snapped: “What is this Zumpitch? What happened?”

  Zumpitch replied in what Roger assumed was Serbo-Croat, the only word he understood being the rank of Colonel. So the older man must be Colonel Von Krapnoff. The men listened to Zumpitch but Roger couldn’t follow the by-play. They turned back to the boys.

  Colonel Von Krapnoff asked: “You are sure Dorkoffsky was with the KSS?”

  “Definitely. In a black uniform; and with one of those Iron Claw badges on his collar,” Roger replied.

  “Iron...Claw!” the young officer hissed. “Describe it.”

  Roger did so. He even mentioned that it had a number engraved on the reverse. The young officer shook his head as though he could not believe it. “How could he! We trusted him,” he said sadly.

  “Perhaps it was a mistake Your Highness,” a handsome captain in his twenties replied.

  Your Highness! Roger’s mind raced. So the young officer with the moustache must be Prince Peter. Without thinking he asked: “Excuse me sir, are you Prince Peter?”

  The group turned in stunned silence.

  “How did you know?” snapped the Colonel in a steely voice.

  Graham spoke: “The captain there just called him ‘Your Highness’. And you must be Colonel Von Krapnoff, Kommandant of the Royal Guard.”

  There was another astonished silence. The Colonel visibly recoiled and blinked. Then he drew a pistol and aimed it at Graham.

  “You boys seem to know an awful lot. How is that?”

  Graham eyed the pistol but replied without a tremor in his voice: “Because we translated a secret message of yours which one of the KSS men had in his pocket.”

  “Untersturmfuhrer Jablonski,” Roger put in.

  “Tell us. Tell us all of it,” the Colonel snarled, shaking the pistol in Graham’s face.

  Graham did so, aided by Roger who explained how he found Jablonski’s jacket. That reminded him of his shame, and his current need.

  “Can I go to the toilet please?” he croaked.

  “Take him!” Prince Peter ordered. The soldier with the bayoneted rifle who had been standing behind them grabbed Roger and marched him down the road past the last Land Rover and pointed. Roger indicated his hands were tied behind his back. The soldier clearly wasn’t going to unbutton Roger’s fly and hold it for him.

  “You’re lucky I’m not one of those,” the soldier said with a grin. He put his rifle against a tree and drew a pocket knife. “Don’t try anything silly,” he warned, indicating other royal guards who were lying in the jungle watching. The soldier cut the bindings. For a minute Roger could not use his hands. They had gone nearly black. The pain as the circulation returned was so painful he burst into tears. He rubbed his hands on his wrists and slowly clenched and relaxed his fingers.

  Then he was shaking so much he could not unbutton his fly for a while. He wiped tears away and was so embarrassed by the men watching that for half a minute he could not start. At last he managed to but he was quite upset by the time he finished.

  The soldier retrieved his rifle and motioned him to go back to where he had been sitting. He did not re-tie Roger’s hands and Roger fervently hoped no-one would notice. Trying to pretend he wasn’t scared he walked back and sat beside Graham.

  CHAPTER 29

  TREACHERY

  Prince Peter looked at
them and shook his head. “So Dorkoffsky really was a traitor,” he said. “And he was our most trusted courier! We must assume that the Archduke Paul knows all our plans.”

  Colonel von Krapnoff scowled. “And the Australian Police Your Highness. Thanks to these interfering cadets,” he snarled.

  A tall, thin officer spoke: “We should leave this area and disperse at once Your Highness. Then we must recast our plans.”

  “Yes Stiltz. You are right. How long before the police arrive do you think?”

  ‘Adjutant Stiltz.’ Roger realized he should have guessed it. The man was a captain and was as thin as a stick.

  Adjutant Stiltz replied, “It depends whether they have chain saws to clear the road. Several hours probably. But the real danger is that they will set up road blocks on all the roads out of the area. We need to move at once.”

  The Prince nodded agreement: “What do you suggest?”

  Colonel von Krapnoff then spoke rapidly in their language. As he did another person joined them. Roger looked up and noted with surprise that it was a girl. She wore a green jacket and long green trousers but was still obviously a girl. She had been sitting in a white 4WD parked in front of the green Land Rover.

  Roger stared at her in wonder. ‘She is beautiful!’ he thought. ‘The most beautiful girl I have ever seen!’ She was only about 15 or 16 years old and had a perfect heart-shaped face, glossy black shoulder length hair and hazel eyes.

  “Why must we suddenly go?” she asked in English. Her voice sounded like music and stirred emotions deep in Roger’s soul. For a moment he forgot to be frightened.

  “Because the police are coming Your Serene Highness,” Colonel von Krapnoff replied.

  ‘Highness! She must be the missing Princess Karena,’ Roger thought. ‘No, that’s silly. If she went missing in 1941 she wouldn’t look fifteen. Still, she must be a princess.’

  The Princess pointed at Roger. “How do the police know we are here? Is it because of these boys?” she asked.