by Wilbur Smith
Werner did not know how Konrad von Meerbach had escaped, or where he had gone. No one other than the most senior men, whose own identities were unknown, were in possession of that information. But the count was still alive, and not in Germany, that was for sure. And how else would a man who had his own private airfield escape?
‘Scheisse . . .’ Werner whispered to himself.
He had to get back to his car.
He was about to get to his feet when he saw the men by the fire walk towards the Jeep. Then, he saw a fleeting shadow in the corner of his eye.
There’s someone else in here!
Werner turned his head a fraction, saw the person darting between two blocks of fallen masonry.
It’s that English bitch!
A smile creased the corners of Werner’s mouth.
She wants to take me by surprise. Two can play at that game.
Saffron had made her way to the back of the Zeppelin shed. The clouds had thinned a little. The sun was making a brave attempt to emerge.
The pipe was as Ferdi had described it. It looked like a section of railing, hollow, a couple of inches in diameter. Could come in handy, she thought.
She picked it up and made her way towards the thick mass of tangled brambles. She saw an opening, but a few thorn-covered branches had fallen across it. The vegetation gave way to hard, rough rubble, then solid brick and suddenly she was into the Zeppelin shed itself.
She saw the remains of wooden partitions, broken windows and a door. It looked like an office, probably used by the man who ran the place and his admin staff. She stayed on her knees, keeping herself under cover as she crawled to the front of the office. When she reached the partition, she rose up enough to see through the shards of shattered glass that clung to the window frame. It was a magnificent sight. The massive walls rose up into the air on either side, stretching away into the distance. There were four or five places where the wall had collapsed, either in part or to the ground, like the holes left by missing teeth. High above her arched the bare steel beams that had once supported the roof.
Saffron spotted the car, an old pre-war VW parked behind a pile of fallen rubble. From the front entrance it would be invisible.
She crept out of the office towards the car, clambered up the rubble and looked across the vast open expanse.
You could line up an entire infantry division in here, with all its vehicles and equipment – how am I going to find one or two men?
She narrowed the search. Her quarry would be on the right-hand wall of the shed, facing Ferdi’s hut.
There was a shadow, the outline of a man, crouched, like she was.
He was heavily built, short blond hair, wearing a smart but well-worn black suit. His eyes were directed outwards, towards Ferdi’s campfire.
Saffron made her way silently across the floor of the shed. She’d been highly trained: all those hours in the wind and rain, on the west coast of Scotland, creeping up on instructors posing as German soldiers, learning how to play a deadly game of Grandmother’s Footsteps. The final fifteen metres took her almost thirty seconds.
She stepped out from behind her cover.
She was directly behind the man’s position.
Except, he wasn’t there.
And then she felt hard metal jabbed into her back and heard a guttural German command.
‘Drop the pipe.’
Saffron’s mind flashed back to a book she had learned by heart, the SOE combat manual All-In Fighting and, within it, Lesson No. 30(b), ‘Disarm From Behind’.
It was a basic tenet of SOE training that one could always escape being held at gunpoint. If the man with the gun wanted to shoot you, he would have done so already. Nor was he expecting resistance. The first priority was to do everything to make your opponent feel that he had won.
Saffron dropped the pipe. She slumped her shoulders. Her head dropped.
‘If you want to live, do exactly as I say,’ Werner snarled.
He had survived every torment that living hell could throw at him. The Red Army, the partisans, the bitter cold, the blistering heat, the lunatic delusions of idiot commanders in Berlin. He knew that if none of them could beat him, a rich man’s wife stood no chance. In his mind he was no longer an employee, but back in the war zone. And his thinking now was the same as it had been then: do whatever you have to do to survive. Sort out the consequences later.
Saffron whispered, ‘Please . . . Don’t . . .’
She heard him chuckle. ‘This is what happens when you send a woman to do a man’s job.’
It was like a strange, brutal dance: four separate, virtually simultaneous movements executed with perfect coordination to create a single physical expression. And SOE agents spent almost as many hours practising it as ballerinas did at the barre.
One: Saffron twisted sharply to her left, rotating around her left leg as she spun round to face Werner.
Two: she brought her left arm, bent in a V-shape, over Werner’s right arm. Then she pulled it tight, clutching his gun-hand close to her body, trapping it between the crook of her elbow and her armpit, with the end of the barrel sticking harmlessly out behind her.
Three: as the gun went off and the bullet flew away harmlessly into the cavernous hangar, Saffron moved her right knee upwards, as hard as she could. She harnessed all the momentum of her spinning body as she aimed for Werner’s crotch.
Four: Saffron’s right arm used the power of that same motion to jab hard at Werner’s chin. She led with the heel of her palm, going for a knockout blow.
Most men went down if you hit them in the testicles and the face at precisely the same time. But Werner, too, had lost none of his wartime combat skills, nor his instant, reflexive response to an attack. He twisted his hip enough to take the force of Saffron’s knee against his upper thigh, rather than between his legs. And he bobbed his head like a canny boxer so that her hand struck the side of his face, rather than the point of his chin.
The blows hurt, but they weren’t enough to knock Werner out.
Now they were in a fight. The carefully scripted moves in the instruction manual were discarded in a chaotic flurry of lashing limbs and twisted bodies.
Werner aimed a vicious headbutt at Saffron’s face.
She ducked, turned her upper body and felt a shock of pain as his forehead hit the point of her shoulder.
Werner yanked his trapped arm out of Saffron’s grasp.
She swung her right hand down in a karate chop against his forearm, forcing him to drop the gun.
Werner kicked at Saffron’s legs, hitting her shins and causing her to stumble backwards. But even as she was losing her balance, she had the presence of mind to kick the fallen gun out of reach.
Werner launched himself forwards, tackling her around the waist and driving her backwards to the ground. He lay on top of her, pressing her down with his greater weight, trapping her wrists in his hands. He sat back on his heels, still astride her, let go of her arms and fixed his hands around her throat.
He was going to kill her. Saffron knew that for sure. His face was contorted in blind rage, rational calculation long since replaced by raw, animal bloodlust.
She clawed at Werner’s face, but he leaned back and her hooked fingers fell short of his skin. She tried to force her arms between his and prise them apart, but he was too strong for her.
She was unable to breathe. He was crushing her larynx and trachea. In another few seconds her throat would cave in. Her ears were filled with a formless, hissing, crackling noise. Her eyes could barely see.
Now her arms were flailing at her side.
Saffron was blacking out. The darkness was closing in.
Her right hand bumped against something hard, cold.
The pipe.
She gripped it. With her last, failing reserves of strength she whipped her arm up and hit the metal shaft as hard as she could against her assailant’s body.
Somewhere in the distance a car started and revved hard.
Fritz Werner had forgotten how much he enjoyed killing people. It had been so long since he’d been able to relish the last moments of a dying human being. His attention was focused on Saffron’s face as he squeezed the last drops of life out of her. The smack of the pipe against the side of his ribs took him by surprise.
It wasn’t a hard or painful blow, but it was enough to make him loosen his grip for an instant.
Saffron hit Werner again, harder this time, as she felt the glorious rush of air into her lungs. That hit was enough to knock him half off her, easing the downward pressure on her body so that she could wriggle out from under him.
As she was gasping for air, Werner was scrabbling across the dirt floor towards his gun. It was less than a metre from his outstretched fingers.
Saffron’s mind was still slow, her reactions dull.
Werner’s hand grasped the gun.
She swung her arm.
He raised the gun. His finger tightened on the trigger.
Saffron smacked the pipe against his outstretched arm with all her strength, a fraction of a second before the gun went off, breaking his right arm just above the wrist. The bullet ricocheted off the floor.
Then she did what she had intended when the fight began: hit out and not stop until her enemy was incapable of retaliation.
Werner was on his knees, curled over, with his back towards Saffron, who was standing over him. He was trying to cope with the pain from his shattered arm when he felt the next blow from the pipe: an excruciating explosion on one side of his lower back, catching him in the kidneys. She hit his other side in exactly the same place.
Saffron kept hitting and moving, changing her position to enable a steady, relentless succession of strokes.
Through the pain, Werner was aware of the deliberate, calculated way in which he was being worked over. The woman wasn’t just some rich man’s pampered pet. She was a professional. She knew what she was doing. He couldn’t have done it better himself.
Werner heard a car and audible over its engine another sound: a victim’s desperate, plea for mercy.
‘Please . . . don’t hit me any more.’
He realised the voice was his.
‘Don’t move, or I’ll kill you,’ said Saffron.
Werner stayed where he was.
Saffron had acted impulsively; it was in her nature. She saw a threat and went to investigate, confident she possessed the resources and training to neutralise the danger. She had given her instructions to Gerhard so firmly, so definitively, that there was no room for discussion. It was only when she disappeared into the remains of the old control tower that he’d asked himself, Why did you let her do that?
‘She knows what she’s doing,’ he said.
Ferdi considered that claim as he worked on another one-handed roll-up.
‘You reckon there’s anyone in there?’
‘She has a gift for it.’
‘How long before we follow her?’
Gerhard checked his watch. ‘Just under four minutes.’
‘I get it. Here . . . have a drink.’
He gave Gerhard a bottle, watched Gerhard’s face as the raw spirit hit the back of his mouth.
Gerhard returned the bottle to Ferdi and said, ‘I spent three years drinking the crap the Russians claimed was vodka. Compared to that, this tastes like the finest cognac.’
Ferdi laughed.
‘Do you go into the main works much?’ said Gerhard.
‘Sure. I pick up my pay, use the showers, get a hot meal in the canteen.’
‘And you keep your eyes open, ear close to the ground?’
Ferdi nodded. ‘People think I’m that crazy deadbeat who lives on the airfield. They say things they wouldn’t if they took me seriously . . . if they thought I was paying attention.’
‘But you are . . .?’
Ferdi nodded.
‘Would anyone want to send someone out to spy on me?’ Gerhard said.
‘There’s a group of old Nazis, serious, hardcore types. Some of them have been workers here since the old days, but some have turned up in the past few years – old SS men, getting jobs from their friends.’
‘Are they organised?’
‘Can’t say. You hear stories about different groups, not just here, across the country . . . Gangs that get war criminals out of the country, people who dream about taking back power – madmen, the lot of them . . .’
‘Ja,’ Gerhard agreed. ‘But dangerous madmen.’ He looked at his watch – a minute to go.
The sound of a gunshot rang across the deserted airfield and suddenly they were both up and running for the Jeep.
As Gerhard clambered into the driver’s seat his voice was a hoarse, anxious whisper: ‘Oh Jesus . . . Saffron!’
He rammed the gearstick into first, floored the accelerator and the Jeep sped across the short stretch of concrete apron towards the Zeppelin shed. Gerhard yanked the wheel hard left and the tyres sent up a cloud of dust and pebbles as they skidded into the building’s gaping maw. He had a second to get his bearings.
Ferdi was shouting ‘Over there!’, pointing to the left.
He saw Saffron, and his immediate thought was, Thank God, she’s all right. Then he saw that she was using some kind of implement to attack the curled up body of a man, lying like a discarded sack of potatoes at her feet.
The Jeep pulled up a few metres away from Saffron and the two men got out. Gerhard caught her eye and they exchanged a brief, unspoken understanding. His instinct was to run to his wife and hold her tight, but there was no time.
The man was a hefty brute: tall, beefy. Gerhard knew at once that he was ex-SS. Something about him brought back memories of Gestapo men in Russia and camp guards at Sachsenhausen. Somehow she had managed to reduce him to a beaten, quivering wreck.
‘I know that man.’ Ferdi looked at Gerhard and said, ‘You were right about your wife, sir. She’s got a gift for it all right.’
‘Bang on the dot,’ said Saffron. ‘Thanks.’
‘It looks like you didn’t need us,’ Gerhard said.
‘Not until now.’
Gerhard frowned. ‘There are red marks around your neck. Are you all right?’
Saffron shrugged. Her voice was hoarse. ‘He tried to strangle me.’
She turned her attention to Werner, stepping around his body until she was standing by his head. She tapped his skull with the pipe, hard enough to hurt, but not inflicting further damage.
‘Do what I say and you may still live,’ she rasped. ‘Nod if you understand.’
Werner nodded.
‘Good boy. Now roll over onto your back, with your arms underneath you.’
Werner did as he was told.
Saffron pressed the tip of the pipe onto Werner’s forehead.
‘Stay there.’
‘God-damned English whore!’ Werner snarled.
‘Actually, I’m Kenyan,’ Saffron replied.
She pressed down on the pipe and the pressure on his forehead ended Werner’s insults with a gasp of pain.
She coughed, clearing her throat. A little more clearly now, she said, ‘Ferdi, could you please find something suitable for tying wrists and ankles?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
Ferdi scurried away and returned with lengths of electric cable, wrapped in dirty black rubber. Werner’s ankles were bound and his hands tied behind his back. A longer length of cable was slipped through the bonds at Werner’s wrists and ankles, then tied so that it was taut. His range of movement was now virtually non-existent.
Saffron gave the pipe to Gerhard.
‘Feel free to use this.’ She stood over Werner, opened his jacket and patted his flanks. ‘No other weapons,’ she murmured. ‘Let’s find out who you are.’
She rummaged through Werner’s jacket and trouser pockets. Her haul included his wallet, identity card, Meerbach Motor Works employee card and keys, as well as a small amount of loose change.
‘Woul
d you like to interrogate him or shall I?’ she asked Gerhard.
‘It’s your field of expertise,’ Gerhard said. ‘If we’re ever flying an aeroplane, I’ll take charge.’
‘Good plan. But tell me, do you agree that this big lump has SS written all over him?’
‘Without doubt.’
‘No question,’ added Ferdi.
‘Tell me, Herr Werner,’ Saffron asked, ‘are you still working for your old employers?’
Werner spat at her. The saliva fell short.
‘I’ll take that as a yes. Who sent you to follow us?’
Werner glared at her silently.
‘I assume you understand how interrogation works, Herr Werner. Sleep deprivation, disorientation, unpredictable gaps between interrogations, those sorts of things. But it takes a long time, and we don’t have that. Nor can I be bothered to beat information out of you. There’s nothing else for it. We’ll have to get rid of you.’
Werner shouted, ‘Help! Help! Someone . . . !’
Gerhard drew back the pipe, ready to silence Werner, but something stopped him. He had flown hundreds of combat missions against enemy pilots who were trying to kill him and never had the slightest hesitation in shooting them down first. But he didn’t have the capacity to hit a defenceless man, no matter how loathsome.
Saffron can do that, he thought to himself. She can do whatever is necessary.
Now he understood why she had been selected for service in a network of undercover spies, saboteurs and assassins, and how she had survived.
Saffron saw him hesitate. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, resting a hand on Gerhard’s arm. ‘There’s another way to shut him up.’
There was a ragged piece of long-discarded rag, caked in many years’ worth of accumulated filth and dust, lying on the floor not far from where Werner lay. Saffron bent down and picked it up. The fabric was badly frayed and it was easy for her to rip it in two. She crammed one piece between Werner’s teeth, shoving it in like stuffing into a chicken. Then she sealed it in place by rolling the other piece into an improvised bandana, wrapping it over Werner’s mouth and knotting it tight at the back of his head.