by Alan Evans
He saw them from the corner of his eye when they were still a dozen yards away on either hand. One was closing from the right, the other from the left. They both wore raincoats and edged laterally through the shuffling stream. They did not turn their heads to look at him but he knew they had him in view. He was the target.
He could see no police ahead but he would not have been allowed to reach them. The train was on his right while on his left and some twenty to thirty yards away stood a long row of stores or offices, some opened and lit, some closed.
The one on the left came first, a big man and thick-set, fleshy-faced, confident. As his shoulder came up against Smith the man’s left hand came out of his raincoat pocket and reached across his thick body. It held a pistol; Smith thought it looked like a Luger, posing a threat but not actually pointing at him. The man said, “Give me the case.” His hand groped for its handle, fumbling at Smith’s fingers. Smith drew the Colt and smashed it on the extended wrist that held the Luger.
The big man screamed at that hammer blow, dropped the pistol and let go of the case to clutch instead at his shattered wrist. Smith slid in front of him, stamping on his instep so he cried out again, elbowing him away towards the other man now charging in from the right. They collided and tangled.
Smith tucked the Colt away but kept his hand on it, shouldered his way through the crowd and emerged in a kind of shallow at the side of the main stream. Here where the crowd was thinner he could walk more quickly. He passed what seemed to be a waiting-room because it might not have had another exit. Then he saw the high, vaulted room with its floor stacked with sacks. Mail? But what mattered was the sight of the street beyond. He passed through and one voice called an enquiry, another a command, the words of neither understood but their tones clear. Then he was outside the station and walking rapidly down to a car that waited by the kerb.
He asked the young naval officer standing beside it, “I think you may be expecting me. Smith.”
The sub-lieutenant had been searching the distance but now his gaze came down to the slight figure in the old trenchcoat and slouch hat. Pale blue eyes crinkled at the corners as the man smiled. The sub thought this foreign-looking, shabby character did not look like a Royal Navy captain, though God knew they were rarely fashion plates when they went ashore. He said quickly, “Captain Smith for Lancer. Yes, sir.” He yanked open the door and asked, “Good journey, sir?”
“Quiet.” Smith ducked into the car. He did not see the slender, fair-haired girl pass by and hurry into the station for the Warsaw train.
Sarah, intent on finding her way in a strange place and catching that train, did not see him.
Chapter Five – Murder
In the forenoon the sunlight was brilliant, sparking from the surface of the Baltic. Oberleutnant Kurt Larsen stood on the bridge of Brandenburg. She was engaged in exercises with the Panzerschiff Graf Spee, now steaming ahead of her. Moehle, captain of Brandenburg, sat in his high chair at the front of the bridge with Paul Brunner, his Executive Officer, at his side.
Kurt thought they were both in a good humour, particularly Moehle, and that was easy to understand. He had a fine ship, lean and fast, capable of thirty-two knots, only four years old and mounting nine 6-inch guns in three turrets. She was a ship to be proud of, as Kurt was proud. And the men, her crew, lived up to her. They had proved their skill and efficiency over this last year and now as the summer waned they were bronzed and fit.
The messenger who came quickly onto the bridge handed a signal flimsy to Moehle, who glanced at it and read, “From OKM …” That was Oberkommando der Marine, Supreme Naval Headquarters. “… addressed to Graf Spee and ourselves. We are to return to Wilhelmshaven immediately.” He passed the signal to Brunner and sat in thought.
Until Brunner said, low-voiced so the bridge staff would not hear, “You think this might be it?”
Moehle nodded, “I think so.” He turned, saw Larsen and told him with a smile, “Keep quiet about my theorising, Kurt. The men will know when I know and am able to tell them. I don’t want rumours flying that ‘the old man thinks’.”
Kurt grinned back at him, “I will, sir.”
“Signal from the flagship!” That was the signal yeoman, telescope to his eye.
Moehle had already seen the flags climbing the halyards of Graf Spee. He said, “Be ready for the change of course.”
Brandenburg altered course a minute later in accordance with the signal from Graf Spee, turned into her wake with both ships bound for home. Kurt Larsen watched the Panzerschiff ahead. He thought, There is a killer. Six 11-inch guns and twenty-eight knots, eleven hundred men aboard. There were only three ships in all the Royal Navy both fast enough to catch her and big enough to fight her. She could stand off, out of any cruiser’s range, and smash them to pieces with those big, long-range guns.
He turned to glance at the British destroyer, sighted distantly some ten minutes ago but now passing astern and identified as HMS Lancer. She looked to be bound for the Skaggerak — and then England? He wondered if her officers were measuring the might of the Panzerschiff.
*
Smith paused in his restless pacing to stand in the waist of Lancer and stare across at the two ships on the sunlit sea. He asked a passing seaman, “Do you know what ships those are?”
“Yes, sir. Up on the bridge they say Graf Spee, one o’ them ‘pocket battleships’, and Brandenburg, light cruiser, sir.”
Smith answered, “Thank you.” Just a few months ago Brandenburg had been off Spain and some of her men might have killed him. He wondered if that young officer was still aboard her. He had looked a tough nut.
And so did Graf Spee, while Brandenburg would be a handful for any light cruiser. When war came, if those two went raiding …
*
Hannah was intercepted in the foyer of the Bristol by a neatly-suited under-manager. He was a young man, barely thirty and eager to please. “Miss Fitzsimmons! You will pardon me, but — a young lady is asking for Captain Smith. She says he was staying here and she is his daughter. I wonder if Mr Smith was the same man? You were friends? Do you know if he will come back soon? The other three gentlemen, they did not say, but I wondered if, possibly, Mr Smith …” He paused there, hopefully.
But Hannah shook her head and replied blandly, “We are friends but he isn’t a captain and I’m sure he is not coming back. Still, maybe I can help this girl. Where is she?”
The girl was sexually attractive, that was Hannah’s first and lasting impression. Sarah sat in the bar, fingers tapping on the table, brow wrinkled. Hannah checked at the door for a moment, watching her. There was the fair hair and blue eyes but no immediate resemblance to Smith in the delicate features. But then there was a hint about the wide mouth of determination — or stubbornness — or sensuality. That conjured up memories …
Hannah went in and stopped by the girl. “Excuse me, but the manager said you were asking about Mr Smith. I know him. I’m Hannah Fitzsimmons.”
The blue eyes looked up at her, eagerly at first, then guardedly, “I am his daughter, Sarah. If we’re talking about the same man?” Sarah decided this woman with the American accent was not pretty but certainly good looking, attractive. She also thought, for the first time but not the last, I wish I could dress like that.
“Your father is a captain in the Royal Navy, though this hotel doesn’t know that and he doesn’t want it to.” Then Hannah delved in her memory and recalled, “You’re from Berlin.”
“That’s right. Did he tell you about me?”
“Just that you were in Berlin.”
“Oh!” Now Sarah wondered just what relationship there was between her father and this woman.
Hannah guessed at that: “We were friends, just the other side of acquaintances really, because he got me out of a very nasty spot and we used to eat dinner together when he was here.”
“I see.” Sarah accepted that as truth, but wondered if it was all of the truth.
Hannah said, “So
you came to see him.”
“I — hoped to stay with him, although I don’t know him at all.” Sarah sounded hesitant. “I just have vague memories of him from when I was young.”
Hannah thought ruefully, So what are you now, child? She said, “He went back to England. I don’t think he’ll come here again. Will you follow him?”
Sarah frowned down at the table, wanting to keep distance between this woman and herself. But Hannah Fitzsimmons had seen her father only days before and knew him. Curiosity won. Sarah looked up at Hannah and asked, ‘‘What’s he like?”
Hannah remembered him snatching her from the car in Spain. “He’s — quite a guy. A gentleman.”
Sarah thought for a moment then made up her mind: “I’d love to go after him, but I must telegraph to my parents to let them know I’m safe and when I hear that they are all right, then I’ll think of going to London. Will you be writing to him?” That was a probing question and Hannah hesitated. Sarah saw that hesitation and said, “I’m sorry. That’s none of my business. But if you do, please don’t tell him I’m here. I told you I can’t remember my father. The truth is that I hardly ever thought of him, and I don’t want to be seen as begging now. In a week or two I’ll meet him. So — promise?”
Hannah hesitated, then said firmly, “I won’t be writing to him and I won’t tell him.”
“Thank you. I’ll let you know if I change my mind.”
Those last words held Hannah off at arm’s length and she acknowledged it, thought, OK, honey. At your age and in your position maybe I’d be careful just who I trusted. And she remembered the self-sufficiency of the father and decided, drily, that the same trait had come down to the daughter.
But Sarah telegraphed to Ulrich Bauer and her mother every day for a week, without receiving a reply. Hannah found out by asking directly: “Any word from your folks, honey?” She tried to comfort the girl: “You’ll hear from Berlin pretty soon. I’ll bet there’s a simple, innocent reason for the delay.” Sarah thanked her politely but Hannah also wondered uneasily why no answer came.
She had a daily routine that started with a visit to the Press Section of the Polish Foreign Office in Pilsudski Square. She then went on to lunch with the other correspondents at the Europejski Hotel and afterwards embarked on a succession of telephone calls and typing of reports. That went on, with only an interruption for dinner, until midnight or the small hours. But in between she contrived to seek out Sarah and noted the glances of the young Polish officers directed at the blonde, blue-eyed girl. Hannah decided she would have to ride shotgun on Smith’s daughter while realising that would not be easy. Sarah attracted men without trying and Hannah was no closer to the girl.
Sarah in her turn had watched Hannah and seen that she was on terms of easy familiarity and first names with men, both British and American, who came into the bar of the Bristol. She learned that they were all foreign correspondents and so was Hannah Fitzsimmons. To Sarah the men looked the part but the American woman, always beautifully dressed, did not. Was she in fact an adventuress?
Hannah gave her problem some thought and telephoned her editor in London. At the end of that week she told Sarah, “Say, I have to take a trip to sound out the feeling in the countryside. You know, what the ordinary guy and his wife think about this crisis with Germany. I have to take another girl along to share the driving because these Polish roads are hell.” In fact she had been advised to hire a chauffeur. “And, well, just so I’m not on my own out in the sticks. I’m authorised to pay the going rate for the job. What d’you say?”
Sarah hesitated, said slowly, “Well …”
Hannah urged her, “I reckon it would be good for you to come along. You’ll only worry yourself sick if you hang around here and you would be company for me. We’ll phone the Bristol every night and they can read us your telegram when it comes.” Hannah chuckled then, “And it will all be on expenses, kid! How about that?”
It was a factor Sarah had to consider because her funds were limited. Her stepfather had given her enough money to last her for a month or two and promised more but none had come. While she still reserved judgment on Hannah Fitzsimmons, she was growing to like the American woman with her easy smile. And Sarah was increasingly conscious of being alone. She accepted, “All right. Thank you.”
They left the Bristol in a hired Ford with Sarah at the wheel on the morning of Thursday, 17 August. They had lowered the hood because of the glorious summer weather and the baking heat that would rule by noon. Hannah was, or seemed to be, in holiday mood: “We’ll take it in easy stages and wind up at Katowice at the end of the month.”
Sarah asked, “Where is Katowice?”
“Down on the German border.”
*
That night Smith left the British Embassy in Berlin after dark and walked to a side-street where a car waited. When the driver saw Smith he leaned over and shoved open the door on the passenger’s side. Smith swung into the car and it pulled away. The driver said, “I didn’t see anyone following you.” Smith never knew his name, had only met him once before at a meeting arranged by the Embassy but outside of it. He wore a suit that was pressed but shiny with age. He blended into the background of the car, clean but shabby.
Smith shook his head. “One picked me up outside the Embassy but I dropped him.” The tail, a policeman in a cheap suit and slouch hat, was still searching for Smith in a crowded Bierkeller.
They drove to the Wannsee. Smith intended to park a street away from the house of Ulrich and Elizabeth Bauer but when he saw the smoke and flames ahead he had a sense of foreboding and motioned to his driver to carry on. They stopped almost opposite the house, got out of the car and joined the watching crowd. The house was not large but stood in its own small garden. It burned from cellar to roof and the flames mounted twice the height of the house itself. Smith’s driver muttered, “Jesus! They must have swamped the place in petrol for it to burn like that.”
Smith did not ask who ‘they’ were. He stared at the firemen, the ineffectual hoses snaking across the street, the towering flames. He felt their heat on his face. He had come here to persuade Ulrich Bauer and Elizabeth to leave Germany. Word had gone to him in London from Intelligence sources and via the Embassy in Berlin that they were in danger now; Ulrich Bauer had spoken out too much and too loudly. That was common knowledge.
The car would have carried them over the border into Denmark before the morning light. Smith had forged papers for them in his pocket. Both plan of escape and papers were useless now. The Gestapo had got there first.
The driver returned from sidling through the crowd and told Smith, “The cook reported the fire. She’s over there, telling anybody who’ll listen.” He nodded to a little group gathered around a fat, gesticulating woman. “Only the Bauers were in the house. The old girl set out for home, as usual, ten minutes ago. She left them just starting a meal. She met a friend on the corner of the street and stood talking. Then she saw the house burst into flames. Says it exploded.” He paused for a moment, squinting through narrowed eyes at the blaze, then finished bitterly, “I’ll bet it did.”
Smith asked, thinking of them in the flames and recoiling from the picture, “The daughter? Not her, too?”
“No.”
“You’re certain?”
“The cook said someone should tell the daughter but the girl left home a week or so ago; doesn’t know where she went.”
So was there some hope?
Smith said flatly, grieving and hiding it, “No point in waiting here.” Elizabeth was dead. She had been as dead to him these last fifteen years but that had been his fault or that of circumstances, not hers. She had deserved happiness. This was murder.
The driver said, “Right. We’ll get away.” Then he added, “I’ll be glad to get out of this country.” He was German but had been promised refuge in Britain if war came. “Won’t be long now.” He started to shove back into the crowd, glancing over his shoulder at Smith who lingered for some second
s.
On the other side of the street Kurt Larsen elbowed his way through the gaping throng to reach the kerb. Sarah’s house, which he had visited so often in recent months, now blazed to his left, beyond a cordon of police and firemen. Since Graf Spee and Brandenburg had been at Wilhelmshaven their crews had worked around the clock as the ships were docked and stored, prepared for a long cruise. Now he had just two days’ leave and he had come to say farewell to Sarah. He had written to her but received no reply for these last two weeks.
He stared open-mouthed at the house, shocked, and jerked with reaction as did those around him when the roof fell in and sent up a cloud of sparks, smoke and flame. He winced and turned away. He, too, had learned that Herr and Frau Bauer had been in the house. He wondered where Sarah was—
It was then that he saw the face at the front of the crowd across the street. He had last seen it at night in the glow from the headlights of a car, eyes as cold and empty as the pistol barrel aimed at him. He glimpsed it now in the shifting, rippling orange glare of the flames but he knew it.
He started to run, checked for an instant as an ambulance came racing, uselessly, and whipped by him so close the draught of its passing snatched at his cap. He grabbed at it instinctively as the ambulance braked and halted a score of yards along the road. He ran on though the face had gone. The man had to be close and he was a spy, an enemy of the state.
Kurt charged through the spectators lining the pavement, collecting curses but ignoring them. He burst into the open with his head turning, searching for the man he pursued, but did not see him. He looked over the crowd again then ran to the nearest corner. He was just in time to see the rear lights of a car swing around at the end of the block and disappear from sight.
Chapter Six – The Storm Breaks
Brandenburg sailed on the evening of Monday, 21 August 1939, following Graf Spee out of Wilhelmshaven. By noon on the 24th, they had slipped past any watching British ship and were south of Iceland. Kurt Larsen paced the deck below the bridge. He had shied away from reporting to the police his sighting in Berlin of the man he had last seen on the Spanish coast, could imagine their exchanges of glances. He had planned to tell his captain, Gustav Moehle, but when he got back to his ship he hesitated. He was ready, almost, to swear the man in the crowd and lit by the flames was the same he had seen in Spain. But a small, niggling doubt had come with time. Had he been mistaken? The light had not been good on either occasion. In the end he said nothing.