Secret in the Clouds

by Christopher Cummings

  It was Jorgenson who acted. “Schutzer Heckhoff, get her away from there!” he ordered.

  Young Hans trotted forward, his face showing concern and indecision. When he reached Annalisa he reached out with one hand but did not grab her. In his other hand was his Schmeisser. “Come on Annalisa,” he said quietly. “You don’t want to watch this.”

  Annalisa shook her head furiously. “You can’t do it! You will have to shoot me too!” she yelled. She moved to grab hold of Tom.

  ‘Bloody Tom!’ Stephen thought resentfully. ‘Why doesn’t she stand in front of me?’

  Jorgenson now strode over. “Get hold of her Heckhoff and get her out of here!” he snarled. He reached out and grabbed Annalisa’s left arm and began twisting it.

  “Let me go!” shrieked Annalisa, struggling hard.

  Jorgenson swore. “Grab hold of her Heckhoff,” he ordered.

  Stephen saw the indecision on Young Hans’s face. ‘He’s in love with Annalisa,’ he realized in a flash of insight.

  Tom now entered the fray. He kicked out at Jorgenson, striking him in the ankles. Jorgenson swore and let go of Annalisa, then punched Tom hard in the face, knocking him down. Annalisa let out a cry of outrage and reacted. Her right knee slammed up into Jorgenson’s groin. Jorgenson gasped and doubled up. Annalisa kicked again, this time hitting him in the face and knocking him down.

  Stephen saw his chance. He sprang out and cannoned into Young Hans, sending him staggering. They both went sprawling in the dust. Stephen fell heavily but his mind was working at full speed. “Grab his gun Annalisa!” he yelled.

  Annalisa sprang over and seized hold of the Schmeisser in Young Hans’s right hand. “Let it go Hans!” she shouted.

  “Annalisa, no!” Hans cried, his anguish and indecision plain. Annalisa wrenched the weapon from his fingers and stepped back next to Graham, who was turning his blindfolded head from side to side, mouth open. She swung the sub machine gun up and pointed it at the firing squad, who still stood at the ‘order arms’, gaping in shock at the drama.

  “Drop those guns!” Annalisa shouted, swinging the Schmeisser from side to side.

  Stephen was now lying on his back in the dust, only one lens of his glasses still in position to let him see clearly. “Cock the gun Annalisa,” he called.

  Annalisa looked down at the Schmeisser, her face showing her anxiety and fear.

  “Look out!” Tom called. He was just struggling back to his feet, blood streaming down his face.

  Stephen followed Tom’s gaze and saw that a furious Jorgenson was kneeling in the dust nearby, his hand clawing at his pistol holster.

  “Jorgenson! Don’t!” called Grandfather Potts. “Stop or I shoot!”

  Stephen, along with everyone else, turned to look. He saw that the old man was leaning on the open door of the utility, aiming a pistol at Jorgenson. Stephen’s mind instantly recognized the weapon. ‘A Mauser automatic, World War One type,’ he noted, seeing the small magazine forward of the pistol grip. ‘This place is a bloody museum of historical weapons!’

  Jorgenson turned his head to glare at the old man but kept on opening the holster. His face was contorted by pain and rage. He jerked the pistol out and tried to straighten up so he could use his other hand to cock it.

  Crack!

  The Mauser in Grandfather Potts’s hand recoiled and puffed smoke. Jorgenson twitched and straightened up. The pistol dropped from his hand, which began to open and shut spasmodically. Then he flopped forward in the dust.

  The sound of another weapon being cocked, and the metallic noises of bullets being placed on steel caused them to all look past Grandfather Potts. Leaning across the bonnet of the utility was Old Karl. He was aiming a light machine gun, the bipod legs resting on the bonnet and the ammunition belt now spread across it. The LMG was pointed at the astonished firing squad.

  “Der schutze.. Der rifles,” called Old Karl. “Drop der rifles, or I shoot!”

  There was a brittle silence as the members of the squad stared in horror at the LMG. Stephen shook his head in amazement. ‘An MG38,’ he noted, his eyes taking in the circular holes in the cylindrical casing holding the long barrel.

  For several more seconds everyone stood in frozen shock. Stephen saw various emotions flash across the faces of the firing squad: anger, surprise, relief. Then Henry dropped his rifle and put his hands up. The tension was broken and the others did likewise, except Theo, who scowled and placed his rifle down with a ‘ground arms’ drill movement. He then stood with his hands up and a look of disgust on his face.

  “Now on der concrete sit mit your hands on der heads,” Old Karl ordered.

  The men moved to obey, some reluctantly, some with relief. Old Karl then called out again, this time to Potts and Dr List, who still stood on the other side. “You too please Mr Potts, und der Herr Doktor.”

  Stephen sighed with relief as the last of the firing squad sat. He then watched with satisfaction as Potts and List began to move. Potts had gone an ashen colour and looked like he might collapse at any moment. Dr List kept glancing quickly from side to side as though seeking some escape. As neither man appeared to be armed Stephen did not care if he did.

  Graham cried out in a quavering voice, “What’s going on?”

  Peter now acted. “Just wait Graham.” He stepped over next to Annalisa and said, “See that little curved steel projection sticking out of that slot on the right hand side? Pull it as far back as you can. It cocks the gun, but be careful, don’t put any pressure on the trigger or you could kill someone.”

  Annalisa did as she was told. To Stephen the tiny metallic click of the sear engaging the bolt of the Schmeisser was a wonderful sound.

  Peter now turned to Young Hans, who was standing in miserable indecision nearby. “You, untie our hands!”

  Hans glanced at Potts and the members of the firing squad, misery written all over his face. Annalisa glanced over her shoulder and snapped, “Do it Hans.”

  Hans did. First he removed the blindfold from Graham’s face and then untied his hands. Then he moved to Peter. Stephen now rolled over and struggled to his feet before stepping back into line. As soon as Peter’s hands were free he walked over to Jorgenson and put his fingers to his throat to check his pulse. Shaking his head he scooped up the small automatic pistol (‘A Walther 38’, Stephen noted). “Dead,” Peter said. Then he cocked the pistol and stood covering Hans while he untied Stephen.

  As soon as his hands were free Stephen adjusted his glasses, then held out his hand to Annalisa. “I’ll take that. I know how to use it,” he said.

  Thankfully Annalisa handed the Schmeisser to him, then turned to hurry to help Tom. ‘Bloody Tom!’ Stephen thought. Then he forgot Tom as the smooth feel of the Schmeisser registered. He cradled it into his shoulder and sighted it at the firing squad, who stared back with obvious anxiety. Tenderly he rubbed his finger on the trigger. ‘Oh yes! Revenge is sweet!’ he thought, noting the looks of fear on the faces in front of him.

  “Who’s frightened now then?” Stephen asked, moving the gun from side to side so as to aim at each one in turn, ending with it pointing at an ashen-faced Potts. “You’ve gone the colour of bad shit Mr Potts. What’s wrong?” he jeered.

  Graham now stepped over beside him. “Strewth Steve, be careful! We don’t want to go to jail for murder.”

  Stephen breathed deeply and realized just how overwrought he was. He nodded and lowered the gun to the waist. “Tie those buggers up Graham. One at a time while I cover you.”

  Graham did this, starting with Dr List. As each one was tied up he was placed to one side at the base of the mountain. After five of them Graham said, “I need more rope.”

  “Look inside,” Stephen suggested.

  Graham nodded, picked up a rifle and went into the fort. There was a stir behind Stephen and he swung round to see that Grandfather Potts had just collapsed. Annalisa and Tom hurried over to him and Annalisa cradled the old man’s head in her lap. “He’s just fainted,”
she said, after checking his heart beat.

  “I help?” Old Karl asked. “I need to sit too.”

  “I’ll take that,” Peter said, hurrying over to take over the LMG. Old Karl moved to sit in the shade of a nearby tree. Stephen backed over to where Annalisa and Tom were wiping Grandfather Pott’s face. Seeing the Mauser pistol lying on the ground he scooped it up and slipped it into his pocket.

  Graham re-appeared with both rope and his camera. “I found our webbing,” he explained. He proceeded to take a dozen pictures from different angles. The subjects were not very co-operative and he had to wait his chance but it gave him great amusement. “Bastards!” he commented to Stephen. “You’ve no idea what it was like when they gave the order to aim and then that bloody phone rang and they ordered arms!”

  Stephen gave a wry grin. “I can imagine,” he replied.

  When Graham had finished tying up the prisoners, including a miserable Young Hans, Stephen said, “I’m just going to nip back inside for a minute to get my gear.”

  Leaving Peter and Graham guarding the prisoners and Tom and Annalisa caring for the two old men Stephen first searched Jorgenson’s pockets for the key ring. Then he hurried inside, knowing from something Annalisa said that the state police were due at any minute. “I rang them as soon as Karl told us what was going to happen,” she explained.

  Half an hour later Stephen rejoined the others just as the drone of an approaching aircraft came to them. “You took a while Steve,” Graham commented.

  “Just looking around,” Stephen explained.

  Annalisa came over. “I’m going to drive to the airfield to meet that plane. Would someone come with me in case that man Walters is there?”

  “I will,” Tom offered.

  “Good man Tom!” Stephen approved. He no longer felt any jealousy. The long hours of agony had made him realize just how important Judy was to him. “Take a rifle in case you need it.”

  As Annalisa and Tom drove off in the utility Stephen made an excuse and dashed inside again, spending a hurried twenty minutes moving things from the armoury and storeroom he had discovered to nice safe hiding places half way up the re-entrant at the back. Then he sauntered back, acting nonchalant, to rejoin the others just as the utility returned laden with armed police dressed in black bullet proof vests and kevlar helmets.

  After that it was just tidying up. The boys sat with Annalisa and the two old men while a scowling Dr List and a completely shattered Potts were driven away. As he was put in a car Potts whimpered once to Annalisa saying he was sorry. She glared at him and snapped, “I can forgive Grandad for doing what he did back during the war, but you are just a selfish traitor!” She then turned away from him and burst into tears, to be comforted by Tom. As Annalisa sobbed in Tom’s arms Stephen shook his head. ‘Bloody Tom! How does he do it?’

  When Annalisa had calmed down she explained what had happened. “At tea time yesterday Daddy suddenly got called away and wouldn’t explain why. Then he came back with Dr List at about eight O’clock and still wouldn’t tell me what was going on. I was angry then as I could see that it was something very serious. Grandad could see it too and looked very troubled.”

  “Then they went out again at about ten, with no explanation. When they came home at about midnight Daddy just tried to fob me off, pretending to joke and saying it was nothing important, but I could tell he was lying. He and Dr List then went off again to talk and I went to bed. But I couldn’t sleep. All those horrible things kept going round and round in my head.” She looked at Stephen as she said this.

  “Then, when Daddy and Dr List got up and went out at four O’clock I got up and watched them go. I wondered why they were wearing overcoats in mid-summer. Now I know- to hide those horrible uniforms!”

  She burst into tears and wasn’t able to speak for several minutes. Once again Tom calmed her. She then went on, “While I was watching them drive off I heard a sound in Granddad’s room. Fearing that he might be having another heart attack I went to him. But he was crying.”

  At that tears rolled down her cheeks. “He was in great distress and I didn’t help. I was so worried that I confronted him with the story. He broke down and admitted that it was true. I asked him if Daddy knew and he said yes. But he had no idea what was going on now. No-one would tell him.”

  Annalisa paused and shivered. “Then Old Karl came in. He had walked back from this place.” She gestured to the underground fort. “I didn’t even know any of this existed! And I’ve been here hundreds of times for swims and picnics!”

  “You should see inside,” Stephen added.

  Annalisa nodded, then went on, “When Old Karl came in wearing that horrible uniform I thought Grandad was going to have a seizure. Old Karl told us what was going on, and when he said that you were to be shot by a firing squad at dawn I was nearly beside myself because it was already daylight outside. We raced around getting organized and then I had to tell Walters and those other Federal Policemen to mind their own business. I was nearly frantic by the time we started driving.”

  “So were we,” Peter added dryly.

  The laughter helped ease the mood. Annalisa then explained that Old Karl was so upset at the thought of more people being murdered that he just had to stop it.

  It was only later that they learned exactly how Old Karl came into it. Apparently Grandfather Potts had been the chief German agent in North Queensland in the 1930s. Radios, uniforms, guns and ammunition had been smuggled in before the war, and the old gold mine slowly converted into a fortress. The Germans also had a plan to hide their key people in case of war. When the Australian authorities began rounding up German nationals for internment Old Karl had shot the policeman sent to get him, then bolted.

  The policeman did not die but Old Karl had not known that. He had managed to get to a safe house in Ravenshoe and was then moved to a secret camp. So that they did not have too many people at the cattle station the Germans had put them in small groups at other locations. Old Karl had been sent to a timber cutter’s camp near Black Mountain.

  Apparently, when Tom’s grandfather had turned up at the timber camp in army uniform Old Karl had assumed they had come to get him. He said that Lt Bellamy had in fact recognized him. Tom’s comment, reinforced by Major Barnes when he was told the story, was that because Lt Bellamy was the Intelligence Officer and had a list of names of Germans who were still unaccounted for, this was probably so.

  Old Karl had panicked, drawn a gun and shot Lt Bellamy. He had then made his driver a prisoner. That left them with a real problem. Bellamy was only badly wounded. Jorgenson’s grandfather, the bulldozer driver, organized for them to bring the two prisoners to the cattle station, Jorgenson driving the army truck and Old Karl another vehicle. Bellamy had died from his wounds and Grandfather Potts had ordered the driver, Ferris, to be shot.

  Old Karl had been part of the firing squad and had helped bury the bodies in the unmarked graves. But the memories had haunted him, slowly sending him insane. He had been quite unable to allow it to happen again, just, as he put it, “To save a cowardly politician.”

  The army truck had then been bulldozed into the earth wall of the Green Swamp Dam. Tests done on the wreck proved this to be the missing vehicle. Major Barnes confirmed it because he had a copy of his Investigation which included engine and chassis numbers and these were still legible on the rusty wreck.

  In the days and weeks which followed there were many events which flowed from it. The most moving was when the Commonwealth War Graves Commission placed two of the standard white marble headstones on the graves beside Pandanus Creek. Mrs Hopkins had insisted the dead remain undisturbed. But it was a very emotional old lady and her grandson who stood beside the newly erected headstones while an army guard of honour from the 51st Battalion, the Far North Queensland Regiment presented arms after firing the three volleys.

  As the army bugler had played the ‘Last Post’ Stephen, who stood at the salute along with Graham and Peter in front of a detac
hment of army cadets, had been quite unable to stop the flow of tears down his cheeks.

  For both Tom and his grandmother it had been intensely satisfying to see Lt Bellamy’s name officially listed as ‘Died of Wounds’. As Tom said, to know his great grandfather was not a deserter and coward but had been killed by the enemy while in the service of his country was a great comfort.

  The whole event was, of course, a media circus of the first order. The story was a sensation. So too was the arrest and resignation of the Defence Minister. It was the end of Potts’s career. Annalisa’s mother divorced him and went off with a fashion photographer. Annalisa stayed on at the cattle station, now with new workers, to help her grandfather and Old Karl to run the place. Neither Old Karl, nor Grandfather Potts ever went to trial over their actions, the legal proceedings bogging down from the lapse of time and their complexities.

  “Poor old buggers have punished themselves enough I reckon,” was Graham’s summing up, and Stephen agreed with him.

  One Sunday afternoon Graham, Peter and Stephen had gone to Wangetti Beach to dig up Stephen’s evidence. This was a four rotor Kriegsmarine Enigma machine. When sold at auction by ‘Christies’ in London it brought in a goodly sum, which along with the sale of other authentic Nazi militaria and weapons, more than adequately paid for Stephen’s four years at university. That half an hour spent alone in the underground fortress and in the gorge beyond had certainly been worthwhile.

  Tom became a frequent and welcome visitor to ‘Hayden Park’, the romance between him and Annalisa flourishing. Stephen didn’t mind. He had his own romance to pursue with Judy- but that is another story.

  THE NAVY CADETS SERIES

  Davey Jones’s Locker

  The Navy Cadets: Book 1

  Christopher Cummings

  Fourteen year-old Navy Cadet Andrew Collins enrolls in a SCUBA diving course on the Great Barrier Reef to impress Muriel, the girl of his dreams. There’s only one problem: Andrew is terrified of diving, not to mention the sharks, eels, and every other dangerous critter inhabiting the Coral Sea.