by Jack Higgins
Ritter raised the pistol and fired a couple of seconds later, the flare started to descend on its parachute, bathing the avenue in a cold, white glare for a few moments only.
There were two Russian tanks and half a company of infantry sixty or seventy yards up the street. Ritter saw the white faces, heard the voices raised excitedly, and turned and ran like hell towards the Storch.
They picked him up on the move, Strasser holding the door open while Hoffer reached out to grab him by the scruff of the neck, and already the Russians were firing.
Ritter fell into the cabin on hands and knees and Berger yelled excitedly, 'More light! I'm going to need more light!'
Ritter fumbled in the box for another flare. The Storch was roaring down the avenue now, its tail lifting, but already one of the tanks had started to move. Berger had to swerve violently at the last moment, his starboard wing-tip just missing the tank's turret, and for a moment seemed to lose control.
But a second later and he was back on course again. Ritter put his hand out of the window and discharged the flare. In its sudden glare, the Victory Column seemed terrifyingly close, but Berger held on grimly. She yawed to starboard in the crosswind and he applied a little rudder correction.
And then, quite suddenly, they were airborne, lifting off the avenue in a hail of rifle bullets, the Victory Column rushing to meet them.
'We'll hit! We'll hit!' Hoffer cried, but Berger held on grimly, refusing to sacrifice power for height, and only at the very last moment did he pull the column back into his stomach, taking the Stork clear of the top of the Victory Column by fifteen or twenty feet.
'Dear God, we made it. How truly amazing,' Strasser said.
'Surely you never doubted me, Reichsleiter?' Heini Berger laughed, unaware in the excitement of the moment of his slip of the tongue, stamped on the right rudder and turned away across what was left of the rooftops of Berlin.
It was at roughly the same moment that the SS guard on duty at the exit of the bunker leading on to Hermann-Goringstrasse heard a vehicle approach. A field car turned into the entrance of the ramp and braked to a halt. The driver, a shadowy figure in the gloom, got out and came forward.
'Identify yourself!' the sentry demanded.
Martin Bormann moved into the circle of lamplight. The sentry drew himself together. 'I'm sorry, Reichsleiter. I didn't realize it was you.'
'A bad night out there.'
'Yes, Reichsleiter.'
'But it will get better, my friend, very soon now, for all of us. You must believe that.'
Bormann patted him on the shoulder and moved down the ramp into the darkness.
8
There was no immediate easing of tension in the Storch for, as they flew across Berlin, the Russian artillery bombardment seemed to chase them all the way. There were numerous fires in many parts of the city and the darkness crackled with electricity on the edge of things as one shell after another found its target.
'Something to remember, eh, Major?' Strasser said, looking down at the holocaust. 'The Twilight of the Gods.'
'All we need is a score by Wagner,' Ritter said, 'to enjoy ourselves thoroughly. We have been well trained, we Germans, to appreciate the finer things.'
'Oh, it could be worse,' Strasser pointed out. 'We could be down there.'
The Storch rocked violently and something rattled against the fuselage. 'Anti-aircraft fire,' Berger cried. 'I'm going down.'
He threw the Storch into a sudden, violent corkscrew that seemed to last for ever, the whine of the engine rising to fever pitch; and finally and only when the fires below seemed very close indeed, he pulled back the column and levelled out.
Hoffer turned his head away and was violently sick. Strasser said, with a slight edge of contempt to his voice, 'He has no stomach for it, I think, your sergeant-major.'
'So what?' Ritter said. 'They tell me Grand Admiral Donitz is sick every time he puts to sea, but he's still Germany's greatest sailor.'
Gradually, the flames, the darting points of light on the ground, faded into the night. Berger shouted above the roar of the engine, 'I'll tell you something now we're out of it. I never thought we'd make it. Not for a moment.'
'You did well,' Strasser said. 'A brilliant piece of flying.'
It was Ritter, suddenly irritated, who said, 'Not out of the woods yet.'
'Nonsense,' Berger shouted. 'A milk run from now on.'
And he was right, for conditions generally could not have been more in their favour. They flew on through the night at 500 feet in darkness and heavy rain, Berger sitting there at the controls, a slight, fixed smile on his mouth, obviously thoroughly enjoying himself.
Hoffer fell asleep; Strasser, who was sitting next to Berger, made notes in his diary in the light from the control panel. Ritter smoked a cigarette and watched him, wondering what was going on behind the eyes in that calm, expressionless face, but that was a pointless exercise. Just as much a waste of time as asking himself what in the hell he was doing here.
It was like a chess game. You made a move in answer to one. A totally open-ended situation. No means of knowing what the end would be until it was reached. And in the final analysis, did it really matter? He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.
He came awake instantly in response to a hand on his shoulder. Strasser said, 'We're close to Plauen now. Berger's trying to raise the airstrip.'
Ritter glanced at his watch and saw, with a slight shock of surprise, that it was three o'clock. He turned to Hoffer. 'How are you?'
'Better, Major, much better, now that there's nothing left to come. I never could stand flying - any kind of flying. Remember that transport plane which brought us out of Stalingrad?'
Berger was talking away, using his throat mike. 'Red Fox, this is Valhalla. Do you read me?' There was only the confused crackling of the static. He tried again, adjusting one of the dials. 'Red Fox, this is Valhalla.' A moment later a voice broke through the static. 'Valhalla, this is Red Fox. I read you strength five.'
'I am coming in now for refuelling as arranged,' Berger said. 'What is your situation?'
'Heavy rain, slight ground mist, visibility about 150 yards. We'll put the landing lights on for you.'
'All the comforts of home,' Berger said. 'My thanks.' A moment later, two parallel lines of light flared in the darkness to starboard. 'I can see you now,' he called. 'I'm coming in.'
He turned into the wind and started his descent. Ritter said, 'Do we stay here for any length of time?'
'For as long as it takes to fill the tanks,' Strasser said. 'We've still got a long way to go.'
They drifted down through the rain and mist into the light, there was the sudden squeal of the tyres biting as Berger applied the brakes, they slowed, the tail going down.
And then Berger gave a cry of dismay for the trucks that raced out of the darkness on either side, converging on them, had red stars emblazoned on their sides.
'Get out of it!' Strasser cried.
Berger increased engine revs. The soldiers in the trucks were already firing. A bullet shattered one of the side-windows. Ritter shoved the barrel of a Schmeisser through and loosed off a long burst. And then they were really moving again, racing towards the end of the runway, the trucks trying to keep up with them and losing. Berger pulled back the column, they climbed up into the darkness.
He levelled off at 3,000 feet. Strasser said, 'Now what?'
For the first time his composure seemed to have deserted him and he actually looked worried. For some reason Ritter found the spectacle strangely comforting.
'The only thing I'm certain of at the moment is that I've got fuel for forty minutes, and that includes the reserve tank,' Berger said. And in the crisis it was Ritter he turned to. 'Have a look at the Luftwaffe area map, the one on top. See what there is close to our line fifty miles south of here.'
Ritter spread the map across his knees and switched on his torch. 'There's a place called Plodin marked with a red ring. Perhaps forty mi
les. According to the key that means reserve feeder station. What's that?'
'Part of the back-up system for night-fighters. The sort of place they can put down if they run into trouble. A hangar and a single runway, usually grass. Probably a private air club before the war. I'll see if I can raise them.'
'You raised somebody last time,' Strasser said. 'They answered in excellent German and look what happened.'
'All right, what do you want me to do?' Berger demanded. 'I can't see what we're getting in to unless I go down because you won't get even a touch of grey in the sky before four o'clock. I'll be out of fuel twenty minutes before then by my reckoning. You may have read that in such situations people often jump for it. Unfortunately, we only have one parachute and I'm sitting on it.'
'All right, I take the point,' Strasser said. 'Do as you think fit.'
He sat there, his jaw working, fists tightly clenched. He's thrown, Ritter thought, and badly because, for once, he isn't in charge. He has no control. He isn't playing the game - the game's playing him.
Berger was using plain language. 'This is Fiesler Storch AK40, calling Plodin. I am dangerously short of fuel and urgently require assistance. Come in, please.'
There was an immediate response. A voice said urgently, 'Suggest you try elsewhere. We've been completely cut off by Russian troops since seven o'clock last night.'
'I'm afraid I have no choice in the matter,' Ritter told him. 'My estimated time of arrival is o-three-forty. Five minutes after that, and if I'm still airborne, I'll be gliding.'
There was silence, only the static, and then the voice said, 'Very well, we'll do what we can.'
'Right, gentlemen, here we go again,' Berger said, and he started to descend.
Two aircraft were burning at the side of the runway as they went in. 'Expensive landing lights,' Berger said, 'but I'm grateful, nevertheless.'
There were a couple of hangars, a small control tower, a complex of huts a hundred yards or so away, some trucks parked beside them. There was no sound of conflict, no shooting, only the two planes burning at the side of the runway as they touched down, an old Dornier 17 and a Ju 88s night-fighter.
As Berger taxied towards the control tower, half a dozen ground crew ran forward, two of them carrying wheel blocks, and the door opened and an officer stood there framed in the light.
He was an Oberleutnant, his Luftwaffe fliegerbluse open at the neck. He was twenty-three or four, badly in need of a shave and looked tired.
Berger held out his hand. 'Heini Berger. Not too worried about blackout, I see?'
'What would be the point?' the Oberleutnant said. 'With those two blazing like the candles on a Christmas tree. Our water main was fractured in the initial bombardment so we've no fire-fighting facilities. My name's Frankel, by the way.'
'You are in command here?' Strasser asked.
'Yes, the commanding officer, Captain Hagen, was killed last night. Russian tanks shelled us at eleven o'clock and raked the buildings with machine-gun fire.'
'No infantry attack?' Ritter asked.
Frankel took in the uniform, the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords, and straightened his shoulders. 'No, they stayed out there in the dark, Sturmbannfuhrer. Shelled us again approximately an hour ago. That's when the planes got it.'
Ritter walked forward into the shadows. There were bodies here and there and on the far side of the runway, another Junkers tilted forward on its nose, tail up, an enormous ragged furrow in the ground indicating where it had belly-landed.
He turned and came back to the others. 'How many men have you left?'
'Half a dozen,' Frankel said. 'The aircrews of those planes all got away before we were hit. And then there are some of your people. Arrived last night just before the Russians. They're down at the huts now. You can just see their trucks - four of them.'
'My people?' Ritter said. 'You mean by this SS, I presume. Which unit?'
'Einsatzgruppen, Sturmbannfuhrer.'
Ritter's face was very pale. He reached out and grabbed Frankel by the front of his fliegerbluse. 'You will not mention scum like that in the same breath as Waffen-SS, you hear me?'
Einsatzgruppen, action groups or special commandos, had been formed by Himmler prior to the invasion of Russia. They were, in effect, extermination squads, recruited from the gaols of Germany, officered by SD and Gestapo officers. Occasionally soldiers of the Waffen-SS convicted of some criminal offence were transferred to them as a punishment. The phrase scum of the earth summed them up perfectly.
It was Strasser who moved forward to pull Ritter away. 'Easy, Major. Easy does it. What are they doing now, down there?'
'Drinking,' Frankel said. 'And they have some women with them.'
'Women?'
'Girls - from the camps. Jewish, I think.'
There was a nasty silence. Berger said, nodding towards the blazing wrecks, 'Why didn't they fly those out of it while the going was good?'
'They landed here because they were low on fuel in the first place and we didn't have any. Used our last a fortnight ago.'
'No fuel,' Strasser cut in. 'But you must have something surely, and the Storch doesn't need much. Isn't that right, Berger?'
'If it was only ten gallons you wanted, I still couldn't oblige,' Frankel said.
Berger looked towards the Junkers on the far side of the hangar, the one which had crash-landed. 'What about that? Nothing in the tanks?'
'We syphoned the fuel out of her a couple of weeks ago.' Frankel hesitated. 'There could be a few gallons left, but not enough to get you anywhere.'
There was a sudden burst of laughter and singing from the huts. Ritter said to Berger, 'Am I right in assuming that a workhorse like the Fieseler Storch doesn't necessarily need high-octane aviation spirit to be able to fly?'
'No. She'll function on stuff a lot more crude than that. Reduced performance, of course.'
Ritter nodded towards the huts. 'Four trucks down there. I should think their tanks between them would hold forty or fifty gallons. Would it do?'
'I don't see why not,' Berger said. 'Especially if we can syphon a few gallons out of the Junkers to mix with it.'
Ritter said to Frankel, 'All right?'
The Oberleutnant nodded. 'As far as I'm concerned. But the gentlemen of the Einsatzgruppen may have other ideas.'
Strasser said, 'We are on a special mission of vital importance to the Reich. My orders are signed by the Fuhrer himself.'
'Sorry, Mein Herr,' Frankel said, 'but strange things are happening in Germany today. There are actually people around for whom that kind of talk doesn't cut much ice. I suspect that's particularly true of these characters.'
'Then we must change their minds for them,' Ritter said. 'How many are there?'
'Thirty or so.'
'Good. Put a couple of your men to the task of syphoning the JU. Send the rest to the trucks. I'll deal with these -' here he hesitated. 'These gentlemen of the Einsatzgruppen.' He turned to Strasser. 'You agree?'
Strasser smiled slightly. 'My dear Ritter, I wouldn't miss it for anything.'
There was no one at the trucks, no guard at the steps leading up to the door of the mess hall as Ritter marched briskly across the compound, Strasser a pace behind his left shoulder.
'I must be mad,' Strasser said.
'Oh, I don't know. Like we used to say about those chairborne bastards at HQ, it does a man good to get up off his backside occasionally and go up front to see what it's like for the ordinary troops. A little action and passion for you, Reichsleiter.'
He paused at the bottom of the steps to adjust his gloves. Strasser said, 'Why do you call me that, Major?'
'You mean I'm mistaken?'
'To the best of my knowledge, Reichsleiter Martin Bormann is at present in his office in the Fuhrerbunker in Berlin. Even in this day and age, it would take a rather large miracle for a man to be in two places at once.'
'Simple enough if there were two of him.'
'Which would raise the pro
blem of who is real and who is only the image in the mirror,' Strasser said. 'A neat point, but relevant, I think you'll agree.'
'True,' Ritter said. 'And perhaps in the final analysis, an academic point only.' He smiled ironically. 'Shall we go in now?'
He opened the door and stepped into the light. At first he and Strasser went completely unnoticed, which was hardly surprising for the men who crowded the tables before them were mostly drunk. There were perhaps a dozen girls huddled into a corner at the far end of the room - hair unkempt, tattered clothes, faces grimy with dirt. In fact, the faces were the most interesting feature about them, the eyes dull, totally without hope, the look of trapped animals waiting for the butcher's knife.
There was a burly Hauptsturmfuhrer seated at one end of the longest table. He was a brute of a man with slanting eyes and high Slav cheekbones. He had a small, dark-haired girl on his knee, an arm around her neck, holding her tight, while his other hand was busy under her skirt. She couldn't have been more than sixteen.
And she saw Ritter first, her eyes widening in amazement, and the Hauptsturmfuhrer, becoming aware of her stillness, turned to see what she was looking at.
Ritter stood, hands on hips, legs slightly apart, and it was as if a chill wind had swept into the room, Death himself come to join them. The Hauptsturmfuhrer took in that magnificent black uniform, the decorations, the dark eyes under the peak of the service cap, the silver death's-head gleaming.
'You are in charge here, I presume?' Ritter inquired softly.
The captain shoved the girl off his knee and stood up. The room had gone absolutely quiet. 'That's right,' he said. 'Grushetsky.'
'Ukranian?' Ritter said, his distaste plain. 'I thought so.'
Grushetsky turned red with anger. 'And who in the hell might you be?'
'Your superior officer,' Ritter told him calmly. 'You're aware that there are Russians out there in the dark who might have a more than passing interest in getting their hands on you, and yet you don't even post a guard.'