No Entry

by Manning Coles

  “And in the meantime we pass the frontier before they have time to stop us.”

  “That’s the general idea,” said Hambledon.

  Micklejohn relapsed into silence to watch the kilometres coming up on the speedometer. The old car was going quite well.

  “It was a bit of bad luck,” he said suddenly, “those two men happening to come along together at that moment, wasn’t it?”

  “These things happen,” said Hambledon calmly, “and one can’t always expect them to be in one’s favour. But it must have been quite a moment, mustn’t it? There they were, strolling happily along in the morning sunshine and suddenly that harmless little twerp Grober says: ‘Look. There is your employer, the never-sufficiently-to-be-esteemed Herr Kirsch.’ And Dittmar says: ‘The devil it is, it’s that hellhound of a verdammter Englander, the Herr Hambledon.’ ”

  “But if Dittmar knew that Kirsch had been arrested in Goslar, he’d report it, wouldn’t he, as soon as he arrived?”

  “I am not sure that he did know it,” said Hambledon. “I think he was too busy running away. Anyway, we haven’t been arrested yet, have we?” He patted the steering wheel encouragingly. “Come on, Boanerges. Another ten kilometres and then you can cool down.”

  Although the road was an important main road, it was neither wide nor particularly well kept. They were driving through a stretch of forest where the road was narrow but reasonably straight; some distance ahead there was someone at the roadside doing something with branches. One would say that he was piling smaller branches upon a larger one of beech which, being flat, would make a passable sled. When they drew nearer it became plain that this was, indeed, what the old man was doing. He glanced towards the oncoming car, the only one in sight, bowed his ancient back to take the strain, and dragged his timber out to block the road almost completely.

  “Is he blind and deaf?” began Micklejohn——

  “Just possibly neither,” said Hambledon, and pulled up Boanerges within a yard of the obstruction.

  The old man turned with a dramatic start of surprise, cupped one hand to his ear, and squeaked: “I didn’t hear you. Just a minute and I’ll clear—what say?”

  He came doddering round to Hambledon’s window, stuck his head in and said: “Name of Ludwig Kirsch? Thought so. Don’t go on, they’re waiting for you. Road block on the bridge two kilometres ahead and a Vopo Post just round that bend. Orders to stop car and take you both, dead or alive.”

  Micklejohn gasped and Hambledon said: “Thank you very much indeed. How did you know?”

  “Outside Vopo telephone box,” said the old man, with a toothless grin. “They think I’m deaf, see? Can’t hear nothing, I can’t. So they repeat message, write it down and read it back. Car number GS 13579, name of Kirsch and friend. I know about you from Waldecke, see? The man with the message to say Kirsch is all right is in my attic with a bullet in his chest. Turn left here, keep going seven kilometres, and then lie up till dark.” He backed away and dragged his wood round in the road to let Hambledon pass. “Go, quick, quick!”

  Hambledon, who had not stopped the car engine, let in his clutch and swung left into a woodland track. In a matter of yards he was out of sight of the road. Micklejohn, looking back, said so.

  “But not out of earshot,” said Hambledon, thankfully changing into top on a downward slope.

  “Tell me, if it’s not a tactless question,” said Micklejohn, “why do you handicap your mobility with this peculiar vehicle?”

  “It’s Kirsch’s and he loved it, odd as that may seem. It’s the only car he ever consented to drive and he lost his quite notoriously violent temper if anybody was tactless enough to cast nasturtiums upon it.”

  “Some obscure fixation,” suggested Micklejohn helpfully.

  “Obscure is right. Kirsch drove it, I am Kirsch, therefore I drive it. But I think we will find an early opportunity to dump it now that the name of Kirsch appears to be without honour in the land.”

  “Six kilometres coming up,” said Micklejohn, with his eyes on the speedometer. “Seven, our old friend said. What do you suppose happens after seven kilometres?”

  “Probably a road junction complete with police post.” Hambledon slowed down, stopped the engine, and got out. “You stay with the car, will you? I’m going to walk on and see what there is to see. I shan’t be long.”

  He came back twenty minutes later to say that there was indeed a police post on the road to which this track would lead them and that it was manned by alert Vopos. He climbed into the car, took out a map and brooded over it, merely making small grunting noises when Micklejohn asked questions until the young man gave up asking. Eventually Hambledon looked up with a grin, offered Micklejohn a cigarette, and pointed out a double dotted line on the map.

  “Walker’s track,” he said. “I don’t know whether we can get the car through but we can try. It turns off to the right about fifty yards ahead and meanders off. I think it by-passes this road ahead of us, which, if I am right, ends in a farmyard. We circumnavigate the farmyard”—he started the car—“and consequently do not have to cross the road.”

  “I see that,” said Micklejohn, as the car moved on, “just like walking round the headwaters of a stream. But I thought we were going to leave this car.”

  “What, here and now? It isn’t my idea of a car but it goes a lot faster than we can walk, you know.” Hambledon changed down and put the car at a rise, which it charged gallantly. “It’s in much better condition than most cars over this side. You must have noticed that. It’s just a little too well known, that’s all.”

  They rounded the head of a valley and turned south and east until Hambledon said: “I think this will do for the present. Can you keep awake for two hours? I want to sleep. Call me if anyone comes.”

  23: Beanfields

  As soon as darkness began to gather, Hambledon climbed into the car and said that it was time to start. “We ought to pick up some petrol somewhere. I didn’t wait this morning. I thought that there was plenty of petrol in the Western Zone. Never mind. Some opportunity will doubtless present itself.”

  They drove on along one lonely country road after another, but always trending southwards, till the car hesitated, coughed, and hesitated again. Hambledon pulled into the side of the road and turned the petrol tap on to the reserve.

  “Though even that would be more helpful if I had any idea whether the reserve tank held two gallons or one pint,” he said. “You’re very quiet, aren’t you?”

  “Nothing much to say,” said Micklejohn. “I expect I’m hungry. Stultifying to the brain. I’ve noticed it before.”

  “We might pick up some sausage somewhere,” said Hambledon soberly, “but don’t count on it. The country people here are hungry too.”

  They came up to the top of a rise and looked down the further side to see, on the left, a house with lighted windows open to the warm night. Hambledon put the car out of gear and coasted silently down the hill. As they drew near the lighted house it could be seen that it was an inn; it could also be heard that there was a party in progress, for sounds of revelry floated out through the open windows.

  The inn stood a little back from the road with a cobbled space before it. Hambledon drew the car off the road, ran it past the house to a patch of grass beyond, and stopped the engine.

  “I’m going to have a scout round for some petrol.”

  “But this is an inn, not a garage——”

  “I know. But they may have a pumping engine or something. It’s worth looking.”

  “They are very drunk, aren’t they?”

  “All the better,” said Hambledon, and slipped away.

  There was a yard at the back of the inn. He turned into it and received the full blast of dissonance from two windows and an open door. Someone was playing an accordion not too badly, but he had chosen quite a different melody from someone else who was strumming loudly on a guitar. Some members of the party—it appeared to number about six—were singing whate
ver took their errant fancies from moment to moment. Hambledon was a man so nearly tone-deaf that he always said that the only way to recognise a song was by the words, but even he found this cacophony almost painful.

  “But it’s nice and loud,” he said, and wandered round the yard looking for petrol cans. He did not find any, but he did find a car run into a shed with the doors closed but not locked upon it. It was a good car by Eastern Zone standards, which meant that it was an official car, and when he walked round it there was a little green, pennon on the bonnet and several official stickers on the windscreen, which he identified as those of the Agricultural Produce Control Office, or words to that effect, for he had thought it wise to learn something about control offices.

  He turned on the petrol, released the brake, and pushed the car backwards out of the shed without difficulty. Too easily, in fact, for the car dropped its back wheels into a surface drain just too deep for Hambledon to heave it out unaided.

  “They wouldn’t hear,” he said, “if I started up a racing Maserati.” He got in, confidently started the engine, and began to drive out of the yard without having disturbed the revellers in the least. But just as he was passing the open door a man came staggering out of it.

  He stopped, stared, and let out a yell which quietened even the singers. The inn emptied itself into the yard with shouts and maledictions as Hambledon put the car into second gear and shot out, blowing the horn to attract Micklejohn’s attention. He was already out on the road. Hambledon slowed down just enough to throw the door open and let Micklejohn scramble in, and then drove on down the hill.

  “They’re all blind drunk in there,” said Hambledon.

  “Not too drunk to run,” said Micklejohn, crouching on his seat to peer out of the rear window. “Two of them have found Boanerges. Here comes a third. No, he’s fallen down. He’s staying down. They’ve got Boanerges going and they’re coming on. They’re all over the road but they continue to come. They’ve switched the headlights on, dipped. That was a fine sweeping curve; d'you think the driver thinks he’s skating?”

  “This is where we leave them behind,” said Hambledon, and put his foot down. “There’ll be a road post soon and I want to get there comfortably first. Are those papers in that door pocket beside you?”

  They were and Micklejohn dragged them out.

  “Potatoes,” he said, peering in the dim light from the instrument panel, “beets, cabbage, beets, potatoes, kale—what are we, greengrocers?”

  “Far better than that. Greengrocers, indeed. We are the Ministry of Agricultural Produce Control——”

  “We have them,” said Micklejohn cheerfully, “only we call them the County Ag. Red lights ahead.”

  “Very good. Any sign of Boanerges?”

  “No. Yes, I think—yes. Squinting slightly and far, far behind, but still pursuing.”

  “There must have been more in that reserve tank than one would expect. Never mind, so long as I can pass this barrier—stand by.” Hambledon drew to a halt at the red and white pole, and a man in Volkspolizei uniform, who had been signalling to him with a red lantern, came up to the window.

  “Good evening, mein Herr,” he said, saluting the little pennon and the windscreen stickers rather than the individual driver. “Papers, please.”

  “What, again?” said Hambledon genially. “Franz, get those papers out again. Tell me, what is all the excitement tonight? This is the fourth time I’ve been stopped in the last hour.”

  “We look for a car,” said the Vopo, “and though it is plain that the Herr’s car is not the one, it is my duty to stop everyone.”

  “Naturally,” said Hambledon. He took the papers from Micklejohn without looking at them and absent-mindedly laid them down. “I saw a car outside an inn three or four kilometres back—what make is it?”

  “Composite, it says on the order. Two-seater body on long chassis——”

  “But——” said Micklejohn.

  “What number?” asked Hambledon excitedly.

  “Western Zone number GS 13579——”

  “That’s the one! Was it not, Franz? Surely.”

  “That is right. All odd numbers and there was something funny about the car body,” said Micklejohn eagerly.

  “They were exceedingly drunk,” said Hambledon. “They started the car as we came by and followed us. They were all over the road.”

  “They are coming this way?” asked the Vopo.

  “Certainly. At least, they started this——”

  “Look, look,” babbled Micklejohn, pointing back up the hill. “All over the road——”

  Dipped head lamps swooped and curved, appeared to hesitate and came on again.

  “Look here,” said Hambledon urgently to the Vopo, “I’ve got no fancy for being slammed in the rear by this drunken fellow. Let me through, quick, I’ll stop the other side.”

  “Certainly” said the Vopo. He swung the bar to let Hambledon through and immediately closed it again, calling to his mate in a little telephone hut beside the road. “Hugo! Come out, this looks like our meat.”

  Hambledon drove on just far enough to be out of trouble, stopped the car and switched off the engine. In the sudden quiet Boanerges could plainly be heard approaching in a series of short bursts as the almost empty tank spared a few more drops to the starved carburettor.

  Hugo walked forward to meet Boanerges while his fellow waved a red lantern. The car coasted down and ran over a bump which shook a last teacupful into the carburettor; the engine awoke with a sudden roar, the car swung across the road and butted the telephone box, which disintegrated. From white insulators above, on the telegraph pole, there came a sound as of harp strings breaking.

  “Tara’s halls,” murmured Micklejohn. “I shall laugh in a minute.”

  “Be quiet. Look at that——”

  The Vopos, one upon either side, opened Boanerges’ doors and dragged out the occupants. These stood upon their dignity, such as was left to them, and addressed the Vopos by the German equivalent of “low fellow.” The Vopos resented this and their captives kicked shrewdly. The butts of two Volkspolizei-issue revolvers rose up and fell sharply, with hollow-sounding thuds, upon the close-cropped heads of the captives. Their knees gave way. They were dexterously caught and laid out side by side in the cool grass of the road verges.

  Hambledon’s friend came, grinning, to put his head in at the car window.

  “That’s them all right,” he said. “I thank the Herr for his warning. But our telephone, it is kaputt.”

  “Can I do anything? Take a message?”

  “Ach, if you would! There is another post at a crossroads five kilometres on. I will write you a note. They can report this for us and then come up and help us.”

  Hambledon waited while the Vopo sprawled over his bonnet to write a note upon a small official pad with a printed heading: “The People’s Police of the German Democratic Republic,” which, as Micklejohn remarked when they drove on, is a fine example of words meaning what Big Brother says they mean and you can go and boil your head.

  “Oh, quite,” said Hambledon, placidly driving on through the night.

  “But doesn’t it make your blood boil——?”

  “My dear boy, if I let things like that heat my blood I’d have died of spontaneous combustion long ago.”

  “But,” began Micklejohn again. He then saw Hambledon’s grim face in the shadow and abandoned, with a slight gasp, whatever he had been about to say.

  The next road post duly materialised at a crossroads, a red light was waved, and Hambledon drew up.

  “A note for you,” he said, handing it out, “from Post 287 up the road. They have caught your fleas for you.”

  The patrol uttered a pleased exclamation and took the note to another man in yet another telephone box. He read it and came out, grinning, to ask for details of the affair at Post 287. Hambledon told him all about it.

  “So all is well,” he finished, “except that their telephone box is smashed
to firewood and the wires down. They want you to go up and help them.”

  The man nodded. “They want to borrow our little radio transmitter-receiver,” he said. “Hans, get your motorcycle going and you can take me along on the pillion. Oh, first let us dismantle this road post, it will not be wanted any more. You clear it away while I ring up posts ahead to pass the word ‘Emergency Ended.’ Then they can all go home to bed. The Herr may drive on now. He will not be stopped again. Good night.”

  “Thank you,” said Hambledon meekly, and drove away.

  They drove on and on, sometimes through deep and silent woods and sometimes through open farming country, until the stars faded and the sky grew light in the east. Here and there lights began to appear in cottage windows and the daylight broadened minute by minute.

  “Where are we going?” asked Micklejohn, after a long silence. “Anywhere particular, or are you just looking for a likely spot, as it were?”

  “We are making for a spot near a little place called Neuhof, where, for some reason which no one understands, there is a short length of frontier without a wire fence. There is the usual ploughed strip and a lot of Vopos, but no wire; on the further side of the ploughed strip there is a road which, believe it or not, is in the Western Zone. I wish it wasn’t getting so damned light. I was hoping to cross in the pearly light of dawn, if that. It can’t be far now.” Hambledon put his hand in an inside pocket and pulled out a small folded map, which he passed to Micklejohn.

  “Ah! The Wanderkarte Camping! When I first came to Goslar——”

  “Look down in the left-hand bottom corner, outside the zonal boundary. Obersachswerfen, got it?”

  “Obersachswerfen——”

  “Oh, give it to me.” Hambledon stopped the car and pointed with his finger. “There. Obersachswerfen we have just passed through, the next village is Branderode—about two kilometres—and we fork right just past the church. Then it’s just over a kilometre to the frontier.” He started the car again and drove on fast. “Please fold up the map again and put it in your pocket, I don’t want it blowing about.”