by Leo Kessler
‘Come on,’ he said ignoring the look on Otto’s face. ‘Let’s get in there and disturb the two love birds!’
Otto threw a last look in the big boot. Firing would soon have the whole god-forsaken place buzzing with SS men. They needed something quieter in the way of a weapon, if trouble started. He tucked the pistol in his belt and grabbed the length of thick rubber radiator hose and tyre iron that lay there. A moment later he was following the Count through the open door.
On tiptoe they crept down a still, grey corridor. Otto carried the tyre iron in one hand, the automatic pistol in the other, his heavy rubber hose stuffed into the well-pressed chauffeur trousers. The count was using both hands to hitch up his skirts. They listened at each door for the sound of voices, but hearing none until they came to the last. Otto held his finger to his lips in warning. There was someone talking inside. He pressed his mouth close to the Count’s ear.
‘I’ll kick open the door. You go in with that pistol and Chrissake, don’t take the safety off, you’ll probably shoot yourself in the foot. All right, one, two, three!’
Otto’s foot lashed against the door. It flew open. The Count tripped over his long black robe and nearly fell flat on his face.
Gore-Browne and Schmitz swung round in surprise. The cane that the latter had been demonstrating for the Englishman fell out of his hands, as he saw what looked like a mad priest with, a ladies’ pearl-handled revolver in his well-manicured hand.
‘Urn Gotteswillen –’ Schmitz began, as Otto raised his tyre iron warningly. The cry of surprise turned to a simpering whisper, ‘Oh, you’re going to beat me… Oh, how terrible!’
He fell to his knees and to Otto’s complete surprise raised his hands in the classic pose of supplication. ‘How cruel you are! How terribly cruel… You beast!’
Otto, bewildered, kneed him in the face. Something snapped. Thick scarlet blood started to jet out of the officer's broken nose.
‘Shut up, you silly dope!’ he cried, and rounded on Gore-Browne, who was cowering behind a table laden with canes, switches, even a cricket bat.
The Count got to his feet, robe falling open to reveal shorter underskirts. ‘It’s him – GB,’ he hissed, and flashing over with surprising speed, pulled out Schmitz’s pistol from its holster.
Schmitz reeled back. ‘You Catholic swine!’ he breathed, splattering droplets of blood everywhere. ‘I know you of the Inquisition! You are going to subject me to unspeakable tortures.’ He quavered. ‘I always knew it would end like this.’ His words ended with a sudden groan, as Otto thwacked him over the head with the rubber tubing. He pitched face-forward onto the carpet and was still.
The Count turned his attention to the Englishman, who grasped the table edge like a surprised lion-tamer might when faced by a pride of his own animals in his own front-room.
‘May I introduce myself?’ he said with a formal bow. ‘My name is Graf von der Weide. I have been empowered by your own authorities to rescue you from this place.’
‘Rescue me?’ Gore-Browne gasped and looked down at the still handsome figure on the floor. ‘But I like it here. I don’t want to be rescued!’
‘Bother. I was afraid you were going to say that,’ the Count started.
‘Let me at him,’ Otto interrupted, and pushed the surprised aristocrat to one side. ‘Listen, you pansy-arsed Tommy puff, you’re going to be rescued whether you like it or not.’
Gore-Browne did not speak much German. Indeed he spoke no ‘foreign’ languages, save for a few ‘technical terms’ on the subject of sex (as he called them) in French, Italian, Spanish and German, but the threat was obviously there – and, besides, the blond young German in the smart grey chauffeur’s uniform looked definitely very fetching. The tousled crop of blond hair, the strong nose, shapely cheekbones, well-toned body... Yes, he reminded Gore-Browne of some of his favourite past conquests. Plus chauffeurs, he knew from experience, were always very ‘obliging’.
He lowered his hands from his face and said to the Count, though his eyes were still fixed on Otto. ‘If I must, I must.’
‘He must!’ the Count repeated in German.
‘You must!’ Otto said and gave Gore-Browne a swift kick that propelled him towards the door, ‘And damn quick. I'm not going back to any god-awful prison camp! Count, tell him what we’re going to do to get him out of here.’
The door banged behind them as they fled.
On the floor, Hauptsturmbannführer Schmitz stirred and raised himself from the foetal position, which he had adopted in anticipation of further blows from the rubber truncheon. In spite of the painful throbbing of his broken nose, he was disappointed, very disappointed.
He had thought the young fellow in the chauffeur’s uniform, who was undoubtedly extremely cruel, would have beaten him mercilessly. But nothing of the sort had happened. Now they had spirited away Gore-Browne, who might well have been the same kind of cruel-hearted English pervert as the chauffeur (he had been keenly interested in the canes, that was certain), and now he was all alone.
He heard the chauffeur slam home first gear and the car begin to move slowly across the courtyard. Suddenly he became aware of his own danger. For some reason or other, they were kidnapping Gore-Browne and they had spoken German with one another! Something strange was going on.
Abruptly it flashed through his mind that any failure on his part might well land him in the thick of it when the new fronts opened up; and in the trenches there was no place for his beloved canes. For some strange reason the average soldier had an antipathy against pain. He sprang to his feet and grabbed for the phone, gobs of bright red blood showering from his nose.
‘Sergeant of the Guard,’ he said thickly, ‘Sergeant of the Guard, stop the big black Horch as soon – ’
‘What did you say?’ the Guard-Commander asked, his speech slurred. He had demanded that there would only be one bottle between two men; the rest was for him to give to the Home for SS Widows. ‘There’s going to be none of this here drunken behaviour while I’m in charge! Bloody Papal Blessing indeed! Do you know that the Pope pisses in the sink?’ Schmitz heard what sounded like gulping sounds straight out of a bottle. ‘Eh?’ the Guard-Commander finished.
‘This is Hauptsturmbannführer Schmitz,’ the SS officer said as clearly as he could through his stopped-up nose. ‘I want you to stop the car presently heading in your direction.’
The sounds of a bottle smashing, general swearing, and the receiver being dropped. Then, ‘Stop the car… Certainly, Hauptsturm! Immediately Hauptsturm! Regard it as already done, Hauptsturm!’
The Guard Commander banged down the phone and succeeded in smashing it through the cradle. Drunkenly he swayed to the window and flung it open, just as the rain came hissing down again.
‘The priest,’ he cried, his ears filled with the sudden roar of the high-powered motor. ‘stop the pissing priest.’
Next instant he slumped to the floor, lying in the remains of his smashed bottle. ‘I bet the sod didn’t bless it after all!’
Otto swerved wildly round the corner, scattering Englishmen right and left. Ahead of him he could see the guard tumbling drunkenly out of the guardhouse, dropping their wine bottles and fumbling with their rifles as they did so. One of them was lowering the red-and-white-striped pole hastily.
‘What are we going to do, Otto?’ the Count cried in alarm from the back seat. ‘They’ve been alerted!’
‘Pray, Father Flynn!’ Otto yelled above the snarl of the big motor and concentrated on the driving.
The first wild slug howled off the bonnet. Otto swerved violently to the right with shock and fought to control the great 8-cylinder automobile as it started to go into a skid on the slick wet cobbles. ‘Hold tight!’ he roared and ducked as a burst of machine-pistol fire ripped off the papal standard.
‘I say,’ the Count cried. ‘Don’t they know the Vatican is neutral?’
‘Complain to the Pope!’
The distance between them and the firing guards was
diminishing rapidly. Otto held onto the big wheel for all he was worth, wrenching the Horch from side to side crazily. The machine pistol gave another high-pitched hysterical scream. A line of gleaming silver holes stitched themselves the length of the bonnet and smashed the right windscreen pane. But now Otto was beyond caring. He was suddenly carried away by a wild, almost frenzied, surge of electric energy. He'd felt something similar that day in Holland when the mad little Abwehr agent Hirsch had been shot. Now nothing could stop him.
‘Hold tight, Father Flynn,’ he called once more. ‘This is it!’
At eighty kilometres an hour, the Horch hit the pole. It burst apart, multi-coloured wood flying everywhere. A guard sprang out of the way a second too late. The bonnet struck him a tremendous blow. He went reeling into the ditch, machine-pistol chattering with the shock of that blow, slugs howling aimlessly into the grey dripping sky.
And then the Horch was careening wildly down the cobbled road, heading south into the gathering storm, in its boot an unconscious Gore-Browne; for that particular Englishman had fainted with fright at the first sounds of shooting.
‘Give it some gas!’ the Count yelled, as the first hard raindrops started to pelt down once more.
‘What the devil do you think I’m doing?’ Otto shouted back angrily, as they raced down the narrow cobbled road, swaying dangerously from side to side, the raindrops striking the interior through the broken windscreen like white flak.
‘We’ll head for Hamburg!’ the Count cried, wiping the rain from his face. ‘Through the village of Schwarzenbeck up ahead, onto Route Four, through Bergdorf and then into the city itself.’
‘Right. But let’s hope we get off these damn cobbles soon. They’re knocking hell out of my kidneys!’ Otto shouted back and then focussed on the road in front, peering, with his head bent over the wheel, through the cracked windscreen as the wipers whirred back and forth noisily, trying to keep the broken remains clear of the driving rain. We're going to be very lucky to reach Hamburg today, he told himself.
They roared into the red-brick village of Schwarzenbeck. There was no traffic, save for a few miserable cyclists. Otto took the S-bend around the grey-stone Gothic church, grey waves of water splashing up behind him and soaking an unfortunate rider. In the boot, Gore-Browne awoke from his faint and started to be sick. Among his many faults, he also had a weak stomach.
Otto hit the brakes and changed down. The yellow and black sign ahead indicated they were approaching Route Four, the main Berlin-Hamburg highway. To the left it ran to the capital; to the right to Hamburg. He flashed a look in his rear-view mirror. Nothing! They were not being followed. Good. He changed into second and started to take the road in the direction of Hamburg. Ahead of him the dreary dead-straight road seemed empty of human life. The heavy rain had obviously forced everybody under cover.
But Otto was mistaken. Just as the village houses began to peter out, he saw a green-uniformed figure in the familiar black leather helmet of the Schupos. The figure was lumbering onto the road ahead through the grey fog of pelting rain, waving a red storm-lantern. And then, as Otto watched, more men joined the first to block the road. It was the Schutzpolizei.
‘It's the bloody police!’ he cried, jamming on the brakes.
The Horch screamed in protest. It shuddered to a violent stop, shimmying wildly. The Count, thrown out of his seat, was now sprawled in the rear footwell; a muffled yell came from the boot. For one awful moment, as the big car stood there blocking the road at a crazy angle, Otto thought he might have stalled the motor.
But no, he hadn’t. It was still ticking over sweetly, despite the beating it had taken in their daring escape from the castle. For a moment he seemed mesmerized, but then as the Schupos started to run towards them, helmets gleaming in the rain, he realised the danger they were in.
He rammed home reverse. The Horch shot backwards, flinging the Count, who had just regained his seat, back into the footwell. The big car gathered speed, but its white-walled tyres suddenly slammed against the kerbstone. A chrome wheel hub cap clattered to the ground.
‘Otto, chauffeurs don't normally drive like – ’ the Count started. Otto thrust home first and shot the car forward, and anything else the Count was going to say was knocked out of him. The manic chauffeur tore the wheel round, sweating and cursing angrily.
‘Halte! Oder wir schiessen!’ a bull cried.
‘ – like hooligans!’ finished the Count from the back.
Otto ignored him, fighting the wheel furiously. He had to turn away from the Schupos. Hamburg was cut off. Berlin was now their only hope. The policemen were only fifty metres away, running towards them, fumbling with their clumsy leather pistol holsters.
Otto, the sweat streaming down his face, almost had the Horch round and facing in the direction of Berlin. The leading bull stopped. Standing there in the streaming rain in the middle of the road, he took aim as if he were on the police pistol range, one hand on his plump hip.
The cracks were deadened in the rain, but they still made Otto jump out of his skin. The bull was too agitated to aim correctly. All six of his bullets missed their target save the last one, which slammed, through the boot, missing Gore-Browne’s head by inches, smashing a bottle of the red wine and splashing him with its contents.
‘Oh my God,’ he gasped inside the boot, ‘I’ve been hit!’ Once again he fell into a dead faint, as Otto thrust home first gear and went shooting up the road to Berlin, rocketing from side to side, leaving behind a trail of furious white water and several fat perspiring, impotent Schupos.
They were through the large village of Geesthacht now, barrelling along the road in the pouring rain, heading for the next small town of Lauenburg. To their right lay the River Elbe, glimpsed briefly through the flashing trees some hundred metres below the road. To their left, the fields, wet, miserable and very muddy, rose steeply so that anyone up there could have seen the whole length of the road. But the fields were empty of life, both animal and human. It was as if the big black car racing through the storm with its drenched, desperate occupants was alone in the world.
But in spite of their anxiety and their wet misery, Otto and the Count made hasty plans as they tore along Route Four. Originally they had planned to return with GB to the Count’s house in Hamburg. Now that the road was barred, and after their experience in Schwarzenbeck, they reasoned that the whole countryside was probably being alerted. What were they going to do? As the Count expressed it: ‘By the time we get to Lauenburg, Otto, we’ve got to have our decision. After it, there is the main road to Berlin and sooner or later they’re going to stop us on it.’
Otto nodded his agreement, not taking his eyes off the road for an instant, his face greasy with rain-drops so that it looked as if he were sweating heavily.
‘At Lauenburg there are two bridges across the Elbe and its arm, one for Berlin and the other across the main branch of the river taking the road to Luneburg.’
‘Luneburg?’ Otto asked sharply.
‘Yes,’ the Count saw his train of thought immediately. ‘Very lonely heath country all the way to Luneburg itself. If we could get that far, we could ditch the car and make our way back to Hamburg by some other – ’ He stopped suddenly. ‘Otto,’ he gasped in abrupt alarm.
‘What is it?’
‘To the left! On the ridge line.’
Otto risked a swift glance. Above the fields, a silver car was hurtling along a parallel road at tremendous speed, a white V of spray shooting up behind it. And there could be only one reason that anyone would drive at that speed in this terrible weather. Otto put his foot down hard on the accelerator. The Horch shot forward with renewed vigour.
‘There the criminals are!’ Schmitz cried urgently from the passenger seat, his handsome face smeared with black, dried blood. He was staring like an eager hawk down over the fields to the Horch on the main road below. ‘After them, driver! Give it all you’ve got!’
‘I’m doing my best, Hauptsturm,’ the driver prote
sted above the whine of the straight-six engine, the roar of the wind and hiss of the tyres on the wet road. This was Lord Haw-Haw's personal car, a two-seater Wanderer with no roof.
‘Do better!’ Schmitz roared, as the Horch raced for Lauenburg, almost obscured by its wake.
The driver pressed his foot down. The green, glowing needle of the speedometer flicked upwards alarmingly. Now they were doing 120 kilometres an hour, nearly topping out the performance of the Wanderer roadster and a crazy speed for these conditions. The two-litre motor howled with the strain and every rivet whined to be freed from this impossible pressure.
Next to Schmitz, his companion, a young Sonderführer, MP-40 machine pistol in his lap, the only man sober enough to accompany him in the chase, turned an ashen-green with fear. At this speed they were heading for catastrophe.
Schmitz didn’t notice. His mind was completely bound up with his new friend who had been kidnapped so abruptly from right under his nose, just as they were beginning to become acquainted. He wanted him back.
‘There’s a crossroads a quarter of a kilometre up the road,’ he yelled at the Sonderführer. ‘Beat them to it, driver! There’s three days’ special leave if you get there before them and block the road.’ He leaned forward, his battered face gleaming with excitement, as if he were physically urging the silver roadster forward. The Wanderer raced on….
‘…They’re pulling away from us!’ Otto yelled urgently above the strong throbbing of the Horch’s engine. Ahead of them he could just make out the green copper-covered dome of Lauenburg’s church.
‘I see them,’ the Count yelled, his face streaming with rain from the broken windscreen, and started winding down his rear window.