by Leo Kessler
‘What are you going to do, you silly old bastard?’ Otto yelled, feeling yet more wet, icy air blasting the back of his neck, but not daring to take his eyes off the road for one moment now.
Ever resourceful, the Count bravely pulled the small ladies’ pistol out of his skirt. He clicked off the safety.
‘They won’t take us alive, Otto,’ he said grimly, and fired.
The bullet hit the muddy field a couple of hundred metres below the other road and a rabbit, which just happened to be sheltering from the driving rain, scuttled deeper into cover, wondering if the hunting season had not begun rather early this year.
Otto started to come to the first little fishermen cottages which lined the entrance to the small town of Lauenberg. The Wanderer was roaring down towards the crossroads now and he saw that if he were not quicker, it would reach the junction ahead of him. Desperately, he pressed the accelerator down the floorboard. He had to make it!
Out of nowhere, a dog ran across the road. Instinctively he braked. The Horch spun right round on the slick surface, turning a full clock face until it careered to a stop. The Count yelled and was nearly flung through his open window. In the boot Gore-Browne was sick once more, and with a sinking heart Otto saw that the silver roadster had skidded to a body-trembling halt at the crossroads. A man in black uniform was doubling out of it, crouching low as he ran, machine-pistol at the ready. They were cut off from the bridges across the Elbe.
Then he saw it. A small, steep, cobbled path leading down to the Elbe below. Otto didn’t hesitate. He rammed home first gear in the same instant that the dark-uniformed figure opened fire. Slugs zipped along the length of wet tarmac. Little blue spurts of flame erupted, hurrying towards them with frightening speed. And then the car lurched forward.
The rear window shattered, cracking into a gleaming spider’s web, showering a shocked Count with glass fragments. Next moment the Horch was slithering and slipping down the narrow path, branches slapping into both sides, scratching at the paintwork, blinding Otto with green foliage time and time again, as he fought to keep the big car on the road, ears already full of the roar of the Wanderer’s motor as it took up the chase once more.
‘They can’t get by that way!’ Schmitz yelled triumphantly. ‘There’s only a tow-path down there, leading into the dock. There’s no clear road. I know it well,’
‘What now?’ the Sonderführer gasped, hurriedly fitting another magazine as the open-top roadster leapt over the height and started slithering down the narrow cobbled path in pursuit.
‘What now?’ Schmitz echoed, now in the driver's seat. ‘Why we trap them down there. There’s no way out.’ He let out a strained maniacal laugh over the steering wheel. ‘Sonderführer Ziemann, they’re finished this time!’
Beside him, Ziemann told himself that all SS officers were crazy. One false move on the descent and they’d slide right into the Elbe, and somehow he didn’t think they’d have much chance of swimming away if the one-ton Wanderer hit the water at this height. And even if they did, Lord Haw-Haw would have their guts for garters when he learned that his private car was permanently out of action. He bit his bottom lip and felt the sweat begin to break out all over his body.
Otto swerved right off the track. With a crunch of rending metal and a tinkle of glass breaking, the Horch came to rest in a clump of bushes, its headlights shattered, the right mudguard crumpled like a banana-skin.
‘What are you going to do, Otto?’ the Count cried in alarm, his chin bleeding from the shattered glass.
‘Shut up! Keep still!’ Otto commanded. He kicked open the door and vaulted out of the driver’s seat, pistol already in his hand.
The pursuing car was still invisible on the path above him, hidden from view by the dripping foliage and the squalls of grey rain, but Otto could hear it well enough, as the unknown driver fought it down the ascent, his motor roaring away in first gear. He tensed. He knew he would only get one chance, but he knew too he had no exact idea of how he might stop their pursuer, and at the same time ensure that the path was free to use again.
There was only room for one car on it and he would have to climb up it once more if they were going to get to Lauenburg. Should he just hold them up? Or shoot the driver and hope for the best? Blast it, what am I going to do?
Suddenly the gleaming silver Wanderer was there, slithering in the mud, the two areas cleared by the wipers on the windscreen looking down at him like baleful, glaring eyes.
Otto hesitated no longer. He aimed. The pistol jerked in his hand. The windscreen disappeared in a mass of cracked glass. He thought he heard a thin scream of utter fear, but later could never be sure that it had not been his imagination. Suddenly the roadster was completely out of control, thrashing wildly through the vegetation, the driver clutching at his shoulder, the other man trying desperately to control the wheel. Otto dived to one side.
The beautiful silver roadster swung by, gathering speed, and then it was out in the air, riding up and up, flying outwards, its wheels still spinning, its straight-six running strong and free at last, the screams of the two men inside it clearly audible.
Otto dropped the pistol to his side, mouth open in awed amazement, as the Wanderer began to drop at an alarming rate. Nothing could save it now. He closed his eyes, then opened them again. Why didn’t they get out? But already it was too late for that. The car, all twenty-odd hundredweight of it, hit the river. A tremendous jet of water erupted into the grey wet sky. For one moment Otto thought it might stay on the surface so that its occupants could get out. But that wasn’t to be. There was a mad flurry of bubbles. Water sprayed up on both sides. One last obscene belch of trapped air and then it was gone, the only sign of its passing: the ever widening ripple of water and the loud echoing silence, disturbed only by the hiss of the rain.
‘Die Heide at last,’ the Count announced, breaking the gloomy silence which had existed in the battered car ever since they had crossed the bridge at Lauenburg. Its left rear tyre was now almost down to its rim, so that the whole affair bumped along like a short-legged beggar, its occupants still preoccupied with what had happened down at the Elbe.
Otto braked and the car creaked wearily to stop, its engine continuing to shudder for a few seconds after he had turned off the ignition.
‘What now?’ he asked and slumped back wearily in his seat.
It had stopped raining and now the moor sparkled, with the raindrops glistening on the purple-green heather.
‘I think we’d better have a look at our guest, Otto,’ the Count said. He hitched up his damp skirts and crawled stiffly out of the car, while Otto shifted awkwardly in his damp uniform and then decided to do the same.
Wearily, he stamped his feet on the road and stared around at the moor stretching to the horizon, broken only by lines of skinny fir trees and the drainage ditches cut into the landscape. It would be a good place to get rid of the car, which somehow he suspected they would have to do: for with it they would have stood out in any inhabited place. One tyre virtually flat, windscreen cracked and shattered, rear window smashed by gunfire, two lengths of silver bullet-holes running along its body – No officer, that's how I bought it, imagined Otto, a little of his old wit returning.
‘Otto, our guest,’ the Count’s voice broke into his thoughts.
He turned. The Count was supporting GB, who still looked very green, and who creaked at every joint as he was helped along.
‘What?’ he began to croak.
‘Have no fear, my dear Mister Honourable,’ the Count interrupted him gently. ‘You are among friends.’
‘Friends?’ Gore-Browne spluttered.
‘Yes,’ the Count reached in the car and brought out his silver flask. ‘Here, a drink of this will do you good. May I introduce myself? I do love introducing myself.’
He straightened up and put on his ‘man of destiny’ face, which he practised every morning in front of his shaving mirror. ‘Graf von der Weide at your service! Sent here to rescue you by y
our illustrious and noble father er – Colonel Warden!’ Without taking his dark eyes, standing out of his head like hard-boiled eggs, off the haggard Englishman drinking the cognac, he added, ‘And this is my great friend, Herr Otto Stahl.’
Gore-Browne lowered the flask, colour returning to his cheeks. ‘Rescue me, you said?’
‘Yes,’ the Count repeated proudly.
‘But I don’t want to be res –’ Gore-Browne started to protest, then his eye fell on the young chauffeur and he stopped abruptly. In spite of his soaked, somewhat bedraggled, appearance, the young chap was definitely very handsome. Fine blue eyes and a mop of bright blond hair, good physique. He summed up the situation at once. His ‘great friend’ the old man had called his chauffeur. Highly significantly. But then chauffeurs, he always maintained, were always very obliging even if they didn’t have very much in the way of ‘soul’.
‘What are you going to do with me?’ he asked, ‘Now you’ve got me, I mean.’ He took another swig of the flask.
The Count beamed and flashed Otto a significant look.
‘Now that’s the spirit,’ he said. ‘I’m sure your illustrious father would esteem it highly. Where we are going? Why, to Greece, my dear fellow. Athens, to be precise.’
‘Athens,’ Gore-Browne brightened up appreciably. He knew the Greeks. ‘I’ve heard there are some awfully nice chaps down there. By plane, I suppose. It will be awfully nice to get out of this dreary place. I mean Germany does do a bally nice job with its soldiers, marching, and bands and all that – almost as good as the Guards – but the weather.’ He gave an affected shrug. ‘Absolutely impossible.’
Otto shook his head. What with the Count posturing and this Tommy warm-brother flapping his pinkies around, as if he were waving a lace handkerchief, this was turning out like ladies’ night in the Turkish baths; didn’t the silly affected buggers realise that there was the Gestapo on their tails? He harrumphed, noisily.
‘The jolly old tavernas, ouzo, retsina and a warm Aegean breeze by tonight, what?’ Gore-Browne was saying happily.
‘Well, not quite,’ the Count said hesitantly.
‘What's the plan now, then?’ Otto snapped, speaking in harsh German. ‘The registration number of the car was entered in the log-book of the guardhouse as we entered the castle. You can be shit-sure that they’ll trace your address in Hamburg from that quick enough. The big boys in the leather overcoats will be waiting for us there, you can take poison on that, Count.’
‘Agreed, agreed, my dear boy,’ the Count said, not looking unduly worried. He gazed from face to face and said in English again. ‘We are a rather strange trio, are we not? A priest who is not one, though he would dearly love to have the blessing of our Mother Church one of these days. A chauffeur in the same situation, and an Englishman of noble birth, who isn’t exactly – er – what he seems to be.’
‘Oh get on with it,’ Otto snorted.
The Count reached inside his damp skirt and pulled out what looked a heavy, waterlogged sock and then another. ‘Though we have a long, long journey in front of us,’ he said slowly, weighing the strange objects, ‘possibly full of danger, I think these little fellows will ensure that we arrive safely.’ He opened the top of one of the socks and poured a stream of gold coins on to his palm. ‘The Horsemen of Saint George, your patron saint, my dear Gore-Browne. They will be our – er – chargers for the long crusade southwards.’
Gore-Browne’s plump face fit up, the word ‘danger’ forgotten, suddenly full of enthusiasm. ‘Oh, I say, a bit of an adventure you mean, rather like the scouts.’ Gore-Browne had always had a soft spot for scouts. ‘Should be great fun, especially with two stout chaps like you, er, Count and Otto!’ He fluttered his sandy eyelashes coyly at a disgusted Otto. ‘You speak the lingo, know the best places to eat, I suppose, and all that!’ He clapped his hands together in schoolgirlish delight. ‘Oh, this is really going to be fun!’
BOOK 3: ON THE RUN
CHAPTER 1
The slow train chugged through the hilly landscape. In the distance the mountains were capped with snow, for in Upper Austria it had been a long, cold winter. It was still dark and by lifting his carriage window's blackout blind, a weary Otto could see the orange sparks flying from the engine like red-hot sawdust, though already the sun was beginning to flush the sky a pale pink, against which the peaks stood out a stark, jagged inky-black.
He let the blind fall again and reaching over for the Thermos of coffee which they had bought at Innsbruck, unscrewed the cap, and poured himself a lukewarm cupful of the stuff. Opposite him on the wooden bench, the Count and GB propped up against each other in a rough pyramid, snored in unison.
‘Faces that only a mother could love,’ Otto commented sourly and savoured the warmth given off by the coffee as he gulped it down his gullet.
They had been travelling for two days now, ever since they had abandoned the car, and tramped into Luneburg, wandering around the dingy little suburbs of the place until they found what Otto sought: a workers’ pawnshop where he had bought them three rough suits from a pawnbroker, who looked very Jewish indeed, although he greeted them with the usual ‘Heil Hitler’ and draped his skinny hunchback-frame with the chocolate-brown uniform of the SA.
The long train journey to Munich and from there across the old border with Austria (non-existent since Austria had become the ‘Eastern March’ in Nazi parlance) had been uneventful, save for two things: the number of troops who seemed to be moving southwards – twice they had been held up by long troop-trains carrying tanks and guns into Austria; and GB’s mild attempt at importuning in the male toilet of Munich’s Hauptbahnhof, where they had gone for a quick wash and brush-up.
‘I was only trying to help you with your fly buttons, Otto,’ he apologized lamely in faulty German, ‘I thought they seemed a bit stiff.’ To which Otto had replied sourly, ‘Yes, and I bet they weren’t the only things that were stiff. Hands off, Englishman, or you’ll be lacking a set of ears!’ Although Otto was quite sure the Englishman had not understood the German, he had comprehended well enough what Otto’s clenched fist had meant. Thereafter he had left Otto in peace, though now and again he caught GB throwing him interested glances with much fluttering of those sandy eyelashes.
Now, as they crawled ever closer to the Italian frontier with the Third Reich, which, according to the Count, was well guarded, they began to change trains more frequently, moving twenty kilometres or so in one and then transferring to yet another wooden-seated local, which stopped at every God-forsaken little hamlet and village. The time had passed leadenly, and Otto commented more than once, ‘They even stop to let the cows cross the track on this service.’
‘It is typical old-world Austrian courtesy,’ the Count had soothed him and GB had added eagerly, ‘I once knew some Austrian chaps – frightfully decadent they were!’
Now it would soon be dawn and Otto knew they were slowly approaching the border, but before they reached that pass, they would get off and meet the Count’s mysterious contact, who supposedly would guide them across the mountains into Italy.
Otto hoped that for once the Count would not make a mess of it; for he had no illusions of what would happen to them, or at least to him and the Count, if they fell into the hands of the Gestapo. It would be a bullet in the back of the head in some evil, dark torture-cellar.
Hurriedly he forgot that unpleasant possibility and, finishing the coffee, raised the blackout blind once more to stare at the dawn countryside, flushing ever more rapidly in the light of the ascending sun which hung like a blood-red ball on the peaks, great black shadows racing across the fields like the shadows of gigantic crows. He craned his neck a little and followed the progress of the black locomotive, as it puffed up the curving incline, ever deeper into the foothills which would soon give way to the Border Mountains, trailing thick white clouds of smoke behind it.
Suddenly he forgot the train. To his left, parked along a dusty white country road, hidden by the big oaks that lined o
ne side of it, there was tank after tank, black, sinister and immensely powerful, with, crouched around them, little groups of soldiers boiling their morning coffee around flickering little petrol fires or lazily eating pieces of hard bread, while here or there an officer or NCO strode by officiously, clipboard in hand.
Automatically Otto started to count the tanks; there was nothing better to do anyway. But by the time he had reached fifty, the little local train passed into a tunnel through the hills and when it emerged again, the road and its tanks had vanished.
Otto sat back against the hard wooden bench, puzzled. What were so many tanks doing out here in this remote Upper Austrian valley? From his training with the Abwehr spy school back in ’39, he knew that fifty tanks meant he had something in the way of a whole regiment out there. Where could they be going? After all, ahead lay Italy, and Mussolini’s Italy was Hitler’s ally.
Perhaps they were out on manoeuvres, he told himself in the end, though he knew quite well that troops didn’t usually manoeuvre over farmland, at least not in a friendly country – and Hitler’s own homeland to boot! It was all very strange.
‘The hamlet of Klein Hohental,’ the Count announced. ‘Headquarters of the NNSPfRG.’
‘The what?’ Otto exclaimed, peering around at the wood-frame station with its sagging platform and the tarnished, but clearly visible, double-eagle plaque of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire above the ticket office. Somewhere a cock crowed and drowned the last sounds of the train disappearing now up the track into the mountains.
‘The Neo-National Socialist Party for the Regeneration of Germany,’ the Count said, finishing the last of the coffee, while Gore-Browne stared open-mouthed at the place. ‘They’ve got at least fifty members now.’
‘But we’ve already got a National Socialist Party,’ Otto objected, carefully avoiding the hole in the wooden platform, beneath which a herd of skinny black pigs rooted hopefully, ‘with nine million members.’