The Leader And The Damned

by Colin Forbes

  Finally, there was the most trusted quarter - London - a haven Lindsay was desperately trying to reach. And here Tim Whelby was waiting with orders to ensure that the Wing Commander never survived to deliver his report on his visit to the Fuhrer.

  At this stage all the leading characters in the Great Game were living in a state of chronic anxiety. Stalin was sweating it out in case the Allies made a separate deal with the Germans. Roger Masson was having nightmares because he could not rid himself of the dread that Hitler would invade Switzerland if he found out the activities of Lucy. Roessler was worrying because he seemed to have lost the confidence of his Swiss protectors.

  The key to all this desperate insecurity was that in May 1943 the Germans still stood a good chance of winning the war. They had the resources, the men - and the generals - to destroy Soviet Russia.

  In London Tim Whelby was only too aware of the military situation. His most recent encounter with Josef Savitsky had shaken him badly. Although he had earlier had the briefest of meetings with Lindsay he had hardly noticed the man. Others had been present -- men whom it had seemed more important to observe and cultivate.

  'During a recent trip to Madrid,' he remarked casually to Colonel Browne shortly after the Charing Cross meeting, 'I was told of a rumour we might be exploring the possibilities of a separate peace with Hitler if the terms were right...'

  'Really?' Browne hardly appeared to be listening as he stooped over the papers on his desk. 'Who told you that?'

  'Just an informant I'd sooner not name. I told him that the whole thing was a load of rubbish. How do these rumours start?'

  'The way all rumours start I suppose...'

  'The same informant told me.. Whelby invented the story while he went on talking.. that Lindsay was sent on a peace mission to Hitler and is now negotiating a treaty with him...'

  'Really?' Colonel Browne's tone expressed sheer disbelief in what he was being told and he reached for another document.

  Whelby dropped the subject. It would be dangerous to pursue the topic any further. The devil of it was he had still not obtained Browne's confidence so he would open up on Lindsay's real role.

  When Paco and Lindsay - with Bora and Milk - reached the ancient town of Graz from the Sudbahnhof they did not linger. They arrived well after dark. Mingling with the hurrying crowd of other passengers, they walked out of the station without interference.

  'No sign of security or police checks,' Lindsay commented.

  'This is a backwoods place, remote from the war,' Paco replied as they continued on foot. 'No taxis here

  and the last bus left an hour ago. You can walk three kilometres. You've been sitting down for a whole day!'

  'There's a different atmosphere.' He glanced behind and Bora was following with Milic in the distance. The moon shone brightly on cobbles worn by centuries of footfalls. 'It might be a country at peace, like Switzerland.'

  'Don't get too rhapsodic,' she warned. 'We hide up here for about three weeks in case they're watching the frontier for us. Then we cross into Yugoslavia at the Spielfeld-Strass border post - and that may be no picnic.

  'We're all going over together?'

  'You and I together. We change clothes into Serbian costume. Bora and Milic provide the diversion to help us through...'

  'I should help them...' he began.

  'You should do as you're bloody well told! This is my territory. You're a package we have to deliver to one of the Allied military missions …'

  'Maybe I should apologize for existing...'

  'Now, don't go all sulky. That I can do without...'

  During the verbal flare-up Paco had kept her soft voice calm as though they were carrying on a normal conversation. She glanced sideways at him as he stared straight ahead.

  'You saved our bacon at the Sudbahnhof when you rushed me aboard the train. We make a good team, Lindsay.' She grasped his free arm. 'We're all exhausted - that's the moment to watch it. We've just passed a couple of Austrian policemen in uniform...'

  'I never even saw them.'

  'Because we were too busy arguing like a normal couple. I saw one of them grin and make a remark to his companion...'

  'You devious little bitch!'

  'It's nice to be appreciated...' She squeezed his arm and began walking faster. He stared at her - she had deliberately provoked the row to get them past the policemen. Her quick-mindedness and ingenuity never ceased to amaze him. This, he thought, was how Paco's group had survived so long.

  'What did you do before the war?' he asked. 'I don't know much about you...'

  'I worked for an advertising agency in Belgrade. I was what they call in London an account executive. To survive in that job you have to be very persuasive with all types.'

  'You joined the Partisans after Belgrade?'

  'I joined the bloody Cetniks - they support the monarchy, which I was quite happy about. That is, until I found they were collaborating with the Germans. I went over to the Partisans because they were fighting Germans. As simple as that...'

  They spent the harrowing waiting time in an old house overlooking the river Mur in the centre of Graz. An old couple occupied the staging post. On Paco's instructions Lindsay exchanged not a word with either of them. He slept in a tiny bedroom with a window facing across the river to a weird clock tower perched halfway up a steep hill rising from the opposite bank.

  He slept badly, tossing and turning on the unfamiliar bed, and through the open window chill air flowed into the room - he opened it so he could hear if the police called in the night. On the day they left the place he wondered whether the lack of sleep had been due to premonition. The crossing at Spielfeld-Strass was a bloody affair.

  Part Three

  The Cauldron: Der Kessel

  Chapter Twenty-Eight.

  In forty years Spielfeld-Strass has not changed. It is the same today as it was in 1943 - when Paco and her companions arrived in a six-coach train drawn by an ancient steam engine. It is more like a wayside halt than a frontier station.

  As Lindsay alighted, following Paco, he saw another train waiting in a siding. The destination plates hanging from the coaches carried the legend WIEN SUDBHF. They crossed the tracks coated with early morning frost and went inside the small station building through the door marked Ausgang. No one was about to collect the tickets they had purchased at Graz.

  Paco walked without appearing to hurry, descended some concrete steps and they were out in the open. The station stood perched on the side of a small hill. Down a short slope they walked into Spielfeld, a handful of houses and a police station, a two-storeyed building with a tiled gable and a tiny dormer window like a dovecote. Over the entrance were the words Gendarmerie and Postenkommando.

  It was all so entirely unexpected. Lindsay transferred his suitcase to his left hand and caught up with Paco.

  'There's no sign of troops or defences.'

  'Wait till we get to the border crossing. It's not far.'

  'What's happened to Bora and Milic?'

  'Questions, questions, questions! You're at it again. They've gone a different way to create the diversion if we run into trouble at the crossing point...'

  Lindsay said nothing. He was recalling how he had wandered into the kitchen of the house at Graz. Milic had been packing equipment inside a bag - the 'equipment' had included stick grenades and what looked like smoke bombs. Presumably he had collected his travelling gear from some secret weapons store inside the house. He had not enquired.

  'Don't stop!' Paco warned. 'Keep walking - ignore the police van.'

  The police station stood at the edge of a deserted square. On the far side reared a huge chestnut tree, gaunt with naked branches along which were perched rows of sparrows. Behind the tree huddled an ancient inn with faded, colour-washed walls. Gasthof Schenk.

  It was so incredibly peaceful. The other passengers seemed to have made off in the opposite direction - which made Lindsay feel conspicuous and nervous of the police station. Coffee-colour
ed hens trod the paving stones, jerking their red wattles. The birds chattered testily. The only other sound was the click of billiard balls from an open window in the Gasthof.

  It was 11 am, the sky was a sea of surging grey clouds and there was the smell of rain to come.

  Two uniformed policemen sat in the cab of the police van parked under the chestnut. As they walked past the vehicle which bore the word Polizei in white across the front, Lindsay was aware of two pairs of eyes studying him. The two men remained motionless but he knew they were watching. He waited for the metallic grind of the handle being turned as the door opened.

  Paco waited until they were descending a country lane before she spoke. Behind there was a faint flapping and Lindsay almost jumped. It was the birds taking off.

  'They wouldn't stoop to speak to the likes of us,' she remarked in a perfect cockney accent. 'The way we're dressed!'

  They had changed into different clothes at the house in Graz. Now Paco wore a peasant jacket and skirt of Serbian style with a brightly-coloured handkerchief wrapped tightly round her head - again concealing her blonde hair.

  Lindsay was similarly attired in the male equivalent and, at Paco's suggestion, had again not shaved so he was well-whiskered. They passed a high green knoll as they proceeded down the empty country lane and now the only sound was the distant whistle of an engine followed by the clang of shunted coaches.

  `Milic and Bora may have to wipe out the frontier post if we are stopped,' she remarked casually. 'In case of trouble, put as much distance as possible between yourself and the guards. We have arrived …'

  Acts of violence are shocking not so much by the casualties they create as in the suddenness with which they occur. Rounding a corner in the country lane they were confronted with the frontier post, with war.

  German troops mounted guard over the crossing point, men clad in field-grey uniform who moved restlessly about to combat the morning chill. They paused to stamp their booted feet on the iron-hard ground crusted heavily with frost in a hollow. They slapped their gloved hands round their shoulders to get the circulation going. In the descent from the station the temperature had dropped ten degrees.

  The rail track had reappeared, the line leading south into the Balkans, into the battlefield. A goods wagon stood in a siding and men loaded it with wooden boxes from an Army truck. Lindsay stiffened and Paco's arm linked inside his kept him moving.

  The boxes were rectangular in shape, made of wood and stencilled with broken lettering. Ammunition boxes. The rail wagon was almost fully-laden. Sentries with machine-pistols at the ready patrolled on both sides of the track.

  'A bad moment to arrive,' Lindsay murmured.

  'A good moment,' Paco murmured back. 'Their attention is taken up with that wagon.'

  Lindsay glanced up at the grassy knolls topped with copses of trees surrounding the hollow. He was trying to imagine where he would position himself if he were Milic and Bora. There was no sign of the two men. Paco produced some grubby papers and they joined a queue of no more than half-a-dozen peasants waiting to cross into Yugoslavia.

  The two old women immediately in front of them chattered in a strange language, a sing-song, zizzing sound. Lindsay had never heard people speaking in that way before. Paco, who was watching him, whispered.

  'That's Serbo-Croat. You'd better get used to it, you're going to hear a lot of that..

  Strange, Lindsay reflected, her calm confidence that they would reach the Promised Land, Yugoslavia. The border post was a small wooden but very much like those he remembered night watchmen had sheltered inside in England before the war. All papers were being examined minutely by a young Army captain.

  'Be careful,' he warned Paco, 'the young ones are the worst.'

  'Not for me!'

  She really was quite incredible. Lindsay's nerves were twanging. Then he noticed why such a youngster occupied this passive occupation. His left sleeve hung loose like a draped curtain: he had only one arm. He observed the tight mouth, the bitter expression. Paco could have misjudged this man.

  The queue shuffled forward. Beyond the hut, maybe a hundred metres beyond, stood a huge tidy log pile stacked in a cube. Some of the logs from this pile' formed a fire which crackled dose to the hut. The captain waved a man across the border. Safety was simply permission to continue walking down a country road - on to Yugoslav soil.

  Now only the two old women in front of them had to be checked before it was their turn. Lindsay had never felt so helpless in his life - no experience at the Wolf's Lair, at the Berghof, while they were spending the night at the tumbledown Gasthof near the Sudbahnhof, had been as bad as this. He felt so horribly exposed...

  'I thought my aunt looked surprisingly well - considering how ill she has been. Don't you agree?' asked Paco, speaking German in a calm voice.

  She caught Lindsay off guard. He had been studying the topography close to the border point. He realized she was making conversation for the benefit of the officer checking papers.

  'It was a waste of time our coming in my opinion,' Lindsay responded.

  The two old women ahead were handed their documents and the German studied Paco before taking her papers. She smiled at him but he showed no interest, which was exactly what Lindsay had expected. 'These papers are not in order, he said after only a glance.

  The top of the green knoll closest to the frontier post below was occupied by three men. Two were alive. One was dead. The German machine-gunner who had guarded this key position sprawled behind his weapon had never heard Milic creeping through the trees. His first inkling that he was not alone was when Milic rammed home the knife.

  British field craft, as taught in the training camps in England was an amateurish affair compared with the Serb's expertise. Now it was Bora who lay sprawled behind the gun mounted on a tripod.

  Next to him Milic lay on the cold grass with a pair of field glasses focused on Lindsay and Paco as they

  waited for their papers to be examined. Alongside Milic in neat, rows lay the stick grenades he had extracted from the canvas satchel he had carried on his back. A parallel row of smoke bombs lay behind the grenades.

  'I think there is trouble down there,' Milic observed.

  'What is wrong?' snapped Bora. 'They may get through without trouble. Trust Paco...'

  'She has just given the signal,' Milic replied equably.

  Through the lenses of the glasses he clearly saw Paco raise a hand to the handkerchief covering her head. It was the agreed warning. We are in danger …'

  'The special stamp recently introduced is absent from both of these documents,' the captain at the frontier post informed Paco.

  'But, Captain, these papers were stamped in Graz yesterday...'

  'You mean they were forged in Graz yesterday!'

  Paco raised her hand to her head as though straightening her handkerchief. She went on talking, holding the captain's attention as she produced another set of papers. Her manner became even more self-assured and with a hint of arrogance.

  'We are on a mission. Have you not been informed? We should have been passed through without question. These papers, as you will see, are signed by SS Colonel Jaeger of the Berghof...'

  Lindsay glanced round the hollow again, surveying the enclosing knolls as the captain, his eye caught by the embossed eagle holding the swastika in its claws at the head of the documents, began to study the transit orders.

  A short, wide-shouldered figure appeared at the crest of the knoll closest to the frontier post. His right hand held something which he hurled in an arc. The object landed close to a group of soldiers and detonated.

  The dull thump of the explosion knocked down the soldiers like a row of skittles. A second grenade landed. Lindsay made a fist and hit the captain in the centre of his chest. He toppled back inside the hut.

  Grabbing Paco by the arm he hustled her forward until they were running.

  'That log pile!' he shouted. The peaceful frontier post had erupted into activity and soldiers
milled around like confused ants. 'We must get down behind it - the ammunition wagon...'

  He threw her down bodily as bullets from a machine-pistol streamed at them, spinning chips of wood off the top of the pile. Peering round a corner he saw the next grenade describing an arc and dropping inside its objective - the ammunition wagon...

  The world came apart in a shattering roar. The ground under their feet - the frost-coated, iron hard ground - trembled as though shaken by an earthquake. Lindsay lay on top of Paco, shielding her as debris rained down. The log-pile remained firm.

  He risked another glance round the corner. The wagon had disappeared. A section of the track had disappeared. The Germans who had patrolled alongside the wagon had disappeared. Men with rifles - well spaced out - began advancing up towards the crest of the knoll from which Milic had hurled his grenades. Now, crouched out of sight, he tossed smoke bombs down the slope.

  They burst just in front of the advancing file of troops and a wall of fog billowed between them and the top of the knoll. Sprawled full-length behind the German machine-gun, Bora stared, along the gun-

  sight. The first German broke through the smoke. He waited. More troops appeared.

  Lindsay checked carefully the position inside the hollow. Confusion still. Distant shouted orders. The frontier post but had also vanished when the ammunition wagon exploded.

  'We go now,' he told Paco. 'No one is watching the road to Yugoslavia. What about Milic and Bora...'

  'They look after themselves. That was the arrangement. They join us later...'

  'Follow me. I'm going to run. Zigzag - it makes a hard target to hit. Keep well away from me...'

  He took one final look and started running. Paco followed and kept to the side of the road. Lindsay was running down the centre, dodging from side to side. At the extreme right flank of the file of troops moving up the knoll a soldier saw them.