Murder's Art

by Christopher Nicole

  ‘You volunteered,’ he pointed out.

  ‘But am I not entitled to ask the reason?’

  ‘General Tito wants us to remind the Germans, and the world, that we are still a fighting force, and capable of carrying out offensive actions.’

  ‘But why this railway line, and on a fixed date so soon?’

  ‘Well, as to your first question, the railway line from Belgrade to the border, and thence through Hungary to Germany, is the only one that matters at this moment. As for the timing, we have information that this particular train, the one leaving Belgrade at eight o’clock on Sunday morning, will be carrying items of great importance to the German command. To deprive them of those items will be a triumph.’

  ‘Items?’

  ‘I am not going to answer any more questions, and you are not to ask them.’

  ‘Well, when I think that we could be sleeping in our warm billet here in Foca, instead of trudging through the snow and getting chilblains, I hope it will be worth it.’

  ‘It will be worth it,’ he assured her. Although perhaps not to you, he thought. He was concerned that he might be about to betray her love. But her love was more of an animal instinct, an animal passion, together with a desire to belong to the best, rather than anything of the soul. And she knew he had only taken her, at her invitation, because he had believed Sandrine to be dead. But Sandrine was alive, alive, alive! No matter what the Gestapo had done to her, she was alive. And she would survive, and return to his arms and his future.

  He felt so ebulliently happy that what lay ahead of him seemed irrelevant. Until he had to spell it out to his people. ‘We have to cover a hundred and twenty miles in four days,’ he told them. ‘That is, thirty miles a day. If we can maintain two miles an hour for fifteen hours, with a ten-minute break in every hour, we will have nine hours to spare for sleeping and resting. Our meals will be eaten as we walk, except for the evening meal, which we shall endeavour to have hot. Now it follows that to maintain this pace we can have no delays and no distractions. We will go round any obstacles, and we will not engage any enemy, be he German or Cetnik, unless it is absolutely unavoidable. Should any one of us, man or woman, injure himself or become in any way unable to continue the march at the required speed, he or she will have to drop out and return to Foca as best he can. Understood?’ They nodded, faces grimly determined. ‘Then let’s go.’

  It was a quarter to three on the afternoon of Wednesday, 26 November 1941.

  Most of the army turned out to watch them leave. Tito shook hands with each of them. ‘I know you will succeed,’ he told them, ‘and I look forward to welcoming you back in triumph.’ He raised his cap, and the assembled Partisans gave a cheer.

  The march was every bit as gruelling as Tony had anticipated. The temperature hovered just above freezing during the day, but plummeted during the night. This was worse than if it had stayed freezing all the time, as an ice-covered road could suddenly turn into ankle-deep slush. In addition it rained, or snowed, every day. This was a valuable aid to concealment – they could occasionally hear aircraft overhead – but did nothing for their comfort. They encountered few people, and those they did meet gave the seven grim faces above the heavily armed bodies – they all had, in addition to their tommy-guns and rifles, strings of cartridges and grenades round their necks – a quick glance and scuttled away. Presumably some were of the traitor mould, and would report what they had seen, but in these conditions there was little chance of any search being mounted even for obvious guerillas. Those German patrols that were about could be heard long before they were seen, and hiding from them was a simple matter.

  When they bivouacked for the night, they huddled together in a mass for mutual warmth, too exhausted to do more than gulp their food and drink a mug of steaming weak coffee. That they had hot food at all was a tribute to Sasha and Draga, who every evening lit a small fire and did the cooking, and were ready to go again at dawn the following morning.

  Inevitably, not everyone made it. One of the men stumbled and twisted his ankle, and obviously could not keep up. Tony could only show him on his map the way back to Foca and wish him well, and hope that he would have the sense, and the courage, to blow out his brains if he found himself about to be captured, if only so that he would not reveal their destination.

  But as they descended into the valleys, it still rained incessantly, however, and the ground was even slushier. Many of the streams that had to be forded were chest-deep even for Tony, who was six feet two inches tall; he had to have ropes slung across the rushing water so that the women could manage. But here, as before, the training he had made them undergo meant that they were far fitter than the men, save for Brolic, who proceeded on his way in brooding silence. ‘I do not think he is quite sane,’ Sasha confided. ‘He never speaks, he never smiles …’

  ‘I imagine any truly sane person would condemn us all to the loony bin,’ Tony suggested.

  There were more people around on the lower slopes, as well as on the more level ground of the plain. Tony changed his order of march, and had them take their nine hours of rest during the day, sheltering in copses or little gullies, and making their way from dusk, which was early, to dawn, which was late, proceeding by way of his compass. Now too they saw more German movements, but in the absence of any recent guerilla activity, these were clearly routine. And just after they had begun to move on Saturday evening, they heard the wail of a train whistle.

  ‘That is the evening train to Novi Sad,’ Brolic said. ‘We will be at the line by midnight.’

  ‘And you know the best place for the derailment?’ Tony shone his torch on the map.

  ‘Here.’ Brolic prodded the stiff paper. ‘It is a shallow culvert. An explosive charge will not only blow the engine off the tracks, but should bring down the earth to completely block the line.’

  ‘Excellent. Now listen very carefully,’ he told them. ‘With fortune, we should be able to do this job and have a couple of hours to spare before a pursuit is mounted. We are informed that the German guards are principally at the front of the train, and certainly that is where the radio is situated. So hopefully we will knock that out when we destroy the engine.’

  ‘They will still come after us with everything they have,’ someone said.

  ‘I think they will be very careful about that,’ Tony said, ‘in view of the nature of the goods they are carrying, and which we are here to capture. Now, again according to our information, these goods are contained in the first-class carriage, which is situated at the rear of the train, immediately in front of the guard’s van. Obtaining these goods will be the responsibility of Captain Janitz and myself. The rest of you are required to knock out any German resistance remaining after the derailment. There are likely to be civilians on board, but these will almost certainly all be German, and while you should not deliberately target them, do not let them get in the way. When Captain Janitz and I have secured the goods, I shall blow my whistle, and we will retire as rapidly as possible. Understood?’

  ‘With respect, Colonel,’ someone said. ‘What happens if something happens to you?’

  ‘Captain Janitz will take command.’

  ‘But she will be with you, sir.’

  ‘I take your point. You are thinking that if I go, she goes. In that case, Captain Dissilivic will take command.’ Draga looked impressively stern.

  ‘Now will you tell me what we are looking for?’ Sasha asked.

  ‘I’ll tell you when we get it,’ Tony promised.

  Anke unlocked the door of cell thirty-one, and Angela stepped inside, blinking because of the brightness of the bulb as compared with the gloom of the corridor. It was early in the evening, and Sandrine sat at her table, reading one of the books Angela had given her. She looked up, but did not speak. ‘Thank you, Anke,’ Angela said. As always, Anke looked as if there was a great deal she would have liked to say, but after a brief hesitation she withdrew and closed the door.

  ‘She worries,’ Angela said, ‘t
hat one day you will strangle me.’ She crossed the room, and stooped. Sandrine turned up her face, and was kissed on the mouth. ‘Would you like to strangle me?’ Angela asked.

  ‘One day, perhaps,’ Sandrine said.

  Angela sat on the bed. For all their intimacy, she was still not sure when the Frenchwoman was joking or when she was deadly serious. ‘I should have thought you would be grateful to me,’ she said.

  ‘I am.’ Sandrine put down her book.

  ‘But you still hate me. Is that because I have made you become my lover?’

  ‘Not at all. I have had a female lover before. Your people shot her.’

  ‘Oh. That is why you hate us.’

  ‘There are other reasons.’ Sandrine held Angela’s hand. ‘But I do not hate you, personally. As you said, I am grateful to you.’

  ‘But you do not love me.’

  ‘We have not known each other long enough for love.’

  ‘I love you,’ Angela said, almost fiercely. ‘I think I fell in love with you when I first saw you. I hated you then. Do you know that it is possible to love and hate someone at the same time?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘It is not very nice, I can tell you. But then I stopped hating you.’

  ‘When you saw me in the shower. You fell in love with my body, Geli, not me.’

  ‘It was you,’ Angela insisted. ‘Oh, you have a lovely body, just as you have a lovely face and lovely hair. You are a lovely person. But you also have a loveable personality. I fell in love with your dignity, your confidence, your self-belief. I have none of those things.’

  ‘You will get them, when you have experienced as much as I have.’

  ‘Will I ever?’ Angela stood up, suddenly and violently, and took a turn around the cell. ‘It is over now.’ Sandrine waited, but her eyes had become watchful. ‘I am leaving Belgrade tomorrow morning at dawn, to return to Germany,’ Angela said. ‘I am to accompany Fritz. We are to be married.’

  ‘I thought he was very badly wounded.’

  ‘He is. But I am still to marry him.’ Angela’s mouth twisted. ‘It is the Führer’s wish.’

  Sandrine looked interested. ‘I had no idea you were so well connected.’

  ‘Neither did I. But there it is. Listen, I have left Ulrich orders that you are to be continued in this cell and with this treatment until Fritz is able to return to deal with you.’

  ‘Is he going to return?’

  ‘Not for some time.’

  ‘So, am I to spend the rest of my life in this cell?’

  ‘Would you rather be hanged in public? Listen, I will do what I can for you. Ultimately, it will lie with Papa. I will work at it. But it is too soon after Mama’s death to attempt anything now. You must be patient.’

  ‘So it seems.’

  ‘Are you not grateful?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sandrine said. ‘I am grateful.’

  ‘Then show it!’ Angela grasped Sandrine’s shoulders, and shook her, violently.

  Sandrine took Angela’s face between her hands, and kissed her on the mouth. ‘I am grateful,’ she said.

  Angela’s burst of anger faded as quickly as it had sprung up. ‘Well, I must go now. I would like to think I shall see you again. Would you like that too?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sandrine said. ‘I think I would enjoy that.’

  Angela gazed at her in total frustration for a few moments, then turned and left the cell.

  ***

  ‘Careful now, careful.’ General von Blintoft stood above the stretcher as it was lifted from the ambulance and carried across the platform into the first-class carriage. This had been entirely reserved for the gubernatorial party, which, in addition to Angela and Wassermann, consisted of a doctor, two nurses, and an armed guard.

  The space between two of the rows of seats had been filled in with a mattress-covered trestle, and on this makeshift bed Wassermann was carefully laid, still on his stretcher, while an oxygen mask and bottle were placed on the adjacent seats, ready for use if necessary. He was sedated, and oblivious to his surroundings.

  Angela wore black – dress, shoes, stockings, fur coat, and fur hat. As if her fiancé was already dead, Ulrich thought, standing beside the general. Or perhaps it was merely that she knew the colour suited her; she certainly looked quite beautiful.

  Blintoft embraced her. ‘I know you will take good care of him,’ he said. ‘Telephone me as soon as you reach Berlin. You will be met there – Himmler has assured me of this – and an apartment has been arranged for you. Though I know you will wish to spend as much time as possible with Fritz.’

  ‘Of course,’ Angela said, allowing him to hug her and kiss her on the cheek. Then she looked at Ulrich.

  He stepped forward to shake her hand. ‘My felicitations, Fräulein.’

  She gazed into his eyes, willing him to carry out her instructions regarding Fouquet. But he had already made up his mind about this. His position vis-à-vis the general might be invulnerable, but the Frenchwoman was becoming at once a nuisance and an embarrassment – and a potential risk, in the event that Wassermann never did recover. The moment Angela was gone, he intended to ‘discover’ the identity of the mysterious prisoner in cell thirty-one, and inform the general. He was sorry to have to let down the Fräulein, but he had his own career to think of, and he did not suppose he would ever see either Angela or Wassermann again.

  He stepped back and saluted, and the door was closed.

  Angela sat by the window on the far side of the carriage from Wassermann. She wondered if he would survive the journey, which was going to take many hours. If he did not, then there was no reason why she should not return to Belgrade. She would have done her duty. No one could ask anything more of her. And then … Why did she bother? Sandrine had never truly shown any attraction to her, however much they might have been able to arouse a mutual passion. It remained a question of ownership. Sandrine was hers! To have so precious a possession ripped from her grasp by men who were only capable of considering the form, the appearance of things, rather than the substance, was infuriating.

  She found herself actually considering ways and means of getting rid of the medical people so that she could be alone with the wounded man, just for a few minutes. That was all she would need. But she had to be careful.

  ‘Coffee, Fräulein?’ One of the nurses handed her a cup.

  ‘Thank you. How soon will we be in Novi Sad?’

  ‘Another half an hour,’ the nurse said brightly. ‘It will be necessary to draw the curtains during the stop. We do not wish anyone looking into the carriage.’

  ‘I understand,’ Angela said, and used the opportunity to look out of the window. There was not much to see. They had left the last of the houses far behind, and were travelling across a snow-covered landscape, with only one or two distant hamlets to be glimpsed beyond the bare trees. Then the train entered a culvert, the banks of which rose only just above eye level, but sufficiently to blot out the view. Angela turned back to look at Wassermann, and was enveloped in a huge explosion.

  Even the first-class carriage, situated at the very rear of the train, bucked and then crashed into the carriage immediately in front of it, being in turn rammed by the guard’s van behind it; it hovered for a moment before falling on to its side with a resounding crash. Angela tumbled out of her seat, and fell right across the carriage, landing on Wassermann, who was also thrown forwards and to one side. Dimly she heard the doctor shouting and the nurses screaming, at the same time as she heard a fusillade of shots.

  She rose to her knees on the window which was now the floor, aware of pain and a ringing in her ears, and gazed at Wassermann, who lay in a crumpled heap beside her; fresh blood was seeping through his bandages. Then her arm was seized by the soldier. ‘You must get out, Fräulein.’ He had lost his helmet, and there was blood on his face. Angela blinked at him, but did not object when he pulled her up. ‘The back door,’ he said.

  Angela gazed past him at the doctor and the nurses, just p
icking themselves up, but they seemed more interested in Wassermann than her. She half-staggered and was half-carried along the various windows. Several cracked under her feet, but the soldier did not stop until they reached the door, which had taken on the aspect of a large hatchway in the rear of the train. Here he let her go, and she sank to her haunches while he tried to get it open, finally drawing his pistol – he had lost his tommy-gun – and firing several shots into the lock.

  The noise outside was growing in intensity; there were more shots, joined now by screams and further explosions. Why does he want me to leave? Angela wondered. Will I not be safer in here? The soldier pulled the door down, then turned back to her. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I wish to stay. With them.’

  ‘If they have blown up the train,’ he said, ‘it is to get at either you or the major. If you remain here you will be killed. Come.’ The door, which was opened across the width of the carriage, came to her waist. The soldier held her round the thighs, and lifted her up, grasping her legs to thrust them through the aperture. What insolence, she thought, but she did not resist him. ‘Put your legs down, Fräulein,’ he panted.

  She obeyed him, and gasped. ‘There is nothing there.’

  He had shifted his grip to her armpits now, and was slowly lowering her. ‘There must be something,’ he said. ‘You will have to drop.’

  He let her go, and her coat snagged on the edge of the door. She listened to the material ripping, and remembered how expensive this coat had been. Then she plummeted down, only a few feet, to land on the snow-covered gravel beside the track with a jar which seemed to travel right up her legs and into her hips. But she was still entirely surrounded by the train. ‘I can’t get out,’ she shouted. ‘I can’t get out.’

  He climbed through the opening himself, and dropped beside her. ‘There!’ He pointed at a line of daylight. ‘You will have to lie down and roll out, Fräulein.’ Angela looked down at herself. The front of her fur might be torn, but her expensive dress was so far undamaged. ‘You must, Fräulein,’ the soldier insisted.