The Berlin Escape

by Warren Court

  “Tell her,” the count repeated.

  Richard shrugged. “You tell her. You’re dying too.”

  “He’s a spy, Aubrey, a Soviet spy. He reports to the Kremlin. We’ve been on to him for a while, but I never had the proof I needed to bring him in. When I heard he was working with the Rote Kapelle, the Red Orchestra, I knew it was only a matter of time before he would lead me to them. We could take care of them all in one stroke. And now, one part is done, Mr. Fuchs. Your friends are all dead. Now there’s only you.”

  Aubrey pulled her pistol and put it to the count’s head.

  “Drop your gun or I’ll shoot, Helmut, I swear.”

  “Aubrey, you fool.” He swatted the gun away. She raised it again and pulled the trigger. Click.

  “My men took the liberty of unloading it when they were in your room.”

  Aubrey stared at him. “It was you?”

  “Yes. Convincing, wasn’t it. I wanted you to be more agreeable to working with the Rote Kapelle. And it worked, just like it worked when I got you out of that dungeon. Do you think he would have killed you? That little rodent in the SD almost did. Good thing I had my timing right. Ahhh—speak of the devil himself. Here comes our friend.”

  The trucks came around the corner, and the count waved his arm at them. “Over here.”

  Richard saw his chance: he launched himself at the count, delivering a drop kick that sent the titled gentlemen sprawling across the hood of his Mercedes before dashing away. The chauffeur sprang out. He had a gun of his own and fired a shot at the fleeing Russian spy, but missed.

  Aubrey stood her ground. A day ago, she would have gone to Helmut to help him. Now she loathed the sight of him. The SS troops jumped out of their trucks and surrounded her. They were shouting for her to drop her weapon, empty and useless though it was. They were just waiting for her to resist, she knew, for the chance they needed to gun her down. They must not know it’s unloaded, she thought. Or maybe they didn’t care.

  She dropped the useless weapon on the dirt. Helmut’s chauffeur scooped it up and handed it to Helmut, who had gotten slowly back to his feet. He put the gun inside his overcoat.

  Then the soldiers were on her fast. They held her by the arms. Then all heads turned as Hauptsturmführer Schmidt appeared, wearing a smile that was half smugness, half fury. He still had the bloodlust of the recent battle at the slaughterhouse in him.

  Helmut had recovered himself and spoke to the captain. “The one we want got away. He can’t get far. Set up roadblocks on all exits out of here. Have the rest of your men do a house-to-house search, and call in for reinforcements.”

  “I won’t be taking orders from you, Herr Colonel,” Captain Schmidt said. “This is an SD operation. The Abwehr can stand back and watch if they like.”

  The count gave him a dark look. “Power struggles—that’s all you people know, isn’t it? Very well, run the show. I’m taking her back to Berlin.” He inclined his head at Aubrey.

  “No, I am taking her. She is in my custody,” Captain Schmidt said.

  “I don’t want to fight about it. We can use my car; you can come along for the ride if you like.”

  The captain snapped a command at an adjutant standing next to him, and the soldiers started to spread out into the town.

  “Make sure he does not escape, and I want him alive,” the count called after them.

  The chauffeur opened the back doors of the Mercedes.

  “Aubrey, don’t play silly games by trying to resist. You’re in enough trouble as it is,” Helmut said.

  Aubrey knew it was true. She shrugged and got in the car. Schmidt and the count slid in on either side of her. Aubrey was forced to perch on the bar that jutted out from the back of the driver’s seat and hold on to the red curtain for support.

  “What are you going to do to me?”

  Captain Schmidt answered her. “You’re an enemy spy, an agent provocateur, sent here to disrupt the achievements of our glorious Reich. I ask you, what do you think should happen to you?”

  Aubrey looked at the count and saw him roll his eyes at the pronouncement; he was trying to charm her again. Aubrey wondered if this was a case of good cop, bad cop. Clearly, they were both going to go to work on her, and it seemed the count was going to try the soft approach.

  Helmut said, “Aubrey, why don’t you fix us a drink. It’s a long drive back to Berlin.”

  She relented, pulled out the crystal decanter and poured them both a drink. What the hell else was she going to do?

  “Make one for yourself,” the count said. “It will calm you down. I hate to agree with my colleague in the SD here, but he is correct: you will be kept at the convenience of the state.”

  “I’ll want to call my embassy.”

  “You do not make demands here,” Schmidt said. “You will only provide us with answers.”

  They were out of the village now, roaring along the country lane.

  “Get your driver to stop up here,” the SD officer barked.

  “Why?” the count asked.

  “There is a call box. I want to call for support. I’ve left all my men in the village; I want an escort. Just in case the Red Orchestra tries to free her.”

  “I thought you killed them all back there?”

  “We took out one cell, but there are others—more than you can imagine. Although I’m not surprised the Abwehr has no idea what Germany is up against. Decadent, aristocratic fools. Driver, pull over here.”

  There was a shack just off the road. The count looked at the SS man suspiciously. The driver brought the big car to a stop and Schmidt got out, then reached back in and grabbed at Aubrey. “She must come too.”

  “Why?” Helmut said. “This is absurd.

  “Simply speaking, mein Colonel, I don’t trust you. And it will be my neck if she gets away.”

  “Mine too, or don’t you know my boss, Admiral Canaris? He doesn’t tolerate failure.”

  “The call box is on the other side of this building. I used it this morning to call in my men.” Schmidt strode off, dragging Aubrey along.

  “That’ll be quite enough of that,” the count said.

  There was a voice from behind them. “I agree. That’s far enough.”

  Aubrey recognized it: Hewitt Purnsley. He’d stepped out from some bushes on the other side of the road and had a gun pointed at the count.

  “I’ll take her, if that’s okay.”

  Aubrey saw the bumper of a car poking out from the hedgerow farther down the road.

  “I was hoping we’d meet, Herr Colonel,” Purnsley said.

  “She is working for you?”

  “Indeed. On loan, you might say, from the Yanks. They won’t take kindly to her being returned in anything but tip-top condition. Aubrey, come stand behind me. Move smartly.”

  She broke away from Schmidt and hurried over to Purnsley.

  “Sorry it has to end like this, Helmut,” Hewitt said.

  “It’s just a game, an endless game.” The count shrugged. “There is always another round.”

  “I agree. Until next time, then.”

  “You’re not free and clear yet.” The count looked around at the surrounding countryside, and that mischievous smile that Aubrey had come to know, love and now loathe, appeared once more. “You’re still in my country, Herr Purnsley.”

  Schmidt, who’d moved behind the count while the two intelligence men were talking, pointed his Luger at the count’s head and pulled the trigger. It was the tiniest of pops, no louder than a Christmas popper, but the count went down like a sack of stones. The chauffeur’s door opened. Hewitt spun and put two bullets into the chest of the emerging driver sending him slumping back into the vehicle.

  Aubrey screamed.

  “It’s okay, Aubrey. It’s over,” Hewitt told her.

  Schmidt holstered his weapon, then pulled out a piece of paper and handed it over to Hewitt.

  “Thank you, Starlight,” Hewitt said. “I’m also glad that you and I finally
meet.”

  “You don’t have long. You must go,” Captain Schmidt said.

  “Why’d you do that?” Hewitt said, motioning towards the dead count.

  “I will call it in. I’m afraid I will have to tell them what happened—that you ambushed us, took her from me, killed the count and his driver. I was lucky to get away alive. To maintain my cover, I will have to order them after you. You have a head start of an hour, I’d say. You’ll have to make your way across the frontier on foot. The border crossings will be watched, trains searched.”

  “I figured that.”

  “Poland is your best bet; I’ll tell them you’re likely headed to France.”

  “Thanks, Starlight. Aubrey, let’s go.”

  She looked down at the fallen count, dashed a tear off her cheek. “Hold on.” She went to him and crouched down.

  “Aubrey, we don’t have time.”

  “For this we do.” She pulled her father’s pistol from the count’s jacket. “This doesn’t belong to me; I need to return it.” She reached in again and found the clip of bullets. She loaded the .45, cocked it and pointed it at Captain Schmidt.

  The evil little man, in his evil little spit-and-polish uniform, did not flinch. “I believe she wants to kill me.”

  “Aubrey, no! He is a valuable agent.”

  “Perhaps another time, Fraulein. Good luck… to both of you.” Schmidt started to drag the dead chauffeur out of his seat.

  Hewitt said, “Come on, Aubrey. The clock is ticking.”

  29

  “I followed you from your hotel this morning, saw you drive off alone. I even picked you up again when you left the camp with your passenger,” Hewitt said to her as they drove off.

  “Never spotted you.”

  “But then I lost you. Luckily that fighter plane let me know where you were. I thought for a moment that you’d been killed in the explosion, but then I spotted you with binoculars, running away with that Fuchs chap.”

  “Did you know he was a spy?”

  “Suspected it. He is good, one of the best. I would have liked to have had a chat with him.”

  “He’s probably dead by now. That bastard’s men will rip him apart.”

  “And with good reason.”

  “What was it all for? What did Starlight give you that’s so important?”

  “You have no need to know.”

  “Damn it all, I almost got killed because of what you got me mixed up in.”

  “Listen, Aubrey, I didn’t tell you to get hooked up with any Red Orchestra or a cell of communists. You did that all on your own. You should be in Paris right now, fully debriefed and on your way home.”

  Hewitt tightened his grip on the wheel. He pulled out the slip of paper and handed it to her. “I guess you were instrumental,” he said.

  She read the note. It was in German, written in ballpoint pen, hard to read. She recognized a few words; her written German even weaker than her spoken. She got the gist of it, though; it was an innocent-sounding note, a man writing to a woman about a romantic weekend spent in the Alps. Something she could easily have written herself if things hadn’t turned out the way they did.

  “It’s a love letter,” she said. “What’s liebessklave mean?”

  “You are really going to have to brush up on your German if you’re going to be of any use to us.”

  “There you go again about the coming war.”

  “A future war is exactly what we’re trying to prevent. With Starlight’s help, we just might.”

  “With this love letter?”

  “Liebessklave. Means love slave. The dot on the ‘i’ in that word is a microdot. It contains information about Hitler’s imminent plans concerning France.”

  “Such as?”

  Hewitt gripped the wheel tighter as he wrestled with going against his instincts, his training.

  “He intends to reoccupy the Rhineland. It’s a buffer between France and Germany, put in place after the Versailles treaty. There are French troops there now. If Hitler goes marching in with his stormtroopers, it might start a war.”

  “I see.” She handed back the note. “He is a monster, your Agent Starlight.”

  “A necessary evil. He has the perfect cover. No one would suspect a fanatic of being a traitor. And that’s all I’m going to say about him. We might share Starlight’s product with your side eventually, but we run him.”

  “How are we going to get away?”

  “I’m going to follow his suggestion: the Polish frontier. It’s a hundred miles away. We can ditch the car and make it on foot if we have to.”

  They drove past a wooden sign on the roadside.

  “I have a better suggestion,” Aubrey said. “Take the next turnoff.”

  “What the blazes for?”

  “Just do it.”

  Hewitt obeyed and saw what she meant him to see. There was another sign and an arrow marked ‘fifteen kilometres.’

  “You’re out of your mind.”

  “I think we can pull it off, and it will be a lot quicker than driving or walking out of Germany.”

  They approached the gates of the Kesselberg air base, the one where the count had mentioned the flight trials of the Bf 109 were ongoing. There was a guarded perimeter, naturally. Two soldiers manned a white- and red-striped pole, raising it up to let cars and trucks enter. More soldiers stood lazily around, rifles slung over their shoulders.

  “These are Luftwaffe personnel, aren’t they?” Aubrey asked as they crept up on the perimeter.

  “Yes. Their guns are still real; they fire real bullets.”

  “Just leave it to me.”

  The non-commissioned officer in charge approached Hewitt’s open window. Aubrey leaned across the British spy. She spoke to the airman in a mixture of German and English and handed across a business card. The NCO read it, then went into the shack. He came back out and seemed reluctant to do so, but he ordered his men to lift the barrier. Hewitt waited for instructions from him and took the card back. The NCO instructed them where to park and which building to enter on the air base. Aubrey thanked him, and Hewitt drove on.

  “What the devil does that card say?”

  She handed it to him. There was writing on the back. Hewitt read it out loud. “‘To whom it may concern: please afford this young lady all the courtesy and help she requires.’” He turned it over and his eyes went wide with astonishment. “My word, it’s from…”

  “Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering.”

  “The old boy got us past the front gate. Big deal.”

  “We’ll see.”

  They were greeted at the administration building and shown inside. Aubrey, assisted by Hewitt’s excellent German, told the clerk what they were there for. He in turn told a sergeant, who summoned a lieutenant and then a captain.

  The Germans looked at each other. Aubrey produced her card one more time for all to see and read. She and Hewitt were allowed to wait there while the officers walked off to phone it in. Aubrey spied a handsome-looking flyer in a leather jacket and flight helmet walking from the flight line. She jumped up and ran to the door.

  “Albert,” she called.

  The pilot stopped when he saw Aubrey, a puzzled look on his face as he struggled to remember her. She ran out of the building to him. Hewitt looked around; there was no one holding him back. He quickly followed after her.

  “Albert, my friend,” Aubrey said, and embraced him.

  “Aubrey, is that you? What is this? How are you here?”

  “We’re meeting some VIPs; they’re going to show us the Bf 109. We may even go up in one! Are there any trainers about? Two-seaters?”

  “No, I am afraid not.” He turned to Hewitt. “Who is this?”

  “Albert, this is—”

  “Carter Stowe,” Hewitt answered, and extended his hand. “Air Attaché to the British embassy in Berlin. I’m escorting Miss Endeavours on her tour of the Luftwaffe.”

  “I see.”

  “Are you going up in a
109 now?”

  “Sadly, no. I have been switched to larger aircraft – bombers. My poor showing in the air rally. You don’t have a Luftwaffe escort?”

  “Not yet. We were just waiting there for the Count Helmut von Villiez to arrive. He will be our escort.”

  “I see. This is a highly restricted area. I would hate for something to happen to you. Perhaps you should wait inside.”