From my position at the low knothole, all I could do was reach up and grabbed a firm hold of von Tresckow’s manhood. I gave it a firm twist, just below the glans. “Don’t move a muscle General,” I murmured, “or this is coming off.”
I’ve played some decidedly uncomfortable games of Sardines in my time, but nothing like this. We stayed perfectly still as the castle door opened.
__________
Hitler walked in.
Inside the wardrobe all four us were holding our breath.
Never a handsome man, Hitler looked thin, pale and exhausted. His clothes were hanging off him, and he twitched and ticked awkwardly. He was sweating and breathing heavily from climbing the stairs.
“Eva! There you are. I was calling you. I need you. The Fatherland needs you. It is time for my medicine.”
All four of us in the cupboard winced at his pleading, wheedling tone. This was the Chancellor of Germany for Christ’s sake. The two Generals were in agonies of embarrassment for their Fuhrer, whereas Cornwall and I were only sickened at the sight of him.
Eva came from the window, where she had been winsomely looking out. “Here I am, my love,” she said in a honeyed tone. They embraced, and kissed, his moustache pressing horribly into her powdered skin.
__________
“I sink you needs to explain yourselves,” whispered Olbricht, indignantly.
“Shut it General,” I hissed back. “We heard every word of your plan for a coup. Know this: if we’re discovered you’re both for the firing squad along with us.”
“Zen perhaps our requirements align,” said von Tresckow, in perfectly whispered English. “Please kindly let go of my villy.”
I gave it a violent squeeze, and then loosened my grip. Cornwall released Olbricht’s neck. “Zank you,” he breathed. “I am obliged.”
For want of anything better to do we all shook hands. I motioned to a couple of convenient knotholes in the cupboard, so that our guests could see what was going on too.
Von Tresckow asked, “Why does it smell like shit in here?”
__________
Hitler’s eyes moved to the brown leather doctor’s bag by the table. I had thought it was Eva’s handbag, but I was wrong.
“Do you have it with you?” he said, his voice trembling with anticipation.
“Stay calm my dear, it won’t be long now.” Eva unclasped the metal fasteners and reached into the bag. Hitler was brimming over with excitement, and his eyes had assumed that unnerving, wide-eyed quality so noticeable in film of his speeches. With a pristine handkerchief he dabbed sweat from his brow and from his nasty little toothbrush moustache.
What happened next is seared onto my retinas and will never ever leave me. From the bag Eva produced an enormous metallic dildo about ten inches long, with what looked like a cutlass handle engineered onto the bottom. It had a matt finish and stamped onto the shaft was the repeating pattern of the Iron Cross.
“The Klung Hammer,” she said holding it up in awe like a holy relic. It glistened in the light.
“The Klung Hammer,” Hitler repeated the words in breathless reverence, as a tear rolled down each cheek.
“The Klung Hammer,” Cornwall whispered from inside the wardrobe as we realised the missile we’d seen in the grainy photograph, was in fact, a close up of an artificial phallus.
Hitler looked like any addict in the throes of withdrawal – be it booze, roulette or opium. I could see in his eyes that he knew he’d be feeling better soon. However manic and hysterical he became, he knew the Klung Hammer could quiet him. He must have become increasingly reliant on it, needing it daily just to get by. Through the crack in the wardrobe I looked on in horror as Hitler stepped out of his trousers and pulled his underpants down.
“Adolf’s been a bad boy again today,” he said and bent over the café table, looking back at her, guiltily.
Eva smiled. “Let the Klung Hammer punish you, Adi.” She breathed on it twice to warm it up, and polished it with the hem of her cardigan.
Victor, at this point I should warn you that I AM about to describe the hideous event that transpired next. You may well have buried this deep in your memory banks, and be concerned about revisiting it. If so, perhaps you should skip the next couple of pages, up to the words “… Eva threw the dripping Klung Hammer onto the table.”
Olbricht looked across at me, sick to his stomach. I couldn’t even see von Tresckow’s face as he had hidden it in his hands. For the briefest moment I felt sorry for these abhorrent men, whose leader had revealed himself in all his abasement.
Eva slathered a generous layer of lubricant onto the tip of the formidable shaft. It was so long and thick that she actually had to close one eye and look down the length of it, as if she were aiming an arrow. When she was convinced she’d got her angles right, she took a deep breath, and slowly sank the huge metal member deep into Hitler’s puckered back door. The dildo had been engineered to perfection. It slid inside him with minimal resistance, and the Fuhrer’s greedy anus swallowed the metal with a slight stretching squeak.
We could see him in profile, bent over the café table, resting on his patched elbows. He winced at first and held his breath, his face turning scarlet as it flooded with blood. “Just a little further, mein Fuhrer,” Eva whispered, her voice an octave deeper than before. I wondered how much of her act was manufactured for his pleasure and how much was real.
Hitler gripped the edge of the table, his knuckles straining like the claws of some tortured animal. For a moment I thought he might pass out, but soon his discomfort eased, to be replaced with something new. His anatomy had adjusted to this terrible intrusion, and his grimace became a rictus grin of pleasure. Eva sensed the change. She started moving the Klung Hammer repeatedly up and down, in and out, as if she were unblocking a stubborn drain with a giant plunger.
It was unholy. Hitler’s slack jowls began to vibrate, as his whole body shuddered in ecstasy. His meticulously greased side parting dropped forward, smearing down both sides of his face, and his foul little moustache twitched like a salted slug. His flubbery lips smacked together as he uttered the same syllable again and again
Hng.
Hng.
HNG.
I screwed my eyes shut, but found them opening again of their own accord. I didn’t want to see this! Eva was hammering at him so forcefully that I wondered if she had decided to brutalise him to death, instead of using the cyanide. I tore myself away from the knothole in the wardrobe, but somehow the guttural noises were even worse on their own. I screwed my eyes tighter, but unhelpful images infiltrated my brain: a torpedo in its tube, land girls heaving marrows from the rich loam of a Sussex field. Lambing season.
“Schnell! Schnell!” I’d seen newsreel of Hitler in full flow at his despicable rallies, and now I was watching it live. He was working himself up into a foaming, rabid frenzy.
“Fick Mich! Fick Mich!” Eva didn’t need any encouragement. She plunged back and forth with the Klung Hammer, changing arm every now and again as her muscles failed her. The veins on Hitler’s temples were like thromboses. He was ranting at the top of his voice, waving his fists into the air, spitting vile expletives, slamming the table with a furious hand, demanding that he be punished harder.
Inside our wardrobe, things couldn’t have been more uncomfortable. Von Tresckow and Olbricht held each other silently. Everything they knew was a lie. Olbricht had been sick down his front, and von Tresckow was weeping.
Then, like a whistling kettle on the boil, Hitler began his big finish; emitting a wail which gradually increased in pitch until it was so high that we had to cover our ears. His face had now turned a deep shade of purple, and his eyes, veined and bulging, stared straight ahead in shock. His mouth was open and drool spilled from his bottom lip. He was unable to draw breath. The pitch continued to rise. I thought he migh
t be about to die. Then, just as I thought he could take no more, Hitler’s body started to shudder, and the high-pitched wail entered the ultrasonic range. Suddenly one of Cornwall’s fillings shattered. He gripped his mouth as if another might go at any moment.
Then Hitler gasped for air and the horror was over. The Fuhrer was spent. He collapsed onto the table, shuddering and moaning. In the distance I could hear the German Shepherds howling. After just a few moments, he pushed himself up, fastened his trousers, and turned to his love.
“Danke,” he said.
“Bitte,” said Eva.
Eva threw the dripping Klung Hammer onto the table. It glistened in the light as it rolled to a stop. Eva began to pull down her sleeves. Neatened, she stepped forward and her arms encircled the dazed dictator. She held him tight, humming a lullaby to him, even as she gazed at our cupboard.
__________
“We must kill him! Kill him now!” whispered Olbricht.
Well that wouldn’t do. No, that wouldn’t do at all. As mentioned previously, Hitler’s grasp on power was the single biggest destabilising force on the Third Reich. Although the temptation to beat him to death with his own metal fancy was blazing within me, it would have been the wrong move. In fact, we needed to actually protect Hitler, horribly counter-intuitive as it was. I could see Cornwall was making the same calculations.
Major General von Tresckow was preparing to shoulder-barge the cupboard door. I took a half step backwards, and caught him in a full nelson, up under the arms, linking my fingers around the nape of his neck. I don’t want to blow my own trumpet, but it was the single best combat move I have ever performed, perfectly silent, utterly incapacitating, and all at close quarters. “No!” I whispered, “let them leave! Eva still has your arsenic powder! If you attack him now you’ll be dead in moments!”
Luckily, the Generals saw the sense of my words, and settled down again.
Or so I thought! Suddenly Olbricht flung himself at the cupboard door…
…but it stood firm. We were locked in.
__________
“Vot vas das noise?” The change that had come over Hitler since his session with the Klung Hammer was startling. He’d become focused and assured. He allowed Eva to tidy him up. She swept his hair back to the side with a comb from the leather bag, and kissed him on the cheek.
“Nothing, I’m sure,” said Eva, brusquely. “Come, are you ready to face the world, my Fuhrer?”
“To rule it! But first, my birthday celebrations.” Hitler took hold of Eva’s hand, and together they walked out of the room and down the stone stairs. We waited in silence until they were gone.
I was really starting to dislike this wardrobe.
“Now we need to all move over here to the left, and on the count of three we’ll charge to the right, to knock the wardrobe over,” Cornwall said, authoritatively.
“Yah, good. Do the count of three.”
“One, zwei, three!”
The wardrobe toppled over with a huge crash. Cornwall and I had made sure we were behind the Nazis, and we landed heavily on top of them. They were both badly out of condition, and it was child’s play to jump up first and beat them unconscious with cudgels pulled from the shattered wooden frame. We hogtied them, and in a spiteful touch that I came to regret, ripped their medals from their breasts and threw them from the castle window.
“Have you got a hankie, Trevelyan?”
“Why do you ask?”
“We’ve got to take that with us…” Cornwall pointed to the Klung Hammer, still lying on the table where Eva had left it, “…as a souvenir.” Cornwall was right, but not for the reason he mentioned. The propaganda boys would have a field day publicising our story, and sharing photos of Hitler’s personal sex aid. There wasn’t an Allied soldier anywhere who wouldn’t find this hilarious. Also depriving him of the Klung Hammer might just destabilise him further. But neither of us was relishing carrying the foul thing around.
This caused a brief argument about who would pick it up, which due to his already unclean state, Cornwall lost.
“It’s bloody heavy,” he assured me. “Nice bit of engineering though. Lovely machined surface.”
I didn’t really want to think about it. “Right then, let’s get it back to Rosie,” I said. Then I remembered Rosie was no more. I’d crashed her.
Cornwall took this news quite well, considering the day we’d had.
We reckoned we probably had ten more minutes before somebody found one of the bodies and raised the alarm. Then all hell would break loose and we’d be done for. It was time to leave. But how? As if reading my mind Cornwall spoke up, “I’m not going back in those pipes if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“We’d never get that far anyway,” I said and put my brain into gear, cycling through the possibilities until something surfaced. “Do you remember the plane that brought Hitler in?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“If it landed here, then surely there must be room for it to take off.”
But Cornwall was already shaking his head. “A plane needs less room to land than take off. I’ve done tactical landings on areas the size of a postage stamp, but taking off is a different ballgame.”
I nodded. “Indeed, but there must be a way of doing it. This plane isn’t here to stay. There must be a runway somewhere.”
__________
We moved to the window and looked down onto the courtyard. It was a large area, perhaps two rugby pitches long, and just about big enough to land a plane on. But taking off in the same space looked nigh on impossible.
Below us was the Junckers J252 that Hitler had arrived in. It was a cargo plane, with its rear ramp down for unloading. Soldiers were heaving barrels up the ramp.
“Munitions being loaded.” Cornwall said. “It’s getting ready for take-off.”
“In that case we should get down there quick smart.”
We headed down the staircase and followed the corridor toward the inner courtyard, passing a couple of senior officers on the way. Cornwall hid the dildo behind his back, and we saluted hurriedly as if we had more pressing matters to attend to, muttering between us about the Fuhrer’s urgent request for a gramophone.
As we stepped out onto the windy, snow-covered courtyard things became a little clearer. In the failing afternoon light, we could see luminous yellow paintwork delineating a runway. But this runway ended abruptly at the castle walls.
Cornwall nudged my arm to get my attention. The Junckers J252 was now taxiing slowly in a tight circle, lining itself up. As it did so, an entire section of the castle wall let out a metallic groan as it began to slowly roll back, to reveal the darkening sky and a carpet of pine trees beneath.
“Good lord! They’re going to drop it over the side of the cliff,” I said. “I suppose if the cliff is high enough and they can get some wind under the wings, then maybe…”
Cornwall seized my arm. “Can you fly it?” I honestly didn’t know, but I could see Cornwall needed an answer. “I… I… yes, probably.”
“Come on then!” he said with a wild intensity. “Let’s get on that plane. We can beat them to death with this.” He held up the dildo. “If you can fly this thing we’ll be back in England by suppertime.”
“But look at the space we’ve got! If we don’t get up enough speed we’ll be burning to death on the forest floor by teatime. This runway is only two hundred feet long,” I protested.
“Fine,” he said. “In that case we’ll let them worry about the take-off. We’ll just get on the plane!” Now Cornwall was onto something. Their pilot could do the tricky bit. We just needed to talk our way onboard as last minute passengers. Overpowering them would be relatively straightforward once we were in the air.
But in the event, the decis
ion was settled for us. A cry of alarm went up inside the castle. Clearly one of the bodies we’d stashed had been found. There was an immediate furore as soldiers mobilised, running across the snowy flagstones of the courtyard. We saw an officer briefing a squad to search sheds and outbuildings, and realised our number was up. We used the commotion to move smartly across the courtyard, and straight into the back of the Junckers, via the loading ramp. There were six Nazis already on the plane. Without slowing Cornwall started ordering people around. “Get the ramp up, Fuhrer’s orders. We’re leaving.”
One of the soldiers went to query him but was met with an immediate backhand slap across the face. “The castle has been compromised, we are under attack, and I have secret plans contained within this… metal vessel, which could win us the War.”
He held up the dildo. “We are leaving immediately. You two, man the guns. I suggest you others strap yourselves in. We’re about to come under heavy fire.”
The men sprang into action, strapping themselves into their seats, while two manned the turrets. Cornwall started lifting the ramp. He was an infuriating bugger but I had to admire his chutzpah.
I quickly made my way into the cockpit to instruct the pilot to take off. “Achtung! There’s been an assault on the castle and the Fuhrer’s life is at risk. We’ve got him secure onboard and we need to leave now, Schnell!”
The pilot didn’t need telling twice and the engines roared to life. We lurched forward. Then the bullets started flying. The heavy guns on the castle walls were quickly swivelled and trained on us. Gunners were emptying their belts into our fuselage, tearing huge holes. One of the Nazi soldiers was killed in his seat, making our job a little easier. Perversely the men we’d sent to the gun turrets were now firing back, believing that they were shooting at Allied forces. It was all rather good, apart from the fact we were about to drop off a cliff in a cargo plane. Cornwall and I strapped ourselves in as we hurtled down the short runway. The edge of the courtyard ahead dropped away to nothing.
Scoundrels Page 17
