by Michael Dean
As Holzbauer agreed to that, a man walked into the forecourt, greeted Holzbauer and strode into the garage as if he were very familiar with the place. Hodge felt sure he was Heinrich Wittemann, the guard at Hindenburg Barracks, the source of the information about the tunnel under Karl Wagner’s house – or so Barbara had said.
Hodge remembered their interview with Wittemann, the other day at Kornwestheim. He had said nothing about a tunnel. At least, not while Hodge was there. Barbara, of course, had had a few moments alone with him, as per their plan.
And Wittemann had ignored them just now, though he obviously knew Holzbauer quite well. Hodge shrugged. Why should Wittemann greet people who had recently questioned him? Why shouldn’t he know a garage owner in Ludwigsburg? But he still had a feeling of unease. Something was wrong here but he did not know what.
He put the thought out of his mind as Holzbauer took the jeep’s keys and departed, perched precariously on one of the tractors on the forecourt. He was back quickly, towing the stricken jeep. After the garage-owner’s examination of the jeep’s engine, Barbara translated the situation for Hodge.
‘The distributor is smashed and water has been poured into the petrol tank. Herr Holzbauer can fix it. About an hour and a half. RM500 for the parts.’
‘Fine! Where are you going?’ Hodge’s voice rose in alarm, as Barbara walked away from him.
‘I’m going home. Surely even you can find your way back to Flak Barracks from here?’
‘OK. OK. I’ll tell Lindsey about our new Wagner lead. He’ll be pleased.’
‘Sure.’ She was already half way across the forecourt. ‘What new lead is that?’
‘About the tunnel under his house!’
‘Oh, that.’
At that moment, as if on cue, Wittemann appeared from inside the garage, walked across the forecourt and disappeared down Karlstrasse.
Chapter 8
Ludwigsburg, Wednesday August 22, 1945
Hodge was hurrying back to his room in the officers’ block at Flak, clutching a parcel. The post from England was beginning to get through. Nell, his younger sister had sent newspapers and books.
Sitting on his bed, Hodge tore at the parcel. Nell had sent the Times, the Daily Mail and Hodge’s preference politically, the Labour supporting Daily Mirror. All of them were full of the VJ Day celebrations last week. Japan had surrendered after the Americans had dropped A-bombs on two of their cities. The war was finally – finally – over.
His demob must surely come through soon. There would be a future of peace. A future for him, one which would include Barbara Ketz.
Whenever he was happy he read even more than he did in sadness. Within the hour, he started both the books Nell had sent, Head in Green Bronze, one of a book of short stories by Hugh Walpole, and a new tome by Bertrand Russell on power.
The afternoon passed. He looked up from his other-world of books and realised he was late for his appointment with Lindsay.
*
‘John!’
Lindsay was grinning at him, holding his arms out as if for an embrace. Mind you, he looked exhausted. His usually immaculate uniform shirt was soaked with sweat.
‘Oh, hello John. How’s it all, um …’
‘We need to talk, John. I gotta lotta things to say to you. All of them good.’
Lindsay put his arm round Hodge’s shoulder and steered him out of his office. The two captains called John ended up at a table at The American Way Services Club. Lindsay got them a couple of bottles of Dr Swett’s root beer, without asking Hodge what he wanted. They drank them from polystyrene cups.
Lindsay raised his cup in a mock toast. ‘First off, John, I owe you an apology. I should have gotten round to saying this before: that was damn good work by you and the furline at Hindenburg Barracks, on Sunday. You know, don’t you, that we had questioned all these people ourselves and gotten precisely nada.’
Hodge smiled, sipped his root beer, grimaced – it was foul – and said nothing.
‘And then along comes this limey captain, excuse me John, out of nowhere. So to get you out of my hair, I let you go play out at Hindenburg. And what happens? Inside a day you crack open the Werwolf group who been harrying us since day one. Congratulations, John!’
Lindsay waved his polystyrene cup aloft again. Hodge understood that sheer exhaustion was making him so talkative. His moustache was wet and dark with root beer. For the first time, Hodge noticed a couple of grey hairs in it.
Hodge treated him to the smile that had pulled back so many bed sheets. ‘Cheers, John.’ He managed a sip of the disgusting root beer without showing what he thought of it.
‘You like the beer, John?’
‘Love it.’
‘Great! It’s my favourite beer back home. I’ll get you another bottle in a minute …’
‘No, I …’
‘But first I got to tell you what happened with Rau. You remember, Gustav Rau, the Werwolf guy who works in the laundry?’
‘Yes, along with …’
‘…with Wittemann, the guard. Right.’
‘So Brad – Brad Carpenter, you met him, yuh? Brad and I chewed the fat a while after your breakthrough on Sunday. IIAE I believe they call it. Incoming Information Analysis and Evaluation. Can you believe that? And we decide that of the two Werwolf guys, Rau is the one to work on.’
‘I agree.’
‘Good. So we set a trap for him. We made it even easier for him to get messages to Hoffmann sewn in his laundry. And for Hoffmann to reply the same way. We opened the messages both ways. And just yesterday we got a hold of their next operation.’
‘That’s great news, John!’
‘Too right!’
‘Can you tell me …?’
‘That’s what I’m doing, man. And you’re in. That’s if you want to be. In on the operation.’
‘Excellent! I want to be there alright.’
‘Thought you would. OK. Night operation. Two days’ time. They plan to blow the viaduct we’re repairing at Bietigheim. It’s a little town, ten, maybe fifteen miles north of here. We’re repairing the road bridge. Plus there’s a main water pipe going overground at that point. Carried along the viaduct.’
Hodge whistled.
Lindsay nodded hard. ‘Yuh. It’s a biggy alright. Or it would have been. But we’ll be waiting for them. Thanks to you!’
‘John, I’m delighted I could help.’
‘There’s one more thing, then I’ll let you go. You know these paintings you’re looking for? You think your guy Wagner has them?’
Hodge was intrigued. ‘Yes?’
‘I want you to give a talk to the men about them.’
‘But John, I …’
Lindsay held up a hand, like a policeman at Piccadilly Circus stopping a line of traffic. ‘Hear me out! One.’ Lindsay enumerated on the fingers of his left hand. ‘These paintings are sought booty. Looted art. My men are being asked to look for them. They need to know what they are looking for.’
‘But I haven’t got copies! I’d have to describe them! They’d be bored stiff.’
Lindsay smiled. ‘Two.’ A second finger was brought into play. ‘This is a foreign posting. I want my men to get something out of it. A little more than eating a Bratwurst and screwing a furline. This is about art, John. This is about Nazis. You understand things my men don’t. So tell ‘em.’
Hodge was flattered – yet again. And with Lindsay selling it, he could see the sense in it. It could really increase the chance of the paintings being found. And that meant a lot to him. But a lecture on nine missing paintings by four different artists to an audience who knew nothing about art when he did not even have a copy of any of the paintings?
How would his lecturers back in London, at the Slade, have coped with that? He thought of the last lectures he had been to – Victor Pasmore, William Coldstream, Randolph Schwabe. Pasmore and Schwabe, the practitioners, would have knocked up copies of the missing paintings themselves. Hodge resolved to do the same. Hi
s talk was already coming to him, in his mind.
‘Three.’ The enumerating Lindsay was still going. ‘This whole posting here in Ludwigsburg is about making the most of opportunity. Big problems, we got here. OK. But also big opportunities. When you walked in that door out of the blue, John, I saw only problems, with you. And I was wrong. That is not the American way. The lining of every problem is an opportunity.’
‘Hey. That’s good. Do you mind if I get myself a bourbon?’
‘Be my guest.’ Lindsay clicked his fingers. The barman appeared. ‘Bottle of Jack Daniels, Hank. My tab.’
‘What, not a whole …?’
The barman was back in a blink with a special army issue bottle of bourbon. He poured two huge measures into clean glasses, said, ‘Enjoy, sir. Enjoy, Captain Hodge,’ then went back behind the bar.
‘Oh, there’s one more thing,’ Hodge said, two bourbons later.
‘What’s that?’
‘I found out that there’s a tunnel running from under the Stern, Wagner’s inn, to the palace. The paintings could be there.’
Lindsay’s half-smile disappeared. ‘And you found this out when, John?’
‘Quite recently.’
‘Quite recently? And you didn’t think to mention it to me until now?’
‘I was going to tell you, obviously. I put my head round the door yesterday. And the day before. But you weren’t around. So I thought I’d wait until …’
‘Who is the source of this information?’
Hodge took a sip of bourbon, his thoughts spinning. ‘Wittemann. The guard.’
‘So you learned it at your visit to Hindenburg, at the same time as you identified Rau’s means of communication with Hoffmann?’
Hodge thought of saying he had got it from Wittemann when he saw him at the garage, but obviously he did not want to talk about the repair to the jeep.
‘You said it yourself, John. Incoming Information Analysis and Evaluation. I wasn’t sure the information was correct.’
Lindsay was still looking at him sharply. ‘And now? What? You are sure?’
‘No. But I’ve done some checking. I’ve paced out the area from the palace grounds to the Stern inn. There’s nothing against the theory. Parts of the area where the start and finish of the tunnel would be are trodden down.’
Lindsay nodded, slowly. ‘You know what I think, John?’
‘No. What do you think?’
‘I think you just made that bullshit up. You got the hots for the furline. Miss Ketz. I can’t say I blame you. She’s a very pretty girl. But watch yourself. Don’t get burned. The information came from her, right?’
Hodge said nothing.
After a while, Lindsay said. ‘OK. Here’s what we’ll do. We act on both your tip-offs. But I can’t pull people off other duties, form a battle group, put them back, and form another one. We don’t have the manpower.’
Hodge thought he wasn’t going to act on the tunnel information. This would have been fine with him. He was already regretting mentioning it. He and Barbara could check it out alone. But then Lindsay spoke again.
‘We’ll combine the two operations. Day after tomorrow. We do the tunnel in the afternoon. We do the viaduct ambush in the evening and on into the night. That way we minimise the risk that the tunnel raid blows the viaduct operation. It doesn’t eliminate the risk. But it’s a chance we’ll have to take.’
‘Thanks,’ Hodge said, not sure himself what he was thanking Lindsay for. Wagner, after all, was wanted by the Americans as well as the British.
‘OK. I need some shut eye for the next hour or so. And you got a lot to do, preparing your talk for tomorrow. Don’t mention the tunnel or the viaduct operations to anyone. And that includes your furline.’
‘Righty-ho!’
‘See you later.’ Lindsay stood and they shook hands. ‘And next time give me any information immediately. Especially if it comes from the furline.’
‘Yes. Sorry. Will do.’
Hodge watched Lindsay go, and then went back to his room. His reading would have to wait. He got his sketch paper out and his charcoal and paints. He pictured the photographs of the paintings he had seen at the Courtauld, just before he came. He started sketching all nine of the lost paintings, one after the other, from memory.
Chapter 9
Ludwigsburg Thursday August 23, 1945
Having slept late the next day, and then worked on his sketches and notes for the talk, Hodge lunched at the canteen at Flak. As usual, US soldiers asked if they could join him and stopped to talk to him. They asked him about the queen, about Winston Churchill, about the class system, about the victory celebrations in London. One or two of the black soldiers asked him what it was like for coloured people in Britain. Hodge truthfully said he didn’t know.
Most American soldiers were open and friendly, less rank-conscious than soldiers in England. There was just one, a corporal, a professional soldier not a draftee like most of the others, who was edgy with Hodge. He called out ‘There goes another bloody hound,’ every time he saw the Englishman. But it was accompanied by a toothy grin and Hodge took it in good part.
He had not yet found anyone at Flak interested in art, but he had palled up with a couple of kindred spirits who read as widely and with as much pleasure as he did. One was an intense, talkative fellow called Danny Rubin, a sergeant from New York. And there was also a lieutenant from Oregon who had dealt in books before the war – Richie Manson.
After talking to Manson about the short stories he was reading, Hodge finished his lunch. He decided that the raid on the tunnel from the Stern inn gave him enough of an excuse to go and see Barbara without prior arrangement.
*
On the ride from the suburb of Ossweil, where Flak was, to the Ketz apartment in Stuttgarterstrasse, the speed of the jeep blew the muggy air in gusts around him. He put his foot down recklessly, revving in time to the song in his heart, only slowing when he thought that maybe a bit of caution was in order, in case he crashed the jeep and ended up at Holzbauer’s garage again.
As he parked outside the Ketzs’ apartment building, the main door opened and Brad Carpenter came out. The bespectacled skinny lieutenant did not seem especially pleased to see Hodge. He was in mufti – brown zip-up leather jacket, blue woollen shirt and jeans.
Hodge was about to speak to Carpenter, but the American nodded coolly, said ‘Good day, Captain Hodge’ and walked on. In his haste to get away from Hodge, Brad Carpenter had not closed the outside door to the Ketz apartment properly. Hodge made his way in and ran up to the fourth floor. Outside the Ketz apartment he knocked, then called through the door, ‘Barbara, it’s me, John.’
‘Just a minute!’ she sounded alarmed. Hodge’s blood ran cold. Was she getting dressed?
After what felt like an eternity to Hodge, Barbara opened the door.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I need to talk to you. Can I come in?’
‘It’s not a good time.’
‘It won’t take long. What was Brad Carpenter doing here?’
‘Nothing. He comes for German lessons.’
‘You never mentioned that before?’
‘Why should I? What do you want?’
‘There have been some … I’ve got some news.’
Her pupils looked unnaturally bright. Without another word she left the door open for him and went back to the table.
‘Is your father not here?’
‘No, he’s out painting.’
So she had been alone with Brad Carpenter, then. Hodge decided to let it go. He wanted to avoid a row at all costs, in case it lead to a breach with Barbara. So he told her about discussing Wagner’s tunnel with Lindsay. He told her about the planned raid, even though Lindsay had told him not to. The news appeared to cheer her up.
‘Who told you about the tunnel?’ Hodge sounded tense, even in his own ears. ‘Have you seen it for yourself?’
She gave a wry smile. Whenever she thought back to the tunn
el, she could get only so far, in her memories. She could remember coming round, after Wagner had raped her. She could remember arriving home, but not how she had got home. She could not remember going into the tunnel, no matter how hard she tried. She had no memory of going into the inn, either.
‘Barbara, if you come on this raid would you be able to show us where the tunnel entrance is?’
Barbara hesitated so long Hodge thought she was not going to reply at all. Eventually she said. ‘Yes, I’ll come. I’ll try to find the entrance. Maybe it will come back to me then.’
‘Good.’ Hodge said. In his relief that she was coming he missed the clue to her past – ‘come back to me’ – in what she had said. But she was obviously deeply unhappy and that troubled him. ‘Have you got a cold or something?’
‘Yes. You are right. I’ve got a cold. I’m feeling under the weather. So will you go now please? I’ll see you when we look for the tunnel.’
*
Later that evening, Hodge pinned his rough renditions of the missing paintings up round the walls of the The American Way Services Club lounge at Flak. He had borrowed some drawing pins – or thumb-tacks as he had learned to call them.
Fortunately, he had a clear memory of the photographs of the paintings he had seen at the Courtauld Institute Library. His renderings had turned out reasonably well, he thought. Before all this started, he had known of the two by Chagall and the three by Jankel Adler. He had not known the three by Lasar Segall, though he knew the name, and he had never heard of Hans Feibusch.
As he pinned them all up, he was filled with foreboding, regretting letting the charismatic Lindsay talk him into doing this. The stripper originally booked for The American Way Services Club this evening had been cancelled. Instead of her, fighting men thousands of miles from home would be treated to a foreign officer talking about paintings they had never heard of and had no interest in.
Would anyone even come? Lindsay had made it clear this was an off-duty activity – attendance was voluntary. But he had put up notices all over Flak advertising the talk, stressing the connection between the paintings and their work of Nazi-hunting.
