“What do I call you?” asked the sergeant when they were outside the office block.
“Horst,” he had said with his best attempt at a smile.
“Right, Horst, you can call me Charlie. The young soldiers have to call me Sarge, but you’re exempt from that, being a civilian and especially since you’re an ex-sergeant major. You outrank me, old chap,” he said, clapping him on the back and laughing.
Manteufel’s heart sank. He had hoped that his past would not be common knowledge, but it appeared that Kelly had briefed Hemmings, and Hemmings had briefed the rest of the company. They entered the squad room where a number of drivers, service and civilian, were getting themselves prepared and stuffing bits and pieces into their lockers.
“Listen up, you rabble!” called Charlie. “This is Horst Manteufel, our new driver. I’ll introduce you individually in a second, Horst.”
Instead of hisses, curses or, worse still, silence, as Horst had expected, there was a chorus of “Wotcher! Aye up! Hi Yer! Cheers! and Tag!” the latter from the German civilians. Charlie had then introduced him individually to each driver in the restroom at that time. Every one of them had shaken his hand and greeted him with a friendly word.
“You were in the Army, weren’t you Horst?” asked a young soldier. It was the question he was dreading.
“No,” he said, deciding the best way was to be open and honest. “I was Luftwaffe. Fallschirmjäger.”
There was a mixed reaction to this admission. His German comrades and one or two of the British drivers were nodding approvingly, while Charlie whistled softly between his teeth. Most of the British drivers were looking decidedly puzzled, and several commented.
“Fallsquirm?” and “What the ’ell’s that, Sarge?”
“Paratrooper, you Welsh moron”—this to the young man, ‘Taff’ Wyatt, who had asked the last question. This was received with a murmur of approval from the British lads.
“A Red Devil, eh Horst?” from Taff.
“Hey, wait a minute, you’ve got a point there, Taffy boy!” said Charlie. “Horst’s surname is Manteufel, which can mean ‘Man Devil’—perhaps it should be ‘Rotteufel’ to mean ‘Red Devil’?” A ripple of laughter.
“Your grammar is crap, Charlie,” laughed Ziggy, one of the German drivers.
“Hang on a bit, me old mucker,” said Charlie, “I can’t help it if you choose to speak a language that is unintelligible to the rest of the entire world.”
“You’re forgetting, Charlie,” returned Ziggy, “it was your language once, before you mixed it up with all that French and Latin garbage!”
“Okay! Okay!” said Charlie, sounding slightly mollified. “Point taken.”
“Can I raise a point of historical accuracy?” queried Hansy, another of the German drivers.
“If you absolutely must,” said Charlie, raising his eyes to the ceiling.
“Well, the Fallschirmjäger were formed well before the British Red Devils, and they already had a nickname. They were known as the ‘Green Devils’, so perhaps Horst’s nickname should be ‘Grünteufel’?” This brought a ripple of applause from the German drivers with calls of “Ja, Ja!”
“Right, enough already, I think we’ll stick to Manteufel, it’s easier. Now, Horst, I want you to come with me to the vehicle park and I’ll introduce you to some of our beautiful ladies. I’ll tell you which ones are always sweet and which can be a bit temperamental, and what we do about that.
“The rest of you buggers, get out onto that park and do some driving. It is, after all, what the British Army pays you far too much money to do!”
That had been over a month ago. It seemed like a lifetime now. He had walked over to the vehicle park with Charlie feeling so much better, and with so much more confidence. He had a feeling that this was exactly what Charlie had intended with the banter in the squad room. Horst had no doubt he could work with this man.
There had only been one unpleasant incident, and that had occurred in Horst’s third week into the job. He had been sitting in the restroom with several other drivers when a young national serviceman had walked in.
He looked around and muttered to one of the other drivers, “I don’t think we should have to share the restroom with bloody Nazis, do you?”
As Horst was the only German in the room, it was clear who he was indicating. The other drivers had immediately railed against him and Charlie had grabbed him by the scruff of the neck.
“You piece of shit!” he roared. “Show some respect! That man has seen more action than you’ve had hot dinners.”
He was in the process of dragging the hapless squaddie in front of Horst to apologise when Horst stood up, raising a hand.
“Please stop, Sergeant, he has every right to feel angry,” said Horst. “Please don’t do this on my account. I’m okay, it’s not a problem.” He stood up and walked out of the squad room.
“I’ll see to it,” Charlie said as several of the drivers rose to follow Horst out, motioning them to sit down. “You!” he said pointedly to the young soldier, “I will speak to later.”
Charlie found Horst sat on one of the benches that had been put outside to allow the drivers to take the fresh air during their breaks when the weather was more clement. This morning it was freezing.
Charlie sat down beside his German friend. “That bloody idiot!” said the sergeant, clearly angry. “Been in five minutes and he knows it all.”
“It really is okay, Charlie. Who knows what the lad has been through? He may have lost his brother or even his father, we just don’t know.”
“As long as you know that the rest of the lads don’t think that way,” said Charlie, still clearly angry.
“I know that, Charlie, I’ve only been here a few weeks and I’ve made some good mates already, and thanks, Charlie, I really do appreciate it.”
The following day had a hint of spring about it, so Horst took the opportunity of going to the same bench during his break to take the air. He hadn’t been sat for a minute when the young man in question, a young national service driver by the name of ‘Brummie’ Linnet, emerged from the restroom and made straight for him.
“Mind if I sit down, Horst?”
“Help yourself, Brummie,” said Horst, moving further along the bench to make room.
“I’ve come to apologise about yesterday,” said Brummie bluntly.
“Sarge send you?”
“Not exactly, he said it was up to me. He told me a few things that I didn’t know and said to think it over, sleep on it, then decide. I’ve thought it over, and I realise I was well out of order. The thing is this, Horst, although the lads call me Brummie, I’m not from Birmingham, I’m from Coventry.”
“Ahh!” said Horst knowingly. “I told Sarge there would be a reason. Were you bombed out?”
“Twice! The first time from the lovely little house that my parents had scrimped and saved to buy. Then about a month later from the temporary accommodation we had been allocated.”
“I’m so sorry, Brummie, that must have been devastating. You would have just been a kid?”
“I was nine, but I remember coming out of the Anderson shelter after the raid and finding our house just a pile of bricks and burning wood. My mother broke her heart.”
Horst nodded but said nothing. Words wouldn’t ease this pain.
“Last night Sarge told me a few things about how it was in Germany during the war. He said that as far as bombing went, Germany had it far worse than we did. Is that right, Horst?”
“I only have hearsay from people I served with who were receiving letters from home, what I’ve read since the end of the war and of course my own experience, but apparently Germany did have a lot more casualties. The latest estimate puts the figure—most of whom were women and children, by the way—at well over half a million, and before you say, ‘Serves you right! You started it!’, you’re right Brummie, we did start it.”
“I wasn’t going to say that. I’m just really staggered by that num
ber. That would have been Hamburg and places like that?”
“Hamburg, Dresden, Stuttgart, Munich, Wilhelmshaven and so on.”
“Aren’t you angry?”
“Yes of course, and deeply saddened, but I’m realistic. The RAF did what they had to do in the main. Mostly they were strategic targets, and it was the same for both sides: centres of industry or important economic cities like London and Berlin. Shipbuilding in Hamburg and Liverpool. Naval bases like Portsmouth and Wilhelmshaven, and industrial centres: Manchester, Coventry, Munich and Stuttgart. But some things angered me very much.”
“Sarge mentioned a place called Foreshine?”
“Pforzheim, 23 February 1945. Note the date, Brummie, and how close that was to the end of the war. The Allies knew the war was over when Harris ordered the bombing of Pforzheim. It was a day of shame for him. And do you know why Harris ordered the destruction of this small medieval town? Why it was burned to the ground and pulverised? Why twenty thousand people—old men, women and children—had to be incinerated? Let me show you.” Horst stretched out his arm and pulled back his sleeve, revealing a watch. “They made watches for the Luftwaffe!”
“That can’t be true, surely!”
“That was in the first statement made about the raid. It caused such an uproar among British senior military figures and MPs that the statement was retracted and another one issued almost immediately, saying that watchmaking was just one of the many activities undertaken in Pforzheim. It then listed other components which were supposedly made there, including guidance systems for V2 rockets.”
Horst sighed and leaned back on the bench, slowly shaking his head. “Sorry, Brummie, you shouldn’t have let me go on like that. It’s probably made you angrier, listening to me whinge.”
“It’s made me think, Horst, did Berlin have it bad?”
“Yes, pretty bad, but it was weird, some districts were nearly wiped out whilst other places were hardly damaged. For instance, this place where we are sitting now—Spandau Machine Gun Factory—hardly a scratch. You would think that this would have been a prime target, wouldn’t you? The Air Ministry in Wilhelmstrasse should have been hard to miss! It was two hundred and fifty metres long, never hit once. My mates used to say it was because the RAF were aiming at it! Some places, on the other hand, were simply demolished.”
Suddenly Horst’s eyes widened, and his face assumed a look of horror. He gripped Brummie’s arm. “Brummie, do you know what those RAF monsters did?”
“What, Horst, what?” exclaimed Brummie, alarmed.
“They bombed Hertha BSC football stadium!” Horst fell back against the bench backrest with his hand on his heart, whilst Brummie burst into peals of spontaneous laughter.
“God, Horst, you had me going there!”
“I’m serious! A hundred and forty craters in the pitch! You wouldn’t be happy if the Luftwaffe had bombed Coventry’s ground.”
“Highfield? It was. Same night we were bombed out for the first time. My dad was a supporter, but he had other things on his mind that night.”
“Aah,” sighed Horst, “it’s a good job we can laugh about it now, but it wasn’t funny at the time. Heart-breaking, eh Brummie?”
“It was! If it’s not too painful a question to answer, did you lose anybody in the war, Horst?”
“I did sadly, I lost my elder brother. He was an air gunner in a Heinkel 111 that went down over London in 1940. Then I lost my parents in the big raid of November 1943. They lived in a flat, not far from where I live now, in Charlottenburg. I went to see the area when I was posted back to Berlin in late 1944, but there was just a pile of rubble and ashes. I couldn’t even be sure which pile of rubble had been our block. I don’t mind telling you that this brave sergeant major stood on that pile of rubble and broke his heart. They never found the bodies. I don’t think they looked very hard … they would have been incinerated. The only consolation I draw from it is that they went together. They were very devoted.”
“Do you go back to the site regularly? I think I would.”
“I used to. Of course, the rubble disappeared quite quickly, the Trümmerfrauen made short work of that after the war, dumped it on Teufelsberg. They’re building apartments on the site now; I’ve got my name down for one of them. When Gudrun first suggested it, I was horrified. Having an apartment on the site my parents were killed? But after I thought about it for a while, I came to like the idea. Bringing my kids up on virtually the same spot that I was brought up, and it would be an everlasting memorial to my parents and my brother.”
“That’s great, Horst, I wish you luck with it.”
“Thanks, Brummie. Well, I’d better get back or Charlie will be out here chasing me.” Horst extended his arm. “Are we square now, mucker?” he asked, imitating Charlie.
“We’re square now, mucker,” smiled Brummie, shaking Horst’s hand, “and I’m really sorry about yesterday.”
There were no further incidents.
Skadi Reports
From his window in the engineers’ block in Alexander Barracks, Spandau, Dan Kelly spotted Horst Manteufel making his way towards the east gate. He half rose with the intention of intercepting him. He looked at the clock: 12.30, and then at the calendar: Saturday. Horst would either be going to the football or he would be taking Gudrun shopping. Either way, now would not be a good time to stop him. He sat down again. It could wait. He would pop in and see Major Jack Hemmings, Horst’s squadron commander, on Monday morning and arrange for Horst to be given some time off so that he could meet with him. There were a number of issues he wanted to go over with Horst, including some of the points raised in the report now sitting in front of him on his desk.
The report was from Sybilla. She had returned from France three weeks ago, having spent a frustrating couple of weeks in pursuit of Heinrich Müller. They had spent the following week together before she was shipped off again, this time to Hamburg on an entirely different mission. McFarlane, Dan’s immediate boss in London, had assigned him to the Müller case without any real enthusiasm. McFarlane felt that in this instance, the bird had flown and was probably now assembling Volkswagen cars in Argentina.
Dan Kelly wasn’t so sure. Sybilla’s report hinted at a possible link between Müller and one of the other cases he was working on—that of the missing plunder the Nazis had stolen and stockpiled during the war—and that was what he wanted to talk with Manteufel about. Horst had been one of the last people to leave the Führerbunker in 1945. So, coincidentally, had Müller.
Dan decided to go over Sybilla’s report again to see if he had missed anything. He flipped over the first few pages until he came to the shooting at the Sarreguemines pottery and reread that section. Well done, Wolf. Quick thinking and utterly reliable in a tight spot. He smiled as he thought about his old comrade in arms. He must make a point of visiting him again sometime.
He read on. Sybilla always wrote informally in her reports as she knew that it would be for his eyes alone:
* * *
Section 4Strasbourg
* * *
Having decided that we would involve ourselves in the warehouse stakeout before moving on towards Marseilles, we travelled south in Agent Rahn’s car to Strasbourg where we booked rooms in a hotel near the warehouse. The following day we met with Inspector Marcourt of the Sûreté, who informed us he would lead the stakeout and subsequent investigation. To our great delight, we were joined later that day by Chef d’Escadron Paul Fournier and a small group of gendarmes. Fournier was at pains to assure Inspector Marcourt that he and his men were there purely to provide material assistance and that the operation was entirely the responsibility of Marcourt and the Sûreté, hence preventing a possible conflict between the two services.
* * *
The stakeout began early the following morning with plain-clothes Sûreté detectives strategically placed inconspicuously in the vicinity of the warehouse. Rahn and I also loitered in the area.
* * *
There was
little movement into and out of the warehouse for the first two days. However, on the third day a group of four men were seen entering the building, at which point Marcourt triggered the snatch team and the four men were arrested.
* * *
Marcourt’s men interrogated the detainees for the next two days. Three of them were unforthcoming, however a fourth, Edmund Saunier, a young man of twenty-two, was broken fairly easily. I was permitted to be present at the final interview when the man made a formal statement, but I was cautioned before it began that I was not to speak or interfere in any way.
* * *
The gist of Saunier’s statement was that he had been employed in the warehouse, which was actually a storage depository—that explains the lack of movement in and out—for just over two years. During that time, they had transported one man, a German, from Strasbourg to Marseilles in a delivery lorry. This occurred just after he started working there, and he was given a dire warning about talking to anyone about the incident. They deposited the German ‘package’ at the quayside with instructions to make his way onto a Spanish ship docked there. Once on board, he was to present a document in a sealed envelope to the captain of the vessel. Saunier stated that he had no knowledge of the contents of the document, though he said the envelope was thick, and he guessed it may have contained money in addition to any documents. One of his fellow workers (one of the four arrested) told him that they had transported two previous ‘packages’ in this way.
* * *
Saunier stated further that he had been told that the route had been abandoned and that they were not expecting any further ‘packages’ from Germany. In conclusion, he stated that he had never been made aware of the identity of the German male they had transported to Marseilles, nor did he have any knowledge of the other packages the group had moved.
Shadow Of Evil: Cold War Espionage Thriller (Dragan Kelly Book 2) Page 6
