“Well, the table had me convinced, but where do you and Hellie sleep?”
“On top of the bed with the spare duvet over us. I keep our clothes in a wardrobe in the next apartment. The only way in now is through my little escape hole. The shell has devastated next door, including the floor in front of what was the door. You’d have to be an acrobat to get in that way.”
“And the Russians haven’t bothered you?” I asked pointedly.
She smiled and squeezed my hand. “No. They’ve searched the building twice, and each time I made it safely into my hideaway. The first time I heard them start along the corridor towards next door, so I was ready to duck back in here, but they stopped, and I heard them retrace their steps. I suppose that after seeing the devastation they didn’t even bother trying to get in. I don’t think they’ll come here again, but I keep my anti-Russian system in place, just in case.”
Gudrun left me in the flat while she went to the mobile bakery for her rations. The Russians had now started issuing a few vegetables and a small quantity of meat, but it was meagre rations and only enough for her and the boy.
That night, as we sat exchanging stories with Hellie playing around our feet, we discussed what the future would hold for us. I suggested I could register with the Soviets as a former soldier, but Gudrun wouldn’t hear of it. At the very least I would be incarcerated and interrogated, and it would only take one informer to betray the fact that I was Fallschirmjäger and I would be put up against a wall and shot, if I was lucky! The only alternative was to remain incognito and find some means to buy or barter food. I needed a job!
The following morning, back in disguise, I made my way north, keeping to the quiet streets and zig-zagging to avoid the police stations I knew to be in this area. As I plodded northward the bomb damage became less and there were, in consequence, fewer hiding places to take a break. I took to resting in parks and cemeteries—anywhere to ease my aching back and sore knees.
I was playing a long shot. I had served in Crete and North Africa with a fellow paratrooper by the name of Bernhard Schumacher. A really nice man, quiet and unassuming, he didn’t seem to be Fallschirmjäger material, that was until the action started—then he became quite a different character. We became close friends, the sort of friendship that develops between two men who have been through heavy fighting together, secure in the knowledge that the one would risk his life for the other.
Berni, as he was known, had once told me that his father was a ‘fixer’.
“I know, you told me before he was a builder.”
“I don’t mean that sort of fixer.” He smiled and winked. “He also fixes other things.”
He then made me promise that if ever I needed help of any sort, I would look up his father at his builder’s yard in Eschengraben, just south of Pankow.
Berni had been captured by the British in North Africa, so I wasn’t sure how his family would react if I turned up, but that was my goal: to reach the Schumacher family to see if there was anything they could do to help, or even suggest an alternative to giving myself up.
The distance to Eschengraben was roughly four kilos, so at my current rate of shuffling progress of about two kilos an hour, and allowing for stops, I should make it in around three hours.
I was making good progress when I turned left into Raumerstrasse from Schliemannstrasse and straight into a Soviet patrol coming towards me on the same side of the road. They were too close to allow me to take evasive action, so I did the only thing I could do. I continued to walk towards them until they were almost on top of me, then pressed myself back against a doorway to allow them to pass.
My heart sank when I saw the long khaki cloaks swaying as they marched. Guardsmen! Elite soldiers. The best of the best. They were a small squad of four with the senior NCO leading them, marching one pace to their right. He was everything you might expect from a guards’ sergeant. Tall, broad and with features hewn from solid granite, I swear you could have chopped sticks on his face and he wouldn’t have flinched. He stopped his squad level with me, and without a word, they formed an arc around me, their rifles ‘easy’ but held in such a way that they could be brought into instant use. I wondered what the chances were of using my pistol. It was currently tucked into my trousers behind my back. I estimated it as close to zero.
The officer approached and scrutinised me. I saw his eyes narrow slightly as he did so.
“What is your name, and where are you going?” he asked in passable German.
“Horst Manteufel, Kamerad, I am looking for a mobile bakery, I am starving, Kamerad,” I stuttered in my best old man’s voice.
“Where have you come from?”
“Georgenkirch Strasse 23, Kamerad. Do you or your men have any spare food?” I gave him the address of one of the bombed-out apartment blocks I had passed in the back streets near the Volkspark.
“Your papers!”
“Destroyed in the bombing, Kamerad. I lost everything … my wife was in the apartment when it was bombed … I have lost everything.” I allowed my voice to break. Was I mistaken or was there a trace of sympathy, fleetingly, on the granite face?
“The nearest mobile bakery is at the junction of Lychener and Stargarder, by the laundry, and while you’re in that area, go to the police station on Stahlheimer and get yourself registered.”
I spluttered my thanks, accompanied with many bows, but he and his guardsmen were already halfway down the road. I stayed for some time, propped up against the door, unable to move as I fought to get my emotions under control. It had been a near thing. Had my disguise worked or had I been given the benefit of the doubt by the big guardsman? I suspect it was the latter.
Needless to say, I avoided both the bakery and the police station and ended up in Eschengraben in the early afternoon. The builders’ yard was easy to find, but I hovered near the gate for some time, wondering whether throwing myself on the mercy of an entirely unknown family was really such a good idea. In the end the memory of Berni exhorting me to get help from my father if you need to, he’s a fixer, won the day, and I unlatched the gate and walked into the yard.
It was a typical builders’ yard: bricks and wood in neat piles alongside a sizable workshop, and an old Magirus Deutz three-ton flatbed sitting in the corner and looking very retired. A handcart piled with buckets, picks and shovels seemed to confirm the demise of the truck.
Hesitantly, I knocked on the door. There was a brief delay until a short, stocky man of about fifty with thinning hair answered. He was wearing dungarees over an open-necked shirt, the sleeves rolled up displaying very muscular forearms and hands like shovels.
“Herr Schumacher?” I asked.
“I’m sorry, I can’t help you at the moment, I’m fully booked until Tuesday next. You could try Gus Köhler on Spiekermann Strasse, near the Engelhardt Brewery. He may be able to help, but I know he’s fairly busy too.”
As he started to close the door, I spoke quickly. “Herr Schumacher, let me tell you who I am and why I’m here.”
I have never seen a man change his demeanour so quickly. Suddenly he was alert, his body tense, his penetrating gaze scrutinising me closely.
“Who sent you?”
“Your son, Bern—” I didn’t get any further as I was unceremoniously yanked into the house. He gazed around the yard for a moment, then slammed the door closed.
“How do you know Berni?” he asked peremptorily.
“We served together in Crete and Africa,” I explained. “My name is Horst Manteu—”
“You are Feldwebel Manteufel?” he asked, his face alight with joy.
I nodded. “It’s now Stab—” Again I didn’t get the chance to finish as he threw his arms about me, embracing me warmly. A woman flew out of a room which I later discovered was the kitchen and threw her arms around me and the builder, sobbing on my shoulder. I wondered idly if I would ever get the chance to finish a sentence.
“Berni wrote to us often when he was in Crete and in Africa and always
mentioned you. I think you were his hero,” said the woman.
“I don’t know about hero, but we were great friends,” I responded as the woman embraced me again, sobbing.
“Please,” said the man, indicating a seat.
“Would you like coffee, Horst?” asked the woman, who was already on her way into the kitchen before I could answer.
Once we were settled, each with a cup of surprisingly good coffee, the couple introduced themselves as Karl and Lieselotte—or Lottie, as she preferred to be called—and I told them about my journey, first to find Gudrun and Hellie and then, because of Berni’s advice, to seek out themselves.
“You were right to do so, I may be able to fix something,” said Karl with a knowing look towards Lottie. I smiled inwardly as I remembered Berni’s words. This, then, was Karl ‘the fixer’.
They insisted that I tell them about Berni’s capture. I told them how we became separated when I was ordered to drive a captured British Bedford carrying a dozen or more officers. I assumed I was taking them on a recce, but our guide took us to an improvised runway where we found four transport planes and two Messerschmitt escort fighters. Waiting to board were several dozen more officers. A captain met us and flagged me down.
“Park up then join the queue,” he told me.
“I’m just the driver,” I explained. “Should I return the vehicle to the depot?”
“No, it’ll be picked up later. What rank are you?”
“Feldwebel, Herr Hauptman.”
He considered for a moment then said, “That’s in order, join the queue with the others. They will need NCOs as well as officers.”
Half an hour later I was in the air heading for Italy, and from there back to Germany where we were used to form the nucleus of a new Fallschirmjäger division. To the everlasting shame of the general staff, the remains of the division in North Africa were left to their own devices. Shortly after that, they were cornered in Tunisia by the British and captured, Berni among them.
“Our only consolation is that Berni was captured by the British,” said Lottie sadly. “We get letters from him occasionally. They have taken him to England, somewhere in the north, but of course he is not allowed to say where. There are a number of Fallschirmjäger with him in the camp. He tells me they have a good football team.” She smiled wanly. “At least he has survived the war. I wonder how long it will be before the British release him?”
“I don’t suppose it will be very long,” I said without any real conviction.
After a pause Karl said, “I have to say that I am astounded you managed to come all this way in that disguise. Even Granny Schumacher would have seen through that, and she only had one eye. It’s a good thing you weren’t stopped by a Russian patrol.”
“I was!” I said and told him about the granite guardsman.
“My God, you were lucky. Either that soldier is seriously in need of an optician, or you found the only Russian in the entire world with a soft heart.”
I agreed. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I was that it was the latter. The granite guardsman with the soft centre.
“Right!” said Karl decisively. “You can put aside any thoughts of walking back that way. If you’re bumped again by a Russian patrol, you won’t get away with it. Even if it’s your Russian fairy godfather again, he will turn you in. He told you to register with the police. If you had, you would have a temporary pass. As you don’t have one, it’s clear that you have disregarded his order, so you will present him with an easy decision.
“I have to go out to see some friends, but before I go, I need to take your photograph for use on a pass. You need to shave and do something with your hair, lose the overcoat but the suit will do for the photo, then we need to lose that as well. I will get you some proper clothes that fit.”
After washing and shaving—blessed relief—I put on my suit jacket while Lottie pinned a white sheet against the wall. Karl then appeared with what looked like a brand new Praktiflex camera. Pointing to the lens, he boasted, “Carl Zeiss, 1.5, the best!”
After a brief photo session, Karl disappeared into his workshop carrying his camera. “He has a darkroom in there, but you’d never find it if you didn’t know where to look,” confided Lottie.
He reappeared half an hour later, carrying a folded piece of paper. Opening it up, he showed me my photograph. It was perfect, a real professional standard.
“Have you any birthmarks or scars?” he asked.
“I have a scar on my left leg,” I said. “Crete, shrapnel grazed my leg, didn’t do any real damage but opened up a tear of about five centimetres. The first aid by the medics was a hell of a lot more painful than the actual wound.”
Karl smiled. “I can imagine. Let me have a look at it.”
Lottie looked away while I dropped my trousers. The scar is quite ugly with stitch marks all round it where the medics had very crudely sewn it up, poured some sort of disinfectant on the wound, then wrapped a field dressing around it and sent me back into action.
“Perfect!” announced Karl. “Couldn’t be better.”
Karl kissed his wife. “I’ll be back in time for dinner, Lottie. Horst, come with me to the workshop, you can stay in the darkroom tonight. Don’t worry about Gudrun, I’ll call in on my way.”
I thanked him and warned him about the security precautions. He chuckled. “She sounds like a very enterprising lady. I’ll pick you up at dinner time,” he said, “but best to lie low for now.”
In the workshop, he walked over to an incredibly old and decrepit wall unit, which had once graced someone’s living room. As he slipped his hand behind the right side, I heard a click; this was repeated on the other side. Karl then slid the wall unit along the floor.
“Lockable castors,” he said in explanation.
Once clear, the wall unit revealed a door which led into a concealed room, as wide as the workshop but very narrow. Without measuring the workshop inside and out, it would be impossible to know of the room’s existence. At one end was Karl’s darkroom equipment complete with workbench, overhead drying wires and a red lamp. At the other end was a single bed.
“The room doubles as a spare room for ‘special’ guests,” said Karl, emphasising ‘special’. “There’s plenty of ventilation, and there’s a low wattage light at the top of the bed. You can use that—it can’t be seen from outside. I’ll see you in a little while.”
The little while turned out to be a couple of hours, but eventually I heard the castor locks click and the wall unit roll across the floor before the door opened revealing Karl, smiling broadly.
“Dinner’s ready!” he said. “We can take a chance on an unexpected visit—there are places to hide you in the house if we’re caught out.”
The meal was quite astonishing! We sat down to eisbein with sauerkraut and pea puree and shared a Mosel Spätlese. I didn’t have the audacity to ask them how they had come by such fare, I just sat and enjoyed the best meal I’d eaten in a long, long time. After dinner, Karl produced a bottle of Asbach and filled three schnapps glasses, distributing them with a smile.
By this time, I was thinking about Gudrun and feeling very guilty. As if reading my mind, Karl said, “Don’t worry about Gudrun and Hellie, Horst. I saw her and told her where you were. She is okay, and I left her a couple of very nice cooked schnitzels. She’ll have to eat them cold though. I told her not to heat them at the communal cooker outside in Belforter Strasse. I don’t want people asking awkward questions.”
Breakfast the following morning was a delicious Strammer Max, after which I was led back to the secret room. “When I return at lunchtime, I expect to have everything fixed,” he said reassuringly.
Karl was as good as his word. He collected me from the darkroom at around midday.
“No need to hide anymore,” he said, “everything is sorted.”
Karl showed me my new documentation. I was Horst Manteufel of Belforter Strasse, medically discharged from some insignificant regiment of the
Wehrmacht as a result of a very severe leg wound sustained in Poland in 1940. Everything was there: my civilian pass, my medical discharge certificate and my driving licence.
“In addition,” said Karl, “the records in the police station on Stahlheimer Strasse show that you registered there two days ago. Now we need to talk about a job. When I answered the door yesterday, I told you I was too busy to take on any work. That’s not strictly true. I could get plenty of work, but very few people have any money to pay, and nothing of value to barter. I’d like to help everyone, but I have very limited materials and difficulty in getting more, so I have to preserve my building supplies for those customers who can pay. Which means I need some other means to keep the wolf from the door.”
I knew what he was going to say before he said it.
“I have a little side-line which involves buying food from farmers on the outskirts of the city and selling it locally. Strictly illegal of course, so the farmers will only sell to a very few people they can trust. It’s become much more difficult now, since my old ‘Maggi’ gave up on me.” He flicked his head towards the old vehicle.
“I do have another side-line, which can be quite lucrative, and promises to become more so in the coming months,” he said with a whimsical smile.
I raised my eyebrows inquiringly.
“I move people!”
“You move people? From where to where?”
“From Berlin to Genoa, initially, and from there to Paraguay, Argentina, Peru, Brazil,” he said with a shrug that suggested it was the most natural thing in the world.
“As you’ve seen, I have the help of a master forger. You can literally become anyone and live anywhere. But I need help, and you need a job. What do you say?”
So, I became a ‘bricklayer’s labourer’. Suitably clad in workmen’s clothes Karl had acquired for me, I became his general dogsbody. In the main, this involved long, arduous treks to and from farms outside the city, pulling his work trolley, ostensibly to carry out maintenance work on the farmhouses but actually to buy meat and vegetables.
Shadow Of Evil: Cold War Espionage Thriller (Dragan Kelly Book 2) Page 10
