Shadow Of Evil: Cold War Espionage Thriller (Dragan Kelly Book 2)

by Peter Alderson Sharp

  “I’m not really a fan of football,” he said. “I did go to watch Gradanski a couple of times before the war, and I’ve watched a few games between different Ustase companies, but it’s not my thing. Two teams running around after the same ball? Why not give them a ball each? That would solve the problem!”

  Hartmann nearly choked on his beer as he burst out laughing. “I like that solution!” he said. “You may have hit upon the answer to the world’s problems. Give everyone their own ball!”

  “Tell me,” he added after a pause to compose himself, “Gradanski?”

  “You probably know the team as Dinamo Zagreb. The original name was Gradanski, but after the war, Tito’s communists insisted that the name be changed. Too nationalistic, I assume.”

  “I confess to being a fanatical FC Bayern fan. A bit sluggish at the moment, but they will go on to great things, you can be sure of that,” said Hartmann with conviction. “I suppose we ought to talk business. You will leave in the same vehicle early tomorrow, after the driver has had a night’s rest. He will drop you at a warehouse on the outskirts of Salzburg, where you will be picked up by a car and driven to the central distribution point. From there, our sister organisation takes over. It’s known as ‘The Spider’ and is controlled by someone you may have heard of before: Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny?”

  Kelly’s gasp of surprise was not feigned. “Skorzeny?” he repeated incredulously.

  “Quite so,” confirmed Hartmann. “I take it you have heard of him then.”

  “Heard of him? I should say I’ve heard of him! Every member of every Ustase battalion has heard of Skorzeny! Even my unit, the Black Legion, that considered itself the best, held Skorzeny and his commandos in awe.”

  “Indeed! Well, you will have your chance to meet the gallant commando tomorrow. All that remains for me is to wish you luck and trust that you find peace and happiness in South America.”

  Kelly left the meeting feeling very unsure of exactly what had taken place—a friendly chat or a very clever interrogation—and it left him feeling distinctly uneasy. At the first opportunity he sought out Manteufel, or rather he made it seem that Manteufel had sought him out, and they moved to a point in the yard where he was sure they were not being overheard.

  “Get anything?” Kelly asked quietly.

  Manteufel nodded. “The three boys I was having a drink with all work for Thule. I’m not sure about our driver, but in any case, they trust him. They seemed to think I was also a member of the Society, and needless to say I did nothing to disabuse them of that notion. Consequently, they talked very freely. I listened and said little, only speaking when not to have done so would have looked odd.

  “They started by talking about you. This is the first time they’ve had an Ustase down the line and were clearly not comfortable with it. I, of course, confirmed that I wouldn’t trust you a centimetre, and said I was concerned that you were out of my sight. They assured me that Hartmann and Maxi would be able to handle any issues. They then talked about the last package and actually named Müller. From what I can gather—you realise I didn’t dare ask any questions—Müller was shipped off to a farm in southern Bavaria under the protection of a very senior person in the Society. I’m talking very senior here, judging by the respectful way they spoke about them, either top or very near it. Do you know, I’m certain they referred to this person as ‘she’ on two occasions?”

  “Excellent, Horst, really good work. First opportunity I have I’ll contact McFarlane to find out if any of his contacts have knowledge of a woman in a very senior position in the Society. For my part, I’ve just had a very bizarre meeting with Herr Hartmann. I don’t know whether I’m punched, bored or countersunk. I’ll tell you about it later. However, what is important is he told me that the person we are meeting tomorrow is Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny.”

  The look of contempt on Manteufel’s face was not lost on Kelly. “I take it you’re not a fan?”

  “The man is a self-publicist and a poseur. He allowed the Fallschirmjäger to rescue Mussolini, then took all of the credit for himself and his SS cronies. During operation Greif in 1944, he ordered his men behind enemy lines wearing British and US uniforms. Those captured were shot as spies. Of course, he was careful not to get himself into a danger area. No, in answer to your question, I don’t have a lot of time for him.”

  “Well, for God’s sake don’t show it when you meet him, we don’t want to antagonise him. Try to be Mister ‘I’m impressed’—he may be able to provide us with the last link to Müller!”

  Manteufel smiled. “I’ll be on my best behaviour, Herr Colonel.”

  It was Kelly’s turn to smile. “This is it, Horst, the last leg! We’ll see what Skorzeny gives us, but even if we draw a blank, we’re finished. We’ll contrive a way out and go home! If nothing else, we have pinned down Müller to a farm in southern Bavaria. It would be nice to know which farm and it would be even nicer to know why!”

  The slow, stop-start progress of the vehicle and the noise around them suggested to Kelly that they were again passing through heavy traffic. They had been travelling for about four hours, so this must be Salzburg.

  After a while, the driver turned sharp left then executed a tight arc before reversing, coming to a halt and killing the engine. They had arrived. After scrambling from the vehicle, the two were met by the driver.

  “This is the end of the line for you good people. I hope it hasn’t been too uncomfortable.”

  “It’s been fine. Thank you for all your help. Is that you finished now?” asked Manteufel.

  “No, I have a fairly big drop here, then it’s off to Linz for another drop, and finally Vienna.”

  “We’ll give you a hand to offload,” volunteered Kelly.

  “Thank you, that’s truly kind. You see this despatch number in the corner of the label? Anything with that number comes off here. Stack them in the corner there,” he said, indicating a space just to the side of the door. “They are all at the back so it shouldn’t be difficult.”

  In a few moments, the three had unloaded the consignment, stacking it neatly in the corner. After a final check that the right number had been offloaded, the driver said his goodbyes and wished them well with a final handshake. Then, with a crashing of doors, a rattling of bolts and locks, a roar of the engine and a final wave from the window, the Tatra moved out of the compound and headed towards Linz.

  Kelly and Manteufel found a bench inside the warehouse and were just making themselves comfortable when a man entered. “The car shouldn’t be long,” he explained. “It’s late. It was supposed to be here by now, but it won’t be long.”

  It was, in fact, a good thirty minutes before a Fiat 1400 turned into the compound and pulled up before the doors. Two large men emerged, both in mid-grey suits with black wavy hair. Archetypal Italian, thought Kelly.

  “Please, who is Novak?” asked the man who had been the driver, in bad German.

  “I am Novak,” answered Kelly, approaching.

  “Please, you can put your hands up like this,” said the Italian spokesman, fitting the action to the word by raising his hands in the air.

  Kelly complied and the Italian commenced to frisk him for weapons. “You have gun, yes?”

  “No, I have no gun.”

  “Good. Please, you sit in back of car.” He then approached Manteufel, who started to raise his hands. “No! Please you do not put hands up. You have gun?”

  “Yes, of course,” said Manteufel easing his Luger out of the back of his trousers and showing it to the Italian.

  “Good! You keep it ready, yes?”

  Manteufel smiled. “Yes, it’s always ready,” he assured the Italian.

  Whilst Horst and Kelly settled in the back of the car, the two escorts climbed into the front seats, and with a screeching of tyres they accelerated out of the compound and along a B road. They sped down the road, gradually leaving the industrial area behind and entering an upmarket residential district. Man
y of the properties were detached in their own grounds, but many had perhaps seen more affluent times. They turned into one of the better properties, the car crunching over the gravel that made up the approach road, and drove around the side of the large house, stopping near a rear entrance.

  Tradesman’s entrance for me, thought Kelly as he followed the two Italians into the building, with Manteufel bringing up the rear. After ascending a rather rickety wooden staircase, they emerged onto a spacious landing, luxuriously appointed with a rich, thick carpet on the floor and expensive-looking hangings decorating the walls.

  “Wait here,” said one of the Italians as he made his way down one of the opposing corridors, stopping at the first door and tapping gently.

  A very loud ‘Herein!’ rang out clearly from behind the door. The Italian opened it and popped his head in, apparently chatting to the occupant before emerging and beckoning the rest of the party to approach. As they did so, he nodded to Kelly and Manteufel.

  “You both go in,” he said and pushed the door open.

  As Kelly and Manteufel entered, the man, sitting behind a desk opposite the door, started to rise and seemed to continue to do so forever. He must have stood six and a half feet tall and was broad shouldered. His dark hair was brushed back from his forehead which, slightly protruding, shrouded his blue-grey eyes in semi-darkness. The nose was large, but not excessively so, and below it, a pencil-line moustache sat over his cruel lips. The most remarkable feature was an ugly duelling scar which disfigured his left cheek.

  Skorzeny!

  After giving the Nazi salute, which Kelly and Manteufel dutifully returned, he held out his large hand and shook hands with each in turn, beaming all the time.

  “Herr Novak?” he asked, looking from one to the other.

  “I am Dragan Novak,” confirmed Kelly, nodding as he did so.

  The big man turned to Manteufel. “Then you must be Stabsfeldwebel Horst Manteufel. It is an honour for me to shake the hand of one of our elite ‘Green Devils’,” he said, matching the action to the words and shaking Manteufel’s hand a second time.

  Although much surprised, Manteufel played his part well and, suppressing any personal feeling he may have felt, said, “The honour is entirely mine, Obersturmbannführer. The exploits of yourself and your commandos are legendary and were always being talked about by my fellow Fallschirmjäger.”

  Kelly breathed a silent sigh of relief. He just hoped that Skorzeny didn’t detect the irony in Manteufel’s little speech. If he did, he didn’t show it, his smile becoming even broader.

  Skorzeny shrugged his shoulders, raising his hands slightly as he did so. “I have to say at this point that I have no idea why Thule insist that everyone must go through my organisation. They call it ‘filtering’. In reality it’s all quite simple. If you are German and an ex-member of the party wanting to make a new life elsewhere, then Spider—my people—will deal with you. If you are Ustase, then it’s a matter for the Church. Why Thule wish to complicate the matter beyond that, I have no idea. But they do, and they have.

  “So …” he said, screwing his face up, “All that remains for me to do is wish you well, Herr Novak, and direct you to Father Vilim.”

  “Is Father Vilim also in Salzburg? Is it very far?” asked Kelly.

  Skorzeny roared with laughter. “No, Herr Novak, it isn’t very far. This is Father Vilim’s house. I only come here to filter. My office is in Vienna. Father Vilim’s office is a good, oh, let me see … five paces from here. Mind you, that’s only an approximation,” he roared, laughing again. After composing himself and wiping his eyes, he said, “I apologise for that, it’s just that it struck me as funny. Father Vilim is waiting for you in his office. Lorenzo and Mattia will escort you. Good luck with the rest of your journey.”

  Saluting then shaking hands, he ushered them out of his temporary office and into the corridor where the two Italians, Lorenzo and Mattia, were waiting.

  “This way please,” said one of them, escorting them further down the corridor. They passed two doors then stopped at the third, on which the Italian leading the way knocked and opened simultaneously, waving them inside. The room was clearly an antechamber with a further door leading into the main room, presumably Father Vilim’s office.

  Kelly’s stomach had sunk into his boots. They were already in the house of Father Vilim Cecelja, the very person McFarlane had warned him to avoid. He had assumed—wrongly—that they would be visiting Skorzeny in his own offices then driving on to Cecelja’s house later. His plan had been to create some sort of diversion to enable Manteufel and himself to extricate themselves and make their escape back to Germany. They were now utterly trapped!

  Father Vilim Cecelja

  The Italian who appeared to be the senior of the two motioned them to sit, while he approached the door and tapped gently on it. Opening it he went inside, closing the door behind him. It was several minutes before he emerged again and motioned Kelly forward. Manteufel also rose, but the other Italian grabbed his arm and signalled to him to remain seated.

  Kelly walked into a spacious, airy room. The floor, like the corridor, was expensively carpeted, the walls hung with religious oil paintings. Three or four paces in front of him, situated in front of a large double window, was a huge mahogany desk, the top inlaid with leather. Behind it, head down and scribbling something on a writing pad, was the man Kelly assumed was Father Vilim Cecelja, a Croatian priest who had once been chaplain to the Ustase, and who, it was believed, had instigated a number of war crimes carried out by the Ustase militia on Serbian civilians, participating in some of them himself.

  Kelly approached the desk to within a couple of paces and stood and waited. The priest ignored him and carried on writing.

  Ignorant bastard! thought Kelly.

  Eventually, Cecelja deigned to notice his guest and sat back in his chair. There was no welcoming smile. No word of introduction. He just sat and stared, his face blank.

  It was hard to judge his height, sitting as he was, but Kelly sensed he was tall. He was very slender, bordering on skinny, with a sharp angular face and a long thin nose. The non-descript brown hair, brushed back from his brow, emphasised a receding hairline. He was dressed in a simple black suit and wore his clerical collar.

  At length, Kelly, now angry and trying hard to contain it, speaking in Croatian, said, “Shall I come back tomorrow?”

  His remark, if nothing else, elicited a response from the priest, who at first frowned and then raised his eyebrows. “Why would you want to do that?” he asked.

  “Well, Father, you seem a little preoccupied. Perhaps I should come back another day?” Shut up, you damn fool! said Kelly to himself. You’ll antagonise him!

  “You were a captain in the Ustase, is that not correct?” asked the priest, his face stone.

  “Yes, that is correct.”

  “And I,” continued the priest, “was a Lieutenant Colonel. It may be as well for you to remember that, Novak.”

  Kelly, his blood now up, said, “Since 1945 our respective ranks have not been worth a shovelful of shit. It may be as well for you to remember that, Cecelja!” You’ve blown it, he thought to himself, but to his surprise, the priest smiled and leaned further back in his seat.

  “Black Legion, was it not?” he asked.

  Kelly nodded. “Black Legion,” he confirmed.

  “Every officer I met in the Black Legion had the same self-opinionated, arrogant, disrespectful, insolent self-confidence that you have just displayed. I suppose that’s what made them so incredibly good in combat.” He paused for a moment, as if deep in thought, then said, “Odd though, I don’t remember you.”

  “I regret I never had the very great privilege of meeting you in person,” said Kelly, with more than a trace of sarcasm. “I feel sure I would have remembered.”

  The priest smiled again. “Perhaps.”

  “We seem to have started on the wrong foot, Dragan,” he said, his tone placatory, “so let’s start again. Pe
rhaps you could tell me about your adventures with the Black Legion?”

  And so, they talked, or at least Kelly did, Cecelja interposing a question here or observation there. It wasn’t what Kelly wanted to do, afraid as he was of betraying his accent, but he had no alternative. To have been taciturn would have surely invited suspicion. He was trapped in a corner but saw no alternative than to try to bluff it out.

  At length, Cecelja said, “You have had an eventful career, Dragan, you are exactly the type of patriot we want to aid. I will get you to Rome. You will then be moved to Genoa when a suitable ship is available, and from there it’s Argentina and a whole new life with a new identity.”

  He shuffled through the papers on his desk for a moment before shaking his head. “I had prepared a Red Cross document ready for your signature, but it’s not here. Ugh, of course, I gave it to Lorenzo to finalise. Also, you will need a photograph for your Red Cross passport … wait here a moment, I’ll get that document you need to sign.” So saying, he calmly rose and left the room, closing the door behind him.

  On the other side of the door, it was a very different Father Vilim who emerged from his office, his face thunder and his mouth twisted into a snarl. He hissed something in Italian which clearly caused consternation in Lorenzo and Mattia. Sensing a problem, but unable to understand the language, Manteufel grabbed the arm of the man he had spoken to earlier.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked in German.

  “I’ll tell you what’s wrong, Herr Manteufel,” said the priest, reverting to German, “that man is an imposter!”

  Manteufel reacted immediately. Drawing his Luger from the back of his trousers, he cocked it and made for the door. “I’ll kill the swine,” he growled. “I’ve never trusted that bastard—I’ll blow his brains out.”

  Cecelja and the two Italians restrained him and calmed him down. “Not here, Herr Manteufel, the shot would be heard, and we can’t risk that. We can’t afford a scandal. I can understand how you feel, having been his babysitter for so long, but you must contain yourself. You will have the pleasure of killing him, but away from here.