Guns At Cassino

by Leo Kessler

  But there was no time to be lost. Gasping painfully, Schulze scrambled to his feet to be confronted by the whore sitting astride the other MP pummelling him with her fists.

  `Get that big arse out of the way,' he yelled urgently, `and let yer father have a go! Aren't you ashamed of showing a great hairy thing like that to an innocent military policeman!'

  He shoved her to one side and slugged the remaining chain-dog with his dice-beaker.

  `Up here!' a harsh voice yelled in the corridor. 'I tell you I saw the chief come this way!' Apparently someone protested, for the harsh voice repeated. 'By the great whore of Buxtehude, I'm telling you he thought Hansen was up here!'

  The naked whore was the first to react.

  `Toni,' she cried and pushed him towards the dirty window. `Out that way. And you too, you great lump! Get that pack of yours - and your popgun - and go with him or the head-hunters!'

  She did not need to finish the warning. For once Schulze did not stay and try to be funny. He knew that even his Knight's Cross would not save him from Torgau (4) if the chain-dogs caught him now.

  `What about you, Gerda?' the pale-faced youth in the shabby black uniform asked urgently.

  `Don't bother about me. I'm just a ten-mark whore. It's you, they're after. Go on, get on with it!'

  The boy needed no further urging. Hurriedly he opened the window, while Schulze slung his gear over his shoulder. The heavy boots were coming closer. The boy swung himself deftly up and out on to the small brick ledge beyond, followed by Schulze. Below in the evening gloom he could just make out the house's overflowing rubbish dump. It must have been a drop of at least twenty metres.

  `Oh, my aching arse,' Schulze breathed. 'I get dizzy even when I stand on a tall chair!'

  `Knock it off!' the whore commanded. 'They're here!'

  She pulled the window down and drew the blackout curtains. Clinging to the wall, his fingers boring into the eaves, his big boots thrust into the worn brickwork, Schulze could hear the chain-dogs tramp into the whore's room. Questions were barked at her and Schulze heard the sound of a slap.

  `Freeze!' the boy next to him hissed urgently.

  Schulze squeezed himself even closer to the bricks. The blackout curtain had been flung back. A thin shaft of yellow light sliced into the growing darkness. The next moment the window was thrust open. Schulze caught a half glimpse of a helmeted head peering out. A torch beam cut into the evening and illuminated the overflowing trash cans in the yard below. It swung back and forth for what seemed an eternity to the sweating Schulze. Finally the chain-dog was satisfied.

  `Nobody down there,' he reported.

  `All right, you take care of the Chief, and I'll see to this sow!' the unknown speaker emphasized his point by slapping the whore again.

  Next to Schulze, the boy tensed, but no sound escaped from his tightly clenched lips. The window was shut again and the curtains drawn. The iron-shod boots clattered down the stairs a few minutes later. But still the two men balancing precariously on the narrow ledge did not move until the noisy rattle of the chain-dogs' motorbikes below told them that the danger was over.

  `All right,' Schulze said, turning slowly and with some difficulty to face the pale youth, 'now tell me what all that was in aid of, would you?’

  The boy clenched his fist dramatically and proclaimed in a conspiratorial voice:

  `Red Front, comrade ... I'm a member of the communist underground!'

  Schulze nearly fell off the ledge.

  `Oh, I'll go and piss up my sleeve - what the hell have I let myself in for now?'

  Nine

  It was the same question that was running through Major Kuno von Dodenburg's mind as he faced Group Leader Schellenberg that afternoon in Madame Kitty's private sitting-room. The blowsy, tough Madame, who dressed as if she were forty, but looked every day of the seventy she really was, had brought Schellenberg a bottle of his favourite Moselle Piesporter Goldtroepfchen and had been inclined to stay. But the youthful head of the SS Secret Service, with his sleek black hair, impudent eyes and cynical mouth, had sent her away.

  She went, closing the big double doors behind her slowly, while von Dodenburg gazed around the room. He imagined that this was the way such establishments had looked in the days of the old Imperial Army, with the big-breasted mermaids frolicking in an impossibly blue sea in the Boecklin hanging in its pompous gilt frame on the wall and the Nippes statue, next to his elbow, depicting two gleaming white Amazons doing something anatomically impossible to each other.

  `It is Kitty's idea of what constitutes good taste,' Schellenberg said, catching his look and pouring out the white wine. The ex-lawyer's voice was soft and very polite - too polite to be genuine, von Dodenburg could not help thinking. 'But then she has spent all her life in such - er - establishments and there is nothing more respectable than an ex-whore, is there?' He passed von Dodenburg a glass.

  ‘Prost!' he brought the glass up level of the third button on his tunic, elbow extended at a right angle to it, as military custom prescribed.

  ‘Prost!' von Dodenburg responded.

  `Well, Major von Dodenburg, I am sure you are wondering what the Reich Main Security office has to do with an establishment, which, I suppose one could class in the parlance of the man-in-the-street, as a whorehouse, eh?' He smiled and sipped his wine carefully.

  `Somewhat.'

  `You could say that I started my official career here when my old chief General Heydrich thought he would take a leaf out of Stieber's (1) book and open a discreet little establishment, catering for all types of sexual pleasure among those who one might classify as – high society. We modernized the Stieber concept of course. Our girls – and boys, we must concern ourselves with that particular one too – are all trained members of the SD, speaking two foreign languages, and each room is wired to the central listening system in the cellar.' He saw the look in the young officer's eyes. 'Oh, yes, every word, each groan, any perverse little desire is being recorded at this very moment beneath our feet.' He chuckled. 'What a treasure chest our records would be for a blackmailer, eh! Ciano, Ribbentrop, Goering - they have all been here, though the good Reich Marshal was not very effective, I can tell you. Yes, my dear Major, I really learned about life in the good Kitty's establishment - '

  `But, sir,' von Dodenburg cut in, a little irritated by the smart young SD chief's loquacity. 'I can't really see what all this has got to do with me.'

  `Of course, all that was by way of a preliminary. In short, what I wanted to say was, I have listened long enough. Now the time has come for action.'

  `What kind of action?'

  Schellenberg tapped the ends of his long, well-manicured fingers together. 'In essence, von Dodenburg, the problem is whether we can rely upon you to support Colonel Geier in his direction of the Wotan when the time is ripe.'

  `Who is we and what is the time, sir?'

  Schellenberg took a careful sip of his Moselle.

  `Let me answer the second question first. We lawyers, von Dodenburg, are very fond of the oblique approach, I'm afraid. Well, in any period of internal crisis, we feel there ought to be certain troops like yours – elite formations, which can be relied upon to help to solve that crisis. In Berlin we have the Guards Battalion, for instance; In Poland the Greater Germany Division; in Italy your own Wotan – all units located in strategic places throughout the Reich and the occupied territories.'

  `And the we, Group Leader?' von Dodenburg persisted.

  `Ah, the we,' Schellenberg looked hard at von Dodenburg. `Well, I could tell you they are certain key officers of the Wehrmacht, the Armed SS and naturally my own service.'

  `You're talking in circles, Group Leader,' von Dodenburg snapped, growing angry as well as apprehensive at Schellenberg's procrastination. 'You haven't answered my question.'

  `Naturally,' Schellenberg said without offence. 'I'd risk my head if I did.' He paused momentarily. 'And that of your good father.'

  `My father!' von Dodenburg gasped.
/>
  `Yes, after all, he was one of the instigators of the whole affair. Now he is a key member of our organization in your native East Prussia.'

  `To do what?'

  `Well, in essence, we must take certain action if the Führer will not make peace before it is too late.'

  `And that action?' von Dodenburg rapped.

  `To overthrow Adolf Hitler!'

  `Wagner!' Schellenberg shouted, finally breaking the shocked silence which greeted his announcement.

  The big doors opened immediately to reveal Wagner stuffing back his pistol into its holster. He grinned at von Dodenburg's look.

  `Just a precaution, Major, just a precaution.'

  `Is General von Dodenburg on the line, Wagner?'

  `Yessir and spitting blood too because I made him wait.' He looked at von Dodenburg. 'Your father is an exceedingly hot-tempered man. He threatened to come up to Berlin personally and whip my arse if I didn't hurry up.'

  `Come,' Schellenberg ordered, 'the scrambler's in the other room.'

  They passed into another ornate and vulgar room where a green telephone receiver lay on the table next to a painting of the sexual act, which looked as if it had been painted in the previous century.

  `I am sure your father would have no objection to my listening to the conversation,' the SD man said. 'I'm sure you won't either.' He did not wait for confirmation but picked up the attachment.

  `Certainly.'

  Von Dodenburg picked up the phone.

  `Is that you, Kuno?' his father's voice exploded in his ear; the old man could never get used to the idea that one did not need to shout to be heard over the telephone.

  `Yes, Father.'

  `And damned time too, Kuno. I want to speak to you, naturally, but I am also in great need of an opportunity to pass water. You know the state of my damned outside plumbing?'

  Kuno von Dodenburg did. It resulted from 'living well but not too wisely', as the old General was wont to bark whenever the doctor had to be called to deal with the problem. In spite of the gravity of the situation he smiled, and imagined the old man sitting on his old regimental saddle in the dark library, filled with the dusty tattered momentoes of ten generations of his family's service in the cause of the Hohenzollerns (2) and what came thereafter: the tattered old flag which had flown at Bluecher's side at Waterloo; the large ornate chandelier looted at Metz in '70; the great sword a remote ancestor had wielded for the Great Elector; the letter under glass which had been written to a von Dodenburg by Old Fritz - a score of items proving the von Dodenburgs' loyalty to their masters. And now that family was preparing to betray its leader for the very first time.

  `The East is lost,' his father was saying matter-of-factly. 'At night we already can hear the guns here. The Reds have proved better than us. They have transformed their country into a perfectly organized inhuman ant-heap producing more guns, tanks, soldiers than we can ever do. Soon the Red tide will overrun us, if we don't do something to stop it now.'

  Kuno von Dodenburg attempted a joke.

  `Well, you've got your defences organized in the estate, haven't you, Father?'

  `Naturally I won't be taken personally without a fight. After all I am - I was - a soldier. But that is not what I meant. We cannot stop the Reds militarily any more. That is obvious. We must do so through a combination of political and revolutionary means.'

  Von Dodenburg caught his breath. Now he realized, for the first time, the full extent of what the man standing next to him had planned. 'Revolutionary, what do you mean, Father?'

  `Politically, by surrendering what we have taken by force in the East - and in the West naturally - and revolutionary - well, it's self-evident isn't it, Kuno? If your Führer does not agree, then we must get rid of him.'

  `How?' Overhearing the contempt in his father's voice, he forced himself to ask the impossible question, 'how will you get rid of him, Father?'

  `By force, of course. Wake up, boy - by force!' his father snapped testily.

  `But that ... that would be rank treason,' he breathed in horror, 'you cannot do that!'

  `Of course, it's treason, Kuno, and of course we are playing for high stakes. But it must be done for the sake of our country, even if it means breaking our holy oath as soldiers and von Dodenburgs too.' He paused for breath. 'Are you still there, Kuno?'

  `Yes, Father.'

  `I must go now, but look after yourself, boy. You are the last von Dodenburg.' Then the phone went dead.

  Schellenberg looked across at Kuno von Dodenburg as he took the phone from the pale-faced young officer's hand and replaced it in its cradle, but he said nothing. Wagner spoke for him, the humour gone from his voice now.

  `If I may take the liberty of summing up your present situation, Major von Dodenburg,' he said slowly, 'you are faced by two alternatives. You join us and save, not only Germany, but your father's life too, for we shall be found out if we do not act soon. That is obvious. Or you betray us and thus deliver us into the hands of the Gestapo.' He smiled faintly. 'In the language of the front-line swine, my dear Major, we have you truly by the short and curlies, haven't we?'

  Ten

  The brother of the whore pushed a glass of weak wartime beer across the stained counter in the smoky little pub opposite the station.

  `No good,' he said, hardly opening his lips lest he be overheard by the mixed company of black marketeers, soldiers waiting to catch their trains back and the whores, who filled the place. 'The comrade in the RTO (1) tells me that they are looking out for you at the barriers.'

  `It's my handsome mug,' Schulze answered, taking a swig at the beer and pulling a face. 'Once seen, forgotten for ever.'

  `But you must be serious,' the boy said. 'Your life is at stake. They take our comrades to Neuengamme Concentration Camp for less than what you have done this day.'

  `You and your shitty comrades,' Schulze growled. 'Can't you call them mates or something?'

  In his heart, he knew the boy was right. He had struck a chain-dog and floored a Gestapo man; and if that weren't bad enough, he had helped a Bolshevik to escape. They would have the bollocks off him for that.

  `But all I wanted to do was to get the dirty water off my chest and then go and see my old man out in Barmbek.'

  `There is no question of doing that now,' the pale-faced boy said with the assurance of a man twice his age. 'They have your description and the fact you belong to the SS. You must get out of the Reich and back to your unit at the front as soon as possible. There you'll be safe.'

  Schulze looked incredulously at him through the smoky haze. `Safe at the front - that I don't laugh! They're killing people out there, you know.'

  `I know,' the boy answered gravely. 'But believe me, far worse things than death are happening back here in the Reich. Out at Neuengamme, they are torturing people to death slowly, very slowly, by means which you cannot even imagine. That's why we must strike at the fascist beasts soon before they have killed the best of the comrades. We must get rid of them.'

  Schulze thought of the many millions of Germans, who blindly served the National Socialist cause and told himself the boy was living in a dream world; he and his 'comrades', whoever they might be, would never make the man in the street turn against Hitler until it was too late.

  `You might be right, but at this particular moment, sonny, I'm worried about Mrs Schulze's boy. You got me into this mess, how about getting me out of it?'

  The young communist's grave face brightened.

  `Don't worry, comrade, we'll get you out of Hamburg and back to your unit all right. Tell me first, where you have to return to?'

  Schulze quickly filled in the details, while around him the dark-eyed whores screamed hysterically on the soldiers' knees and the black marketeers exchanged their wares surreptitiously under the beer-stained tables.

  `Good,' the boy said finally, 'we shall see that you meet your officer at the Lehrter Bahnhof by four o'clock tomorrow afternoon. I think we'd better go and see Fat Erna. It looks as if sh
e could pull off the wounded soldier routine with you.'

  `And who's Fat Erna when she's at home?' Schulze asked, finishing off his beer.

  For the first time since Schulze had met him in the Herbertstrasse, the boy's face broke into a smile.

  `You'll see, comrade. All I can say at the moment is that she's a helluva lot of woman.'

  Fat Erna was washing her enormous bulk in a chipped enamel bowl in front of the green-tiled stove when they opened the door of her room. Schulze's mouth dropped open at once. Fat Erna, who must have weighed well over a hundred kilos, was completely naked save for a tiny white washcloth with which she was rubbing her left breast, as if she were kneading dough for the oven.

  `Christ on a crutch!' he breathed, 'I haven't seen so much fresh meat since the days before rationing!'

  `Shut the shitty door,' the big blonde woman growled, `there's a draught. Or have you got sacks out there!'

  Hastily Schulze did as she ordered. Fat Erna dropped the cloth into the grey water with a splash and began to pummel herself with a towel, sizing the SS man up as she did so.

  `Well, don't stand there like a spare dildo in a convent!' she snapped finally. 'You'd think you'd never seen a naked woman before. Give me that robe on the chair there!'

  Schulze handed the flowered silken kimono to her and while she slipped it on, glanced round her room. Despite the fact that the house was located in Hamburg's poorest working-class district Rotenburgsort, not far from the bombed shunting yards, it was a virtual treasure chest. Cans of coffee were stacked everywhere. One wall was nearly hidden in the brown woollen blankets that would have brought a fortune on the black market, if they could have been sold to those shabby Hamburg housewives who turned such blankets into coats. And the only piece of decent furniture in the room, an enormous double bed was piled high with cartons of American cigarettes, captured on some front or other.