by Jack Ludlow
‘I came under false pretences.’
‘You must forgive the general and I for deceiving you – that was essential.’
‘What if I decline to do it?’
‘Then I must, so please tell me quickly what you intend.’
‘How would you get away with it if you did it?’
‘I would not, Mr Jardine. I might succeed but I would not long survive since suspicion would soon fall on me. The best I could hope for is a firing squad.’
‘But you will take that risk?’
Veseli laughed. ‘It is not a risk, it is certain I would die.’
‘Who were you going to pass the papers to?’ Cal asked.
That was a solution to one conundrum he had in his bath: the Czech did not insult him by denying there was someone, but there was no way he was going to reveal any more.
‘If I depart this square, my absence will be noticed, for to do so when the Führer is speaking would be seen as a gross insult to him …’
There was no way of faulting that statement; Veseli stood literally head and shoulders above most of his fellow men. He couldn’t move anywhere without it being spotted.
‘… while you can leave without raising even a slight eyebrow, especially if you claim to have eaten something that disagrees with you and which forces you to return to the hotel.’
‘The guards?’
‘Tonight, they will be here in the square, as will every Nazi in the town. None will want to miss this.’
‘The clerk at reception?’
Veseli pointed him out and also the Ice Maiden, standing next to Henlein, who was talking to Corrie, adding that the hotel would be practically deserted, given all the staff were rabid anti-Czechs if not quite National Socialists, while the guests had come specifically for this rally. It was not a residence for anyone not committed to the cause.
‘The news of the movements of the Czech army may come before Hitler is finished speaking, but it is hoped not. Either way, Henlein will seek to flee and to do that he needs his car, which is parked in the same place as your own.’
‘Though not without those documents.’
‘But hopefully you will have them and when he sees that they are gone he will not hang around to find out who stole them.’
‘Miss Littleton?’
‘I will make sure she is escorted to safety. Both you and she, being foreigners, will be free to travel through the army lines when things quieten down and it has already been arranged they will not attack the Victoria but the headquarters of Frank’s Nazis. Stay at the hotel and wait till order is restored.’
‘It is still dangerous.’
‘What can we do in these times without hazard, Herr Barrowman? Take those documents, give them to your government and let them know what that little Austrian bastard is really like.’
‘And what will you be doing?’
Veseli laughed softly. ‘Me, I will be starting a riot.’
Even with the babble of talk in the square the loudspeakers had been disseminating a sort of background growl, which was the audience at the Congress Hall in Nuremberg and that began to fade into silence.
Veseli managed one more point before the Cheb crowd followed suit. ‘I will also tell you that inside that safe is a large sum of money, subventions from the German Foreign Office, which Henlein uses to fund the SdP. I would not object if you took that too and found a better use for it.’
‘Noise?’ seemed an apposite question and he was not talking about that which was abating now.
‘Imagine what it will be like when the Führer is insulting my poor country.’
The hush fell and there was an expectant silence from both the assembled crowd and the loudspeakers, which emitted only a steady crackle now. Then the loud voice spoke out, like a guards drill sergeant.
‘Der Führer, Adolf Hitler! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!’
The orchestra struck up with a patriotic march only to be overwhelmed as that ‘Sieg Heil’ was answered by thirty thousand throats in a deafening roar of welcome for the godlike master, which drowned out its brass instruments, while those at the Cheb rally now had their arms outstretched too and were yelling just as lustily.
The hails went on for an age and so emotional were the folk around the square that they had their eyes closed and were near to ecstasy. It was a great trick to pull, that long walk up the avenue of adoring acolytes, a march with glittering escorts and tessellated banners that raised to a supreme pitch the soaring sense of anticipation, even if it was invisible.
By the time the baying had died away and he said his first quiet words, all over the Reich and in many places beyond, most listening were in the palm of his hand, ready to be manipulated into a frenzy.
‘Meine Kameraden.’
It was his standard opening line and what followed was the usual guff, about when he had first decided that the Reich needed him and then responded, how in six years, with their help, he had raised Germany to the pinnacles on which it now stood. He would go on for certainly over an hour, sucking them in and making them believe these ‘good comrades’ were his inspiration instead of mere tools.
Slowly but surely the voice would rise as he recalled his own struggles, much magnified so they matched those of the nation: the glory and filth of army service, being gassed, the stab in the back that brought national humiliation and then the rebirth under his guiding hand, all the tropes by which Germans deluded themselves.
These were the kind of myths which turned rational human beings into clichéd trotting dolts. As he had reflected many times, as a Scot, his own nation was not immune, though they did not turn to murder to prove them, more inclined to fire themselves up with a dram.
Cal could not wait for the insults to start, as Hitler damned everything and everyone who did not succumb to his genius, and now that he had manoeuvred himself out of sight of Corrie he clutched his stomach, put the now empty napkin to his mouth, looked pained and made his way out of the square.
As he passed Jimmy Garvin the youngster made to move. The blast for him to stay still was furious and the language left no doubt about what he would do to him if he followed. Out of sight and in deserted streets – the Czechs who lived here were inside with the blinds drawn and the doors barred – he could pick up his pace.
The garage was at the back of the hotel and open. Inside were Henlein’s Mercedes, a few other smaller vehicles and Cal’s Maybach. The box from the boot he wrapped in one of the blankets from the back seat, able to smile at the irony of their so-different purposes that day; the hunting knife he jammed in his trouser belt.
The back door led into a lobby and a set of uncarpeted wooden stairs that were used by the staff, which creaked alarmingly as he stepped on to them. On the grounds that being surreptitious was a bad idea he made his way up them and accepted the sound would be treated as normal to anyone who heard them.
He had to put the box down on the top step, where there was a bare light bulb, to look at the napkin and get his bearings – which was a bit of luck, since he heard a creaking himself; it was an old building cursed with loose boards. Someone was coming along from what he had identified as the main part of the building to the passage that led to the staff quarters.
There was no time for subterfuge. Cal headed for the first door and was relieved it opened to reveal a deep cupboard which, by the smell, he reckoned was full of linen. The door he closed behind him as soon as he laid the box on the floor, and he had the knife out and ready, prepared to kill and hoping that if someone came in it was not a maid.
That he would have to take a life he knew; this was too important to let anything like finer feelings intrude, and besides, he was in the frame of mind he had been in many times in his life: when it came to kill or be killed there was not much room for sentiment.
The creaking had become boots, which thudded as they reached the bare floorboards, rising then falling off as they passed the door, a slight shadow coming under where there was a gap that let in light. He wai
ted for silence, then sheathed the knife and opened the door to peer out. Sure it was clear, he picked up the box and tiptoed off.
Going to his own room first was a risk but he wanted that Mauser in case he was disturbed. He would use the knife for preference but up against anyone armed only a bullet would save him. The weight of that in his jacket pocket dragged it down to one side in a way that would show anyone who saw him what he was carrying – that had to be accepted.
To see the lobby deserted was a surprise, but as Veseli had said, even the guests had gone to the event in the square, it seemed, and where he might have been seen by the guards had they looked round, he was safe from that for the same reason.
He was halfway across when the sound made him stop dead, that was until he realised it was snoring, and when he looked behind the desk there was the porter who had taken his luggage to his room, slumped in a chair fast asleep.
‘You, old son, are in for a very rude awakening,’ he said very quietly to himself as he walked away.
Where would Hitler be by now? He looked at his watch, mildly surprised at how little time he had used to get this far, a mere twenty minutes; the Führer would have hardly got going. Access to the office suite was by a heavy five-bar lock that, had he not had the key, would have needed some of Mr Nobel’s finest to get it open.
How the hell Veseli had got such a key he did not know, but then he had no idea how long they had been planning this operation. He went through and locked it behind him. That napkin had told him where the emergency exit was, at the end of the corridor, and he checked that first.
The heavy wooden door to Henlein’s own office was locked too, and that was a setback solved by the blade of his hunting knife, not without a tearing sound that had him still and listening for half a minute before he entered to find that the large windows gave him enough light from the street to see.
First stop was the radio, which he switched on to warm up, turning the volume dial right down low even before any sound emerged. Then he put the Mauser on top of the safe, butt out, where he could get at it easily. Next he took the bulb out of the overhead light and put it in his pocket, then put on the gloves, using his knife to cut into the explosive packaging, his nose wrinkling at the increased smell.
He had no option but to employ what professional safe-crackers would call a ‘jam shot’, something he had learnt from one of Snuffly Bower’s mates, which came in very handy for blowing off the steel doors of bunkers or places where arms were stored. The Nobel 808 being malleable, he could press down the lock side of the safe in a continuous strip, jamming it into the very small gap.
It looked feeble but he knew the force even a small amount could produce: an almond-sized blob properly placed would blow any normal door to bits. The radio was warm now so he gave it a bit more volume and spun the tuner till he heard that rasping voice from Deutsche Rundfunk. Ear close to the speaker, he could hear that Hitler was getting a bit hoarse; by the end of his peroration he would be rasping.
What 808 he had left he packed as close to the lock as he could, which created a mass into which he could insert a detonator, that then connected to wires, they in turn being threaded into the terminals on the plunger. Carefully he took that and opened the door to the hallway, placing it outside where he would fire it, using the solid wall of the old building to protect him from the blast. Then he settled down to wait.
Peter just made his train by a hairy taxi ride from the Gare du Nord to l’Est and was able to settle down to sleep in a comfy couchette, this while Vince was fuming and still being denied access through the last checkpoint. It had taken all day for Noel McKevitt to find a hose that would fit the Humber but he was back on the road, barrelling north, using his diplomatic passport and plates to get through every checkpoint as a priority case.
Not that such progress was smooth: given the number of cars held up and the sheer quantity that had to move to facilitate his advance – not to mention the fulsome and loudly expressed curses he got for his temerity – each one took an age, so that when he arrived at the checkpoint where Vince was waiting it was dark, and fulminate as he might, it seemed the army had priority on the road ahead and not even a diplomat could make progress.
Sitting on the floor, gloves off, Cal was listening to Hitler as he started to heap insults on Czechoslovakia, which was a miserable little country which dared to call itself a democracy but was suppressing its inhabitants … in this state there were three and a half million Germans (his voice was really hoarse now) … the misery of the Sudetenlanders was terrible … Beneš was a liar and a cheat … on and on he went and each part of his increasingly deranged tirade was met with great repetitive cries of ‘Sieg Heil!’ from the audience.
It was the climax of the speech he was waiting for, that last point where Hitler would sweep his right hand like a sword across his chest, the sweat flying from his brow, his shirt soaked and his eyes aiming off to some point beyond those who were listening to him, to a Valhalla where even the gods of the Nibelungen were sat bolt upright in amazement at his brilliance.
Cal turned the radio up a fraction and moved out of the door to where the plunger lay, closed the door as much as he could without damaging the wires, slid down so his back was to the wall and listened, his pistol near his hand, to the berserk spectators creating a din that was now so loud Hitler could hardly be heard. He then took the lever in his hand. Faintly he could hear those in the square, loud enough to echo through the streets and penetrate solid walls.
‘I’m sick of the sound of you, old cock,’ he said, then twisted and pressed hard before immediately jamming his hands to his ears and opening his mouth.
To him it sounded as if the earth had caved in, but he had no idea how it sounded outside. Perhaps the folk at the rally thought thunder or maybe, since half of them subscribed to beliefs in mythical deities, that the gods had spoken; he had no time to wonder – he just picked up the Mauser and went in.
The room was a mess: Henlein’s desk was mostly matchwood, the window panes blown out so compressively they seemed to have gone in one piece, only breaking when they hit the cobbles below. Out came the bulb to be screwed back in, and then the light could be switched on; it made no difference who saw that now.
The door of the safe was hanging open and there was the smell of burning, probably some of the contents. Hauling to get it right open he looked inside and started rifling through the mass of papers, pushing aside bundles of banknotes.
The one he wanted was easy to identify, a high-quality green folder with the gold device of an eagle with a swastika in its talons. Taking it over to what was left of Henlein’s desk, under the light, he opened it to see the top letter carried the address of the office of the Führer at the top and the Hitler signature at the bottom.
‘Hände hoch!’
There was no time to see who it was or what they had; dropping the file he just spun quickly, dived sideways and as he did so put a bullet into the chest of the porter who had been asleep downstairs, which blasted him backwards. Rolling up on to one knee, the second bullet went into his head and he died for the fact that he was old, overweight and slow and had a key to the door of the office suite; that and because he was holding a gun.
Relocking the suite door, and this time leaving his own key twisted in the lock to stop anyone else gaining entry, Cal went back to the office and jammed the file down the back of his trousers. Then, using that blanket from the Maybach, he scooped in the bundles of banknotes, knotted it and headed for the emergency exit which took him out of the back of the hotel, through a door that, once closed, locked itself.
He was out in the alley and heading for the garage before he heard the first of the thudding boots coming to find out what had happened, which risked him being caught in possession of that bundle, so he resorted to an old trick burglars use to avoid getting caught with their swag just after a robbery. Carrying it at night, when they usually do their breaking and entering, they are bound to be stopped by a copper and qu
estioned. The solution is to find a convenient bin, preferably with a lid, and dump the goods till daylight – the back of the hotel was lined with dozens of them.
Then, coming from where his car was parked, he heard the sounds of a big engine being fired up and doors slamming, followed by screeching tyres as Henlein’s Mercedes swept out and past him, forcing him to press his body against the wall, able to see the alarmed face of the driver as it raced past and then a fleeting last glimpse of a worried-looking Henlein.
Entering the garage himself he ran to the Maybach and jammed the file of documents and the Mauser under the front seat, before locking it and heading back to the square to find Corrie.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The sound of breaking glass was almost immediate and as Cal ran towards the square he could see, in the intervening streets, small knots of Brownshirts busy attacking what he supposed must be Czech homes and businesses, so occupied they ignored him. When he got to the old marketplace, the central square was still crowded but now with a mob baying for what they saw as justice for an oppressed minority.
Veseli stood out easily, his head and forage cap visible from a distance, and Cal made straight for him, barging through a crowd that had no desire to ease his passage, passing open yelling mouths chanting either indistinct Nazi slogans or curses aimed at their Czech neighbours and foreign devils, clearly still under the spell of the euphoria created by Hitler’s speech.
They were facing some hothead who had got himself hoisted above the crowd and was waving a swastika, trying to make himself heard above the din. Cal knew by his contorted face and that flag he was not trying to calm them down but seeking to fire them up to commit some kind of anti-Czech pogrom.
He got to Veseli eventually, standing tall and looking fierce, to find Corrie close by in the company of Jimmy Garvin, the look of fearful greeting in both their eyes evidence of how uncomfortable they found it to be surrounded by a mob of excited ideologues slipping rapidly out of any sense of self-control.
