Fox at the Front (Fox on the Rhine)

by Douglas Niles

  Ahead of him the men of his platoon moved resolutely along, even crippled Hans swinging along at good speed between two of his comrades. Lukas was holding back, as their officer wanting to insure that they had the chance to reach safety first.

  Abruptly, a machine gun chattered up the hill, the slugs kicking up dust and stone fragments on the road. Lukas ran for all he was worth, as the men, too, hastened onto the bridge. He heard a bullet zing past his ear, felt the hot sparks on his cheek as another slug chipped into a concrete pillar and cast a shower of shards against his skin. His feet pounded across the pavement, past the girders of the bridge supports. The waters flowed past below, dark and deep and forbidding.

  Finally he was across the bridge. His men took shelter immediately behind a low wall of the sidewalk, but Lukas urged them on, into the ruin of the city itself. As soon as they approached the first cross street, the young officer darted to the side, tumbling down the steep embankment of the approach ramp, and started crawling through the rubble, looking for the engineer in charge of the demolition.

  He found the man in a niche beside the dock, ready to press down the T-shaped handle of his detonator.

  “Colonel Peiper is still over there!” Lukas protested.

  “Sorry kid—I have my orders.” The engineer shook his head. “The bridge is ready to blow—and the goddamned Russians will be starting across any minute.”

  He pressed down on his lever, and the valley of the Oder shuddered to a powerful boom, a crash of sound that echoed up and down the river like the lingering thunder of a an early spring storm.

  SKY OVER TEMPELHOF AIRPORT, BERLIN, 0812 GMT

  Porter reluctantly turned away from the window when he felt the tap on his shoulder. The jumpmaster leaned in and yelled into his ear. “We’re going to be heading back, now.”

  The reporter nodded, and set down the notebook—his second one—with its pages of hasty notes. “Thanks for the sightseeing tour,” he shouted back. The sergeant smiled acknowledgment and returned to the cockpit.

  Porter swung around and resumed his observations. There were no parachutes visible in his immediate vicinity—the first wave of the All-Americans had touched ground more than half an hour ago—but the view of the city and the sky had held him entranced for all that time.

  A group of P-51s dove past, a mile or so away. The six Mustangs plummeted toward the ground, and Porter watched them strafe a concrete enclosure near the end of largest runway of Tempelhof airport. He spotted a flash of flame followed by a plume of smoke and debris, and knew that the nimble fighters were dropping bombs on an enemy position—no doubt they had been called in by radio, to support the battling paratroopers on the ground.

  Farther away, the great square bulk of the antiaircraft tower near the Reichstag was shrouded in smoke, having been pummeled by more bombs than Porter could have counted. Somehow, it was still functioning: guns flashed from the apertures that he glimpsed between the shifting clouds of murk, and the deadly black puffs still erupted across the sky.

  Drawing a deep breath, Porter reflected with awe on the scene he had witnessed. The paradrop had been the most stirring sight he had ever seen, and he was already working out the terminology of his story in his mind. How to convey that awe-inspiring sense of might, in a way that the readers back home could share his sense of wonder?

  He was slammed against the side of the fuselage then, assailed by the loudest noise he had ever heard. For a moment he could see nothing except flashing lights, his head throbbing from the impact into the sheet metal of the aircraft body. As the pain faded he still couldn’t see, though he felt the seat lurch beneath him, a very frightening sensation of the big transport plane sliding sideways through the air.

  Vaguely he wondered if he had been hit, if blood or wounds obscured his vision. Tentatively touching his face, he was surprised and relieved to find that his GI-issue helmet had slid forward, down to the bridge of his nose. Pushing it up, he gawked in shock and a sudden, squeezing sensation of fear.

  The big radial engine, that droning image of power on the wing, was torn and flaming. The propeller was a bent stick, and orange flames billowed from the cowling, and through the gashes in the metal housing. Porter’s face was pressed against the window, and he realized that gravity had a lot to do with this: the plane was virtually on its side, and he was looking straight down at the ground.

  Strangely, Chuck Porter wasn’t terribly afraid. In fact, some cool rational part of his mind was suggesting, strongly, that he should be terrified, but his reporter’s instincts were in control. He studied the wing, noting that some of the outer surface seemed to have been blasted away by the explosion that had damaged the engine. Gradually the horizon was coming up; he realized that the pilot was righting the plane, though they were losing altitude fast.

  He saw the jumpmaster, coming back from the cockpit. The man grabbed the overhead cable for balance, and gestured Porter toward a chair against the bulkhead wall, a few feet forward of his window. “Sit there and strap yourself in!” the sergeant shouted. “We’re going down!”

  With that, he turned and pulled himself back through the door. Porter looked out the window again. The ground was closer now, coming up fast. He glanced at the chair, saw that he wouldn’t be able to see anything from up there, and decided to stay right where he was. He wrapped a couple of straps around his waist, and found a buckle that secured the belt, but kept his body twisted around so that he could continue to observe.

  The Dakota was leveled out, now, obviously limping along on one engine. They continued to descend, flying at barely a thousand feet over a large cemetery, dropping closer and closer to the ground. Abruptly there was a runway in view—Tempelhof! He saw GIs scattering to either side of the wide, paved strip, and was mildly relieved that no one seemed to be shooting at them.

  Clearly the pilot intended to put the plane down. The reporter couldn’t see beneath the wing, wondered if the landing gear had dropped—until he saw the C-47’s shadow in profile, with no suggestion of any wheels hanging below. They were gliding low over the tarmac, thirty, twenty, only ten feet, when sudden silence engulfed him. There was still the rattle of the wind and speed, of course, but he knew the pilot must have cut the remaining engine.

  A moment later he felt a sharp jolt, a shock that hurled him sideways until the belt cinched painfully around his middle brought him to a sharp stop. Gasping for breath, he heard a terrible shriek of metal, smelled smoke and ozone with the awful, gritty taste of sooty fire. But still he looked: They were skidding on the plane’s belly, sparks streaming from beneath the wings. It seemed to take forever, but finally the big C-47 came to a halt. Porter was out of his seat before the jumpmaster came back, and together the two men raced to the rear door, pushed it open, and jumped the five or six feet down to the runway.

  Porter rolled away, grimacing from the pain of a twisted ankle, then looked up into the curious face of a helmeted paratrooper.

  “Welcome to Templehof airport, sir,” said the private, with a wink. “Property of the All-Americans. I guess we’re open for passenger service.”

  EAST BANK OF ODER, KÜSTRIN, GERMANY, 1020 HOURS GMT

  As soon as he heard the explosion Peiper knew that the last bridge over the Oder had been blown, and he allowed unconsciousness to claim him. It was a merciful relief from the pain of his mangled foot, and the burns where the short-lived fire had seared his skin.

  He awakened some time later, startled by an ominous change in the level of noise. The shelling that had been so intense and so nearby had shifted far away; he could still hear the guns, but the barrels and their targets were many kilometers away. He was half out of the turret, but trapped so tightly that he could neither get out nor climb back inside the tank.

  More significantly, the small-arms fire that had chattered throughout the night and the bleak, gray morning had fallen away entirely. That could only mean that the Russians had abandoned their advance—an inconceivable thought—or that all of the other
Germans on this side of the river were dead.

  Peiper cursed weakly—why did he have to remain alive? He squirmed within the metal trap of the tank’s turret, but the twisted metal where the shell had punctured the armor still held his foot in a vise of steel. His pistol had been knocked from his belt and lay on the floor of the tank turret, two meters away but beyond the reach of his straining hand. He knew beyond any shadow of doubt that if he could have reached the gun, he would have put a bullet into his brain.

  Instead, he could only wait for the Russians.

  A half-hour later he saw the first of the enemy infantry coming through the smoke. They were short men, crude and savage compared to the Aryan ideal of which Peiper was such a splendid example. Or had been a splendid example, he reflected ruefully, before his face had been blasted open and his foot twisted and broken in the grip of twisted metal.

  He tried lunging upward when one of the Soviet riflemen was close, expecting that the sudden gesture would provoke a merciful, fatal gunshot. Instead, the man seemed to sense the Nazi’s helplessness, for he looked up at the trapped SS officer and grinned widely, displaying a mouth with more gaps than actual teeth. His face was oriental and swarthy, and Peiper guessed that the fellow was one of the hardy Siberian troops that made up so much of Stalin’s army. How appropriate, he thought in despair: The Mongol hordes were once again riding across the civilized peoples of Europe.

  The soldier jabbered something at him and gestured with the barrel of his rifle. Peiper tried to spit, but his mouth was too dry to muster even a fleck of saliva.

  LONDON, ENGLAND, 1016 HOURS GMT

  “Operator, may I help you?” came a somewhat nasal voice over the telephone line.

  “Yes, I’m trying to locate a Mr. W. G. Marley.” Kim Philby drummed his fingers on his desktop and looked out his office window as he waited for the reply.

  “I have no listing for a W. G. Marley at this exchange.”

  “I see. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” the operator replied, then disconnected.

  Eight names on the personnel list, and eight names no longer with addresses or telephone numbers on the exchange. Quite mysterious. Philby no longer had any doubt that he had found the right program, but he did not yet know the details of the program, or what it concealed.

  The danger to himself multiplied with each step in the process. He needed to discover where the names on his list had gone, and indeed find out more about each of the names, but if someone found him crawling about the countryside snooping into the affairs of these people, it would be dashed hard to explain, German mole or not. It was time for some help. He would activate his personal network of agents, and at the same time prepare a message for his Soviet handlers, letting them know the status of the work and assigning them some of the necessary tasks. Let them do some of the legwork and report back to him for a change. On his way home, he would mark the lamppost to let them know a message had been placed in the drop box.

  It was raining and a little bit past six o’clock. A small trickle of people were still departing from 64 Baker Street. Two men sat in the small Morris across the street. “There he is,” the man in the passenger seat said.

  “Right, then,” said the driver, and started the engine.

  Traffic was dense enough that it was no challenge to drive slower than foot traffic. The walking man easily reached Marylebone ahead of the Morris, and on the green signal crossed the street. The Morris briefly swung ahead as it turned left, then was stuck in traffic again. “Got him?”

  “Yes, there he goes. Right on schedule. Punctual man, what?”

  “Very regular.”

  The passenger focused binoculars on the walking man, even though he was only a few feet away.

  “You think he’s something really special, eh?”

  “If he’s any kind of double agent, he’s likely to be a very good one, now, isn’t he?”

  “I suppose. It’s more likely that he isn’t any kind of double agent at all, though.”

  “Here now, hold on, hold on.” It was at the corner of Marylebone and Lisson Grove. The walking man stopped, put his foot up on the base of a lamppost, leaned over, as if to tie an unlaced shoe. “Well, I’ll be damned. He is a bleedin’ spy. He just left a marker at the base of that lamppost, cool as anything, right in the middle of a crowd of people. My, my, Mr. Philby. We are a professional, now, aren’t we.”

  “Are you sure? You can’t see anything in this rain, now can you?”

  “That’s why I brought my binocs, lad, that’s why I brought my binocs. If he tried anything, I’d need to look close up, like, and that’s it. I’ll bet pounds to shillings that if we go back and look at the base of that lamppost we’ll see something—a piece of tape or a matchbox or something. Mark my words, someone is going to come round to look at it, and when he does, he’ll know that Mr. Philby has left a message for him.”

  “So, do we go arrest Mr. Philby now?”

  “Oh, no, not at all. Wouldn’t do. We’ll need a lot more evidence, and even then, identified spies are often more useful left alone than arrested and punished. No, our Mr. Philby, I’m quite sure, is a very bad man, but he may yet be able to serve king and country, whether he wants to or not.”

  SHAEF, REIMS, FRANCE, 2345 HOURS GMT

  The ashtray had been emptied and refilled again, Ike noted absently, crushing out another cigarette. His eyes went to the map that had remained on the wall, taunting him with promise and danger, throughout this long day. Pins and flags had been thrust into many places on the map, marking the reports of the successful landings, but there were still many questions remaining to be answered.

  “We have Tempelhof and Gatow,” he recited to himself. “And Patton and Rommel are in Spandau, already. But what of Oranienburg?” He cursed to himself, lit another cigarette, then looked up as Beetle Smith came in.

  “The Brits have done it, too, General,” said the hardworking chief of staff. “Oranienburg is secure; we can bring in the first of the supply planes just after dawn.”

  “Well, Beetle, it looks like we pulled it off,” suggested the Supreme Commander, not entirely sure of his own words. “Any word from the Russians?”

  “No communications. We do know that they’re advancing north and south of the city, but so far they haven’t made any move to attack our boys.”

  “Well,” Ike said, exhaling a long plume of smoke. “Let’s hope they continue to show that kind of good sense!”

  14 MARCH 1945

  RURAL HIGHWAY #47, EAST OF LUCKENWALDE, GERMANY, 0101 HOURS GMT

  The convoy of armored cars was moving too slowly for Heinrich Himmler’s taste, but he was forced to accept the pace. The driver had pointed out, in tones that the Führer of the Third Reich normally would not have tolerated, that the narrow and winding road, coupled with the need to drive without headlights, had of necessity slowed the procession to a painstaking crawl. He turned in irritation to confront the hostage, who had the audacity to sleep during this tense passage.

  “Wake up!” snapped Himmler, slapping von Reinhardt on the shoulder. He took some satisfaction from the wince of pain evident on the tall man’s face as his head jerked forward and, ever so slowly, he opened his eyes and peered around.

  “What is it?” asked the aristocratic Prussian.

  “You are sure this is the right road?” Himmler pressed. “Remember, if we encounter trouble, you are the first one to die!”

  “That is a fact that I am not likely to forget,” von Reinhardt noted with a maddening lack of passion. “As to whether we are on the right road, I cannot say—perhaps you noticed that I was sleeping?”

  “Bah,” Himmler snorted, turning to look out the window. That was worse than useless; all he could see was the forested countryside, wherein even the trees seemed to lurch and sway with menace. He saw a tall pine swaying in the wind and recoiled; it was too easy to imagine some nightmarish creature lunging forward to attack him.

  “Is your driver followi
ng the directions I provided?” asked von Reinhardt.

  “Of course,” snapped the führer.

  “Then I should say you have nothing to worry about. As I explained, this route was carefully arranged to carry you between the enemy spearheads. Once it’s light out, we’ll pick up speed, and we’ll be in Czechoslovakia by the following night. There, you will have neither Americans nor Russians to worry about.”

  Any reply Himmler would have made was stifled by a sudden burst of small-arms fire. The car in front of them lurched, spun off the road, and toppled onto its side in the ditch.

  “What is going on?” shrieked the leader of the Third Reich.

  “Americans!” cried the guard sitting next to the driver. He scrambled upward to man the light machine gun in the small turret overhead. The gun chattered, but that was nothing compared with the cacophony of noise outside. Weapons were flashing, and a hail of bullets rattled against the armored car’s exterior. The gunner suddenly cried out and slumped down, falling into the compartment of the car, and Himmler gagged as he saw that half the man’s face had been blown away—although he had ordered the deaths of millions, the führer was often squeamish at the sight of blood.

  “You bastard!” he cried, turned to von Reinhardt, who was still watching him with that calm expression.

  There was another explosion and the vehicle lurched, a sickening jolt that slammed Himmler into the door, then sent him tumbling against the Prussian colonel. Furiously he punched at von Reinhardt, who tried to lift his arms but was too weak to deflect the blows. Light flashed outside, and another blast jolted the car, bringing bile of terror rising into the führer’s gullet.