by Ib Melchior
The soldier walked behind the tree. He picked up the two ends of the chain, pulled them as tight as he could, drawing Woody’s foot up against the tree trunk, held there in the taut loop of the chain. The soldier snapped the lock in place.
“I don’t know the combination,” Woody growled. “If you lock the damned thing, I’ll never get away.”
The soldier shook his head in mock sympathy. “Your little Schatzi will have to go for help,” he sneered. He gave an unpleasantly sharp little laugh. “When she can walk again!” He closed the lock with a snap and twirled the tumblers.
Woody watched him put his gun in his belt and walk toward the other man, still holding the naked Ilse. He turned his back on them. He had only a couple of minutes, he estimated. Three at the most.
Feverishly he unlaced the bootlace from one of his boots. He twisted and ripped off the aglet. He pulled out the wire saw and placed it around one of the chain links.
Twenty seconds gone.
With short, strong pulls he began to saw, bearing down, careful not to telegraph his movements with his shoulders. He listened. He did not turn around to watch.
“Now, little Schatzi,” he heard the soldier say, the man’s voice grating in his ears. “Now we come to you. And I am first.”
He heard the other man grumble. “Always you first, Felix. To the devil with that! This time it is me first! And what about the money? I want half.”
“Schon gut, Helmut, schon gut,” the soldier placated his companion. “Here. We will divide it.”
Woody doubled his efforts. A minute gone. More. He was too keyed up to gauge time. He peered at the chain link. Already a deep groove had been sawed into the metal.
“So,” he heard the soldier say, “you got your money. Now, I will take the girl.”
He heard scuffling sounds. Grunts. A low oath. He expected to hear Ilse scream, but she uttered not a sound.
Two minutes gone.
“Verdammt nochmal! Hold her arms, Helmuth!” he heard the soldier pant. “I do not want to have to knock her out. It is no fun that way.”
Almost through. The wire bit steadily into the metal. His fingers were bleeding where he gripped the saw, pulling it rapidly back and forth.
He was through. Bless that Limey bastard, Forbes, he thought. With all his might he pulled on the chain—and the link opened up. In seconds he had it unwrapped from his foot and from the tree.
He stood up, the chain and lock dangling from his bloody hand.
He looked. Eyes burning with hate, he looked.
In the little clearing a short distance away Ilse was lying on the ground. Fiercely, silently she was fighting against the soldier who was struggling with her long, naked legs, his own pants bunched around his feet. Savagely Ilse scratched, kicked, and twisted as the other man, kneeling at her head, pinned her arms to the ground. Totally intent upon subduing the girl, they did not notice Woody.
In a few steps he had covered the ground between them. He swung the chain and lock and struck the soldier a vicious blow to the temple. Instantly the man collapsed across the supine girl. Startled, the other man looked up, in time to register his utter astonishment as Woody’s boot caught him squarely on the chin.
Woody threw the chain away. He pulled the soldier off Ilse and helped her to her feet. He put his arms around her. For a brief moment they clung to each other.
“Quickly,” he breathed, “put your clothes on.”
She hurried to comply.
Woody looked at the two unconscious men. They would live. But they would not forget their little encounter in the woods. Not ever. For a moment he was tempted to take the soldier’s gun. He thought better of it. He had already once made the decision not to carry a weapon. It was the right one. He picked up the gun and hurled it into the woods as far as he could. He retrieved his watch and his money. He picked up the papers and I.D.
Ilse was dressed. Woody wheeled the motorcycle down to the path—and within a few minutes they were back on the road.
It was 0727 hours when they passed through the village of Schnuttenbach, seventy-five kilometers from Memmingen.
They would be at the Achse Anlaufstelle before 1000 hours.
Willi looked at his watch. Again. 0942 hours. The truck was more than an hour late.
The worry had been slow to build, but now it was stiff and taut in him.
They were waiting at a little shed near a row of warehouses at the railroad yard. Obviously their transportation could not pick them up directly at the Anlaufstelle. The shed was locked and they had to wait outside. Because it was Sunday there were only a few workers about. All men. It was both a blessing and a curse, Willi thought. A blessing because curious would-be inquisitors were few; a curse because they were dangerously exposed out in the open. Especially with Eva, he felt, a woman and pregnant, sitting on a bench at the shed, sticking out like a coffee bean in a bowl of rice.
Anxiously he searched the road with his eyes.
Nothing.
Scheissdreck! Nothing ever went as planned.
He took a deep breath. Easy. He realized he was becoming edgy. Being shuttled about by a succession of strangers was getting on his nerves. Having to depend blindly on people he knew nothing about. He liked to depend on himself. He had been trained to do so. He was used to it.
Ludwig, the plant manager, had rounded up motor transportation for them, at least. A truck. Delivering the Ami newspaper, Stars and Stripes. The truck would take them to the next Anlaufstelle in Steingaden in the Allgäu, close to the Alps. Willi had raised an eyebrow at this intelligence, but Ludwig had explained to him that, as the Ami combat soldiers went home, more and more German drivers were hired by the American Army to drive such nonmilitary assignments. The Ami security and screening was so lax, he’d told him, that the Achse had been able to place several men, using false names, in such positions. The Stars and Stripes trucks could go virtually anywhere, unmolested at checkpoints and by MPs. The driver would simply smile and hand out a few copies of the paper—to be cheerfully waved on by the soldiers, who were blithely unaware that Achse travelers were hidden in the back behind the stacked-up bundles of papers. It was foolproof. And not a little ironic.
He frowned. Again he wondered if he should return to the ropery and Ludwig. And run the risk of missing the truck, if it should show up.
He’d give it another five minutes. No more.
He glanced at Eva, sitting quietly on the bench. She seemed composed, patient, as she waited. She was quite a woman, he thought.
Eva hated the waiting. In her mind a problem had the habit of growing in ever greater proportions to the time spent waiting. She felt tense from head to foot. She struggled not to show it. She did not wish to add to Willi’s worries. Only once before in her life did she remember a waiting as unbearably strained. It had been during the afternoon of the 20th of July, about a year before.
She and her friend, Herta Schneider, had gone swimming in the Königsee near Berchtesgaden. She had been lying on a wooden raft out in the lake, resting before swimming back to shore, when she suddenly saw one of the Führer’s private cars approaching rapidly on the road from the Berghof. She had immediately been filled with a feeling of disaster. She had dived into the water and swum as fast as she could to shore, where a white-faced chauffeur informed her that there had been an attempt to assassinate the Führer at his headquarters at Rastenburg in East Prussia. A bomb. No one knew exactly what had happened, but the Führer was believed to be alive. She had rushed back to the Berghof. She had at once tried to telephone Adolf, but she had not been able to get through. And no one could get any definite information. Wait, they had told her. Wait . . .
And she had waited. And the waiting time had conjured up ever more cruel visions of bloodshed, of mutilation and death. The waiting had been the worst.
When finally she did reach Adolf, he had assured her he was safe.
She had been horrified when, a few days later, he had shown her the uniform he had been wearin
g when the assassin’s bomb went off. Bloodstained, tattered, and imbedded with splinters and dirt, it had rekindled her terror.
And she remembered Adolf taking her by her shoulders and gazing into her eyes as he said: “It is by the grace of Providence that I have been spared and chosen to lead my people. This miraculous escape from death more than ever has convinced me that it is my sacred fate to be victorious in the war. And in my mission!”
She sighed. Gently she touched her swollen belly.
The Führer’s greater goal would have to be left to his heir.
Her child.
“Eva!” Willi’s voice shook her out of her reveries. “Here he comes!”
The truck skidded to a stop at the shed. Quickly Willi strode up to the cab. His eyes flashed at the driver. “What the devil kept you?” he barked.
“Nur ruhig—take it easy, Kamerad,” the driver grinned. A stocky, middle-aged man with a neck that disappeared into his shoulders, he leaned out of the cab window. On his weathered, ruddy face, directly under his nose, a small patch of skin appeared lighter than the rest, where he apparently had shaven off his Hitler mustache. “I did not think you would want to share your trip with an Ami sergeant.”
Willi gave him a sharp look.
“The Scheisskerl bummed a ride,” the driver explained. “Just as I was on my way here. I could not turn him down. Had to double back all the way from Woringen. To pick you up. Be glad I am here at all.”
He looked around the yard, moving his head stiffly on his thick neck.
“Get in the back,” he said. “Behind the bundles. Los! We have to be on our way. I have a lot of catching up to do.”
Willi helped Eva into the back of the truck, and in less than a minute they were careening down the road toward Steingaden.
They did not see the motorcycle that passed them, with a man and a woman on it, headed for the area near the railroad yards.
If they had, it would have meant nothing to them.
SS Sturmbannführer Oskar Strelitz walked rapidly toward the Memmingen Anlaufstelle at Seilerei Rademacher near the railroad yards.
He had watched Eva and her companion leave in the Stars and Stripes truck. They were on their way again. Mingling with the railroad workers in the yard, being inconspicuous and seeming to belong at the same time, had not been easy because there were so few men working. But he had busied himself walking along the tracks with a pail picking up stray pieces of coal for salvage, and no one had questioned him. He had been able to keep an eye on Eva and the young SS officer with her.
He had been outraged at the length of time Frau Hitler had been forced to wait at the shed. Placing her in that kind of dangerous situation was inexcusable. The agent at the Anlaufstelle would be held to account; he would see to that personally.
Ahead he could see the long, narrow building that housed the ropewalk. Although several buildings on the street were damaged, some totally in ruins, the rope manufacturing plant seemed relatively untouched by the shelling. He would get the necessary information from the agent in charge and be on his way, following his wards.
He was about to cross the street when he saw a motorcycle with a young man and woman drive up and come to a halt. He stopped. He watched. The young man inspected the sign on the old red-brick building. He and the woman dismounted and, wheeling his bike, the young man led the girl into the plant yard.
Strelitz frowned. Instinctively he sensed that the two young people were Achse travelers. Who were they? They were very close behind Frau Hitler and her escort. He knew that when Eva left the Harz hideout there had been no one traveling the escape route behind her at least not within a three-day span. How had this couple caught up? And more important, why? He felt the familiar tense alertness grow in him. With their own transportation, the couple might easily overtake Frau Hitler. At the next Anflaufstelle. Is that what they were after? If so, why? He had best find out as much as he could about the young couple. Determine if they might possibly be a threat. He was suspicious. Well and good. It was his business to be. The Führer, himself, had charged him so. It was, of course, possible that the young man was at the plant on business other than the Achse. Employment, for instance. But he did not believe it. Even if he did, he would still have to check him out. Thoroughly.
Quickly he decided on his course of action. He would wait. Let the newcomers get settled in, and then confront the agent.
He looked around. He needed a reason for hanging around. Almost directly across from the plant a building lay in ruins with bricks and broken masonry in jumbled piles. He took off his jacket and began to stack the bricks from a crumbled wall. He had a perfect view of the plant gate while he worked.
Twenty minutes he thought. He would wait twenty minutes before going in. He had no idea what would ensue. All he knew was—he could handle it.
Heinz Ludwig sneaked another look at the girl who had given her name as Ilse, as he conducted the newly arrived travelers through the ropery to the room in the back. She was a real Muckerl—a real looker—he thought admiringly. Even better looking than the young woman who had just left. Interesting, he mused. Two women. One immediately after the other. The only two he had processed at his stop.
In the room Woody turned to him. “Herr Ludwig,” he said in a low, confidential voice. “A word with you, if you please.” As Ilse, looking pale and exhausted, lay down on one of the beds, Woody took Ludwig aside. He tried to size the man up. How best to get the information he wanted without arousing suspicion.
“Herr Ludwig,” he said, “when do you think we can be on our way?”
“As early as tomorrow,” Ludwig said. “You will be traveling by truck. It leaves the area at half past eight in the morning.”
“That would indeed be excellent, Herr Ludwig,” Woody said. “But we have our own transportation. A motorcycle. All we need is to have our papers fixed up, a little gasoline—and the necessary information to take us to the next Anlaufstelle by tonight.” He lowered his voice. He gave a quick glance toward the resting Ilse. “You must understand, Herr Ludwig,” he whispered conspiratorially. “It is not easy to have to travel with a woman. She gets tired. And impatient at the same time. Like a woman, she cannot wait. Everything must turn around her wishes. I am sure you understand.” He sighed, much put upon. “I have been given responsibility for her. And I should very much like to get her to our destination as quickly as possible. That is what she demands. And I want that, too, before she . . .” He shrugged eloquently. “I should like to leave here as soon as possible, Herr Ludwig. I am certain you can arrange it.”
Ludwig frowned. He would have liked to keep the good-looking woman around. At least for the night. One never knew. He nodded slowly. “It will be arranged,” he said.
Woody beamed at him. “I am grateful, Herr Ludwig. It is a bother, having to drag a woman along. I do not know why I was so singled out.”
“If it is any consolation, Herr Bauhacker,” Ludwig smiled thinly at him. “You are not the only one.”
Woody looked at him in surprise. “Wirklich!” he exclaimed. “Really! How extraordinary. I cannot for the life of me think of any woman who would need to avail herself of the—the special travel accommodations of the Achse. Are you certain you are not mistaken?”
“Of course,” Ludwig said shortly, a hint of offense in his voice. “There was another couple. They only just left a couple of hours ago.”
Woody felt his heart skip a beat. Eva! He grinned crookedly at Ludwig. “I wish the poor dolt good luck,” he said fervently. “I know what he must have to put up with.” He looked earnestly at Ludwig. “I am grateful,” he said. “We shall wait here for our papers.”
Ludwig nodded. “It will take an hour,” he said. “Perhaps two. It will be no trouble.”
He left.
In the ruins outside, opposite the plant, SS Sturmbannführer Oskar Strelitz looked at his watch. Twenty minutes.
He placed the brick he held in his hand on a stack. He put on his jacket and briskly
walked across the street to Seilerei Rademacher.
Plant manager Heinz Ludwig stared at the grim, imposing figure of a man towering over him.
“It is impossible,” he said. “In no way can I do what you ask. I do not have the authority. Only in emergency . . .”
“I strongly suggest you take another look at my authority,” Strelitz interrupted him harshly. “I am certain you recognize the signature on it.”
Ludwig obediently looked at the papers the man, identified in them as SS Sturmbannführer Oskar Strelitz, had given to him. On special mission for the Führer, Adolf Hitler, he read. Authority not to be questioned. Full cooperation by all officials demanded. No exceptions. He stared at the signature. He nodded.
“The Führer is dead,” he said tonelessly.
“As dead as you will be, Herr Ludwig,” Strelitz said quietly, “if you do not at once comply with my orders.” He glared icily at the manager. “Remember, Herr Ludwig. The Brüderschaft— the Brotherhood—is very much alive. They fully back the Führer’s commands. They will not look kindly on any—obstruction.”
Ludwig swallowed. “Very well,” he agreed “I will make contact with officials of the Verteilungsstab. They will make some calls.” He handed the papers back to Strelitz. “I will get you your information.”
The cool water soothed the lacerations on Woody’s palms, caused by his grip on the wire saw. Ilse looked concerned as she gently bathed the bloody crusts, soaking them off.
“I’ll be okay,” Woody said. The hands hurt like hell. And gripping the damned handlebars on the motorbike hadn’t exactly been therapeutic. If only the cuts didn’t get infected.
He glanced at his watch. It had been better than two and a half hours since Ludwig left them. Where the hell was the bastard?
Suddenly the door to the room opened. A stranger—a tall, sturdy man around forty—entered, followed by a cowed-looking Ludwig.
Without a word or a glance at the two people standing at the washstand, the stranger marched to the only table in the room. Woody watched him. Obviously a military man, he thought. Another traveler? Not the way he was taking charge. Who then? What the hell was up? The hackles on the back of his neck itched. Trouble!