A Broken Land rtw-2

by Jack Ludlow

  From there it was another short journey to Unterluss and the Rheinmetall-Borsig Werk. With three factories this was the one he had been told to go to; what they did not make here would be brought from the other plants in Kassel and Dusseldorf — the whole, once inspected and accepted, would be shipped up to the Free Port of Hamburg. Peter Lanchester had a cargo vessel on the way to dock there and wait, provided by one of his secretive backers, who was obviously in shipping.

  Unterluss was a typical small German town, dependent on the factory, with tall half-timbered buildings with steep sloping roofs and the serious-minded Saxon inhabitants. Reputedly the hardest workers in the country, their neighbours had a saying for them, that in a Saxon household ‘even if Grandfather is dead he must work; put his ashes in the timer’.

  The name he had been given was that of the factory manager, Herr Gessler, and having rung from Celle he was expected. Gessler was very correct, dressed in a grey suit that hugged his thin frame, with rimless glasses and his party badge on his lapel, an object he was given to frequently fingering. A tour of the factory was obligatory and it was something he would report back on, this being the manufacturing works for not only small arms and flak artillery, but for small-calibre naval guns.

  Gessler had obviously been told to treat him as an honoured guest, an instruction which had no doubt come from above, but he was nervous in a way that made Jardine jumpy, given there seemed no reason for him to be. He was also a walking technical encyclopaedia who wanted to impart all his knowledge in a sort of breathless litany that left even a man with a professional interest in the subject wondering whether he would ever shut up.

  The nerves had an explanation, which was provided as they approached the head office building having finished their tour. The Mercedes standing outside had a swastika pennant on its wheel arch and beside it, standing to attention, was a driver in the pale-blue uniform of the Luftwaffe.

  Inside Gessler’s office they met the passenger — a full colonel, sharp-featured and wearing a monocle, in a beautifully tailored uniform, boots so shiny you could have shaved in them, and a pair of grey gloves in one hand which he slapped into the other — who, having clicked his heels, introduced himself as Oberst Brauschitz.

  ‘Herr Moncrief, I have come from Oberbefehlshaber Goring who wishes to meet with you. I am ordered to convey you to his hunting lodge at Carinhall.’

  He did not want to go; it was like the lair of the wolf and he was aware that the excuse he offered was a feeble one. ‘I daresay that will involve an overnight stay, Herr Oberst, and my luggage is at the Furstenhof.’

  Brauschitz responded with a thin smile. ‘Please credit us with some sense, Herr Moncrief. Your luggage is in the back of the car. But I assure you, were it not, you would want for nothing, given the person who is going to be your host.’

  ‘I cannot think I warrant the personal attention of the supreme commander of the Luftwaffe.’

  For the first time the genial mask dropped and he almost barked. ‘It is not for you to decide, it is for you to do as you are requested.’

  There was no point in saying it did not sound like a request, even less in continuing to refuse. ‘Herr Gessler, I thank you for my tour and I am sure I will be seeing you shortly in the near future.’ That was followed by a keen look, to see if he agreed; if he did not, Cal knew he was in trouble. All he got was a sharp nod, which left him still guessing.

  ‘Shall we go? My superior does not like to be kept waiting.’

  That was an absurd thing to say; Cal did not know exactly where Carinhall was but it lay in a totally different region of Germany, further away even than Berlin. That was when he found out how they were going to get there.

  ‘I take it you have no exception to flying?’

  ‘None.’

  The plane was a Fieseler-Storch, and once his case was in, there was not a lot of room. Brauschitz had replaced his service cap with a flying helmet and they were airborne very quickly. The noise inside the cramped cabin made talking extremely difficult, so Cal just sat back and admired the scenery as they flew fairly low over the countryside. On landing there was a second car waiting and now the colonel could talk.

  If he was urbane, it was in a German way; correct and, in his case, slightly boastful. By the time they reached their destination Cal knew he was part of a military family that went back a long way, and that he was related to very many senior officers in the German army, including one on the General Staff. Fortunately, with it getting dark and the road being through thick forest, which shut out what light was left, he was unable to see the look of boredom on his passenger’s face.

  The so-called hunting lodge looked more like a low-lying Florida to Jardine; thatched roof, white walls and two storeys high. It stood in extensive grounds, proved by the time it took to travel past the steel-helmeted Luftwaffe guards at the stone-pillared gate and get to the house itself, which was lit up like a luxury hotel. Dominating the gravelled courtyard was a bronze statue of a huge wild boar. Inside, Cal’s first impression was of overdecoration, not that he had long to look; a white-coated valet came in carrying his case and the colonel indicated he would take him to his room.

  Once there, the man proceeded to unpack his things and hang them up, and that included his dinner jacket. ‘Dinner will be served in an hour and dress is informal, mein Herr, shall I lay out what I think appropriate?’

  ‘Please do.’

  ‘With your permission, I will take the rest of your clothes when you have changed and have them sponged and pressed.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The fellow was a perfect servant, except when he was finished and about to depart he gave Cal a crisp, full-armed, Nazi salute.

  The two-fingered response was only produced when he had gone.

  In a blazer and open-necked shirt, Callum Jardine still felt overdressed compared to his host, who was clad in a long, sleeveless hunting waistcoat of soft brown leather, green trousers and he too was in a white shirt and tieless. Never having seen Goring outside of newsreels, it was interesting to observe he was thinner than he looked on film, although still well built. The smile was the same, though, a full affair that pushed out his cheeks, rosy either from fresh air or the unnecessary fire in the huge grate.

  ‘Herr Moncrief.’

  ‘I don’t quite know what to call you, sir.’

  Goring went over to a table full of bottles and, having established that Cal would drink whisky and water, made it for him. Interesting that in a house full of servants, this conversation was not going to be overheard by anyone. The glass, crystal, weighed a ton but the whisky was a single malt.

  Goring laughed and finally replied to the question. ‘As long as you do not call me what they do in the part of Spain from which you have come. That, I do not think, would be flattering.’

  ‘No. That would be rude.’

  ‘Sit, Herr Moncrief, and tell me something of yourself.’

  This was a situation in which Lizzie’s brother’s true story was no good. He was a lounge lizard who worried whether his tie matched his spats, never quite deciding, and letting his man do it for him after an hour of agonising. A life spent in the clubs of St James seeking to outbore the bores; that tale was not going to impress this man.

  Added to that, Hermann Goring was no fool; he could not have got to his present position if he was. In the dog-eat-dog pit of Nazi politics he was a top man, and that also meant he was a ruthless killer. For all the smiles and the amiable expression he could have Cal taken out like a shot without blinking.

  ‘I don’t think it will surprise you to know that is not my real name.’

  ‘No.’ Goring waited, only speaking when Cal did not. ‘Am I to be told what your real name is?’

  ‘I rather suspect you might know already. You do, after all, have a great deal of resources with which to check up on people.’

  ‘Captain Callum Jardine.’

  ‘Not a serving captain and I never use that rank.’

 
‘You’re an interesting fellow, but I cannot see why you have become involved in this particular transaction. My information, which I will admit to you is limited, does not have you down as a fellow traveller of communists.’

  ‘I do what I do for money.’

  ‘The Republicans will be crushed.’ Those words went with a hardening of the expression on his face, slight but noticeable. ‘Germany will not allow them to triumph.’

  ‘A man in my profession has no given right to supply the winning side.’

  The thoughts that were spinning around in Cal Jardine’s head made it hard to keep a poker face. How much did Goring know about what he had been up to in Hamburg? Was he familiar with his exploits in Romania? Was this all an elaborate trap, or would he go through with the agreed deal?

  ‘And how are you to be paid, given what is stored in Athens is for what I am supposed to supply?’

  That was responded to with a conspiratorial smile and a lie, which came easily. ‘Naturally, there is more than one pot of gold. My trade, my fee, will be simultaneous with yours, but in a different location. I have no desire to trust my funds to a Greek bank, and before you ask, I will decline to tell you how high it is.’

  Goring’s chest heaved slightly. ‘I have no concern about that, Herr Jardine, except that if it is too substantial it may be enough to allow you to retire.’

  ‘People like you and I don’t retire, we love the game too much.’

  ‘It can be a deadly one.’

  ‘That, if I may say so, is part of the thrill.’

  ‘We shall eat together, and you will tell me about the places you have been and the things you have seen. Sadly, apart from Sweden and seeing the fields of France from the air, I have not been able to indulge in much travel.’

  Goring was an engaging host and it was obvious that sitting at table being served fish from his lake and wild boar that he had shot himself, the one subject that was not to be discussed was arms sales, not with servants in the room. Cal was able to talk knowledgeably about hunting and fishing in Scotland, which he had done with his father, while his host listed the delights of the surrounding forests.

  For a top Nazi he was remarkably free of the cant that generally peppered their speech — racial superiority, Aryan eugenics and the like — and, given he was an affable host, Cal had to keep reminding himself that this was an ex-fighter ace, a winner of the highest Imperial German decoration for bravery, Pour le Merite, who had been with Adolf Hitler from the very earliest days.

  In 1923, Goring had taken a bullet in the lower gut during the so-called Beer Hall Putsch, ending up in an Austrian hospital where he had become addicted to the morphine that they used to ease his pain. He had risen as Hitler had risen, not just because he was a close comrade, but also because he was a man who would do anything to achieve power and would certainly do the same to maintain it.

  It was also clear that he had a degree of respect for his guest; it was one of those things that people who had fought in the Great War found quickly, a sort of shorthand route to understanding — both had seen the death and destruction, both had survived, and that meant they could talk almost like old comrades.

  He was interested in Palestine, where Cal had helped some of the Zionist settlers to fight off their Arab neighbours, more as a place to which the Jews, a pest to him, could be despatched, than in anything else, and, of course, the war in the Peninsula was referred to, his opinion of Franco not a flattering one.

  ‘I am glad you agree that Madrid is the key, Herr Jardine, but taking it by frontal assault is not the way to gain the prize. Talk to our generals and they will tell you that the way to win is to cut the capital off from its bases of supply.’

  ‘Or to bomb them into submission.’

  ‘A large city is a difficult target; not impossible, but the means to achieve that goal would have to be much more than the Condor Legion could put in the air.’

  ‘You do not see it as barbaric, bombing civilians?’

  ‘Herr Jardine, war has changed and will go on changing, but what you call “civilians” have never been safe from we warriors. Perhaps a few hundred years ago you and I might have met in the joust, but then it would not have troubled our chivalry to go and cut up a few peasants and perhaps rape their daughters. We would certainly have stolen anything they possessed. There is no good pretending that war can be fought with rules; best to forget any of that nonsense and get it over as quickly as possible.’

  ‘Will we have another war?’

  ‘It can be avoided.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Give Germany back what she lost at Versailles. We have no objections to you ruling the waves, in fact the Fuhrer admires the British Empire, but we are the land power to match your sea power. Let us look to our backyard and we will leave you to your oceans.’

  ‘I think there are one or two nations that might object.’

  ‘Nations? Is Poland a nation? No, like the rest it is the construct of a fool of an American president and men who were too supine to tell him to mind his own business.’ That thought obviously angered him. ‘The Americans do not understand Europe, and nothing proved that more than Woodrow Wilson’s stupidity at Versailles.’

  His voice dropped. ‘We want peace, Herr Jardine; we need peace to restore Germany.’

  ‘And once restored?’

  ‘Then we can destroy the Bolsheviks and I hope and expect that is a crusade in which, instead of being enemies, the British Empire and the Greater German Reich will be allies.’

  When Cal thought about what those same Bolsheviks were doing in Spain it was a tempting prospect, but he doubted it would ever come to pass. Goring barked an order and the dining room was cleared.

  ‘You are a calm man, Herr Jardine, and I admire that. When I invited you here, I was not sure what to do with you.’

  ‘Are you now?’

  Goring stood up. ‘I am going to retire. Sleep well.’

  There was no sign of Goring in the morning, but he did hear the sound of distant gunfire, so he assumed he was hunting. There was plenty of other noise, made by workmen building, sawing and hammering, and a pre-breakfast walk showed that Carinhall was a construction site — if Goring needed money, this was where it was going.

  On his walk he tried to sum up the man — he had a feeling if he got away from here, still questionable, he might be asked. Goring was a bit of an opportunist, which did not mean he did not believe in the German destiny of which he had spoken the previous night; in that he was passionate and perhaps that was why he was a Nazi, they being, to him, the only people who could restore the country to what it had been in his youth.

  Yet for all his more open perspective and lack of humbug, he was as deluded as any of his comrades; he sincerely believed in an absolute impossibility, that Great Britain would let Germany have a free hand on the Continent. It was a chilling thought, and one he had harboured for many years, that there was going to be another war and maybe one that would be even more terrible than the last. Old Sir Basil saw it too, so did Peter Lanchester and his mysterious cabal of backers — why could not the politicians and the people who voted for them?

  ‘It’s not impossible,’ he said out loud. ‘It can be stopped and it must be stopped.’

  ‘Herr Jardine.’ It was Brauschitz. ‘When you have breakfasted I will fly you back to Unterluss.’

  Well that answers one question, he thought. He’s not going to shoot me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Jardine had a lot of things he thought wrong with the Germans, and that came from growing up as a young schoolboy in Hamburg, having spent his formative years in a French lycee, which, it had to be said, made him exotic enough to avoid the bullying that might have come his way and very popular with the girls.

  As a nation, never mind individuals, they were damned serious and too ready to take offence. Try being five minutes late for a meeting in a coffee bar and it was like the fall of the Roman Empire; what you say is what you mean — the exact opposit
e of the way the British behaved. A friendship declared was like a blood ceremony without a cut, and God help you if you failed to meet the obligations.

  Yet you could not fault their efficiency: when they said his goods would be delivered on a set day, that was the day they would arrive in Hamburg, and he was there before them, in what was for him an old stamping ground. Gessler had assembled the agreed batch of weaponry, he had inspected everything and it was all proper; he had even tested random weapons and they worked.

  There was a residual guilt from his last departure from the city, so hurriedly made, in which he had to go without saying goodbye to someone important: the lady who had not only occasionally shared a bed with him for several months, but also probably saved his life with a phone call. The walk he took around St Pauli, with a hat low on his eyes, took him past many of the places he had frequented and it was good to know the people who had been there before were still around.

  They were doing what they had always done, selling the dream of a good time as long as you could pay, very likely purveying stuff you could buy for one mark for ten — twenty if you were a real idiot; the club hostesses were still pretending to drink what was supposed to be champagne and the heavies were still there to ensure the clients pay the excessive bills when they complained.

  The sad bit missing was the bar of Fat Olaf, where Peter Lanchester had found him on that fateful day. That was closed and shuttered, and where was he? Had he paid a price for Cal Jardine getting away before the Brownshirt SA thugs arrived to beat his brains out? He hoped not, and the chances were good; Fat Olaf was a survivor, maybe he had opened up somewhere else.

  He had walked the Reeperbahn, slipping into the Herbertstra?e as darkness fell to make sure Gretl the great dominatrix was still plying her trade and her whips, glad to see her in a new costume of sparkling gold, glaring out with practised ferocity to the street, waiting for those players and payers who wanted to go home and tell a great story about their Hamburg adventure; it had never occurred to Cal that anyone really enjoyed the first part of Gretl’s thing, it was the way she took the pain away that made her an institution.