by Nick Cook
Even though four firearms were bearing down on him, Herries liked the feel of the rough stock in his hand; it gave him the authority he needed.
“This is all an outrageous lie,” he stormed.
Hartmann glanced easily from the barrel of Herries’ gun and into the eyes of its owner.
“The SD in Berlin has a file as long as my arm on you, Herries. It reads well... an easy assimilation into the Waffen-SS, a model foreign-service recruit at Bad Tolz and a good record in combat on the Eastern Front. Then you disappear and show up here. You are the same Christian Herries, are you not?”
Herries held the gun steady. They had him, knew exactly who he was, but there was not a ghost of a chance that they could have unravelled what had happened in Czechoslovakia, learnt of the massacre of his unit in the forests above Chrudim or his trip to Britain.
“Yes, I am he,” he said.
Hartmann gave a disarming smile. “Good, we’re getting somewhere. Why all the fuss, then?” He lowered his Walther and motioned for the three soldiers behind him to do the same.
“I don’t take kindly to having accusations of treachery levelled at me, let alone guns.”
“A little hastiness on our part, I assure you. I have to say, though, that I am still curious as to why you doctored your papers and denied all knowledge of the Britische Freikorps.”
“That’s simple,” Herries said. “Since I returned from the front, I’ve found that the British aren’t too popular here, not after what the RAF did to Dresden and Berlin. I found it was . . . easier if my nationality was conveniently erased from my service papers.”
“I see,” Hartman said, “that sounds plausible enough, if a little irregular.”
Herries brought his arm down slowly and holstered his automatic. He moved over to the stove and took a swig of coffee from the private’s mug. His eyes flickered around the hut, looking for something with which to retaliate if things started to turn nasty again. They rested for a second on the panzerfaust leaning against the wall, then moved on round the room, finally falling on Hartmann’s face.
“If you would allow me to go on my way now I will forget about this outrage,” he said.
“You’re good at forgetting, aren’t you, Herries?” It was said casually, but there was enough menace there to raise the short hairs on the traitor’s neck.
“What do you mean, Hartmann?” The panzerfaust was close now. If he could squeeze off the round, the detonation in that confined space might just give him a chance.
“Your unit, the men you fought with, for instance. Have you forgotten them, too?”
“They’re all dead, unfortunately.”
“Not all. There was one survivor.”
Herries froze. “Tell me about it, Hartmann. Were you there?”
The Gestapo man laughed. “No, I had better luck than to serve on the Eastern Front. But a certain sergeant by the name of Dietz did not. He made it back to our lines and lived long enough to make a full deposition to the authorities: that you killed your platoon on a mountainside in Czechoslovakia and were last seen heading for Allied lines. In my book, that’s treachery and desertion - and murder.”
Hartmann watched as the blood drained from Herries’ face. “Dietz, it’s not possible . . .” he mouthed in English.
Hartmann moved in for the kill, keeping his eyes all the time on Herries’ face. He did not notice the traitor take a small step backwards towards the wall.
“You have become quite a celebrity in Berlin,” Hartmann said. “A very thorough description of you, based on your sergeant’s report, is currently circulating around headquarters. The SS don’t like to leave these loose ends untied, much like the Gestapo.” His eyes went cold. “When you altered your papers, Obersturmführer Christian Herries, you should have changed your name, too.”
Herries whipped round and pulled the panzerfaust away from the wall before Hartmann or the guards could react. He pointed it roughly in the middle of the group, briefly registered the horror on their faces, and squeezed the trigger, preparing himself for the detonation of the anti-tank round as it rocketed towards its target.
In the frozen silence of the moment, everyone heard the soft click. The round never left the tube.
In the same instant that Herries realized the panzerfaust was a dud, the private leapt from his chair and knocked it to the ground. Then the others were on him, pinning him against the wall. Herries disintegrated, the sobs racking his body, drowning the savage cries of the soldiers who had cheated death by the miracle of a worker’s carelessness in a munitions factory hundreds of kilometres away.
Hartmann clicked his fingers. Giesecke and the two guards disarmed and dragged Herries to the stove. Hartmann opened the lid, grabbed Herries by his short, blond hair and pushed his face close to the glowing red and white coals.
“Now tell us,” he said, “why make your way back from Czechoslovakia to this place? And who the hell is Stefan Krazianu?” He pushed his head further into the furnace until Herries’ skin drew taut and his eyebrows began to singe.
Herries screamed out. “First we do a deal,” he babbled in English. “You and I. I’ll tell you everything about Archangel. Just let me go.” His voice had risen an octave.
“I don’t care about anything called Archangel,” Hartmann said, pulling him away from the furnace. “I want to know about Krazianu.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. But it’s good information, the best. It does not come cheap.” Herries fell on his knees, clutching at the hem of Hartmann’s coat. The Gestapo officer brought the barrel of his P38 across Herries’ face, cutting his cheek. He cried out with the pain. “No deals,” Hartmann said. “Talk, or your face goes back into the furnace.”
“All right. Krazianu’s no Rumanian, he’s a Royal Air Force officer, real name Squadron Leader Kruze. He’s going to steal an aircraft from this base.”
“What?” Hartmann roared. “Where is he now?”
“I could find him . . .”
“Then do!” Hartmann pulled him from the guardroom into the half-light of dawn. Herries stumbled in the direction of the hangars, now clearly visible several hundred yards away, beyond the flight operations complex where he had last seen Kruze. The Gestapo policeman and his escort were a few short paces behind him.
“But why?” Hartmann shouted after him. “Why is an RAF officer here, why does he want one of our aircraft?”
“He’s after Archangel,” Herries spluttered, nursing the cut on his cheek with his hand.
“And who is this Archangel?”
Herries turned round to face him. “No,” Hartmann barked, “you talk while you walk.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Kruze hid the last earthly remains of Stefan Krazianu - trousers, jacket, tie and documents - under the raised floor of the barrack hut. He stepped out from the narrow gap between the two sleeping blocks, where he had effected his change of persona, as Major Rolf Peiper of 10/KG 77, one of the resident Arado Kampfgeschwader units operating from Oberammergau.
Fleming had told him bluntly at Stabitz that, if he did go down behind Russian lines, Peiper’s identification would be a perfect alias - perfect for their purposes, that was, not his. Peiper had been posted missing by the Luftwaffe following a reconnaissance mission over south-east England in October 1944. The Luftwaffe never found any trace of his aircraft, an early model Ar234B-1, nor did it receive word of his death or capture through the Red Cross. The fatal crash-landing in the Romney Marshes on that October morning provided the EAEU with its first look at the radical new Arado machine. The Luftwaffe believed that Peiper and his aircraft had sunk to the bottom of the English Channel.
Kruze tucked into his boots the pilot’s breeches he had worn under hiscivilian trousers and reversed Krazianu’s coat to expose the plain grey which, he had been assured, would go unremarked amidst the proliferation of dress styles sported by the Luftwaffe. The coat hid the fact that he was not wearing the fliegerbluse used by German fliers - there had sim
ply not been room under the civilian clothes. He wrapped the coat tightly round him and adjusted the Iron Cross so that it hung neatly over the top button of his shirt. He looked himself over. It was not perfect, but it would have to do.
With just under an hour before the Meteors came over, he knew he had to find a vantage point, somewhere which would allow him an unrestricted view of the flightline. There was nothing else for it but to head resolutely toward the noise of the turbojets.
As the sky grew lighter, the mist started to clear and Oberammergau seemed to come alive. He moved around the low buildings, heading for the hangars that lay beyond, their outlines just visible above the barrack rooftops.
Mechanics, distinguishable by their black cotton drill uniforms, began to emerge from the huts around him, rubbing eyes and yawning after too little sleep as they headed for the flightline. None of them paused to give him a second look. He tagged along behind a group of NCOs who trudged in the direction of the hangars, trying to look as if he knew the place intimately.
He had not seen any other flying crew, but then this was the hour of briefings that preceded the day’s operations.
Suddenly he was out of the maze, with the airfield stretched before him. He kept walking, conscious of the sudden lack of cover.
The runway ran from left to right, a strip of grey that glistened in the half-light, its edge seemingly disappearing into the foot of the Alps beyond. A few hundred yards from him were the two enormous hangars that he had seen from the barracks compound, their doors closed against the chill wind that had started to whip down off the mountains. The whine of the turbojets was louder now, but he still could not see the Arados, only a few Heinkel 111s and a Ju 52 transport parked haphazardly on the apron.
He walked faster, towards the hangars, pulled there by the sound of the engines. He had to see the aircraft that would take him into Czechoslovakia. Then he would worry about finding a place to hide.
He drew closer to the first hangar and stopped dead in his tracks. Across the other side of the runway there were three Arados, their silhouettes just visible against the mountains. As he focused on them, he detected the others through the haze on the periphery of his vision and when he switched his gaze to them, more black crosses leapt at him out of the corner of his eye, this time from further along the runway’s edge. He became aware of the small dark shapes of the groundcrew scurrying around the aircraft. He strained for a better look and thought he could make out the bulbous shape of bombs and jettisonable tanks hanging from the stores pylons beneath the wings, like fat, blood-filled ticks clinging to the soft under-feathers of a bird of prey.
The aircraft appeared so ready to go that they seemed to be pushing against their wheel chocks. Soon their pilots would launch them from their Alpine lair on the dawn forage for enemy ammunition dumps, bridges and other high-value targets. Kruze swore quietly. He was on the wrong side of the runway. Somehow he had to get across the clear expanse of ground between the hangars and the dispersal area on the other side. He had no choice. He scoured the area in the immediate vicinity of the Arados for a place to go to ground. There was only one, an immense graveyard of aircraft wrecks, filled with an assortment of twisted fuselages and broken wings. He knew that if he could make his way there and lie low until the Meteors arrived, he would only have to sprint a hundred yards to the nearest of the Arados.
There was still fifty minutes to go. He wondered if he could get into a plane without depending on the Meteors’ diversion. He turned round cautiously and looked back at the barracks and flight operations compounds. There were no pilots in sight yet, only a few mechanics, still making their way to and from the hangars, but he felt that the appearance of the flyers was imminent. It was time to make his move.
Kruze was level with the second hangar, striding towards the runway, when he heard a cavernous groan, a low metallic rumble that he felt even through the concrete beneath his feet. The forty-foot doors of the hangar parted, allowing a ray of light to spill across the ground, blinding him with the intensity of the arc-lights within. He stood in awe as the doors were winched back.
The nose of the Arado that sat in the centre of the hangar, facing him head on, seemed to be on fire as the arc-lights reflected off its Plexiglass canopy. He felt himself walking towards it, part of him mesmerized, part of him knowing that what he was doing was wrong. This was the aircraft that had filled his thoughts for the last two days.
He stepped into the hangar, nodding casually to the rigger who was operating the electric motors that hauled the doors open. The corporal’s wave turned to a salute when he spotted the prized Iron Cross at Kruze’s throat. The other mechanics were too busy with their last-minute checks to pay any attention to the major taking an interest in their work. The bastard probably did not know that they had been up all night repairing the flak damage that the aircraft had sustained during the previous day’s operations. They were all the same.
Kruze stood a little way from the mottled grey and green bomber. It was a late production model Ar 234B-2. The long, smooth tubular fuselage tapered away from the glazed nose, culminating in a tall, graceful fin. The wings were high and straight, attached to the shoulder of the fuselage to give plenty of clearance to the two turbojets they held underneath. He took in the bombs slung beneath the engine nacelles and the drop tanks that were attached to the wings between the turbojets and the rocket-assisted take-off bottles. He reminded himself that for an aircraft operating at such a heavy all-up weight from an airfield as high as Oberammergau, RATO assistance would be essential for getting off the ground.
He moved closer to the cockpit. The Arado was different from almost all aircraft he had come across in that there was no raised canopy. The pilot sat out in the pressurized nose, surrounded by a wrap-around sheet of stiffened Perspex which afforded him almost perfect visibility. He peered inside, casually, noting the ejection seat and wondered whether it actually worked. It was a startling concept. Despite attempts at Farnborough and the Martin-Baker company the British were hard pressed to come up with a device that could get a pilot clear of a stricken aircraft automatically.
His eye caught the periscope that jutted out from the canopy roof. At first he thought it had to be something to do with the Lotfe bomb-sight, but then he realized that the optics pointed backwards as well as forwards. Intrigued, the Rhodesian stepped back and ran his eye along the fuselage until he spotted what he was looking for. Just forward of the tail, in the belly of the aircraft, was a smoke-blackened port, pointing aft. The EAEU knew that the Germans had developed rearward firing cannon for some aircraft, but it was unaware that the device had been extended to the Arado. He hoped he would not need it to get him out of trouble; he was relying on the Arado’s speed to do that.
An engine sound, like the rough cough of a motorbike starting up, made him whip round. The three-wheeled tractor, a rigger at the wheel, was backing up to the nosewheel of the aircraft. Kruze watched as the tow-bar of the Scheuschlepper was attached to a torsion point and locked in place. With a thumbs-up signal from two groundcrew who checked the connection between the tow-bar and the Arado’s undercarriage, the driver gunned the tractor’s engine and the Arado inched towards the hangar door.
The idea formed in a second. Kruze knew that to delay, to think it through, would cause him to miss the opportunity: he had been given his passport across the runway. Provided the driver chose not to strike up a conversation, which would be difficult above the noise of the little tractor’s engine, he could get all the way to the dispersal point. He ducked as the Arado’s wingtip moved over his head, then ran round to the front of the aircraft, nodding curtly to the ground-crew who watched in bemusement as the officer chased the Scheuschlepper out of the hangar. The driver started as Kruze jumped onto the seat beside him, but before he could say anything, the Rhodesian pointed to the engine, shrugged, and blocked his ears. The NCO shook his head, as he always did at eccentric officer behaviour, and turned slowly towards the taxiway that bisected the runway
and led to the gaggle of Arados on the far side of the airfield.
They were swinging around the corner of the hangar when he saw the small group of people not a hundred yards away from him, a mixed bunch of soldiers and, he thought, a civilian, marching into the first hangar. The goose-flesh was still rippling his scalp as the Scheuschlepper rounded the building, preventing the opportunity for another look, a chance to tell himself that what he had just seen could not possibly be.
Except that it was. Herries had a face he could never forget.
He was still asking himself why when the third Arado in the dispersal line directly across the runway from him exploded in a sheet of orange flame, the ignited fuel from its full tanks shooting into the sky.
The driver stopped, dumbstruck. A black pall of smoke billowed above the broken, burning aircraft. Kruze glanced at his watch. Forty minutes to go, there were forty fucking minutes to go!
He was still shouting his fury as the first of the Meteors screamed over the hangar, missing its roof by ten feet.
The driver wrenched his gaze from the explosion, aware that his passenger was yelling over the din of the Scheuschlepper’s engine and the eruption across the runway. Kruze felt a rough grip on his shoulder and remembered, too late, the presence of the NCO. The driver was staring into his face, a mixture of fear and bewilderment in his eyes, when the Rhodesian brought the butt of his automatic across the man’s head, leaving his body to slump over the wheel.
He leapt off the tractor in the same instant that another Arado blew up on the other side of the airfield, its attacker flying directly through the explosion, so low was its altitude.
The idiots were destroying the aircraft they had been specifically told to avoid. There was no time to think.
His fingers bled as he wrestled to detach the tow-bar from the nose-wheel of the bomber. At first, the nut holding it in place would not move, then it gave a fraction, enough for him to double his efforts. He felt no pain as he twiddled the fastener, not letting up until he heard the clunk of the bar as it hit the concrete.
