"You must stand up quickly. We must get away from here … " Strong hands grabbed him from both sides and pulled him to his feet. He was propelled through the black wood, stumbling on roots and fallen branches. He couldn’t breathe properly and the pace of their flight from the landing area was punishingly fast. Slowly he regained his breath and managed to look around at his helpers who were half-carrying, half-pushing him along.
Despite the snow’s luminescence, it was too dark to make out features but he could tell from their posture and build that they were men. Where was the woman who had ordered him to get up? The blackness was cloying and he wondered how they managed to guide him through the undergrowth. After a few minutes they came to another clearing, in the middle of which stood four horses. Wordlessly he was shown to one of the mounts and, without needing to be prompted, he got on.
”Are you ready?” the woman asked.
"Where are we going? I can’t see a damn thing.”
"The horse knows the way. Just don’t fall off.”
The other two men laughed as they set off in single file, the woman in front. Smith had no problem with riding, it was one of the prerequisites of being a cavalry officer. The problem was the lack of light. His face stung from being constantly whipped by branches that would snap out from the pitch-blackness.
Twenty face-scoring minutes later they reached what looked to be a tavern. The inn, which seemed to sit in the middle of the forest, was straight out of pre-war tourist guide. Ivy clung to the walls like a second skin, a thatched roof and small lop-sided windows only added to the days-of-yore effect. They had approached from behind the inn and Smith saw a road as they trotted round to the front. At last, in the light of the Inn’s outside lantern, he saw the face of the woman who had been in charge. After lithely dismounting from her horse, she pulled her hair from her face to tie it back, and looked straight at him.
It was Maria, the contact in the photo. She was stunning even in the half-light, the moonlight accentuating her high cheekbones and long neck. She caught him briefly with her eyes and dropped him as she turned to the others. Addressing the two men in her native tongue, she turned back to Smith again. Her dark eyes appraised him openly and it seemed like whole hours flew by before she spoke.
“You will stay here the night. Tomorrow evening we will go to the Count. All is prepared. You go in with Michael here,’’ she indicated one of the two with them, ”and you stay here until we come for you. Do you understand?”
"Where are you going?”
"We will come tomorrow, here is safe. Michael is also here. Please stay here and do not move until tomorrow night.” She turned her back on him to go.
"Maria … ” he started to say. Her name seemed strange on his tongue. She turned and waited. "I … I don’t like this. Why am I being left here. Why don’t we go to the Count now?” He wanted to say more, to prolong this first contact. He wanted to ask her to stay with him instead of Michael. He wanted to forget about the Count and concentrate on her. It was absurd and ridiculous but he didn’t seem to be in control of himself.
She smiled knowingly, "We will meet again tomorrow, Major Smith. But, for now, you must stay here." She turned and was gone, back into the night, leaving him in the capable hands of Michael.
Chapter 7
"Get up, English. You’ve got ten minutes before Maria comes for you," he said, kicking Smith’s bed.
For a moment, he didn’t know where he was, and then recollection seeped slowly back. Sitting up, he swung his legs off of the bed. His mouth was sour and dry, his head felt bruised and delicate.
"What time is it?" he asked, rubbing his eyes.
"Twenty-three hundred hours. Well, ten minutes to. Maria will be here in ten minutes, so please hurry. There’s coffee in the bar.”
Smith noticed that Michael was visibly happier. He wondered what could have brought on this magical transformation. Shrugging it off, he went in search of something to sluice out his mouth.
The bar, unlike the night before, was deserted. He saw the jug of coffee and poured some into a cracked cup. The bad taste in his mouth made him aware that he hadn’t washed in two days. His clothes were creased and he hadn’t shaved either. He looked round for a mirror but he couldn’t see one.
Michael came in, carrying Smith’s bag and folded clothes. "Ready, English?”
"I’m not sure. Is there a bathroom here where I can get cleaned up a bit? I’m meant to be meeting a Count and I must look a right state," he smiled.
"You’ll do. The Count is not one to stand on ceremony. Besides, he’s aware of your situation, so he’ll make allowances.”
Smith wasn’t so sure. He felt conspicuous in his unkempt state. It went against the grain of his military upbringing to meet someone, especially a Count, looking like a scarecrow. However, there was no time. Outside he heard horses. He quickly checked the contents of his bag to make sure it was all there and stuffed his folded overalls into it.
Maria called from outside something in Romanian. Michael answered and turned to Smith, "Let’s go."
Smith knocked back the now cold coffee and followed the Romanian outside.
The same four horses as the day before were waiting for them and Smith wordlessly took the reigns of the horse he had already ridden from the silent third man. Once again, Maria took the lead and Smith fell in line behind her. They headed in the direction of the snow-covered hills that rose up to the East of them. This time they stayed on the road which wasn’t as dark as the forest path they had used the day before.
Smith studied Maria’s straight back and swan-like neck. Despite the cold, she had pinned her hair up and it made her look elegant and younger. At one point she turned to say something to one of the men behind her and noticed Smith watching her. She gave him a quick knowing smile, said her piece and carried on looking straight ahead. She didn't look back again for the whole journey, which gave Smith ample time to take in her lines and grace and savour that one quick shared moment.
After a while, Smith saw the shape of a building in the distance. It was too far off to make out properly but, judging by its silhouette against the moon, he could see it was of considerable size.
"Is that where we’re going?” he asked.
"Yes," she answered without looking back.
The moon, hanging over the building in the distance lit up the road and he could follow the path with his eyes as it wound up through the hills.
As they drew nearer, the building started to take shape. Smith could discern towers and, as they came up closer, he saw gargoyles and other mythical creatures carved into and onto the masonry. The walls were made of large stone blocks and the windows held intricately stained glass, depicting scenes that Smith couldn’t make out in the dark. There was no boundary to the land; the road ran straight up to the front door. The Spartan white landscape and the solitary road seemed to magnify the building’s presence and Smith felt a shiver of primitive suspicion at such an alien and foreboding scene.
The doors were massive wooden affairs that would have looked at home on a medieval castle. Two great iron knockers adorned them, shaped like dragon’s heads. Maria jumped down from her horse and offered the reins to Michael. He and the third man (who’s name Smith still did not know), took control of the mounts and they left them alone on the front steps.
Maria raised one of the knockers and let it fall. The crash made Smith jump and he felt an insane urge to tell her not to be so loud. The aura of the building and the strangeness of the situation affected him to the point where he seriously considered leaving. Right there and then, he would take a horse and just go. However, his thoughts of flight were interrupted as one half of the door opened with an unholy creak. Before them stood the man from the picture the Brigadier had shown him. He wasn’t as tall as he looked in the photo and the sense of arrogance that Smith had perceived in the picture now seemed more like the professional distaste of a manservant or butler.
Maria spoke to him in English to accommodate Sm
ith, "Marik, here is the Englishman, Smith. Let us in, it’s cold out here.”
Wordlessly the man turned away from them to allow entrance.
Smith followed Maria into a spacious, yet darkened, hall. An abundance of portraits adorned the walls, with candles providing the only light. Doors led off to the left and right with a wide stairway that branched off in two directions in front of him. The man called Marik silently picked up a large candle and gestured for them to follow. Smith studied the pictures as he walked. They were old and all were of people, both men and women. A thick layer of dust covered everything and the smell of corruption sullied the air to an almost cloying degree. The filth disgusted Smith and he found it hard to credit that this was a Count’s residence.
Their host opened a door to one of the rooms and held it for them to go in. Once inside he closed it again, leaving them on their own. It was a library, the walls of which were covered in shelves upon shelves of mildewed books.
"What’s going on. Was that the Count?” Smith asked, "Why did he just leave us? What in God’s name is going on here? Is this some kind…. ”
He was cut off by Maria.
"Do not mention that name in this house again!” she shrieked, pointing at him in an apparent rage. "Never say that again in this house, do you understand?”
Her face had visibly blanched and her dark, alluring eyes were now red rimmed and staring. The moment froze and Smith, taken aback by her ferocity, looked away to break the tension.
When he glanced back she was normal and Smith found himself gripped again by the urge to flee. Had he just imagined that? Had she just physically paled at the mention of God’s name? He groped for something to say,
"I didn’t mean to cause offence,” he offered, "it just seems all very odd to me, that’s all.”
Maria didn’t say a word. She looked normal but was breathing heavily and her anger, or fear, was still evident. Then, in a moment, it was gone. Her face brightened and broke into a welcoming smile as she looked at something behind him.
“Master," she beamed over his shoulder. Smith turned. He hadn’t heard anyone come in and was shocked to see a man standing by the door.
He was even more surprised to find himself looking at a mirror image of himself. The hair was black and long but there the differences ended. A feeling of recognition and kinship washed over him like a warm draft, but bewilderment paralysed him and he could but gape at the stranger.
Maria ran to the Count and knelt before him as if he were royalty. He wore a spotless white shirt and black trousers tucked into Cossack-style boots. His presence was like a beacon of vitality amongst the squalor and filth. It all felt unreal and dreamlike to Smith who could only stare in dumbfounded silence.
Finally, he found his tongue. "Are you, I mean … I take it you are the Count?” he breathed.
"Yes, Brother.”
Chapter 8
Berlin Hauptbahnhof
They waited on the platform in a huddle. Anonymous among the sea of uniforms, only Henning’s size and Rohleder’s scars set them apart. Rohleder had brought six volunteers from his troop. Von Struck and Rasch hadn’t yet arrived and, as the station canteen wasn’t yet open, they were forced to wait in the cold.
The wind whistled through the station and whipped their faces raw. Although it was early, there were still a lot of people about and the ORPO, the Order Police, were walking around checking IDs and leave passes to make sure there were no deserters in the crowd.
"Fucking police. They should spend some time at the front before they get given their badges”, grumbled Henning. His past association with the police in Hamburg had somewhat blighted his appreciation of the state’s public regulators.
"They mean well, Wolfgang," smiled the Rottenführer beside him. ”They’re just doing their job.”
"They could do their job on Ivan. Now I’d like to see them try that,” he laughed. "Papers please, bang!”
"Ivan would never show such disrespect to the Ordnungs Polizei, would they?" added one of the volunteers, SS Oberschütze Nils Muschinski.
"Not to help the Fatherland," snickered Rohleder and they all laughed as the old policeman came their way.
Henning didn’t know the men Rohleder had brought with him, but he knew his old comrade in arms and his recommendation was enough for him. They seemed young but he knew they had all seen action in the East and Rohleder had reassured him that though they were reliable in a fight and that none of them was a party zealot. Henning had no time for ideology and politics. At first he had been convinced, they had all been convinced. He had seen the bad times in Germany and the fact of the matter was that Hitler had led Germany out of the depression in a way that had no parallel in Western Europe. The Nazis had created jobs and, with work, came pride. German fathers no longer stood in impotent desperation as they watched their children starve. Veterans of the Great War found a new sense of worth as the shame of Versailles was demolished brick by brick.
Slowly, the German people rose out of the quagmire of their past and, with Adolph Hitler at the helm, nothing had seemed impossible. He had no quarrel with the Jews and the Communists, but they simply hadn’t helped when Germany had been on its knees. In fact the rumours were that the depression had been a plot by Jewish bankers, and the German capitulation at the end of the First World War had been at the instigation of the Jews and Communists.
Henning had joined the SA on a whim and had moved to the SS. His size and willingness to fight made him ideal material for Himmler’s elite, and his shady past was swept under the carpet. But now, with the tide turning in Russia and the stories of massacres and genocide running rife through the ranks of the Waffen SS, Henning had started to question if the propaganda they had all been fed was not just half-truths, but out and out lies.
He knew that Rohleder felt the same. In fact, Rohleder had actually seen mass shootings and one of his men, Schneiderat, had taken part in one, which was something he did not broadcast and which wasn’t discussed by the troop.
Rohleder had tried to hide his horror at what he had seen but Henning knew him too well. He had told the story of what had happened after a long schnapps-fuelled evening just outside of Minsk.
"We’re all damned, Henning. There’s no going back now, the bridges have all been blown," he’d said. "This is no way to run a fucking war, believe me.”
Henning believed him.
* * *
"Oberscharführer Henning, report!" It was Von Struck with another officer.
They all sprang to attention as Henning went through the formalities of a military introduction. Von Struck introduced the Doctor. The men took in his immense height and academic appearance and Von Struck could almost smell their immediate dislike for the gangling political officer. Rasch nodded at the men and sauntered off, his interest in the squad already exhausted. They kept it formal until Rasch was out of earshot when Von Struck turned to the men. "Wolfgang, I thought I told you not to bring that drunkard Rohleder with you?”
"I found him in the toilet trying to drum up some business with a couple of queers!" Henning laughed.
"Rohleder, change your career if you want to make some money. As queer bait you’ll starve to death.”
Rohleder didn’t miss a beat, "Well, if they paid me enough I wouldn’t have to do it with strange men. But look at you, a Standartenführer now. Unbelievable, you officers get promoted quicker than Frenchmen have orgasms!”
Von Struck grinned and turned to Henning, "Glad you brought him along. He can tell us all about his experiences with Frenchmen and their orgasms!”
Their cheerfulness attracted stares, especially from Rasch.
Rohleder introduced the men to Von Struck. "Firstly we have our two ‘Untermenschen’, the Bavarians, Nils Muschinski and Jurgen Muntner, although The Führer alone knows what they’re doing in my racially pure troop.”
Both nodded to Von Struck.
”Then comes our Paderborner, Andreas Schneiderat. From up north is Thorsten Gruhn and from
that most ‘parteitreueste Stadt', Soltau, comes SS Oberschütze Matheus Nau. From the middle East of our Greater German Empire comes the Leipziger Berndt Grand … ”
For each name, Rohleder had a tale about some amazing feat that the individual had achieved, be it in combat, in a bar or in a field brothel, and Rohleder’s natural talent as a storyteller had them all laughing even though they already knew the stories. " … so Thorsten took off his wedding ring and shagged her in the beer cellar … "
"Standartenführer!" Rasch had moved into hearing range and did not like the idea of officers mixing with the ordinary ranks. Von Struck turned and met the political officer’s eyes, "Is there a problem, Herr Doctor?" He emphasised the Doctor title. All eyes turned in silent warning to Rasch.
"I must … we must … " he stuttered, unsure now of his superiority. On paper, he was in charge and Von Struck’s men were just the escort. Now, in the space of a heartbeat, he understood that the men were with Von Struck and he was just a package to be delivered.
"We must talk on the train, Standartenführer,” and he left it at that. Rohleder looked at Henning and they both shared a brief moment of amusement at the Doctor’s deflation.
"Indeed, Herr Doctor, I believe that’s our train now.” Von Struck nodded, indicating a locomotive pulling up to the platform in a shroud of steam.
"Sort the men a carriage out, if you would, Oberscharführer. I’ll be down to brief you all later.”
"Will one of the men be taking my pack for me or do I carry it myself, Standartenführer?" Rasch enquired. Before Von Struck could answer, Rohleder sprang to attention and clicked his heels together in mock subservience. "Jawohl, Herr Doktor, zum Befehl!" he barked. Rasch looked at Rohleder and, completely missing the sarcasm, nodded his approval.
"Thank you, Rottenführer. I’m glad to see that military discipline is not completely dead in the Waffen SS,” he said, pointedly eyeing up Von Struck.
The Division of the Damned Page 3
