Dawn was quiet at the rail terminal; the Commanding Officer was not an early riser and, since he led by example, reveille was determined by the severity of the Sergeant Major’s hangover.
On this particular morning, the sentry at the station ambled about the rail yards, awake for once. He had fallen asleep in an old comfy chair inside the ticket master’s office and awoke to a lap full of squirming rats fighting over the bratwurst he still clutched in his hand from his usual midnight mess. One of the rodents mistook his thumb for sausage and the bite woke him with a jolt. After an impromptu dance, feet futilely trying to stomp the fleeing creatures, complete with a vigorous waving of his arms attempting to dislodge the rat still clinging to the tasty thumb, the sentry gave up on any more sleep for the night, much less the near future, and decided he might as well make his rounds.
The yards were quiet. A low mist hovered over the ground, and the rails were shiny with condensation. The sun was just hinting at a rise in the starlit sky. There being not enough light as yet, the sentry carried a kerosene lantern to see his way through the tangle of rails. He sipped from his flask, an armour against the morning chill and most likely the reason his sleep was sound enough to allow five filthy rats to climb his legs and nest in his crotch.
As he high-stepped across the rails (a previous stumble had split his lip and swollen his nose), he heard a sound that stopped him. He froze, listening. What was it? Then, as the noise became louder, he recognised the unmistakable mechanical churning of a locomotive. Nothing unusual in that at a train station.
But he glanced at his watch, an old-fashioned chunk of Hungarian silver, big as a turnip. His eyebrows gathered together and he gave a little shrug of his shoulders. Curious. Nothing scheduled. His months of night duty, due to an inebriated altercation with his sergeant, had made him very familiar with the arrival and departure schedules. But trains had arrived unannounced before, the vicissitudes of war and the incompetence of governmental bureaucracy prevailing. For example, the special train that had stopped here at the beginning of his watch and took on two cattle cars before departing an hour later than usual.
For some reason, this new arrival made him uneasy, and it took him a second to comprehend the reason—the rhythm of the oncoming train’s engine was not diminishing. Even trains that passed through Brasov without stopping had to slow down. This locomotive was not slowing at all. In fact, judging from the sound, it was moving faster than any train in the sentry’s experience.
He peered down the tracks. Usually he was able to see quite a distance, three miles down the line on a clear day before the dual strands of steel curved out of sight.
But visibility was only a mile or so on this dim, foggy morning and, when the sentry finally spied the engine and cars headed his way, the sight struck him with cold fear.
The train was speeding toward the station backward. And the cars he saw first were tankers—full of aviation fuel. He had watched them leave only a few hours before his dinner and nap. Aviation fuel. Thousands of gallons.
And this train was not stopping.
He decided to run.
He barely made the little brick shack used by the rail workers before the runaway train slammed into a file of boxcars waiting on the track.
Here was where the particular genius of Sergeant Renfield came into play. He devised a simple plunger detonator attached, not to the first, but to the last fuel tanker’s coupling. As soon as the coupling encountered any resistance it would depress and ignite the fuse. Then the Sergeant placed his charges, and this was where his prodigy further expressed itself.
He had clambered atop the tanker car and released the catches that bound the two-foot-wide hatch, flipped it open.
“The most important aspect of igniting any petroleum product is tae remember that ’tis not the liquid that burns, but the gas emitted from the fuel’s exposure tae the air,” he lectured like a Cambridge don, his madness once again put aside for his favorite subject—blowing things to smithereens. “The more gaseous ye can make the fuel, the bigger the detonation. So, we put a charge inside the tank, immersed in the liquid. It will detonate first, vaporising the fuel, and then a split second later this charge, set above the fuel, will go off, igniting the vapor. Ach, a bliddy grand explosion follows.”
He wired the charges, one immersion device and one on top of the tanker, linking one car to the next and finally to the plunger attached to the coupling.
“Always wire the ignition device tae the charge last,” Renfield cautioned. “Some fool may accidentally activate the igniter while ye are setting up the explosive or the igniter may be defective and set off the charge prematurely. Aye, you work the other way, from yer explosive toward yer ignition system. Maind ye, ye could ruin yer whole day.”
He obviously took pride in his profession. I always tried to assist when possible, and it was a pleasure to watch his hands make such quick and tidy work.
When he was finished, he rushed to where Dracula waited. The vampire was now dressed in an old sea coat Lucy had found in the trunk of the Bentley. It was too small and made him look not ridiculous, but oddly vulnerable.
“’Tis done, Master,” Renfield reported.
“Cease calling me Master,” Dracula protested. “Someone should remove the bodies killed by Miss Van Helsing and Mister Harker. Those with bullet holes. It would spoil our subterfuge if they were found.”
Pavel volunteered that there was an old quarry nearby, the waters unfathomably deep. He and the other partisans quickly went about gathering up the pertinent corpses.
Dracula leapt up into the engine compartment, and I helped him shovel coal into the fiery maw of the boiler. I was hard put to match his pace; he tossed three, maybe four, times the shovelfuls that I could manage.
At one point he turned to me and thanked me for assisting him in the luxury car. I knew that my assistance was of minor consequence, but the acknowledgement was a gentlemanly act, and my opinion of the man rose another notch.
Once the boiler was as full as possible Dracula engaged the gears, putting the locomotive in reverse. As the great steel wheels spun, striving for some grip upon the rails, we leapt from the engine and watched it return the way it had come, gaining momentum with every chug of the massive engine.
So eventually, when the poor sentry at the Brasov station saw the train approaching, the locomotive engine was rolling at full speed toward him. As he sought sanctuary in his tiny brick structure, no larger than an outdoor privy, the train cars collided with one of the stationary cars parked on a siding. A few thousand liters of aviation fuel ignited instantly.
The explosion was unprecedented. It shattered windows over a mile from the station, completely demolishing the ticket office and brick terminal building, which were blown apart like stacks of sugar cubes. Rails were bent into twisted curlicues as one idly bends pipe cleaners. Brick and steel rained upon the adjacent army barracks, penetrating the corrugated tin roof, injuring many a soldier and leaving the structures unlivable.
Railway cars were tossed airborne a hundred metres and came crashing to the ground like the sky was raining houses. In all respects, it was a most satisfying end to our mission.
My only regret was that I and, most importantly, Renfield, could not have witnessed the results of his handiwork.
By the way, the sentry was found unconscious under a pile of bricks that had once been vertical.
On the drive back to town none of this was known to us. It was quiet in the car for some time, then Van Helsing spoke.
“I was witness to your engagement with the German officers.” The Professor addressed Dracula, who sat in the back with Lucy and Renfield. “That was no simple attack. That was . . . slaughter. Butchery. So much for controlling your bloodlust.”
“My endeavour toward personal improvement is still in the embryonic stage, I suppose,” Dracula answered coolly.
“You unnerved me,” Lucy told him.
“At times I frighten myself,” he replied.
/> “The creature who impaled twenty thousand Turks as mere warning is not that far under the skin, perhaps,” Van Helsing said.
“I suppose not,” Dracula agreed. He was not his usual poised self, seeming uncomfortable with the admission.
“That could be said for all of humanity,” I interjected. “As much as we pride ourselves on our so-called civilised ways, we repeatedly seem to revert to our more atavistic selves, hence the war we find ourselves fighting now.”
I do not know what prompted me to defend the vampire, but there it was, and I did not regret the outburst.
“I have a question for you, Doctor,” Dracula addressed Van Helsing. “You knew how to destroy me, not the stake, but completely. But you did not do so. Why did you refrain?”
“I am puzzled myself.” Van Helsing shrugged in that vague Continental manner. “In my younger days, after receiving my degree, I lived for a while in Bavaria, a village that is now a small city. I remember walking those woods, taking respite between writing chapters of my first book. The forest was dark, inhabited by bear and wolf. I loved those ambles. It was like entering a Musaus fairy tale, full of shadows and the possibility of monsters, dragons or witches, ogres and gnomes, but with a happy ending, as I always found my way home, back to damned civilisation.”
“I have experienced many of the same emotions since you woke me,” Dracula remarked, “stepping into this new world where creatures such as I should not exist.”
There was a moment of silence.
“But I interrupt. Please continue,” Dracula told the old man.
“Yes, well, one day a bear killed a breeder’s horse and the townspeople armed themselves and invaded those woods,” Van Helsing said. “They hunted and killed each bear in that forest. Slaughtered every one of the beasts and their cubs. Plus what wolves they found for good measure.”
“That is barbaric,” Lucy said.
“This is what humans do,” I said.
“I walked in my woods but one more time,” Van Helsing intoned sadly. “It was not the same. We need bears in our woods. And wolves. As we need ogres and dragons.”
“The dragon is my family signet,” Dracula commented. “The derivation of my name.”
“This we know,” Van Helsing remarked as his attention was drawn away from the conversation and out the window.
Ahead of us lay Brasov. The warm grey of the quickening sky was smudged by an inky blot rising from the town. A black column of smoke, expanding as it rose, appearing very much like the dire tornado that snatched away Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.
“Renfield’s work,” I commented.
“Indubitably,” Van Helsing added.
“Boom,” said Renfield as he stared at the results of his work, grinning like a child presented with a birthday cake.
“Boom,” we all chimed in and erupted in laughter together. Even the vampire could not contain his delight.
DATED: 19 MAY 1941
TO: CSS REINHARD HEYDRICH, RSHA, REICHSFUHRER-SS
FROM: SS MAJOR WALTRAUD REIKEL
CC: HEINRICH HIMMLER, REICHSFUHRER-SS
(via diplomatic pouch)
MOST SECRET
Regarding the destruction of the Brasov railroad terminal:
The wreckage is extensive. Buildings, rails, and various locomotive materials are a complete loss. The experts brought in from Bucharest estimate five to six weeks for enough repairs to allow trains to pass through here again. From my experience with the Rumanian work ethic I would expect these repairs to take five to six months, if not years.
Until then rail transport to and through Brasov is impossible; we will supply ourselves by road convoy.
As to the cause of this destruction: Upon my arrival at the Brasov terminal, I witnessed a great desolation of the property. Whole train cars had been scattered all over the area. There were large fires amid the ruins fierce enough to melt rails and steel cars.
There was but one eyewitness to the conflagration, a Rumanian Army Corporal who was on guard duty and described the source of the incident--a runaway train that had left the station earlier that same night. The evidence that he was correct came in the form of two passenger cars containing German officers on leave to the homeland from the Ploesti oil field security, the Brandenburg Battalion. There were also two cars filled with prisoners destined for Neuengamme and three tanker cars of aircraft fuel.
The explosion of that selfsame fuel left little but kindling and molten steel, so the exact cause of the detonation may never be known; the combustive properties of the fuel itself, plus the collision, might have been enough to ignite the gasoline. The train was apparently returning to the station at an extremely high speed when it crashed into the terminal.
The next question is why the train was put into reverse and accelerated back toward the station. One of the passenger cars was found halfway intact, more exactly, half of the car had landed in a nearby strawberry field at least a hundred metres from the rail yards. That this heavy unit had flown such a great distance demonstrates the power of the eruption of the fuel tanks. But this was not the only remarkable aspect of this artefact.
Entering the car was like walking into a slaughterhouse. Blood was everywhere, the floor, the walls, even the ceiling. Dead German officers, and parts of these men, lay strewn amid the wreckage. There was evidence that these men had obviously been killed, not by the collision, but by some unseen hand. These men had been torn apart, throats and bellies ripped as if by claws, limbs rent from their sockets, and their faces frozen in a rictus of abject terror. The last sight those dead eyes witnessed froze their visages into masks of horror.
Some of the investigators, after examining the carnage, have proposed that this is the result of a bear attack. I asked what kind of bear could cause a locomotive to reverse its engine and received no coherent answer. Plus, we found no remains of the prisoners occupying the other two cars--not a remnant of one. They could not all have been vaporised by the fire and explosion as we assume the rest of the German victims were consumed. Could they have escaped from their car and created this animalistic slaughter?
I ordered a party out to search for the place where the train had stopped. One of my Lieutenants proposed that the train may not have done so, and I had to remind him of the simple physics: For it to reverse, it had to stop. This and the fact that the prisoners most likely did not leap from a moving train, especially the old and infirm among them. I ordered the rail line to be walked, a step at a time until they find the precise location where this incident began.
I had the sole surviving rail station guard brought to the castle, where he was interrogated vigorously. No more information was forthcoming.
By the time that interview was terminated, I received a report from the field that the site of the attack had been located.
Because the road parallels the tracks for a good part of the way, I decided to lead a small convoy to the location, some 87.3 kilometres north of Brasov.
Surprised at the speed of the discovery, I was told that an enterprising motor pool Sergeant had commandeered a gasoline-powered railroad cart used for rail inspections and they had driven the distance slowly and with an eye out for any anomaly.
This patrol discovered the bodies of two members of the train’s security detail lying alongside the track. Further along, past a peculiar mountainous outcropping, there was a sandy open area where the search party found another pair of bodies, German officers, slain in the same manner as those found at the terminal. An amputated arm was also discovered, plus a smattering of broken glass most likely from a passenger car window. A few weapons of German issue lay alongside the tracks, some of which had been fired, their magazines empty or near empty.
Another unit searching by foot spotted a body tangled in the debris alongside the river, apparently the corpse of the civilian fireman, a rather large man, bearing the same animal-like marks as had the other victims, a few of which had exhibited a rather horrendous tearing of the flesh at their necks.
Hearing a cry from one of the search parties, I was alerted that a living survivor had been found on the opposite bank of the river. This was the engineer of the train. He was in a much-weakened state, old and nearly drowned. When asked what had occurred here, he had a one-word answer.
This answer was so outrageous that I concluded that he was either in shock from his ordeal or was lying, and I had him escorted back to the castle for some medical treatment, enough to make him viable for an interview.
Walking the river’s edge, deep in thought, focusing on this puzzle and the engineer’s most mysterious explanation, I spied an object that did not fit among the rounded stones: a black enamelled square box. A moving picture camera, one of those with a crank at the side that winds the mechanism like a clock. The kind of object favored by our more affluent officers, hobbyists who need more than a still photo.
I ordered one of my men to take this camera into Brasov to the local photography shop and have the film developed immediately.
While the engineer was being questioned (see attached transcription), the processed film arrived, along with the photography shop proprietor, who brought his personal projection equipment.
I viewed the footage alone--the proprietor operating.
I will not explicate what this viewing revealed. If I were to put what I saw into words, you would be as disbelieving as I was of the engineer. I myself had to view this film a number of times for the inevitable conclusion to sink into what, I am proud to say, is a rational mind.
Dracula vs. Hitler Page 28
