by Peter Haden
Jan bowed his head and led Gunnar off to the stable. It was cold in the barn, but with forethought Jan and Renate had included a few blankets. He thought he would have to do without supper, but around seven that evening, Renate opened the door and hurriedly handed him a plate of sandwiches. ‘He’s having a bath,’ she told him, ‘but I have to get back. With luck, I don’t think he’ll stay for long. Just a day or so – two at the most.’ With that she hurried back.
Some sort of premonition told Jan that it would not be wise to get undressed and go to bed on his straw palliasse. So, he lay there fully dressed, under the blankets, taking off only his riding boots. An hour and a half later, he thought he heard raised voices. Pulling his boots back on, Jan crossed the small yard and stood to one side outside the kitchen door. He recognised Hans’ voice, now slurred from whatever he had been drinking.
‘Don’t be a frigid cow, Renate,’ he was shouting. ‘You should be grateful. You’re safe and comfortable in my father’s house. Ten days from now I’ll be at war. You can’t deny me something to remember from a pretty German Mädchen.’
There was the sound of furniture being pushed to one side, a scraping of wood on flagstones, then something of a struggle. A glass shattered, presumably on the floor. Then came Renate’s cry of ‘Nein!’ followed by a scream. Jan opened the door.
It took only a second to take in the scene. There was broken glass on the floor and an almost empty schnapps bottle that had rolled on its side across the table. Hans had Renate pinned against the sink. Her clothing had been pulled down, she was naked to the waist, and one hand was pawing at her breast.
‘Sir, please do not do this,’ said Jan mildly, but at the same time taking a step forward. Distracted, the German turned from Renate. Dishevelled, he was wearing only tunic trousers held up by braces over a half-undone shirt. Unfortunately, his holstered pistol was immediately behind him on the table. Spinning unsteadily, he managed to draw the weapon and before Jan could reach the two of them it was pointing towards him, albeit in a shaky aim.
‘I told you to stay out of my sight,’ Hans shouted, his voice still slurred heavily from drink.
Jan was about two metres away. Leaving Renate to the German was not an option, but rushing his enemy and hoping to brush the weapon aside offered at best an outside chance. If the Hauptmann got off a round, it might not be fatal, but he might well take a hit in the shoulder. He watched as Hans swayed slightly from side to side, his aim wandering all the time. Picking his moment, when he watched the muzzle beginning to drift off-line, Jan made his move. A shot rang out, and rushing forward, Jan knew that the German had missed. But as they closed the pistol pointed straight at his chest. Jan was not sure if he had time to push the muzzle aside and prepared himself to take a round.
The second shot, when it came, went over his shoulder and into the ceiling. The weapon clattered on the floor and seconds later a trickle of blood escaped from Hans’ mouth to run over his chin. Then he slumped to the floor. The knife Jan had used to gralloch the buck had been on the draining board. Now, only the handle protruded from the German’s back. Renate slumped to her knees, her face in her hands. ‘He would have killed you,’ she sobbed. Jan put two fingers to Hans’ neck. He was dead.
Jan lifted Renate to her feet and first eased her back from Hans’ body, then around the table to sit on the other side. He pulled her clothing up and she tugged her blouse together. From here she couldn’t see what was on the floor between the other side of the table and the sink. ‘Do you still have any brandy?’ he asked.
She could only nod towards the larder. There were shelves at the end above the meat safe and along both sides. On one of them was an almost-full bottle of cognac. Taking it into the kitchen he opened cupboards till he found a glass and poured her a stiff three fingers of the spirit. When he pushed it into her hand she was shaking so much that the liquid threatened to slop over the side. Putting his hands round hers, he guided it to her lips. She managed a small sip at first, then a larger draught that made her cough. Jan kept his hands near hers as she set the glass back on the table. Perhaps it was the burning jolt from the alcohol, but she had stopped shaking.
‘What will we do?’ she asked.
‘First, I’m going to get rid of what’s down there,’ he told her, inclining his head towards the sink. ‘Then we’ll talk. Will you be all right for a couple of minutes whilst I go outside to the stable?’ Renate nodded that she would.
Jan moved quickly to find an old horse blanket that he had noticed a few days earlier. Back in the kitchen, with Renate still seated where he had left her, he withdrew the knife. She had put a lot of force into the blow and he had to twist from side to side to let in air round the blade, which was not grooved like a bayonet, before he could pull it free. He wrapped the corpse in the blanket together with the rest of Hans’ uniform, although he kept the automatic and ammunition, plus the documents he found in the German’s jacket pocket. The knife he threw into the sink – he could worry about that later.
‘Close your eyes,’ he ordered.
The blanket covered nearly all the body, although Hans’ feet stuck out from one end. Jan dragged the shroud and its contents into the yard, then hefted the bundle over his shoulder. After a short walk, he was able to set down his burden inside the stable. Closing the door, he returned to the kitchen.
Telling her not to watch, he rinsed the knife clean and searched under the sink for caustic soda. Finding a metal bucket, he made up a strong solution deep enough to cover the weapon, which he dropped in before setting the bucket outside the kitchen door. Finally, using a strong, fresh solution of soda, he cleaned the kitchen floor. With everything rinsed away there was no sign of the recent carnage.
‘What will we do now?’ she asked anxiously, looking up as he settled opposite and poured himself a glass of cognac. She had stopped crying but the whites of her eyes were streaked with red.
‘There’s nothing we can do, before daybreak,’ he told her. ‘Then I can get rid of the evidence. You saved my life back then, you know,’ he added gently, placing his hand over hers, which were clasped together on the table, still clutching her glass.
‘On the way here was bad enough,’ she said softly. ‘But that was just some anonymous Nazi. Here, it was Tantchen Meta’s only son... it was horrible,’ she finished with a convulsive shudder.
‘Renate, you would have been raped,’ he said gently but firmly. ‘He was drunk and his blood was up. Had you not done what you did, I would probably be dead and then you would have been violated anyway. You cannot possible blame or reproach yourself.’
‘What will we do,’ she asked yet again, ‘and what on earth can I say to Tantchen Meta?’
‘First things first,’ Jan replied. ‘How did Hans arrive here?’
‘He walked from the station,’ she replied automatically. ‘He was angry, because he had told someone to phone and tell his mother to pick him up. Meta wasn’t here, and either they didn’t bother to phone or I missed the call. And in any case, Meta’s taken the Mercedes to Cologne. But it’s a good two or three kilometres from the station, so he was already in a foul mood when he arrived. Then you came back on Gunnar, which set him off all over again.’
She paused. ‘He had a couple of drinks,’ she went on, ‘then went for a bath. He was annoyed because he couldn’t find his dressing gown – I didn’t think he would need it any time soon, so I gave it to you. Then he got dressed again, came down into the kitchen, and literally ordered me to make him some supper. I was just making a start when he...’ she hesitated. ‘Thank God you came in when you did.’
She took another sip of cognac. ‘I think you should try to eat something,’ he told her. ‘If you tell me what to do, I’ll put something together.’
‘I don’t know if I can cook,’ she said hesitantly. ‘But I was going to do something with a chicken. Maybe you could cut off a few pieces, dust them in flour, and f
ry them in a pan.’
‘That’s probably all I could make anyway,’ he told her, trying to lighten the mood if only just a little.
‘That’s too strong for me,’ she told him, pushing her drink aside. ‘But could I have a glass of wine? There are some bottles of red on the floor in the larder.’
Jan finished off her cognac, then fetched and opened a bottle. As he fried the chicken, Renate felt well enough to walk round the table and throw in a few herbs, although he caught a frightened glance at the now cleaned space on the floor, as if there might still be something there. The bottle was almost finished before the chicken was ready so Renate went into the larder and brought out another.
By time they had finished and the new bottle was half empty, Jan could see that Renate was suffering from shock, not helped by the drinks she had consumed.
‘It’s been a horrible day,’ she slurred, ‘I just want to go to bed and forget about it.’ She reached out for his hand. ‘Jan, I’m frightened. Could you...’ she hesitated, ‘would you keep me company, just like you did on that first night on the road? So that I won’t be on my own?’
Jan locked up and found Renate in her night-dress and under the covers. He lay alongside her fully dressed, Hans’ side-arm on the floor beside him. She tossed and turned for quite some time but eventually fell into a troubled sleep. Carefully, so as not to disturb her, Jan opened the curtains. He needed to be up and away before dawn, but despite the vicious events of the evening he did manage a couple of hours’ sleep.
It was still pitch dark when he left a sleeping Renate and let himself out of the kitchen door. There was a shovel in the stable. Hans’ body he tied across the plough horse, judging him to be the most placid of the three. In the half light of pre-dawn, he headed off to the wood, not far from where he had first slept and then buried his equipment. It was just light as he led the horse into the trees, but he was confident that they had not been seen. An hour and a half later, Hans was interred in his last resting place, the grave smoothed down and covered with dead leaves, immune to any inspection.
By the time he got back to the house the sun was up. Renate was re-lighting the kitchen range, a dressing-gown now over her night-dress. ‘I should have banked this up last night,’ she said matter-of-factly. She put a match to the paper and sticks and stood up.
He turned her to face him and put his hands on her shoulders. ‘Are you all right?’ Jan asked anxiously.
‘I think so,’ she said slowly. ‘And thank you again for looking after me. Have you...?’
‘All taken care of,’ Jan broke in. ‘So try to put your mind at rest. Now,’ he said firmly, ‘we have breakfast then we put our story together. You may be contacted in a day or two, or maybe even not at all, but for now we just carry on with our lives. I have to be away for a few hours, but I’ll be back as soon as I can. I have some information for London that needs to be transmitted as soon as possible.’
Renate bustled about making Speck und Ei which she served with buttered toast and coffee. Jan always enjoyed bacon and egg, but also recognised that keeping busy was a defence mechanism, a way of taking her mind off things.
After breakfast, they put together a version of events. Having reassured himself that she would be all right for a few hours, Jan saddled Gunnar, retrieved his radio and code books, transcribed his message and then set off to be well away from the estate. Despite having ridden that way yesterday, knowing the lie of the land he went more or less in the general direction of the airfield. Perhaps a kilometre or so to the east, he found a suitable copse, tethered Gunnar, and set to work.
Oberleutnant Erdmut Kühn loved flying the Fieseler Fi 156 Storch – the Fieseler Stork. Trained to fly gliders in order to circumvent the prohibitions of the Versailles treaty following Germany’s defeat in the Great War, he was perhaps a little old for fighters. But he loved the almost glider-like simplicity of the Army’s general purpose, high wing monoplane light aircraft, with its long stick-like undercarriage and fabulous short take-off and landing ability. Earlier in the day he had taken a senior officer, in the passenger seat behind him, to a grass field near Cologne and now, with the aircraft to himself, he was thoroughly enjoying a leisurely ride home in the late morning sunshine. Humming contentedly, he scanned his instruments and then, as he always did, the ground as it passed under each side of his aeroplane. The Argus As 180kW engine hummed smoothly as he held her at just under seven hundred metres – low enough to give him a chance to dive for cover in the unlikely event that he encountered a stray reconnaissance machine of the Royal Air Force. The light wind was pretty much on the nose, but he looked forward to landing back at the strip and a good if late breakfast – or perhaps it would be an early lunch with a glass of beer – in the mess.
Something moved between the trees. In a two-second gap as he flew over a small break in the canopy he thought he saw a grey horse. But why would it be tethered in the middle of a small wood, he wondered?
Instinctively his left hand moved to the yellow knob on the throttle and he pulled back smoothly to reduce power, at the same time leading with a touch of rudder before pushing over the stick to execute a gentle turn. As he circled the wind set the Storch back the way it had come. At this height, with the revs now set so that the engine was barely ticking over, he knew that downwind he would be pretty much inaudible to anyone on the ground.
Wearing headphones and concentrating frantically on taking down a message, Jan was totally unaware of the sinking, circling aircraft. On his third turn, and at barely four hundred metres, Kühn risked a quick leg back towards the trees and caught a glimpse of a figure on the ground. He was hunched over some sort of box, and... just before the man on the ground disappeared again behind the canopy... Kühn thought he was wearing headphones. He had, he realised, almost certainly caught someone in the act of making an illegal transmission: a traitor – perhaps a spy.
This time he broke off from his circle and headed away downwind. Not until he was barely above treetop height did he risk feeding the power back on. Gently the Storch responded, levelling out at first then starting to climb as Kühn gradually pushed the knob forward for more revs. He reached for his radio telephone. Flying one-handed, he opened the map and reported what he had seen to the tower, giving both the co-ordinates and a geographic description of the copse, with reference to its position both from the airfield and the nearest village. He was ordered to hold station and observe. This, Kühn calculated, would best be done at a good height and just downwind. Throttle well forward now, the Storch’s willing little engine pulled her in broad circles to settle at eight hundred meters.
As Jan switched off and began to pack his equipment it was Gunnar that drew his attention to the faint buzz in the sky. The horse turned his head, ears flicking. Jan watched and listened for several seconds before catching a brief flash of reflected sunlight as it caught the wings of a light aircraft. He watched as it circled. It might be a coincidence, but there was only one way to find out.
Hastily he gathered everything together, shouldered his pack and remounted. He would not set off in the direction of the farm, but neither could he move nearer to the airfield. If the pilot had radioed in a report, he had no wish to meet up with the inevitable follow-up patrol.
He rode gently, as if out for a pleasure hack rather than fleeing an aerial pursuit. The circle pattern of the aircraft moved with him, always high, and always downwind, but following him nevertheless. Jan knew now that he was being hunted, and soon the aircraft would be joined by other assets on the ground. What they might be, he had no way of knowing.
Erdmut Kühn checked his fuel state. Unfortunately, he had been almost at the end of his filed flight plan before the sighting, and he now had barely enough to make it back to the field. But when he requested permission to abort and return it was flatly denied. He was ordered to continue surveillance, and if necessary to make a dead-stick landing and await further supply. To Jan’
s immense relief, the sound of the aircraft’s engine died before he encountered any form of ground patrol.
Kühn was not particularly concerned when the buzz of his engine became a cough, to be replaced by a rush of wind. The Storch had a reasonable glide angle and its speciality was a short field landing – and take off for that matter. Besides, it was fairly open country below, and selecting a field and making an engine-off landing was part of the trade test for any aspiring pilot under training. Often, when flying alone, he would practice the selection and approach, only pushing on the power at the last minute when he was certain that the landing would have been successful.
He had already chosen a field. It was easily long enough for the Storch. Flaps set, he turned onto a parallel downwind leg off to one side, but because of the steeper approach from an engine-off powered aircraft, he went past what a glider pilot would call “the box” somewhat higher, at almost four hundred meters. Turning base leg, he set himself up for a landing just beyond the low hedge. He smiled – power pilots were sometimes challenged by a dead stick landing. After all, a misjudged approach meant either hitting the hedge or landing way down the field, with the possibility of running into whatever was at the other end. But as a glider student, Kühn had learned to do this consistently, time after time, with no margin for error. One last application of rudder and stick and he was committed to finals. He had allowed for the steeper glide angle of the heavier aircraft and passed over the hedge with perhaps ten metres to spare. No need to side-slip off any height. Just into the field he checked back, then as the wheels neared the ground he eased the stick back even further and flared out. The Storch brushed the stubble in a perfect three-pointer.
Minutes later, pleased with himself and still grinning, Kühn climbed through the door on the starboard side of the Fieseler and stepped down onto spring wheat. He had reported his position as soon as the engine cut out, but like as not, he would be here for some time. There was a small village only a kilometre or so away. He lit a cigarette. He had played his part. Now he would enjoy a walk in the spring sunshine and hopefully, at the other end, something to eat and – never mind the regulations – that glass of beer.
