Code of Combat

by Michael Asher

  The boy picked up his shotgun, raised his thin chest again. ‘Why not? I am good fighter.’

  ‘All right, but can’t you get a few more partisans to join us?’

  The youth shook his head. ‘They afraid they get blame if Cabbage-Heads kill civilians. Also many think ambush is not possible. But Ettore is my friend: I go with you. If we go now, we get to Orsini before full light.’

  He broke off, spoke to Emilia in Italian. The countess scoffed suddenly, made a curt answer, stared at Caine with wide eyes. ‘He had the cheek to tell me I ought to stay here because I’m a girl.’

  ‘And what did you tell him?’

  ‘I said Ettore might be his friend, but he’s my brother: I don’t care what happens, I’m not missing this.’

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Jesi, Le Marche, Italy

  10 October 1943

  At sunset, Karl Grolsch met Reichsgeschäftsführer Wolfram Stengel at a café in Jesi. They sat at a table outside: it was risky, but this wasn’t a time for displaying a lack of confidence. In any case, Grolsch had made sure that the square was well seeded with guards from his Sipo-SD. He couldn’t help grinning when he stood up to greet the Ahnenerbe chief – Stengel looked in a worse state than himself: he wore a dressing on his head and his bearded face was speckled with lacerations from flying shrapnel flakes: his eyes were bloodshot: he moved painfully from the severe bruising on his arms and legs.

  Grolsch felt as bad as Stengel looked: his right arm in a sling, a bandage round his shoulder, his movements clumsy and restricted. He’d been damn’ lucky, he thought: one of the partisans’ bullets had missed, the other had glanced off his collar-bone. Probably because it was a woman. Women can’t shoot straight. Had it been an inch or two lower, it would have shattered his heart. His narrow escape, when almost all the other troops in the escort-party had been slaughtered, was a near-miracle: ever since, he’d been experiencing bursts of euphoria.

  Of course, on another level, he was exasperated that the partisans had managed to stage such an elaborate decoy and that he’d been stupid enough to fall for it. He felt bad about the men he’d lost: he was incensed that Amray had been killed and that Caine and Butterfield had got away. What with that, and the escape of the two other SAS-men – Fishface and the Giant – the other day, things were getting out of hand. Confidence that Germany would win the war was de rigueur amongst SS officers: any converse suggestion amounted to treason. Grolsch couldn’t help asking himself, though, what would happen if they didn’t win. I’m a soldier carrying out orders, like any other, but the enemy won’t see it that way. If we lose the war and those witnesses are still around, I could be executed as a war-criminal.

  Still, it might have been worse, and he was grateful to God that he’d survived. Yes, he had to admit it: this was the closest he’d come to death, and in the two days since the ambush – somewhat to his own dismay – he’d felt a faint stirring of long-forgotten religious feelings. Someone up there is looking after me, and I don’t mean Adolf Hitler.

  The café stood at one corner of the cobblestone square, blocked in on all sides by the town-houses the Italians called palazzi – austere façades, balconies with wrought-iron railings, shuttered windows. The square was coddled in long shadows: the hard nickel sky above was rolling itself up in swells of dove-grey surf, streaked with strawberry ripples.

  The waiter, a pot-bellied man in a soiled white shirt with grease-slicked hair and blue jowls, brought them espresso and schnapps. Stengel drank his schnapps in a gulp, let out a sigh. His codfish eyes were haunted, Grolsch thought: a muscle in his pock-marked face jiggered. Grolsch sat straight-backed, lifted his glass with his good hand, took a tentative sip. ‘I’m glad to see you up and about, Reichsgeschäftsführer,’ he said. ‘I heard they had confined you to the hospital-wing.’

  ‘I was very fortunate: the countess didn’t hit me very hard with the bottle, and when Caine pushed me down the stairs, I fell behind the stairwell: the main blast went the other way. Four men dead: the whole squad wounded.’

  ‘So I understand.’

  ‘Caine killed seven men in his assault on the villa. I underestimated these SAS people: they are utterly ruthless. That is why we must be ruthless in dealing with them. I regret that I have wasted two days in hospital when I could have been directing the search for the Falcone girl and that British traitor.’

  The word traitor brought a smile to Grolsch’s lips. He felt affronted, too, though: hunting escapees was a Sipo-SD job – his responsibility, not Stengel’s.

  Stengel lifted his empty glass stiffly to the waiter. ‘Mi da la bottiglia,’ he said. The pot-bellied man scurried out with the bottle on a tray, topped up Stengel’s glass, left the bottle on the table. Stengel raised the glass. ‘Heil Hitler!’ he said.

  He drank half the schnapps, set the glass down: his eyes were shifty. ‘You used to be a priest, eh, Sturmbannführer?’

  Grolsch wondered what was coming. ‘As I have told you, sir. I suppose you could say I’m unfrocked.’ He chuckled: Stengel’s face darkened.

  ‘Did you ever have dealings with demons?’

  ‘Demons?’ Grolsch’s mouth crinkled. ‘Not personally, no. Not a big interest in demons in the church these days. There’s an exorcism rite, of course, but it’s rarely used. Why do you ask?’

  Stengel seized his glass, drank down the rest of the schnapps. He slammed the glass back on the table, filled it from the bottle. Grolsch noticed that his hand was shaking. He threw it back in a single swallow.

  ‘I see shadows,’ he said in a rush. ‘I see faces behind me when I look in the mirror. I hear footsteps: I see eyes watching me. I hear voices in the night.’

  Grolsch shook his head. ‘That’s strain, Reichsgeschäftsführer. You’ve been wounded: I imagine you’re also under considerable pressure from Herr Himmler to find the Codex.’

  Stengel filled his glass again, motioned the bottle at Grolsch, who shook his head. He studied the clear liquid. ‘Do you know what a Jew-Bolshevik commisar is, Sturmbannführer?’

  ‘Not exactly, no.’

  ‘A Jew-Bolshevik commissar is a Soviet Yid Communist Party official. We rounded up hundreds of them during the invasion of Russia. They’ve been in prison-camps in Germany ever since.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘One hundred and five of them are now dead specimens in the Anatomical Institute of Strasbourg. One hundred and five. How do you suppose they got there?’

  Grolsch shot Stengel a hard glance. ‘I have no idea. It’s not my business, is it, sir?’

  ‘Perhaps not, but that is what they look like.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The demons. They look like Jew-Bolshevik commissars.’

  Grolsch finished his schnapps, put his glass down. He picked up the doll-sized coffee cup, grasped the tiny handle awkwardly between finger and thumb. ‘Sir, you’ve been hit on the head with a bottle, wounded in a grenade-attack, which you were fortunate enough to survive.’ He nodded at his arm-sling. ‘I was lucky, too, but I know it’s a shock to the system. My head hasn’t been right since the ambush. You discharged yourself too early, perhaps?’

  Stengel ignored the comment. ‘Do you know that what is sought lies in a room with no doors or windows?’

  Grolsch swallowed: Stengel seemed determined to wander beyond the limits of the rational.

  ‘How could anything be found in a room with no doors or windows?’ he said. ‘What is it that’s sought anyway?’

  ‘It was something the countess said when I . . . interrogated . . . her. At first I thought it was nonsense, but now I’m not so sure. What is sought is the Codex: this phrase is the key to its hiding place. If I could find the girl, I could discover what the rest means, but I’ve wasted too much time. Her trail will be cold by now.’

  Stengel hadn’t heard the latest reports, Grolsch realized: he wasn’t going to be pleased to hear about the casualties they’d sustained. He paused to finish his coffee, set the cup back carefully on its mini
ature saucer. His shoulder was troubling him: even raising and lowering a doll’s-house cup with his left hand was painful.

  ‘There have been several contacts with the partisans in the past couple of days,’ he said. ‘My men found their camp following a tip-off. Unfortunately, they had skipped only minutes before we arrived.’

  Stengel looked annoyed. ‘Why didn’t your men pursue them?’

  ‘It was a small squad. The i/c left six men at the camp, went back with the rest for reinforcements and a tracker-dog. While he was away there was some sort of counter-attack: all six men were found dead at a ford not far from the camp. The other squad followed their trail with the dog, caught up with a party near the place where we executed the saboteurs. The partisans managed to kill the dog and elude pursuit, but –’

  Stengel looked disgusted. ‘You mean they let them get away?’

  ‘But,’ Grolsch insisted, ‘there was a girl with them, my men were certain of that – slim, long dark hair.’

  ‘That covers half the Fräulein in Italy.’

  ‘Perhaps, Reichsgeschäftsführer, but I’d say that the countess is still in the locality, with the partisans. I’d hazard a guess that she won’t leave without her brother.’

  A look of interest came over Stengel’s face. ‘The brother is still locked up in Orsini, no?’

  ‘Yes, but he’s due to be transferred here tomorrow: the convoy leaves Orsini at 0830 hours.’

  Stengel leaned forward. ‘Why is this important?’

  ‘Because I have just received information that the partisans are planning to attack that convoy. If we want to find your countess, and my escaped SAS-men, I suggest we should be ready for them.’

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Near Montefalcone, Le Marche, Italy

  11 October 1943

  The car had been run off the road into a thicket and camouflaged with leaves and branches, among several other vehicles belonging to the partisans. She was certainly an Alfa Romeo – a black 1938 Pescara, low, sleek, powerful. Caine had done some work on this model before the war, knew she had a 2300cc engine, a double carburettor and was capable of ninety miles an hour. A tribute to Italian engineering, he thought: it seemed almost a pity to waste her on a military stunt. The body-work was already battered in places: Furetto told him that the engine had been kept carefully tuned. Caine checked tyres and petrol, had a shufti under the bonnet: the motor was clean and in perfect order. Before they got in, Furetto showed them what was in the boot: blankets, bottles of water, boxes of spare 9mm ammunition, some packets of .303 rifle rounds, spare weapons, including a Breda M37 light machine-gun, and a box of Mills grenades. ‘Wot, no mortar?’ Wallace grumped.

  The big man dipped a hand like a shovel-blade into the boot, picked up the Breda, shucked the mag, cocked the works: it was similar to the Bren, but a tad lighter, fitted with a vertical magazine. ‘Now this is my kind of pea-shooter,’ he growled.

  ‘Watch it,’ Trubman told him. ‘Those Bredas have a slow rate of fire.’

  ‘All the more accurate then, innit?’

  ‘Yep, but they’re prone to jamming, see.’

  ‘I’ll take me chances, mate.’

  Furetto placed his shotgun in the boot, selected a Beretta sub-machine gun – a 9mm weapon with a slim magazine and a carved wooden stock. ‘Is better for job,’ he told them. ‘Better than Schmeisser. Even Krauts like it.’

  Before they got in, Caine broke open the box of grenades, doled out a brace of No. 38s to each of them. ‘Make sure you arm ’em,’ he told the others. ‘Or it’ll spoil the effect.’

  Furetto threw the pile of blankets into the back seat of the car. ‘Allora, andiamo!’ he said.

  Caine drove: Furetto sat in the passenger seat to direct him. The others crammed into the back, Wallace and Trubman on the sides, Emilia in the middle. The Alfa Romeo was right-hand drive, but Caine had driven plenty of Itie vehicles in the desert: to start with he toddled her along at snail’s pace, bumping along a road that was no more than a cart-track, with parallel grooves and a ridge running dead centre. It was still dark: the limbs of the forest reared like vast undersea reefs on either side, slashed through above by a delta of deep midnight blue, strewn with stars like tarnished silver studs.

  When they came to the main Jesi road Caine switched on the headlights: if the Krauts clocked them driving without, it would look suspicious. He changed down, pushed the speed up, kept the beams dipped, followed the green and bronze line of the verge with its thick scattering of russet-hued leaves. Furetto pointed out the turn-off that led to the Villa Montefalcone and, further on, the place where the partisans had staged the ambush. The boy opened the window, leaned out, scanned the area keenly. It looked quite different in darkness: of the overturned cart and the dead horse there was no trace, but Caine clocked the debris of the burnt-out motorcycle-combo strewn along the side of the road.

  Furetto wound up his window. ‘You know horse and cart is my idea,’ he told Caine proudly. ‘Is good trick, no?’

  ‘Original,’ Caine agreed. He shot a sideways glance at the boy. ‘How did a boy like you get mixed up with the partisans?’

  ‘I am not boy,’ Furetto bristled. ‘I look . . . giovane . . . but I am university student. I study law at University of Bologna. My father is poor – a peasant: he save money to help me go there. When I am student, my professor, Stefano Minotti, is socialist. I join socialist party, write articles for Stefano’s newspaper against Mussolini and Fascisti. I don’t use my name – I sign only Furetto. Then one day squadristi – Blackshirts – they visit Stefano. Who is Furetto? they say. Furetto is furry animal, very fierce, he tell them. Is small but have big teeth. They don’t like. What is his real name? they say. Stefano don’t tell them, so they beat him bad. They leave him in pool of blood, but he is OK: he run away from Bologna. Before, though, he tell me to run, too. I come back to Le Marche, work as school-teacher in Ancona. When they kick out Mussolini, I want to join Giappisti, but they say I am not strong. I am strong and clever, I tell them, I prove it. I plan for them bomb operation at hotel in Ancona: three Krauts killed. They trust me after that.’

  ‘Are all the partisans socialists?’ Caine asked.

  Furetto shrugged beanpole shoulders. ‘Giappisti are everything: socialist, Marxist, Christian – even Fascist. Is fighting between partisan bands, fighting against Krauts, fighting against fascist militia, fighting among families, fighting everyone against everyone. Mamma mia! Italy is in a big mess.’

  Within minutes they were descending from the plateau on a series of hairpins: Caine switched to full beam: tree-trunks sprang out at him in galleries of slim grey pillars, like a breakwater, holding back the wild oceanic tide of the forest. At the foot of the pass, Caine clocked the signpost to the villa he remembered from his journey out. He changed gear, was about to press down on the gas when a red light bloomed dimly out of the darkness ahead. He eased off the accelerator. ‘What the hell’s that?’ he asked.

  Furetto swore in Italian. ‘Is Kraut checkpoint. They use red light. Is new – not here before.’

  ‘Just what we didn’t need,’ Caine said grimly. ‘Is there any way we can turn off?’

  ‘No other road here.’

  ‘Too late, anyway,’ Trubman chimed in from the back seat. ‘They’ll already’ve clocked our headlights. If we turn off, they’ll be on us like flies on cowturds.’

  ‘Crash through, skipper,’ Wallace said. ‘We’ll draw fire, but we’ve got a good chance.’

  ‘Krauts use oildrums filled with concrete for checkpoints,’ Furetto said. ‘No way to crash through.’

  ‘We’re stuck then, boys,’ Trubman said.

  ‘We ain’t stuck while I’ve got this here Breda,’ Wallace rumbled.

  Caine took a deep breath. ‘We either dump the car and hoof it,’ he said, ‘or we fight it out. Which is it going to be?’

  ‘Don’t ask,’ Wallace gurned. ‘We’re SAS, ain’t we?’

  ‘If we have a contact, the Krauts’ll
be alerted all the way to Ancona,’ said Trubman. ‘It’ll be like driving up a blind alley with no exit, see.’

  Wallace snorted. ‘Oo dares wins, mate, innit? Stirlin’ an’ Mayne once drove right into Benghazi, lay up in a derelict house for a whole day under the noses of the Hun. And they got away with it.’

  ‘This isn’t Libya, boy: you can’t vanish into the desert here.’

  ‘Yeah, an’ this ain’t Benghazi, it’s just a checkpoint.’

  ‘I think we should risk it,’ Emilia cut in. ‘Or we’ll never make Ettore’s convoy.’

  ‘All right,’ Caine said. ‘We’re going for it. Keep those weapons out of sight.’ He checked that his Schmeisser was across his knees, reached down, slipped the safety catch. He glanced at Furetto, saw that the boy was composed and ready, both hands on the Beretta SMG in his lap. ‘Don’t anybody get out of the car unless I say so,’ he said. ‘If it comes to a firefight, take your own arcs: don’t be shooting over anyone’s shoulder. And if I yell run, I want everyone out of the car like greased lightning: OK?’

  The checkpoint consisted of a 3-ton lorry and a Kubelwagen, plus a gaggle of Jerries hovering like wraiths around two oildrums in the road. A red lamp was set on top of one the drums: both German vehicles were on their side of the barrier, the car on the right, the truck on the left. Caine slowed down as he approached, flipped to sidelights. He pulled up a good fifteen yards from the oildrums, waited for the enemy to approach them.

  A Kraut flashed a torch at the car, started walking towards them. Caine scanned the area for armaments or hidden sentries, clocked a wireless antenna rising like a whip from the back of the lorry. That’ll have to go.

  ‘Pity we don’t have that night-sight we had on Sandhog, eh?’ Trubman whispered.

  ‘Nowt wrong with the Mark 1 SAS eyeball,’ Wallace scoffed. He peered over Furetto’s shoulder. ‘There, skipper, to yer right: there’s a machine-gun mounted on the Kubelwagen – M42, I reckon. One gunner on stag.’

  Caine strained to see it: he could just about make out the protruding muzzle of the Spandau in the greyness – if it was a Spandau: Fred Wallace was as keen-eyed as a kite, but Caine found it hard to believe that even he could tell the gun’s make at this distance.