The Liquidator

by John Gardner

  Stuermer put down the mug of grog and cleared his throat. The men looked at the tall lean Colonel, suddenly expectant and alert.

  `Comrades,' Stuermer began a little hesitantly. 'The Führer has honoured us with a new task.'

  `We're in trouble again, then, sir,' Ox-Jo Meier, the Storm-troop's senior NCO, said in a bantering tone. 'Can I apply for a swift transfer to the Paymaster Branch?'

  Stuermer and the others smiled at the big Bavarian rogue's comment, but Major Greul frowned. 'I wish you wouldn't make remarks like that, Sergeant-Major Meier,' he snapped. `One must show due respect to our beloved Führer.'

  ‘Yessir,' Ox-Jo answered and winked behind the Major's stiff back at his running-mate, Jap Madad, the wizened, slant-eyed issue of a passing relationship between the daughter of a Bavarian technician on the German-American reconnaissance of Nanga Parbat in 1920 and an amorous Hunza guide-porter.

  `Perhaps you're right, Ox-Joy,' Stuermer said. 'I think a lot of people would agree with you that we are in trouble. You see, comrades, tomorrow morning we set off on a mission which will take us approximately one thousand kilometres behind enemy lines.'

  Even Major Greul, ever eager for action, could not quite conceal the look of shock that crossed his hard, fanatical features.

  For a moment or two Stuermer let his announcement sink in, in a kitchen which was silent save for the crackle of the logs in the big stove. But if his men's faces showed shock, they revealed no fear. It was a good sign, Stuermer told himself. He could depend upon such men.

  `Tomorrow morning, comrades, we fly from Vienna to, Kharkov. There, Colonel Skorzeny has a Condor waiting for us. The Condor will transport us across Southern Russia, through the Caucasus, over the Caspian Sea to a place in Persia —'

  `Persia?' someone exclaimed in surprise. ‘But Persia —'

  Stuermer held up his hand for silence. 'Bear with me, comrades,' he said. 'I shall explain everything in due course. I was saying then to Persia to a place called Rud-i-Sat, which is about the limit of the Condor's range. There we will drop on the northern slope of one of the peaks of the Elburz Mountain range.' He gave his men a faint smile. 'Now you can see the reason for all the para-training this last month.'

  `See it ! Feel it, you mean, sir,' Ox-Jo groaned, as irrepressible as ever. 'If you could only see my backside, sir.'

  `No thank you, Meier. I can dispense with that particular treat. Now, what is this all about, you may ask?' Stuermer continued, his smile vanished. 'Why Persia?' He hesitated for a fraction of a second, hating to lie to them, but knowing that if security were to be maintained, he would have to do so until they reached their destination. 'I shall tell you. Last year the British and the Russians took over Persia, which was basically pro-German. They chased the Shah off his throne and placed his eighteen-year-old son on it as a puppet, whose strings are pulled by the Tommies. Now Persia has become the Ivans' vital supply line through which the Western Allies, the Antis and the Tommies, pass tanks, trucks, guns — all sorts of war material — to the Russians. We have been given the task of cutting that particular supply line.'

  Stuermer gave them a few moments of excited chatter be¬fore he stepped to the covered map-board which was propped up on the kitchen sink below the hand-carved crucifix, the place's sole decoration. 'Blackout down!' he ordered.

  Jap and Ox-Jo opened the windows to let in the icy air and swiftly closed the wooden shutters, while other troopers lit the two oil lamps that stood on the scrubbed kitchen table.

  Stuermer gave a swift glance around the kitchen. Everything was all right. They were well shielded from prying eyes. Satisfied, he pulled back the cover to reveal the top secret map that the prisoner had prepared for them in the 'camp', as Skorzeny preferred to call the hell-hole in which they had been holding him. 'Northern Persia,' he announced, slapping the map between the Caspian and the Black seas. 'Occupied by the Ivans since last year. Here, Teheran, the capital, with the main road leading north to Kazwin, fringing the Elburz Mountains and running north across the Russian frontier to Baku. Now, comrades,' he continued, 'That is the main route used by the Russians to ship the goods that they receive in Teheran from the Anglo-Americans, and that is the route that we are going to cut.'

  `How are we going to do it, sir?' Lieutenant Willems asked, flushing at his own temerity. 'After all, there are only twenty of us, including myself and Lieutenant Hager, sir.'

  `You mean eighteen — and two half-portions,' Ox-Jo said in an audible whisper.

  The men laughed. The two new officers were expert climbers, but they still had a lot to learn about Stormtroop Edelweiss.

  `A good question, Willems,' Stuermer answered. 'How can a handful of men like ourselves stop this great flow of traffic, which is guarded by at least one Soviet division?' He touched the map again. 'Here,' he said, 'is the hamlet of Alamut, the centre of the Valley of the Assassins. Now, comrades, I have to go back into the history of Persia a bit — nearly a thousand years to be exact. You see, in the eleventh century, in that remote part of the country, a rather unpleasant holy man named Hassan-i-Sabbath established himself as lord of the valley. By treachery, according to the legend. At all events in 1090 he built himself a castle, the first of a series, called the Eagle's Nest, and set about gathering around him his fida'is, or disciples, who were willing and eager to carry out his orders by all and any means.

  `Now, to get these people to do anything he wanted, he fed them hashish, which in a corrupt form gave them their name — the assassins. Apparently these assassins were drugged with hashish before they set off on their missions. Under the influence of the drug, they were given three days of paradise, with as many women as they desired, and in every conceivable form of sexual coupling.'

  `I think I joined the wrong army,' Jap exclaimed in delight. `That lot sounds more like my kind of outfit.'

  Stuermer grinned. 'Maybe. But you don't know what these assassins had to do after their three days of paradise. They never knew how they had entered Hassan's secret garden, where they were given the drug and the women, and how they had got out of it. It all seemed like a dream. But a dream of such power that the assassins really convinced themselves they had been in paradise. As a result no terror or torture could deflect them from the task that Hassan gave them.'

  `Which was?' Greul snapped coldly. Always the puritan, the Major hated any reference to sex.

  `Very simple. To murder Hassan's opponents and spread their master's influence throughout the Mohammedan world. From these sixty castles or so Hassan and his followers built in the Valley of the Death, the assassins virtually ruled most of the Middle East for a hundred years, until finally the Mongol hordes from the Far East overran the Valley and slaughtered the last grand master of the assassins and his 12,000 fanatical followers. The rule of the assassins was over.'

  Colonel Stuermer paused and let the information sink in, knowing from the looks on his men's faces that they were wondering what all this was leading up to. Now you are asking yourselves, of course, what these events of a thousand years ago have to do with us, and the problem of cutting the Russian supply line? I shall tell you. We are going to cross the Elburz Mountains, to reach the Valley of the Assassins.'

  `And there, sir?' Hager asked.

  Before Stuermer could answer that question, there was the crunch of tyres on the snow outside and the squeal of brakes. Skorzeny, Stuermer told himself, was dead on time. Their guide had arrived.

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