"Perhaps you're right."
"Of course I'm right," Gregory muttered impatiently. "Don't waste any more time in arguing; we haven't got a moment to lose."
"You've thought out a plan, then?"
"I wouldn't say that; it's lust a hunch that we might be able to pull a fast one on these swine while they're collecting their wounded. Tread as softly as you can now and follow me."
For some moments now the Nazis had given up sending pot-shots into the wood. Cautiously at first, and then more loudly, they had been calling to one another until, reassured by their continued immunity from attack, they evidently believed that their surviving enemies had given up the fight and made off. The unwounded were now emerging from their hiding places to give first aid to the wounded and to search for their dead. The woods were silent once more, except for the sound of their voices which came quite clearly and gave a good indication of their positions.
Using extreme caution Gregory and Charlton moved in a wide semi circle round the area occupied by the Nazis, until they struck the lane on the right hand side of the cottage and about half a mile from it. The little building was now almost burnt out and the flames had died down, but a red glow from the ashes still lit its surroundings for some distance. At the edge of the wood Gregory paused and pointed. The motor truck which had brought the S.S. men from Dornitz was still there, parked on the roadside about half way between the place where they stood and the remains of the cottage.
The wood was higher than the road by about four feet; so having warily tiptoed along, weaving their way in and out among the trees on the top of the bank until they were opposite the truck, they were able to look down into it.
As they paused there, holding their breath, two S.S. men, one of whom held a torch, were just lifting a dead or unconscious companion into the back of the open vehicle, and a minute later the torch moved disclosing the bodies of two other Nazis who had been laid out on its floor boards. After the third body had been placed beside the others the man with the torch muttered something and set off at a quick walk down the road towards the cottage, leaving his helper who presumably was the driver just below the place where Gregory and Charlton were crouching. Lighting a cigarette he remained there, his back towards there, facing his van.
Gregory waited until the first man had climbed the bank and disappeared into the trees further along the road then, clubbing his shot gun, he rose slowly to his feet. Balancing himself carefully he raised the gun high in the air, leant forward and let the driver have it. The heavy wooden stock hit the Nazi full on the top of the head. He went down like a pole axed ox, without even a murmur.
"Quick " Gregory whispered, springing down the bank. "You get the engine going while I heave this tell tale cargo into the ditch."
As Freddie scrambled up into the driver's seat Gregory seized the nearest body by the boots and, with one violent jerk, dragged it out of the back of the truck. The engine sputtered for a minute, on the bad petrol. then it burst into a steady roar.
Gregory grabbed a handhold, hauled himself up into the body of the van and veiled
"Go on, man! What the hell are you waiting for?" "You," Freddie yelled back.
"I'm all right. Drive on, for God's sake, or they'll shoot us as we pass the cottage "
The truck moved off with a jerk which nearly threw Gregory ff his feet. Steadying himself with an effort he got a grip on he second Nazi and, exerting all his strength, bundled him overboard; then lurching towards the third in the wildly rocking van he pushed him out of the back, gasped with relief arid flung himself flat.
Once Freddie had shifted gear their get away was so swift hat the remaining Nazis had not enough time to guess what was Happening. No shots came at the truck as it roared past the lowing embers of the cottage and in another moment it was Hurtling away at the top of its speed down the road into the darkness.
Three quarters of a mile further on the lane ended, coming out at right angles into a second class road. As the headlights glimmered on a wire fence dead ahead Charlton jammed on his brakes and brought the truck to a skidding halt.
"Crossroads; which way do you want me to take?" he sang out.
"Half a minute." jumping out of the back Gregory scrambled up the bank on the corner to a signpost which he had glimpsed outlined against a break in the clouds where the moonlight was now filtering through and tried to decipher what was written on it. The bank brought his head within a few inches of the lettering and by holding up matches one after he other their light was just sufficient for him to read
DORNITZ 2 KILOMETRES" on one arm and "GLOINE 3.5 KILOMET'RES' on the other.
"Turn left," he shouted as he ran back and jumped up reside Charlton on the driver's seat. "This road will take us to a place called Gloine. Where the devil that is God knows, but anyhow it's in the opposite direction to Dornitz and we daren't run through there in case the police recognize this van and want to know how we got hold of it.'
The road was fairly flat and Freddie pushed the lorry along at the top of its speed through the sandy Brandenburg countryside which was broken only here and there by woods and was now, outside the glow of the headlights, hidden by the darkness.
Five or six minutes later they rumbled into a straggling township. It was nearly two o'clock in the morning so no one was about, with the exception of a solitary policeman who was standing in the little square beside a memorial to the fallen of the last Great War.
"Drive straight on." muttered Gregory as the lamps of the truck lit a road sign reading: "GORZKE 10 KILOMETRES" and "WIESENBURG 18 KILOMETRES".
He had never heard of these places either; but the wintry night sky was fairly clear and on their way to Gloine he had had an opportunity to get his bearing from the stars and from what he could recall of the map which von Lutz had drawn for them that evening. He now knew the direction in which they were heading and in any case it would have been madness to pull up and ask a policeman, since as soon as the surviving Nazis could reach a telephone they would report the theft of their truck and send out a general call to have it held up wherever sighted.
"Where are we going?" asked Freddie as they left the last houses of Gloine behind and headed for the open country once more.
"This road heads almost due east, which is a bit of luck for us," Gregory replied. "Sooner or later it must get us to Berlin."
” Berlin?" echoed Freddie. "Are you crazy? That's the last place we want to go to 1 I thought you meant to head for the Dutch frontier."
"So you're still thinking of that girl of yours, Angela Fordyce, eh? Well, maybe we'll get to Holland and you'll be able to see her yet, but first I want to find out what's happened to Erika."
"But damn it, man! That means running both our heads into the noose. In a place like Berlin we're absolutely certain to be captured. Besides, we must make the utmost of our start. Our only chance is to make a dash for the Dutch frontier right away."
"Not necessarily, Freddie. And if I were doing any dashing. for frontiers I should head for Denmark, which is nearer than Holland by hundreds of miles."
"Well, I'm jolly sorry for you about Erika, and all that, but I don't think you're quite playing the game in boggling our only chance of escape."
"All right, my dear fellow," Gregory shrugged, have it your own way; just pull up and drop me here. I'll make you a present of my half of the van and you can drive straight to The Hague or wherever it is your delightful young woman hangs out."
"But my German's not half good enough yet," exclaimed the exasperated Freddie. "I'd never be able to get all that way on my own."
"Of course you wouldn't, dear boy. I don't suppose this thing’s got enough petrol in it to do a hundred kilometres, and here isn't a service station in Germany out of which you could wangle another gallon without me to help you. Even if you succeeded in reaching the frontier you wouldn't stand a dog's chance of getting across it. As it is, we shall have to ditch the truck in half an hour or less because once those swine we left in he wood get t
o a telephone every policeman in Brandenburg will be on the look out for it. That's why putting both our girl friends entirely out of the question we should be absolutely mad to try to make a dash for any frontier at the moment; and why, even if I were not anxious to find out what has happened to Erika, I should be heading for Berlin."
"I suppose you're right about our having to ditch the van pretty soon," Charlton admitted reluctantly, "but the thought of trying to keep out of trouble in a great city sends cold shivers town my spine."
"Don't let it. There's an old Chinese saying which I've often 'found to be a very true one. `When thou wouldst be secret do by business in a crowd'. If only we can get to Berlin we'll be all right, but the problem is how to get there."
Gorzke proved to be a larger town than Gloine but owing to he late hour it was almost as deserted. They had to pull up for a moment in its central square to find direction signs but on 'reading them Gregory saw "WIESENBURG 8 KILO and under it "BELZIG 19 KILOMETRES". The name Belzig rang a bell in his mind which made him believe that it was on a main line railway, so he decided to push on awards it.
The road now curved to the south east but it was a good main way, wider and with a firmer surface than that upon which hey had been before, and they made better going. In this quiet country district they had not so far met a single vehicle and as they bucketed along Gregory was busy calculating distances. He reckoned that by the time they reached Wiesenburg they would have covered about fifteen miles and, as the top speed of the lorry with the handicap of Ersatz petrol was in the neighbourhood of 30 m.p.h., half an hour would have elapsed between their arrival at that town and their seizure of the lorry from the Nazis.
He had been fairly confident about getting through. Gloine and Gorzke without trouble but every moment now increased the likelihood of their being held up. It was not more than twenty minutes' walk from Hails Foldar's cottage to the home of their late friend, Colonel Baron von Lutz, and it was certain that the manor house would be on the telephone. If the Nazis had set off for the house at once the police all over the district would now have been warned and be drawing cordons across the roads to catch the stolen truck before it could get further afield. On the other hand, if the Nazis had wasted time in argument or, feeling confident that the vast German police network would easily pick up the fugitives on the following morning, considered it more important to patch up their wounded than to make a dash for the nearest telephone, there was a decent chance that no emergency police call had yet been sent out.
Gregory said nothing to Charlton but as they approached the first houses of Wiesenburg he braced himself for trouble. Peering out into the darkness ahead and holding the shot gun that he still had with him ready across his knees he prepared to fight rather than to surrender.
Further into the town a belated roisterers lurched off the pavement and almost under their wheels. For a second Gregory did not realize that the man was a drunk and thought him the leader of an ambush who had jumped out to call on them to halt; but Freddie swerved the van, missing the fellow by inches. and it clattered on.
In the centre of the town a line of light lorries was pulled up at the side of the road and in the half light they could see that a number of soldiers were gathered about them. Once more Gregory tensed his muscles. Perhaps these men had just been dispatched from a local barracks to bar the road; but when he saw that the lorries were all parked in line he realized that his fears were groundless. The lorries would have been drawn across the road if the men were there to stop them. It was only a company of troops engaged on some ordinary night operation.
As they passed the unit some of the men called a greeting and Gregory sang out cheerfully to them in German in reply, thanking his gods that in the half darkness they could not see that he was wearing the uniform of a colonel. Another three minutes and they were out of Wiesenburg on the Belzig road.
The tension was over for the moment and Gregory was able to sit back while the truck rattled on for a few more miles; then he began to peer ahead at both sides of the road as far as he could see in the uncertain light. After another kilometre they came to a wood and Gregory told Charlton to slow down, meanwhile keeping an anxious eye open for any sign of a track that might lead off the road in among the trees. A white gateway loomed up. Leaving his shot gun on the seat, as he meant from this point to rely on yon Lutz's automatic, he jumped down, opened the gate and beckoned to Freddie to drive through.
In the darkness among the trees it was not easy to find the most suitable place to abandon the van; but a few hundred yards up the track they reached a break in the wood which on investigation proved to be a sandy patch sloping downwards at a fairly steep angle.
"This'll do." said Gregory; "we'll ditch the van here. Be careful how you go, though."
Freddie drove over the grassy verge on to the sand and the van bumped its way down until more trees became visible in its headlights. Pulling up he switched off the lights, got out and scrambling up the slope rejoined Gregory.
"It'll be visible from here in daylight, I'm afraid," Gregory said, "but we can't help that; and, with luck, this track may not be much used. There's a sporting chance that no one'll find it for a day or two and in any case it's well out of the way till to morrow morning, by which time we shall be miles from here."
"What's the next move?" Freddie asked.
"We've got to foot it into Belzig and I mean to try to get a train to Berlin from there."
Side by side they set off back along the track and took the Belzig road. Half an hour later they reached the outskirts of the town and taking Freddie's arm Gregory whispered to him to go cautiously. Over an hour had elapsed since they had stolen the truck and he felt certain that by now the police in every town for fifty miles around had been notified and would have special patrols out. Two minutes later a match flared a hundred yards ahead and by its glow the vague outline of two men's faces could be seen as they lit cigarettes from it.
Gregory would have bet his last shilling that they were only two of an armed squad which had been posted there to hold up the lorry should it make an appearance. Although they might not regard two pedestrians with suspicion he was extremely anxious to avoid being questioned, so twenty yards further on he silently turned Charlton off the road down a path at right
angles to it which ran along a garden fence. Where the fence ended they turned again and with subdued curses stumbled across some back lots till they reached a group of buildings and a lane, by taking which they arrived back in the main street at a point well beyond the police picket.
It seemed most unlikely that there would be any trains in the middle of the night but Gregory wanted to find out when the first one for Berlin left in the morning, so their next problem was to find the station. The houses were dark and the streets deserted but presently they came upon a man who was lighting his way with a torch, who Gregory felt certain, from his kit, was an A.R.P. warden doing his rounds. Motioning to Charlton to keep in the background Gregory stepped forward and asked the man the way to the station; upon which he civilly directed them and, ten minutes later, they came to the small, open space on the south eastern edge of the town where the station lay.
A Gregory was now in the uniform of a German colonel he would never have dared to attempt travelling on a train within a hundred miles of the war zone, or anywhere near Germany's frontiers, without the military voucher which anyone in uniform would normally have presented; but as they were right in the centre of Germany and far from any military zone he felt that he might risk trying to buy tickets, like an ordinary civilian, without arousing awkward questions.
Just before they reached the door of the railway station he touched Charlton on the arm and said: "Now we're for it But keep a stiff upper lip and forget all the German that you've recently learned. Whatever happens, you're to stay absolutely dumb and not utter a word, even if they speak to you in English, unless I tell you to."
"Right," said Freddie, and pushing open the door they went into the sma
ll, dimly lit station hall.
The booking office was closed and only two people were in sight; an elderly porter and an officer of the S.S. in a smart black uniform. What this Nazi official was doing there at such an hour Gregory had no idea but he did not by the flicker of an eyelid show his alarm at this inconvenient meeting. Striding up to the porter he said with abrupt authority befitting his rank:
"What time does the next train go to Berlin?"
"Five twenty," mumbled the porter.
"Is there a waiting room here where we can sit in comfort?"
The porter jerked his head in the direction of a door leading out of the small hall. "You can wait in there, Herr Oberst, but there's no fire." And having given them this depressing information he slouched out on to the platform.
The officer of the S.S. had been eyeing them curiously. Freddie had on the grey green officer's greatcoat in which Gregory had left Berlin but he did not look like a German officer and he was still wearing his flying helmet. Lifting his hand in a casual half salute the Nazi said to Gregory:
"You are up early, Herr Oberst."
Gregory frowned. "my car broke down just outside the town it's this filthy Ersatz petrol otherwise I should have gone straight through to Berlin by road. As it is, my business is urgent so I left the chauffeur with the car and walked in to catch the first train."
"You've over two hours to wait yet," said the Nazi, "and you'll find it icy cold in that waiting room. I think you'd better come along with me to Party Headquarters."
Gregory remained quite still for a moment, but his brain was revving over like the engine of a dynamo. Was this a casual meeting and the Nazi only acting with friendly intentions? or had this man, after the news of the fray in the woods had been telephoned through, left his bed for the purpose of picketing the station and bringing in any suspicious characters who might have slipped past the police on the main road?
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