Orphans of the Storm (Commander Cochrane Smith series)

by Alan Evans

  He said, “I thought I recognised your car. You must not stay here.”

  Hannah answered, “We’ll be moving on as soon as it’s light.”

  The officer shook his head. It seemed to twitch as with some nervous palsy. He said, “No. Rest for a little, maybe one hour, but then go on.” He looked back down the road. The engine of his tourer was still running, the driver at the wheel.

  Hannah asked quietly, “What is the matter?”

  “You saw the garrison of Czestochowa, passed them on the road. When I left them two hours ago it was because they were encircled. The German tanks, armoured cars and motorised infantry had swung around them. I was in a car and we drove out of the trap just as it was closing. No one will get out on foot.” He rubbed at his face with his hands then lowered them to stare at the two women. “The Germans are moving quickly, faster than I could ever believe. Rest a little then go and drive at top speed.” He saluted then went back to his car, climbed in and it pulled away, was lost in the darkness.

  Sarah said quietly, “All those men. You said five thousand. Wiped out or captured like that.”

  Hannah nodded. She had heard the Germans were advancing quickly and now she had proof at first hand.

  This was far faster than the struggle in Spain.

  This was Blitzkrieg.

  On the next day, Sunday, they booked in again at the Hotel Bristol in Warsaw. There were plenty of vacant rooms; people were already leaving the city because of the news of the German advance. An excited waiter told them of the British and French declarations of war and they heard the crowds cheering in the streets.

  Sarah said flatly, “They’re celebrating a bit early.”

  Hannah cocked an eye at her, “What do you mean?”

  “Britain and France can’t get into the Baltic so how can they help Poland?”

  “By attacking Germany?”

  Sarah said sceptically, “Do you think they will?”

  Hannah recalled the British and French politicians and soldiers she had interviewed or listened to in the last few years, and answered, “No.” She grinned wryly at Sarah, thinking that the girl had courage and a mind of her own. She was no fool.

  They slipped back into something like their old routine, despite the city being bombed several times each day. Hannah moved from the Press Section in Pilsudski Square to the embassies, the typewriter and the telephone. Only now Sarah went with her and hammered away at the typewriter while Hannah prowled the room with a cup of coffee or a Martini and dictated her copy. Then the telephones refused to take any further international calls and Hannah’s dispatches had to be sent over a radio link that was subject to delays of up to thirty-six hours. The two women swore in unison. They were becoming a team now, sharing a joke as they had shared the hardships.

  Hannah said, “This damn war is catching up with us again.” It caught up with them next day.

  The bombing that morning was the worst so far. The Luftwaffe attacked the motor factory by the airport, an aeroplane factory and the Fiat automobile plant in Praga on the other side of the river. They also smashed to rubble or set alight several blocks of tenements by the railway station. Hannah and Sarah went down to see.

  There were no taxis for hire and Hannah said she wanted to save the Ford with its full tank and spare cans of petrol locked in the boot. So in cotton shirts and trousers they walked down the streets littered with debris, headed for the columns of smoke and flame lifting above the roofs between. They were becoming used to the air raids and sauntered along in the sunlight looking about them. They saw this was a poor area of the city with a stables smelling of manure, some small, cheap shops and drab blocks of tenements.

  But then they heard a different sound above the drone of the high flying Dorniers and Heinkels and ran when the whistle of the bombs became a scream as they neared the ground. Hannah broke right and Sarah scurried to the left, both seeking shelter in the doorways of the first tenements they came to, throwing themselves face-down with their arms around their heads in the way that had become a reflex action these last few days.

  The screams ended in crumps as the stick of bombs burst along and across the street. Hannah felt the ground heave under her and the hot breath of blast tug at her hair. The explosions made her ears ring. When she cautiously lifted her head she saw dust boiling into the street from the tenement opposite that had taken a hit on the roof and collapsed. Hannah pushed up to her feet and ran in search of Sarah.

  They were both lucky, Sarah to be alive and Hannah to find her. The front of the building had fallen out into the street and the wreckage of masonry, bricks and broken beams stretched half across it. Hannah clambered up and over the pile until she stood where she judged the hallway to have been. Sarah could have gone no further.

  Other people were appearing through the dust clouds, with vague ideas of rescue but little else. Warsaw had not been prepared for this aerial war, did not yet know how to cope with it. Hannah had taken the course in Spain. She shouted, “Sarah!” Then listened, shouted again and again and stumbled about on the bricks and splintered beams, searching. She prayed for an answering voice but only heard it by chance. Her ears still rang, bombs shrieked and burst further away in the city, the anti-aircraft guns hammered. But then, for a second, the bombs and the guns ceased, as if to draw breath before going on. And in that moment of stillness Hannah heard the thin, faint call from below her: “Help!”

  Hannah thought she saw where the call came from. The twin front-doors of the tenement that had stood open, flat back against the walls of the hall inside, had been blown out together. They made a roof, holding up the rubble, fashioning a tunnel beneath. She knelt at its mouth and called again but now the guns were firing again and she heard nothing come from the tunnel. She was still certain the cry had come from there.

  She crawled into it. After the first yard the roof was less than a foot above the heaped bricks and rough-edged masonry so she had to wriggle along on her stomach. It became pitch-black as she left the daylight behind and her own body blocked it out. The atmosphere in the tunnel was thick with dust that set her coughing as she breathed it. She groped ahead of her with outstretched arms before she pulled herself forward another foot or so. And now when she called Sarah’s name she got an answer from the black void in front of her face: “Hannah? Is that you?”

  “Nobody else! Hold on!”

  Then her reaching hands found the girl’s head, fumbled in her hair and down the sides of her face to her shoulders. Sarah also lay face-down, hands clasped over her head. Now those hands unclasped and instead seized hold on Hannah’s arms. It was a tight grip and Hannah thought this girl had a strong hold on life and would not give up.

  Sarah was jammed in the narrow tunnel and could not free herself, but Hannah tugged at the girl’s shoulders while Sarah heaved her slim body forward. She moved, scraped forward with a rattling of falling stones behind her as her legs kicked their way out, winced with pain as the skin was stripped from her by the embracing masonry. But as Hannah worked backwards out of the tunnel so Sarah was dragged after her. Until there was light around them, Hannah got to her knees and lifted Sarah to hers. Both of them rubbed at dust-inflamed eyes and coughed.

  They saw that there were dozens of men, and women, now working at clearing the rubble from the road, digging for survivors and forming bucket chains to fight fires. Others were on the move, whole families trailing away along the street carrying bulging cardboard suitcases, bedding, clocks, kettles. Hannah knew she was seeing the start of refugees here.

  The bombing and the gunfire had stopped. Hannah said, “We’d better get you back to the Bristol.” She climbed to her feet and held out her hand to Sarah. They picked their way down off the heaped debris on legs that were shaking now and set off up the street.

  Sarah did not say ‘Thank you’. Instead she said, “I had to get out of Germany in a hurry …” She told of her involvement with the organisation smuggling victims of the Nazis out of Germany, her stepfather�
�s determination to speak out against the regime, the demands and threats of his black-uniformed cousin, Werner. Hannah told Sarah about her attempted kidnapping in Spain and Smith’s rescue. “So they’re after both of us. And I told you your father was quite a guy!” They arrived at the Bristol with their arms around each other.

  Later, bathed and changed, Hannah tapped at Sarah’s door and called, “I’m on my way down to the bar.”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes.” Sarah stood in front of the bathroom mirror, sticking lint and plaster on the skinned parts of her body.

  “Right!”

  But Hannah returned in less than five minutes to bang on the door. “Sarah? I’ve just been talking to some guys downstairs.” Sarah knew the ‘guys’ were other correspondents. Hannah went on, “They tell me the American Embassy is evacuating and the Polish government has already gone. All the guys are taking off! Throw on your clothes and grab a bag. We’re getting out of here!”

  When the Stukas caught them they were outside the city. Sarah was driving, working her way through the long column of refugees on farm carts, bicycles, or on foot, pushing perambulators or barrows. All were seen dimly through the cloud of dust that covered the column, stretching for miles across the plain burning dry under the sun.

  The figures around the open Ford suddenly scattered, running like startled chickens in a farmyard, meandering back and forth across the road. Hannah craned her head around to look back along the column. She saw the aircraft with its oddly bent wings swooping down on them like a hawk and the other four — five — hanging in formation above it, waiting their turn. She remembered that silhouette from Spain and shouted, “Divebombers! Get off the road! We’re going to be strafed.”

  Sarah yanked on the wheel and sent the Ford bouncing over the verge and into the brown field beyond. Hannah saw the first Stuka plummeting towards the earth, towards her, and yelled, “We’ve got to get out and get down!”

  And Sarah shrieked back at her, “What if we leave the car and he hits it?” The car was their lifeline. Hannah hung on to its door as Sarah flattened her foot to the floor and the Ford picked up speed, rocking, swerving and bouncing over the rutted surface.

  The first Stuka pulled out of its dive, its splayed wheels seeming to sweep just over their heads, and its bomb screamed down to burst some fifty yards away with a jet of flame, huge splash of dust like a brick thrown into a pond, and a drifting plume of smoke. Then came the second Stuka, the third …

  Sarah threw the Ford about at breakneck speed, swinging in tight circles or weaving in figures-of-eight, as the fat steel cartons of death wobbled from the Stukas then, as the tail-fins of the bombs gave them direction, slid down their curved paths to burst around the car.

  The Ford was creating its own dust-cloud, churned up from the dry earth by the tearing wheels and mixing with the hanging dust thrown up by the bombs and the drifting smoke from their bursts. The smoke stank of the explosive and the two women coughed smoke and dust from their lungs and rubbed them from red eyes — Sarah with one hand as she steered the Ford. Then they were out of it and in the open again. The Stukas had gone and the dust and smoke were settling or drifting away on the breeze.

  Sarah drove more sedately to the side of the road, braked and switched off. They sat wiping at their faces, cleaning off the worst of the skin of mud formed by sweat and dust. Their eyes searched the sky nervously for more aircraft but saw none. Sarah said, “From now on, whoever isn’t driving will have to keep a look-out for planes.”

  “Uh-uh!” Hannah agreed, “I should have thought of that. I’d seen them before.”

  They were both breathing deeply, as if they had run a long way. Sarah got down from the car and walked around it. “She seems all right.” She climbed back into her seat and started the engine: “And she goes.”

  She turned the Ford out onto the road and began working through the river of refugee traffic again. Then Hannah said, “Someone else isn’t so lucky.”

  Ahead of them a car was stopped at the roadside, its bonnet lifted and steam trickling up from around it. A man dragged a suitcase out of the back and slammed the door disgustedly. He turned as the Ford crept past him, stared and said, “Hannah?”

  She told Sarah, “Pull in!” Then Hannah turned in her seat as the Ford came to rest at the side of the road and the man walked up to them. He was in his forties, long and thin in a baggy suit that hung on him, peering out from under a battered, snap-brim trilby hat. He took it off to show sandy hair, grinned at Hannah and she said, “Hi, Jim. What’s the trouble?”

  He answered disgustedly, “Bomb splinters’ve torn the radiator and fuel system to hell. That automobile is going nowhere.”

  He shook Hannah’s hand then she introduced Sarah: “This is Jim Rice, a fellow American and we’re in the same line of business. Jim, meet Sarah Smith. She’s British and a great girl. So what are you doing, Jim?”

  “Trying to get out of Poland.” Then he added drily, “After going to a hell of a lot of trouble to get in. I was covering the German side in Berlin up to a week ago. They told me the German-Polish border was shut so I came through Denmark and Sweden just as the shooting started. This morning I got some straight answers, but clear off the record, from a major on the Staff. The Polish air force has been wiped out and the German army is running rings around their troops. Never mind what the government says, the war is all over bar the shouting.”

  Hannah said, “Oh, God!” Poland was a democracy and the Poles were going the way of the Czechs. “Who said the good guys always win?” But she felt Sarah’s eyes on her and asked, “Berlin? Any trouble with mail getting through there, Jim?”

  “Not me.”

  “Sarah here, she cabled her folks five, maybe six times, but didn’t get an answer.”

  “Is that so? Smith, uh? Attached to your embassy?”

  Sarah said, “No. I cabled my stepfather, Ulrich Bauer. He’s German.”

  “Bauer?” And then Rice asked, “Businessman? Lived in the Wannsee district? English wife?”

  Sarah smiled, “That’s right.” She had not noticed his use of the past tense.

  Hannah had. “You knew them, Jim?”

  He studied the hat he held, smoothing the brim. “Only heard about him, in the way of business. He made himself pretty unpopular by saying some hard things about Hitler and his gang. Then about a week before I left there was an — accident. I didn’t cover the story but I heard about it from a local man who did.” He stopped there.

  Sarah had caught that momentary hesitation and asked harshly, “What kind of ‘accident’?”

  “The house burned down.” He looked up at Sarah and she was aware of Hannah’s hand on her arm, the people shuffling past through the dust, the sun that burnt her face. Rice said, “Sorry. This guy, he told me when we’d had a couple of drinks. He was feeling pretty bad about it because it seemed he knew Mr Bauer. He said gasoline was used. He didn’t print that, of course.”

  “What about my stepfather, my mother?”

  Rice, gentle man, could only offer her bitter consolation: “He was sure they were dead before the fire started.”

  Sarah did not weep. Crying would come later and all the worse for that, Hannah knew as she watched her, thinking that now the girl had to find her father. She said gently, “C’mon kid, move over and let me drive and we’ll get this show on the road again.”

  Sarah shook her head, “I can drive.” Her voice was quiet, even, without hysteria.

  Hannah hesitated, then nodded, “OK. Jim, you throw your case in the back and climb in after it.”

  He did, and asked, “Where are you headed?”

  Hannah said, “We started out to follow the government, but now they’re finished, right?” And when Rice nodded, she said, “So it’s one heck of a haul but we’ll go home through Romania.”

  Sarah let in the clutch. They had a suitcase each but what really mattered were the big cans of petrol in the boot, the bread and wine in the back seat and the pisto
l in the glove compartment.

  So Sarah set out in search of her father.

  *

  When Smith returned to London from Germany it was only for one night before going off on another assignment. His country was at war now. He found a handful of mail scattered on the carpet inside the door of his flat. He sifted through it quickly, hoping there might be one from his daughter, Sarah, or giving news of her, but was disappointed. They were bills save for one envelope addressed in a writing that was vaguely familiar, the copperplate upright and bold. He opened it and glanced first at the signature and closing sentence: “Best wishes to yourself and Mrs Smith …”

  It was from Buckley, who had served with him as a leading seaman until Smith was carried ashore wounded from Audacity in 1918. Smith’s lips twitched as memories came flooding back — of Buckley’s ability to express disapproval of his captain without uttering a word or moving a muscle — and his disbelieving exasperation when Smith took some risk.

  He read the letter through: Buckley was going back to the Navy and asked if he could serve with Smith again? Smith was touched by the request, that Buckley not only remembered him but was prepared to put his life in Smith’s hands. It was an easy letter to answer and Smith wrote his reply at once. Buckley was large, solid, silent and competent, a good man to have at your side. Smith said he had to go abroad for a while but when he returned he would ask for the big leading hand. Then he added briefly that he had been divorced some years ago.

  Next day he sailed for Denmark.

  *

  Jake Tyler listened to the news coming out of the stained and scratched old wireless set with his eyes closed sleepily against the glare of the sun. He lay on the deck of the Mary Ellen that was tied up to the quay. The small port lay on the southern shore at the mouth of the Brazilian river that was itself some five hundred miles north of the estuary of the Rio de la Plata and his original destination of Montevideo. Beyond the quay and a line of low warehouses was the town with its streets, houses, stores and bars. A few men worked, slowly and sweating, on the quay but Jake had better things to do in the heat of the day.