Otto's Blitzkrieg

by Leo Kessler

  Gore-Browne groaned inwardly and closed his eyes. Sleep was now his only solace – and the dreams it brought. Even when he couldn’t sleep properly, he would close his eyes and suspend himself in a protracted semi-sleep for hours on end, knowing that when he opened them again, the prison-like atmosphere would come crowding in again with its bitchiness, stupid-important chat, its posturing and overwhelmingly boring routine. Why, he asked himself once more, had he ever been fool enough to volunteer for this sort of thing? If only he had a lover!

  He thought of the handsome SS officer Schmitz and licked suddenly dry lips, as if in anticipation. He could imagine if he told that repulsive product of the Irish bogs, Joyce, who his father really was, they would take him away from this dreadful place. All doors would be opened for him.

  By now he thought he knew the Germans. They ran on about ‘unnatural vice’ and all that, but they were as corrupt as the next country. He had seen the covert looks Schmitz had thrown at him when he thought that he, Gore-Browne, wasn't looking. He could imagine that the authorities, once they realised his real value, would close a blind eye to anything he could manage to pull off with Schmitz. ‘Pull off’ – the phrase triggered a delightful image. Schmitz stripped of that handsome black uniform, completely naked. How white and delicate his body would be! Gore-Browne groaned. Suddenly he burned with desire.

  A half kilometre away, a wet, miserable Otto shivered in his sacking.

  ‘Count, my eggs are rapidly getting hard-boiled in this bloody cold. I’ve seen enough. Let’s get back to the car and you can tell me how we’re loot the Bastille where it's warm!’ He shook his head in mock self-disgust. ‘Just got out of one freezing cold prison, and now I’m catching pneumonia trying to break into another! What a crazy world.’

  The Count grinned and agreed. ‘I’ve got a flask in the car, Otto. That should warm you up.’

  ‘I’ll need a shitting blow-torch to thaw my feet out.’

  Fifteen minutes later they reached the Horch, wet and weary. No one had seen them. The whole of Schleswig-Holstein seemed to be disappearing behind curtains of thick grey rain. Otto, dripping with water, threw down his soaked potato sack and blew a raspberry at the waxwork Bismarck. ‘Schleswig-Holstein, Bismarck, you can have it! I’d give it back to the Danes. They’ve got webbed feet!’ And with that he slipped inside the front of the Horch.

  The motor spluttered into life, and the Count turned the heater up full-blast. As the warmth began to flood the front, he handed Otto his silver flask of cognac, and began to speak. ‘I must admit I have not worked out the plan to the final detail. A certain amount of, ah, improvising will be necessary.’ He grinned winningly at Otto.

  Over the top of the flask, the other man gazed fixedly through the windscreen.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ backtracked the Count, ‘Well, I think, however, on the whole, it is a very tidy little plan. We won’t have any trouble getting in. The pass is genuine. Hitler wants to appease the Pope Pius and the Catholic Church. There are a lot of German Catholics, I mean, who like that sort of Papist thing.’

  ‘Oh yeah, and then,’ Otto asked gruffly, feeling better after a few sips of cognac. In front of him Bismarck’s walrus face was beginning to disappear rapidly, as the windscreen steamed up in the heat. That was something to be thankful for at least.

  ‘Our problem is really GB,’ this was their new codename for Gore-Browne. ‘I see it as a twofold one. First, to convince him he should come with us. Second, how to get him out of the camp when he has made the decision to come with us.’

  Otto nodded his agreement, but said nothing. Bismarck vanished completely. He took another drink of the cognac. It burnt right down to his toes.

  ‘Phase two, I feel we can manage relatively easily,’ the Count continued. ‘The Horch has a remarkably large boot. It's also comfortable. I asked my new butler to try it out on his job interview, you know. I told him he was a great fit for the role, and signed him on the spot! Ha ha, what?’ Getting no response from Otto, he collected himself and continued. ‘I doubt, too, that the guards will be tempted to search the boot on our way out, especially after we have distributed wine from it – blessed by His Holiness the Pope himself – to the sentries on our way in.’ He looked slyly sideways. Maybe this would be cunning enough to elicit a response from the young fellow.

  ‘You’re a crafty old devil at times,’ Otto was forced to admit, a little happier now. ‘But how about phase one? How are you going to convince Churchill the Queer to come with us? That sort of warm brother tends to like such places. I know from experience! and I don’t see you, Count, gunning him down if he doesn’t want oblige.’

  The Count shuddered dramatically. ‘Please don’t say things like that, Otto.’ He winked at his handsome companion. ‘Have you never thought, my dear boy, that you are a very attractive chappy?’ he said slowly. ‘You’d make a rather fetching chauffeur, I would imagine. Uniform, in spite of your dislike of it, suits you very well.’

  It dawned on Otto what the Count was hinting at. ‘Oh, my aching arse,’ he groaned. ‘Not that!’

  The Count looked at him sternly. ‘Now Otto, we don’t need to go that far,’ he said piously. Then he grinned. ‘But you’ve got the right idea.’

  Hunched over his cognac, Otto continued to stare through the misted-up windscreen. This had been the Count's plan all along. Hadn't he said something about Otto's good looks at their reunion meeting? This is why he needed me and not just one of his British cronies, he thought to himself. He's probably read up on Gore-Browne's previous boyfriends and realised I was just the type.

  ‘When are we going in?’ he asked in a small voice, and then winced at his own turn of phrase.

  ‘Tomorrow afternoon,’ the Count replied, and taking hold of the gear-lever. ‘Now I think we’d better get off home, my little jewel in the rough. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow, and you need to be looking dashing!’ He pressed the button activating the Horch’s windscreen wipers. They flicked back and forth. Bismarck came into view once more, staring at them with his bulging, bellicose eyes. Otto blew him another raspberry and then they were gone.

  And up in the castle, lying on the bed in his own turreted quarters, Hauptsturmbannführer Schmitz was reading Bismarck’s memoirs (for after all, he was on holy ground). His eyes took in the lines of text. ‘He who has just administered a thrashing, will undoubtedly receive one the next time round,’ and shuddered delightedly, the phrase recalling beautiful memories of those years at Eton.

  He dropped the thick tome and forgot Bismarck’s warning to the victors of the 1870 campaign against France, his mind full of those thin supple canes. How beautifully they had hissed through the air when wielded by one of those ascetic-looking perverts in their black gowns. He had always fantasised about being tortured by some cowled monk of the Inquisition, in spite of the exquisite pain on his naked boyish rump.

  Although the English regarded themselves as mild-mannered, polite, easy-going people, they were, in reality, he knew, an arrogant, aggressive lot with all the hard-handed, cruel roughness of a very wealthy nation.

  Cold-blooded as they were, they only talked a great deal about fornication, but did very little about it. In Schmitz's mind, most of their women were either lesbian or flat-chested creatures, who didn’t believe in ‘that sort of thing’, anyway. In short, he had realised very quickly arriving at Eton that he had come to his spiritual home. The sense of deep guilt that it was very un-Germanic even to think such things, slowly became pushed far back into his brain. How absolutely delightful those beatings had been! How his heart had jumped with joy when one of the housemasters had produced his cane from up the chimney! And how wonderful those cold-blooded fornications in the cubicles later!

  ‘Ah,’ Hauptsturmbannführer Schmitz sighed in English, Bismarck and Final Victory completely forgotten now, ‘those were great days!’

  He thought of the plump Englishman with the balding head who had looked at him so knowingly the other day – Gore-Browne he was
called. Joyce had mentioned him before. He looked the type who might just use the cane. He shivered with delighted anticipation and told himself that he would venture to speak with him on the morrow. The new war campaigns would soon start and time was running out for him. Yes, tomorrow it would have to be.

  Hastily the handsome young SS officer turned out the light, thrust the cane (he had had them sent specially from England before the war) in between his teeth and imagined he was being bound and gagged by some black-gowned, perverted sadist in the way he always did. Within minutes he was groaning and rolling with wild pleasure. In that tremendous exploding moment of culmination, he cried out loud, ‘…for Eton!’

  CHAPTER 7

  ‘Turn out the guard! Officer approaching,’ the black-clad sentry at the entrance to the castle barked smartly, the raindrops glistening on his black-painted helmet.

  Behind the wheel of the big Horch, flying the flag of the Vatican proudly at its gleaming bonnet, Otto, dressed in the chauffeur’s uniform, started to slow down. The guard tumbled out of the wooden hut and lined up. Behind him ‘Father Flynn’ took his eyes off his breviary and straightened up, as befitted the official representative of Pope Pius.

  At a snail’s pace, they approached the line of black-clad sentries. The drummer rattled his kettle drum, and their hard hands slapped their rifles, running through the routine of the salute, each gesture trained and perfect. Their heads moved woodenly with the car as it slid to a stop. Their heads are worked by steel springs, thought Otto, staring out of the windscreen as fixedly as he had done the previous day.

  Benignly, Father Flynn turned in the back and blessed them with an affected movement of his right hand.

  The Guard Commander strode up and saluted with the customary ‘Heil Hitler!’ barked at them as if they were standing five hundred metres away and not five.

  Father Flynn blessed him too and then brought out his papers. Formalities were over in a matter of moments and Father Flynn indicated to his smart young chauffeur that he should open the door of the big boot. Otto did so and then the Papal Representative insisted on giving each man a bottle of wine ‘blessed by the dear Pope himself’ and shaking his hand, which proved a little awkward, as each man was standing rigidly to attention. Five minutes later they were driving under the castle portcullis, leaving each sentry with a bottle of wine placed at his feet, like a line of urine samples at a military medical.

  Well that's the first part over, Otto told himself with a sigh of relief. They were in! Now the questions was – would they be able to get out?

  ‘I was at Eton,’ Hauptsturmbannführer Schmitz commenced a little awkwardly, as he fell into step with Gore-Browne. It was the midday break and the cobbled castle yard was full of Englishmen taking the air after a morning of lectures.

  ‘Were you really?’ Gore-Browne feigned enthusiasm, delighted that the handsome young SS officer had finally spoken to him, though a little disappointed that he was an old-Etonian. They were renowned for not having ‘souls’ at Eton.

  ‘I was kicked out of Harrow!’ he said, fluttering his sandy eyelashes in what he imagined was a modestly seductive manner.

  Now it was Schmitz’s turn to be kittenish. ‘Flogging your fags too severely, I expect?’ he said in a small voice.

  ‘Something like that,’ Gore-Browne agreed.

  ‘With canes!’ Schmitz breathed. ‘Sp… spanking them too hard!’ he said the secret word with his heart fluttering excitedly.

  ‘Yes, I suppose,’ Gore-Browne said, a little puzzled, but with his blood rising anyway.

  Schmitz sighed with relief. ‘There is nothing like the strict corporal discipline of a public school, I always think.’

  Gore-Browne said nothing. He was slightly bewildered by the trend the conversation was taking, but the gorgeous German was talking to him, that was the main thing. Now they were heading in the direction of the castle's wing that contained Schmitz’s room. Can it be on purpose?

  Trying to control his excited breathing, he said, ‘At Harrow, they didn’t use the cane on the grubby little fags. Mostly the beater found a cricket bat made more of an impression.’

  ‘I say!’ Schmitz was obviously impressed. He thrust his own arm through Gore-Browne’s, as if they had known each other for years. ‘My dear chap, this is really interesting. You must please tell me more. Cricket bats… ’

  ‘Lift up yer hearts, my boys… God bless, lads… Begorrah,’ the Count passed through the yard, raising his black-clad arms like crow’s wings at regular intervals, blessing the puzzled Englishmen who stood around, with their hands in their pockets, viewing his efforts with a mixture of bewilderment and amusement. ‘Shape your lives to the gravity of the hour, begad. God bless…’

  The Count went on remorselessly, his eyes darting here, there and everywhere, searching for GB, occasionally flashing a quick glance at the photograph of him which C had supplied back in London, hidden within the pages of his pocket bible.

  Up in his turret room, William Joyce followed the absurd progress of the tall priest with burning, contemptuous eyes. He had just added the old trick of noting that the clock had stopped at some public place – this time outside St Pancras Station – to his script for the evening broadcast. It made his listeners believe that Lord Haw-Haw was omnipresent with his spies everywhere. Of course he didn’t know whether St Pancras’s clock had stopped or not, but the ruse usually worked; English clocks seemed notoriously unreliable. Now, indulging in a tea break, he watched the man from upon high.

  What fools the Germans were, he told himself, as the Papist flapped from group to group looking like a bloody black crow, so like the English. Why did they permit all this petit-bourgeois nonsense with the Red Cross and parcels from home and all the rest of it? Were they not always maintaining that they were as tough as leather, as hard as Krupp steel? In practice, they were soft. Hitler had no real conception of the fascist ethic, hard, brutal and intolerant. He snorted with poorly suppressed anger. One day the Führer would learn.

  Then a sudden flash of inspiration sent his tea cup clashing back into his saucer. He forgot the absurd priest and returned to his evening broadcast. ‘Now where is your vaunted Ark Royal?’ he scribbled quickly. ‘I shall tell you. At the bottom of the sea, to be precise, sixty fathoms deep in the Mediterranean,’ He sniffed and told himself that this was the third time he had sunk the aircraft carrier this last six months. He hoped this time that High Command had got it right at last.

  Otto was relishing his role. All through his body, nerves were tingling with electric tension. He had never felt less bored, than right now, playing the part of the bored chauffeur. He was just thinking how alive he was feeling, when he spotted GB. The 1939 passport photo of the target had been clear, and he recognised the man immediately.

  ‘But, damn it, what's this?’ Otto cursed to himself.

  There was an awkward catch. GB was in deep conversation with an officer of the SS! And to top it off, they were strolling arm-in-arm across the cobbled courtyard towards the ivy-covered dormitory wing of the castle. Otto hesitated only a fraction of a second. ‘Father Flynn,’ he called.

  The Count swung round. ‘Yes, my son,’ was his mild reply. Then he saw the look in Otto’s eyes, followed the nodding of his head and caught sight of the two figures strolling towards an ivy-framed doorway. Reacting very quickly, he disengaged himself from the gaggle Englishmen.

  ‘Take the car over there, my son,’ he ordered. ‘I would like to distribute the last of the wine to the people in that building.’

  ‘Yes, Father.’ Otto prevented himself from running to the Horch. He swung himself into the driving seat, started, and crawled in first gear across the courtyard. Passing GB and the SS officer, he swung the big car round so that its boot was facing the door to the dormitory building and left the motor running in case they had to make a quick getaway. Thanks to the damned SS officer, such a situation now seemed highly likely.

  He opened the boot and pretended to be busying himself wi
th its contents, body half-hidden in its cavernous depths as they passed him.

  ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child,’ Schmitz was saying, face flushed quite hectically with excitement, as they continued to talk about this most delightful of subjects. ‘I have always believed, my dear chap, in strict discipline – painfully strict discipline – for all ages.’

  ‘Well, of course, it’s your job, you being in the SS and all that,’ Gore-Browne responded. He opened the door and said with unusual politeness for him. ‘After you, Hauptsturmbannführer.’ And then, in a hushed whisper that Otto just overheard, ‘Show me the way to your private chamber!’

  ‘No after yow, my dear old fellow,’ Schmitz said in high-good humour, ‘or do you wish to beat a retreat? Ha, ha!’

  Laughing gaily, the two of them passed inside. Otto rose and grunted, ‘Silly arseholes.’

  A moment later the Count came puffing up, quite out of breath. Otto filled him in:

  ‘They’ve gone up to his room, the SS officer’s.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ the Count said mildly. As always he lived his roles; now he was a gentle priest.

  ‘Oh dear, my arse!’ Otto snarled. ‘That SS sod has got a great big dirty pistol in his holster, I hope you know, and it looks like he's not afraid to use it! What now?’

  The Count thought for a moment. ‘We can’t back down, Otto. Too much depends upon it. Our freedom depends on it!’ He flashed a furtive look to left and right and then with a swift gesture, pulled something out of his sleeve.

  Otto gasped. It was a big automatic pistol. The count started fumbling around, trying to load a clip the wrong way round.

  ‘Jesus christ!’ he cried, ‘Give me that. Have you ever even used one of these things?’ He snatched the pistol out of the Count’s hand.

  The Count seemed in no way offended. ‘I've never been very good with short range weapons. In another life I was a crack shot with a sniper rifle. But my sleeve's hardly long enough for one of those.’ Hitching up his skirt like a fat woman tugging at the elastic of a pair of loose knickers, he pulled yet another, but smaller pistol from inside his waistband.