by Leo Kessler
For the next two hours, they climbed silently, the ascent to each fresh height a reminder that yet another one lay before them. Their big guide did not allow them to stop, even when Gore-Browne staggered more and more wildly.
In the end, when the Englishman gasped he couldn’t go another step, Streithammer grunted angrily and simply slung him over his shoulder, as if he were light as air. Together the illegitimate son of England’s leader and the future one of a regenerated Germany marched on.
As it began to grow light, the peaks sparkling a warm pink in the ascending sun, they finally started to descend, their legs feeling as if they were made of soft rubber, so that time and time again, Otto and the Count slipped and tripped over the slightest obstruction.
At six, Streithammer slipped a refreshed Gore-Browne from his massive shoulder and allowed them to stop for a minute, while he gave them their instructions for the final stage of the crossing.
‘We’re through the Alpini lines now,’ he growled, picking his nose, as if he were bored with the whole business. ‘Roughly about two and half kilometres inside Italy itself.’ He took his finger out his nostril and pointed down the hillside. ‘See that little road down there? That leads into the first village where you can catch the nine o’clock bus to Bolzano. I shall take you that far and then you’re on your own. Got it?’
The three of them nodded and the Count said a little apprehensively, ‘There’ll be no checking of documents down in the village? It is near the frontier, after all.’
Streithammer simply shook his head.
‘But what about the villagers?’ Otto asked. ‘I mean we’ll stick out like a sore thumb down there, surely. It won’t be every day that they see strangers like us.’
Streithammer gave one of his rare smiles. His face seemed to crack in two. ‘They’d know better than to betray friends of the Führer.’ He doubled that massive fist of his. ‘Because if they did they’d be lacking a set of teeth in double-quick time. Clear?’
‘Clear,’ they echoed as one.
They continued.
‘OVRA!’ Streithammer gasped. ‘Hit the dirt!’
With surprising speed for such a big man, he dropped into the dried-up drainage ditch at the side of the road, the others following him in. A second later, a black Fiat tourer swung round the bend and started to slow down, with a crash and thunder of gears being forced home clumsily.
‘How do you know it’s them?’ Otto hissed, peeping over the top of the ditch and taking in the black car with its pretentious radiator design and row of unnecessary lamps on a gleaming bumper.
‘Down this way, only the Militia and the OVRA have cars,’ Streithammer replied. ‘All the peasants have in the way of wheeled transport is the family ox-cart. They –’ He broke off abruptly. The Fiat had stopped!
It was parked about a hundred metres away from their position. A small Italian got out from the passenger door, black-felt hat pulled down over one eye, collar of his trench coat pulled up high, a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his thin-lipped mouth.
‘I say – Humphrey Bogart.’ Gore-Browne whispered.
‘Pipe down there!’ the Count hissed.
In tense silence the four of them watched the little Italian, who did look a little like the Hollywood gangster they remembered from pre-war films. He removed his cap and surveyed the heights with a pair of binoculars, swinging them back and forth as if he were searching for something in particular.
‘Look at the bulge under his armpit!’ Streithammer whispered. ‘He’s OVRA all right. That’s a hand cannon he’s got there.’
‘But what do they want?’ the Count asked.
‘They’re looking for us. There’s no doubt about that,’ Streithammer answered, a worried frown on his big ugly face. ‘Wait, he's getting back in. Everyone down!’
The little man hopped back into the black Fiat, the driver let out the clutch and he crawled by them before stopping once again to allow the little man a repeat performance.
‘What now?’ Otto asked. ‘If they can't find us like this, they'll just stake out the village. They’ll pick us up if we try to board the bus.’
‘You’re right there,’ Streithammer agreed and then suddenly his face lit up. ‘Count,’ he said to the older man, ‘what would it be worth to you to be able to travel to the coast in your own private vehicle? I mean, how big would your donation be to Party funds?’
The Count was puzzled, but it was clear from the look on Streithammer’s ugly face that he had some plan or other.
‘Fifty sovereigns?’ he said, hesitantly opening negotiations.
‘Remember it’s for a good cause, Count,’ Streithammer said. ‘It all helps to get rid of that lily-livered leftist red swine in Berlin.’
‘Seventy-five?’
‘Make it a hundred and you’re on.’
‘A hundred it is.’
Streithammer beamed. ‘Good. I won’t forget you, Count, when I take over power. You'll have your pick of the golden geese. Berlin, for example?’ he said generously.
‘Very good of you, indeed. I really appreciate the honour. But what exactly are you going to do? I mean, Streithammer, where’s the private vehicle coming from?’
Streithammer gave the Count his ugly grin and pointed up the road where the black Fiat was now beginning to crawl towards the village. ‘There.’
‘You mean the OVRA,’
Streithammer nodded. ‘I do indeed,’ he said.
‘What a damn crazy idea,’ the Count replied. ‘A man after my own heart!’
CHAPTER 3
The South-Tirolean village looked no different than its counterpart across the border in Upper Austria. There were the same shabby white houses with their carved wooden balconies and the tobacco leaves and maize-cobs drying under the eaves. The only difference between this one and the one the fugitives had left several hours before, lay in the communal water tap in the village square. Here it was decorated with the Roman bundle of rods, the symbol of Italian fascism, and a huge, flyblown poster of the Duce, his dark pugnacious jaw sticking out threateningly from underneath the gleaming helmet.
The four of them limped slowly down the dusty street towards a line of shabby people. Women covered their heads in kerchiefs and bore baskets of produce, the men in broad black hats and leather breeches, their waistcoats festooned with chains. It was the queue for the morning bus that would take them into town.
The Fiat was parked at the water pump, half way between the four travellers, and the patient queue. The little Italian Humphrey Bogart laboured at the tap to produce water, though like everything else in Mussolini’s vaunted ‘New Order’ it didn’t work properly, and only a trickle of brackish, brown liquid came out. It was a facade just like everything else, behind which all decayed and rotted. A country whose core was black with maggots.
A fat priest passed them in a broad shovel hat much like the Count's, prayer-book under his arm.
‘Grass Gott,’ he said, and recognising the big man in the lead, turned around hurriedly and sped back to the little baroque church from which he came. Man of God as he was, he knew trouble when he saw it.
A couple of farm labourers on bicycles, bottles of red wine sticking out of the cheap briefcases clamped behind the saddles, rode through the dust towards them.
‘Thick air, Streithammer… thick air!’ they hissed as they passed, their eyes shooting towards the Fiat and the OVRA man at the pump.
Streithammer seemed not to hear the warning. He shambled on, head bent. The others trailed behind him at the same slow pace. They looked like men who had reached the end of their tether.
Over at the bus queue, the peasants had become aware of the approaching strangers. There was a sudden hush in their conversation. Here and there an old white-moustached peasant started to look at his watch, as if he had decided that the bus wasn’t going to come after all, and it would be wiser to go straight back home again. Women covered their baskets. A child started to yell, ‘Heil Streit – ’ his mo
ther stifling the cry with her hand. The crowd began to drift apart. Suddenly the morning air was hot with tension.
It seemed to take Bogart at the pump a long time to become aware of the strangers bearing down on him. Finally, he straightened and kicked the pump in anger. Looking up, he recognised that something unusual was going on. The pump was uttering a guttural chug-chug sound, but he wasn't paying it any attention. His kick must have dislodged something, thought Otto. Bogart rounded on the travellers and fixed them with a dark stare, eyes narrowed into a mean squint. Then as an afterthought he took a ten-lire piece out of his pocket and began to flip it up and down.
‘Good grief,’ Gore-Browne hissed in spite of his fear, ‘it’s not Humphrey after all… its George Raft!’
‘Be quiet!’ the Count hissed angrily, ‘I'd just got my quote ready. Now I need a new one!’
After you, then, muttered Streithammer, and ushered Graf von der Weide forward.
Otto could see his compatriot's brain working overtime as they strolled calmly towards the little Italian. We're bloody close to the lad now. Something needs to happen soon, he thought.
The Count's hand, clasping the little woman’s pistol in his pocket, ran with hot sweat. George Raft, George Raft, he intoned to himself. And then he had it! Slowly, he clicked off the safety catch and looked up, straight into the Italian's wide eyes.
‘So, how tough are you, babe?’
– THE END –
Otto's Adventures Continue in...
OTTO AND THE REDS
by LEO KESSLER
Available as an e-book soon.
