Winner Lose All

by William F. Brown

  There was another long pause on the line. “Two white circles… Yes, I see. War is never without its accidents and vagaries, is it? I shall place that call within the hour.”

  “I shall tell him to expect it. I believe that should decide this race, Prime Minister.”

  “Let us hope so,” the Prime Minister said with a hint of sadness. “These are difficult times. I was told you had the intelligence to understand your duty and the backbone to carry it out, and I am pleased to see you haven’t disappointed me.”

  George Bromley smiled as he heard the line go dead.

  Thirty minutes later, as the Prime Minister extinguished his bedroom light, he realized he had a new problem to consider. When this war finally ended, he must find an appropriate reward for this Colonel Bromley. It must be something that would get the man out of London and away from the Fleet Street press for a few years. Yes, and get him away from the prying eyes of opposition politicians as well. Perhaps a promotion and a posting overseas. Military attaché to Borneo, Kenya, or Costa Rica? A regiment of his own in Nepal or the Falkland Islands? Yes, that would provide the fellow with a modest career and income, modest, but not independent. No, independent would be most unwise.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Leipzig

  Georg Horstmann woke to a soft, insistent knock on his kitchen door. He looked at his watch and saw it was almost midnight. Knocks on doors in the middle of the night were never good in Nazi Germany. His first thought was the Gestapo; but no, the Gestapo would not knock. They would simply kick in the door, so it was not them. Perhaps it is a friend, he thought, perhaps a comrade from the underground in trouble. It must be something like that, because no one else would knock on a stranger’s door in the middle of the night, not here, not now. Horstmann groaned. It was most assuredly another of Otto Dietrich’s traps, but there was no getting around it. Someone was out there, so he screwed up enough courage to get out of bed, press his ear to the door, and listen.

  “Georg, please,” he heard a woman’s plaintive whisper. He peeked out through the torn curtain and saw it was Hanni standing alone in the dark. “Unbelievable!” the old bookseller told himself as he quickly unbolted the door and let her in. She wore a bulky, oversized Army greatcoat that hung down to her ankles as she slipped past him into the kitchen. His anxious eyes swept the rear yard behind her, but he saw no one. Somehow, she must have escaped from Otto Dietrich’s clutches. As improbable as that seemed, there was no other way she could be out there, and that would be exceedingly dangerous for both of them. He knew Hanni was far too skilled at tradecraft to let any of them follow her here, but these days, after the way she had been acting, one never knew.

  “Hanni?” he asked as he bolted the door and turned to face her, stunned. After their last acrimonious meeting in Gestapo Headquarters, he never thought he would see her alive again, much less standing in his shop. “How? How did you get out?” he asked, until he saw the bloody rag wrapped around her left hand. “My God, what happened?”

  “I cut it going out a window,” she answered bravely, biting her lower lip to mask the pain. “I hate to disappoint you, Georg, no bullets, just broken glass.”

  “You are insane, girl. Here, let me see it,” he said as he helped her into a rickety chair. He laid her hand on the table and gently unwrapped the makeshift bandage. Despite the cool night air, sweat was rolling down her face and she looked pale. No wonder, Horstmann thought as he saw the long, deep gash. It went through the meaty part of the palm and opened her hand down to the bone. He whistled softly. “This needs stitches, Hannelore.”

  “Then get a needle and thread and start sewing, old man,” she replied as she set her jaw and glared up at him, “and stop calling me that!”

  “It is the name your mother gave you.” He smiled as he rummaged through a cabinet and pulled out an old first aid kit. “She was quite a woman, you know — dignified, quiet, and very pretty. She was nothing like your father.”

  “Or like me?” she asked through clenched teeth

  “You are the very image of her. As for all the rest — well, your mother was a real lady and a very smart one. She was much smarter than your father, although neither of them would ever admit it. You have her beautiful face, her golden hair and her bright blue eyes,” he said fondly. “That is why I think of her whenever I see you, and why I call you Hannelore; because that was the name she gave you. In Hebrew, it means ‘grace’; you are the child of grace. If she had left it up to your father, your name would have been Jacob, or Barnaby, or Ebenezer, or something.”

  “It sounds like you should have married her.”

  “Oh, I would have, but the lady turned me down… several times,” he laughed with an embarrassed smile. “Unfortunately, she was set on your father, and the poor kerl never stood a chance.” Horstmann found his sewing kit and turned to look at her hand once more. “Your mother would be very proud of you, Hannelore, but she would not be proud of such a terrible cut. How did you come by it?”

  “A rear window in Gestapo headquarters.”

  “You mean you broke out?” He shook his head. “You know this is the first place Dietrich will come looking. We must get you out of here to somewhere safe.”

  “Do not worry. The Chief Inspector will not be coming after me or anyone else, not for a long time. Edward has him.”

  “Scanlon has Dietrich?” Horstmann’s jaw fell open. “Oh, my! Pity poor Otto.”

  “No, pity poor us. He also has Raeder and all the rest of them too. If he gets away and delivers them to the Americans, everything is lost — you, me, my father, everything. Can you not see that?”

  “Yes, but what can we do about it?”

  “Do? We must stop him.”

  “That is insane.”

  “Insane? I will show you insane! Sew up this hand, old man.”

  “Then what? Look at yourself, girl; you are in no condition to go anywhere. You are pale and exhausted, and you have lost too much blood. You must rest. Besides, how can we stop him? We do not even have a three-legged horse between us.”

  “I did not come here empty-handed, Georg, or empty-headed,” she snapped. “I have the Luftwaffe Major’s automobile. They took Dietrich’s big car and left the Major’s parked out back, so I stole it before anyone else could. The guards were gone too, so I went back in and cleaned out Dietrich’s office. I took some Gestapo travel permits and I found these,” she said as she opened her bulky coat. There was a Schmeisser submachine-gun hanging around her neck, four long magazines full of bullets tucked in a side pocket, two Luger pistols, and a German “potato masher” hand grenade jammed in her belt. “As I said, I did not come empty-handed.”

  He stared at the collection of weapons and frowned. “There was a time when I would have leaped at the opportunity to take another whack at those bastards. Now?” The old man slowly shook his head. “Look at us, Hannelore, we are only kidding ourselves.”

  “Georg, we are all there is,” she said as she grabbed his shirtsleeve and pulled him close, her eyes desperate to make him understand. “We are all there is.”

  “How are we going to even find them?” he asked in frustration.

  “They left in Dietrich’s Maybach. No one who sees that car is likely to forget it so they will be easy to follow. Edward will head south. I am certain of it, because that is where I would go if I were him. Besides, it will not be hard,” she said. “He wants me to follow him. He thinks that is how he will get me back, so he will make it easy. He will lay a trail of bread crumbs, if that is what he has to do to get me to follow; because once he gets me in Bavaria, he thinks I will never be able to leave him.”

  “And he is right.”

  “No, he is not. He cannot be.” She slapped her good hand on the table.

  She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out the black leather wallet she also rescued from Otto Dietrich’s office. She opened it and laid the brass and red enamel NKVD officer’s badge on the table in front of him. “My orders come from Beria
, Georg, from Lavrenti fucking Beria himself; and we both know what that means.”

  The old man closed his eyes and moaned. “It is a death sentence, then. Beria will have us both shot whether we catch Edward or not. Surely you know that.”

  “And he will have my father shot if I do not. So we must play his game, Georg.” She shrugged hopelessly. “We must play his game. There is no other choice. Do it for my mother if you will not do it for me.”

  He looked into her eyes and reluctantly nodded.

  “Now, get your needle out and sew up my hand, old man,” she ordered. “There is no more time to waste.”

  PART FOUR

  BAVARIA, GERMANY

  APRIL 1945

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The passage south out of the badly bombed city of Leipzig proved easier than Scanlon expected, to the chagrin of Otto Dietrich. Repeated Allied air attacks kept all but the most fanatical or foolhardy drivers off the roads, including the Gestapo and any roving SS patrols. Even though it was the dead of night, the roadblocks and guard posts stood empty. Whether anyone entered or left the city no longer seemed to matter as much as the prospect of a 500-pounder from a B-17 or a strafing attack from a P-51 Mustang.

  For Scanlon, the timing could not have been better. The darkness gave them cover, at least for a while, so he drove while Paul Von Lindemann sat in the front seat next to him. “Keep your gun pointed at the rear seat,” Scanlon told him, “for crowd control.” With Otto Dietrich, the two Raeders, and the young police sentry jammed elbow to elbow in the back; the task was not all that demanding.

  By avoiding the main roads and the worst of the bomb damage in the cities, Scanlon managed to keep the powerful car moving south through the suburbs and out into the open countryside beyond. There was a half moon, so he was able to gain speed and put as much distance as he could between them and Leipzig.

  “You should never have let her escape, Edward.” Dietrich finally broke his long silence. “That is a sure sign of weakness in a man. Mark my words, the lovely Fraulein Steiner will make you pay dearly for it before she is finished.”

  “I didn’t let her do anything.”

  “Edward, you never were a good liar,” Dietrich said with a sadistic smile. “You had her in your crosshairs and could have stopped her but you did not. That marks you as an amateur. If it were I, I would never have made that mistake.”

  Scanlon felt his hands grip the steering wheel tighter and tighter as he tried not to let Dietrich get to him. “I might be an amateur but I was good enough to bag you, Otto.”

  “True, but the lovely and talented Fraulein Steiner will bag us both before she is finished. I was watching, and you should have shot her when you had the chance.”

  “If I might suggest, Herr Dietrich, I would not aggravate Scanlon any further,” Paul Von Lindemann warned him. “It is you he would most dearly like to shoot.”

  “I deal in fact, Herr Major. If you close your eyes and listen, you can hear the pounding of her little feet coming up behind us as we speak. She will catch us, all right.” He smiled knowingly. “She will catch us, because Fraulein Steiner knows what she wants and she will stop at nothing to get it.”

  “Shut up, Otto,” Scanlon glared at him in the rear-view mirror, “or you’ll have a matching knot on the other side of your head.”

  “Moscow Center gave her no choice, you know,” Dietrich continued, ignoring the threat, knowing he was out of Scanlon’s reach for the moment. “They have a gun to her father’s head.”

  “Shut up!” the American exploded. “I swear to God, I’ll kill you right here if you don’t!” He would have done just that if they had not run into a Gestapo roadblock around the next blind turn in the road, and this one was manned.

  “Very careless of you, Edward,” Dietrich clucked. “First you lose your sense of humor, now you lose your concentration. What is next?”

  “Next? You die, Otto. Remember that.” Their eyes met in the rear view mirror. This time, Dietrich knew to keep quiet.

  “They could not have heard about the raid on Gestapo Headquarters so quickly,” Von Lindemann said in a calm, steady voice as they neared the roadblock.

  “No. Maybe we can bluff our way through,” Scanlon answered. He glanced back at the Chief Inspector once again. “I’m using your papers, Otto. If we don’t make it through, the Major will put a 9-millimeter slug in your chest. You got that? And the same goes for the rest of you back there.”

  The SS were known to post special Flying Squads at major road intersections to catch deserters, with summary executions authorized on the spot, so he and Von Lindemann kept their pistols handy as the big Maybach rolled up to the barricade. Fortunately, all they found was a squad of elderly Volksturm reservists standing around a big fire, casting occasional bored glances at the elegant old touring car as they tried to stay warm. Obviously, the militiamen knew a car like that must belong to a Nazi Party big shot, a banker, or an industrialist, and they were not paid to be overly nosy. These were mostly grizzled veterans from the last war who had joined the Volksturm in the mid-1930s for the big parades and free lunches at the beer halls. Unfortunately, the beer had long since gone flat and the last of the free sausages had been consumed years before. Now, these lonely scarecrows found themselves stoking a bonfire with pieces of broken furniture that had been dumped along the roadside by the long lines of refugees fleeing west ahead of the Cossacks. Like the Roman legionnaires who stood similar watches in these same hills eighteen hundred years before, a roaring fire might help them stay warm through the night but it would not keep the barbarians away for much longer. Tonight, though, the militiamen were not alone. Scanlon spotted two other men in black leather overcoats standing near the barricade. With their hands thrust deep in their coat pockets and their hat brims snapped low over their eyes, they looked like cheap B-movie gangsters. Gestapo!

  “Do you know George Raft and his partner over there?” Scanlon asked Dietrich.

  “Sorry,” the Chief Inspector sighed. “We have taken on a lot of summer help to handle the busy season, you know. These two were probably called in from one of the rural precincts, from the sticks, as you Americans call it, and you know how the new boys always overplay the role.”

  “Lean back in the seat and close your eyes, Otto,” Scanlon warned. “and don’t open them until I tell you. Pretend you’re asleep.”

  “Or else, I assume,” Dietrich quipped, but he did as he was told when Scanlon stopped the car at the checkpoint.

  Slowly but purposefully, the two Gestapo agents in the black leather coats strolled toward the big touring car, very much playing the role. One walked to the driver’s side door while the other circled warily around to the passenger side.

  “Your papers,” the first man demanded as he held out his hand. Scanlon passed Dietrich’s identity cards through the open window and watched the Gestapo officer examine them under the harsh beam of a flashlight.

  “You have no travel permit,” the man said.

  “Chief Inspector Dietrich is the one who issues them, you moron!” Scanlon challenged him. The Gestapo agent was not accustomed to being addressed in that manner, and the American was counting on his being unsure of his ground. “That is him sleeping in the rear seat,” Scanlon said as he threw a thumb over his shoulder. “Are you telling me you don’t recognize Herr Dietrich or his car?”

  “I… uh,” the man stammered as he backed away and took a longer look at the car.

  “The Chief Inspector is heading for Nuremberg to meet personally with Reichsführer Himmler on a matter of utmost importance to the Reich.”

  “But the papers, I…”

  “You look new here,” Scanlon said as he motioned for the fellow to step closer, sounding more sympathetic. “Did you just transfer into the district?”

  “Well, yes, I…”

  “Then you won’t mind moving again?” Scanlon hinted darkly. “Because you’ll be in the next truck headed east if you wake Herr Dietrich up.”


  The Gestapo officer swallowed hard, and then shone his flashlight into the back seat. The thin beam traveled quickly across the four faces and came to rest on Otto Dietrich’s for a brief, wavering moment. “All right, be on your way, then.” The man scowled as he tossed the identity cards onto Scanlon’s lap and motioned for them to pass on through.

  Scanlon smiled as he pressed the accelerator to the floor. The powerful twelve-cylinder engine kicked up a cloud of dust as it accelerated and the glow of the watch fire soon disappeared behind them. Slowly, Scanlon felt the tension fading and he began to relax. He glanced at the finely crafted instrument panel and asked, “By the way, Otto, how does a simple, hardworking policeman like you come to own a superb piece of machinery like this?”

  “Oh, by fixing a few parking tickets, doing a little moonlighting, you know how it is for a lowly public servant,” he smiled. “A hard-working fellow can always pick up a bargain if he has a bit of extra cash in his pocket.”

  Scanlon shook his head in disgust. “Instead of Gauleiter of Hollywood, you should ask Himmler to make you Police Chief in Chicago. You’d fit in there too.”

  “Excellent idea, Edward. I shall remember that. And since you like my lovely car, I would appreciate your remembering to return it in one piece when you finish playing your little games.”

  “Where you’re going, you won’t need it, Otto.”

  “Oh, I would not count on that, my boy.” Dietrich smiled knowingly. “I would not count on that at all.”