Murder's Art

by Christopher Nicole

  As if to lend emphasis to his words, the sound of shooting was coming closer, as were the screams and the explosions. Angela drew a deep breath and lay flat on the snow, then rolled into the aperture between the side of the train and the parapet on which the track was laid. Her shoulder caught on the metal above, and she gasped and turned back on to her stomach, wriggling sideways. She got her legs through, then her torso, and lastly her head, and, before she could stop herself, went on rolling down the embankment to come to rest in a snow- and water-filled ditch. For a moment she sat there, panting, only slowly feeling the freezing temperature which surrounded her lower half, while she watched the soldier sliding down beside her. He held her arm to drag her to her feet. ‘Run!’ he shouted.

  Angela looked left and right. To her right the train lay in a shattered mess, steam rising from the engine and the first carriages, and now she could see smoke and flashes of flame as fire took hold. Most of the shooting was coming from there. But to her left, beyond the guard’s van – also on its side – the track was empty. She turned to run along it, and was checked by a shout from behind her. Instinctively she turned, as did the soldier, drawing his pistol. Instantly there was a shot, and he fell backwards, blood spouting from his tunic to stain the snow. Angela dropped to her knees beside him, but he was already dead. She stared at the blood, and felt sick. This was only the second person she had ever seen shot – but the first had been her mother, hit in almost exactly the same place.

  She heard footsteps, and looked up to see a man and a woman. The man had a stubble of beard, and the woman was tall and strong and angry. ‘She is a German,’ the woman said. ‘No Yugoslav would have a coat like that.’ She levelled her pistol.

  ‘Wait,’ the man said. ‘If she is a German …’ He licked his lips.

  Angela lost her head. ‘I am Angela von Blintoft,’ she said. ‘The governor-general is my father. If you spare my life he will reward you.’

  The two Partisans gazed at her for a few minutes, then the man’s lip curled. ‘Blintoft,’ he said. ‘Your father murdered my parents.’

  Angela returned his gaze with her mouth open, realising what he had in mind. ‘No,’ she said, and tried to stand up. But Brolic seized her shoulder, and threw her to the ground. ‘Hold her hands,’ he told Draga.

  Draga hesitated. ‘The colonel may not like it.’

  ‘The colonel is dead,’ Brolic said. ‘I saw him fall.’

  ‘But Sasha …’

  ‘She placed you in command. If I do not take this woman now, I shall be for ever damned.’

  Draga considered for a final few moments, then said, ‘Make it quick.’ Her own parents had been killed in Belgrade by a German bomb.

  Angela was again endeavouring to sit up, but Draga held her wrists and pulled her back down, then knelt, pressing Angela’s arms into the snow. Angela gasped and tried to kick her legs, but Brolic was kneeling across them as he pushed up her skirt and dragged down her knickers, just as Wassermann had done the first time they had had sex. But that had been a game. This was reality. ‘Please,’ she begged. ‘Don’t hurt me, please.’

  ‘I am going to hurt you,’ Brolic promised her, taking the knickers right off and pulling her legs apart to kneel between them while he tugged her coat open and tore at the bodice of her dress, ripping it and her petticoat to reveal her breasts. ‘You are going to scream,’ he told her, dropping his pants and then grasping her breasts to squeeze them as he went down on her.

  ‘You are slow,’ Draga said. ‘Have you never had a woman before?’

  Angela screamed at the pain of his grasp and as she felt him inside her. She made convulsive but unavailing efforts to throw him off, but Brolic was now lying flat on her as he worked away; then he suddenly ceased moving. Angela screamed again, and looked up to see another man standing over her. ‘You too?’ Draga asked. ‘Well, hurry it up.’

  ‘No,’ Angela begged. ‘Please.’

  ‘She’s German,’ Draga pointed out. ‘That is what she is speaking. German.’

  ‘I have no use for a German slag,’ the man said. He kicked Brolic in the backside. ‘Let’s move. Shoot the bitch, and have done.’

  Brolic rose to his knees, allowing Angela to draw up her legs. ‘Shooting will be too quick,’ he said. ‘I am going to crucify the bitch. Then we’ll leave her for her father to find. Help me.’

  The train whistle uttered a blast as it entered the culvert, and Tony looked down at the plunger beneath his hand; as with the bridge at Kragujevac, he had placed the charges himself, and had to doubt they were going to be successful. He glanced around his small command. None of the men had shaved for four days, and the women were equally unkempt – even Sasha’s hair was loose and tangled as it emerged from beneath her woolly hat. They looked a ragged but dangerous bunch. ‘You know what you have to do,’ he reminded them. They nodded, clutching their tommy-guns and making sure their grenades were easy of access.

  The train roared into the culvert. The Partisans were situated on the far side, but they were looking straight down the cut, and when the engine was almost through, and directly over the charges, Tony pressed the plunger. The explosion, and the result, were all that he had been promised by Brolic. The front carriages leapt into the air, and then crashed on to their sides. As they did so, both sides of the culvert collapsed, burying the engine and the first carriage beneath an avalanche of snow-covered earth.

  ‘Move,’ he snapped, and leapt to his feet, followed by Sasha, to run along what was left of the top of the culvert towards the rear of the train. Beneath them, Draga and her people went into action, hurling their grenades and firing their tommy-guns. Tony looked down at a scene of utter chaos, as all the remaining carriages had also left the track after cannoning into each other. People were climbing out, looking dazed. Most were in uniform, and all of these carried at least side arms. Tony saw one of the Germans draw his Luger. It never occurred to him that the man might be shooting at him, much less that he could possibly hit him, but a second later he was lying on the ground, for the moment feeling no pain.

  ‘Tony!’ Sasha dropped to her knees beside him.

  ‘Fuck it,’ he said. ‘Listen, get to the last carriage. Get—’

  ‘I must stop the bleeding,’ she said.

  ‘I have given you an order.’

  ‘You are hit. I am in command. And I say you come first.’ She opened his tunic to look at the seeping blood. And now the pain was too severe to allow him to do more than gasp. ‘There is a rib broken, at least one,’ she said. ‘But I think the bullet has exited.’ She unslung her haversack and took out her first-aid kit, expertly applied some antiseptic and then lint to the wound, before pulling his shirt and vest out of his pants to wrap bandages right round his body.

  Draga stood above them. ‘What has happened? My God! The colonel has been hit.’

  ‘I will care for him. Listen, take command until I can come to you. Are there any other casualties?’

  ‘Not one. But nearly all the Germans are dead. I think there may be some left at the back.’

  ‘Well, go and kill them, and then prepare to pull out. I will need help. Hurry now.’ Draga slid down the embankment.

  Tony tried to concentrate. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Listen.’

  ‘Sssh,’ Sasha said, tying the bandage. ‘You should not speak. It will be all right. I am in command.’

  ‘You don’t understand. The goods we wish, the reason for this attack, are in the rear carriage.’

  Sasha frowned. ‘I had forgotten. What are these goods?’

  ‘They are two people. Major Wassermann and Angela von Blintoft. Tito wants them taken prisoner.’

  ‘Blintoft? The governor-general’s wife? I thought she was dead.’

  ‘This is his daughter. Listen, she must be captured alive.’ As he spoke they heard a scream, and then another. ‘Go,’ Tony said. ‘Go. She must be alive.’

  Sasha hesitated, then got up. ‘I will be right back,’ she said, and slid down the embankment. She
ran round the back of the train, and paused in consternation at what she saw. A dark-haired young woman had been stripped naked except for her stockings, and was being thrust against the bottom of the train by two of the Partisans, watched by Draga and a third man. Brolic was standing before her, his knife in his hands, and was preparing to drive it through the palm of Angela’s extended hand, while Angela gasped and moaned and shrieked. Sasha ran forward. ‘Stop that!’

  Brolic turned, his face still contorted with passion. ‘This bitch is the governor-general’s daughter.’

  ‘And she is what we want. Let her go.’ She looked at the torn and scattered clothing spread over the snow. And then at Draga. ‘You permitted this?’

  ‘Well,’ Draga said, ‘if she is the governor-general’s daughter …’

  ‘The colonel wants her alive.’ Sasha picked up the torn fur cot. ‘Wrap her in this.’

  ‘She is going to die,’ Brolic snarled. ‘Do you think a fucking woman is going to stop me?’ He lunged forward with his knife.

  Sasha’s tommy-gun was still hanging round her neck. She levelled it, and shot Brolic through the heart. He went down without a sound, and the other two men backed off. ‘I am in command,’ Sasha told them. ‘Go and make a stretcher for the colonel.’

  Angela had slid down the bottom of the carriage, and was sitting at the foot, eyes wide, panting. Draga knelt beside her, and wrapped the fur coat round her shoulders. ‘Her tits will be frostbitten.’

  Sasha knelt also. ‘Well, wrap her up. Use her coat.’ She grasped Angela’s chin, and moved her head to and fro. ‘Do you speak Serbo-Croat?’ Angela’s eyes rolled as Draga closed the coat across her chest and began massaging her through the thick material. But her response, even if muted, indicated that she understood what had been said to her. ‘Listen,’ Sasha said. ‘We will save your life. But you must help us.’

  ‘That man raped me,’ Angela muttered in broken Serbo-Croat.

  ‘You won’t die of it,’ Sasha told her. ‘Now get off your ass, and put on your clothes.’

  ‘My clothes are torn! And …’ Her face wrinkled with distaste.

  ‘Just do it. They’ll keep you warm. Shit!’ she muttered as there was a burst of firing from along the train. ‘Help her, Draga.’

  She clambered back up the embankment, and saw the two men, who had dragged a makeshift stretcher – composed of two coats taken from dead Germans, with rifles thrust through the sleeves – up to where Tony lay. ‘What was that firing?’

  ‘Someone moved down there,’ Groznic said. ‘So we shot him.’

  Sasha knelt beside Tony. He was still awake, although clearly groggy. ‘Did you get her?’ he asked.

  ‘I got her,’ Sasha told him, deciding against adding that Angela was not exactly undamaged goods. ‘Now we must leave this place.’

  ‘I cannot walk. You must abandon me. You will command. But first, radio Tito. Just the one word: success.’

  ‘I am already in command,’ she reminded him. ‘And it is my decision that we take you with us.’

  ‘You will not make it, carrying me.’

  ‘We will make it. Put him on the stretcher,’ she told Groznic.

  ‘You wish us to carry him all the way back to Foca? That is impossible.’

  ‘You will do it,’ she told him, ‘because I have commanded you to do it.’ The two men stared at her. They were as well armed as she, and they were each bigger than her. But Sasha’s hand was resting on her tommy-gun, and they had seen the ruthlessness with which she had despatched Brolic when he had questioned her command. ‘Discard your weapons,’ she said.

  ‘We must have our guns.’

  ‘There is no need for them, as you will not be shooting at anyone. Drop them.’ The men exchanged glances, then obeyed. ‘Now pick up the colonel.’ They placed Tony on the stretcher. Sasha knelt beside him, drew his revolver, and placed it in his hand. ‘If you have any trouble with them, shoot them. Do you need some more morphine?’

  ‘If you drug me any more I won’t be able to shoot anybody. I can bear it. Send that radio message. Then you’d better destroy the set. You can’t carry me and it.’

  Sasha nodded, and stood up. ‘Start moving,’ she said. ‘I will be back in a few minutes.’ She slung the tommy-guns on her shoulder, went to the end of the culvert where the radio had been left, and sent the message. Then she picked up a discarded rifle, and smashed the set into several pieces. Next she went to the rear of the train, where Draga was still helping Angela to dress. The German girl looked like a scarecrow, and she was shivering with the cold; her clothes were still wet. ‘You’ll warm up when we get moving,’ Sasha said. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘What is going to happen to me?’ Angela asked.

  ‘I really don’t know. Keep your fingers crossed.’ She grinned. ‘And your legs, even if it is a bit late for that.’

  ‘My father would pay much to have me returned, alive and unharmed.’

  ‘I think he is going to have to do that anyway,’ Sasha said. ‘Move.’ Angela looked back at the train. ‘There is no time to collect your things,’ Sasha said, misunderstanding the look. ‘We are in a hurry.’

  Eleven

  Reunion

  Tony managed to stay awake until he was joined by the women, then his pain- and drug-filled brain gave way. His half-conscious mind became a jumble of broken images and uncertain feelings. The pain was ever present, even if dulled by the morphine, just as the constant jolting of the stretcher was also uncomfortable, but his extreme exhaustion, caused by the wound coming on top of the four days’ hard slog, meant that he kept drifting off to sleep. Yet his waking images were equally distorted, as he kept seeing Sandrine’s face beside Sasha’s, while now there was a third face added, quite different from the first two – a hauntingly beautiful face, very young and very frightened, but also containing a strangely attractive element of defiance. It was not a face he had ever seen before, and he could not understand where it had come from.

  Then he awoke to complete clarity of mind, to searing pain, combined with an urgent desire to know where he was and what was happening. The stretcher was on the ground, and he was looking up at trees. The air on his face was cold, and now he felt cold on his body as well; he was undressed, and Sasha was bending over his wound. ‘He is awake,’ a voice said in very uncertain Serbo-Croat.

  Tony turned his head and looked at the girl. So she had not been a dream after all. He tried to speak, but could not. The girl held a cup of water to his lips, and he was able to see her more clearly. She wore what had obviously once been very expensive clothes, including a sable fur, although now everything was torn and dirty. Only the matching hat looked undamaged.

  Sasha knelt beside him. ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Alive. If somewhat bloody.’

  ‘Are you in pain?’

  ‘Some.’

  ‘I have been saving the morphine. It is going to be some time before we get back. Would you like some?’

  ‘I’ll be patient. How far have we come?’

  ‘We have covered just over twenty miles.’

  He looked up at the sun streaming through the trees. From its angle he reckoned it was about three in the afternoon. ‘But that is splendid time,’ he said. ‘Twenty miles in six hours?’

  ‘No, no,’ Sasha said. ‘We took the train two days ago.’ He stared at her in consternation. ‘We have travelled slowly, partly because of you, but mainly because the country is swarming with soldiers.’ She smiled at him. ‘But they have not found us yet.’

  He considered the situation. ‘Are they taking hostages?’

  ‘I do not know. It is likely.’

  ‘And how is Wassermann bearing up?’

  ‘Wassermann?’

  ‘The wounded SS officer. Capturing him was the reason for our raid.’

  Sasha bit her lip. ‘I do not know. I never saw him. There was so much going on …’

  Tony turned his head. ‘But you got the girl. You are Angela von Blintoft.’

 
‘Yes,’ Angela said. ‘And you are Davis.’

  ‘Spot on.’

  ‘Your people raped me.’

  Tony looked at Sasha, who shrugged. ‘It was Brolic. I shot him.’

  ‘I was wondering what had happened to him. Well, Fräulein, these things happen in war. And your people happen to have started this war.’

  ‘Suppose I am pregnant? I will kill myself. And this walking through the snow. My feet hurt, and I am so cold. And there is not enough to eat. Is this the way to treat a lady?’

  ‘Probably not. But we don’t classify you as a lady. Tell me about the prisoner your father is holding.’

  Angela’s nostrils flared. ‘The woman Fouquet! Your mistress!’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘She will probably be executed in retaliation for this.’

  ‘You had better hope not. Because if she is, you are going to be hanged in the public square at Foca. We’ll send the photographs to your father.’

  Angela clasped both hands to her neck.

  Sasha lay beside him that afternoon; she was following his example and only moving at night. ‘So Sandrine is alive. How long have you known this?’

  ‘I learned about it the day before we left on this mission.’

  ‘So I am no more use to you. You have had what I have to offer.’

  ‘Hang around and find out,’ he suggested. ‘I owe you my life. And I’m not sure I don’t owe you my reason as well.’

  She considered this, then she said, ‘You mean to exchange this girl for Sandrine. That is what this has all been about.’

  ‘That is a spin-off. Destroying that train, capturing the governor-general’s daughter – this will be a great propaganda coup. It was General Tito’s aim to show the Germans, show the world, that we are still capable of offensive action. He had hoped to get Wassermann as well, but that can’t be helped.’

  ‘We would have had him, if you had not been so secretive.’

  ‘I know. I did not wish to upset you. Anyway, he was probably killed in the crash, as he was already badly wounded. And we have the girl.’