Death on the Rhine

by Charles Whiting

  It was typical of the many legends that surrounded his person. Was it an invention, a tall tale? But how else could a former captain of the fleet lose a leg while engaged in a desk-bound intelligence job?

  He dropped his scroll pen, sprinkled some sand on the letter and then signed it ‘C’ in green ink, for at the headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service only he was allowed to use green ink. He looked up and gave them a wintery smile with his lips moving as if worked by steel springs. ‘Good of you to come,’ he barked. ‘Please sit down. Are you both well and fit?’

  Even if they had not been, the two of them would not have dared to admit it. ‘Yessir,’ they said, again in unison.

  ‘Good, you’ll need all your strength for what is to come.’ He peered hard at their faces and seemingly liked what he saw, for he barked, ‘The spell in the North Sea has done you some good. Put some colour in your cheeks.’

  ‘With not much success, sir, I’m afraid,’ Smith said, a little crestfallen, as he remembered his failure of the previous day.

  ‘No matter. That business will be taken care of in due course. Now I won’t lecture the two of you. I expect you both read the papers and know how bad things are in Germany at the moment. We, the French and the Americans occupy half the country right up to the Rhine. The rest of the country is run by a socialist government in Berlin, which cannot act efficiently without the aid of the army, and you know just how reactionary and right-wing the army has proved itself since its defeat in the war?’

  The two of them nodded obediently and wondered where all this was leading.

  ‘Meanwhile, there are paramilitary organisations springing up all over the place,’ C continued in that no-nonsense manner of his, ‘both right-wing and left-wing. Recently, one of these right-wing organisations has started to make attacks on our Occupation forces in the general area of Cologne, the British Army’s HQ. There’s been a bad case of murder and rape on one of our people, plus a lot of sabotage of our equipment – and,’ he paused significantly, ‘last week the Huns tried to murder Winston Churchill while he was on a trip on the Rhine.’ C noted their surprise and said quickly, ‘Naturally we’re keeping this strictly hush-hush and not a word of what I have just told you must ever leave this room.’

  ‘Yessir,’ they both replied.

  ‘Now, two of the Huns who tried to kill old Winnie were taken. Our intelligence johnnies questioned them closely and got nothing out of them – nothing of value, that is – until we sprung this upon them.’ He held up a piece of paper with a drawing of what appeared to be a crooked cross on it. ‘This design or emblem was taken from the poor woman who was raped and murdered. They call it a swastika. Ever heard of it?’ They shook their heads, a little puzzled. ‘I’m not surprised. They call it a swastika – Hakenkreuz, in the Hun lingo. And it is the emblem worn by a new Munich-based right-wing group called the National Socialists. They started out as a very minor organisation a couple of years back. Indeed, there were only seven founding members. But after they started to get money from rich right-wingers, these National Socialists began to expand rapidly and even more so when a rabble-rouser called Adolf Hitler took over the party. But,’ he gave them a wintry smile, ‘I’ll let an old acquaintance of yours tell you the rest.’ He jingled the bell. The bluff major opened the door and he said, ‘Send in Major McIntyre now please.’

  ‘Yessir.’

  The two young officers had last seen McIntyre back in 1919. But the man who came through the door had not changed much since. He was a little greyer and was now a major instead of a captain. He was still a tough colonial!

  He was a Canadian really, of Scottish extraction, tough and lean, who spoke little and when he did he did so from the side of his mouth. He was the type who liked to let his fists do the talking for him, or if necessary a revolver. Smith knew the type. They had volunteered to fight for the ‘mother country’ and those who had survived the slaughter of the trenches back in 1916/17 had been commissioned in the field, becoming temporary ‘officers and gentlemen’. Not that McIntyre could ever have been mistaken for a gentleman. He was too angry-looking, truculent and tough for that. Still, Smith had always liked the cut of his jib.

  McIntyre gave C a careless salute, and, nodding to the other two, said in a Canadian accent with an underlying Scots burr, ‘Hello, you two.’

  ‘You know Major McIntyre’s job?’ C said. ‘He works officially for the British Control Commission in Germany—’

  ‘Frigging Huns,’ McIntyre snarled.

  ‘Unofficially he works for us. Now, ever since the start of this year when the attacks on our forces on the Rhine commenced, McIntyre has been trying to find out about this National Socialist group led by Adolf Hitler, what their plans are and, above all, why they are directing their venom against us instead of the French, who, as you know, have just occupied the Ruhr and are much more hated than we are by Huns.’

  McIntyre lit a cigarette without asking permission, blew out a stream of smoke and said, ‘Because the Frogs shoot ’em if they catch ’em. You British are a soft touch.’ He sneered contemptuously.

  ‘I say, you can’t go around shooting civilians,’ Dickie Bird exclaimed, attempting a little humour. ‘It’s not allowed.’

  McIntyre eyed him coldly, as if he were a particularly unpleasant form of life.

  Smith, as impatient as ever when it came to a new mission, said, ‘But what has all this got to do with us? After all we’re sea-based.’ C looked across at the tough Canadian, smoking silently, eyes narrowed as the blue smoke curled up about his lean face. ‘McIntyre, you’re the expert. You’d better tell them.’

  McIntyre took the cigarette from between his lips, as if he was reluctant to speak, and said slowly, measuring every word, ‘This feller Hitler is planning some big incident in our Zone of Occupation. I don’t know what.’ He looked hard at the two younger officers. ‘But I do know that Hitler is out to take over Germany…’

  Five

  There was silence now in the cobbled village square. In the light of the flaming torches held by burly Germans dressed in brown uniforms, McIntyre and Dietz, his little interpreter, could see the blood-red swastika flag hanging from virtually every house. These new National Socialists were obviously pretty strong in this particular Rhenish village, McIntyre told himself grimly.

  Next to him, Dietz whispered, ‘It’s very dangerous, the thing we do, Major. If they catch us, they will not stop. They will be throwing us in the Rhine.’

  The tough Canadian didn’t take his hard gaze off the square. ‘They have to catch us – first,’ he said out of the side of his mouth.

  A big Adler touring-car came bumping over the cobbles. The guards opened a path for it and the civilians crowded forwards to watch the coming spectacle. McIntyre flung up his night glasses. A familiar face swept into the circles of calibrated glass. It was one of the most evil ones the Canadian had ever encountered. Framed by a high fur collar, it was small and soft, with thin lips that looked as if they might have been painted on it. But it was not the German’s intense pallor that was unnerving; it was the eyes. They were hooded and dark, as if they had no depths at all, with an expression of boundless sadism.

  ‘An old friend, Kapitanleutnant von Horn,’ he whispered, lowering the glasses, as the big open tourer parked opposite the rostrum on which he would speak.

  Dietz shivered. He knew the reputation of von Horn, head of German Naval Intelligence. He was a sadistic pervert who would stop at nothing in his attempts to reunite Germany under the rule of some strongman who would make Germany great again as she had been before her defeat in the war.

  McIntyre told himself there were ‘no spots’ on von Horn, as his ancient mother, long dead, when he had been a wee laddie back in the Gorbals, had said. He was on to this man Hitler. It looked as though this new leader was going to get the support of the military.

  ‘Er kommt…! er kommt… he’s coming!’ The cry rose from a thousand throats. Next to the rostrum, the drum major brought
down his baton. The fifes and kettledrums blared into action, bashing out a Prussian march at full blast.

  Slowly, a big black Horch was making its way through the crowd, brown-uniformed thugs hanging on the sides, looking aggressively at the crowd, ready to drop off immediately if they spotted a troublemaker and knock the merry hell out of him.

  ‘Heil… Heil Hitler!’ The cry was taken up everywhere; right hands were thrust out rigidly on all sides.

  McIntyre’s hard face twisted into a look of contempt. ‘Frigging Jerries,’ he whispered to himself as next to him Dietz, who had deserted from the German Army at the end of the war and had thrown in his lot with McIntyre, hissed, ‘There he is – Hitler!’

  The car stopped. The SA thugs dropped to the ground in a rough circle, hands on their pistol belts. A figure stood up. He was dressed in a shabby trenchcoat and breeches. On his head he wore what looked like a flying helmet and in his hand he clutched a long, leather dog whip. He flung up his own hand, bellowed ‘Heil,’ and then with the band playing his favourite ‘Badenweiler Marsch’, he strode purposefully to the rostrum amid the wild cheering of the crowd.

  He marched up the steps, watched intently not only by McIntyre from his hiding place but also by von Horn, who would soon make the decision for his own group whether they would support the Austrian rabble-rouser, who, a mere four years ago, had been a simple lance-corporal in the Imperial Army.

  For what seemed a long time, Hitler just stood there, hands on hips, gazing down at the crowd. Then as the cheering died away, he started to speak, his voice soft so that his listeners had to strain to hear his words. He explained the events of the last four years: how Germany had been stabbed in the back by the Jews, the profiteers, the intellectuals of the Home Front. It was they who had lost the war, not the brave German Army fighting in the mud and blood of Flanders.

  Within minutes he had his peasant and working-class audience in his hands. Now, his face flushed and glazed with sweat, one lock of hair falling over his narrow brow, he launched into the attack. He stormed at his favourite enemies, the Jews and the Reds. ‘Our motto shall be, if you will not be a German, I’ll bash your skull in… We cannot win without a fight, a bloody fight… Those traitors in Berlin must go… Liquidate them and under strong leadership we can make Germany whole again… great… The French, the Americans, they must be tossed out of the great Fatherland… They have no right to be here… letting their black soldiers rape our decent German woman… suck us dry of our last penny in reparations so that the plutocrats, the Jews, in London, Paris and New York can sit like fat pigs in shit…’

  Now his audience were sweating, too, some of them staring up at the new saviour, who was saying what ordinary German folk thought, with rapt devotion. Everywhere, too, the brown-shirted guards had forgotten their primary duties. They, too, were held in a hypnotic spell by the demagogue on the rostrum.

  McIntyre knew his time had come. He reached into his pocket and released the safety catch of the .38 that he kept there. Then he pulled the rubber cosh out of his other pocket and strapped the loop around his wrist. ‘All right, Dietz,’ he ordered loudly as the mob cheered and whistled, ‘they’re just right. Get back to the old jalopy and start up the engine.’

  Dietz looked apprehensive, not for himself this time, but for McIntyre. He liked the tough Canadian. The Major had been very good to him in their four years together, though he had been frightened half that time. ‘Be careful, sir,’ he warned. ‘They are bad people when angry.’

  McIntyre gave him a hard grin. ‘So am I,’ he said, then he was moving down the dark street to the right of the square, the noise of the crowd and the ranting of the orator instantly deadened. He had already picked the man he wanted. He had come with Hitler and wore the stars of an officer on his collar. Just before Hitler had left the car he had spoken to the man. McIntyre hopedhe was the senior man of the bodyguard, the kind of person who would pick up all the big shots’ gossip.

  Now he edged his way around the square by means of the backstreets, which were deserted as he had expected. He passed the onion-towered church. A man was standing morosely at the open door, perhaps straining to hear the speaker in the square below. He was wearing a priest’s robes. ‘Guten Abend,’ McIntyre said in his best German.

  ‘Guten Abend, mein Sohn,’ the priest answered. There was a sob in his voice. Perhaps he already knew his day was over. He had lost his flock.

  McIntyre turned the corner. Now he came out at the back of the square. To his immediate front was von Horn’s car. That monster had his back to him, listening intently to Hitler, who was ranting, ‘The Treaty of Versailles was a fraud, a mere piece of paper which we will immediately tear into shreds once we have come into power.’ Just behind it was Hitler’s car. Most of the bodyguard who had come with him had pushed forwards to hear what their chief had to say and were staring, just as fascinated as the rest, at the sweating, gesticulating man on the rostrum. Only the officer remained, leaning against the side door. Perhaps he had orders to do so, McIntyre told himself, to ensure no one planted a bomb in the Horch. These days the party bosses, left and right, regularly bumped each other off like Chicago gangsters. He nodded his approval. The lone man and his evident unawareness that danger was on its way suited him fine.

  McIntyre stole forwards, one hand clutching the butt of the big revolver, the other the rubber truncheon. In the next few minutes he would use both. Fifty yards to go. This was the crucial moment. It was like in the old days in the trenches with the ‘heavies’ blasting hell out of the Hun positions. Soon they’d also know the ‘heavies’ would stop firing to avoid killing their own chaps. Then, when that happened, the attackers would make that last desperate charge for the enemy wire, hoping and praying that the Hun machine-gunners wouldn’t recover and run to their deadly weapons.

  He came up just behind the lounging SA officer. Up front, they were still chanting and cheering, Hitler was throwing himself all over the rostrum. Every eye was concentrated on him. McIntyre took one last breath. Then he stuck the muzzle of the revolver in the German’s ribs – hard. The man started violently as if he had been stabbed.

  McIntyre didn’t give him a chance to shout out. He slapped him across the back of the neck with the club and commanded, ‘Ruhe. Don’t shout. Now.’ He kept the German simple. It was always the best way. Long instructions confused the victim and at the same time gave him time to recover and shout out. He shoved the muzzle harder in the startled man’s back. ‘Move it!’

  The suddenly frightened SA man ‘moved’ it.

  They started down the darkened village street which led away from the square. To their front lights flashed off and on. It was Dietz with the car.

  The big Canadian prodded the German harder. He stumbled into a run. Behind them there was a shot, followed an instant later by a shrill whistle. At the wheel, gunning his motor, Dietz swallowed hard. Had they been spotted?

  McIntyre flung open the door. He shoved him inside and as he did so, he brought the rubber cosh down hard on the back of the man’s shaven skull. He collapsed without a sound on the back seat.

  ‘That’ll keep the swine quiet for a while,’ he said through gritted teeth, while Dietz’s expression grew even more worried. ‘Come on, let’s head for the Rhine bridge.’

  Dietz needed no urging. He swung the car round. Behind them they could hear someone attempting to start a car, turning the cranking handle with little success save a series of throaty barks of the reluctant engine.

  He pressed the accelerator down hard. The little car shot down the dead straight road, the vineyards on either side whizzing by. Behind them the car started up and McIntyre told himself grimly they had been rumbled. Someone had spotted them. He took out his revolver and laid it on his lap in readiness.

  Next to him Dietz gulped with fear and almost lost control. ‘Watch the frigging steering wheel,’ McIntyre snapped hurriedly, as the car narrowly missed going into the drainage ditch at the right side of the country road. He fl
ashed a look in the rear-view mirror. Yes, they were being followed all right. Two headlights, hurrying forwards at speed, were after them. ‘Hit the floor, Dietz,’ he commanded. ‘Don’t spare the horses.’

  The glowing needle of the speedometer started to rise. Thirty… forty… fifty kilometres an hour… Sixty. The little car was shaking at the seams.

  But still the other car kept up and in the rear-view mirror McIntyre could see there was another car behind it. It would be the one that had brought Hitler to the meeting. He frowned and wondered how long it would take them to reach the safety of the Rhine bridge. Once across it they would be in safety. There was the British Zone of Occupation and British Tommies would be guarding the far side. For he had no illusions about what would happen to him and Dietz if the Huns caught them. They’d be slaughtered and dropped in some remote ditch within the hour.

  ‘Come on, Dietz!’ he urged. ‘They’re gaining on us.’

  The first car was. It was cutting down the distance between the two vehicles rapidly and McIntyre knew it was time to act. He had to do something. ‘All right, Dietz!’ he shouted above the snarl of the engine, ‘try and keep her as steady as you can.’ Without waiting to see if Dietz had heard, he leaned far out of the open side window, steadying himself the best he could. He took aim and fired. The slug howled off the road yards in front of the car behind. He could see the sudden spurt of angry blue flames where it hit the tarmac.

  McIntyre cursed and raised the range. By now there were spurts of scarlet flame coming from the other car. They were firing back. He took aim and pulled the trigger. The big revolver jerked upwards. In that same instant a slug slammed into the back of their car. On the rear seat the unconscious prisoner was thrust forwards by the impact and slammed into the back of Dietz’s seat. But he had no time to look around. He was concentrating frantically on the road ahead, praying fervently they would spot the bridge soon.