Death on the Rhine

by Charles Whiting

  ‘I shall wear the black lace drawers and the frilly garters,’ she was saying in that delightful naughty accent of hers. ‘But you must not be a bad boy and remove them.’

  ‘Why not, my dearest? Oh please let me remove them and look at your splendid little thing.’

  ‘Naughty, naughty,’ she chided him. ‘Oh, aren’t you such a greedy man.’ She breathed softly into the phone and he felt a sudden surging in his loins. He pressed his free hand deeper into his pocket. ‘However, if you are a little good, I shall allow you to kiss my titties.’

  ‘Oh, would you, my darling girl?’ he breathed hoarsely, sweat breaking out on his wrinkled forehead at the thought. ‘Could I suck the nipples, too, dearest?’

  ‘Only very little and gently, as if you were my own dear baby.’

  ‘Let me be your baby, Liebchen.’

  ‘But babies don’t do naughty things like sticking things up ladies, do they?’ she admonished him.

  ‘But it is so delightful, sweetie,’ the General cooed over the phone. ‘I think if you were here now’ – he tapped the bulge in his breeches to make sure he was right – ‘I would do that naughty thing to you right here and now – over my desk. Now, what do you say to that?’

  ‘Oh, if you continue in this manner,’ she said very firmly, ‘I shall be forced to take your trousers down on Saturday and give you a good spanking, do you understand me?’

  The General swallowed hard. He hadn’t had a good smacking for a long time now. ‘Do you really mean that?’ he asked thickly.

  ‘I certainly do, you naughty boy. Your bottom needs a severe smacking for saying such terrible things to your darling darling little pussycat—’

  Listening in on the extension outside, the General’s groom and batman, Hopkins, shook his head in mock wonder. The old fart, he told himself, will have a heart attack if he goes on like this. The boss was getting too old for that kind of thing. He’d have to start putting bromide in his tea like they did with new recruits to make them concentrate on their training and to stop them having randy thoughts.

  Hopkins had a sneaking liking for the ‘boss’, as he called the GOC. He was toffee-nosed like all the old-school cavalry officers of his class, but he was brave and when the division had gone into action during the last war he’d gone with it. Not like so many divisional commanders who spent the war in their chateaux, boozing and womanising. He was worried for the boss, too. He had listened in to the conversation the General had had with the tough Colonial major and the West Yorks NCO had told him how the Colonial had slipped him a few bob to run sneak patrols at night – just in case.

  Still the old fart just wouldn’t take his security seriously. He frowned. The Jerry tart he rogered on Saturday nights, for instance. She couldn’t be trusted either. He didn’t trust a single squarehead. She could slip a knife though the boss’s skinny ribs one night – and that would be bloody that.

  On the other line, the General was quavering in his thin reedy voice, ‘Don’t torture me any longer, my dearest sugar plum. I know I’m a naughty boy, but you must take them off for me this coming Saturday. I couldn’t stand it if you refused an old man’s fervent wish—’

  Outside, there was the sound of a car braking. The guard commander barked an order. There was the stamp of boots on concrete. Horny palms smacked against rifle butts. It was an officer, Hopkins told himself. He was getting the ‘present arms’.

  ‘I shall slip them off your delightful body slowly, very slowly, savouring every precious moment, my darling,’ the General was drooling, as Hopkins put the extension down softly and tiptoed the best he could in his heavy, polished boots to the entrance hall, where, seizing a cloth, he pretended to be dusting the hall table.

  One moment later, McIntyre came striding in, face like thunder, revolver bulging clearly in the right pocket of his shabby, unpressed uniform. ‘Is your master in?’ he snapped at the batman.

  ‘Yessir,’ Hopkins said, standing rigidly to attention with the cloth held tightly to his side, as if it were a rifle. ‘He’s on the telephone though, at the moment.’

  ‘Announce me,’ McIntyre snapped. ‘It’s urgent, very urgent.’

  ‘Yessir. I’ll see what I can do.’

  He tapped on the door and entered softly.

  The General perched on his saddle was quite red in the face. It was not surprising. He was on heat. The things she was now saying had made him very excited indeed. The bulge in his breeches was all too pronounced.

  ‘If you dare remove my underthings, I promise you,’ she was saying in a very threatening tone, ‘that you will have to pay a high price for it, sir. You may have your way with me, have your sordid pleasures, but afterwards, there will be punishment. No sir! Not just with my delicate hand, but with the whip!’

  The GOC nearly jumped out of the saddle when Hopkins said softly, ‘Sir?’

  He shook his head like a man trying to wake from a deep sleep. ‘I shall call you again, my dear. I’ve got to attend to something.’ He put the phone down hurriedly and, pulling out a large silk khaki handkerchief, wiped the beads of sweat from his red face. ‘What is it, Hopkins?’ he demanded, feeling that delightful object between his legs receding rapidly through shock.

  ‘It’s the Canadian officer, Major McIntyre, sir. He says he would like to see you urgently.’

  ‘Damn the man’s impudence,’ Sir Alexander snorted, angry at being disturbed in the middle of such a delightful conversation. ‘What’s up?’

  McIntyre was already at the door.

  ‘We know for certain now, sir,’ he snapped.

  ‘For certain – what?’ the GOC snorted, looking at the cold-eyed Canadian in his untidy uniform.

  ‘When they’re going to attempt to assassinate you, sir,’ McIntyre replied, no trace of emotion in his voice. He might have been speaking of the state of the weather.

  ‘What poppycock!’ the General blustered. ‘Who would want to shoot me. This isn’t Ireland, you know. This is a civilised country – Germany.’

  McIntyre didn’t allow himself to be rattled, although the man he was speaking to was the most powerful Briton in Occupied Germany. ‘It’s a political matter, sir. You are a symbol of the enemy occupiers to the Boche. Eliminate you and it will be triumph for the German right-wingers attempting to take over power this year.’

  ‘Enemy occupiers, my foot! The Huns seem to like us. The Chief Burgomaster here, what’s his name?’ He snapped his fingers in irritation. ‘Oh, yes Adenauer. He’s very friendly and there are other Huns, I know, who like us a lot, a lot better than the Froggies, I can assure you of that.’

  With studied patience, McIntyre waited for the General to finish before saying laconically, ‘It’s this coming Saturday. They plan to kill you on that day, sir.’

  The General looked at him, as if he had suddenly gone mad. ‘Now how can you know that, man?’ he demanded. ‘Even if there were anything to all this tall tale, how could you know that so exactly, eh?’

  McIntyre stood his ground doggedly. ‘I can’t reveal my sources, sir,’ he said. ‘But you can take it that they are absolutely impeccable, sir.’

  The General paused. Hopkins, who knew better than most men that the General was getting a bit long in the tooth now, and that of course, that Jerry bint had sent him a bit loopy, knew he was no fool. Even in the British Army you couldn’t become a GOC if you were. McIntyre’s stand had impressed the old man. He was thinking the Canadian’s words over.

  Finally the GOC spoke. His temper had vanished. When he spoke now his voice was almost gentle – for him. ‘Major, I’m afraid I can’t move from this place on Saturday. In the afternoon I’ve a reception for the colonel of the 8th Irish Hussars and his squadron commanders – they’re due out here soon. I can’t cancel. Then I have – er – another private matter to be taken care of here that same evening. However, if it will give you any peace of mind – and I can see you take this matter seriously – I’ll suggest this.’

  ‘Yessir?’ McIntyre prompted
eagerly.

  ‘I’ll whistle up a company of West Yorks for that day. They can take up positions all around this place. In addition, I’ll talk to my friend Dr Adenauer – the Hun Chief Burgomaster chappie – and ask him to supply a Hundertschaft. Is that the correct word?’

  ‘Yessir, it is. It means a hundred police recruits from the police training barracks.’

  ‘Well, if I can get them, we’ll seal off the whole place.’ He gave McIntyre a thin smile. ‘In addition, I and my groom here will carry loaded revolvers and I can assure you that we know how to use them. Now then, Major, does that satisfy you?’

  ‘Pretty well, sir. But I have one request.’

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘Do you think I could take temporary command of the West Yorks company? I was a company commander in the trenches in the last show.’

  The General looked at the ribbon of the Military Cross on McIntyre’s breast and the three golden wound stripes on his sleeve. ‘Yes, I can see you’ve been through the mill. But why do you want temporary command of that company?’

  ‘They are regulars, sir,’ McIntyre said swiftly. ‘They’re used to the regular way of doing things. But we’re not up against regulars. We’re up against terrorists. They fight dirty and we’ve got to be prepared to do the same.’

  The GOC nodded his understanding. ‘I’ll see what I can do. The CO of the West Yorks won’t like it, but as it’s only for a day, I expect he’ll rally round.’ He chuckled. ‘After all, I am the GOC.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ McIntyre touched his hand to his battered cap in a vague salute, did an about-turn and went out.

  ‘Well, Hopkins,’ the General said sitting back on the saddle-chair, ‘what did you make of all that, eh?’

  ‘Bit of a turn up for the books, sir,’ Hopkins admitted. ‘Funny lot – Colonials. But he looks a hard man to me, sir. I think he knows what he’s on about, sir.’

  ‘Yes, I think you’re right. All right, then, Hopkins, off you go. I’d better get on with shuffling a bit of this bumpf.’

  Hopkins went out smartly and the GOC stared down at the pile of paperwork – approval for promotion, confirmation of court martial sentences, recommendations for good conduct medals, all the mundane letters, orders, forms of a peacetime army – and found he couldn’t face it. He put down his fountain pen once more and thought of the Canadian’s words. Could some Hun fanatic really be out to do him in? He fought fanatics often in his youth. Fuzzy-wuzzies and whirling dervishes in Africa, Pathans and the like in the Hindu Kush, wogs in Egypt, but he’d always thought of fanatics being natives, black or brown. He’d never considered the Huns as such. He frowned. Since the last show he didn’t seem to be able to comprehend the world any more. There were even these labour chappies in Parliament now demanding that the country should get rid of the British Empire!

  He let his mind drift. He thought of her in those lace-trimmed black silk drawers she loved to wear. He licked his wrinkled lips in anticipation. ‘Damn it all,’ he said aloud, ‘Terrorists or no terrorists, I’m going to enjoy my Saturday night…’

  Three

  ‘Dusseldorf-Hauptbahnhof Dusseldorf!’ The ‘Beast’ awoke with a start as the great metallic voice echoed and re-echoed in the bare cavern of a main station.

  He had been dreaming he had been leading that last fatal charge at Verdun when it had happened. The French machine guns had been chattering furiously, mortar bombs had been exploding all over the place and, here and there in the drifting fog of war on the barren, shell-pitted heights, they had glimpsed the French infantry in their horizon blue. His men were falling on all sides, but they kept on doggedly, braving the hail of steel. Suddenly out of the smoke, Fort Vaux, their objective, had loomed up. ‘Follow me, men,’ he had yelled, adding the traditional rallying cry, ‘the captain’s got a hole in his arse!’ They had cheered and had begun running again. Then, something had hit him full in the face like a sledgehammer. A sudden spurt of scarlet had exploded in front of his eyes and he had known no more.

  The ‘Beast’ shook his head. He fought off the dream. He tried to remember the instructions von Horn had given him at Hamburg station when he and Blind Klara had seen him off. He was to go only as far as Dusseldorf. The next station would be Cologne and if he went that far he ran the risk of being checked by the Tommies. If they discovered his two pistols then, as von Horn had put it, ‘the clock’ll really be in the pisspot’.

  From Dusseldorf, he was to take the tram to Koeln-Deutz, a suburb in the unoccupied part of the great Rhenish city. Von Horn had said the Tommy crossed every evening after dark to meet the woman. This time when he arrived at his ‘love-nest’, as von Horn had sneered, ‘you will be waiting for him, my dear Leutnant. You will do what you have to do, but you must leave clues all the time.’

  He had nodded numbly, not quite understanding and not really caring. Every time he was allowed to sleep with Blind Klara he felt a sort of lazy peace with himself – for a while. He was feeling that way now. That terrible rage which animated, burnt within him, had lapsed and the feeling was good.

  ‘You see,’ von Horn had lectured him, as they stood there in the shadows waiting for the express to start, ‘when the deed is done the Tommies must reveal that the assassin came from unoccupied Germany. It has to be clear that someone – some brave patriotic German – risked his life to rid the Fatherland of the foreign tyrant. That man will become a symbol of German renewal and the German people’s bid for freedom. Do you understand?’

  Dumbly, he had nodded his head, as the red-capped guard waved his little stick and had shouted, ‘Alles einsteigen… alles einsteigen, bitte!’ Klara had hugged him with surprising warmth, for she was not a demonstrative woman, and had cried above the noise of escaping steam, ‘Look after yourself, Gerd… look after yourself,’ and then, for some reason, tears had begun to flow from those blind eyes of hers.

  Now, as everywhere the doors of the compartments started to slam open, he wondered anew why Blind Klara had cried. Then he dismissed the matter. He took the special key that von Horn had given him and opened the door of his first-class compartment. A woman passing caught a glimpse of his ruined face in the yellow light of the gaslamp and shuddered. Hurriedly, he pulled up his coat collar and tugged the brim of his felt hat deeper over his forehead.

  Head bent, he pushed and shoved his way through the throng of passengers outside into the glowing darkness. He knew exactly what to do. Von Horn had told him. The tram stop was to the left of the station. He was to catch the one to Koeln-Deutz and sit near the door on the special seat reserved for the ‘war mutilated’. There he was to pull down the collar of his coat so that the other passengers would see his face. ‘They mustn’t forget you,’ von Horn had insisted. ‘It will be another clue that the press can follow up once the deed has been carried out. It will be quite clear that one of the brave wounded warriors was responsible.’

  The ‘Beast’ had felt quite proud of that description – brave wounded warrior. Still, as he sat there next to a man whose left leg was missing, he detested the covert horrified glances that the other passengers darted at him. Even the man with one leg couldn’t bear to look at him, the ‘Beast’ sensed that. But von Horn had said – it had to be done, so it would be. Yet, now that old rage at what life had done to him started to build slowly. He had been hurt. Soon, somebody else would have to hurt in return.

  Half an hour later he was alone in the bare little room of the discreet little pension reserved for him by von Horn, waiting for the call to von Horn to come through via the switchboard below in the reception, moodily drinking the glass of Korn, which the proprietor had brought him. Somewhere bedsprings were squeaking and someone was giggling softly.

  His black mood increased. He was condemned to be out of things for ever. Blind Klara loved him only because she couldn’t see him, he knew that. If she could, she’d run away from him. He was certain of that. ‘Dammit, what a shitty life,’ he grunted and slammed his big paw down on the bed so that the
glass of gin on the little bedside table trembled.

  The phone shrilled suddenly. He seized the receiver. It was Horn. He wasted no time. ‘Have you pencil and paper there?’ he rasped.

  ‘Jawohl, Herr Kapitanleutnant—’

  ‘No ranks,’ von Horn said smartly. ‘You never know who might be listening. Good, this is the woman’s address. Schoernerstrasse funf… Frau Klose. Make sure that you ask the hotel reception for directions. It will be another clue – later. One more thing. The time.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Twenty hundred hours tomorrow night. Klar?’

  ‘Klar!’ he rasped, as if he were still that bold young Prussian lieutenant of infantry receiving an order to go over the top from his commanding officer.

  The phone went dead. Slowly the ‘Beast’ took the two pistols from his battered briefcase and lay them on the bed. He stared at them, the rage within him beginning to intensify by the instant. Up the corridor, the silly giggling had changed to a harsh strangled gasping. It was almost as if the girl was being choked. The words came slowly from him, formed he knew not how. ‘Love… is… death…’

  * * *

  Nearly four hundred kilometres away in Hamburg, von Horn put down the phone and stared up at the shabby little whore. Her face was still sad and pained and her rouge had run where the tears had trickled down her cheeks. He felt a sense of contempt for her. Women were fools. Unlike men, who could love but keep their emotions under control. Woman always wore their hearts on their sleeves, the silly fools.

  ‘You understand,’ he said coldly, ‘that when you are approached later, probably by our authorities, there must be no mention of my part in this affair?’