THE ODD MAN
East Berlin - December 24, 1964 - 4:00 PM
'Why does it always rain when I'm in Berlin?' thought Ralph Barton, feeling the oppressive dampness close in around him.
A chilly, overcast afternoon had given way to a cold, drizzly evening. He pressed against the alley wall trying to stay dry but the constant drip of water running off the roof's narrow overhang collected along the brim of his battered brown fedora and ran down his neck, soaking the white dress shirt he hadn't had a chance to change in the past twenty-four hours. He rubbed his gloved hands together, trying to generate a little heat, then held them to his chilled nose.
"God, I'd rather be in Cuba right now," he said out loud. 'It may rain a lot, but at least it's warm rain. Now I know why they call this the Cold War,' he told himself.
A door slammed further up the street. He heard the sound of footsteps coming toward his hiding place as they echoed through the nearly empty streets. The clatter of a truck rumbled along in the distance, then faded away, as the footsteps got louder, then broke into a run. A figure raced in front of the alley right before a dozen rifle shots exploded in the air. The running stopped.
A bare hand slapped against the wet wall of a deserted building on the corner. There was little strength left in the arm to steady the bullet torn body. It slid to the ground. The dying man reached for the inside pocket of his bloodied coat and pulled out a small notebook. With trembling fingers, he skidded the slim book down the alley. It lodged under a stack of crates a few yards away. With the last pump of his heart, the man gave one more heave and rolled his body into the gutter. He was facing away from the alley. He hoped he had given his friend enough time to secure the notebook before the East German guards started looking for it.
Ralph had inched toward the street and realized it was his contact, John Wactor, who was lying slumped on the pavement with the rain beating down on it like so much garbage.
"Shit!" he muttered. That's no way to die. Face down in the gutter on Christmas Eve.
Ralph had seen roughly where the notebook landed and moved cautiously toward the spot. Then he heard footsteps coming up the street. The wild movement of flashlights flailed their way toward the body while the persistent rain tried melting the harsh beams as they turned a once warm human being into a cold, gray corpse.
Ralph leaned down and fumbled for the book. The numbness of his fingers felt like he was wearing boxing gloves. He yanked off one glove with his teeth and groped around until his cold fingers finally touched the edge of the small book and he pulled it free. He stuffed it in his coat pocket and took one last look over his shoulder at his friend's body.
"Merry Christmas, John," he whispered.
Ralph dodged the stack of wooden crates with the agility of a man half his size and hid in a doorway at the other end of the alley before the two soldiers sauntered up to what remained of his friend in the street. A shiny black combat boot kicked at the body. The other soldier had his Russian semiautomatic weapon aimed at the lifeless figure. There could have been twenty American agents down that alley ready to take them out and there they stood kicking a dead man. 'Schweinehunde,' Ralph said to himself. So they got themselves a secret agent. Big f-ing deal. Didn't they know how an operation like this worked? Information was passed down a line. There was always somebody waiting for the baton, usually some fool freezing his butt off in an alley somewhere waiting for his turn. If they got one of ours, why aren't they looking for the next guy in the chain?
Ralph peered from his hiding place and watched the big-footed swine bend down and roll John over. Even from that distance he could hear John's head crack against the curb. One of the soldiers snickered.
"Oh, shit!" Ralph groaned as he lurched forward.
He had pulled his gun without realizing it. He just wanted to kill somebody. Instinct stopped him. Thank God for instinct. He backed into the doorway and lowered the gun. Right now that notebook was the most important thing in the world.
"Shit!" he muttered again.
The two soldiers ransacked John's pockets looking for whatever they might find. The one cradling his rifle aimed a military flashlight into the gutter, then, using the barrel of the weapon like a stick, he flipped through the debris. Muck was rushing down the street and his eyes followed a hunk of the stuff until it disappeared into a drainage ditch.
"Scheisse," he muttered, thinking he might have lost something important.
He ordered his companion to alert the others and soon two East German Army vehicles pulled up, their amber headlights casting eerie shadows through the fog that was settling over the sleeping city.
Ralph needed to get out of there. The door behind him was locked and barred. The East Germans didn't trust anybody. Across the alley was a rusty iron ladder going straight up the wall to the roof. He made a move toward it then thought about his tan raincoat looking like a red cape in front of a raging bull and shrank back into the shadows. He quietly removed the coat and turned it inside out, the dark fleece lining instantly blended into the night. Quietly, on the balls of his feet, Ralph crossed the alley and began pulling himself up the ladder. Like a 220-pound grizzly, he climbed out of danger and made his way over the rooftops while unfriendly hands took care of John below. Ralph patted the pocket with the notebook. If it was worth a man's life, he better get it into the right hands.
After making his way to the street a block
away, Ralph Barton stopped under a street
lamp and looked through the notebook. A piece
of paper fell to his feet. As he picked it
up and unfolded it, he could feel the raised
print of the letterhead. In the misty light
he read: WESTERN EUROPEAN AERIAL RECONNAISSANCE
OPERATIONS. That was all. He turned it over.
In a very shaky hand he read the English
words: SOMEBODY KNOWS.
CHAPTER 2
The Present
Los Angeles - Summer 1991
It was a sweltering summer afternoon. Dry heat might be great but air conditioning is better. Elaine Barton settled into her long, black and white hound's-tooth couch and let the large, window air conditioner go full blast as she reread the last line of the chapter, 'SOMEBODY KNOWS'.
'You bet, somebody knows. A lot of people know. Now,' she thought. And if their plan works, it wouldn't be long before the one person who caused all this is blown clear out of the water.
Elaine's publisher had her completed manuscript. He'd had it for several weeks. She knew one of his staff readers, a man not destined to rise much higher in the ranks, was on a certain Senate subcommittee's payroll. His job, his primary job, was not as a reader of manuscripts for the publisher, but as a reader of manuscripts for this secret government committee and he was to report any 'interesting' storyline that crossed his desk.
His assignment, for which he was handsomely paid, was to spirit copies of potentially publishable books, which included any type of cloak and dagger scenario, devious conspiracy theory or industrial espionage plot, out of the publishing house and to his primary employers. He often wondered if the people receiving the information were using the findings as reference material to defeat dastardly deeds or to devise one. But, then again, after he deposited the cashier's check he received weekly into a separate bank account, he didn't really care.
Elaine thumbed through the pages of her manuscript. It had taken her a good part of a year to complete, but it covered forty-eight years of history. Her dad, Ralph Barton, the man she was just reading about, was a principal player in the story. It was her dad, along with Colonel Robert Mackenzie, a top CIA intelligence officer, and Günter Beyer, a former German resistance member, who provided her with most of the facts in the story. It was the parts they made up that gave them cause to worry. They hoped they were close enough to the truth to flush out their quarry. Because if this gambit worked, they would capture several key pieces on the board, and one of them might be the next president of the United States.
Elaine looked at the stack of notes and communiqués and bits of information the team had gathered ever since the pieces started fitting together. There were hundreds of them. And then there were all John Wactor's notebooks. Poor Mr. Wactor. He died on that wet street in East Berlin, twenty-five years earlier because somebody thought he knew something. Wactor didn't figure it out until it was too late.
Elaine kept thinking to herself, 'O, what a tangled web we weave....'.
This web had ensnared so many people. Even Elaine was caught in it, but by this point she was obsessed with the endgame. Too much was at stake to kick over the table now. The others were professional players, but she was learning the rules, or the lack of rules, from the experts.
Elaine could argue that she was the odd man in this scenario, the one with no background in international espionage or even a penchant for spying, but on closer look, she was born to it.
She dropped out of college after her sophomore year and went to work as a newspaper reporter for a small town weekly, then applied for a job with the FBI. Her father was acquainted with the bureau chief in Memphis and he got the ball rolling. At the time the FBI had this curious habit of checking out the backgrounds of people who applied for work. It had something to do with national security. Go figure. It took over three months before they got back to her. By then she had taken another job as a private investigator with a local Memphis firm.
Elaine went on undercover gigs all over the country. She considered it playacting. She would concoct different identities for herself while on assignment and act them out while gathering information for the detective firm. Some of the jobs got a bit dicey, but nothing she couldn't talk her way out of. She had been a novice writer and this gave her the chance to create different characters. She quit the detective firm right before classes started the following fall and she went on to get her degree. A year after graduation she packed up and moved to California to write.
The overnight success took a few years, but Elaine ended up with several published adventure novels and a few detective books with her name on the cover. She bought a pair of four-plexes in Burbank and settled into the California lifestyle.
Then Robert Mackenzie sent her John Wactor's notebooks. They were mostly class notes taken when Wactor and Elaine's father were in a spy school Mac taught back in the early sixties. Wactor had died because of those notebooks, but nobody could figure out why. He, too, was going to write a spy thriller someday, so John had written down every plotline that popped into his head. Mac poured over the books, as did all the surviving members of that ill-fated pipeline in Berlin, but to no avail. Mac figured Elaine might try her hand at the novel poor John was never able to write.
As for Colonel Mackenzie, he wasn't just the guy who got Ralph Barton to do special assignments for CIA while Barton was a pilot in the Air Force, Mac was a friend. Elaine grew up with Colonel Mackenzie always somewhere in the picture. He was the second greatest hero in her life.
Mac told her the pieces of the story he knew, identified the characters and the explained the knotted plot that led to the collapse of his first spy network in East Berlin.
Tangled web, she thought.
She took a long, cool sip of iced coffee
then set down the two-inch thick manuscript
she had written. Just enough of the truth
was in it to jolt the actual players into
making a move. It said somebody knew too
much, but not all of it, just enough to make
somebody nervous. Then there was the other
story. The truth. What really happened and
why. This is that story. Where's the best
place to begin? At the beginning, of course.
CHAPTER 3
Crash Landing
Northern Germany - January 1943
First Lieutenant Robert Mackenzie flew co-pilot when the first U.S. bombing runs began over Bremen, Germany, during the war. On their second flight, his plane was shot down. Captain Leonard tried keeping the crippled B-24D Liberator as level as he could, steering it away from the city, but he was losing fuel, altitude and forward momentum. Not the easiest plane to fly in the first place, with a portion of one of the slender 'Davis' wings shot off, Leonard was fighting a losing battle keeping her in the air. As the rest of the formation disappeared into the clouds, Leonard was looking for someplace flat and clear to land. Fuel was pouring out of the engines as he skimmed over the tops a small forest. Then he saw it: a small field. Not a landing field, this one was full of snow-covered turnips. The plane rolled through the dormant stumps and the captain eased off the throttle and gave it some brakes. The plane kept rolling.
"Lost hydraulics," said Mac, looking at the gauges.
"Shit! We're all dressed up and no place to go."
The Liberator was hauling ass over the icy ground. It went a hundred yards until it ran out of dry land, careened up an earthen dike at an angle, throwing itself off balance because of the broken wing and flipping sideways, breaking the other wing. It went nose-first into a canal. The B-24 isn't exactly the 'Sherman tank' of aircrafts. It doesn't do 'crash-landings' very well. It tends to separate behind the cockpit. As the front end slammed into the water, the rear portion snapped in half like an egg, throwing the top turret gunner into the air in the opposite direction. The nose gunner was killed as the plane slammed into the mud. The flight deck was filling with water as Captain Leonard struggled to get out of his harness. Mac was unconscious beside him.
The forward navigator had disappeared as the plane was torn apart. The tail gunner suffered the same fate as the gunner in the nose. The massive fracturing smashed him into the ground. The two waist gunners were thrown around like loose sacks of grain. There wasn't much left of them. The only two to survive in the rear were the aft navigator and radioman. They had seen the training films and were strapped in, ready for impact.
Leonard couldn't free himself. His right arm had been shredded by broken glass and his hand lay limp in his lap. Water was coming up to his chin. As he was taking his last breath of air, he spotted white specters emerging from the forest carrying rifles.
As Mac started coming to, his first sensation was an earthy smell and the feeling of dampness enshrouding him. He thought he must be dead and in his grave. He tried opening his eyes but there was a weight on his head, cold and oppressive. His hands went to his face and he felt a wet rag covering his eyes. He pulled it off and found himself in a murky root cellar staring at a beautiful young woman with dark brown hair and a porcelain complexion. She was looking very seriously at him and put the rag back on his head. Mac tried pulling it away but her voice was imploring him in German to keep it in place. His German wasn't that good at the time and he kept pushing away the rag. The next voice he heard was much more insistent and was speaking English.
"Keep it there, Lt. Mackenzie. You are injured and we are trying to help you," said Günter Beyer, a young Adonis in his early thirties, ten years older than Mac.
"Who are you?" asked Mac, still in a daze, trying to clear his head.
"German resistance."
"And French Maquis, mon ami," said another disembodied male voice. "We have spotters along the coast watching for you Americans and the English."
"Aren't you a little far north?" questioned Mac. "The French border's 500 kilometers south of here."
"Oui, mon ami, but the Nazis occupy The Netherlands and Belgium. I think you Americans have sense enough to avoid such dangerous ground. You come in over the North Sea and we are here to pick you up if you can't get back."
"My apologies, and my thanks." Mac put out his hand, his eyes still covered with the cloth. The Frenchman walked over and shook it. The hand was hard and there were rough calluses padding the palm. This must be a farmer, thought Mac. You don't get those from pushing a pencil.
"My name is Jean Robert Clement, but I'm called Jean by mes amis, monsieur. And my German friend is called Günter Beyer."
Another hand grasped his. This one was larger and more powerful. Mac could visualize a six foot six Aryan standing before him, golden hair shaved into a severe butch, square jaw, and steel blue eyes. He lifted a corner of the wet rag to confirm his suspicions. He was just about right. Günter was maybe two inches shorter, but from his disadvantageous position on the cot, the man looked like a blond Max Schmeling.
"The surviving crew members are upstairs getting some fresh air," said Günter, anticipating Mac's next question. "Captain Leonard has gashes on his arm and will need further attention when we can get a doctor to see to him. Baxter was driven to the next town. It was necessary. His leg was severely injured and we have someone in Stadtgraben who will help us. The rear navigator and radioman are fine. I am sorry but the rest of the crew did not make it. How are you feeling?"
The beautiful woman exchanged the rag for a new one. The cool dampness slowed the spin-cycle his head was taking but one look at her gorgeous face made his blood race. She said something to Günter. The tone was reprimanding.
"My wife, Monika, says I'm talking too much. You need your rest. I'll be back later with news of how we're getting you out of here."
Wife. Pity, thought Mac. He let himself drift off to sleep.
He awoke several hours later to the sound of anxious voices and hurried steps coming down the wooden stairway. Above the clamor, Günter's voice rose above the others, deep and resonant, commanding everyone to be quiet. Mac opened his eyes. The rag had fallen off an hour earlier. Stumbling down the stairs was Tony Martinez, the aft radioman, followed by Captain John Leonard, being helped by a thin, wiry man, with a complexion ruddy from the sun. The large Aryan was hurrying along Roger Isley, the aft navigator.
Mac looked around the room for the woman. She wasn't there. He sat up, trying to get his bearings. The damp smell of the root cellar had started to have a soothing effect on him, but all this noise was destroying his sense of well-being.
"What is it?" he asked from the cot.
"Nazis," said Günter. "Looking for you people. Pull out the shelves," he ordered, pointing to a stack of shelves sparsely filled with jars of summer fruit and a few potatoes and onions. No one knew what he meant.
Günter, Browning rifle slung over his shoulder, pushed his way through the men, grabbed the shelf unit with one well-muscled arm and swung it into the room. Behind the unit was another chamber. The weak light in the center of the root cellar spilled a few feet into the smaller room.
"Take your belongings!" ordered Günter, pointing to things lying on the ground. "And the cot, Lt. Mackenzie, please."
Mac sprang from his bed with more energy than he thought he had and dragged the cot into the dark hole.
"The tracks," said Mac, pointing to the grooves cut in the dirt floor by the wooden legs of his cot. Günter grabbed a spade and patted down the marks. Mac leaned the cot against the far wall inside the hidden room.
"Where's your wife?" asked Mac, thinking they were all going to hide.
"She's at the house. The Nazis need a welcoming committee and a pretty face can throw them off the scent. I'm supposed to be in the army. I must hide, too."
"But.... she'll be alone with them. What if they...."
"Then I'll break my cover and kill as many of them as I can."
Günter looked around the cellar to see if anything was out of place. He yanked the light cord in the center of the room. The cellar went black. He took out an American-made cigarette lighter and struck it several times until it sputtered into a flame. The flint was wearing down and he needed a new crop of Americans with a good supply of flints so he could keep it going. A match would leave the smell of sulfur in the room and a clever Nazi might detect it.
He backed toward the opening, patting down the earth around the secret entrance. He leaned the spade against the shelves, ducked into the small chamber and tugged the unit closed. It was hinged to the wall and left no marks on the ground. Once it was shut, Günter popped open a small aperture beneath a lower shelf and reached his hand through, grabbed the spade and tamped down the cluster of footprints around the entrance. He stood the spade against the shelf, shut the tiny door and extinguished his lighter.
In the darkness, his voice seemed to come from nowhere. "Sit, my friends. There are benches along the walls."
Günter heard fumbling and bumping in the dark. Striking his lighter again, he saw the men clumped together in the center of the small chamber. The faint glow enabled them to find the benches and take a seat. When everyone was settled, he closed his lighter again.
They sat in silence for the longest time. Günter knowing what to do, the others following his lead.
A few minutes later Günter spoke quietly. "Lt. Mackenzie, do you require your cot?"
"No. I feel better. Will they check...?"
He was interrupted by the sound of heavy boots clomping down the wooden stairs. Three men entered the cellar. Mac could distinguish their tread as they descended. The muffled sound of boots on the dirt floor moved the length and breadth of the room. One pair moved toward the secret opening. They stopped and Mac could hear something scrape across a wooden shelf. Moments later the object was replaced. Something else was lifted and this time the distinctive 'pop' of a sealed container was heard.
"Das ist gut," said the soldier to his comrades after tasting the contents.
Mac heard the scraping of a few more jars across the wooden shelves and figured the spoils were being divided. A few moments later the soldiers were heading up the stairs and all was quiet again. No one in the secret room made a sound. Everyone was waiting for Günter to speak. The Aryan said not a word.
Minutes rolled on. Silence. Bloody, scary silence. Mac became aware of his own heartbeat pounding in his ears. He could hear someone in the tiny chamber breathing heavily like they had just run the 400-meter dash. Solitary confinement must be a bitch, Mac thought. He reminded himself to never get caught by the enemy.
Twenty minutes crawled by. Absolute silence. Finally the cellar door creaked open and the sound of a delicate foot could be heard descending the stairs. The light was turned on and a gentle tap on an empty shelf echoed in the darkened chamber.
Günter pushed open the secret door and put his arms around his lovely wife. As fragile as she looked, there was something in her face that said she could handle any situation. She stood locked in Günter's strong embrace, then slowly, Monika looked up and smiled at Mac from behind her husband's broad shoulder. The young lieutenant would never be the same.
As the men crammed into the secret compartment emerged from the darkness and were taking a breath of somewhat fresher air, Günter asked his wife if all went well with their visitors. Mac, still mesmerized by the woman, heard her responded with a most curious statement. Monika turned her back to the other men and said in almost a whisper, "They want to know when these men will be returned." She spoke in German but Mac understood the words. Then Günter whispered to her, but Mac caught only a piece of it. ".... need more information...next bombing run..."
Mac's head went light. He felt like a trapped animal. He could almost see the Swastika on Günter's sleeve. Damn superior Aryan son-of-a-bitch, he thought. And the woman. Shit. He had to think of something. What really happened to Baxter? Where was he? What were these Krauts really planning?
Günter turned to the men in the cellar and said, "You are safe here for a while. Monika will bring you hot food while I arrange for your departure. I must go to Stadtgraben, the next town, at nightfall to make contact with other members of the underground. I will try to get you out in a group, but if that is not possible, the injured will go out with an able-bodied man, two at a time. Be patient."
Mac spoke with Captain Leonard in private after Günter and Monika had left the cellar. He didn't want to alarm the others right away.
"You have to be wrong, Mac. This guy saved us from the Nazis. If he were with them, he would have turned us over when they were here. Hell, he would have shot us at the plane."
"Not if he needed information about the next bombing run."
"Mac, we don't know where they'll bomb next."
"We know where the concentration has been the past few weeks."
"So do they. Come on, son. That bump on your head knocked something loose. They're okay."
Mac couldn't believe he was wrong. He knew he heard them correctly. They were deep behind enemy lines and you just couldn't trust any of those Aryan bastards.
When it got dark, he climbed the wooden steps out of the cellar for a smoke. A foot of snow was on the ground but the night sky was clear. He ducked into the shadows behind a small wooden shed, keeping the farmhouse in view until he saw Günter steal out the rear door and slip into the woods.
When the war began, many heavy vehicles were confiscated. Most farm machinery was left. Günter had an automobile squirreled away, but he only used it in an emergency. He had three trucks, one hidden with the car, but didn't use them often because petrol was scarce. His other means of transportation was the horse cart, but he wouldn't use it at night.
Günter told them Nazis patrolled the roads at night and he would be picked up if he used the cart after sunset. He said his only option was to walk. With the snowfall earlier that day, he had to go the long way, weaving in and out of the woods to conceal his tracks, otherwise, if he was captured by the police, his footprints in the snow would lead straight back to the farmhouse.
If he were the lying swine Mac thought he was, Günter would be rendezvousing with his pack of Nazi jackals somewhere in the woods or in the nearby city.
Mac trailed him easily for fifteen minutes. They broke out of the woods and followed a narrow dirt road for another ten minutes. The lights of Stadtgraben were growing closer. Mac could see the outline of buildings a few hundred yards away. Günter cut back into the woods and Mac almost lost sight of him. If there was a path through the trees, Mac couldn't see it, just the dark imprints left in the snow from Günter's heavy boots and the steady crunch of footsteps ahead of him.
The temperature had dropped rapidly after sunset, causing an icy crust to form on top of the snow so it cracked with each step. Mac had been a good hunter as a young boy and he knew how to keep his own noise level to a minimum. He would slip his foot under the ice layer and put his weight on the softer snow beneath. He would then pull his foot out the same way it went in, allowing the crust to fall back into place, almost obliterating any footprints he might leave.
The woods were quiet except for the steady footfalls of Günter moving ahead of him. The wildlife had grown silent at the approach of these two-legged intruders. Suddenly the quiet was broken with the shout of "HALT! HALT!"
A searchlight flooded the area, catching Günter in its beam. He pivoted like a basketball player, but he couldn't outrun the light. Two dark figures stepped into the glare. German soldiers.
Günter turned toward them and smiled as he walked toward the men, calling them 'mein Freund'.
Mac gritted his teeth. That was all he needed to know. He was going to crouch down and listen to their plans for him and his buddies when he noticed Günter had a different look on his face. Not one of soldier meeting soldier. He had an almost comical expression on his face. His shoulders were slumped and the big German looked shorter and dumpy.
"What are you doing here?" asked the older of the two soldiers. He was Günter's age. The other man was younger.
"My girlfriend lives in Stadtgraben."
"Why didn't you take the road?"
Günter gave a nervous laughed. "I slipped away from my wife. She's a nag. You know how it is? And my girlfriend.... uh, she's married. Her husband works nights. I didn't want to run into him or anybody who knows him, so I came this way."
"Let me see your papers." The soldier wasn't impressed.
Günter patted his pockets. "I left them at home. I snuck out in such a hurry.... and I didn't think I'd see anybody."
"You must carry your papers at all times. Where do you live?" demanded the soldier
"In Bootshafen. This side of the river."
Günter gave a location on the opposite side of his own woods.
"You walked a long way." The soldier was studying Günter rather closely.
A snide smile crossed Günter's lips. "She's worth it."
"What's her name?" This impenetrable German was not amused.
"I don't want to get her in trouble," said Günter, trying to get these guys off the scent.
The other soldier spoke. "It might be my own wife. I know about you men who don't go in the army. "What is her name?"
Günter had a dilemma. He couldn't give the name of one of his own people, nor could he safely make one up. If he was dragged into town and his story didn't check out, the Nazis would assume he was with the resistance. He would put the entire operation in jeopardy. He just shrugged and shook his head. The older soldier wasn't going to accept his silence. He bashed Günter in the jaw with the butt of his rifle, knocking him to the ground.
"Tell me her name!"
Mac knew he had made a big mistake. Now he had to help the man. He looked around for a weapon. He saw what he thought was a three-foot length of heavy branch about two inches in diameter near his feet. He gently pulled at it but it refused to give. He tried again, but something was holding it. He gave it another yank. The rest of the felled ten-foot sapling was buried under a blanket of dry leaves. He would have made less noise if he had fallen out of a tall tree carrying a sack of glass.
The two soldiers swung around. The younger man grabbed the spotlight and aimed it in the direction of the racket. Mac froze with one end of the branch still in his hand. The older soldier trained his gun on Günter.
Mac let go of the branch and walked into the circle of light. He started yelling at Günter in what he hoped was passable German. "My wife! My wife! Leave her alone. Swine!"
The distraction was just enough to throw the Krauts off balance. The one with the rifle aimed at Günter turned slightly, pointing the barrel into the woods. Günter seized the moment and kicked the man hard in the leg, then sprang from the ground and grabbed hold of the weapon. The soldier fired two shots into the air.
The other soldier turned at the sound of gunfire, giving Mac a split second to make his move. It wasn't enough. Mac made a leap at the young man only to end up doubled over the rifle jammed into his stomach.
Günter was stronger than his man. He wrestled the rifle away with little effort and pummeled the soldier a few times with the butt end, knocking him to the ground.
Mac managed to right himself as the young soldier started yelling "HALT!" again. The muzzle was still in his gut and the Kraut was beginning to panic. Mac backed up slightly only to trip over some bramble at his heels. He tried regaining his balance. The German thought it was an escape attempt and aimed his gun to fire. One clear shot rang out. The young German jerked violently and fell forward, dragging Mac down with him. Günter stood in the spotlight, the rifle still aimed at the soldier, but the young man wouldn't be moving on his own anymore.
Mac rolled out from under the guy with an urgency that comes from being too close to death. He tried getting to his feet but his knees were a little wobbly. Günter lowered the rifle to lend him a hand. As he was leaning forward, the other German jumped to his feet and ran toward Günter with a knife clinched in his fist. He was a few yards away and moving fast. When he was within five feet of plunging the blade into Günter's back, another figure appeared out of nowhere and came between the soldier and Günter. The German's battle cry was cut short by a swift thrust upwards under the rib cage. The diminutive body holding the stiletto couldn't manage the dead weight so it fell to the ground. Günter stepped to the side and brought the rifle up just as the dark figure turned towards him. The searchlight caught her delicate features beneath the stocking cap she had pulled down over her dark hair.
"Monika!" said Günter, surprised. He lowered the rifle and looked at her standing there with the stiletto still firmly clinched in her hand. She knelt down and stabbed the blade into the snow covered earth beneath her feet, cleaning off the dead soldier's blood, then tucked it neatly in the waistband of her skirt. Her job was done.
Günter turned his attention to Mac who was now standing near them. Monika turned off the spotlight, but Mac could still see his blue eyes in the dark.
"Why were you following me, Lt. Mackenzie?" Günter said in a low voice, stepping even closer to Mac, his nearness implying a clear threat.
"I wanted to see where you were going. I heard you speaking to your wife after the soldiers left the farm today. She said something about.... I heard her say they needed more information about our bombing runs. I thought you were.... I thought you were going to turn us over to the Nazis."
"You are an amazing American, Lt. Mackenzie. You risked your life because you thought we were going to betray you. Did you tell your Captain Leonard?"
"Yes. He said I was crazy."
"He was correct. But you are brave and your instincts are good. When you pretended you were the outraged husband, you thought very quickly. You also noticed the marks your cot made in the dirt in my cellar. The Nazis would have noticed them, too. That was very clever. We could use you in our operation. A man who can think on his feet would be very valuable to us."
"I'm a pilot. I need to get back into the war," said Mac.
"You're in the war, my friend. Right in the middle of it. What would you do with these two men?" the German asked, pointing to the dead soldiers.
"Bury them. But first I'd take their uniforms and their identification. We could use them."
We could use them. That was all it took. Günter contacted the head of the German underground and a coded message was sent to the SOE in London requesting Mackenzie's services for a short time.
The British Special Operations Executive (SOE) was founded in the summer of 1940, after the Germans started their war in Europe. The Brits thought it preferable to send their volunteer commandos into the countries the Krauts already occupied to stop the juggernaut before they had a chance to cross the channel into England.
By 1942, the Americans started their own secret service, the OSS, to do virtually the same thing. Conceived by William J. 'Wild Bill' Donovan, his organization combined clandestine warfare with intelligence gathering. OSS operations were originally centered in North Africa, preparing the way for the invasion of Italy that November. As the war progressed, Donovan worked jointly with SOE and ran his entire operation from an office in London. He personally OK'd Mac's request to stay in Germany.
The short time Günter expected to use Mac's services lasted almost a year until the United States Army Air Corps asked for his return when they needed experienced pilots for the bombing of Berlin right before the end of the war in Europe.
Mac and Günter got the rest of the crew from his plane back to England and over 150 other men out of Germany before he left the country.
Twice London sent messages 'requesting' information
be secured confirming the whereabouts of
certain high-level Nazi generals. There was
talk somebody in Washington wanted a few
of Herr Hitler's top men taken out. Another
source said they really wanted to know if
any of the good little Nazis would be willing
to compromise the 'Little Paperhanger' himself.
There were rumors several men in the Abwehr
(one of the German Intelligence branches)
were considering throwing Hitler an early
retirement party, but nothing materialized
while Mac was in Germany. Günter and
Mac kept tabs on the top brass in Hitler's
political machine, but no orders ever came
down to follow through with any of those
plans.
CHAPTER 4
Monika
Mac could never quite get Monika out of his mind. She was intoxicating. Who wouldn't have fallen in love with her? She was older than he was, maybe five or six years, but they were good years that made her radiant and wise and warm. Just to look at her was like having a good meal. The chestnut hair. The pale skin. And those silver-blue eyes.
He would always remember the first time she looked at him with that.... that look. He had been in the hidden part of the root cellar with Günter and the crew from his plane. The Nazis had left and she came down to give the all clear. Günter had his arm around her, asking how it had gone. She looked at him from behind Günter's shoulder and gave him a smile that touched his very soul. He was young, there was a war on, he had just lived through a plane crash and this beautiful woman had smiled at him.
Capt. Leonard and the rest of the crew had
gotten safely out of Germany through Günter's
underground network. Mac and Günter
had gone on a few missions together in both
France and Germany. That big German trusted
him with his life. The odd thing was, Mac
felt better when he and Günter were
doing something dangerous because it would
take his mind off Monika. He couldn't stop
thinking of her.
May, 1943 - Germany
It was late spring. Both men were sleeping in the root cellar because the Nazi dogs were on the loose. They were still conscripting all able-bodied men for the army. Hitler had ordered the execution of all British commandos found in the country while Hermann Göring, a glider pilot and war ace, was rounding up downed British and American pilots and putting them in stalags for the duration. But Americans aiding the German resistance were tortured and killed.
Monika, along with two of Günter's elderly uncles and his young nephew, Klaus, had been working the farm. They weren't able to produce as much food with Günter and his brother, Hans, working for the resistance and their other two field hands at the front. Because theirs was a small farm, they weren't assigned French, Dutch or Belgian forced laborers to pick up the slack. And since part of what they did grow was taken for the war effort, there wasn't exactly a bumper crop left to sell or to eat.
When picking time came, both Günter and Mac would dress up like the two old men and labor in the fields themselves. They would work in relays usually yielding four times the produce as the older men. With fires blazing in empty oil drums to provide light, the men worked round the clock to pick the meager harvest of vegetables.
"Light the barrels at the other end of the field," said Günter to his ten-year-old nephew.
"We're running out of branches, uncle," said the young boy, too young to join the resistance, but eager to help.
"Have you gotten the debris from behind the shed?"
"No, sir."
"Use your head, Klaus. Make good use of everything. We'll burn the shed if we have to. Tomorrow, we'll go up in the trees and knock down any loose twigs and branches we can find."
"Maybe we can get into their motor pool and steal one of their trucks and take their gasoline."
"If we got onto their base, we'd steel a truck, all the gas we could carry and burn their motor pool to the ground. Now go and get the debris behind the shed," said Günter.
Klaus ran off on his assigned duty. Inside the farmhouse Monika was trying to apply makeup to Mac's face. He was being far less cooperative than young Klaus. Monika was applying smudges of lampblack and ash to make his young face look weathered and old. She was trying to get dark circles under his eyes but he kept fidgeting and she succeeded in making a track of thumbprints down his cheeks. She moistened a towel and was trying to rub off some of the blotches.
"Please hold still, my reluctant flyboy. You will really be an old man before I can get this on your handsome face."
"It's dark outside. Nobody'll see me."
"Günter said you were to look like an old man and you will look like an old man," she said with some intimidation.
Monika leaned down and started cleaning off the dark smudges. She touched his face with the towel and he gave an involuntary jerk. She used her other hand to rub some of the dark color into the hollows under his cheekbones. He was finding it difficult to swallow. She stood in that position, staring at him, long after she had achieved the effect she wanted. He was starting to stare back. The silver of her eyes was becoming a whirlpool pulling him in. He felt himself falling toward her. He caught himself.
"Do I look old yet?"
"You'll never look old," she said.
"Do you have a crystal ball, or something?"
"I know these things." She stood back and examined her work. He looked good. "I'll release you now. You may go. Robert?" He turned to her, his heart pounding. "Would you please take this scarf to Günter? He might catch a chill." Mac took the knit scarf and fled.
Günter's uncles were sitting on stools next to one of the lighted barrels, smoking cigarettes, as Mac walked up. They looked at him and then at each other. In the flickering light they looked alike.
"You two go in for some food. Monika has a stew waiting."
"But don't eat it all," said Günter, walking up to the group. "When this shift is over, I'll want some for myself."
"Won't that be your second supper?" asked one of the men.
"Yes, but this is my second shift. Go eat."
"We'll be through my morning," said Mac. "They can get a good night's sleep."
"I'd like to get one myself. I'm starting to feel like a bat out here."
"What are those lights?" asked the young flyer, pointing to a spot on the horizon where the black fields began blending into the night sky.
"I've been watching them ever since I came outside," said Günter. "It has to be the farm near the river. They must be doing their harvesting tonight, too."
"I can hear the drone from here. I didn't think they had that much farm equipment."
"They don't. But those have to be headlights, or they've hung flashlights on a team of oxen."
"Maybe they're getting a little help from the SS," Mac kidded.
"I don't think I want that kind of help. We'll keep an eye on them."
Günter and Mac walked to the far end of the field where the two older farmers had stopped with their picking. Young Klaus had rolled drained oil barrels to the area, filled them with combustible material and set them on fire. There were several empty crates stacked between the rows waiting to be filled with whatever produce they could glean from the ill-tended fields.
Even the seeds had been hard to come by the past year. The hilly North German Lowlands were naturally infertile from times prehistoric and still required substantial fertilization and arduous tillage if they were to produce even modest amounts of food. The sole source of steer manure was either stewing in a pot somewhere at the front or cut into two inch slabs for Göring and his elite troops somewhere at the rear.
That night Mac and Günter were picking cabbages. They harvested a modest crop of turnips several nights earlier. It was a little early in the season and the vegetables were not quite ripe, but they would last in the root cellar until the autumn harvest brought in, hopefully, a better crop. Also, Günter and Mac had business to take care of so they did the picking when they had the time.
Günter's tomatoes had done miserably the past summer and bugs were turning the early lettuce leaves into lace. The kale was growing in abundance but Monika was running out of ways to prepare it. With little meat to be had, they were turning into vegetarians, a fate very un-Germanic, except for Herr Hitler, who had an aversion to dead flesh.
Usually Günter planted a large crop of barley for one of the local breweries, but when he couldn't get parts for his thrasher the prior season, he let the land go fallow. He concentrated instead on small crops he could plant twice yearly and harvest by hand. That would feed the people in the area and allow time for his clandestine operations.
The two men worked diligently for several hours in the chilly night air. A fog was settling near the river and edging toward the farm. Down on their knees, digging up the scrawny cabbages with small hand tools, they listened to the crackle and pop of the twigs burning inside the oil drums and the muffled drone of the vehicles on the nearby farm.
Mac rubbed his hands. They were becoming as calloused as Jean Clement's, the farmer with the French resistance, who had helped pull him out of his downed plane just a few months earlier. He tugged on a pair of worn gloves Monika had given and continued working.
The fire in one of the oil drums started to go out so Klaus, whose job it was to stoke them, ran back to the barn to get another wheelbarrow full of twigs and trash to burn. He was the first to see the stream of lights heading up the road toward Günter's farm. The boy ran back to the field, stumbling over the filled crates.
He yelled out, "Uncle Günter! Uncle Mac! Trucks!"
The two men were instantly on their feet. Günter looked toward the farmhouse and then at the entrance to the root cellar. The trucks were too near for them to make it across the field and into the secret room. Mac was several rows away, but he knew their dilemma.
"Mein Gott, how did they get so close?" Günter threw down his spade. He was suddenly aware of noise all around him. Looking to both sides, he saw headlights coming straight through his fields in their direction.
"Down that way!" he yelled, pointing toward a narrow culvert at the bottom of the slight hill they were on. In the late summer it would fill with water but that evening it was dry. An early spring drenching had washed through it leaving the sides partially eroded. That might provide some camouflage if they could get down there without taking a few bullets in the back.
Mac saw Günter run down the hill in the shadows and thought his friend might have a chance to get away if he diverted the first truck that was tearing through the field toward them. He was standing a few yards from one of the burning oil drums, but from that angle the driver hopefully couldn't see him. He crouched and ran toward the barrel. As he neared it, he dug his gloved hands under its bottom rim and heaved it forward, dumping the burning debris in front of the oncoming truck. The vehicle swerved wildly to the left as Mac hurled himself to the ground and tumbled head over heels between rows of unharvested cabbage. He ended up on his back next to Klaus's overturned wheelbarrow.
A hulking, black staff car sped past the house and was plowing across the field toward the spot where Mac had landed. Before it could get too close, a figure stepped in front of its rapidly advancing headlights. The car came to a skidding stop in the dirt and the three occupants jumped out. Two flashlights were immediately aimed at the figure standing in the dark. Only her legs and skirt were caught in the car's lights.
A German Kapitän pointed his flashlight at the basket she held in front of her face. "Fraülein, you must be crazy to be out here like this," he said. As she lowered the basket, he saw her silver-blue eyes glare back at him.
"You're the stupid fool driving across my farm in the middle of the night."
He was taken aback. "But, madam...."
"What do you want here? Do you want to take the last bit of food from our mouths? Look at this." She showed him the pitiful vegetables she had in her basket. "Is this what you came for? Go ahead take them. Take everything." She threw down her basket and started to cry.
He was from a rural area, too. Who wasn't in Germany at that time? To him the uniform was an escape from working in fields much like that one. And a woman crying. He had seen that before as well.
"Madam, we believe you're illegally harvesting your crop. You know a percentage must go to the state for the war."
"You've taken it already. This is all we have left."
"What were those men doing out here tonight?"
"Men! What men? There are no men left in Germany."
He scanned the desolate hill, looking for movement. "We saw men working in these fields. Who knocked over that oil drum? I demand an answer!"
A cough was heard somewhere in the dark. Monika looked startled. The German officer looked vindicated.
"Who's out there? Who are you trying to protect?"
Monika dropped to her knees and started gathering up the few scrawny vegetables at the officer's feet. She lifted her head and looked plaintively into the man's eyes. She could feel the cold blade of her knife pressing against the skin under her waistband but decided what she needed was time and not this man's blood.
"Please. Who else will pick my crop?"
"Get up. Show me where they're hiding."
Monika slowly stood and placed her basket on the overturned wheelbarrow. She turned and walked toward the farthest oil drum with the German officer and his two armed minions in tow. Looking over her shoulder, she made sure the three men were following. They were trudging after her, rifles at the ready.
There was a solitary figure sitting close to the blazing fire. A pair of gloved hands was stretched toward the side of the drum, warming themselves on that cold night. The German officer walked within inches of the figure and gave him a kick. The man with a battered hat pulled down over his ears jerked his head in the direction of that superior specimen of the super race. The weathered face caught in the firelight looked like it was carved out of wood.
"Get up," demanded the officer, not wanting to admit he made a mistake. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm picking cabbages, Herr General," said Ernst using a walking stick to get his seasoned carcass off the cold ground. He gave a quick smile to Monika. They both knew that guy wasn't a general.
"Where's the other man?"
Ernst looked at Monika and shook his head. "Other man?"
"I know there was another man. Now tell me where he is!" The officer slapped Ernst across the face.
Ernst had taken a lot more than a slap on the face in his time. If that Aryan pig thought that was all it would take to break him, he was sadly mistaken. "There's no one else."
"Swine!" exclaimed the officer, slapping Ernst again. "I saw someone push over that barrel. Where did he go?"
"I did it," said Ernst, ducking from a blow he expected to receive.
"But there were two of you. We saw two men in the firelight. Where is he?"
"He ran away. Past the farmhouse." Ernst pointed toward the road leading up to the house.
"Please," said Monika, this time tugging at the officer's sleeve. "They're just helping me pick vegetables."
The man threw off her hand. He knew he was being tricked, but he didn't know how. "You, come with me. We'll check your house." He motioned for Monika to lead the way.
One of the soldiers walked beside her, waving his flashlight over the ground so they wouldn't trip over anything on their way. When they came close to the overturned wheelbarrow, the light illuminated the wicker basket Monika had been carrying. It was now sitting on the ground.
"Halt!" said the perceptive officer. He smiled in the dark. Now he had them. "Come out from under there," demanded the Kapitän.
Monika and Ernst looked scared. The two soldiers were confused.
"I said come out!" shouted the officer.
Slowly, the wheelbarrow started to move. The soldiers aimed their rifles as the rusty carcass was lifted off the ground and tipped over. The small figure crouching underneath stood up.
"Aunt Monika!" yelled Klaus, running to her, noticing the confounded look on the officer's face.
"My nephew, Klaus," she explained. "He's just a little boy."
Now the officer was steaming. "To the house. Schnell!"
The whole group almost ran to the house. The officer pushed his way through the doorway first and started searching for the other man he knew was there. He looked behind the furniture and curtains in the front room, and then raced to the kitchen. He nearly tore the door off the pantry, but nobody was hiding inside. Seeing the door to the rear bedroom, he dashed toward it.
Monika was now getting panicky herself. She followed him into the room and ran to the dresser and yanked out the bottom drawer.
"Is he hiding in here? Maybe the top drawer." She gave it a pull and it fell to the ground. That caught the men off guard. Monika managed to get to the armoire and jerked open the left door that would block a view of its interior from the rest of the room. She started tossing out the contents, hurling them into the air as she screamed.
"Do you want everything we own? Here, take our clothes. Give them to your wives, your girlfriends. What do you want from us? We're Germans like you. Why must you persecute us? What have we done? We grow your food. We take just a little to keep ourselves alive. What more can we do?"
She still had a handful of clothes ready to throw. She slumped against the closet door, closing it, and slid to the floor.
"Take it all." She raised her hand toward the soldiers.
"Look in the other rooms," said the officer, "And the out buildings." He left Monika sitting on the floor.
She waited until she heard the men walk out of the kitchen. Standing up, she opened the armoire door. The dark-haired woman handed the clothes she was holding to Mac who was surprised he wasn't lying in a bloody heap at the bottom of the closet. A grin started from somewhere deep inside her. She knew the power of walking up to the devil and spitting in his eye.
The German officer and his men finished with the house and were heading outside to check the barn, cowsheds and storerooms. Monika threw a shawl around her shoulders and followed the men into the cold night air. The trucks that had plowed through the fields were now chomping at the bit in the driveway. The din was overwhelming. Herr Kapitän had to yell his orders to the men as they checked the other buildings. Upon entering the smaller of the two sheds behind the barn one of the soldiers yelled out.
"Kapitän! Kapitän! Here he is!"
Again, the officer in charge beamed.
"Finally," he said mostly to himself. "These peasants...."
The man who stumbled out of the door was bent over and one of his hands twisted into a claw. He looked dazed and confused. A ratty old hat was jammed down over his head and his clothes were filthy.
"What's going on here?" asked Günter, keeping his head low, stifling a yawn.
"Mein Gott! How could you sleep through all that noise?" screamed the officer, his frustrations back with a vengeance.
"Eh, what? Noise? What noise?" said Günter, leaning closer, cupping his claw-like hand over his ear, trying to pick up another word or two from the man who was swiftly nearing the end of his short rope.
"We'll be watching you, Fraülein."
"Frau. Frau Beyer. My husband is Fieldmarshall Gerhard Beyer. He is with the North Afrika Korps."
A Gerhard Beyer had lived in the area and was with Rommel's troops in North Africa. He had quite a formidable reputation. Monica knew this toady would never check her story. Fieldmarshall Beyer's reputation precluded any questioning and until Rommel was accused of joining a plot to assassinate Herr Hitler in 1945 and given the opportunity to kill himself with poison, he was considered a god, and his men, above reproach. The raiding party left.
Mac and Günter finished picking the cabbage that night. The Kapitän and his band of storm troopers were off harassing other farmers until dawn. Young Klaus couldn't get over fooling the soldiers by taking Mac's place under the wheelbarrow. He fell asleep half an hour before the sun came up, still explaining to Uncles Ernst and Frederick how they pulled the switch. The two old men had nodded off almost an hour earlier.
Monika brought a pot of coffee out to the fields around four-thirty. She handed Mac a brimming cup and pressed her hands around his as he held it.
"I'll give you something for those calluses when you finish the harvesting. The heat will soften them a little, but you should remember to wear your gloves." She pointed to the pair lying on a filled crate. Tossing them to him, she picked up the crate and headed toward the root cellar. Halfway down the path, with the crate balanced on her well-rounded hip, she stopped and turned. She knew he would still be looking at her. He was. She smiled.
* * * *
There were occasions when Günter went on missions with members of the local resistance. He entrusted his wife, nephew and farm to Mac. Mac would have preferred the mission.
"I'll.... I'll sleep in the hayloft," he said when Monika offered him accommodations in the farmhouse. "I can see the road until it turns off to Stadtgraben. Nobody'll get close without me seeing them." He hoped his face wasn't turning red.
"If you insist. In case it gets chilly, I'll get you some blankets. But no fire up there. You'll burn down the barn." She winked at him.
Klaus brought him his evening meal that night and they sat and talked until Monika called the young man for bed around eight o'clock. Mac sat in the dark, watching the road for what seemed like hours. Occasionally he would walk to the rear of the loft and watch the windows of the house. He would catch glimpses of Monika sitting at the kitchen table making noodles for supper the next evening. Later she walked into the front room and he could see her tidying up before she retired. Walking back through the kitchen with her knitting, she disappeared into the bedroom. He sighed and returned to his lookout post. Mac made himself as comfortable as he could in the hay, wrapping one of the blankets around his shoulders. He drifted in and out of sleep.
"Would you like some cocoa?"
Mac nearly jumped out of his skin. The blanket came flying off and he got up so fast he hit his head on the low ceiling.
"Monika?"
"I thought you might like something hot before you settled in for the night."
"I didn't hear you...."
"I don't make as much noise as Herr General's staff car."
"Is Klaus okay?"
"He's asleep."
"My.... My calluses are better. What was that you put on them?"
"It's a poultice. Something my mother taught me."
"You ought to patent it." Mac kept looking at his hands.
"It's just oils and herbs," she said, setting down the small pot of hot chocolate and cup. "I want to thank you for staying here with Klaus and me."
He could feel her watching him. All he could do was stare at his hands. He thought he was going to burn a whole in them if she didn't stop first.
"You know I'd do anything for you."
"Yes, Robert, I know. Günter picked a very good friend."
His heart sank. Every time he looked at her, he felt he was betraying Günter and all she considered him was Günter's friend. "Thank you for thinking about me," he said, indicating the chocolate.
"I think about you all. Klaus idolizes you. Do you need anything else?"
He shook his head. She smiled at him. He looked so young standing there. She took a few steps toward him and gave him a gentle hug. Mac flushed to his toes. She quietly turned and went to the ladder at the end of the loft and disappeared into the dark below. He watched her walk into the house from the opened loft door. A gentle breeze touched his face like a kiss. Monika.
* * * *
Then there was the last time they were alone together. An American plane was downed. It was the beginning of summer. The survivors were taken to the farm and stayed for three weeks before they could be gotten out. Four other men, three Americans and one Englishman, passed through during the same time on their way to Berlin, and stayed through a patch of severe rainy weather. They were a reconnaissance team sent in to see what bridges needed to be taken out before the raid on Berlin began. The Brit had a better German accent than Günter.
The recon team headed out a few days before Günter and Mac took the flyboys south to the French-German border. The German Army was starting to spread itself too thin. The Krauts didn't know where the inevitable Allied invasion point would be so they tried being everywhere at once. Mac and Günter were having trouble dodging their convoys while trying to get the airmen out of the country.
After handing the Americans over to the French resistance, Günter and Mac headed back to the farm. Buy Günter had business in Wilhelmshaven, so he let Mac off in Delmenhorst to go the rest of the way on foot. Günter never liked leaving the farm and Monika alone for very long. His brother was helping set up several listening posts along the North Sea and he was bringing them some equipment he and Mac picked up en route. The Allies were airdropping supplies into France and the German team would carry them the rest of the way. This load was full of radio equipment. The Allies were preparing for D-Day and they were running a scam. They wanted tons of equipment scattered from Bremerhaven to Marseilles so the Germans wouldn't know which direction the invasion would take.
Mac was exhausted when he walked in the back door of the farmhouse. Summers in that part of northern Germany weren't blistering but his face was flush. Mac had given his jacket to one of the injured America flyers so the guy looked like a native and he secured a new one on the return trip through Dortmund. He and Günter had run into a pair of German soldiers looting a house. Mac acquired a thin jacket taken off the body of one of the dead soldiers before they buried the bodies. The jacket had a rather large hole in it from the bullet that killed the original owner. When Monika first saw him she thought Mac had been injured. She ran to him and the compassion on her face made him wish he had been shot. Mac told her he was fine, but in fact he had picked up some sort of bug from one of the Americans and a week in summer heat brought it right home.
He sat at the kitchen table drinking Monika's hot soup, feeling warmer and warmer until he broke out in a cold sweat. She had him lie down in her bed and she mopped his forehead, as he got more and more delirious. He kept mumbling that this was like the first time he had seen her.
Time rolled on like thick oil pouring over his brain. When his fever first began he hoped he wouldn't say or do anything stupid, but then his memory got tangled up in the dreams he figured he was having. Mac could feel Monika mopping his brow, then felt her cool hands touch him, and then her warm lips kiss his face. He wasn't in a war; he had died during the night and was in heaven.
His fever broke sometime before dawn and he finally got to sleep. The sound of rain and thunder rattling the windows woke him up around midday. He thought at first it was distant bombing and sat up in bed. The covers slipped down over his bare chest and he tried pulling them back over his shoulders. The other person in the bed was holding them down.
Monika lay there next to him, her hair falling over her face. Those dark waves a man could drown in. He leaned down and gathered a handful of silky hair and breathed in its intoxicating fragrance. She washed it in rainwater and rinsed it in a brew of crushed lavender and white nettle. He didn't know how long he sat there watching her sleep.
Finally her eyes fluttered opened and she saw him staring at her. She smiled that smile he had seen dozens of times since he had been at the farm. It was Monica's smile when she brought him hot stew when he was hiding in the cellar or when she gave him the last of the coffee out of her best china cup. He had to tell himself it was his imagination, over and over again, but this time he wasn't dreaming.
"Do you feel better?" she asked, in a low, groggy voice, her long night vigil finally ending in the early morning hours.
"I'm sorry if I was a burden," he mumbled.
"I'm sorry I had no proper medicine for you." She smiled again and looked away timidly.
Panic and guilt washed over him. "If I did anything...."
She reached from under the covers and patted his hand, then held it tightly. "You are so silly, my beautiful American flyer. You didn't do anything wrong. I gave you Schnapps. Lots of Schnapps to warm you from the inside. That was all I could think of to break your fever."
"I'm in your bed," he said, not looking at her.
Her hand squeezed his, "Another old German remedy. My body warmth to warm you. Usually reserved for family and friends."
"Which am I?"
She pulled him closer, her hand refusing to let go of his. "Many young soldiers have stayed here. Not in my bed, of course" she clarified, smiling. "Many were wounded far worse than you. But I remember the first time I saw you, lying on that cot, so beautiful and so helpless. I couldn't help but love you."
Mac leaned down and kissed her. It was no dream. She slipped her arms around his shoulders and pulled him down on top of her, the weight of his body making it hard for her to breathe. Taking in his breath. Wanting to absorb as much as she could before she had to stop.
They held each other and kissed and touched while the rain pelted the small bedroom window. Thunder echoed through the valley, each clap making both think of bombs dropping over the countryside.
Cradled in his arms, Monika traced the profile of his face with her fingers. Quietly, she spoke to him. "If there had been no war, I would never have known you. Now, I'll think about you for the rest of my life."
"Do you want me to leave? I'll tell Günter I can't do this anymore?"
"No. You'll leave soon enough."
"Do.... do you want to come back to America with me? I'll talk to Günter. I'll tell him it was my fault. I made you...."
"Made me fall in love with you? Günter would never believe that. He knows me. Maybe the war helped. Maybe I shouldn't have brought you in here...."
"And let me die?"
"You were not close to death." She laughed a gentle, wise laugh that he didn't understand. Right now he was ages younger than she, the war adding a wisdom she wished she had never learned. "Robert, you are a remarkable young man. I can see great things for you." She laughed again and turned to him, his face fallen, his eyes wounded by her laughter. "My people came from Bavaria. Do you know about Bavaria?"
"I know where it is."
"Bavaria is the land of the gypsies. All my family are from there. Günter had to steal me away from my father. That was a very brave thing to do. Maybe that's why he doesn't fear the Nazis. Gypsies can get very angry." She laughed again, a different laugh. Deep and earthy. "My mother told me when I was very young I had a gift. I could read people. Tell their fortunes. See their futures. Günter tells me it's all nonsense, but, I believe it."
"And my wonderful future is without you?" he asked. "I won't like it."
"Did you enjoy being with me today?"
"Yes!" He almost swooned at the thought of being so close to her.
"Then you'll always be happy in the thought of it. The memory will be greater than the reality. But wait...."
Monika got out of the bed, the long gathers of her white cotton nightdress caught in the bed linen. She thought he was holding her back and she turned to give him a scold only to see the pained look on his face. Her gown worked itself free and she went to the heavy wooden dresser against the back wall of the room. She leaned down and tugged at the large bottom drawer. From it she lifted an embellished silver box. She brought it to the bed and nestled amidst the folds of the bedclothes. She opened the box and handed him an ornate necklace made of jade and brass beads strung in various lengths from a hammered brass chain.
The necklace was heavy, the brass and jade cold in his hands. He looked at her not knowing what she wanted him to do with it.
"My father was given this by a gypsy princess. Not my mother. Now it's mine. I give it to you."
"I don't understand," he said, still confused.
"You can be loved by someone other than your wife. It's a very good thing. Your wife will love you all the more because another woman once loved you. Give it to her."
Monika put her hand behind his neck and pulled him close to her. She lifted his face to hers and kissed him one last kiss that he would remember the rest of his life.
She climbed out of bed, took her clothes from the chair near the door and walked into the kitchen to dress. By the time Mac had shaved and put on clean clothes, Monika had porridge bubbling in an iron pot and a small piece of ham grilling in a pan. She was more radiant than ever and he knew he would judge all women by her. He hoped it wouldn't be too unfair.
The rain had moved farther south and the sky was beginning to clear over the farm. Monika poured him a cup of coffee made from pine nuts and a little ground coffee. Everything was getting scarce in Germany.
Mac wanted to ask her a question. It had been nagging at him since their talk in bed. "The night Günter and I were caught by the soldiers. Were you following me?"
"Not for the reason you think. I thought you were going to hurt Günter. I didn't trust you, just like you didn't trust me."
"You would have killed me?"
"Yes, as surely as I killed the German soldier." She smiled at him. At first it was the smile that captured his heart when he first saw her, then it turned into the rich, gypsy smile that was to enchant him forever. He exploded with laughter. She laughed with him.
"Günter has a good woman. May I find one as wonderful." He raised his cup and toasted her as Günter walked in the back door, a distant clap of thunder echoing over the next village as the summer storm swept across the countryside.
Mac never asked if she told Günter about
that night. In truth, he didn't quite know
what happened while he was in his delirium.
He believed what he wanted to believe.
CHAPTER 5
The Harbinger
Berlin - Early July 1943
Mac stayed in contact with the OSS home office in London. Günter had a dozen listening posts along the coast and messengers would hand deliver communiqués to either him or one of his men. Back in April, the OSS had sent a coded message to Mac telling him to set up a safe house in Berlin. With as many German Marks as they could lay their hands on in Germany as well as America and Britain, the Allies came up with enough cash to purchase a modest three-story townhouse on Werderstrasse in the heart of town.
After some remodeling, the place was furnished and then remained virtually unoccupied for two months. Mac and Günter returned to the farm and waited for further instructions.
The first of July, an Avro Lancaster 4-engine heavy bomber, one of the new planes the British had developed, crashed in roughly the same spot Mac's plane had gone down six months earlier. This one faired even worse. The only survivors were the two guys in the rear. They were pulled out of the wreckage with only a broken leg, a fractured clavicle and several broken ribs between them.
Mac had gotten word the same day that two important men were coming in from Poland and to be in Berlin by the ninth to escort them out of Germany, into France and onto a boat bound for England. The only thing Mac and Günter could do was take the two RAF men with them and meet these other guys at the safe house.
The injured Brits had a week to rest up before they were stuffed into a hidden compartment in Günter's truck and made the long trek to Berlin from the farm outside Bremen. Monika went with them as a diversion and as nurse. The man with the broken ribs wasn't doing as well as they had hoped.
The group arrived at the safe house late in the evening on July 9. Monika drove the truck to a warehouse they used and made her way back to the house on foot by sunup. For three days they waited. Günter didn't like it. Anytime there was a break in the routine, he expected trouble. He wanted to get the two Brits on their way that night. While Mac waited at the house, he and Monika would take the two Englishmen to the border.
Mac talked him into waiting a few more hours just in case the men from Poland could make it that night. It was raining like mad and that was usually a good time to move. The German soldiers in Berlin were enjoying themselves entirely too much to waste their time standing outside in a downpour. They still enjoyed the best food and lodging to be had, at least during the middle of a war.
It was past midnight and there was no sign of the men. They were coming from Warsaw where there had been some kind of trouble in April. Word wasn't getting through from any of the people they knew in Poland and Günter was worried. He had friends in that country and he knew many of Monika's family had been sent there by the Nazis who wanted people like that taken out of Germany.... for the duration.
By two in the morning Günter was ready to head out. He wasn't comfortable with the delay. He was wearing a Gestapo uniform and had access to a German staff car that would take him through the city to where the lorry was parked. His plan was to drive near the house, pick up Monika and the two RAF men, and then head southwest through Osnabrück, Münster and Dortmund. Since the British air raid in May on the Ruhr Valley, that section was relatively quiet. They would end up near the French border where they would link up with the underground network working around Aachen. Günter wanted to slip the Brits through that way into the capable hands of his old friend, Jean Clement, with the Maquis in France.
The lorry was sparsely stacked with burlap bags of potatoes and turnips. The cool, damp weather kept them fairly fresh. Günter had secured papers allowing him to transport the food out of Berlin to the troops outside Cologne. The dates on the documents were wrong so a well-placed drop of water conveniently smeared the ink and the three-month time deficit.
The lorry was in a warehouse near the city's main railroad station which hadn't been bombed and was the hub of much activity. Since Germany was supplying itself with almost everything it needed as far as food and supplies went, from its own efforts, or forced labor and even confiscating goods from countries it occupied, trains kept the lifeblood flowing throughout the country. Produce trucks moving in and around the railway station at all hours were seldom questioned.
"Mac, get Ronald and Harry ready. I'll get the truck. In this weather, it should take me forty-five minutes." He headed for the rear door in the kitchen.
Mac had been watching from the front window. "There's no movement on the street and I checked out the back alley a few minutes ago. Maybe those men will show up before you get back," he added, following Günter.
Turning off the lights and opening the rear door, Günter stepped into the alley. He was going to say something when they heard gunfire from the street. Running through the darkened house, they pulled the blackout curtains away from the front window. Someone was running down the street toward them. If he ran to their house, it would all be over.
Monika had been getting the two Brits into warm clothes in the upstairs bedroom. She ran to the landing, a gun in her hand, ready for Günter to give her the word on what she should do.
"Get them into the closet!" he yelled.
Mac ran to help Monika get the two men down the stairs. Harry's ribs were still sore but he managed to get to the ground floor without passing out. Ronald limped down the hall and into the kitchen with Monika's help.
Mac stayed in the living room with Günter. His hand was clinched around the doorknob. He knew the danger. Death was only yards away. He thought of his options. If he could get outside, he could fire a few shots over the running man's head to stop his pursuers while the man rounded the corner. He could shoot the man so he wouldn't give away their location and duck back inside. He could....
He didn't have time to make the decision. More shots rang out and the man fell.
Günter was still at the window. He whispered, "The man is in the middle of the street. The Gestapo will be knocking on every door in the area before dawn."
Günter went to the kitchen to make sure the two Brits were safely hidden in the secret chamber and to tell Monika to get back upstairs and continue her watch. He would wait until later to get the truck.
Monika was kneeling on the floor over a pile of ragged clothes. Inside the clothes were the pitiful remains of a man. Günter looked at the man's face, sunken and the color of ash, and thought he was dead. He was very close.
Mac ran in the room and had the same reaction. He jumped when he saw the rags move.
"Is this the other man from Poland?" he asked.
"Yes," said Monika. She was holding the man in her arms. "We must hide him before they start searching the houses."
The kitchen was pinewood paneled. A three-foot wide section between a floor-to-ceiling hutch and the doorway leading to the living room was opened. Behind it was a narrow chute that ran back ten feet. The two RAF men were standing in the chamber watching Monika and the man from Poland.
When the houses along this street were originally built, the floor plans were very simple. There was a small front room and a large rear kitchen. In the middle on one side was a bath, on the other was a dining alcove and the stairs going up to the three bedrooms and attic on the upper two floors. All the plumbing was downstairs. The front door opened in the center of the living room and directly opposite it was the arch into the kitchen. This was in every house - except Günter's.
He narrowed the bath by a few feet and took a foot out of the hallway next to the dining alcove. He replaced the arch with a door that was slightly off center from the front entrance. In the kitchen he built a small storage room along the right wall. If the Nazis were looking for a hiding place, they would go to the storage room, find nothing suspicious, and then leave.
"Harry, sit as far back as you can," said Günter, directing the man to the rear of the secret chamber. "Ronald, you sit next to Harry. I'll put our visitor on the floor and Mac, you stay with him near the door. Take this other gun."
Günter lifted the man with relative ease. He couldn't have weighed more than ninety pounds. The Brits took their positions as Monika handed Mac a blanket. The man from Poland groaned as Günter lowered him to the floor.
"There's not much time," said Mac.
Günter nodded. "We'll get the three of them out of here tonight," he said. "It's too dangerous here." Then, looking at the pile of rags that had once been a human being, he asked, "What happened to him? That isn't a man who's been through war. That's a man who's been through hell."
Monika was on her knees, mopping the floor where the visitor's rain soaked rags had dripped. She was almost through when she turned to Günter and Mac. "He said they killed the people in Warsaw. I don't know how many, but this isn't the way you fight a war. What's Hitler doing?"
Günter helped her put away the bucket and mop. He knew she was worried about her family members who were shipped off to Poland but he had little comfort for her. The man in the closet was a harbinger, but he didn't know of what.
There was banging on the front door. They could hear voices coming down the back alley. Mac ducked inside the closet and pulled the door shut. Günter set a chair in front of it as he pushed Monika through to the living room. He motioned for her to go up stairs. She shook her head. She wanted to be with him. He gave her a stern look and jerked his head again in the direction of the stairs.
Monika obeyed and dashed past him and up the stairs, still clutching the gun. Günter walked to the front door. He unbuttoned his jacket, pulled off his belt and loosened his pants. Giving a quick look around the room, he made sure the scene was correct. There was more banging and someone yelled for the occupants to open up.
Günter released the latch and opened the door. The glare of a flashlight hit him in the face. He covered his eyes with his hand, then turned slightly, just enough for the soldier to see the Gestapo insignia on his collar. The Geheime Staatspolizei was the German state secret police. The man at the door was an officer, too, but with the SD, so it didn't make that much of an impression. The Sicherheitsdienst was the German Security Service that searched out enemies of the state. They had their network of agents and informers that turned over anybody they thought looked suspicious and as the war deepened, everybody was suspect.
"What's going on?" asked Günter. "Are they bombing Berlin?"
"We're looking for a man who may be in one of these houses. We've killed one of his kind and must find the other. We must search your house, Major."
"Certainly, Kapitän." Stepping aside, he let the man enter, followed by four other soldiers. "What has he done?"
"He is an enemy of the Reich, Major. He must not be allowed to leave the city. Is there anyone upstairs?"
"Yes," stuttered Günter. "But it is only.... uh.... my wife."
"We will have to check. Excuse me," he said, pushing past the disheveled major.
"It is all right, my dear," said Monika, leaning over the railing, dressed in the sheerest of negligees. Few German officers had wives like that, but many had mistresses. Now the Gestapo Kapitän knew why the Major had stammered.
Monika smiled at Günter. He was impressed with her disguise but wondered where she was hiding the gun. She descended the stairs with just enough tackiness to say she wasn't a lady and enough heat to fog the goggles of the soldiers searching the house. The sound of men banging along the wall in the kitchen reached her ears. Monika shot another glance at her husband but he was watching the Kapitän.
It was a small house so it didn't take long for them to finish their search. They found nothing and were heading out the front door. The Kapitän turned to leave when he heard a cough from the rear of the house. He looked at Günter who pretended he had heard nothing. Monika adjusted a strap on her gown and assumed a bored pose. The Kapitän started toward the kitchen when one of his straggling soldiers came strolling out of the bathroom. Günter knew the sound hadn't come from that room, but the officer didn't. The Kapitän hurried his man along.
"Sorry for any inconvenience, Major. If you see anyone suspicious, shoot him. This man must not leave Berlin."
"What did he do?" asked Günter, again.
"He will betray the fatherland, Major. Kill him."
The Kapitän walked out the door, leaving it open for Günter to close himself. Günter stood at the door and watched the soldiers running around in the rain, chasing ghosts in the dark. The sight sent a shiver down his back. Monika pushed the door shut and bolted it. She stood in the living room watching the expression on Günter's face. It scared her.
They waited almost an hour before they opened the secret panel. Mac and the two Brits were sitting on the floor in silent vigil. The body on the blankets wasn't moving.
"He's dead," said Mac, cradling the man's head in his lap. "He spoke while we were in here. I don't think he knew where he was." Mac was numbed by the experience. "Oh, his cough. Did you hear it out there? I was waiting for the Krauts to beat down the walls."
"What did he say?" asked Günter, his eyes still watching the body.
"He talked about Warsaw. The Waffen SS came in with tanks and flame throwers."
"The Schutzstaffel can't leave those people alone. In 1940, the SS herded the Jews into an area about three miles square, then walled it off," said Günter. "There was a quote from the Nazi governor of Poland, this pig named Hans Frank. He said, 'I ask nothing of the Jews except that they should disappear.' I guess he wants to keep them from escaping."
"Günter, there's more. Himmler's SS were taking 6000 people a day out of the ghetto and shipping them to a place called.... Treblinka. Himmler wanted the rest of the people.... This man said over 400,000, taken out by February, but the resistance and the bad weather, kept the SS from carrying out the order. That's when they sent in the tanks. He said they were living in an area just a few blocks square. His people were fighting with guns smuggled in even after the Nazis set the place on fire. He said they held out for 28 days. This man had been on one of the trains going to Treblinka...."
"Where is that?" asked Günter.
"That's the message he had. That's what he wanted to report to England. Treblinka is the name the Nazis gave to two different camps. He said they were concentration camps. One is in Siedlce and the other in Malkinia. He was being sent to Siedlce, a forced labor camp. The other one.... Günter, I must have misunderstood his words. He was speaking so low. He said in the other camp they were killing them.... all of them."
"Working them to death?"
"I don't think so. I had the feeling he meant...exterminating them."
Monika gasped.
Mac continued. "He said...He said the SS were transferring them into dust."
"We're leaving now," said Günter. "Monika will arrange for this poor man to be gotten out of here. We have to get this information to London."
"I'm going with you," said Monika.
"You'll go back to the farm with Hans." A protest washed over her face but she backed down. Again, his word was law.
"What about the house?" asked Mac, placing another blanket over the body before closing the panel.
"We'll leave it for six months. If this
information is true," he turned to look
at the near skeleton-like human lying in
the secret compartment. "If it's true,
I believe your bombers will end this war
before then."
CHAPTER 6
The Mission
Hamburg, Germany - July 1943
Günter didn't realize how right he was. They got Ronald and Harry into the hands of the French resistance at the border and the French got the two RAF men back to London with the message from the poor soul from Warsaw.
In ten days a coded message was gotten to Günter from one of his listening posts in Bremerhaven. The woman who came with the message sailed a small boat down one of the canals from the port city and hiked the rest of the way on foot.
The Special Operations Executive (SOE) and OSS in London had another urgent request. This time it was for information on targets in and around Hamburg, the second largest city in Germany, 75 miles inland from the North Sea. Its location on the Elbe River and the network of canals connecting it to the country's interior made it Germany's main seaport.
Mendelssohn and Brahms were born there, but the OSS wasn't interested in culture. Along with its production of mineral oil, cigarettes and printed matter, Hamburg was famous for having the second largest copper plant in Europe and it was also in the shipbuilding business. Shipbuilding meant steel manufacturing. Steel meant U-boats, heavy bombers and things that go boom in the night.
Allied Intelligence understood the strategic importance of the city, especially the port area, but they didn't know the exact location of their most crucial factories. Sources were claiming the bulk of the heavy industry was located in the southern part of the city. That would mean flying bombers directly over Hamburg during the day. The planes would drop their payload and then fly right back over the same area. There wasn't a pilot or crewmember that didn't know the risk, but they sure as hell wanted the most bang for their buck.
Old photographs and postcards of the city were gathered by both the British and American intelligence services to see if they could identify any of the factories. Giant blast furnaces indicating steel mills weren't hard to spot, but it was the finishing mills and the universal plating mills that had escaped detection.
A very fortuitous set of circumstances aided the Allies. It started in a German POW camp during the Great War, 1917. A young RAF pilot named F.W. Winterbotham was twiddling his thumbs and wondering how does one go about taking aerial pictures from a low-flying aircraft and not get blown out of the sky. After the war, he went back to England and his family's farm and kept thinking about the problem. To young Winterbotham, aerial photography was going to be the key to winning future wars. Whoever saw what the enemy had in their back pocket would know how to respond.
He told his theories to fellow aviators and somebody mentioned him to MI6, British Secret Intelligence Service dealing with foreign intrigue and foreign intelligence gathering. Everybody liked his idea but to avoid antiaircraft fire, the plane would have to fly at high altitudes. At high altitudes the lens would fog up. The solution came from a wild Australian bush pilot named Sidney Cotton. Holes were cut in the fuselage for the cameras and hid them with shutters. From the ground nothing could be seen. This was great for low-altitude flying. The bonus came when they realized at high altitudes, with the shutters open, warm air from inside the plane kept the lens clear. Now they could fly at higher altitudes. Winterbotham talked the Brits into buying a brand new Lockheed 12A Electra so they could reach a ceiling of 22,000 feet and take pictures of everything, especially the Germans. Off they flew to Europe in the late 1930's with Winterbotham posing as the head of an aeronautical research company. Nobody suspected the two aviators of anything because nobody thought you could take pictures at that altitude without condensation forming on the lens.
The two pilots became the darlings of the Luftwaffe who were intrigued by the small American airplane. Winterbotham even took one of the Generals for a ride. While the General was checking out the two-crew member, six passenger aircraft, he noticed three green lights blinking on the control panel and asked what they were. Winterbotham, his mind racing, said they were fuel indicators for the twin-engine aircraft. That satisfied the Kraut. If he had investigated, Luftwaffe General Kesserling would have realized they were attached to the Leica camera snapping pictures of der fatherland.
By 1939, Winterbotham figured it was time to head home.... with a ton of photographs of German military sites. When war broke out, the Brits used Sidney Cotton's great photos, but a problem arose. Allied bombing wasn't stopping the flow of munitions coming out of Germany. Allied Intelligence needed to know what factories they were missing. The first team sent in was discovered trying to sneak across the Belgian border with an SSTR-1 Radio in their luggage. What tipped their hand was the obvious weight of the case. Forty-five pounds of clothes in one bag carried by a man wasn't going to cut it. Now, if a woman had been carrying that much stuff....
A map of the city was found in the lining of one of the dead men's coats. Steel mills, munitions factories and warehouses were marked. Now the Krauts knew the Allies were preparing to bomb their city, but they hoped, without exact locations, the raid would be postponed. The German high command sent word that all border areas should be on the lookout for anybody with heavy luggage and patrol boats were watching the waters along the North Sea.
The Brits were indeed preparing for a massive air raid over Hamburg on the 24th of July. The OSS wanted Mac and Günter to get into the city, locate and verify strategic targets and get word back to London before the bombing run began.
"Günter, you can't go. It will be dangerous. I know it," said Monika, as the men were preparing their gear for the trip.
"We will be in and out in two days. Don't worry."
"But I don't like it. Mac, talk to him. He is so stubborn."
"We'll leave Friday night. I promise," said Mac. "That's twelve hours before they begin the bombing runs. We'll be home by dinnertime. We'll bring something good to eat from their marketplace. Don't worry."
Monika was still apprehensive. "But Günter, you know how I...."
".... Worry. Yes, my dear. If we do stay longer.... Now wait 'til I finish." He held her shoulders. "If we take a few days longer, it's because we have more work. Nothing will happen to us. Do you believe me?"
She thought about it. A calm came over her. "All right. But.... watch your back."
Günter smiled at her and gave her a kiss. "I know your instinct. We will watch our backs. Keep Klaus busy. He worries like you do but he doesn't yet know how to think things through. That will be your job while we are enjoying the city."
"Don't enjoy yourself too much," she kidded. "I know the reputation of certain parts of Hamburg."
Later that morning Monika saw them off without one word of protest. Several times Mac looked back and saw her standing in the hayloft, watching. She was still there as they turned onto the road to Hamburg before it disappeared into the forest.
On the outskirts of Hamburg, they left the truck with a friend and changed into German SA officer uniforms. The 'Brown Shirts' was Hitler's paramilitary organization, basically a bunch of thugs that didn't mind busting heads to clear the way for the elite men in the SS to march in and achieve the 'final solution'.
They waited along the side of a country road feeding into the main highway until they saw a wagon loaded with fruit and vegetables coming their way. The two horses pulling it were refugees from a glue factory. Günter waved the old man driving the cart to a stop. The owner saw their German uniforms and didn't resist. After commandeering the wagon, they rode a few more miles before pulling into some trees and changing back into their country clothes. The rest of the trip was over bumpy, dirt lanes that led into the southeastern part of the city.
A barricade had been set up and German soldiers were checking ID's as they approached. The rickety produce wagon and the pair of rurals peddling their wares was a pitiful sight. Günter had assumed a stooped posture and walked with a decided limp. Only the crippled or severely retarded were totally exempt from the army. Mac had become a mute, slightly spastic, laborer who was there for his brawn. Their papers were authentic; they just belonged to two other men. Mac and Günter were told the main produce market was near Speicherstadt, the bonded warehouse area.
That was exactly where Günter wanted to be. They followed the canal as far north as they could until finding themselves in the warehouse district. Along the way, they took note of any factory that was heavily guarded or any warehouse that had an unusual contingent of German uniforms milling around its exterior.
This was a famous area of Hamburg. The tall, red brick buildings had dominated the skyline before the boring, modern, high-rise buildings stepped in and cluttered the landscape. Each old building was embellished with Gothic architectural detailing, fitted with gables, trimmed with bay windows and crowned with elaborate turrets. And these were just warehouses. Magnificent.
Mac had gotten into the back of the wagon and made notes. More than once, he loosened one of the wheels and managed to kick it free as they passed a gaggle of German soldiers standing guard at the entrance of a busy factory or warehouse. Each time, a willing guard would come to their aid and helped reattach the wheel. Equally obligingly, the guard would tell his little peasant friends that he and the other soldiers were guarding something very important for der fatherland.
What Mac and Günter didn't know was a German SD officer had seen the stunt pulled several streets back and was now witnessing the same scene in front of another factory. He wasn't one who believed in coincidences. The Sicherheitsdienst (SD) was the German Security Service that used a network of agents and informers to uncover enemies of the state in and outside of the country.
Following them to the next stop, the SD officer saw the play being performed for the third time. He slipped into the building and called headquarters and was told to continue the surveillance and see where the two men went. The officer wanted to capture the spies right there and interrogate them, but his commandant wanted to see where the two ended up. He could have pulled Mac and Günter into a quiet building and beat the truth out of them, but German officers were trained to do what they were told. He continued his watch.
As it happened, that was the last performance. Günter drove the cart into the crowded marketplace and secured the team. The place was a patchwork of huge open-air barns and stalls. The air was filled with the smell of putrefying fruit and the ground was littered with decomposing compost. Since the war began, there were few workers available to keep the streets clean.
Even with the war all around them, the German diet wasn't too bad. They were rationed up the wazoo, but the country had stored up food, clothing and supplies for the long hall. Farmers would bring their crops and produce to market and sell it to German officers acting as henchmen for Der Führer. Most of the better quality food went to the military while the dregs stayed in the city to feed the hungry populace. Farmers would harvest what they could for their families in the middle of the night and store the contraband in secret root cellars. If caught, they were shot. Most had hidden rooms like Günter had on his farm. It was dangerous, but so was starving. Even so, the German diet was equal to that of the British, for the duration.
Still playing the cripple, Günter limped to the back of the cart and prodded Mac to get to work. Mac had been acting as the rear lookout. He stretched as he let his eyes roll over the activity in the lot.
He spotted the uniform first. The SS insignia flashed on the man's collar like twin bolts of lightning. Then he saw the light blue eyes staring directly at him. He stretched out like he was going to take a nap, all the while telling Günter they had trouble. Günter took the cue and started slapping Mac around. He had to help unload the fruit.
"Get up, you lazy fool!" he yelled, smacking Mac on the head.
Mac covered his head from the mock blows and rolled over. He had to get his gun from beneath the bags piled at the rear of the cart. He grabbed it as Günter continued the assault. Mac tucked the gun in his shirt and rolled over, hoping he could locate the SS officer again in the crowd. There was no trouble in that. The man was running straight toward them. Mac jumped off the cart and headed for the center of the throng. Günter was right behind him, yelling curses at the fleeing man. Onlookers stopped what they were doing and watched. It was a comical scene and the crowd closed in around the show, laughing and clapping. The German officer was now blocked and he was yelling even louder than Günter. He pulled out his Walther PP and fired several rounds in the air. The laughter stopped. Günter and Mac didn't. They made their way through one stall after another, Günter losing his limp along the way.
In one large barn-like structure, they both came to a stop and looked around. The German officer could not be seen and the noise from the crowd was gone. Now a running man would cause suspicion.
An elderly farmer with dried, parchment-like skin was stacking crates of medium size cabbage around his stall. He noticed the two men running.
"What did you do?" he asked, indicating Mac.
Günter sized him up quickly. The man had to be in his late-sixties, too old to have served in World War I, a farmer all his life. Most likely he had sons who served in the last war and grandsons in this one. Probably loved Germany, hated the Nazis.
Günter hunched over and rubbed the imaginary war wound on his leg. "They're trying to conscript my brother. He's slow-witted and can't fight. I served in this war and look what I got. I'm a farmer. How can I farm like this? Now they want to take my brother. And he's an idiot."
Mac was by his side, a spastic hand flailing in the air, a twitch in his face, no sound coming out of his contorted mouth. The old man felt disgust as well as pity. Should have drowned him at birth, he thought. But a farmer needs all the help he can get. His sons were gone. Two died in the last war. A third was a German officer whose eyes had long ago lost their compassion.
"Sit here" said the old man to Mac, pointing to a stool behind the stall. "Clean the cabbage. Pull off the bugs from the outer leaves. You," pointing to Günter, "carry crates."
For half an hour Günter unloaded and stacked crates from several carts. Mac picked bugs off cabbage. By the time the sun was setting, he was itching all over and the twitch was becoming permanent.
A squad of soldiers checked identification papers in the area. Both Mac and Günter still had theirs. When the market closed, both men helped load the empty crates onto the carts, were given a bag of overripe produce and when the opportunity presented itself, they slipped out of the marketplace by hitching a ride on a wagon full of field hands. They rode several blocks and then jumped off and continued on foot.
They spent the night in a vacant warehouse. The next day they borrowed a friend's truck and drove around the city like day laborers on a job. When they needed to be on foot, each grabbed an empty crate and walked, Günter with a limp, Mac with a twitch. They pinpointed the sections near the central and northern parts of Hamburg that had the highest concentration of military targets. By nightfall they headed toward their contact who lived in the St. Pauli section. The lookouts on the North Sea had relocated there a week earlier. They knew when the bombing started, the first area to go would be the docks.
When the sun set, the entire city went dark. Blackout curtains were tightly drawn and the few automobiles and trucks on the streets turned off their headlights and slowed to a crawl. People were still milling around, buying bread for the evening meal or picking up their ration of meat for the week's stew.
Bumping into a man he didn't even see, Mac excused himself profusely. Günter grabbed his sleeve and pulled him away. Mac looked at him for answers but Günter was silent until they had moved down the block.
"These people aren't in the forgiving mood, Mac. Look at them. They're silent. You must become what they are."
"They move around like ghosts."
Mac saw people through different eyes from that time forward. When the populace was cautious, closed and distrustful, he became just as guarded. If they were joyous and ebullient, he became the life of the party. He mimicked their gestures, assumed their national attitudes and wore their clothes. He learned the advantage of being a chameleon. He would learn more lessons as he moved toward his destiny.
"Have you ever been to the apartment?" asked Mac as they drove across town.
"Not this one. Hans did the reconnaissance work for me."
"Then it was your brother who came up with the maps we're wearing on our back?"
"He was an artist before the war. Went to an art school in Bremen."
"I hope he gets back to it soon," said Mac.
Both men were wearing summer weight jackets with worn linings. Beneath the lining, on the jacket itself, was a lightly inked map of the major streets in Hamburg. A few landmarks were noted like St. Michaelis Church, the fish market, the Hauptbanhof (city railway station), Nikolaifleet (a major canal) and the Hafen (port) area. Both men marked their jackets in case only one managed to get out of the city.
The St. Pauli section of Hamburg was notorious for its bohemian lifestyle. Its infamous Reeperbahn area, or Red Light District, was second to none. As Mac and Günter got closer to the street they were seeking, they noticed an abundance of German staff cars parked at the curb.
"Busy night," said Mac.
"There's the future of Germany, between the legs of a two-bit whore," said Günter, driving quickly passed the cars.
They got to Herr Frenkel's place a little after 8 PM. The street could have been in any European town. Big, grayish-brown stone-fronted buildings stood side by side like men in wool tweed button-down suits. The cobblestone street would be too narrow for 1990 size buses, and was barely wide enough for 1943 size trucks, but fine for horse-drawn carts.
Again, no street lamps were burning and the houses looked deserted. Only four vehicles were parked in the neighborhood. Two cars were at the far end where the street made a 'Y' and two more were opposite each other at the head of the street when they drove in.
Günter parked and they walked toward the Frenkel's building. It was extremely quiet and pitch dark. They knew there were people on the streets but they moved like vapors. Mac looked over his shoulder.
"Are you still seeing ghosts?" asked Günter.
"It's like they're everywhere."
Günter smiled, and then looked over his own shoulder.
In the lobby of the old apartment building, they took the stairs to the top floor. Six flights. Peter Frenkel wanted to be as high up as he could so his radio would have less interference. The tallest thing in Hamburg at the time was the steeple on St Michaelis Church.
As they trudged up the stairs, an old man peeked his head out of his apartment to see who was moving around the building. He watched with narrow, rheumy eyes as the two climbed to the next floor, studying them like bugs under a microscope, and then very slightly, shaking his head. He pulled his door shut and they could hear the bolt being thrown.
Frenkel shared the top floor with three other families. His was the apartment with a small dormer window facing west - toward London. The window was in his tiny bathroom. He ran a wire out the window to the roof and set up an antenna along the one of the chimneystacks. It couldn't be seen from the street and since he was the building's janitor, he was the only one who made regular visits to the roof.
Knocking on Peter's door, Günter called out, "Peter, it is your cousin, Fritz. Rolf and I have come to see how you are doing."
Peter opened the door. He was dressed rather well for a janitor, but some of the people in the underground had their own sources of cash, usually a dead German soldier. He was happy to see the two men and ushered them into his small apartment.
"Glad you made it all right, Fritz," said Peter, shaking Günter's hand and smiling broadly. "Did you have any trouble?"
"No. There are not many vehicles on the streets anymore. This is 'Rolf', my friend from...Bremerhaven."
"Rolf, good to meet you." Again, the man pumped Mac's hand with great enthusiasm. "So, you need the radio? It is in here."
Peter led the two men down the hall to the bathroom. It was meant for one person at a time but he pulled Günter inside to show him the set up.
"I keep it behind the tub. Nobody will look there."
He unscrewed the access panel to the pipes behind the sitz-tub, a half-size bathtub with a built-in seat, and dragged the suitcase containing his radio equipment into the room. The long wire fed out and he checked to make sure the connection hadn't been broken.
He was using the Type B MK II Radio developed by British Signals Officer John Brown in 1942, for the SOE that was created when Germany first goose-stepped across Europe during the summer of 1940. The SOE worked with in-country resistance groups like Günter's and by 1943, when Mac landed, literally, on German soil, the OSS joined in, working in cooperation with the British group. The suitcase radio had a range of over 500 miles. When the weather was good, it could reach twice that far.
"If you give me the information you have, I'll send it to London now," said Peter, anxious to use the radio.
"What time is it? 8:15. Good. Tina will be on the other end of the wire. Do you know Tina?"
"Tina? I don't know their names. I never stay on long enough to send a personal message. Is she cute?"
"She sounds cute. Always signs off telling me she will buy me a beer when the war is over. She is probably an old hag like my wife." Günter laughed.
Mac's ears perked up. He knew something was wrong. He felt for his gun.
"What message do you want me to send?" asked Peter.
"I'll write it out for you. Do you have some paper...and a pencil?"
"Paper? Sure. Just a minute."
'Peter', or whatever his name was, went into the front room and rummaged through several drawers in a small desk until he came up with a few blank sheets of paper. Meanwhile Günter was explaining things to Mac.
"TINA is the method radio operators at the home station recognize each other's touch on the Morse key. It's like fingerprinting. We have to get out of here."
"Here is some paper," said 'Peter'. "Use my pen."
"Fritz, did you get the maps out of the truck?" Mac improvised, wanting to get both himself and Günter out of the apartment.
"No. Go get them. I'll write out the code so Peter can get started."
'Peter' stepped into the tiny bath beside Günter. Mac hesitated. 'Peter' noticed.
"Hurry up. We don't have much...."
'Peter' didn't have any more time. Günter grabbed him by the hair as he slit the man's throat, dropping the dead body head first into the sitz bath. He snatched the radio equipment off the floor, severing the wires and pushed Mac out of the bathroom. They ran to the front door.
"They're going to be out there waiting for us," said Mac.
Günter dropped the radio behind the couch and opened the door. Three SD officers stood in their way, guns drawn.
"You will come with us," said the German Security officer. "Drop your weapons."
Mac pulled the gun from its shoulder holster and set it on a table. Günter took his knife, still bloody, and jabbed it into the arm of a nearby chair. The officer noticed the blood. He looked around the room.
"Where is my other man?"
"He's taking a bath," said Mac.
The officer looked puzzled, and then got the point. "Make no mistake, gentlemen. You will not escape. Get the radio," he said to one of his men. "We will send someone back for Gerhard."
His man went to the bathroom, looked inside and saw the bloody scene.
"Mein Gott!" he yelled.
The lead officer took his eyes off Mac and Günter and the man with him took a few steps forward. Mac grabbed the automatic still in the other man's hand and shot the officer before he could turn around. Günter yanked the knife out of the sofa and flung it into the side of the younger officer. Charging the man, he wrestled him to the ground, and then finished the job. Günter yanked the gun out of the dead man's hand and retrieved his knife for a second time.
Seconds later they were racing down the stairs two at a time. On the landing where the old man lived, they saw his door open a crack and the heavily creased face poked out. The milky eyes widened as he saw them flee.
"Halt! Halt! They are getting away!" he yelled, stepping into the hall.
Günter raised the automatic and fired a single blast at the informant.
On the street, they dove into the truck, Mac going first, stepping over the driver's seat and dropping into the passenger side as Günter slid into his seat and started the engine. He took off in the direction of the "Y" in the road only to see the two cars on opposite sides of the street move forward, trying to block him off. Günter gunned the engine and drove through the middle, spinning both cars out of the way. The two other cars were hot on their tail.
Günter went left. Before he got to the end of the next block, a row of headlights flashed on. There must have been eight police cars lined up blocking their escape. He slammed on the brakes and tried to spin around. The old truck didn't have that move in her. It fish-tailed before it slammed into a vehicle parked at the curb. He revved the engine and tried backtracking. Four more German staff cars were coming toward them, their lights blinding their eyes.
Günter stopped the truck and looked over to Mac.
"Maybe Monika was right," he said, fatalistically.
"She didn't say we wouldn't be coming back," Mac said in English.
"You optimistic Americans. Remember one thing, my friend: think in German. Do you understand?"
Mac didn't have a chance to answer. Doors were flung open and they were dragged onto the pavement. They were taken first to Gestapo headquarters. The two men were separated and questioned. Their identification papers said they were German nationals and Mac spoke to them only in their language.
"Do you work for the resistance?" asked the interrogating Gestapo officer.
"No," answered Günter. "I went to see my cousin, Peter Frenkel. This other man was in his apartment and he wouldn't tell me where Peter was."
"Is that why you killed him?"
"I knew something bad was going on. That man thought I was somebody else. He wanted me to operate his radio. I don't know radios. I'm a farmer."
He was questioned further, beaten senseless, and then tossed into a cell. Mac suffered the same fate, beaten unconscious, and taken to a hospital room. When he came to, a doctor was working on him. His left eye was swollen from the beating. The doctor cleaned up the worst of the injuries and took two stitches above Mac's left eyebrow, all without anesthetic. A lovely young nurse assisted. Every time Mac flinched she grimaced, feeling his pain. The doctor saw the concern on her face and sent her out of the room to help with other patients. Minutes later, the doctor left.
Mac looked around the room to see if there was anything he could use as a weapon. Other than some used cotton swabbing, there was nothing there of use, not even a glass vile that could double as a knife. He sat on the edge of the examining table and waited to be taken away.
The young woman stepped in the room with a tray of clean bandages and more cotton swabs. She was dressed in a crisp, white cotton uniform, her hair neatly pulled into a bun. She looked Mac over and saw blood dripping from where the stitches had been taken. Setting down the tray, she reached under the table and pulled out a bottle of alcohol.
Putting a little on a clean bit of cotton, she said, "This will sting a bit."
Mac flinched slightly but she kept pressing the saturated cotton against his forehead until the pain and bleeding stopped. She gazed into his eyes and smiled ever so gently.
"I'm with the resistance. I'll help you escape." She spoke in English.
Mac looked at her like she was speaking Greek. "Ich verste'he Sie nicht."
She got a panicked look on her face. Again, in English she blurted, "Oh, no. I thought you were the American we had expected." She turned hurriedly to go. Mac didn't try to stop her. She hesitated for a second at the door, waiting for Mac to break his cover. He just pressed the bloody cotton to his forehead and looked blank. She left the room.
Mac eyed the open bottle of alcohol left on the counter. He stuffed a handful of cotton in the neck and reached for his lighter. He heard footsteps coming toward his room. It sounded like two people. He flipped open the lighter and struck the flint. Holding it away from the cotton that was slowly sucking up the alcohol, he waited.
When the door opened, he saw the Gestapo agent who had first interrogated him and another man in uniform. They saw the flame first and then the bottle. Both backed away from the door. Mac was right after them.
Before the Gestapo agent could reach for his gun, Mac lit the fuse and tossed it at the guy's feet. The glass broke and the alcohol ignited instantly, sending up a ball of flame around the two men. Mac jumped through the flames and took the service weapon off the second man who had reeled back, screaming, his uniform and skin burning. The Gestapo agent was rolling in agony on the floor next to him.
Mac secured the weapon under his jacket and continued down the hall, looking for an escape route. He still had a mission: to find a way to get a coded radio message to London. But he had a bigger problem. What he thought was a hospital, wasn't. He was still in Gestapo headquarters and his Molotov cocktail had raised the alarm.
As men started running to that hallway, Mac stopped and turned, looking back down the hall like he had just gotten there himself. He stepped aside as officers raced passed him, then continued on his way.
The nurse came around the corner and spotted him. She had been running in the direction of the sound, but stopped and the doe-like expression came back in her eyes. She jerked her head for him to follow. He did. She went to a supply room and pulled him inside.
She spoke again in English. "I'm here to help get you two out. I'll get your friend. What's his...?"
Mac interrupted her. Speaking in German, he told her he didn't understand and the added, "Will you help me get out of here?" he asked.
She switched back to German. "I'll help you."
"Thank you. What about my friend?"
"I don't know where he is. What did you do?" asked the nurse.
"We went to the house of a friend. A stranger was there. We thought maybe he was a saboteur. I think he killed Fritz's cousin."
"How is your head?" she asked, looking at the wound. "It may need more bandaging."
"I just want to leave."
"Let me see if the officers have left the hall."
She opened the door a crack and checked the hallway. "Go very fast, but don't run. They will see you. Okay?"
Mac nodded. He opened the door and he peered out. The coast was clear. He nodded to her and stepped into the hall. He started walking fast. The hallway was long but another hall intersected it two doors down.
When Mac got that far, the woman called out in English, "Take the left hall."
Mac kept walking straight ahead. He heard the hammer cock and stopped. He turned. She was holding a gun on him. She reverted to German.
"We will have you join your friend."
Mac didn't know what that might entail. An educated guess said it wouldn't be good. Soon six more Gestapo officers joined them and he was pushed into another room. To his surprise Günter was there in one piece and looked about as bad as he felt. Two armed men stayed in the room with them.
"What happened to your eye?" asked Günter.
"Dog bite."
They said nothing else for twenty minutes. The soldiers guarding them shifted from foot to foot, bored and tired. It was getting late and their shift was coming to and end. One guard stifled a yawn and the other scratched himself, his wool uniform itchy on that particularly warm evening.
Footsteps were heard coming down the hall. Jack-booted thugs make a noise all their own. The door burst open and a phalanx of black-shirted SS men stepped into the room. These were Hitler's elite guard, the political police. The Schutzstaffel grew under Heinrich Himmler into the chief Intelligence Force, which became the main instrument of terror in Germany. All other branches of mayhem fell under their guidance. This bunch originated under Richard Walther Darré, a pig breeder by trade, but as George Orwell said, some pigs are better than others.
"You will come with us," said SS Officer Rausch, the skull and crossbones insignia gleaming on the collar of his black tunic.
"What do you want with us?" pleaded Günter, hunching over and rubbing the imaginary wound on his leg. "We are simple farmers."
"I do not think so. Your friend tossed a Molotov cocktail at two Gestapo officers in his attempt to escape. I do not think that was the act of a simple farmer."
Günter looked at Mac and kept a very straight face. He looked back at Rausch. "He is never that clever on the farm. Maybe it was the knock on his head."
They were driven to the Reich Central Security Office. The sun was beginning to set.
"What is the date?" asked Mac.
Herr Rausch answered, "July 23rd. Why? Do you have somewhere else to be?" He laughed at his own joke. "We know you are with the resistance. Now you will give us the names of everyone in your organization. I will see to it personally."
The SS Central Office was in the heart of Hamburg. Very likely it's location was on every map the Allies had of the city. Mac kept looking at his watch.
He and Günter were put in another room with guards stationed every five feet down the hallway. There wouldn't be any cocktail-throwing parties in this place.
"How did you manage the Molotov back there?" questioned Günter, finally allowing himself to smile. He kept his voice low.
"After they stitched me up, a cute little nurse started batting her eyes at me. Said she was with the underground."
"Maybe she was."
"She tried tripping me up when I thought I was escaping. Spoke to me in English. But I didn't bite. That's when she pulled her gun."
"Why didn't you believe her?"
"It was the eyes. For one brief second she wasn't a nurse and I saw it."
"You are a good student.... Rolf. What time is it?"
They weren't given any food that night. This would be the build-up to the torture that was to come. The next day they were again denied food and water. Several times they were dragged individually from their cell and taken into a room and beaten. The SS officer was always in the room but he didn't speak. He watched as they were pummeled, his cold blue eyes unblinking, and with the snap of his finger, he had them taken back to their cell. The routine was not uncommon. Starvation, thirst, pain, torture and finally they would break.
The sun had gone down by the time Mac was tossed back into the cell with Günter. The cut over his eye was bleeding again, but nobody was coming to remedy the situation. He sat on one of the wooden chairs and held his bloody handkerchief to the wound.
Günter was looking through the barred windows at the pitch-black sky over Hamburg, and then he looked at his watch.
A second later air raid sirens went off as firebombs began dropping all over the city. British Lancasters swooped in from over the North Sea and the city burst into flames. From every direction they heard the rumbling of aircraft. Building after building was hit and fires erupted. The sound of fire engines racing through the burning streets was followed by the screams of people running for their lives. The mountain had come to Mohammed.
Mac and Günter figured the fate of two resistance fighters was not a priority and it was time to leave the party.
"Let's get out of here," said Mac.
"Try the door," said Günter.
Mac rattled the knob but they were still prisoners.
"Kick it down," he added.
Mac kicked at the bottom of the door but nothing was giving. Günter picked up a wooden chair and bashed it several times against the solid wood panels but all he broke was the chair. Mac could see the swarm of aircraft flying low over the city and the nearer they got, the more the windows rattled, but so far, they weren't feeling the ground shake from heavy bombs.
"Let's try the table. Use it like a battering ram," said Mac.
The men grabbed both sides of the long table and ran at the door. It bounced off the doorframe and stopped them cold.
"Turn it sideways," suggested Mac.
They grabbed hold of the top and bottom edges of the table as they rammed the door. It gave slightly. The forward legs were hitting the left doorjamb but they were starting to loosen. They gave it another run. The lock was giving way. They stepped back for another go when four or five gunshots blew the lock apart and the door was kicked open.
Rausch and a handful of his men stood in the hall.
"We will take you to a secure place, gentlemen. I intend to get the truth out of you before the night is over. Schnell!"
Guns pointed and Mac and Günter were led away. The sound of planes was getting nearer. They walked down the main hall until they passed an open office and someone called to Rausch. He stepped into the room to speak to his superior. Mac and Günter waited with the armed guards.
"Get them into the basement," ordered Rausch. "I will follow in a minute."
The five guards hustled the prisoners down the main hall then turned right. The narrower hallway in that wing of the building was filled with offices. Near the end of the corridor were the stairs. They made the turn and were halfway down the hall when a firebomb skidded down the face of the six-story edifice, exploding on the street outside the kommandant's office, incinerating Herr Rausch and his superior in one screaming flash.
Before the end of World War I, the Germans developed incendiary bombs. Thermite bombs, its more devastating sibling, followed. Consisting of aluminum and powdered iron oxide, when ignited, the rapidly rising temperature of the aluminum pulls the oxygen molecules away from the iron oxide, sending the temperature to a screaming 1800in a matter of seconds. When heat rises, as it does at that incredible temperature, it sucks up everything in the vicinity with it. Given enough contiguous fuel, you have a self-sustaining firestorm.
The guards closest to the holocaust were pulled into the inferno before anybody knew what was happening. Günter had a second to react and pushed Mac through a door and tumbled after him down a set of stairs. One of the guards went with them. He was at the bottom of the pile when they reached the basement.
The lights had gone out when the firebomb hit. The guard staggered to his feet and reached for his flashlight. He realized he had dropped his gun in the fall but spotted it on the floor. Mac saw it at the same time and dove for it first, scooping it up like a ground ball, rolling on his side and shooting the man several times in the chest. The retort echoed through the underground chamber. Günter took the dead man's light just as the basement generator was cranked up and utility lights came on.
That brought out the rest of the rats. Doors flew open and Nazis poured into the hall. Mac shot a few more rounds as he got to his feet, sending the Germans in retreat. Mac and Günter didn't have much time to plan their escape. The stairs and the fiery inferno looked like their only option.
They bounded back up the stairs. When they got to the top, Mac turned to see if anybody was following. He fired one more round as Günter braced himself and peered out the door. The entire front of the building was blazing. He could feel air rush past his face as the fire was feeding itself with anything it could drag into its belly.
To his left was a dead end. He watched as offices closest to the inferno had their doors ripped off their hinges and drawn down the hall along with the room's contents into the flames. Günter felt himself being sucked into the open but Mac grabbed his jacket and pulled him back into the stairwell.
That's when the explosion rocked what was left of the main building. The munitions room on the ground floor, piled to the roof with ammunition and weapons, erupted, blowing the facade off the Reich Central Security Office. With it went the top five floors. The entire front portion of the structure imploded, crumbling in on itself. Rubble filled the hallway that had moments ago been the mouth of hell.
"Let's get out of here," said Günter.
The collapsing building had extinguished the part of the fire they could see. Mac climbed over massive chunks of concrete block to find an escape route. A few pieces of burning wood gave off some light but mostly everything was black. On either side of him were entire sections of wall that had crashed through floor after floor, stacking up like playing cards.
He could hear creaking above his head. Debris sifted down through huge gashes in the ceiling. Whatever was left up there was working its way loose.
"We have to find another way out," he yelled, scrambling down.
Günter was trying to find an unlocked door that might lead to an exit. The first few offices provided nothing but rubble and no escape. He stepped back into the hall to hear what Mac had said. Some loose debris under Mac's feet gave way and he slid under a portion of fallen wall.
Amongst the devastation he heard a moan. Günter pointed the flashlight in the direction of the sound. Mac looked down at his feet and saw the nurse trapped beneath a massive concrete cornice that had once been arched over one of the front windows. She was no longer in her white, angel of mercy uniform. Now she was wearing a German Army uniform. Her face was bloody and her eyes dazed.
"Help me," she begged.
"Where's your gun?" he asked in English.
She looked at him, confused, pitiful. Günter stared at the woman, then looked at Mac.
"Fuck her," said Mac, continuing his climb out of the ruin.
The ceiling gave way, burying her.
They ran down the hall looking for a way out. An office door was open and they saw a row of multi-paned windows facing the center courtyard without bars. They could see fires blazing in the opposite wing. The flames grew menacingly bright. Suddenly, every window in the west wing melted. Next, the trees, plants and lawn furniture in the courtyard were whooshed to oblivion.
An odd noise filled their ears. With a gigantic inhaling sound, the glass in the windows in front of them was sucked out. Günter pushed Mac out of the room and slammed the door.
"The basement!" he yelled.
They dove into the stairwell and slid on their stomachs to the basement floor. The utility lights were still on but all the men had left.
"There must be a way out down here," said Günter.
A door at the far side of the basement was standing wide open. It led to a tunnel that ran back a hundred feet then angled upward for another fifty feet to a garage. Before they got to the end they could hear voices and the gunning of engines. Men were scrambling into vehicles preparing to leave. Officers were issuing orders, yelling at the men to load up. Even with the din, Mac and Günter became aware of a heavy droning sound. They knew what it was.
"They don't know what's happening outside," said Mac.
A moment later the roof blew off the old wood and plaster building like a tornado hit it. The sky outside was glowing orange as everything in the cavernous structure started to swirl. The men nearest the tunnel entrance tried making a run for it. The whirlwind grabbed at their clothes and they fought to keep their footing. Several men dropped to their knees and crawled toward the door. Mac and Günter pushed it closed and dropped the bar to secure it. By that time the noise level, even in the tunnel, was becoming unbelievable.
"Get in as far as we can," yelled Mac over the din.
They raced down the tunnel and into the basement. Mac could see the concrete block that surrounded the door. This wasn't a basement. It was a bomb shelter. They still wanted to be as far underground as they could get so they went to the room the farthest from the tunnel door. That was their sanctuary, but not theirs alone.
In the dimming light from the slowly expiring generator, they saw a man in uniform crouching behind a small desk. He had a gun, aimed at them. He was Gestapo. Mac thought it was odd to see him hunched there on the floor with his uniform neatly buttoned. He motioned for them to sit as the roar above them got louder and louder.
The room was getting uncomfortably warm. The monster upstairs was using up the oxygen at a ferocious pace. Mac hoped the man wouldn't notice because two fewer people breathing would leave more for him. He could draw his own gun, but he'd be dead before he could pull back the slide. Günter had the same thoughts but he was running the data through his own computer. He sat quietly and waited.
The utility lights began to fade right before the firestorm whooshed down and ripped the generator out of the storeroom located above ground. Mac knew Günter still had the flashlight but he wasn't using it. They waited in the dark.
The maelstrom swirling above their heads seemed to go on forever. As the noise intensified, they covered their ears with their hands and tried stuffing the sleeves of their jackets over them to keep out the god-awful din. Their heads ached from the unearthly roar.
Finally they became aware of the calm that was settling above them. Mac took in a breath and realized air, not necessarily fresh air, but air mixed with the smell of sulphur and smoke was seeping into the room.
In the blackness that surrounded them, the Gestapo officer said, "I believe we just went through hell, gentlemen."
Günter turned on his flashlight. "Let's see if we can find a way out."
Almost in slow motion, they stood up, none of them really sure what would happen next. They walked into the corridor and over to where the steps had been. Only a few charred pieces of wood jutted into the hollow space. They looked up and could see the night sky glowing an eerie orange color. The building was gone; nothing remained but ash.
Günter walked back to the entrance of the tunnel. The door had been forced open by a ton of dirt that had poured into it like an avalanche. The stone building that stood between the Central Security Office and the SS garage had collapsed into the tunnel. The bunker saved them from the firestorm but their escape route was now blocked.
"Let's see if there is any rope," said Günter.
He and the Gestapo officer did a room-by-room search but found nothing. Mac started pulling furniture out of the nearest offices and was stacking them in the open stairwell. He was wrestling with a filing cabinet as they came back empty handed.
"This is our way out," said Mac. "Find a bigger desk for here at the bottom. I'll build on top of it."
Half an hour later they had every large object in the bunker stacked up in the hole and Mac was climbing to the surface. Topside, he looked at the destruction around him and gasped. Günter shinnied up the pile of furniture and the sight effected him the same way. Their companion joined them on the surface and the three men stood silently looking at the devastation.
Block after block had been leveled to the sea. Behind them, rows of buildings stood black against the strangely orange sky while fires danced in their open windows. Somewhere east of the Alster River, a massive firestorm was swirling madly, its glowing funnel cloud rising into the sky like a demonic cyclone.
And the noise. The thundering sound of the firestorm itself had been replaced with the din of people somewhere out there screaming. Horns were honking and sirens blared from every corner of the city, except the parts that no longer existed.
The Gestapo officer had put his weapon in its holster. His uniform was now torn and blackened but all the buttons were still buttoned. He looked at the two men standing with him.
"What had you done?" asked the officer.
"Stole gasoline," said Günter.
The man shrugged and walked away. He wasn't yet steady on his feet. They could tell he was looking for a street or a landmark or anything to tell him which direction he was going. He looked around, dazed, frightened, and lost. He disappeared into the night.
"We head for the east side. We'll go through the sections they already bombed," said Günter. "The planes won't hit there twice. "
They were farther north than they wanted to be. Climbing over rubble, they tried finding anything that looked like a street because the buildings, or what was left of them, were still smoldering. One area was still glowing. They could feel the incredible heat radiating off the molten remains of the steel-framed building. The Germans must have been fabricating metal parts, maybe tanks or planes, because that area wasn't reduced to concrete rubble, it had melted. The ground was still hot; they had to run over it to protect their feet.
They came to one of the many canals running through the eastern side of the city. Hamburg has more canals than Venice and Amsterdam combined. The Elbe and Alster Rivers, as well as the canals, were main thoroughfares. One would surely lead them away from the bonded warehouse district that had been targeted.
Also, the landscape as they moved eastward had changed. The fires had stopped abruptly at the canal's edge. This one was lined with massive brick warehouses standing shoulder to shoulder like union dockworkers on strike. They looked virtually untouched and deserted. It was Saturday night. The workers had gone home before the bombs started dropping.
"Let's see if we can find something to eat," said Günter.
A long ramp ran up to a footbridge that crossed the canal. They took it and tried getting into the nearest warehouse. Günter used the end of the flashlight to break a window and they crawled through. This place housed nothing but clothes.
"I could use a new shirt," said Mac. "And some shoes. I think I've burned a hole in these."
Günter held up what looked like a lady's undergarment. "What's your size?"
They moved on to the next building. It was no better. It was full of bottles of mineral oil. Mac did find somebody's old work shoes that fit. He wished the guy had left an old ham sandwich in his locker, too.
The adjacent warehouse was empty but the fourth one was full.... of airplane parts. The place was huge. Sheet metal was brought in from one of the mills and airplane parts were being fabricated. Final assembly was done somewhere else, but the components were being stacked up for their final destination.
Mac was very interested in the type of plane being built. He went into one of the offices and found a handful of drawings still pinned to the drawing board. Using Günter's flashlight, he went over the blueprints.
"What kind of plane is this?" he asked, mostly to himself.
"Messerschmitt." answered Günter.
"No. The fuselage is too long. And what's this?" he asked, pointing to a large compartment fitted onto the body. "Is this a gas tank? God Almighty, Günter. If this is the Luftwaffe's new plane, it'll have a greater range. Right now, the Allies are winning the air war because our planes can stay up longer. If Hitler gets these into production, they'll go back to London and level it."
"Then we burn this warehouse to the...."
He was interrupted. People were coming in the front door and the lights came on. Since the windows were blacked out, no light could be seen from outside. Officers from the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) were everywhere. Before they knew it, a dozen more soldiers were filing into the lower portion of the workroom. Mac and Günter ducked out the back of the tiny cubical and climbed into the rafters above the main work floor and listened.
One of the SD officers was speaking. "We will start working tomorrow morning and produce as many petrol tanks as we can during the day. These English swine only attack in the dark and we cannot chance running the heavy equipment at night. Sparks coming out of our chimneys will give away our location. Each afternoon we will take the finished materials to the warehouse in the Speicherstadt and from there it will be ferried to the assembly plant in Altona. That will be a safe place. We will round up as many regular workers as we can find and have you men driven back here at sunup. Heil Hitler!"
The soldiers were marched out and driven away in army vehicles. They would pick up more stragglers on their way to the barracks. The SD Officer and two of his aides remained.
"What about the U-cruisers still at the docks?" asked one of the men. "Will we have time to install their larger fuel tanks?"
"We lost the first barge tonight, but a second will be arriving by dawn. We should have them installed by Tuesday, Wednesday at the latest. With greater refueling capacity, our Wolf Packs will be able track down every American and English ship in their fleet."
"How many of our submarines are waiting in the North Sea?"
"500, perhaps more. I heard we have 700 active U-Boats defending der fatherland. We will destroy the Allied Forces in the air and on the sea."
The third man in the room added, "Now, if the Japanese will hold the Gilbert Islands, we will crush America between us." He clasped his hands together and slammed his palms against each other in one mighty pop.
Up in the rafters, Mac whispered, "We have to get a message to London."
"I don't know if any of my people are still in Hamburg. The ones on the coast pulled out days ago."
Mac had a thought. "Günter, when we were at Gestapo headquarters, did anybody bring in the suitcase with the radio? Did you see it at the Reich building?"
Günter thought about it. ".... No. I don't think so. Mein Gott. It might be in the flat.... if the building is still there."
Mac wanted to get out of the warehouse right then and search, but Günter held him back and put his finger to his lips. The last thing they needed was to be spotted. They waited for the men below them to leave. It only took ten minutes.
Once out on the street Mac asked, "Do you know how to get there from here?"
"I think so, but we need transportation."
"Let's steal a car."
"I've got a better idea." He pointed down at the canal. A few small motorboats were bobbing in the water below them. Businesses used them to go from warehouse to warehouse in that section of town. Sometimes it was easier than taking a four-wheeled conveyance.
They took the stairs to the long dock running in front of the warehouses. Günter didn't have much trouble starting the engine and he backed the small craft into the middle of the canal. He navigated easily through the dark waters.
"Günter?" asked Mac. "Why didn't the guy in the bunker shoot us on sight?"
"He was no fool, my friend. If he were buried down there, alone, who would help dig him out? He thought we could be of use and your building the stairway was exactly what he needed. We Germans are very practical people."
"Why didn't he arrest us?"
Günter laughed. "His jail is gone. There wasn't much point."
At the first large cross canal, they took a right. Günter went several more blocks and pulled the boat into another dock. This one was quite small. Only one business used it. Mac tied the boat up and they found their way to the street above.
Günter led the way to a narrow street of Brownstone buildings, each one of them burning and crumbling before their eyes. The smoke was still thick as a lifetime of possessions went up in unforgiving flames
"Aw, shit," said Mac, looking at what was left of the top floor of the apartment building with flames licking through the broken glass.
"Patience, my friend. We have two more streets to go."
Mac took a deep breath and quickened his pace. He rounded the second corner first and saw the big, grayish-brown stone-fronted building standing intact. He was going to cheer but he suddenly became aware of movement around him. Dark figures were coming out of the ground from both sides of the street. He almost panicked. Günter came up beside him.
"The bomb shelters," he said by way of explanation. "Germany prepared for this war. There is a large shelter near the Holy Ghost Plaza that holds 60,000 people. There must be shelters under these apartments as well."
The dark people filed out of the shelters and stood looking up and down the street. From that location they couldn't see what had happened to a large portion of their city. A few men went to the head of the street and saw fires burning all around them.
"Let's get about our business," said Günter.
None of the people were going inside. They were waiting for the men who ventured a few blocks away to come back with news of the damage. Mac and Günter went to Peter's building and climbed the five flights of stairs to his flat. The door was shut but not locked. That gave Günter cause for concern. The place was probably picked clean.
"It's still here," he said with great relief, leaning over the couch and retrieving the battered suitcase. "I'll reattach the antenna and send our message to London."
He got down on his hands and knees in the bathroom and twisted the broken wires together. Pulling off his jacket, he ripped the lining out so he could study the map his brother had penned on the fabric. The map was marked off into grids so Günter could tell London which areas contained strategic targets for the next bombing run. He tapped out his message and then waited for the reply. Somebody else's finger was on the key because the touch was different.
Günter listened to the message being sent back to him. "General Hollcroft is answering me back," he said. Something important must be happening. He listened. "He is 'most impressed' we are still here." He continued listening to the tap, tap, tap-tap. "American bombers are coming in on the 27th. They will adjust their routs accordingly."
"Did you give them the location of the factory making the larger gas tanks for the Messerschmitt and U-Boats?"
"I don't know its exact location, Mac."
Mac looked at Günter's jacket spread out on the floor.
"Günter, I have an idea. See if Colonel Hollcroft will listen."
The German was getting used to the young airman's boldness. He keyed in the request.
Colonel Hollcroft replied to the affirmative.
"Tell him we'll mark the roofs of the factories making those super tanks for their U-Boats and the Messerschmitts. Get somebody to fly over Hamburg at daybreak on Tuesday morning, mark the coordinates on a grid map and radio those coordinates to our planes before they make their bombing run."
Günter figured the Colonel would laugh it off as some kind of joke; instead the man in London keyed back a question.
"He says a lone bomber would be too slow and it would telegraph our moves."
"I'm not talking bomber. Send in a de Havilland Mosquito. It's fast, and the wood frame is damn near radar proof."
Günter tapped out the message. There was a momentary hesitation, and then Colonel Hollcroft answered.
"He asks how many passes will the plane need to take?"
Mac thought a minute. "Most of the warehouses are in the...."
".... the Speicherstadt district," said Günter.
"Right. We'll have two nights to locate targets and mark them. Tell him.... two passes over that area."
Günter keyed in the reply and waited. A response came back.
"He asks....I think this is some of your American humor. He asks who does he get to fly the mission?"
"Tell him to get the best goddamned pilot the Army Air Corps has," said Mac. "And I'm not joking."
* * * *
The Supreme Allied Commander in Europe thought it was suicidal for everyone involved, but Bill Donovan said it was brilliant. They just had to find a flyer to do Phase Two. Mac and Günter did Phase One, the painting of the 'X's.
A young Army Air Corps pilot named Ralph Barton was sitting in Base Ops on Midway Island, chewing the fat with another pilot, waiting for his next assignment when the phone call came. Donovan knew a flight instructor at Offutt Field outside of Omaha and had somebody in Washington give him a call. The instructor was asked who was the best pilot he ever had. The man answered, "Is Lindbergh still alive? No. Then it's Ralph Barton."
There was a slight problem. Barton was sitting on an island in the Pacific and a war was going on there, too. Donovan wasn't interested in excuses.
"My guy at Offutt says Barton is the best. Get him on a transport, fly him to a couple of those Russian bases near the Arctic Circle for refueling, then drop him in London in forty-eight hours. He has to be over Hamburg by dawn Tuesday."
Barton's CO was surprised when the call came in direct from Washington. He wasn't told which one of the brass hats in DC wanted Barton, where he was going or what he would be doing. The only other instructions he received were to let Ralph pick a co-pilot and crew chief to go with him. The CO gave Ralph his orders as he was gathering his gear.
"You'll get your final orders en route," said the CO, yelling over the drone of the Douglas C-54A Skymaster revving its four Pratt & Whitney engines ready for takeoff.
"I want John Wactor. And get Harry Wynn. He's asleep in the barracks."
The three men were strapped in and it was wheels up thirty-five minutes later. John looked at Barton for answers. Harry looked out the window. He didn't care where he went or what he did, just so he could kick butt, Japanese or German, didn't make him no never mind.
Ralph Barton was the kind of pilot every instructor wished he'd trained. He was cocky, could fly by the seat of his pants, and always brought the plane home in one piece. They hadn't built a plane he couldn't fly. They said he could thread a needle with a plane. Half the reason the C-47 had such a great reputation was what Ralph could do with one.
The other two men on the mission were John Wactor, a hotshot pilot from Kansas who drove his instructors nuts because he hated following orders and Harry Wynn, a plumber by trade and a hard drinking pain-in-the-ass by choice.
Wynn was crew chief on the mission over Hamburg.
During their short layover in London after
the bonsai flight over the Pole, he modified
the oxygen system in the nose section of
the de Havilland with two masks in case Barton
had to climb above 20,000 feet.
* * * *
While 'Plan B' was winging its way toward London, 'Plan A' was breaking into a store in Hamburg, stealing several cans of paint, numerous brushes and securing a few other necessities. Mac and Günter still had use of the motorboat and were using it to identify their targets.
They cut up pieces of canvas tarpaulin and painted red crosses on them. One was draped over the stern to cover the boat's registered name. The 'Blau Frau' was now a mercy vessel. By day they traversed the miles of canals in the warehouse district, watching for barges riding low in the water. That meant sheets of steel being sent to fabricating plants and turned into airplane wings, ailerons, tanks or submarine bulkheads.
By night, they pulled up to the wharf nearest these factories, scaled the fire escapes with their cans of paint and painted huge white 'X's on the largest available horizontal surface. The Germans spread the factories all around the city and built some underground to prevent mass disruption of their production schedules.
Mac was just about out of paint. Günter had the motorboat on the other side of the canal and the sky was growing light. There were three buildings in this last row of beautiful Gothic structures that produced ordnance. One made bomb casings, the adjacent building stored the explosives and the third building fabricated hand grenades. Mac was painting his last X in great swaths when he heard something.
"Halt!" said a voice.
A soldier stomped towards him and Mac stood up, brush in hand.
"What do you think you are doing?"
"I'm with the Red Cross. We have designated one building per block to be our safe zone. This building is to be spared. Geneva Convention rules."
The soldier looked at the white X painted on the roof and then at Mac. He looked back at the X and tilted his head until it looked like a cross.
Meanwhile, Mac tried to locate Günter who was on the other side of the canal. He had seen him on a roof about four buildings away but now he had disappeared.
"How did you get up here?" asked the soldier.
"The fire escape. I came up from the canal side. See, there's the Red Cross mercy boat over there." He pointed to the wharf and the small boat bobbing in the water with the Red Cross banner hanging over the stern.
"You better leave now. My Kommandant does not like strangers near these buildings."
At that moment, a small plane came in low from the north. It flew directly overhead causing the two men to look up. The plane made a belly loop over the river and swooped back over the other side of the warehouse district several blocks to the east. By that time antiaircraft guns were firing from locations around the city, but the very maneuverable plane was swinging back and forth like a kid in a hammock, dodging the flack.
* * * *
The twin-engine de Havilland Mosquito Mk I made its last pass at 5,000 feet. John and Harry, squeezed into the nose position, marked their maps as they picked up the white 'X's on the streets below. The plane eluded detection mainly due to its wooden construction not readily being picked up by the German's sorely inadequate radar and the plane's great maneuverability and speed. Barton wove his way through the ground fire like so much flotsam on a pond. None hit anything vital. John Wactor knew Barton and trusted him like a brother. Harry Wynn figured if the Germans didn't kill Barton, he would, for getting him into this in the first place.
The plane climbed to an altitude of 18,000 feet and headed toward England. Somewhere over the North Sea, the engine maxed at 380 mph, Ralph radioed a lookout on the German-Netherlands' border: 'Operation Double Eagle was successful.'
Three bomber squadrons had left London two hours earlier. They were over the Netherlands and entering German air space by the time Barton was picking up speed over the North Sea and turning south, heading for Jolly Old England. The first squadron turned due east toward Hamburg while the second squadron swung northeast to hit the city from the other side. The third group held back so they could receive instructions from the mysterious de Havilland somewhere over the North Sea.
When the third squadron received the AOK
on 'Operation Double Eagle', their navigators
pulled out their special maps of Hamburg
and opened their radio channels. From the
cramped nose position of Barton's plane,
Wactor started calling out code numbers like
a bingo game. Each coordinate was a location
to bomb. Each plane in Squadron 3 was assigned
particular grids and was to hit as many targets
in their area as possible.
* * * *
While Mac and the soldier were watching the de Havilland Mosquito get farther away, the door to the center core stairway opened and a Sicherheitsdienst (SD) officer stepped onto the roof. The German Security Service man watched the plane then became aware of Mac and the soldier. He paused for a moment, and then looked at Mac again. Mac turned and saw his blue eyes, the same blue eyes he had seen before in the market when the SD man chased him and Günter through the vegetable stalls.
"You!" shouted the officer.
Mac pulled his Mauser-Pistole and shot the man, hitting him in the side. He fell into the doorway. The soldier tried raising his rifle but Mac killed him where he stood. He grabbed the man's weapon and started running over the rooftops. He turned to see if Günter was anywhere in sight. The big German had heard the first retort and ran back to the motorboat. He had it moving in the water by the time Mac got to the roof of the bomb case factory.
By that time, the German SD man was on his feet, pressing his hand against his side to stop the bleeding. He stepped out of the way so the men dragging the antiaircraft gun to the roof could get it into position. One soldier fixed the legs as the other started feeding ammunition into the chamber.
The first volley got everybody's attention. Mac didn't have a choice. He dove five floors into the canal. Günter swerved slightly and came up beside him. Tossing the rifle over the side, Mac grabbed the metal stairs and yelled, "Get the hell out of here!"
Günter gave her full throttle and the boat lurched forward. Mac held on as bullets ripped into the water. Günter tried the same swaying motion the pilot of that small plane had done and hoped Mac had a firm grip. He hung a fast left, sending up a spray of water over a few boats tied at the dock. He cut the gas and let the boat drift to a stop as he helped Mac climb aboard.
"You Americans. You can never do anything small," said Günter, tossing Mac a spare shirt he found hanging on a hook.
Mac stripped off his own shirt and was pulling on the new one as Günter went back to the wheel and steered the boat into the center of the canal. Daylight was upon them and it was time for them to go.
That's when something caught Mac's eye. Tearing around the corner was a phalanx of Nazi speedboats. "We've got company," he said.
Günter went full throttle. He picked that particular boat because he knew its speed. Now it was time to see if he was right. There were other vessels along the docks and a few were running in the water. Günter swerved past one and nearly hit another as he tried to distance himself from the four horsemen of the apocalypse that were closing in.
The lead boat made the same maneuver between the small craft on the canal. The second and third boats tried going through the same slot at the same time. The one on the left swerved out of the way, clipping the side of a private launch and tried to compensate. It pulled too far right and smashed into the port side of the fourth Nazi boat just going through the break. The third boat was in the clear and followed its leader.
Günter swung down another canal as shots were fired from the lead boat. That canal was narrower and more congested. It was the beginning of a new workday and everybody was getting an early start. Since the Germans weren't operating many factories at night when they could be spotted, the workday began before sunup to take advantage of the daylight.
"Do you know these canals?" asked Mac, watching the black boat behind them move up fast.
"Probably better than the schmuck behind us."
A tugboat was chugging down the center of the canal toward them pushing three barges sitting low in the water. Both men strained to see which side would allow them passage. It was a toss up.
Günter had to slow down a bit so they wouldn't end up smashed into the side of the canal. That gave Mac a chance to look at the barge.
"They're carrying sheets of steel. Tons of it. Where's the tarp with the white cross?"
He found the folded piece of canvas in the rear of the boat.
"I'm getting off. If you can get to the canal on the other side of these warehouses, I'll be waiting."
Günter didn't have time to talk the young American out of it. Mac jumped from the boat to the middle barge riding in tandem and flattened himself on the six-foot stack of metal plates. Gauging the thickness, he figured these were going into the shipbuilding business.
The black boat coming up quickly beside the barge slowed. Two soldiers raised their rifles at Mac who rolled over the edge. He managed to wrap his arm through the heavy ropes securing the metal plates and hung off the side, his feet dragging in the water. The black boat sped past, as did the second one, still following Günter who had made up speed once he cleared the barges.
Mac pulled himself on top of the metal sheets and laid out the big tarpaulin. He floated along for two more blocks before coming to a footbridge that went over the canal. Nobody was expecting the Titanic to sail down that waterway. It was for barge and small craft only. Mac stood up and reached for the overhang. He scaled up the metal fence and dropped onto the walkway.
Again, something caught his eye. A speedboat was racing toward him. A big red cross was draped over the windscreen as Günter waved another piece of tarp in his hand. Behind him were the two persistent Nazi boats.
Mac climbed back over the fence and waited for the 'Blau Frau' to pass underneath. He dropped into the boat and Günter went full bore. He knew which canal he was going to take and made his turn just as massive explosions rocked the city. The Americans were in Germany.... with a vengeance.
The American bomber squadrons weren't dropping incendiary bombs. These B-17's and B-24 Liberators used the old-fashioned 'rock and roll' percussion kind. The city shook. Bombers roared over the city as antiaircraft guns tried picking them off, one by one.
Mac looked to see how close the two black boats were getting. Too close.
"Where's your escape hatch?" yelled Mac over the sound of the engine and the bombs.
"Hold on."
Günter steered the boat to a larger canal and headed toward the Elbe River. This was away from the city but they were heading toward Berlin. Not exactly the direction Mac wanted to go. The two Nazi speedboats were gaining on them. A few rounds went off over their heads and Günter swerved the boat. He couldn't do that for long because a straight line was still the shortest distance between those black speedboats and his destination.
Mac picked up the rifle he liberated from the dead soldier and fired back. Now it was their turn to bob and weave. It gave Günter a few seconds advantage.
The landscape had changed dramatically once they were out of the city. The land grew flat and there was no place to run. Mac was thinking this wasn't the great escape he had hoped for. The speedboat sputtered and he got really concerned.
"Only a little further," said Günter, giving it the last drops of gas in the tank. "See that flag!" he yelled, pointing to a German flag waving in the early morning air at a small bend in the canal. "When I run the 'Frau' into the mud, get to the flag and pull the rope."
"What?"
"Pull the rope!" yelled Günter, ramming the boat into the soft mud.
Mac jumped from the boat and ran toward the flagpole. Günter stayed behind and fired the last few rounds at the two speeding boats. Just as they rounded the bend Mac got to the pole. Günter dove off the boat and rolled down a slight embankment that acted as a dam against the canal. Mac pulled the rope.
The two boats were blown into the air in one gigantic blast. Flame, smoke and a million small pieces of German engineering scattered all over the canal.
"Holy shit!" said Mac, knocked to the ground himself by the explosion.
He looked toward the spot where Günter had been. Smoke was clearing in the gentle breeze that washed the area. Stepping through the cloud was the German, covered with mud, smiling from ear to ear. He had his arms outstretched like the closing act of a vaudeville show.
"What the hell was that?" asked Mac, walking over to him.
"My spotters on the coast watched the British plant their mines in the North Sea. We 'borrowed' a few. The rope pulled it from its mooring at the bottom of the canal."
People living in the area were walking toward the two men. They were farmers, friends of Günter's.
He added, "Let's get some good food before we head back to Bremen."
"Günter," said Mac, worried. "I forgot to get something from the market for Monika."
"She'll forgive you. I know my wife very well."