It was only a short journey north from Irene’s apartment in the British sector back to the church, but he’d managed to arrange a car. The concierge at Irene’s building was, as she had pointed out to him, one of us and had the black two-door car brought to the front of the lobby. It was far more modern and cleaner than his own car, and Bill wondered how much higher Irene was in their organisation. Bill paid the baby-faced youth that had delivered it with Occupation Marks, and he ducked into the front seat out of the cold. He’d much rather have stayed in Irene’s warm bed, but the car was, at least, warm enough to remove his hat. Placing the flask of coffee and the paper wrap of sandwiches on the seat beside him, he carefully packed his pipe and lit it.
The car purred into life, and he pulled away into the morning mist. The purr became a growl as Bill’s foot grew heavier. The devastated world of Berlin blurred past the glass on either side of him. Children waved as he passed, and mothers instinctively pulled at their arms to keep them moving. They had learnt it didn’t do well to attract the attention of anyone driving a black Mercedes-Benz in Nazi Germany, and the instinct remained strong now that their city was full of foreign cops, politicians, and soldiers. The roads were quiet. Bill stopped at an intersection to see a large military truck pull up and decant its olive-green contents of French soldiers onto the pavement. He continued up the street, avoiding the numerous potholes, and saw the soldiers entering some anonymous ruined building behind in his rear-view mirror.
Arriving now, opposite the empty block of devastation that surrounded the grey church, Bill pulled up alongside a matching but slightly inferior and far dirtier version of his motorcar. The windows were misted on the inside, and a thin layer of ice had formed outside.
Switching off the engine, Bill ventured from the warm and supreme comfort of his steel and leather sanctuary and walked around to the second Mercedes.
“Wake up, you bastard!” he shouted as he rocked and bounced the car with his hands on the frosty roof.
The outline of the occupant shifted inside, and the ice cracked and fell from the glass as the window creaked open, and Bill was presented with the business end of a Walther P38 semi-automatic pistol.
“Well, that’s a fine way to treat a man who brings you breakfast.”
“Fucksakes, Bill, I thought I was a goner!” Jack exclaimed. “Waking up an armed man like that is a good way to catch a bullet,” he added, redoubling his vociferation. Then, putting his gun down on the seat between his legs, he paused and asked, “Bacon?”
“Sorry, partner, only corned beef. I didn’t get home last night.”
“I wondered why the flash new motor. Jump in.”
Bill forced the half-frozen door from its hole and jumped inside. “Start the engine and get some heat going, would you, Jack? It’s frostier than a disciplinary meeting at the Kremlin in here.”
The engine strained into life. Holding his pipe between his teeth, Bill poured the coffee into the two white mugs on the car’s dash and passed over a tired-looking sandwich.
“Thanks … I guess,” Jack grunted.
“Any sign of our man?”
“Nope. Just Father Lard-Arse and a few of the regular God-botherers the past couple of days. Strangely, no one seems to gather here at any one time. They all come and go individually throughout the day and evening. The last visit is usually around twenty-three hundred hours. Lardy pops out for essentials to the small shop over there on the corner fairly regularly. I had a word with the little old shopkeeper there called …” Jack pulled out his little notebook to check and carried on, “… Mrs Krause. Lardy’s essentials mainly consist of copious amounts of bread, sausage, cigarettes, and schnapps. Not necessarily in that order.”
“Maybe it’s time to talk to Lardy?”
“No, wait. There’s more. One character, a well-dressed man with a black suit and tie and long leather overcoat, visited twice within a couple of hours, went to the shop, returned to the church, and never came out. That was the day before yesterday. I stayed up all night, but he never re-emerged. I know I didn’t miss him, as he had a ridiculous Hindenburg moustache and a distinctive maroon scarf. There is no other entrance than the one on this side. The church seems to go dark every night at midnight, and no one comes or goes after that.”
“Cracking work, Jack, thanks, pal. It looks like I need to get in there and have a proper nose around. Here, finish the coffee and sandwiches.”
“Where are you off to? He’ll still be in there.”
“I’m going to see Mrs Krause.”
“A pound of sausage, please,” asked Bill politely.
“Certainly, young man. Is it cold outside?” enquired Mrs Krause.
“Erm, yes. I’m afraid the winter has finally hit.”
She was at least eighty. The thin curly hair perched only on the top of her head was devoid of colour. Not grey, but white. She wore a moth-eaten brown woollen cardigan, the same colour as her teeth. There was a prominent scar down her left cheek, and she wore threadbare, knitted, fingerless gloves on her small, bluish, withered hands. The shop was as hot as Hell’s waiting room, with a roaring fire in the large open fireplace. The obscenely large sausages hanging from a hook behind her were half-baked from the ambient temperature.
“So strange for the time of year. It was only cold in the winter when I was a girl.”
“Well, it is February.”
“Is it? Is it really? Well, I never! It’s not easy keeping track of the time. I’ve not seen you in here before. My name is Mrs Krause. My Husband is Mr Krause, but he is not here now. He’s fighting the Russians, you see. You are very smartly dressed. Are you from the Gestapo?”
Bill looked quizzically at her, “No, I’m British. I’m a journalist here in Berlin. The Gestapo are long gone. They disappeared over a year ago. You don’t remember the big battle here and all the bombing?”
“Oh my! Are you British? But you speak such perfect German!” She picked up a small photograph in an ornate gilded frame of an elderly man wearing a black felt, floppy peaked cap. He was holding a Panzerfaust single-shot anti-tank weapon whilst grinning proudly in a heavy grey greatcoat with a full, bushy, even greyer moustache. On his arm was an armband with embroidered eagles and the bold lettering, Deutscher Volkssturm Wehrmacht. “My husband is a hero in the war against the Bolsheviks. He is a tank destroyer. He was so brave in the last war that they wanted him to help in this one!”
On the man’s chest was an Iron Cross, Second Class, evidently from the first war. “Yes, he is clearly a brave man. They don’t give those Iron Crosses out to just anybody.”
Bill thought back to the turmoil thrust upon his own family before he was born in that futile war that did little for European relations except to start them all on the path for this last one.
The Volkssturm were Hitler’s grand plan for a last-ditch final stand against the invading Russians. Hitler was so sure of a last-minute victory by sending the children and elderly of Berlin to their deaths that he went and hid in a bunker and shot himself.
Mr Krause was, without a doubt, very much a hero, but he was also clearly very dead. The bravest of heroes usually are, Bill reminded himself.
“I ask those nice men from the Gestapo who pop into the shop occasionally, but none of them seem to know where he might be.”
The Gestapo? The old lady had clearly gone senile and was imagining things.
“Not everyone in a black coat and hat is from the Gestapo, Mrs Krause. Do you know the priest from the church?”
“I do! He is such a lovely man. He comes in for his sausage and schnapps every day! He also sends his friends from the church here to buy cigarettes and other things,” she proudly announced.
Bill looked around the pathetic store. Apart from the bare essentials, like cheap schnapps, beer, sausage and bread, there were a few dozen tired-looking potatoes in a small basket, some soil-covered carrots, apples and a small hardware section with brooms, clothes pegs, dustpans and shovels. Bill wished he’d bought shares in whoever made the shovels and brooms sold in Berlin. Sales were booming.
He stifled a chuckle to himself and placed a small half-bottle of fine cognac he’d obtained from the concierge at Irene’s apartment down on the counter along with enough marks to buy the pound of sausage he’d asked for, plus another.
“I’m going to need a favour if you can keep a secret, Mrs Krause?”
“What do you need?” she whispered. “I was a nurse near the trenches in 1916. The men used to bribe me to do all kinds of sexual things!” she said excitedly.
“No, no, no! Nothing like that. I need you to delay the priest next time he comes into the shop. Don’t serve him too quickly. Buy me some time.”
“A surprise birthday party, is it?”
“Er, yes. A surprise, so don’t tell him anything, just keep him talking a bit longer than usual. Here is a bottle of brandy for your trouble and a few extra marks.”
“Thank you, young man, that is very thoughtful of you. I will save it for my husband, for when he returns.”
“Take care, Mrs Krause,” Bill said as he collected the sausage.
He placed his hat on his head as he left the roasting hot shop with the cold hitting like a sledgehammer to his face and made back across the deserted street towards the cars. He turned as he heard Mrs Krause call out after him.
“Young man! Young man! You forgot your bottle of brandy!”
What a great plan this was, Bill thought. It was going swimmingly.