‘Turn out the guard! Officer approaching,’ the black-clad sentry at the entrance to the castle barked smartly, the raindrops glistening on his black-painted helmet.
Behind the wheel of the big Horch, flying the flag of the Vatican proudly at its gleaming bonnet, Otto, dressed in the chauffeur’s uniform, started to slow down. The guard tumbled out of the wooden hut and lined up. Behind him ‘Father Flynn’ took his eyes off his breviary and straightened up, as befitted the official representative of Pope Pius.
At a snail’s pace, they approached the line of black-clad sentries. The drummer rattled his kettle drum, and their hard hands slapped their rifles, running through the routine of the salute, each gesture trained and perfect. Their heads moved woodenly with the car as it slid to a stop. Their heads are worked by steel springs, thought Otto, staring out of the windscreen as fixedly as he had done the previous day.
Benignly, Father Flynn turned in the back and blessed them with an affected movement of his right hand.
The Guard Commander strode up and saluted with the customary ‘Heil Hitler!’ barked at them as if they were standing five hundred metres away and not five.
Father Flynn blessed him too and then brought out his papers. Formalities were over in a matter of moments and Father Flynn indicated to his smart young chauffeur that he should open the door of the big boot. Otto did so and then the Papal Representative insisted on giving each man a bottle of wine ‘blessed by the dear Pope himself’ and shaking his hand, which proved a little awkward, as each man was standing rigidly to attention. Five minutes later they were driving under the castle portcullis, leaving each sentry with a bottle of wine placed at his feet, like a line of urine samples at a military medical.
Well that's the first part over, Otto told himself with a sigh of relief. They were in! Now the questions was – would they be able to get out?
‘I was at Eton,’ Hauptsturmbannführer Schmitz commenced a little awkwardly, as he fell into step with Gore-Browne. It was the midday break and the cobbled castle yard was full of Englishmen taking the air after a morning of lectures.
‘Were you really?’ Gore-Browne feigned enthusiasm, delighted that the handsome young SS officer had finally spoken to him, though a little disappointed that he was an old-Etonian. They were renowned for not having ‘souls’ at Eton.
‘I was kicked out of Harrow!’ he said, fluttering his sandy eyelashes in what he imagined was a modestly seductive manner.
Now it was Schmitz’s turn to be kittenish. ‘Flogging your fags too severely, I expect?’ he said in a small voice.
‘Something like that,’ Gore-Browne agreed.
‘With canes!’ Schmitz breathed. ‘Sp… spanking them too hard!’ he said the secret word with his heart fluttering excitedly.
‘Yes, I suppose,’ Gore-Browne said, a little puzzled, but with his blood rising anyway.
Schmitz sighed with relief. ‘There is nothing like the strict corporal discipline of a public school, I always think.’
Gore-Browne said nothing. He was slightly bewildered by the trend the conversation was taking, but the gorgeous German was talking to him, that was the main thing. Now they were heading in the direction of the castle's wing that contained Schmitz’s room. Can it be on purpose?
Trying to control his excited breathing, he said, ‘At Harrow, they didn’t use the cane on the grubby little fags. Mostly the beater found a cricket bat made more of an impression.’
‘I say!’ Schmitz was obviously impressed. He thrust his own arm through Gore-Browne’s, as if they had known each other for years. ‘My dear chap, this is really interesting. You must please tell me more. Cricket bats… ’
‘Lift up yer hearts, my boys… God bless, lads… Begorrah,’ the Count passed through the yard, raising his black-clad arms like crow’s wings at regular intervals, blessing the puzzled Englishmen who stood around, with their hands in their pockets, viewing his efforts with a mixture of bewilderment and amusement. ‘Shape your lives to the gravity of the hour, begad. God bless…’
The Count went on remorselessly, his eyes darting here, there and everywhere, searching for GB, occasionally flashing a quick glance at the photograph of him which C had supplied back in London, hidden within the pages of his pocket bible.
Up in his turret room, William Joyce followed the absurd progress of the tall priest with burning, contemptuous eyes. He had just added the old trick of noting that the clock had stopped at some public place – this time outside St Pancras Station – to his script for the evening broadcast. It made his listeners believe that Lord Haw-Haw was omnipresent with his spies everywhere. Of course he didn’t know whether St Pancras’s clock had stopped or not, but the ruse usually worked; English clocks seemed notoriously unreliable. Now, indulging in a tea break, he watched the man from upon high.
What fools the Germans were, he told himself, as the Papist flapped from group to group looking like a bloody black crow, so like the English. Why did they permit all this petit-bourgeois nonsense with the Red Cross and parcels from home and all the rest of it? Were they not always maintaining that they were as tough as leather, as hard as Krupp steel? In practice, they were soft. Hitler had no real conception of the fascist ethic, hard, brutal and intolerant. He snorted with poorly suppressed anger. One day the Führer would learn.
Then a sudden flash of inspiration sent his tea cup clashing back into his saucer. He forgot the absurd priest and returned to his evening broadcast. ‘Now where is your vaunted Ark Royal?’ he scribbled quickly. ‘I shall tell you. At the bottom of the sea, to be precise, sixty fathoms deep in the Mediterranean,’ He sniffed and told himself that this was the third time he had sunk the aircraft carrier this last six months. He hoped this time that High Command had got it right at last.
Otto was relishing his role. All through his body, nerves were tingling with electric tension. He had never felt less bored, than right now, playing the part of the bored chauffeur. He was just thinking how alive he was feeling, when he spotted GB. The 1939 passport photo of the target had been clear, and he recognised the man immediately.
‘But, damn it, what's this?’ Otto cursed to himself.
There was an awkward catch. GB was in deep conversation with an officer of the SS! And to top it off, they were strolling arm-in-arm across the cobbled courtyard towards the ivy-covered dormitory wing of the castle. Otto hesitated only a fraction of a second. ‘Father Flynn,’ he called.
The Count swung round. ‘Yes, my son,’ was his mild reply. Then he saw the look in Otto’s eyes, followed the nodding of his head and caught sight of the two figures strolling towards an ivy-framed doorway. Reacting very quickly, he disengaged himself from the gaggle Englishmen.
‘Take the car over there, my son,’ he ordered. ‘I would like to distribute the last of the wine to the people in that building.’
‘Yes, Father.’ Otto prevented himself from running to the Horch. He swung himself into the driving seat, started, and crawled in first gear across the courtyard. Passing GB and the SS officer, he swung the big car round so that its boot was facing the door to the dormitory building and left the motor running in case they had to make a quick getaway. Thanks to the damned SS officer, such a situation now seemed highly likely.
He opened the boot and pretended to be busying himself with its contents, body half-hidden in its cavernous depths as they passed him.
‘Spare the rod and spoil the child,’ Schmitz was saying, face flushed quite hectically with excitement, as they continued to talk about this most delightful of subjects. ‘I have always believed, my dear chap, in strict discipline – painfully strict discipline – for all ages.’
‘Well, of course, it’s your job, you being in the SS and all that,’ Gore-Browne responded. He opened the door and said with unusual politeness for him. ‘After you, Hauptsturmbannführer.’ And then, in a hushed whisper that Otto just overheard, ‘Show me the way to your private chamber!’
‘No after yow, my dear old fellow,’ Schmitz said in high-good humour, ‘or do you wish to beat a retreat? Ha, ha!’
Laughing gaily, the two of them passed inside. Otto rose and grunted, ‘Silly arseholes.’
A moment later the Count came puffing up, quite out of breath. Otto filled him in:
‘They’ve gone up to his room, the SS officer’s.’
‘Oh dear,’ the Count said mildly. As always he lived his roles; now he was a gentle priest.
‘Oh dear, my arse!’ Otto snarled. ‘That SS sod has got a great big dirty pistol in his holster, I hope you know, and it looks like he's not afraid to use it! What now?’
The Count thought for a moment. ‘We can’t back down, Otto. Too much depends upon it. Our freedom depends on it!’ He flashed a furtive look to left and right and then with a swift gesture, pulled something out of his sleeve.
Otto gasped. It was a big automatic pistol. The count started fumbling around, trying to load a clip the wrong way round.
‘Jesus christ!’ he cried, ‘Give me that. Have you ever even used one of these things?’ He snatched the pistol out of the Count’s hand.
The Count seemed in no way offended. ‘I've never been very good with short range weapons. In another life I was a crack shot with a sniper rifle. But my sleeve's hardly long enough for one of those.’ Hitching up his skirt like a fat woman tugging at the elastic of a pair of loose knickers, he pulled yet another, but smaller pistol from inside his waistband.
‘Come on,’ he said ignoring the look on Otto’s face. ‘Let’s get in there and disturb the two love birds!’
Otto threw a last look in the big boot. Firing would soon have the whole god-forsaken place buzzing with SS men. They needed something quieter in the way of a weapon, if trouble started. He tucked the pistol in his belt and grabbed the length of thick rubber radiator hose and tyre iron that lay there. A moment later he was following the Count through the open door.
On tiptoe they crept down a still, grey corridor. Otto carried the tyre iron in one hand, the automatic pistol in the other, his heavy rubber hose stuffed into the well-pressed chauffeur trousers. The count was using both hands to hitch up his skirts. They listened at each door for the sound of voices, but hearing none until they came to the last. Otto held his finger to his lips in warning. There was someone talking inside. He pressed his mouth close to the Count’s ear.
‘I’ll kick open the door. You go in with that pistol and Chrissake, don’t take the safety off, you’ll probably shoot yourself in the foot. All right, one, two, three!’
Otto’s foot lashed against the door. It flew open. The Count tripped over his long black robe and nearly fell flat on his face.
Gore-Browne and Schmitz swung round in surprise. The cane that the latter had been demonstrating for the Englishman fell out of his hands, as he saw what looked like a mad priest with, a ladies’ pearl-handled revolver in his well-manicured hand.
‘Urn Gotteswillen –’ Schmitz began, as Otto raised his tyre iron warningly. The cry of surprise turned to a simpering whisper, ‘Oh, you’re going to beat me… Oh, how terrible!’
He fell to his knees and to Otto’s complete surprise raised his hands in the classic pose of supplication. ‘How cruel you are! How terribly cruel… You beast!’
Otto, bewildered, kneed him in the face. Something snapped. Thick scarlet blood started to jet out of the officer's broken nose.
‘Shut up, you silly dope!’ he cried, and rounded on Gore-Browne, who was cowering behind a table laden with canes, switches, even a cricket bat.
The Count got to his feet, robe falling open to reveal shorter underskirts. ‘It’s him – GB,’ he hissed, and flashing over with surprising speed, pulled out Schmitz’s pistol from its holster.
Schmitz reeled back. ‘You Catholic swine!’ he breathed, splattering droplets of blood everywhere. ‘I know you of the Inquisition! You are going to subject me to unspeakable tortures.’ He quavered. ‘I always knew it would end like this.’ His words ended with a sudden groan, as Otto thwacked him over the head with the rubber tubing. He pitched face-forward onto the carpet and was still.
The Count turned his attention to the Englishman, who grasped the table edge like a surprised lion-tamer might when faced by a pride of his own animals in his own front-room.
‘May I introduce myself?’ he said with a formal bow. ‘My name is Graf von der Weide. I have been empowered by your own authorities to rescue you from this place.’
‘Rescue me?’ Gore-Browne gasped and looked down at the still handsome figure on the floor. ‘But I like it here. I don’t want to be rescued!’
‘Bother. I was afraid you were going to say that,’ the Count started.
‘Let me at him,’ Otto interrupted, and pushed the surprised aristocrat to one side. ‘Listen, you pansy-arsed Tommy puff, you’re going to be rescued whether you like it or not.’
Gore-Browne did not speak much German. Indeed he spoke no ‘foreign’ languages, save for a few ‘technical terms’ on the subject of sex (as he called them) in French, Italian, Spanish and German, but the threat was obviously there – and, besides, the blond young German in the smart grey chauffeur’s uniform looked definitely very fetching. The tousled crop of blond hair, the strong nose, shapely cheekbones, well-toned body... Yes, he reminded Gore-Browne of some of his favourite past conquests. Plus chauffeurs, he knew from experience, were always very ‘obliging’.
He lowered his hands from his face and said to the Count, though his eyes were still fixed on Otto. ‘If I must, I must.’
‘He must!’ the Count repeated in German.
‘You must!’ Otto said and gave Gore-Browne a swift kick that propelled him towards the door, ‘And damn quick. I'm not going back to any god-awful prison camp! Count, tell him what we’re going to do to get him out of here.’
The door banged behind them as they fled.
On the floor, Hauptsturmbannführer Schmitz stirred and raised himself from the foetal position, which he had adopted in anticipation of further blows from the rubber truncheon. In spite of the painful throbbing of his broken nose, he was disappointed, very disappointed.
He had thought the young fellow in the chauffeur’s uniform, who was undoubtedly extremely cruel, would have beaten him mercilessly. But nothing of the sort had happened. Now they had spirited away Gore-Browne, who might well have been the same kind of cruel-hearted English pervert as the chauffeur (he had been keenly interested in the canes, that was certain), and now he was all alone.
He heard the chauffeur slam home first gear and the car begin to move slowly across the courtyard. Suddenly he became aware of his own danger. For some reason or other, they were kidnapping Gore-Browne and they had spoken German with one another! Something strange was going on.
Abruptly it flashed through his mind that any failure on his part might well land him in the thick of it when the new fronts opened up; and in the trenches there was no place for his beloved canes. For some strange reason the average soldier had an antipathy against pain. He sprang to his feet and grabbed for the phone, gobs of bright red blood showering from his nose.
‘Sergeant of the Guard,’ he said thickly, ‘Sergeant of the Guard, stop the big black Horch as soon – ’
‘What did you say?’ the Guard-Commander asked, his speech slurred. He had demanded that there would only be one bottle between two men; the rest was for him to give to the Home for SS Widows. ‘There’s going to be none of this here drunken behaviour while I’m in charge! Bloody Papal Blessing indeed! Do you know that the Pope pisses in the sink?’ Schmitz heard what sounded like gulping sounds straight out of a bottle. ‘Eh?’ the Guard-Commander finished.
‘This is Hauptsturmbannführer Schmitz,’ the SS officer said as clearly as he could through his stopped-up nose. ‘I want you to stop the car presently heading in your direction.’
The sounds of a bottle smashing, general swearing, and the receiver being dropped. Then, ‘Stop the car… Certainly, Hauptsturm! Immediately Hauptsturm! Regard it as already done, Hauptsturm!’
The Guard Commander banged down the phone and succeeded in smashing it through the cradle. Drunkenly he swayed to the window and flung it open, just as the rain came hissing down again.
‘The priest,’ he cried, his ears filled with the sudden roar of the high-powered motor. ‘stop the pissing priest.’
Next instant he slumped to the floor, lying in the remains of his smashed bottle. ‘I bet the sod didn’t bless it after all!’
Otto swerved wildly round the corner, scattering Englishmen right and left. Ahead of him he could see the guard tumbling drunkenly out of the guardhouse, dropping their wine bottles and fumbling with their rifles as they did so. One of them was lowering the red-and-white-striped pole hastily.
‘What are we going to do, Otto?’ the Count cried in alarm from the back seat. ‘They’ve been alerted!’
‘Pray, Father Flynn!’ Otto yelled above the snarl of the big motor and concentrated on the driving.
The first wild slug howled off the bonnet. Otto swerved violently to the right with shock and fought to control the great 8-cylinder automobile as it started to go into a skid on the slick wet cobbles. ‘Hold tight!’ he roared and ducked as a burst of machine-pistol fire ripped off the papal standard.
‘I say,’ the Count cried. ‘Don’t they know the Vatican is neutral?’
‘Complain to the Pope!’
The distance between them and the firing guards was diminishing rapidly. Otto held onto the big wheel for all he was worth, wrenching the Horch from side to side crazily. The machine pistol gave another high-pitched hysterical scream. A line of gleaming silver holes stitched themselves the length of the bonnet and smashed the right windscreen pane. But now Otto was beyond caring. He was suddenly carried away by a wild, almost frenzied, surge of electric energy. He'd felt something similar that day in Holland when the mad little Abwehr agent Hirsch had been shot. Now nothing could stop him.
‘Hold tight, Father Flynn,’ he called once more. ‘This is it!’
At eighty kilometres an hour, the Horch hit the pole. It burst apart, multi-coloured wood flying everywhere. A guard sprang out of the way a second too late. The bonnet struck him a tremendous blow. He went reeling into the ditch, machine-pistol chattering with the shock of that blow, slugs howling aimlessly into the grey dripping sky.
And then the Horch was careening wildly down the cobbled road, heading south into the gathering storm, in its boot an unconscious Gore-Browne; for that particular Englishman had fainted with fright at the first sounds of shooting.
‘Give it some gas!’ the Count yelled, as the first hard raindrops started to pelt down once more.
‘What the devil do you think I’m doing?’ Otto shouted back angrily, as they raced down the narrow cobbled road, swaying dangerously from side to side, the raindrops striking the interior through the broken windscreen like white flak.
‘We’ll head for Hamburg!’ the Count cried, wiping the rain from his face. ‘Through the village of Schwarzenbeck up ahead, onto Route Four, through Bergdorf and then into the city itself.’
‘Right. But let’s hope we get off these damn cobbles soon. They’re knocking hell out of my kidneys!’ Otto shouted back and then focussed on the road in front, peering, with his head bent over the wheel, through the cracked windscreen as the wipers whirred back and forth noisily, trying to keep the broken remains clear of the driving rain. We're going to be very lucky to reach Hamburg today, he told himself.
They roared into the red-brick village of Schwarzenbeck. There was no traffic, save for a few miserable cyclists. Otto took the S-bend around the grey-stone Gothic church, grey waves of water splashing up behind him and soaking an unfortunate rider. In the boot, Gore-Browne awoke from his faint and started to be sick. Among his many faults, he also had a weak stomach.
Otto hit the brakes and changed down. The yellow and black sign ahead indicated they were approaching Route Four, the main Berlin-Hamburg highway. To the left it ran to the capital; to the right to Hamburg. He flashed a look in his rear-view mirror. Nothing! They were not being followed. Good. He changed into second and started to take the road in the direction of Hamburg. Ahead of him the dreary dead-straight road seemed empty of human life. The heavy rain had obviously forced everybody under cover.
But Otto was mistaken. Just as the village houses began to peter out, he saw a green-uniformed figure in the familiar black leather helmet of the Schupos. The figure was lumbering onto the road ahead through the grey fog of pelting rain, waving a red storm-lantern. And then, as Otto watched, more men joined the first to block the road. It was the Schutzpolizei.
‘It's the bloody police!’ he cried, jamming on the brakes.
The Horch screamed in protest. It shuddered to a violent stop, shimmying wildly. The Count, thrown out of his seat, was now sprawled in the rear footwell; a muffled yell came from the boot. For one awful moment, as the big car stood there blocking the road at a crazy angle, Otto thought he might have stalled the motor.
But no, he hadn’t. It was still ticking over sweetly, despite the beating it had taken in their daring escape from the castle. For a moment he seemed mesmerized, but then as the Schupos started to run towards them, helmets gleaming in the rain, he realised the danger they were in.
He rammed home reverse. The Horch shot backwards, flinging the Count, who had just regained his seat, back into the footwell. The big car gathered speed, but its white-walled tyres suddenly slammed against the kerbstone. A chrome wheel hub cap clattered to the ground.
‘Otto, chauffeurs don't normally drive like – ’ the Count started. Otto thrust home first and shot the car forward, and anything else the Count was going to say was knocked out of him. The manic chauffeur tore the wheel round, sweating and cursing angrily.
‘Halte! Oder wir schiessen!’ a bull cried.
‘ – like hooligans!’ finished the Count from the back.
Otto ignored him, fighting the wheel furiously. He had to turn away from the Schupos. Hamburg was cut off. Berlin was now their only hope. The policemen were only fifty metres away, running towards them, fumbling with their clumsy leather pistol holsters.
Otto, the sweat streaming down his face, almost had the Horch round and facing in the direction of Berlin. The leading bull stopped. Standing there in the streaming rain in the middle of the road, he took aim as if he were on the police pistol range, one hand on his plump hip.
The cracks were deadened in the rain, but they still made Otto jump out of his skin. The bull was too agitated to aim correctly. All six of his bullets missed their target save the last one, which slammed, through the boot, missing Gore-Browne’s head by inches, smashing a bottle of the red wine and splashing him with its contents.
‘Oh my God,’ he gasped inside the boot, ‘I’ve been hit!’ Once again he fell into a dead faint, as Otto thrust home first gear and went shooting up the road to Berlin, rocketing from side to side, leaving behind a trail of furious white water and several fat perspiring, impotent Schupos.
They were through the large village of Geesthacht now, barrelling along the road in the pouring rain, heading for the next small town of Lauenburg. To their right lay the River Elbe, glimpsed briefly through the flashing trees some hundred metres below the road. To their left, the fields, wet, miserable and very muddy, rose steeply so that anyone up there could have seen the whole length of the road. But the fields were empty of life, both animal and human. It was as if the big black car racing through the storm with its drenched, desperate occupants was alone in the world.
But in spite of their anxiety and their wet misery, Otto and the Count made hasty plans as they tore along Route Four. Originally they had planned to return with GB to the Count’s house in Hamburg. Now that the road was barred, and after their experience in Schwarzenbeck, they reasoned that the whole countryside was probably being alerted. What were they going to do? As the Count expressed it: ‘By the time we get to Lauenburg, Otto, we’ve got to have our decision. After it, there is the main road to Berlin and sooner or later they’re going to stop us on it.’
Otto nodded his agreement, not taking his eyes off the road for an instant, his face greasy with rain-drops so that it looked as if he were sweating heavily.
‘At Lauenburg there are two bridges across the Elbe and its arm, one for Berlin and the other across the main branch of the river taking the road to Luneburg.’
‘Luneburg?’ Otto asked sharply.
‘Yes,’ the Count saw his train of thought immediately. ‘Very lonely heath country all the way to Luneburg itself. If we could get that far, we could ditch the car and make our way back to Hamburg by some other – ’ He stopped suddenly. ‘Otto,’ he gasped in abrupt alarm.
‘What is it?’
‘To the left! On the ridge line.’
Otto risked a swift glance. Above the fields, a silver car was hurtling along a parallel road at tremendous speed, a white V of spray shooting up behind it. And there could be only one reason that anyone would drive at that speed in this terrible weather. Otto put his foot down hard on the accelerator. The Horch shot forward with renewed vigour.
‘There the criminals are!’ Schmitz cried urgently from the passenger seat, his handsome face smeared with black, dried blood. He was staring like an eager hawk down over the fields to the Horch on the main road below. ‘After them, driver! Give it all you’ve got!’
‘I’m doing my best, Hauptsturm,’ the driver protested above the whine of the straight-six engine, the roar of the wind and hiss of the tyres on the wet road. This was Lord Haw-Haw's personal car, a two-seater Wanderer with no roof.
‘Do better!’ Schmitz roared, as the Horch raced for Lauenburg, almost obscured by its wake.
The driver pressed his foot down. The green, glowing needle of the speedometer flicked upwards alarmingly. Now they were doing 120 kilometres an hour, nearly topping out the performance of the Wanderer roadster and a crazy speed for these conditions. The two-litre motor howled with the strain and every rivet whined to be freed from this impossible pressure.
Next to Schmitz, his companion, a young Sonderführer, MP-40 machine pistol in his lap, the only man sober enough to accompany him in the chase, turned an ashen-green with fear. At this speed they were heading for catastrophe.
Schmitz didn’t notice. His mind was completely bound up with his new friend who had been kidnapped so abruptly from right under his nose, just as they were beginning to become acquainted. He wanted him back.
‘There’s a crossroads a quarter of a kilometre up the road,’ he yelled at the Sonderführer. ‘Beat them to it, driver! There’s three days’ special leave if you get there before them and block the road.’ He leaned forward, his battered face gleaming with excitement, as if he were physically urging the silver roadster forward. The Wanderer raced on….
‘…They’re pulling away from us!’ Otto yelled urgently above the strong throbbing of the Horch’s engine. Ahead of them he could just make out the green copper-covered dome of Lauenburg’s church.
‘I see them,’ the Count yelled, his face streaming with rain from the broken windscreen, and started winding down his rear window.
‘What are you going to do, you silly old bastard?’ Otto yelled, feeling yet more wet, icy air blasting the back of his neck, but not daring to take his eyes off the road for one moment now.
Ever resourceful, the Count bravely pulled the small ladies’ pistol out of his skirt. He clicked off the safety.
‘They won’t take us alive, Otto,’ he said grimly, and fired.
The bullet hit the muddy field a couple of hundred metres below the other road and a rabbit, which just happened to be sheltering from the driving rain, scuttled deeper into cover, wondering if the hunting season had not begun rather early this year.
Otto started to come to the first little fishermen cottages which lined the entrance to the small town of Lauenberg. The Wanderer was roaring down towards the crossroads now and he saw that if he were not quicker, it would reach the junction ahead of him. Desperately, he pressed the accelerator down the floorboard. He had to make it!
Out of nowhere, a dog ran across the road. Instinctively he braked. The Horch spun right round on the slick surface, turning a full clock face until it careered to a stop. The Count yelled and was nearly flung through his open window. In the boot Gore-Browne was sick once more, and with a sinking heart Otto saw that the silver roadster had skidded to a body-trembling halt at the crossroads. A man in black uniform was doubling out of it, crouching low as he ran, machine-pistol at the ready. They were cut off from the bridges across the Elbe.
Then he saw it. A small, steep, cobbled path leading down to the Elbe below. Otto didn’t hesitate. He rammed home first gear in the same instant that the dark-uniformed figure opened fire. Slugs zipped along the length of wet tarmac. Little blue spurts of flame erupted, hurrying towards them with frightening speed. And then the car lurched forward.
The rear window shattered, cracking into a gleaming spider’s web, showering a shocked Count with glass fragments. Next moment the Horch was slithering and slipping down the narrow path, branches slapping into both sides, scratching at the paintwork, blinding Otto with green foliage time and time again, as he fought to keep the big car on the road, ears already full of the roar of the Wanderer’s motor as it took up the chase once more.
‘They can’t get by that way!’ Schmitz yelled triumphantly. ‘There’s only a tow-path down there, leading into the dock. There’s no clear road. I know it well,’
‘What now?’ the Sonderführer gasped, hurriedly fitting another magazine as the open-top roadster leapt over the height and started slithering down the narrow cobbled path in pursuit.
‘What now?’ Schmitz echoed, now in the driver's seat. ‘Why we trap them down there. There’s no way out.’ He let out a strained maniacal laugh over the steering wheel. ‘Sonderführer Ziemann, they’re finished this time!’
Beside him, Ziemann told himself that all SS officers were crazy. One false move on the descent and they’d slide right into the Elbe, and somehow he didn’t think they’d have much chance of swimming away if the one-ton Wanderer hit the water at this height. And even if they did, Lord Haw-Haw would have their guts for garters when he learned that his private car was permanently out of action. He bit his bottom lip and felt the sweat begin to break out all over his body.
Otto swerved right off the track. With a crunch of rending metal and a tinkle of glass breaking, the Horch came to rest in a clump of bushes, its headlights shattered, the right mudguard crumpled like a banana-skin.
‘What are you going to do, Otto?’ the Count cried in alarm, his chin bleeding from the shattered glass.
‘Shut up! Keep still!’ Otto commanded. He kicked open the door and vaulted out of the driver’s seat, pistol already in his hand.
The pursuing car was still invisible on the path above him, hidden from view by the dripping foliage and the squalls of grey rain, but Otto could hear it well enough, as the unknown driver fought it down the ascent, his motor roaring away in first gear. He tensed. He knew he would only get one chance, but he knew too he had no exact idea of how he might stop their pursuer, and at the same time ensure that the path was free to use again.
There was only room for one car on it and he would have to climb up it once more if they were going to get to Lauenburg. Should he just hold them up? Or shoot the driver and hope for the best? Blast it, what am I going to do?
Suddenly the gleaming silver Wanderer was there, slithering in the mud, the two areas cleared by the wipers on the windscreen looking down at him like baleful, glaring eyes.
Otto hesitated no longer. He aimed. The pistol jerked in his hand. The windscreen disappeared in a mass of cracked glass. He thought he heard a thin scream of utter fear, but later could never be sure that it had not been his imagination. Suddenly the roadster was completely out of control, thrashing wildly through the vegetation, the driver clutching at his shoulder, the other man trying desperately to control the wheel. Otto dived to one side.
The beautiful silver roadster swung by, gathering speed, and then it was out in the air, riding up and up, flying outwards, its wheels still spinning, its straight-six running strong and free at last, the screams of the two men inside it clearly audible.
Otto dropped the pistol to his side, mouth open in awed amazement, as the Wanderer began to drop at an alarming rate. Nothing could save it now. He closed his eyes, then opened them again. Why didn’t they get out? But already it was too late for that. The car, all twenty-odd hundredweight of it, hit the river. A tremendous jet of water erupted into the grey wet sky. For one moment Otto thought it might stay on the surface so that its occupants could get out. But that wasn’t to be. There was a mad flurry of bubbles. Water sprayed up on both sides. One last obscene belch of trapped air and then it was gone, the only sign of its passing: the ever widening ripple of water and the loud echoing silence, disturbed only by the hiss of the rain.
‘Die Heide at last,’ the Count announced, breaking the gloomy silence which had existed in the battered car ever since they had crossed the bridge at Lauenburg. Its left rear tyre was now almost down to its rim, so that the whole affair bumped along like a short-legged beggar, its occupants still preoccupied with what had happened down at the Elbe.
Otto braked and the car creaked wearily to stop, its engine continuing to shudder for a few seconds after he had turned off the ignition.
‘What now?’ he asked and slumped back wearily in his seat.
It had stopped raining and now the moor sparkled, with the raindrops glistening on the purple-green heather.
‘I think we’d better have a look at our guest, Otto,’ the Count said. He hitched up his damp skirts and crawled stiffly out of the car, while Otto shifted awkwardly in his damp uniform and then decided to do the same.
Wearily, he stamped his feet on the road and stared around at the moor stretching to the horizon, broken only by lines of skinny fir trees and the drainage ditches cut into the landscape. It would be a good place to get rid of the car, which somehow he suspected they would have to do: for with it they would have stood out in any inhabited place. One tyre virtually flat, windscreen cracked and shattered, rear window smashed by gunfire, two lengths of silver bullet-holes running along its body – No officer, that's how I bought it, imagined Otto, a little of his old wit returning.
‘Otto, our guest,’ the Count’s voice broke into his thoughts.
He turned. The Count was supporting GB, who still looked very green, and who creaked at every joint as he was helped along.
‘What?’ he began to croak.
‘Have no fear, my dear Mister Honourable,’ the Count interrupted him gently. ‘You are among friends.’
‘Friends?’ Gore-Browne spluttered.
‘Yes,’ the Count reached in the car and brought out his silver flask. ‘Here, a drink of this will do you good. May I introduce myself? I do love introducing myself.’
He straightened up and put on his ‘man of destiny’ face, which he practised every morning in front of his shaving mirror. ‘Graf von der Weide at your service! Sent here to rescue you by your illustrious and noble father er – Colonel Warden!’ Without taking his dark eyes, standing out of his head like hard-boiled eggs, off the haggard Englishman drinking the cognac, he added, ‘And this is my great friend, Herr Otto Stahl.’
Gore-Browne lowered the flask, colour returning to his cheeks. ‘Rescue me, you said?’
‘Yes,’ the Count repeated proudly.
‘But I don’t want to be res –’ Gore-Browne started to protest, then his eye fell on the young chauffeur and he stopped abruptly. In spite of his soaked, somewhat bedraggled, appearance, the young chap was definitely very handsome. Fine blue eyes and a mop of bright blond hair, good physique. He summed up the situation at once. His ‘great friend’ the old man had called his chauffeur. Highly significantly. But then chauffeurs, he always maintained, were always very obliging even if they didn’t have very much in the way of ‘soul’.
‘What are you going to do with me?’ he asked, ‘Now you’ve got me, I mean.’ He took another swig of the flask.
The Count beamed and flashed Otto a significant look.
‘Now that’s the spirit,’ he said. ‘I’m sure your illustrious father would esteem it highly. Where we are going? Why, to Greece, my dear fellow. Athens, to be precise.’
‘Athens,’ Gore-Browne brightened up appreciably. He knew the Greeks. ‘I’ve heard there are some awfully nice chaps down there. By plane, I suppose. It will be awfully nice to get out of this dreary place. I mean Germany does do a bally nice job with its soldiers, marching, and bands and all that – almost as good as the Guards – but the weather.’ He gave an affected shrug. ‘Absolutely impossible.’
Otto shook his head. What with the Count posturing and this Tommy warm-brother flapping his pinkies around, as if he were waving a lace handkerchief, this was turning out like ladies’ night in the Turkish baths; didn’t the silly affected buggers realise that there was the Gestapo on their tails? He harrumphed, noisily.
‘The jolly old tavernas, ouzo, retsina and a warm Aegean breeze by tonight, what?’ Gore-Browne was saying happily.
‘Well, not quite,’ the Count said hesitantly.
‘What's the plan now, then?’ Otto snapped, speaking in harsh German. ‘The registration number of the car was entered in the log-book of the guardhouse as we entered the castle. You can be shit-sure that they’ll trace your address in Hamburg from that quick enough. The big boys in the leather overcoats will be waiting for us there, you can take poison on that, Count.’
‘Agreed, agreed, my dear boy,’ the Count said, not looking unduly worried. He gazed from face to face and said in English again. ‘We are a rather strange trio, are we not? A priest who is not one, though he would dearly love to have the blessing of our Mother Church one of these days. A chauffeur in the same situation, and an Englishman of noble birth, who isn’t exactly – er – what he seems to be.’
‘Oh get on with it,’ Otto snorted.
The Count reached inside his damp skirt and pulled out what looked a heavy, waterlogged sock and then another. ‘Though we have a long, long journey in front of us,’ he said slowly, weighing the strange objects, ‘possibly full of danger, I think these little fellows will ensure that we arrive safely.’ He opened the top of one of the socks and poured a stream of gold coins on to his palm. ‘The Horsemen of Saint George, your patron saint, my dear Gore-Browne. They will be our – er – chargers for the long crusade southwards.’
Gore-Browne’s plump face fit up, the word ‘danger’ forgotten, suddenly full of enthusiasm. ‘Oh, I say, a bit of an adventure you mean, rather like the scouts.’ Gore-Browne had always had a soft spot for scouts. ‘Should be great fun, especially with two stout chaps like you, er, Count and Otto!’ He fluttered his sandy eyelashes coyly at a disgusted Otto. ‘You speak the lingo, know the best places to eat, I suppose, and all that!’ He clapped his hands together in schoolgirlish delight. ‘Oh, this is really going to be fun!’