The Leader And The Damned

Chapter Thirty-One

Kursk! July 1943…

A town in Russia south of Moscow few people have heard of. It was at Kursk in the summer of '43 that the outcome of the Second World War would be decided.

Here a gigantic Russian salient like a thumb protruded into the German front. The Red Army had crammed the salient with their elite divisions ready for the attack.

This vast area was dangerously over-crowded. There were the huge T-34 tanks, the latest Soviet self-propelled guns, the most battle-experienced infantry and armoured divisions. No fewer than one million Russian troops assembled in this confined pocket waited the order to advance. And Stalin hesitated.

There was no hesitation at the Wolf's Lair. The Fuhrer had made up his mind and his most able commander, Field Marshal von Kluge, fully supported the plan: to attack first, to slice off the base of the thumb and close the immense trap which within days would encircle one million Russians.

'The road to Moscow will then be open,' von Kluge continued at the Fuhrer's midday conference on 1 July. 'There will be nothing left for Stalin to throw in our path. We take Moscow, the hub of the Bolshevik railway system, and Russia is wiped out.'

'We launch the offensive on 5 July,' Hitler agreed. 'Then once Russia is destroyed we transfer one hundred and twenty divisions to France and Belgium. Any attempted landing by the Anglo-Americans will end in catastrophe. Gentlemen, Operation Citadel is on. I have decided.'

He looked round the table at Martin Bormann, Keitel and Jodl., who duly nodded their agreement. The Citadel was Kursk. Once it fell, the gates to Moscow were thrown wide open.

Hitler dismissed the meeting and told Bormann to accompany him to his quarters. He strode out of the Lagebaracke, across the compound and entered his own simple hut. Once inside the Fuhrer threw the cap he had donned onto a table and told his deputy to shut the door as he settled in an armchair.

'Bormann, you must by now agree that everyone accepts me for who I am. Citadel is the biggest operation Germany has so far launched in the whole war.'

' Mein Fuhrer,' began Bormann, 'I have only one anxiety. There is still no news of the killing or capture of Wing Commander Lindsay.'

'Who cares about him any longer? How could he affect me?'

Bormann noted he used me, not us. Since the impersonation which had begun the previous March, Bormann – who had expected to manipulate Heinz Kuby like a ventriloquist's dummy – had found himself relegated to his earlier role under the original Fuhrer. And, he reflected, there was not one thing in the world he could do about it without destroying himself.

'I have studied Lindsay's file carefully,' Bormann persisted. 'He was once an actor used to studying mannerisms and he was very close to that promiscuous Christa Lundt. Before they escaped together I caught her watching you closely. I think she detected something wrong.'

'So, what do you propose?' Hitler interjected impatiently.

'That SS Colonel Jaeger be sent back to the Balkans in the hope that he can pick up Lindsay's trail.'

'Jaeger is taking command of his unit again for Citadel,' the Fuhrer said brusquely. 'We need every experienced man we can lay our hands on to pull this off. Just so long as that Soviet spy Hartmann insisted was here does not pass on details of Citadel to the Russians. Everything depends on the element of surprise…'

That evening at the pine-shrouded Wolf's Lair on 1 July the atmosphere was tense. It was going to be another sultry, humid night and so much hinged on Citadel.

Three of the leading personalities passed through the various checkpoints separately. None of the trio was likely to want the company of one of his colleagues. Keitel was regarded by Jodl as a stuffed shirt who had been promoted above his level of ability. Martin Bormann was possessed of one universal attribute. He was detested by everyone except the Fuhrer. And Hitler's dog, Blondi.

Keitel considered Jodl a tricky individual, not a man you would ever strike up an intimacy with. Certainly an officer it would be wise to hold at a distance. And so it came about that the three men went their own ways, seeking brief relief from the claustrophobia of the Wolf's Lair before the midnight conference.

In these northern climes it was dark at 11.15 pm, when once again experienced hands opened up the log pile concealing the powerful transmitter in the forest. The signal tapped out with the aid of a pocket torch was unusually long. The operator replaced the logs and returned just in time to attend the Fuhrer's conference.

'Anna, I am exhausted,' Rudolf Roessler exclaimed as he closed the flap inside the cupboard which hid his own transceiver. 'I feel something very important is imminent.'

'And how do you know that?' Anna enquired as she handed her husband a cup of coffee which he drank greedily.

'I have received, in normal code, the longest signal yet from Woodpecker. I have, immediately re-transmitted it to Moscow. I suspect it gives the order of battle for a very major operation…'

'Well, you have done all you can,' Anna said briskly, 'so we shall just have to see.'

Roessler swivelled round in his chair and stared at her, his face lined with fatigue. 'From what has happened so far we know Stalin is not making full use of the information I send. Will he ever come to trust me?'

'Kursk! It could be a huge trap to destroy us…'

Inside the small office in the Kremlin it was the early hours and the atmosphere was strained as Stalin spoke. Two other men stood alongside each other, listening. The aggressive General Zhukov and the quieter, more intellectual Marshal Vassilevsky, Chief of Staff.

Stalin was holding the long signal just received from Lucy which had originated from Woodpecker. Never before had Stalin received from this source such a detailed order of battle for the German Army. It was quite terrifying, the vast amount of war material the Wehrmacht had assembled. If it were true. The Generalissimo read the signal again slowly, repeating aloud a few of the details

'Tiger and Panther tanks… Ferdinand mobile guns… General Model to attack from the north. General Hoth from the south… The pick of the German generals… a huge mass of their elite divisions. This is a colossal force. If it is true we could make our own dispositions and destroy them.'

'Could I ask,' Vassilevsky began casually, 'what is the record of this Woodpecker-Lucy espionage ring so far?'

'The information has always proved correct.'

'So it could be correct again. At some moment we have to take our courage in both hands, and gamble everything on the belief that Lucy is right…'

'Zhukov?'

Stalin, who was also standing in the gloom of his office lit only by the shaded desk lamp, glanced sideways at the General. Vassilevsky sighed inwardly. Stalin was up to his old tricks – enticing others to express opinions which could be employed against them if there was a disaster.

The trouble was Stalin had never lost his crafty Georgian origins. Treacherous and devious by nature, he saw trickery everywhere – and Lucy could be Hitler's pawn, luring the Red Army into a gigantic trap from which it would never extricate itself.

Zhukov did not hesitate. The only general capable of contradicting Stalin to his face, he spoke out vehemently.

'Woodpecker tells us D-Day is 5 July – three days from now. He further tells us H-Hour for the attack is 1500 hours, a most unusual time for the launching of a German offensive, so it has the ring of truth. I wish to return immediately to GHQ to make our dispositions on the basis that Woodpecker is telling the truth.'

'You would take full responsibility for such a decision?'

'Yes, Generalissimo!'

'We must consider the problem further, gentlemen. Prepare yourselves for a long night,' Stalin replied.

At 2.30 pm on 5 July Colonel Jaeger's old leg wound began to play him up. Perched in the turret of his enormous Panther tank, he was commanding a section of an armoured division of General Model's 4th Army which was to drive a hammer-blow south at the base of the Russian 'thumb' to link up with General Hoth's 9th army advancing from the south. Between them the two armies would amputate the thumb – encircling one million enemy troops.

It was a hot sultry afternoon as Jaeger checked his watch and surveyed the endless rows of tanks drawn up for battle. His leg wound always troubled him just before the start of a great offensive. Looking across to the next Panther he saw Schmidt wiping sweat off his forehead.

'In half an hour it will be really hot!' he shouted jovially. 'Save your sweat for then!'

There was the sound of laughter from the turrets of tanks nearby. Jaeger was a commander who had the gift of breaking almost unbearable tension with a joke.

'Colonel!' Schmidt shouted back. 'Your sweat pores differ from ours. When the time comes you will sweat beer!'

There was another burst of laughter. Jaeger, anything but a stiff-necked, Prussian-type officer, was always ready to bandy words with his men regardless of rank. At precisely 1500 hours he gave his driver the order through his throat-mike.

'Forward! And don't stop till you see the whites of General Hoth's eyes!'

The immense leviathans began to rumble southward on their massive tracks. There was the thump of heavy artillery opening up a non-stop barrage. The endless, mind-wearying steppes of Russia spread before them as Jaeger's Panther pushed ahead of the vast tracked armada. Ignoring the shell-bursts which began to crater the sun-bleached earth, Jaeger directed his Panther straight ahead. South – ever south – until the link-up with Hoth and the pincers closed behind the Red Army cooped up inside its huge salient.

Altogether, on that humid July day, Field Marshal von Kluge had over half a million German troops under his command. They included seventeen Panzer divisions equipped with the monster new Tiger and Panther tanks, countless mobile guns – all backed up by motorized infantry. It was the largest force ever thrown against a single objective. Citadel.

H-Hour, the starting time – three in the afternoon – should certainly have taken by surprise the enemy who was accustomed to dawn attacks. It was anticipated that before Zhukov grasped what was happening he would find himself surrounded.

And in addition, the 2nd Army – comprising six Panzer and two infantry divisions – was attacking the tip of the 'thumb', as a diversion to draw Soviet troops away from the main battle area.

Earlier than he had expected, Colonel Jaeger found himself staring at two Soviet T-34 tanks advancing towards him about one hundred metres apart from each other. An average commander's reaction would have been to slow down, to wait for reinforcements to catch up with him. Jaeger was not an average commander.

'Increase speed!' he ordered.

As he had foreseen, he could see the huge gun like a telegraph pole on each tank traversing to aim at him. Their traverse was too slow because the last reaction they had expected was for the Panther to continue on course at higher speed: on a course which would naturally take the German tank between the two Soviet T-34s with fifty metres to spare on either side.

The Russian guns began to move more rapidly to bring their muzzles to bear on Jaeger at point-blank range. The Colonel timed it carefully. Just before the traverses were completed he spoke again into the mike.

'Maintain course. And give me everything you've got. Go like hell!'

The Panther rumbled forward, suddenly at top speed. The guns of the T-34s were traversing a little too slowly. Jaeger was midway between them when the Soviet commanders realized this maniac was continuing to advance past them.

They ordered their gunners to traverse to an angle of ninety degrees. The guns went on turning. Jaeger went on advancing. The Soviet commanders gave the order simultaneously.

'Fire…!'

A second earlier Jaeger passed beyond them. The guns of the two T-34s faced each other. The shells passed each other in mid-flight and detonated. Looking back, Jaeger saw the tanks burning, flames leaping from the turrets. So far he had not fired a shot.

'Continue to advance on the same course…'

Earlier he had seen the two tanks approaching, one behind the other before they separated to avoid bunching into a solid target. Jaeger could clearly see the marks of their tracks and he guided his Panther along the same avenue.

Minefields! The everlasting gut terror of all tank commanders. By keeping to the track course of the burning T-34s Jaeger knew he was safe from mines. The wisdom of his judgement was vindicated a moment later when he heard a series of explosions.

To his left and right three Panthers were disabled or destroyed. One had a track sheared off the chassis and stood motionless in the battlefield. Two more were burning where they had encountered mines. Jaeger wirelessed back to the remainder of his squadron.

'Follow in my tracks. Precisely. Pathway through major minefield.'

As he completed his instruction to his operator Jaeger began to worry. Instinctively the incident he had survived told him something strange was happening. Minefields…

The Russians had sown no fewer than 40,000 mines in a single night , each mine capable of disabling a Panther or Tiger tank.

They had sown these lethal weapons in each sector where they knew the Panzer divisions were coming. In the early hours of the morning of 2 July inside the Kremlin, Stalin had finally decided to trust the Woodpecker signals. Given the go-ahead, the Soviet generals had reorganized their entire defences inside the Kursk salient, converting it into the greatest military death-trap in history.

The Germans still fought hard. Low-flying Stukas equipped with cannons swept over the battlefield, wiping out a large number of T-34 tanks. Across a vast area savage tank duels were fought but Hitler had lost the vital element of surprise.

It does not take all that much skill to win a battle if you know in advance exactly what the enemy plan is. The two men who really won the turning-point battle of Kursk were absent from the field of carnage. Woodpecker was at the Wolf's Lair in East Prussia. The middle-aged, shabbily-dressed Rudolf Roessler was in Lucerne.

Even so, the Russians did not find it a walkover. Fighting continued to rage from 5 July to 22 July as the salient became a charnel house. The casualties on both sides were enormous. Medical personnel on the German side described their field hospitals as slaughterhouses.

Throughout the long days and nights the sound was deafening as the artillery continued to pound, the tanks to fire and the bombs to fall. The earth was desecrated, turned into a desert – a desert littered with shattered planes, tanks, and men.

Colonel Jaeger survived the holocaust – and saved Schmidt. Two Panthers had been blown up under the Colonel and he was in the turret of the third in the midst of chaos and milling confusion when he saw Schmidt, hit by a sniper's bullet, topple over the side of his turret.

'Halt!' he ordered.

Clambering down onto the churned-up earth he ran across as Schmidt's tank detonated a mine. A huge length of track splayed out and slapped, onto the ground. Schmidt, sprawled on his side, looked up.

'Get out of it, Chief! The medics will come for me…'

'Shut up and keep still!'

Jaeger gathered up Schmidt in both his arms and carried him to his own tank. He had reached the Panther when he felt a thump against his leg. He ignored it, hoisting up Schmidt as his wireless operator reached down to grasp the injured man.

'Colonel! Your leg!' the wireless operator shouted to make himself heard above the mind-numbing thunder which never ceased.

'Get Schmidt inside! I can get up myself. That's an order…'

Blood had soaked through the trousers covering the upper part of his leg and the pain was starting. There was a ping against the side of the Panther. That damned sniper again! Gritting his teeth, Jaeger hauled himself rapidly up to the turret, inside and closed the lid.

'There is a bloody spy at the Wolf's Lair – and I'm going to track the bastard down when I get out of here.'

Jaeger was talking to Schmidt in the next hospital bed a week later. By using the Fuhrer's name the SS colonel had managed to get them both transported to a hospital in Munich. He had a definite purpose in choosing this location for their recuperation.

'Why are you so sure now?' Schmidt enquired. 'Kursk!'

'So, we lost the battle – it doesn't mean we lost the war..

'I fear, my old friend,' Jaeger said sombrely, 'it means just that. At Kursk, history – it is not an original phrase – trembled in the balance. We should have won, but the Bolsheviks knew our order of battle in advance. I forced my way into the presence of Field Marshal von Kluge afterwards. He agreed with me. The Fuhrer was right, there is a top-level Soviet spy at the Wolf's Lair.'

'Well, there's nothing you can do about it,' Schmidt observed.

They occupied a small two-man ward and both were recovering from their injuries. Jaeger had been shot in the upper right leg, the bullet embedding itself only a few centimetres from the place where he had been shot during the final stages of the 1940 campaign in France.

The doctor had suggested he be invalided out of the army when final recovery took place. He was exhausted by his exertions in so many campaigns. Jaeger's reaction had almost put the doctor into one of his own beds. Grabbing the walking-stick by his bedside the Colonel had thrown back the bedclothes and rested his good leg on the floor.

'You may be a good doctor but you're a bloody lousy psychologist!' he had roared. 'I have a specific job to do – and by God I'm going to do it!'

He waved the stick in a threatening manner. Hauling the bandaged right leg out of bed he stood up, supporting himself by the stick as he hobbled forward menacingly. The doctor backed away from him until the wall stopped his retreat.

'Colonel, you should be in bed…'

'I should be in the Cauldron – searching for a lead to the man who put me here, who left so many thousands of my comrades dead amid the flies and dust of Kursk. I have only one instruction for you, Doctor, get me mobile at the earliest possible moment.'

'I can only do that if you rest, stay in bed…'

The doctor's face had lost its normal colour, confronted by Jaeger who was the picture of ferocity. Holding on with one hand to the bottom of Schmidt's bed, Jaeger raised his stick with the other to emphasize his command.

'Agreed – on one condition. Each day a little more exercise so I can be discharged at the earliest possible moment. There is a war on, hadn't you heard…'

'The same request applies to me,' Schmidt interjected.

'You're to discharge me on the same day as the Colonel leaves…'

'That may be possible,' the doctor agreed cautiously. 'Your chest wound is healing nicely. It was fortunate the bullet passed right through, missing all the vital parts…'

He broke off in mid-sentence as a nursing sister entered, stopped and stared in bewilderment. She was not a particularly attractive woman, arrogant by nature, and on the first day of his admission Jaeger had had to speak severely to her.

'We are holding an important conference,' he informed her with a straight face. 'No bedpan interruptions at the moment.'

'You have a visitor, Colonel. A Mr Maisel. He says you are expecting him…'

'And he speaks the truth, so usher him in at once, please…'

'Is everything all right, Doctor?' she asked.

'He's not feeling too good this morning,' Jaeger replied in his most jovial manner. 'You can see he's lost his usual colour. I prescribe rest, possible a short period in bed.'

'Is it correct that you wished to see me, Colonel?' enquired Willy Maisel.

The thin-faced Gestapo official with a thatch of dark hair was dressed in a well-fitting navy blue suit and his shrewd gaze switched backwards and forwards between Jaeger and Schmidt. He made no reference to their state of health.

'Where the hell is that Englishman, Wing Commander Lindsay, at this moment?' Jaeger rasped.

Willy Maisel was sitting down on a chair drawn up close to the Colonel's bedside drinking a liquid the hospital hopefully termed 'coffee'. Jaeger had winkled out of him the reason for his initial distant manner. Gruber.

The Gestapo chief, still based in Vienna, was being driven mad-by a constant stream of phone calls from Martin Bormann at the Wolf's Lair. Regardless of the normal person's routine he was plagued with these calls from the Reichsleiter at all hours. Three o'clock in the morning was one favourite time and Gruber by now felt he was one of his own suspects in the cells where sleep was deliberately denied.

'He is worn out,' Maisel explained. 'When he heard that you wanted to see me he swore foully. He was terrified that I might pass on any information to you.

'Why?'

Jaeger was intrigued. There was something very odd going on. Maisel, a shrewd man, seemed relieved to be away from Gestapo headquarters – thankful to talk to someone in the outside world.

'Because Bormann is venting his spite on him, preparing him as a potential scapegoat would be my guess…'

'A scapegoat for what?'

'The inability of anyone to track down the Englishman, Lindsay. At times Bormann seems petrified at the idea Lindsay may reach London. Jodl and Keitel, too. They have both phoned Gruber at different times about the same subject, which I find odd.'

`Any idea why?' Jaeger asked.

'The Fuhrer wants to see Lindsay again, I gather. After Kursk, I suppose. There are constant rumours Hitler is desperate to do a deal with Churchill:…'

'So the more people who are after Lindsay the better the chances of locating him?' Schmidt intervened.

Jaeger smiled to. himself. In all apparent innocence Schmidt had laid a trap – and Maisel walked into it. The way was now being paved for Jaeger and Schmidt to join the search for the fugitive.

'Yes, I suppose it comes to that,' Maisel agreed. 'When exactly, and where, was Lindsay last sighted?' Jaeger asked.

'Nowhere really – not since that night I talked to you from Maribor. But our Intelligence people in the Balkans keep reporting these rumours. A blonde girl and Lindsay are travelling with a Partisan group – probably the same lot that attacked the train before it reached Zagreb. And strangely enough we keep hearing Major Hartmann of the Abwehr is alive and with them. After all, we know he was on the same train…'

'Hartmann!' Jaeger sat up very erect. 'The clever bastard is a survivor. Any fuller description of this blonde girl?'

'Only that she is in her late twenties, is very attractive and it is rumoured she is called Paco. Obviously a code-name. Also she seems to carry great authority with the leader of the group. Now we hear a full-blown Allied Military Mission has landed from a plane in Yugoslavia, flown in from Tunisia, we assume. In the Balkans nothing is cut and dried…'

Jaeger sat in silence for some time after Willy Maisel left the ward. Used to his chief's moods, Schmidt was careful to say nothing. Then Jaeger seemed to make up his mind. Throwing back the bedclothes, he reached for the stick, eased himself out of bed and began his daily pacing back and forth.

'The English fought well at Dunkirk. You remember that wall we could not break through, Schmidt? The Fuhrer is right – we should be allied with them. He should never have allowed that fat mental deficient, Goering, to bomb London. If the Russians win they will menace the whole western world for generations…'

'It is a tragedy,' Schmidt agreed, 'but what can we do?'

'Lindsay is the key,' Jaeger replied. 'You and I must find him. It's going to be a race against time. If we're not quick that Allied Military Mission will airlift him out. We may be able to checkmate them if the Mission's whereabouts is known. That's our first job…'

He was talking to himself, thinking aloud as he forced his body upright, marching slowly round the ward, managing without the stick as much as he could.

'How do we checkmate the Mission?' Schmidt enquired.

'I'm going to phone Bormann and get the Fuhrer's backing – we send instructions to the local Luftwaffe commander in the area to concentrate every plane he's got on the area where the Allied Mission is operating. We bomb the hell out of them – keep them on the run so Lindsay can't link up with them until we get down there.'

'I still don't understand why Lindsay is the key…'

'I was very struck by his intelligence. Look how he escaped from the Berghof with Christa Lundt in that laundry truck, how he did not take the bait of the Mercedes we left waiting for him earlier that morning. He really fooled us, the devil! I think that during the two weeks he spent at the Wolf's Lair he found out a lot. He may even have detected the identity of the Soviet spy at the Wolf's Lair – with the help of Lundt. And, by God, I want to put a bullet through that one myself.'

'It's a long shot,' Schmidt reflected.

'I've played them all my life – long shots…'