The Leader And The Damned

Chapter Thirty-Two

Brigadier Fitzroy Maclean was probably one of the most daring and colourful characters of World War Two, a man whom Colonel Jaeger would most certainly have appreciated. He arrived in the Balkans while the German was recuperating in the Munich hospital.

Maclean literally jumped into the Cauldron – with a parachute – at night, landing in Bosnia with the rest of his team and guided by fires lit by the Partisans. His aim was to contact Tito – which he did – but soon after arriving he found himself unmercifully harassed by the Germans.

He was machine-gunned from the air. He was bombed. The group he joined had to move fast and constantly, often escaping by the skin of their teeth from heavy German motorized forces. For this encouraging welcome he had Colonel Jaeger to thank.

Within one hour of Willy Maisel leaving the hospital ward the Colonel was speaking over the phone to Martin Bormann at the Wolf's Lair. He did not mince his words.

'I expect to be out of this place in a few weeks. I'm going after Wing Commander Lindsay.'

'An excellent notion, Colonel,' Bormann agreed unctuously. 'I can promise you my full and unreserved support to hunt down this Englishman alive or dead,' purred the Reichsleiter. 'I will send you a signed authority…'

'What I want now is the phone number of the Luftwaffe air chief in Jugoslavia, plus your backing for me to give him orders to take certain measures…'

'It will be done at once.'

There was an interruption at the other end of the line, voices speaking rapidly, and then the Fuhrer himself came on the line.

'Colonel Jaeger! At your convenience I wish you to fly here so I can confer a decoration on you for outstanding performance at the battle of Kursk. Had the generals shown half your determination and courage we should have won an earth-shattering victory. As for Lindsay, he must be brought back alive, unharmed. The outcome of the whole war may depend on your success in this task I personally place on your shoulders.'

'I will do my best, mein Fuhrer,' Jaeger replied drily.

The phone was handed back to Bormann who had already found the 'phone number Jaeger needed, and promised to call the Luftwaffe commander. The swine – was at least efficient, Jaeger admitted to himself.

Ending the conversation, Jaeger replaced the receiver on its cradle. Schmidt, sitting on the edge of his bed, waiting for the news as the Colonel turned with a cynical smile.

'We have nothing to worry about – Bormann has given us his full and unreserved support..

'How can we surrender to the Allies immediately?'

'The same thought crossed my mind. Incidentally, there is something very odd going on at the Wolf's Lair. Before the Parer came on the line I could hear voices arguing and I'm sure I recognized Keitel and Jodl as well as Bormann. Why should they be so interested in Lindsay?'

'You're thinking of the Soviet spy?'

'Yes.' Jaeger's manner became mock-jovial as he hobbled round the ward with the stick. 'Oh, there's one other small matter you may be interested to hear, Schmidt. Hitler wants us to retrieve Lindsay, I quote alive, unharmed, close quote…'

'Out of the Balkans? Jesus Christ…'

'No – he might be easier. Wing Commander Lindsay, at this moment possibly a guest of the Partisans, or even maybe dead. I'm counting on those rumours Maisel spoke of being true. I suppose I need my head examining. One other things buoys me up…'

'Which is?'

'Another rumour – about a certain blonde lady who carries such authority with one Partisan group, and who sounds remarkably like the ex-Baroness Werther I once had high hopes of getting into bed with.' He smiled wryly. 'The only bed that blonde has put me into is a hospital bed.'

'I keep wondering where Gustav Hartmann is,' Schmidt speculated.

'Ah! Now you're talking. Find Hartmann and we've found Wing Commander Lindsay. Hartmann is a hard man to kill…'

For over three months they had been bombed from one refuge to another. The Englishman and the German sat side by side on a rock ledge which formed a natural seat at the summit of a cone-shaped hill. The sun glared down on them at midday out of a burning blue sky. A few metres away a shallow fissure in the rock formed a slit trench in case – once again – the planes with the iron crosses on their fuselages appeared out of nowhere. The German had grown almost as sick of his compatriots' warlike efforts as the Englishman.

'What do you think they're doing now, I wonder?' mused Hartmann.

Below, the Partisans, under Heljec's whiplash commands, shifted great boulders with iron crowbars, levering them to the brink of a sheer drop above a road like a thread.

'Another ambush – for another German column – for yet another good day's work of slaughter, I suppose.'

'You expect to get' out of this alive?' Hartmann enquired as he produced a worn leather pouch, fingered tobacco from pouch into pipe bowl and tamped the result with a brown-stained index finger.

'Do you? And how the blazes do you keep yourself supplied with tobacco?'

'I buy it, from the Partisans, who, in their turn, have taken it from German soldiers they have killed.'

He saw Lindsay's expression. He lit the pipe and puffed at it for a few moments. Then he spoke again in a carefully off-hand tone of voice.

'My friend, this is the Balkans. I do not think you have yet come to terms with where we are. For centuries Croats have been killing Serbs. And vice versa. The Bulgars hate the Greeks – again, vice versa. Hitler should never have introduced us to this part of the world. It is a place where you kill or be killed. As to your first question, I hope to survive. Smoking my pipe helps me to think clearly. What was it about the Fuhrer you found strange when you were at the Wolf's Lair?'

'I visited him in Berlin before the war. Because of my links with the British aristocracy he took an interest in me. I was also an actor at one time. So I notice people's mannerisms – tiny things which pass unnoticed by others.'

'I understand that. Please continue.'

'At the Wolf's Lair when I first met Hitler he looked like the same man but I sensed he wasn't. Christa also thought something strange had taken place while he was away on that trip to Russia. And Bormann kept watching her closely after Hitler's return…'

'What is it you are really trying to say?' Hartmann persisted gently.

'Simply that some change had taken place…'

'What you are really saying is that the Hitler who returned late from Smolensk was not the same man who went away?'

It was out in the open. Lindsay made a helpless gesture with his hands. 'I'm saying they have put in a substitute…'

Hartmann grilled the Englishman, searching for a loophole in this theory. Lindsay welcomed the experience, it tested the validity of an event he himself had questioned over and over again. He told the Abwehr man of the nightmarish scene he had witnessed when he first arrived at the Berghof.

'And at that time the real Fairer was visiting the Eastern front,' Hartmann commented.

'I've told you the dates…'

'What about Eva Braun? He'd never have fooled her…`

'I don't think he had to,' Lindsay explained. 'Later on I caught a glimpse of this same man with his arm round her waist as they went into the bedroom she occupies at the Berghof.

'She was having an affair with the double? Now that would be in character,' Hartmann said. 'She's attractive but she's also shallow and flighty.'

'And surely her whole position rested on the existence of the Fuhrer? If he vanished from the scene..

'Goodbye, Eva Braun. She isn't popular – especially with the wives of the leading Nazis ' Hartmann was becoming convinced. 'It would explain something else,' he suggested.

'What's that?'

Hartmann settled himself back against the rock. Puffing at his pipe, he glanced round to make sure no Partisan was near.

'The debacle at Kursk. Hitler is still controlling the military strategy. He showed himself to be a genius in the early years of the war. The attack on Poland -- the generals were nervous. Hitler was the driving force. The astonishing campaign when we seized Denmark and Norway. Again, it was Hitler's decision to launch the attack under the command of Falkenhorst – and again the generals shivered in their boots, predicting a disaster! France in 1940 – Hitler backed the audacious plan produced by Manstein – and put into operation by Guderian. The General Staff almost had a nervous breakdown. It would be a catastrophe! Instead it was a total victory…'

'He went wrong at Stalingrad,' Lindsay reminded him.

'A myth! Jodl told me Hitler was certain Stalin was massing armies behind the Don – but our Intelligence, the Gehlen lot – insisted any attack would be at Smolensk, hundreds of miles to the north. The generals agreed. For once Hitler gave in and let them go ahead. But how do you account for the fact that the double now at the Wolf's Lair is able to cope with directing the war?' Hartmann asked.

'When I was brought back by train to the Berghof for the second time I was given the same room where I had earlier watched the man with the mirrors. They had cleared the place out but missed a drawer at the base of a wardrobe. Inside I found a whole collection of military works – Clausewitz, von Moltke and others…'

'The very books I know the Fuhrer himself studied,' Hartmann confirmed. 'This new Hitler must have studied for his role in every aspect, maybe over a period of years. Obviously that included the same military manuals the real Hitler read. But he will lack his predecessor's flair – the war is being handed to Stalin on a plate…'

'You think I'm right, then?'

'Yes – and for another reason. Hitler no longer makes use of his old powers of oratory in public – the talent that lifted him to the heights. A strange omission – until you realize that is one activity a pseudo Fuhrer would never dare indulge in because he couldn't pull it off. That is the clincher. And here comes Paco…'

'You wish to see how determined we are to fight the Germans?' asked Paco. 'Come with me, both of you…'

She led the way from the rock pile across the slope of the hilltop towards where the Partisans had completed constructing their rampart of boulders at the brink of the drop.

'This is not my idea,' she told them. 'It is Heljec who insisted on this… demonstration.' 'Demonstration?' queried Lindsay.

'Of the Partisans' will to fight. I argued with him but still he insists. So, you will see…'

Heljec stood with a group of men behind the boulders, his waist decorated with grenades slung from a belt, a normal Partisan technique Lindsay found most alarming. They were all there. The amiable, round-faced Milic who smiled at Lindsay. Bleak Bora who looked away at the trio's approach. Dr Macek whose expression was anything but happy (Lindsay wondered why). Heljec's deputy, Vlatko Jovanovic who, behind Heljec's back, made a gesture of resignation to Paco. What on earth was going on?

Heljec himself seemed delighted. He beckoned them forward and placed them between two massive boulders where they could stare down the vertical drop into the abyss. He even laid an arm across the Englishman's shoulder and said something to Paco.

'He wants you to watch the road,' Paco translated. 'They are coming now,' she added.

In the depths a file of tiny figures were marching steadily along the winding thread of a road. As the column came closer, began to pass underneath them, Heljec handed a pair of field-glasses to Lindsay and spoke again. Hartmann was provided with his own pair of binoculars.

'He wants you to study the column,' Paco said tersely.

Mystified, Lindsay focused his glasses. In the twin lenses he was astounded to see the entire column was composed of women, women between approximately the ages of twenty and forty, women armed with every conceivable weapon.

At their waists swung the inevitable hand grenades, festooned round them like some hideous decorations. Pistols were shoved inside their belts. Sheathed knives adorned their sides. Many carried rifles, a few machine-pistols.

They wore the Partisan cap with a red blotch which, Lindsay assumed, was the five-pointed Communist star. There was an eery atmosphere about the endless column which plodded past remorselessly. Not a single woman glanced up to the sheer rock wall rising above them, although Lindsay felt sure they knew a group of their compatriots was watching.

'Who are they?' he asked, lowering his glasses.

'The Amazon Brigade,' replied Paco tonelessly.

Heljec began talking excitedly and Paco, her eyes blazing, turned to confront him, arguing back, her voice and manner as cold as ice. Heljec's expression became ugly as Paco shook her head. He raised his pistol and pointed it at Lindsay. For Hartmann's benefit Paco spoke in German, turning her back on the Partisan leader.

'Heljec wishes me to tell you both this. The Amazon Brigade are the survivors of a small town which was attacked by a German company. All their men were killed in the battle. They formed themselves into this so-called Amazon Brigade, trained with the Partisans – and then went to hunt down the company which had attacked their town. You both understand that I am telling you this story only at Heljec's urging?'

'Get it over with,' Lindsay suggested.

'They thought they had found the Germans they sought trapped in a defile. The German were surrounded, had not eaten for days and were exhausted. They surrendered…'

'Go on,' Lindsay said quietly.

'After the Germans surrendered, those women down there castrated every man with their knives. The next bit Heljec does not know I am telling you. They had found the wrong Germans. The men were innocent. Now Heljec parades those women to show you how all his people – women as well as men – fight the enemy. Sometimes I wish I had never joined these people.'

Hartmann's expression was grim. Heljec lifted his pistol and placed the muzzle against his forehead. He said something to Paco.

'He wants you to look at those women through your binoculars again,' Paco told him. 'He says if you don't he will pull the trigger..

'Tell the murdering swine to go ahead..

Hartmann threw the field-glasses at the Partisan leader's feet and braced himself. Lindsay saw Heljec take the first pressure. Paco burst out with a stream of Serbo-Croat. The Englishman had never seen her look so contemptuous. Heljec pulled the trigger.

There was a click.

There had been no bullet up the spout. Hartmann remained very still. His face was now bloodless. Heljec removed the weapon and spoke again.

'He says you are a very brave man,' Paco translated.

'Tell him I can't repay the compliment,' Hartmann retorted.

The German shoved both hands inside his jacket pockets and walked away. Paco and Lindsay followed him up the hill to the rocks where they had sat earlier. Hartmann sat down and looked at Lindsay.

'You know why I concealed my hands? They are trembling uncontrollably. I nearly messed myself back there…'

'We have to get away from these bastards as soon as we can,' Lindsay said savagely.

The Heljec incident seemed to have forged a bond between the German and the Englishman. And Paco made no attempt to object to what had just been said. Escape…'