Operation Afterlight, page 23
“Three, sir,” Bony said. “Including this one.”
“Give it to me. And destroy the others.”
“Sir, I’m not sure I’m allowed to do that.”
“I just gave you a direct order to do so,” Durban said. “Tell no one about this signal.”
Bony nodded. He still hesitated, though, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, his face pale. “Sir, are you afraid there would be no volunteers?”
“Quite the opposite, Bony, not that it is any of your business. I’m afraid they would all volunteer. Because that’s what they do. Well, they’ve done enough. If any more signals like this arrive, you bring them straight to me. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get to it, then.”
Durban waited for Bony’s footsteps to fade down the corridor before locking his door. He placed the folded signal in the top drawer of his desk, then went a drawer lower for the whisky. He was supposed to fly later, but that could easily be changed. For once, he didn’t want to fly. He hadn’t really wanted to for days. Not without Grant.
He had poured too generously. The shaking of his hand sent some of the whisky sploshing onto his thumb and desk, and it was far too good to waste. He took a long swig and felt the delicious burn in his throat, pushed the unwritten letter aside before it could get wet, then used a discarded draft to mop up the spills. Outside, twin Merlins spooled up as a Mosquito raced down the runway and hauled itself into the sky for an air test.
Who was he kidding? It was still the most wonderful sound in the world.
He picked up the pen his father had given him, and with a sigh, pulled the letter in front of him. Maybe the last one he’d ever write. Stared at it. Saw the expanse of unsullied white, like virgin snow. Saw his neat handwriting at the top.
Date. Place. The words Dear Mrs Durban.
It would do for a start.
Chapter Thirty-Two
East Prussia, 12 April
It wasn’t the smell of the crowded street that really shook Stahl, though it hung thick in his nostrils. Unwashed bodies and the smoke from burning buildings. The rancid stench of fear and human waste. The sickly undertone of rotting corpses, numerous enough to defy the efforts of the Baltic Sea breeze to clear the air. These, at least, lay mercifully unseen in narrow alleys or piled up under tarpaulins for burial by soldiers already reassigned to more pressing tasks. It wasn’t the noise that bothered him, either. The front line still lay a few miles from the densely packed buildings of Pillau. Near enough to fill the air with a steady drumbeat of artillery fire, but too far to drown out the sobbing and whimpering and cursing of the surrounding throng.
Stahl had heard such sounds before, too many times, and six years of war had left the stink of panic and death irrelevant in its familiarity.
Alone against the tide of desperate humanity, he again tried to pick a path. Yet again, he failed. A shoulder struck hard against his. A middle-aged man with a girl aged three or four in his wake, screaming as she battled to keep her grip on his hand.
That was what shook Stahl. The sunken eyes in the gaunt, unshaven face didn’t so much as blink at the contact. For eight years, his SS uniform would have been enough to part any crowd. No German would have dared to stand in his way, let alone jostle him in the street. In the space of fifty metres, it had happened three times. No one cared. No one even noticed him.
Stahl had long felt the war was lost. Now he knew it.
The man stumbled on with his oblivious gaze fixed solely on the small freighter that Stahl had disembarked from minutes earlier. Within seconds, both man and child vanished from sight as more people pressed up behind. The girl’s screaming dissolved among a thousand other cries. The crew of the MV Alberich were trying their best to control the flow of refugees onto the vessel, with a small detachment of soldiers attempting to check identification, but they were already being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of panicked civilians. For some, this might be their only chance to escape in days. Maybe the last chance they would ever get.
Stahl fought his way to the front of a nearby shop, ignoring the motionless form huddled in the doorway in a filthy blanket and blood-soaked bandages. Straining to see over the crowd, he looked back across the docks. He easily spotted the U-Boat training facility a few hundred metres across the icy waters, the dark-grey shape of U-78 moored alongside with a dozen soldiers milling nearby. Beyond the Alberich, a Kriegsmarine corvette moved slowly across the bay, anti-aircraft guns trained on the smoke-filled sky. He could make out at least three waterfront warehouses from here, with sharp timbered roofs and loading cranes. He’d seen more from the ship as it inched into the port. Each of them able to hold enough Götterdämmerung to turn continental Europe into a mass grave.
It was almost enough to make him laugh. What had he really expected? With his fake papers to intimidate anyone he met, he’d taken an overnight troop train from Bavaria to Dresden, its carriages only half-filled with soldiers, all of them old men or children. From there, he’d bullied his way onto a Ju-52 flying into besieged Danzig. The exhausted aircrew had told him they normally carried ammunition into the city and brought the seriously wounded back. But there was no more ammunition to take, and Stahl sat alone in the cargo area except for the brown smudges of dried blood. Plenty of room, at least on the way in. They would pack the flight on the way out.
Finally, his papers had bought him a place on an overnight voyage on the darkened Alberich as it steamed its way from Gotenhafen across the Danziger Bucht, zigzagging to avoid the Soviet submarines that had claimed dozens of similar vessels. Yes, getting to Pillau had been the straightforward part. Finding the target building was going to be far more difficult.
He would need help. It was risky, but he was running out of options. And time.
Pulling the collar of his officers’ overcoat up against the sea breeze, he plunged back into the crowd, head down, walking with purpose. It didn’t reduce the jostling, but it helped keep the pace up. He saw a handful of regular army soldiers but ignored them. Instead, he scanned the crudely painted improvised road signs that he passed every hundred metres or so, until he found the right one and turned into a side street that left the wharves behind.
A soldier stood at the corner. Waffen SS. A rifle hung from his shoulder. The man’s eyes flickered up as Stahl crossed the street towards him, then returned their focus to the cigarette in his trembling hands.
“You. I am looking for HQ 247th SS Transport Battalion. Show me.”
The soldier stared blankly. For a moment, Stahl thought he didn’t understand German. That was possible. Some units of the Waffen SS recruited solely from occupied or aligned nations. Three-hundred thousand Romanians, twenty thousand Estonians, nine thousand French. Even a handful of British. Half a million non-Germans all told, some conscripted, many volunteers. This man could be either.
But then the soldier shrugged and pointed further up the road. No words. No salute.
Stahl walked on. He passed between two bomb-gutted buildings, stepping over the rubble that their destruction had left in the street. To his right lay an open area where trees had probably once stood, before the siege and the frigid winter saw them stripped to the last splinter for firewood. Half a dozen trucks stood empty and abandoned beyond it. No sign of their drivers. He picked a path across the muddy field, past a water-filled shell crater, until he reached the sandbagged entrance to the bunker.
The SS flag flew outside on a crude wooden flagpole. Its flickering movement couldn’t conceal the shrapnel holes torn through it. A few feet back, a single radio aerial rose from the mud.
A guard stepped out to bar his path. At least this one managed a salute.
“Where is your battalion commander?”
“Down the steps and straight ahead, sir. Have you brought reinforcements?”
“There are no reinforcements, boy,” Stahl said sadly. “Just do your best. It will not be long now.”
Pushing past, he saw that the lightbulbs in the corridor hung dormant and dark, but a sliver of flickering light emerged from a cracked door at the far end. The incongruous notes of classical violin drifted to him, and he followed them.
Two candles on a shelf sputtered in their last throes above the young man in the battalion commander’s office. His jacket hung on the back of his chair, his booted feet resting on an ammunition crate. Eyes shut, fingers interlaced, he sat with a half-smile on his face while a phonograph played in the room’s corner, a Walther pistol casually abandoned next to it.
“I said I did not want to be disturbed this week.” The man didn’t bother to open his eyes when he spoke. A junior officer, a mere SS-Sturmführer, a second lieutenant. Probably too young to have finished university.
Stahl nudged the crate with his toe. “Where is your battalion commander?”
“Dead. The second in command, too. And the operations officer. Even the quartermaster. I guess I am next in line.” His eyes slowly opened. “Sir,” he added, seeing Stahl’s uniform. He did not stand. “Is there something you needed?”
Hot anger flushed through Stahl’s body. That this was what SS discipline should come to. “Stand when I address you.” It took effort to keep his voice calm.
The man made no such effort to conceal his smirk as he rose slowly to his feet. His shirt hung untucked. “My sincere apologies, Herr Obersturmbannführer.”
“What is your name?”
“Schnellinger. Joachim Schnellinger.” He peered myopically in the semi-darkness. “Yours?”
“My name is Plendl. And I advise you to take care you do not have cause to remember it. Why are the electric lights not working?”
Schnellinger sighed. “Fuel is short. The generator is thirsty.”
“Yet you run it to power your music?”
“Herr Obersturmbannführer, we will all be dead in a few days. If I cannot listen to Brahms now, when can I?” The man laughed.
Laughed in Stahl’s face.
Once, he would never have let such a slight pass. But there were more important things at stake now. He forced himself to relax. The mission was everything. Besides, the young fool was right. It hardly mattered if Stahl let him live. The Soviets would not.
“In March, the 2nd Company of this battalion made two trips to assist the movement of critical equipment from Königsberg to Pillau. Do you recall this movement?”
A shrug. “We move a lot of things. Have we met before?”
“No. This movement would be different, Schnellinger. A priority tasking. Highest security, with full authorisation for fuel. Your orders came directly from Berlin. Think carefully, Sturmführer. Serious mistakes occurred during this operation. I have come from the Reichssicherheitshauptamt to ensure they are corrected. It would be unfortunate for you if I found you to be the one at fault, yes?”
The smirk faded. “I remember, sir.”
“Good. Where did you deliver these items?”
“The waterfront district.”
“Obviously,” Stahl snapped. “Where precisely?”
Schnellinger cocked his head to one side, staring at Stahl, then shrugged. “I would have to check.”
“Do so, then. Quickly.”
Crossing the room, Schnellinger ran his finger down the spine of several thick box files. “We lost a lot of our documents in the retreat from the Vistula,” he said. “It seems we have been retreating since the day I enlisted.”
Stahl nodded. “Have they given you a date for evacuation?”
The man snorted. “To where? It is not like Berlin is any safer. Besides, what is the alternative? Operation Hannibal? They must have put a million people on ships out of Prussia now, but the damned Soviets seem to move westward faster than our boats. You heard about the General von Steuben? The Navy packed five thousand people on her when she left here, including all that remained of 2nd Company, and a Russian submarine sent most of them down with her to the bottom of the Baltic. That is where we lost our operations officer. Though if you ask me, that fool was no loss at all.” His finger halted its slow traverse. “This is it,” he said, dropping the file on his desk. He paused, looking first at the book, then at Stahl. “Are you sure we have not met, Herr Obersturmbannführer? You look very familiar.”
“I am certain of it,” Stahl said. “I spend most of my time in Vienna.”
“Must be nice,” Schnellinger muttered. He leafed through the book, paused. Looked at Stahl again. “Damn. It is not written here. I blame the quartermaster, alas. Very lazy. Did not even bother to run from the shell that killed him.”
“I do not punish the dead for their mistakes,” Stahl said coldly. “Only the living.”
Schnellinger swallowed. His face paled.
Finally, Stahl thought. Some respect. The thought brought back memories of other men, of fear in their eyes. For a moment only he revelled in it, until revulsion struck. He thought of Canaris, and buried that thought in an instant.
“I have an idea,” Schnellinger croaked. “Please bear with me, sir. I think it is time my radioman did something useful besides relaying no retreat orders from Berlin. Müller!”
Stahl heard booted feet hurrying in the corridor. His fingers were already on the grip of his pistol before he caught himself, eyes flickering to Schnellinger, but the Sturmführer was busily scribbling a note and did not seem to notice.
“Take this to Weber,” Schnellinger said, folding the note and passing it to the radioman as he appeared in the doorway. “Quickly.” He watched the soldier go, then dabbed at a bead of sweat on his brow. “Scharführer Weber has been here longer than anyone. He will know where to find the information.”
The phonograph fell silent, leaving only the sound of the guttering candles and the faint crump of shells in the distance.
“I only have this one record,” Schnellinger said. “The Violin Concerto in D Major. Do you like Brahms?”
“Of course,” Stahl said. “Though I prefer Wagner. Götterdämmerung.”
“I’ve never heard it, sir,” Schnellinger said. He seemed nervous, rubbing his hands on his trouser legs and glancing at the door behind Stahl. No more nervous than before, though. If he had heard of Götterdämmerung, he hid it well.
“The docks area,” Stahl began as Schnellinger carefully restarted the record, “where you moved the items. Is it safe?”
“Safe? Have you looked outside, sir? Nowhere in Pillau is safe. Not unless you are already dead.”
“But they have not moved the cargo on? Perhaps loaded it on a ship?”
“Not as far as I know.” Schnellinger yawned. “God knows the ships are crowded enough already. Even with the bombing and the submarines, they are moving thirty thousand civilians a day back to Germany.”
More heavy boots in the corridor outside. Multiple men. Müller, no doubt, returning with Weber. And at least one friend. Their footfall slowed as they approached.
Schnellinger looked with expectant eyes towards the doorway.
And Stahl suddenly knew with awful clarity exactly what the man had written on that note.
Yelling orders, the first soldier burst through the doorway, his machine pistol pointed at Stahl’s face. Two more followed, Müller and the young guard from the front entrance, crowding Stahl. He kept his hands visible.
Schnellinger spat on the floor. “You are under arrest, Herr Obersturmbannführer.”
“What is the meaning of this?” Fury swept through Stahl. At himself. At his overconfidence. He did not need to feign the anger in his voice, but he added indignation. “Soldier, you will lower your weapon now.”
“Ignore him, Weber. I knew I recognised you, Stahl.”
Stahl kept his eyes on the nearest threat, the man holding the weapon. Keep them off balance, he told himself. Make them think. “My name is Obersturmbannführer Plendl. I have my papers.” He reached for his coat, and for the pistol hidden beneath it.
“Don’t move,” Weber screamed, gobbets of phlegm arcing from his trembling lips.
Schnellinger shook his head. “Your picture was on the wall of the lecture theatre at the SS-Junkerschule Bad Tölz. I could not believe it when I saw the signal with the arrest order.”
“Shut your filthy mouth, traitor.” Stahl’s mind moved quickly, considering options. He turned to stare at Schnellinger, using the movement as cover while he marked the positions of the soldiers. “Weber, your battalion commander is under arrest for colluding with the Soviets. My orders are to arrest him and any accomplices.”
Doubt flickered in Weber’s eyes.
“Pathetic,” Schnellinger said. “To think we cadets dreamed of one day being like the legendary Jan Stahl. Müller, find rope. Bind his hands.”
“Are you married, Weber?”
The Scharführer seemed abruptly to realise the enormity of what he was doing, pointing his weapon at a senior officer.
Stahl could sense the hesitation in the other two soldiers as well, but he focused purely on Weber. He kept his voice calm. It would help little to intimidate the man so badly that he pulled the trigger by mistake. “You are married? Children?”
“Yes, sir,” Weber mumbled. “Twins.” The muzzle barrel twitched but did not lower.
“Were you working with Schnellinger, too? With the Communists?”
The man’s eyes bulged. He glanced at his officer.
“He’s lying, Weber. His name is Jan Stahl. He is a wanted man, and Germany will honour us for his arrest.”
“Weber, look at me. Think of your twins. Do you wish them to see your wife brought before a People’s Court? The wife of a traitor?”
“I am loyal,” Weber mumbled. But the weapon remained fixed.
“Damn it,” Schnellinger snapped. “I’ll do it myself.” He turned towards the phonograph and the pistol next to it. Weber’s eyes, as haunted and wild as a trapped animal, followed the movement.
Knocking the barrel aside, Stahl drove his forehead into Weber’s nose. He heard it splinter, the adrenaline already deadening any sensation of pain.
