Casca 42: Barbarossa, page 18
By the 17th Ternovaya had been reached and the grateful defenders embraced their rescuers, having been cut off for four days and having had to face ferocious onslaughts by the Soviet forces all round them. Langer knew that their stubborn refusal to give in had probably saved the sector from being driven in, for the Russians had had to divert troops away from the attack lines elsewhere to try to take the fortified town.
The rescue drive had cost the Germans thirteen panzers that day, however, and Langer and his crew were grateful of the cessation in operations. They were sent south with the other surviving panzers, but there were not many left. Out of 262 between the 3rd and 23rd Divisions on the 12th, they now only had 54 operational panzers.
It had been a high price to pay to stop the Russian offensive, but they had done it.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
They came for Isabella in the pre-dawn period when people were at their most sleepy. Nobody knew how they had found out, but no doubt someone in the church had seen the new nun, wondered about her, and then seen the pictures posted up all round the city and recognized her face. Some people will do almost anything for money, or some other suitable reward.
The Germans had expected to descend on the church and take their prize from sleep-drugged people, but this was a catholic church, and it never entirely slept. There was always someone praying, cleaning, preparing the next day for some service or other, or in this case, pondering over which route to take out of the city, for it now was time to send Isabella away.
Father Smyk had been expecting the Germans to raid the church at any time, and that they hadn’t up to that moment had been something of a miracle. His urgent pressing of other people to get an escape route ready had finally yielded results, but there were three to choose from.
Which one? The northern one to Warsaw, then to Danzig and a ship to Sweden? The western one to Lodz, Breslau and then by train to Austria? Or the southern one to Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and then neutral Turkey?
The first and last were risky because they involved a neutral country at the end of it and would therefore be watched that more closely. The middle one took her not to Vienna but to Innsbruck, for Vienna was considered too dangerous now. Innsbruck was also not far from the Swiss frontier. That was totally internal to the Reich, and had its own risks, but really not as dangerous as the southern route, which would take Isabella through Slovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria. None of those places Smyk trusted fully, and Bulgaria were hardly die-hard members of the German Axis. They were there by necessity. He didn’t trust them one bit.
The northern route had a danger in going via Warsaw. However, the underground there formed part of the route to safety, and he knew some of the people there and trusted them. Danzig was too far for him to have any opinion on, but if the Warsaw Underground had arranged that as a safe route, then so be it.
Decision made. It would be the north.
Shouts. The beating on the front door. Smyk was immediately alert. It could be only one thing. They were here for her. Gathering up his papers he ran to the fire in his room and threw them onto it, hastily making sure none fell out. Abandoning his room he ran to the small chambers used by guests. He hammered on Isabella’s door and burst in, not even waiting for a reply.
She sat up in bed, her night shift covering her modesty. “Father?” she said, blinking her eyes against the light from the corridor outside.
“They’re here! Get dressed now. We have to get you out at once. We have no time.”
Isabella gasped and plunged out of bed and grabbed her habit, hauling it on. “Where are we to go?”
“There’s a back way out under the gardens. They will not know of it. It is away from the road. It was used in times past by people to come and go when we were ruled from Vienna, and before.” Smyk took her by the arm and dragged her out of the room and along the corridor, she still struggling to put her shoes on.
The guttural shouts of the German soldiers were getting louder and jackboots tramping through the church came clearly to them. “We have a few seconds only. Good luck, my child,” Smyk said as they reached a dark, dusty iron-studded oaken door with a large iron hooped door handle. The priest produced a key from his belt and unlocked it, then pushed the door inwards.
A blast of cold air greeted them. Isabella hesitated, and Smyk pushed a flickering candle into her hand. It was a thick wax one typical of those used by the church. “Keep going. At the far end is another door, unbolt it from the inside and go out. There will be a road to cross, and on the far side a jeweller’s. Knock on the door and say you are of Steel. They will know you are to be taken in when you say that.” He glanced down the end of the corridor as voices came echoing along it. “Go!”
Pushed through the door, Isabella sobbed as the door closed behind her and the key scraped in and turned, locking her in.
Trembling, she heard men running and Smyk’s voice demanding to know what was the meaning of the intrusion. There came a short sharp command to shut up and the sound of a man being struck, and then a body hitting the floor. She put her hand to her mouth, then hurried away along a narrow passageway, flagged top and bottom and roughly made of hewn stones to either side.
Cobwebs hung down and coated both walls, and then there came a flight of steps, not clean, and she gingerly descended the twelve steps to the bottom, then followed the passageway. No sound of the door behind her being forced or unlocked came to her, and her breathing got back under control.
The only sound now she heard was the rasping of her breath as she hurried along the dusty, long corridor, until she came to another set of stone steps, these leading up. Sounds of footsteps in the distance came to her, then a dog barking. Hesitantly she climbed, now seeing for the first time a closed door ahead and above her.
As she got to the level of the door, at the top of the last step, she could make out a bar that locked the door from the tunnel side. She leaned her head against the door and listened. There was nothing to be heard, so she slid the bolt back and tugged on the only handle she could see. The door creaked as it gave, and a blast of wind coated her, blowing out the candle. She put the candle down and emerged, looking both left and right.
As the priest had said, there was a road opposite, and across on the far side stood a darkened shop, with a jeweller’s sign above the door. Another quick glance in either direction, then she pulled the door to and ran across the street. She knocked on the door and looked about her. The door she had come out of was set in a stone wall, and on either side stood houses. There was just a wide enough gap for the tunnel exit.
A light came on in the shop and she turned to see a man peering through the window next to the door, frowning. A small panel slid open in the door and another face appeared. “What is it, sister?” the man asked in Polish.
Isabella still spoke little Polish, and so she spoke in German. “I am of steel.”
The man glanced to his right, and apparently got a signal, for he unlocked the door and she slipped into the darkened shop. “This way,” the man said curtly and led her towards the lit passageway at the rear of the shop.
Isabella noticed now that the two men were armed and they shut the door to the shop and turned to look at her. She spread her hands wide in a gesture of helplessness. “The Germans came for me in the church and I had to flee. I was told to tell you I was of steel.”
“Very well,” one of the two men replied. “We must leave quickly – the Germans clearly are keen to apprehend you. The longer you remain here the more danger you put everyone else in. You shall have to change out of that, too. Your disguise as a nun has failed.”
Isabella was about to ask what she was to change into when the other man reached down and picked up a suitcase. “We got your measurements from the church. Put the clothes on and meet us in five minutes at the end of this passageway. Be ready to move fast.”
She wasted no time. The two men were gone, probably to arrange the next step of the journey, so she tugged off the habit and threw it away gratefully. Now she found the white blouse and grey skirt more to her liking, as she did the shoes.
The suitcase she took with her to the back door and waited. Precisely on five minutes it opened and the two men were there again, still holding pistols. Isabella noted they were both the Polish army wz. 35 Vis model, something she had been trained to note. These were still being made under the General Government but issued to the police and some military units. The fact these two men had them meant they had probably been in the defeated Polish army of 1939.
Out the back was a brick walled yard and a grey automobile stood in the yard, a Fiat 508B with two doors and a box-like saloon. She was gestured to get in and so she did, her suitcase being taken away from her and put in the trunk. One of the two men donned a flat cap and opened the driver side and sat behind the wheel. “Pavel Krimowski,” he said by way of an introduction. “Your identity papers,” he passed her an envelope. “Read, memorise.”
While she began looking at her papers, Krimowski started the engine, switched on the two headlamps and drove out of the yard. She glanced up once to see the houses pass by rapidly, then went back to studying. She was now Inge Klein, a maid going to new employment in Warsaw. Krimowski explained to her that he was to pass as a Germanized native working for the same employer.
They drove almost to the outskirts of Krakow before they came to a check point. “Stay calm,” Krimowski said to her quietly. “Remember your cover, and all will be fine. These papers have been made by the best there are.”
There were five soldiers at the checkpoint, all armed with the ubiquitous Mauser rifle. They were led by a black-clad SS captain, a cold-faced, stern looking man with a pistol in his holster and the confidence of someone who has absolute authority over every civilian. Two of the soldiers were aiming their rifles in the general direction of the car, and Isabella fought to stay calm. Her recent experiences had given her a feeling of dread, for she knew the depths of evil the brotherhood dredged, and these men would hand her over to them if they realized she was the one they were hunting. Not of course, that they knew what they were doing, but the brotherhood were like that; they used other organizations as unwitting contributors to the further glory of the secretive sect.
The car stopped and the SS officer indicated that the windows be wound down. Both were and soldiers were immediately at them, muzzles not exactly pointing right at the occupants, but close enough. They didn’t look comforting. “Papers!” the officer snapped, his hand thrust out.
Krimowski slowly did so, looking up at the man. He slowly slipped a hand down the side of the seat where he had secreted his wz. 35 Vis pistol. If necessary he was prepared to kill as many Germans as he could. He had no idea who Isabella really was and why he and the rest of the underground were to get her out of Krakow, but he knew she was being hunted by the people who were occupying his country and he would do what he could to help her. He was also determined not to be taken alive.
Isabella handed her papers over to a secondary man on the other side of the car. The SS officer didn’t expect the woman to be a problem – even though orders had gone out to apprehend a woman known as Isabella Dankl, disguised as a nun, probably known by another name. Description given, details etc etc etc.
The secondary man, a corporal, scanned the documents passed him. They seemed in order, but he was not going to make any decision without the clearance from the SS captain. Such things were not for him to decide. He had no wish to be transferred to the Eastern Front just because he made a decision not authorized by the SS. Let them make the decisions, and any subsequent fuck-ups. “Sir, the woman’s papers.”
The SS officer lost interest in the man’s I.D. It looked correct. “Here you are,” he said off-handedly, passing them back.
Krimowski said nothing. Everything could be a trap, even speaking a simple word. The fact the man had spoken to him in Polish didn’t go amiss – his papers stated he was a German national, so was he deliberately trying to get him to respond in a language that was supposedly not his natural one? There was an exchange of looks, Krimowski trying to look puzzled, the SS captain thoughtful.
The moment passed. He walked slowly round to the passenger side. Now this woman was fine looking, good Aryan features. He had been given the fugitive’s description and it could have been applied to thousands of women in the Reich. Blonde hair, or brown. What sort of help was that? Blue eyes yes; nobody could change that. Nothing about her beauty – if it had said very attractive then he would have no doubt it was the woman sat before him in the car.
“Good morning Fraulein,” he began, taking the papers from the idiot corporal. The man was clearly incapable of thinking for himself, but at least had the good grace to defer to him. “And what are you going to Warsaw for?”
“To take up employment as a domestic in a large household. I have a letter here, sir.”
The officer held out his hand impatiently, and she gave it to him. The light was good enough to read it by now, and he noted the address. He would ring through to verify it. “Plenty of good people needed in the new regions of the Reich,” he said, still scanning it. He passed it back. “Enjoy your journey.”
“Thank you,” Isabella felt her temperature rising with the tension and hoped it did not show.
The bar was raised and they were waved through. Krimowski glanced in the rear view mirror, puffing out his cheeks. “I thought he was going to arrest us back there,” he said.
“So did I. He spoke to you in Polish.”
“Yes, I noted that; it was almost as if he knew. You know he’s going to check that address on the letter.”
“Oh! What will happen when he does?”
“We covered that possibility. The address is genuine, and the position is genuine. We applied for the post and it was accepted. They really do expect you in the next couple of days – it’s only when you don’t turn up that they’ll start asking questions. By that time you’ll hopefully be on the way to Sweden.”
“You worked fast!”
“We knew this was one route – we were given three routes to plan, and set them up. We can now discard the other two, the Stone and Water routes. Whatever you said when you arrived at the shop we would instantly know which route to use. Steel was the code word for Sweden. Stone for Austria, Water for Turkey.”
Isabella leaned back in her seat, content to watch the countryside pass by. She was in the hands of the Polish resistance and there were no others she could rely on to help get her away from the claws of the brotherhood and their unwitting accomplices. Sweden was a place she had never visited and wondered perhaps whether she could set up a branch of the Longini there, given time.
Her uncle would probably approve – they were terribly thin on the ground and needed more branches. Isabella’s time within the Reich was almost run now; she had been too close to the Gestapo and the SS and it was only a matter of time before her luck would run out. Time to be gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The summer was one long series of advances. Langer and his crew along with the others of the 6th Panzer Regiment plunged deeper and deeper south towards the Caucasus. The failed Soviet offensive at Kharkov meant they had no reserves and melted away from the steel teeth of the Wehrmacht.
The advance was split into two; the panzers went south while the 6th army turned east for the Volga River and the city of Stalingrad. Oil, it was said, oil was the reason they went towards the south. The great oilfields of Baku were needed for their panzers, trucks, aircraft, industry. Germany needed more and more, and the reserves in Romania were almost gone.
The days were long and hot, and the advance went on and on and on. Fuel was always short and their stops far too frequent. After taking Rostov they fanned out south-east and roamed almost at will. Langer noticed a total lack of prisoners during this time: the Russians had clearly learned from their failures and were now retreating, and why not? They had the time and space to do that, letting the Germans advance without any real victory, running their stocks of fuel and supplies low, stretching their lines of communications.
Langer knew what they were doing; the feigned retreat. How often had he done that in his time? Let the enemy continue on into a trap, then counter-strike. He wouldn’t have felt half as bad about the entire thing if they had met and defeated enemy forces, but there were virtually none.
The other concern was air cover. Airfields were few and far between and the further south-east, the further away from air cover they went.
So now they were outside yet another Russian village, out of fuel, waiting to be resupplied. The panzers were scattered haphazardly across the wide plain, in amongst the wheat fields, camouflage netting over them, hoping to hell the fuel would arrive before the fighter-bombers. Russian air strikes were becoming all too frequent, and away from their own air cover they were bombing at will.
The schutzen had not caught up yet, having to walk themselves as their trucks and half-tracks were miles away, waiting for fuel themselves. Everyone was walking now. Langer and his men, and others of the tank crews, had armed themselves and were approaching the village which looked deceptively quiet. They were sliding through the long, yellow stalks of wheat, dark shapes cutting through the uniformity of the crop fields, closing in on the collection of houses, huts and barns from three directions.
Langer paused at the edge of an irrigation ditch, peering across the gap to the nearest building, now no more than fifty yards distant. There was no sound, no dog barking, no child crying, no door banging. Nothing. He squinted up into the sky. No birds. It was a clear sunny day. With no air reconnaissance, nobody could tell them whether the village was occupied or not, or even what was around a few miles further off. There could be an entire Soviet division waiting for them and nobody knew. They were the point of the advance, and could see nothing.
