“Inspector Sharpe has it. He took
it,” Roger replied. He was trembling but managed to keep talking. He described
meeting the Inspector at ‘The Chimneys’, then with the four KSS men in the
jungle on Python Ridge.
The young officer frowned. “They
were digging you say?” he asked.
“Yes sir. They were searching for
something.”
“Did they find it? What was it?”
Again Roger sensed the question
was of vital importance to these men and he could not see how lying or
with-holding anything would help in any way. He shook his head and replied,
“They did not find it sir. We don’t know what they were looking for. We thought
it might be a treasure; perhaps the missing crown jewels or the Thigh Bone...”
He suddenly stopped, realizing he shouldn’t have mentioned these things. He
glanced at Graham who gave him a look of disapproval.
A middle-aged officer with a
thick grey moustache bent down and grabbed Roger’s collar.
“Thigh
Bone!
You know of the sacred Thigh Bone of St Joris?
How?”
The group had broken into excited
chatter. They turned back to hear Roger’s answer. He swallowed and broke into a
cold sweat. “We didn’t know then. We thought it must be treasure they were
looking for.” He described events at Mobo Creek.
The young officer asked in a sad
voice: “You say Dorkoffsky was one of the KSS men arrested?”
“Yes sir. We spent the night in
his house at Yungaburra,” Roger replied. Then he looked up. The face of the
sergeant with the cross-stripe suddenly jogged his memory.
“You!
You are the man I saw outside our room that night. You walked off into the fog.
I chased you.”
The man looked most
uncomfortable. The others all turned to look at him. The older officer snapped:
“What is this Zumpitch? What happened?”
Zumpitch replied in what Roger
assumed was Serbo-Croat, the only word he understood being the rank of Colonel.
So the older man must be Colonel Von Krapnoff. The men listened to Zumpitch but
Roger couldn’t follow the by-play. They turned back to the boys.
Colonel Von Krapnoff asked: “You
are sure Dorkoffsky was with the KSS?”
“Definitely.
In a black uniform; and with one
of those Iron Claw badges on his collar,” Roger replied.
“Iron...Claw!” the young officer
hissed. “Describe it.”
Roger did so. He even mentioned
that it had a number engraved on the reverse. The young officer shook his head
as though he could not believe it. “How could he! We trusted him,” he
said sadly.
“Perhaps it was a mistake Your
Highness,” a handsome captain in his twenties replied.
Your
Highness! Roger’s mind raced. So
the young officer with the moustache must be Prince Peter. Without thinking he
asked: “Excuse me sir, are you Prince Peter?”
The group turned in stunned
silence.
“How did you know?” snapped the Colonel
in a steely voice.
Graham spoke: “The captain there
just called him ‘Your Highness’. And you must be Colonel Von Krapnoff,
Kommandant of the Royal Guard.”
There was another astonished
silence. The Colonel visibly recoiled and blinked. Then he drew a pistol and
aimed it at Graham.
“You boys seem to know an awful
lot. How is that?”
Graham eyed the pistol but
replied without a tremor in his voice: “Because we translated a secret message
of yours which one of the KSS men had in his pocket.”
“Untersturmfuhrer Jablonski,”
Roger put in.
“Tell us. Tell us all of it,” the
Colonel snarled, shaking the pistol in Graham’s face.
Graham did so, aided by Roger who
explained how he found Jablonski’s jacket. That reminded him of his shame, and
his current need.
“Can I go to the toilet please?”
he croaked.
“Take him!” Prince Peter ordered.
The soldier with the bayoneted rifle who had been standing behind them grabbed
Roger and marched him down the road past the last Land Rover and pointed. Roger
indicated his hands were tied behind his back. The soldier clearly wasn’t going
to unbutton Roger’s fly and hold it for him.
“You’re lucky I’m not one of
those,” the soldier said with a grin. He put his rifle against a tree and drew
a pocket knife. “Don’t try anything silly,” he warned, indicating other royal
guards who were lying in the jungle watching. The soldier cut the bindings. For
a minute Roger could not use his hands. They had gone nearly black. The pain as
the circulation returned was so painful he burst into tears. He rubbed his
hands on his wrists and slowly clenched and relaxed his fingers.
Then he was shaking so much he
could not unbutton his fly for a while. He wiped tears away and was so
embarrassed by the men watching that for half a minute he could not start. At last
he managed to but he was quite upset by the time he finished.
The soldier retrieved his rifle
and motioned him to go back to where he had been sitting. He did not re-tie
Roger’s hands and Roger fervently hoped no-one would notice. Trying to pretend
he wasn’t scared he walked back and sat beside Graham.
Prince Peter looked at them and
shook his head. “So Dorkoffsky really was a traitor,” he said. “And he was our
most trusted courier! We must assume that the Archduke Paul knows all our
plans.”
Colonel von Krapnoff scowled.
“And the Australian Police Your Highness. Thanks to these interfering cadets,”
he snarled.
A tall, thin officer spoke: “We should
leave this area and disperse at once Your Highness. Then we must recast our
plans.”
“Yes Stiltz. You are right. How
long before the police arrive do you think?”
‘Adjutant
Stiltz.’
Roger realized he should have guessed it. The man was a captain and was as thin
as a stick.
Adjutant Stiltz replied, “It
depends whether they have chain saws to clear the road.
Several
hours probably.
But the real danger is that they will set up road blocks
on all the roads out of the area. We need to move at once.”
The Prince nodded agreement:
“What do you suggest?”
Colonel von Krapnoff then spoke
rapidly in their language. As he did another person joined them. Roger looked
up and noted with surprise that it was a girl. She wore a green jacket and long
green trousers but was still obviously a girl. She had been sitting in a white
4WD parked in front of the green Land Rover.
Roger stared at her in wonder.
‘She is beautiful!’ he thought. ‘The most beautiful girl I have ever seen!’ She
was only about 15 or 16 years old and had a perfect heart-shaped face, glossy
black shoulder length hair and hazel eyes.
“Why must we suddenly go?” she
asked in English. Her voice sounded like music and stirred emotions deep in
Roger’s soul. For a moment he forgot to be frightened.
“Because the police are
coming
Your Serene Highness,” Colonel von Krapnoff replied.
‘Highness!
She must be the missing Princess
Karena,’ Roger thought. ‘No, that’s silly. If she went missing in 1941 she
wouldn’t look fifteen. Still, she must be a princess.’
The Princess pointed at Roger.
“How do the police know we are here? Is it because of these boys?” she asked.
“Yes Your Highness.”
“How do they know to come here?”
Prince Peter turned to Graham: “Yes.
How do the police know to come here, in the jungle? We only arrived yesterday.”
As Graham explained the secret
message mentioning Concentration Place Cloud and the grey Mercedes with four
men in it Roger studied the prince. He couldn’t see any family resemblance
between him and the princess. Roger now noted that the prince wore a dark green
shirt under his field jacket. The shirt had white collar tabs and pinned to
them were gold and silver badges. Real gold and silver he decided, from the way
they reflected the watery sunlight. The badges were a crown surrounded by oak
or laurel leaves.
Prince Peter asked, “Yes, but how
did that tell you where Sammelplatz Wolke was?”
“Because of Leutnant Witorski,”
Graham replied.
“Ah!
Witorski.
How did he come to tell you?”
“He didn’t sir. He broke his leg
and got stuck in a cattle grid. He was unconscious. We got him out and gave him
first aid. When we searched him we found a radio signal and his map, which was
marked.”
Colonel von Krapnoff spoke loudly
in his own language, a curse or expletive from the sound of it. He bent and
pulled maps and papers out of Graham’s pockets and quickly sorted them. While
he did this Adjutant Stiltz gave rapid instructions to the other captain and
the three senior NCOs.
“You and Stegborz had better get
moving. Take the western route. Hauptman Ritnik, would you please escort the
princess to her vehicle. You and Unteroffizier Klotovich take her down to
Atherton. Go now. Zumpitch, you remain with us.”
The feldwebel who had captured
them went to his vehicle and came back. He tossed a pack at the feet of the
solid, square-faced feldwebel: “Your pack Stabb,” he explained. “We found it
lying on the road.”
‘So he is a Staff Sergeant,’
Roger decided. Zumpitch grunted thanks and walked forward, picked the pack up
and took it to the green Land Rover. He spoke to the signaller there who
climbed out with a rifle and took over guarding the two cadets. Zumpitch
climbed in and placed the earphones on his head.
The good-looking captain led the
princess to her vehicle. Roger experienced a twinge of envy. Then the fear
swamped back as Colonel von Krapnoff began to snarl. He had found the radio
signal taken off Witorski and was waving the paper at Graham.
“Did you read this?”
“Yes. We had enough German between
us,” Graham replied. Roger wished he had lied.
“So it was you and not soldiers
who broke up our ambush?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“You interfering little swine! I
should have you shot! What gives you the right to interfere in our affairs?”
Colonel von Krapnoff shouted.
“I’ll tell you what right,”
Graham replied loudly. “The Kosarian Deputy Premier is a guest in this country
and you people have no right to commit murder here. It would make Australia
look pretty poor. Besides, most of you have been living here as refugees and
migrants for years and I think that it is a very poor way to repay Australia.
So take your dirty bloody civil war somewhere else!”
Colonel von Krapnoff said nothing
for a moment but he was clearly very angry. Prince Peter looked abashed and so
did Stiltz. They began to argue in their own language and Roger guessed there
had been a strong disagreement over the ambush plan.
While this was going on commands
had been given and soldiers had been emerging from the jungle and climbing into
vehicles. Engines started and vehicles began driving off. Two went on along the
road northwards including the white 4WD. Three others, including the Land Rover
they had travelled in, drove past and turned left along a side track. That left
only the Land Rover next to them and a Toyota Landcruiser in front of that.
Roger scratched around in his memory and decided there was still another
vehicle back at the last road junction the other side of the Walsh.
‘Eight vehicles
with four or five in each.
That is about forty men,’ he calculated. He now looked around. There did not
appear to be any soldiers left in the surrounding jungle. Was there a chance of
escape? Not really he decided. There were still the prince, the colonel and
Adjutant Stiltz, all with pistols, plus the guard standing on their right
aiming his rifle at them, Zumpitch sitting in the back of the rover using the
radio but watching them, and another soldier acting as sentry further up the
track.
As the sound of the departing vehicles
died away the officers ended their argument at the insistence of Prince Peter.
“We must get going,” he said
“What about this pair?” Colonel
von Krapnoff asked.
The moment Roger had been
dreading had arrived.
“We should shoot the interfering
little shits!” rasped Zumpitch. Roger went ice-cold. Terror constricted his
stomach and chest. Zumpitch had climbed out of the Rover and held a sub-machine
gun which he pointed at Roger’s head. The muzzle seemed to grow larger and
Roger wished he could faint. His skin crawled as he tensed in terrified
anticipation.
Zumpitch gestured with his left
hand. “Get in the vehicle Lurkoff,” he ordered. The soldier guarding them moved
to obey.
At that moment Prince Peter
called out.
“Stop Stabbs Feldwebel.
There will be no
murder,” he commanded.
“But Highness they know too much.
We cannot let them go,” Zumpitch replied in a surly tone. Roger was breathing
very rapidly and felt panic rising but he found his voice: “The police already
know almost everything. Our friends have told them. Killing us won’t change
that.”