The Leader And The Damned (48 page)

'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 …'

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?'