Winner Lose All Page 21

  If he was not certain before, Scanlon now knew he had been right to drag the Chief Inspector along. The man was in bad need of a long drop at the end of a short rope, and Scanlon intended to be there when it happened. For now, though, he drove on, concentrating on the twisting, hundred-mile trek to Bayreuth. That was their first stop on the route to Bavaria where they would meet the other two trucks, and they had to be there by noon. The dark highway rolled through miles of barren agricultural land and passed through the small towns of Zeitz, Gera, and Hof. As Scanlon looked across the muddy farm fields, he knew that with no seed, no trucks or tractors, and no farmers to work them, very little would be planted in Germany this spring except dead bodies and flying steel; and it would be years before they harvested anything but grief.

  Twenty minutes farther down the road, Scanlon slowed and pulled over onto the broad, grassy shoulder. The time had come to get rid of the sentry, he thought. However, if the American was waiting for the right opportunity, so was the young man. As soon as the Maybach drove onto the road shoulder and slowed, the sentry threw himself on Von Lindemann, shoving the Major’s arm aside before he could raise the Luger and fire. While they wrestled desperately for the gun, Scanlon slammed on the brakes. The big car rocked forward and then back, breaking the sentry’s grip on Von Lindemann’s arm and tossing the sentry, Raeder, his daughter, and Dietrich into a pile on the rear floor. Scanlon quickly turned and pointed the muzzle of his own pistol at the sentry’s head.

  “Stop!” he commanded, and the young man instantly froze. “Get out of the car! You too, Otto, get out, now!”

  Scanlon quickly marched the sentry and the Chief Inspector into the muddy field next to the road. “Down on the ground, both of you,” he said as he shoved them both to their knees in a cold mud puddle. Pressing the Luger against the back of Dietrich’s head, he added, “I don’t need any more distractions, Otto. Do you have any last smart remarks for the audience?”

  “Now, Edward,” Dietrich said as he began to shake, “you — you will not shoot me like this. You are above all that.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m exactly like you, Otto. So why shouldn’t I? You would,” Scanlon answered as he jabbed Dietrich even harder with the pistol. “After all, it was your big idea back there, wasn’t it? It wasn’t this kid’s. However, since I know you don’t want him on your conscience, I’m going to shoot you, not him.”

  “Edward, we both know you will not do that,” Dietrich said, trying to sound confident as his plan came apart at the seams.

  “No? Isn’t this how the Gestapo does it? From behind, kneeling, with one bullet to the back of the head?” Scanlon pulled back on the receiver and a fresh bullet seated itself in the chamber with an unmistakably loud “Click, Click.” Suddenly, for the second time that night, Otto Dietrich found himself in uncharted territory at the wrong end of a gun. The silence was terrifying until Scanlon pulled the trigger. The Luger was only an inch or two from the side of Dietrich’s head and the 9-millimeter blast was deafening. The bullet ripped past Dietrich and buried itself in the ground as the Chief Inspector collapsed in the mud, sobbing.

  “You’re pathetic, Otto. You convinced this kid that it was his patriotic duty, and you got him to take all the risks, didn’t you? If he was killed in the process, so what? You’d just try to con somebody else, wouldn’t you?” Disgusted, he turned to the thoroughly shaken sentry. “Pick this garbage up and throw him back in the car.” The young man grabbed Dietrich under his arms, dragged him back to the Maybach, and shoved him inside. With Dietrich slumped in a muddy heap in the corner of the rear seat, Scanlon motioned for the kid to move away from the car. “Now, strip,” Scanlon ordered him. “Take your clothes off, all of them.”

  The sentry blinked for a moment but Scanlon poked him with the hard barrel of the pistol and he quickly shed his uniform. “The boots, too, everything,” Scanlon said and the sentry soon found himself stark naked with cold mud oozing up between his toes. That would sap the courage from even the heartiest man. His knees were knocking and he was holding his hands over his genitals, expecting to be shot at any moment.

  “Now run,” Scanlon ordered as he pointed the pistol at the sentry’s head. “I’ll count to ten before I start shooting so you’d better be out of range by then.”

  The sentry stared at him with round, white eyes. He took a first, tentative step backward and then turned and ran. He slipped and slid in the mud, fell, but scrambled back to his feet, covered with the dark ooze. His bare white flesh shone in the moonlight as he slogged his way across the open field, heading toward the wood line on the far side.

  Paul Von Lindemann turned toward Scanlon and smiled. “For a moment, I actually thought you might shoot them both.”

  “Dietrich? I almost did. But the kid? It wasn’t his fault; it was Dietrich’s.”

  “You think it wise turning the lad loose like that?”

  “He’s no threat, Paul,” Scanlon laughed as he watched the muddy white streak disappear into the trees on the far side of the field. “He has no papers and no uniform. Maybe he’ll try to find a house he can break into to steal some clothes. Even so, it will take him a day or two to get up the nerve to approach anyone. By then, it won’t matter, so let’s get out of here. We have got less than six hours to reach Bayreuth.”

  As they turned back to the car and looked at the three thoroughly shaken faces in the rear seat, Paul Von Lindemann said to Christina Raeder, “My deepest apologies, Fraulein. It troubles me to see you subjected to these indignities.”

  “I appreciate your concern, but my father and I have no need of your assistance, Major,” she answered indignantly.

  “You will if the Russians get their hands on you,” Scanlon added. “It seems your father is more trusting of the Bolsheviks than we are.”

  She refused to admit he was right but as Scanlon caught her eyes in the rear view mirror, he saw doubt creeping in. He started the car and pressed the accelerator to the floor. The engine roared as Bromley’s words rang in his ears again. A milk run, he called it. You are Bo Peep, and all you need to worry your little head about are those bleeding Jerry sheep of yours." Right on the mark as usual, Colonel. But I forgot, what was that last pearl of wisdom you offered me? If the deal goes sour, kill them. Kill the lot of them!

  Well, you had that part right, Scanlon consoled himself.

  South of Leipzig, Hanni drove the small, gray Luftwaffe coupe as fast as she dared on the twisting country road. It was dark, the road was narrow and badly rutted, and she had begun the trip with a sense of dread. She knew precisely what she had to do and what was at stake. It was Edward or her father. That cruel, stark choice was tearing her apart but the thought that she could lose them both was even worse. Part of the tension was because she was not very good at driving an automobile. She had driven tractors on a collective farm, Red Army trucks, city buses in Moscow, even a T-34 tank, but she had scant experience with an automobile. Fortunately, this was a very small one. The sun would be up in an hour, though, and she wanted to be as far away from Leipzig as she could get, so she pushed the car even faster. As she sped around the next curve at too great a speed, like Edward before her, she found herself face-to-face with the same roadblock manned by the militia and the Gestapo.

  “It appears you and I shall get a chance to test my penmanship on those travel passes sooner than I had hoped,” Horstmann said anxiously.

  “Keep your hand on your pistol in case you fail the final exam, old man,” she warned, as two men in black leather overcoats approached the car.

  “Fraulein.” The first man touched his hat brim and leered in at her. “It is not safe for a young woman to be driving about the countryside so late at night.”

  He held out his hand, and she gave him their papers. “My father and I are heading south to meet my husband,” she offered. “Perhaps you saw them come through here earlier? They were driving a big black car. It would be very hard to miss.” As she spoke, she noticed a change in the man’s expressi
on the instant she mentioned the car. “Then you did see them?” she pressed.

  “Yes, several hours ago. That was Inspector Dietrich’s car,” the man conceded as the white beam of his flashlight ranged up and down Georg Horstmann and across the empty rear seat of the car. “You have no luggage, Fraulein. We do not find too many people traveling so light these days.”

  “Light? I am afraid we have nothing left,” she answered innocently. “We lost it all in a bombing raid a few days ago. Papa and I still have each other, however. Don’t we, Papa?” She smiled benignly at the old man sitting in the passenger seat next to her.

  “And one on the way?” the Gestapo agent asked suspiciously.

  Hanni’s head snapped around as she stared up at the man.

  “Your coat,” the man answered as he shone his light beam on the ample middle revealed under her bulky coat.

  “Oh, uh… yes,” she quickly smiled as she patted the Luger and extra magazines lying in her lap beneath the thick wool coat. “That is very observant of you, officer.”

  “It is my job, madam.” He nodded with a self-satisfied smile.

  “You say you saw their car pass through here a few hours ago, and it was the Chief Inspector’s?” she asked. “Then we had better hurry.”

  “Yes.” The guard’s smile began to fade. “The old boy was asleep in the back seat, so I let them pass through. Let me see,” the guard mused. “As I recall, the driver was a clever fellow, a Luftwaffe Captain with black hair.”

  “Then you met my husband.” She tried the innocent smile again.

  “Yes, I believe I did,” the Gestapo man said as the corners of his mouth turned up. “I will not detain you any longer, given your delicate condition, madam. When you next see your husband, tell him to swing back by if he is in the area. I would love to have the opportunity to talk to him again — without the Chief Inspector around.”

  He handed her the papers and she drove away without saying another word to the man, all too aware that Georg Horstmann had been watching her eyes the entire time with his hand on the pistol inside his coat.

  “Edward seems to have that effect on Gestapo agents,” Horstmann said with a chuckle as they made it around the next curve.

  “Yes, and he will surely get us both killed.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Moscow

  Breathless, Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria, the Minister of the Peoples Commissariat for Internal Affairs, Deputy Prime Minister, and Marshal of the Soviet Union, dashed through the door of Stalin’s small, dark office as he heard his master’s angry voice bellowing for him, “Where are they, Lavrenti Pavlovich? I want them. Where are they, and where are you, damn your Georgian hide!”

  It was nearly 4:00 a.m. The sun barely set and rose early in Moscow in the spring. Slivers of bright light were already knifing through the gaps in the thick blackout curtains on the windows but it was unlikely that the premier of the Soviet Union noticed them. He sat at his desk in a coarse peasant’s smock, unshaven, slumped forward on his elbows. Three vodka bottles stood in front of him, two of which were already empty. “Where are they, Beria? Damn you to hell!” he growled angrily. “Where are those bastard German scientists you promised me?”

  As his close circle of underlings knew all too well, the later the hour became, the more Stalin drank, and the more paranoid and vindictive he became. Tonight, his words were slurred, his eyes were angry slits, and Beria was terrified. This time, The Great One was not testing or playing games; he was raging drunk and in one of his foulest moods.

  “I can feel him!” Stalin seethed. “Churchill is gnawing at my guts like a beady-eyed rat, but still you do nothing to stop him. He is toying with us, laughing at me at this very moment, Beria. I can feel him.” Stalin slammed a fist on the desk and the bottles jumped. “Must I wait until British jet airplanes are flying over the Kremlin before you do something, Beria? Must I wait until their bombs are exploding in Red Square?”

  “No, Koba, I…”

  Stalin raised his head and let his eyes burn two painful holes through his short, plump policeman. “You shake like a leaf, Beria.” Stalin pointed a stubby finger at him. “What are you afraid I will learn? What are you hiding from me, you fat cockroach?”

  “Nothing, Comrade Stalin, nothing, I swear,” Beria vehemently denied the accusation, knowing Stalin’s spies were everywhere. The man had spies watching the spies, and he had spies watching the spymaster. Beria knew his own office and telephones had listening devices hidden in them. If Stalin heard so much as a whisper that Lavrenti Beria was disloyal or plotting against him, he would have him shot within the hour. However, as odd as it may sound to outsiders, if the big man continued to threaten and bully him, that was actually a good sign. It meant that Stalin had nothing on him. Not yet, anyway, Beria reminded himself as he breathed a momentary sigh of relief. God help the man to whom Stalin was polite. He was surely headed to the basement of the Lubyanka.

  “I know this fellow Hitler too,” Stalin said as he splashed still more vodka into his glass. “I have dealt with him before. He is a snake. He might be cornered, but I know he is maneuvering right now, bargaining for a separate peace with the British.”

  “That fascist dog!”

  Stalin locked his eyes on Beria’s anew. He was never interested in other men’s opinions, and he obviously had no interest in Beria’s. “Hitler is not the one who is behind this business. It is that devil Churchill. I know him even better. He will strike a deal with Hitler, grab those scientists from under your very nose, and leave you holding the bag,” Stalin sneered. “And that bag will end up containing your own head if you are not careful.”

  “But, Comrade Stalin,” Beria pleaded, “the agent they sent is an American. He is not British.”

  Stalin belched with a painful grimace. “Nonsense. I went eye-to-eye with Roosevelt at Yalta. He is a senile old woman now, a worn-out cripple in a wheelchair. It is that bastard Churchill who is pulling all the strings.”

  “Yes, Comrade Stalin, I see.”

  Stalin tipped his head back, downed the rest of the vodka in one long gulp, and threw the bottle in the fireplace with a loud, demonstrative Smash! “I want those jet airplanes, Beria. I want the plans and I want the men who drew them. Do you hear me?”

  “I have my very best people on it,” Beria pleaded. “I heard from Leipzig this very evening. Those airplane designers are almost in their grasp now.”

  “Your very best people, Beria? And almost?” Stalin’s voice seemed to slither out across the desk and wrap itself around Beria, suffocating and squeezing the life out of him. “These people of yours, these agents, tell me who they are. Russians? Gypsies? Armenians? Who?”

  Beria mopped his brow and tried to think. “They are Germans,” he finally admitted.

  “Germans!” Stalin spat on the floor. “Turning on their own countrymen? I hate traitors, Beria. I hate them worst of all. How much are we paying these German vermin of yours?”

  “Nothing, Koba. They are committed NKVD agents, local party members since long before the war… and Jews,” he finally admitted as his voice dropped to a whisper.

  Stalin glared at his secret police chief as if he were a disobedient child. “Did I hear you say they were Jews, Beria? Jews? Working for free? Then they are the same kind of idealistic trash that ran with Trotsky and Zinoviev — internationalists, ‘socialist’ reactionaries, unreliable double agents, and none of them can be trusted.” Stalin leaned across the desk and pointed an accusing finger at him. “When this business is done, I want them shot, all of them.”

  “Of course, Koba. I was only using them until…”

  “Shoot them!” Stalin went on, ignoring his spy chief. “If you do not, they will surely put a bullet in both of us one day.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Bayreuth, Bavaria

  It was shortly after noon when Scanlon drove the powerful Maybach into the center of Bayreuth. The two trucks from Volkenrode sat waiting for them in front of the
Festspielhaus, the large concert hall which dominated the center of the small city. Scanlon pulled in behind the rear truck, where he saw Eugen Bracht pacing nervously up and down the sidewalk, deep in thought. Emil Nossing sat on the running board of the lead truck, looking relaxed and investing his time in studying a road map. Rudy Mannfried, on the other hand, lay sprawled across its tailgate like a large cat napping in the sun. If Rudy was sleeping, however, it did not take him long to react to the throaty roar of the Maybach’s big twelve-cylinder engine.

  “My God, it is good to see you,” Rudy gushed as he rolled off the tailgate and ran to the car, obviously referring to Christina Raeder. He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her tight as she got out. “I was beginning to think you would never get here, little one,” he said.

  She lowered her head and turned her eyes away, embarrassed to be the center of attention. “It was a… a very difficult trip, Rudy” was all she would say.

  “A trip you never should have made,” Rudy replied, wagging his finger at her. “You left without as much as a good-bye for your portly old friend.”

  “I am sorry,” she answered, looking confused and guilty. “Truly, I am.”

  “Well, now that you’ve come to your senses, all is forgiven,” he beamed as he released her. “Believe me, you would not have liked it in Russia. A steady diet of borscht and Mussorgsky would turn a delicate little stomach like yours, accustomed as it is to sacher torte and Puccini. Blah!” He chortled. “It is a dark land of boiled cabbage and potatoes with tea served in dirty glasses, and winters that would frost your little knickers. It is not for you, little one; it is not for you.”

  Christina’s lips formed a thin smile as she finally looked up at the fat weapons expert. By then, the others had gotten out of the big touring car and joined them in the street.

  “Five minutes to stretch, then everyone in the trucks, please. We must be on our way,” Paul Von Lindemann reminded them. “It is over fifty miles to Nuremberg, and we cannot waste a minute if we hope to get through the city before nightfall.”