EPISODE TWENTY-SEVEN
1732 Words
TWENTY-SEVEN
The vibrating clangour from the four great piston engines set teeth on edge and made an intolerable assault on cringing eardrums. The decibel-level Mũller calculated, must have been about that found in a boiler factory, and one, moreover, that was working on overtime rates, while the shaking cold in that cramped, instrument-crowded flight-deck was positively Siberian.
On balance, he reflected, he would have gone for the Siberian boiler factory any time because, whatever it is drawbacks, it was not liable to be shot out of the sky or crash into a mountainside which, in his present circumstances, seemed a likely enough, if not imminent contingency for all that the pilot of their Junkers Ju 52 appeared to care to the contrary.
Mũller looked away from the darkly opaque world beyond the windscreens where the wipers fought a useless battle with the driving snow and looked again at the man in left-hand captain’s seat.
Oberstleutnant Jan Bomken was as completely at home in his environment. Any comparisons with a Siberian boiler factory he would have regarded as the ravings of an unhinged mind. It appeared obvious, he found the shuddering vibration as soothing as the ministrations of the gentles of masseurs, the roar of the engines positively soporific and the ambient temperature exactly right for a man of his leisured literary tastes.
Before him at a comfortable reading distance, Mein Kampf. He turned a page.
“Großartig.”
He puffed deeply on an ancient briar that smelt like a fumigating plant.
“By heavens, the Fuhrer can write.”
He spoke to the fresh-face youngster in the co-pilot’s seat, Oberleutnant Wenger, while he broke off, fanned the smoke-laden to improve the visibility.
“Oberleutnant Wenger, you have that look of pained apprehension on your face again.”
“Yes, Oberstleutnant. No, Oberstleutnant.”
“Part of the malaise of our time, Wenger, is the young lack so many things, like appreciation of a fine pipe tobacco or faith in their commanding officers.”
He sighed heavily, carefully marked the place in his book, folded the rest away and straightened in his seat.
“You’d think a man would be entitled to some peace and quiet on his own flight-deck.”
He slid open his side-screen. An icy gust of snow-laden wind blew into the flight-deck, carrying with it the deepening roar from the engines.
Bomken grimaced and thrust his head outside, shielding his eyes with a gauntleted right hand. Five seconds later he shook his head in a dispirited fashion, screwed his eyes shut as he winced what appeared to be considerable pain, and withdrew his head.
Once he closed the screen, he brushed the snow away from his flaming red hair and twisted round to look at Mũller.
“It’s no small thing, Hauptsturmführer Mũller, to be lost in a blizzard in the night skies over East of England.”
“Not again, Oberstleutnant.”
Wenger protested.
“No man is infallible, my son.”
Mũller smiled in a polite manner.
“You mean you don’t know where we are, Oberstleutnant Bomken?”
“How should I, Hauptsturmführer Mũller?”
Bomken slid down in his seat, half-closed his eyes and yawned vastly.
“I’m only the driver. We have a navigator, and he has radar and I’ve absolutely no faith in either of them.”
“Well, well.”
Mũller shook his head.
“To think they lied to me at Luftwaffe Headquarters. They told me you’d flown some three hundred missions and knew the East Anglian coastline better than any taxi driver knows his London.”
“Gossip put about by unfriendly elements who are trying to prevent me from getting a nice safe job behind a desk in Berlin.”
Bomken glanced at his pocket-watch.
“I’ll give you exactly thirty minutes warning before we shove you cut over the dropping zone.”
A second glance at his watch and a heavy frown.
“Oberleutnant Wenger, your gross dereliction of duty is endangering the entire mission.”
“Oberstleutnant?”
An even deeper expression of apprehension filled Wenger’s face.
“I should have had my coffee exactly three minutes ago.”
“Yes, Oberstleutnant. Right away, Oberstleutnant.”
Mũller smiled again, straightened from his cramped position behind the pilots’ seats, left the flight-deck and moved aft into the Junker’s fuselage. Here in this cold, bleak and forbidding compartment, he got the impression it resembled an iron tomb.
The noise level sounded even higher here, the cold intense and the metal-ribbed walls, dripping with condensation, made no concessions whatsoever to creature comfort. Neither did the six metal-framed canvas seats bolted to the floor, functionalism gone mad.
Huddled in those six chairs sat six men, probably, Mũller reflected, the six most miserable men he had ever seen. Like himself, each of the six wore the uniform of the German Alpenkorps, identified by the edelweiss insignia worn on their sleeves and caps. Like himself, each man wore two parachutes. All were shivering constantly, stamping their feet, and beating their arms, and their frozen breath hung heavily in the ice-chill air.
Facing them, along the upper starboard side of the fuselage, ran a taut metal wire which passed over the top of the doorway. On to this wire were clipped snap-catches, wires from which led down to folded parachutes resting on top of an assortment of variously shaped bundles, the contents of only one which could be identified by the protruding ends of several pairs of skis.
The nearest parachutist, a fair-skinned blonde-haired man who had come up through the Hitler Youth Movement, looked up at Mũller’s arrival. He had never, Mũller thought, seen Karl-Heinz Friel look quite so unhappy.
“Well?”
Friel’s voice was just as unhappy as his face.
“I’ll bet he’s no more bloody idea where we are than I have.”
“He does seem to navigate his way across the North Sea to England by opening his window and sniffing the air from time to time.”
Mũller admitted.
“But I wouldn’t worry.”
He broke off as Oberleutnant Wenger entered from the rear, carrying a can of steaming coffee and enamel mugs.
“Neither would I Hauptsturmführer.”
Wenger smiled tolerantly.
“Oberstleutnant Bomken has his little ways. Coffee? Back at base he claims that he reads Mein Kampf and depends upon one of the gunners or bombers telling him from time to time where we are.”
Mũller cradled frozen hands round the coffee mug.
“Do you know where we are?”
“Of course, Hauptsturmführer.”
He seemed genuinely surprised, then nodded to the metal rungs leading to the upper machine-gun turret.
“Just nip up there, Hauptsturmführer, and look down to your right.”
Mũller lifted and enquiring eyebrow, handed over his mug, climbed the ladder and peered down to his right through the Perspex dome of the turret cupola.
For a few seconds only the DARKNESS filled his eyes then after a gradual process, far below and seen through the driving snow, he could make out the dark breaking waves of an uninviting indigo sea in the night. For a moment only Mũller’s face registered total disbelief then quickly returned to its normal dark stillness.
“Well, Well.”
He retrieved his coffee.
“All I can see is water.”
“We’re sailing down the East Coast from Scotland, Hauptsturmführer.”
“Scotland?”
I stared at him.
“I don’t remember the flight plan routing us this way. We’re miles off course.”
“Yes, Hauptsturmführer.”
Wenger was unabashed.
“Oberstleutnant Bomken says he doesn’t understand flight plans.”
He grinned, half apologetically.
“Don’t worry, Hauptsturmführer, he will get us to the drop zone on time.”
“I hope so, we are due to rendezvous Commander Hubert A. Werner and some of his crew by late afternoon.”
“We’ll make it, Hauptsturmführer.”
Before Mũller could respond, Wenger was on his way back to the flight-deck.
The Junker lurched as it hit an infrequent air pocket, Mũller grabbed a rail to steady himself and Obersturmbannführer August Dänzer, Mũller’s second-in-command, cursed fluently as the better part of a cup of scalding coffee emptied itself over his thigh.
“That’s all I need.”
Dänzer’s voice filled with overwhelming bitterness.
“It could be worse, Obersturmbannführer Dänzer.”
Friel observed morosely. He transferred his gaze to Mũller and gave him a long considering look.
“This whole set-up stinks, Hauptsturmführer.”
“I don’t think I understand.”
Hauptsturmführer Mũller spoke quietly.
“Suicidal, is what I mean, Hauptsturmführer. I mean, what a bunch of misfits we all look.”
He gestured to the three men sitting nearest to him on his left. Klaus Hergershimer, a flaxen-haired brute of a Bavarian. Max Von Ribbenstein, a short dark-haired Berliner. Both those men seemed slightly amused, and finally Hergen Gesetze, a languid aristocratic German, with the deadest eyes Mũller had ever seen.
“Why are we here on a rescue mission, Hauptsturmführer?”
“Paul Schmidt.”
“Who the hell is he, Hauptsturmführer?”
“A braver man than you by the looks of things, Friel.”
Mũller felt his temper start to bubble up inside him.
“Paul Schmidt is seconded to test-flying long-distance variants of the V-1 Fieseler Reichenberg, and it is believed to have crashed somewhere off the Suffolk coast. Wreckage has been spotted and it is believed that Schmidt somehow survived the crash and is at loose on a remote Suffolk island. He had a great many details of the V-1 Fieseler Reichenberg with him, and if that information fell into the wrong hands, then all hell would break loose.”
Friel gave no reply and none of the others spoke, but Mũller did not have to be a clairvoyant to know what happened to be in the minds of all of them. They were thinking what he was thinking, like himself they were back several hours in time and several hundred miles in space, thinking how ashen-faced he looked when his briefing had finished in that Ministry of Aviation Operations Room in the Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus building on the Wilhelmstrasse in central Berlin.
Here, Hermann Göring, looking very grave, reluctantly briefed Hauptsturmführer Mũller on what the Reichsmarschall des Grossdeutschen Reiches (Marshal of the Empire) admitted being a mission born from the sheerest desperation.
- Writer
