• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

'Drinking,' Frankel said. 'And they have some women with them.'

'Women?'

'Girls - from the camps. Jewish, I think.'

There was a nasty silence. Berger said, nodding towards the blazing wrecks, 'Why didn't they fly those out of it while the going was good?'

'They landed here because they were low on fuel in the first place and we didn't have any. Used our last a fortnight ago.'

'No fuel,' Strasser cut in. 'But you must have something surely, and the Storch doesn't need much. Isn't that right, Berger?'

'If it was only ten gallons you wanted, I still couldn't oblige,' Frankel said.

Berger looked towards the Junkers on the far side of the hangar, the one which had crash-landed. 'What about that? Nothing in the tanks?'

'We syphoned the fuel out of her a couple of weeks ago.' Frankel hesitated. 'There could be a few gallons left, but not enough to get you anywhere.'

There was a sudden burst of laughter and singing from the huts. Ritter said to Berger, 'Am I right in assuming that a workhorse like the Fieseler Storch doesn't necessarily need high-octane aviation spirit to be able to fly?'

'No. She'll function on stuff a lot more crude than that. Reduced performance, of course.'

Ritter nodded towards the huts. 'Four trucks down there. I should think their tanks between them would hold forty or fifty gallons. Would it do?'

'I don't see why not,' Berger said. 'Especially if we can syphon a few gallons out of the Junkers to mix with it.'

Ritter said to Frankel, 'All right?'

The Oberleutnant nodded. 'As far as I'm concerned. But the gentlemen of the Einsatzgruppen may have other ideas.'

Strasser said, 'We are on a special mission of vital importance to the Reich. My orders are signed by the Fuhrer himself.'

'Sorry, Mein Herr,' Frankel said, 'but strange things are happening in Germany today. There are actually people around for whom that kind of talk doesn't cut much ice. I suspect that's particularly true of these characters.'

'Then we must change their minds for them,' Ritter said. 'How many are there?'

'Thirty or so.'

'Good. Put a couple of your men to the task of syphoning the JU. Send the rest to the trucks. I'll deal with these -' here he hesitated. 'These gentlemen of the Einsatzgruppen.' He turned to Strasser. 'You agree?'

Strasser smiled slightly. 'My dear Ritter, I wouldn't miss it for anything.'

There was no one at the trucks, no guard at the steps leading up to the door of the mess hall as Ritter marched briskly across the compound, Strasser a pace behind his left shoulder.

'I must be mad,' Strasser said.

'Oh, I don't know. Like we used to say about those chairborne bastards at HQ, it does a man good to get up off his backside occasionally and go up front to see what it's like for the ordinary troops. A little action and passion for you, Reichsleiter.'

He paused at the bottom of the steps to adjust his gloves. Strasser said, 'Why do you call me that, Major?'

'You mean I'm mistaken?'

'To the best of my knowledge, Reichsleiter Martin Bormann is at present in his office in the Fuhrerbunker in Berlin. Even in this day and age, it would take a rather large miracle for a man to be in two places at once.'

'Simple enough if there were two of him.'

'Which would raise the problem of who is real and who is only the image in the mirror,' Strasser said. 'A neat point, but relevant, I think you'll agree.'

'True,' Ritter said. 'And perhaps in the final analysis, an academic point only.' He smiled ironically. 'Shall we go in now?'

He opened the door and stepped into the light. At first he and Strasser went completely unnoticed, which was hardly surprising for the men who crowded the tables before them were mostly drunk. There were perhaps a dozen girls huddled into a corner at the far end of the room - hair unkempt, tattered clothes, faces grimy with dirt. In fact, the faces were the most interesting feature about them, the eyes dull, totally without hope, the look of trapped animals waiting for the butcher's knife.

There was a burly