Алистер Маклин - River of Death

Darkness was falling over the ancient Grecian monastery and the first of the evening stars were beginning to twinkle in the cloudless Aegean sky. The sea was calm, the air was still and did indeed, as is so often claimed for it, smell of wine and roses. A yellow moon, almost full, had just cleared the horizon and bathed in its soft and benign light the softly rolling landscape and lent a magical quality to the otherwise rather harsh and forbidding outlines of the dark and brooding monastery which, any evidence to the contrary, slumbered on peacefully as it had done for countless centuries gone by.

At that moment, unfortunately, conditions inside the monastery could hardly be said to reflect the dream-like outer world. Magic had taken wings, no-one slumbered, peace was markedly absent, darkness had given way to a score of smoking oil torches and there was little enough around in the way of wine and roses. Eight uniformed members of the Nazi S.S. were carrying oaken chests across the flagged hallway. The brass-bound boxes were small but so heavy that it required four men to carry one of them: a sergeant supervised their operations.

Watching them were four men. Two of those were high-ranking S.S. officers: of those, one, Wolfgang von Manteuffel, a tall, thin man with cold blue eyes, was a major-general, no more than thirty-five years old: the second, Heinrich Spaatz, a thick-set, swarthy man who had apparently elected to choose a scowl as his permanent expression in life, was a colonel of about the same age. The other two watchers were monks in cowled brown habits, old proud men but now with mingled fear and pride in their eyes, eyes that never left the oaken chests. Von Manteuffel touched the sergeant with the tip of his gold-handled malacca cane which could hardly have been regulation issue to S.S. officers.

‘A spot check, I think, Sergeant.’

The sergeant gave orders to the nearest group who, not without difficulty, lowered their chest to the floor. The sergeant knelt, knocked away the retaining pins in the iron hasps and lifted the hinged lid, the screeching of the ancient metal being testimony enough to the fact that many years must have passed since this had last been done. Even in the wavering light of the malodorous oil torches the revealed contents glittered as if they were alive. The chest contained literally thousands of golden coins, so fresh and gleaming they could have been minted that same day. Von Manteuffel contemplatively stirred the coins with the tip of his cane, looked with satisfaction at the resulting iridescence, then turned to Spaatz.

‘Genuine, you would say, Heinrich?’

‘I am shocked,’ Spaatz said. He didn’t look it. ‘Shocked beyond words. The holy fathers traffic in dross?’

Von Manteuffel shook his head sadly. ‘You can’t trust anyone these days.’

With what appeared to be as much a physical effort as an exercise of will, one of the monks averted his fascinated gaze from the glittering chest and looked at von Manteuffel. He was a very thin man, very stooped, very old – he must have been nearer ninety than eighty. His face was carefully expressionless, but there wasn’t much he could do about his stricken eyes.

‘These treasures are God’s,’ he said, ‘and we have guarded them for generations. Now we have broken our trust.’

‘You can’t take all the credit for that,’ von Manteuffel said. ‘We helped. Don’t worry, we’ll look after them for you.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ Spaatz said. ‘Be of good cheer, father. We shall prove worthy of our stewardship.’

They stood in silence until the last of the treasure chests was removed, then von Manteuffel gestured towards a heavy oaken door.

‘Join your comrades. I’m sure you will be released as soon as our planes are heard to leave.’

The two old men, clearly as broken in spirit as they were in body, did as ordered, von Manteuffel closing the door behind them and sliding home the two heavy bolts. Two troopers entered, carrying a fifty-litre drum of petrol which they laid on its side close to and facing the oaken door. It was clear that they had been well briefed in advance. One trooper unscrewed the cap of the petrol drum while the other laid a trail of gunpowder to the outside doorway. More than half of the petrol gushed out on to the flags, some of it seeping under the oaken door: the trooper seemed content that the rest of the petrol should remain inside the drum. Following the departing troopers, von Manteuffel and Spaatz walked away and halted at the outside doorway. Von Manteuffel struck a match and dropped it on the gunpowder fuse: for all the expression that his face registered he could have been sitting in a church.

The airfield was only two minutes’ walk away and by the time the S.S. officers arrived there the troopers had finished loading and securing the chests aboard the two Junkers 88s, engines already running, parked side by side on the tarmac. At a word from von Manteuffel, the troopers ran forward and scrambled aboard the farther plane: von Manteuffel and Spaatz, doubtless to emphasise the superiority of the officer class, sauntered leisurely to the nearer one. Three minutes later both planes were airborne. In robbery, looting and plundering, as in all else, Teutonic efficiency shone through.

At the rear of the lead plane, beyond rows of boxes secured to painstakingly prepared racks on the floor, von Manteuffel and Spaatz sat with glasses in their hands. They appeared calm and unworried and had about them the air of men secure in the knowledge that behind them lay a job well done. Spaatz glanced casually out of a window. He had no trouble at all in locating what he knew he was bound to locate. A thousand, maybe fifteen hundred feet below the gently banking wing, a large building burnt ferociously, illuminating the landscape, shore and sea for almost half a mile around. Spaatz touched von Manteuffel on the arm and pointed. Von Manteuffel glanced through the window and almost immediately looked indifferently away.

‘War is hell,’ he said. He sipped his cognac, looted, of course, from France and touched the nearest chest with his cane. ‘Nothing but the best for our fat friend. What value would you put on our latest contribution to his coffers?’

‘I’m no expert, Wolfgang.’ Spaatz considered. ‘A hundred million deutschmarks?’

‘A conservative estimate, my dear Heinrich, very conservative. And to think he already has a thousand million overseas.’

‘I’ve heard it was more. In any event, we will not dispute the fact that the Field Marshal is a man of gargantuan appetites. You only have to look at him. Do you think he will some day look at this?’ Von Manteuffel smiled and took another sip of his cognac. ‘How long will it take to fix things, Wolfgang?’

‘How long will the Third Reich last? Weeks?’

‘Not if our beloved Führer remains as commander-in-chief.’

Spaatz looked gloomy. ‘And I, alas, am about to join him in Berlin where I shall remain to the bitter end.’

‘The very end, Heinrich?’

Spaatz grimaced. ‘A hasty amendment. Almost the bitter end.’

‘And I shall be in Wilhelmshaven.’

‘Naturally. A code word?’

Von Manteuffel pondered briefly, then said: ‘We fight to the death.’

Spaatz sipped his cognac and smiled sadly. ‘Cynicism, Wolfgang, never did become you.’

At the best of times the docks at Wilhelmshaven would have no difficulty in turning away the tourist trade. And that present moment was not the best of times. It was cold and raining and very dark. The darkness was quite understandable for the port was bracing itself for the by now inevitable attack by the R.A.F.’s Lancasters on the North Sea submarine base or what, by this time, was left of it. There was one small area of illumination, and subdued illumination at that, for it came from low-powered lamps in hooded shades. Faint though this area of light was, it still contrasted sufficiently with the total blackness around to offer marauding bombers a pinpoint identification marker for the bombardiers crouched in the noses of the planes of the surely approaching squadrons. No-one in Wilhelmshaven was feeling terribly happy about those lights, but then no-one was anxious to question the orders of the S.S. general responsible for their being switched on, especially when that general was carrying with him the personal seal of Field Marshal Goering.