Colin Forbes - The Leader And The Damned

It was 2 am when the Condor transport plane carrying Jaeger, Schmidt and Hartmann landed at the aerodrome outside Vienna. A car was waiting to take them into the Austrian capital. Bormann was a strange man, but his enemies – which included almost everyone except the Fuhrer – all admitted he was a superb organizer.

Schmidt sat in the front beside the driver while Jaeger and the Abwehr officer occupied the rear seats. During the longish drive into the city Hartmann remained deep in thought. His silence irked the more extrovert SS colonel.

'How are you going to set about this impossible task?' he asked.

'Where are you going first?' countered Hartmann. 'To SS headquarters, for a consultation with Kahr. You are welcome to attend our meeting.'

'Would you think it discourteous if I asked you to drop me off at the Westbahnhof?' Hartmann suggested. 'I imagine the luggage they left behind is still there?'

'I presume so. What can that tell you?'

'I won't know till I see it, will I?' Hartmann replied. 'You're a close-mouthed bastard,' Jaeger commented amiably.

'But, if I may say so,' Schmidt added, turning round in his seat, 'a shrewd one, too…'

Schmidt sensed a certain fellow-feeling with the ex-lawyer. His methods were not unlike those Schmidt had employed as a police chief in those far-off days in Dusseldorf. It all seemed a century ago.

Hartmann alighted from the car outside, the station. It was exactly 2.30 am. He made his way to the luggage store, extracting from his wallet a document he had obtained from Bormann. It gave him powers to question anyone, regardless of rank. By order of the Fuhrer.

'I'm just going off night duty,' the baggage store supervisor remarked and his manner was surly.

'This is my authority,' Hartmann told him crisply. 'Are you the man who received the luggage impounded by the SS?'

Yes, he was the man. Yes, he could provide a description of the passenger who had deposited the luggage. Hartmann smoked his pipe and listened in silence as the supervisor described the chauffeur. It was not a positive identification but he felt convinced Lindsay had been inside that uniform. He asked to see the bags.

Hartmann spent some time carefully sifting through their contents, being careful to replace things as he found them. He was naturally tidy and both cases contained a woman's complete travelling wardrobe. The clothes were smart, very expensive. He paused when his agile fingers touched a folded Astrakhan coat and matching hat.

An Astrakhan coat and hat…' The detailed report of the rescue group in front of the Frauenkirche had mentioned a man clad in just such an outfit, the 'man' in the rear of the green Mercedes who had hauled Lindsay inside. Except that it had not been a man – it had been a woman…'

'Found any clues, Major?'

Hartmann glanced over his shoulder and saw Schmidt standing behind him. The SS officer smiled and made a friendly gesture as he spoke.

'Jaeger sent me to find out what you are up to. I was nothing loath to come – I'm equally curious…'

'The Baroness Werther – her impersonator – was at the Frauenkirche massacre. This is the coat and hat she wore – the hat doubtless well pulled down over her head. Hence no one, realized she was a woman.

She has now abandoned all her finery. What does that suggest to you, Schmidt?'

'That she has no further use for it…'

'Carry that thought to its logical conclusion,' Hartmann pressed.

'I'm road-blocked…'

'We shall find the Englishman not by concentrating on Lindsay – we must out-guess the Baroness, as I shall continue to call her. A worthy opponent, I suspect. Schmidt! She is changing her level, moving on a different plane. So far she has travelled as an aristocrat. She may be going to the other extreme – to the peasant level.'

'To confuse us? So we have the wrong description…'

'Partly that,' Hartmann agreed. His dark eyes gleamed and he reminded Schmidt of a bloodhound who has picked up the scent. 'But this fact may point to her general destination – she may have to assume a new appearance because of her surroundings. You would not resent a suggestion?'

'My God! No.'

'Warn the watchers at all bus depots and the captains of all ships plying the Danube to look for a peasant group – three men and a girl. And there is another station here, I believe…'

'The Sudbahnhof. Trains to Graz – and Yugoslavia beyond…'

'Watch that station.'

Schmidt glanced at the huge clock suspended from a girder. It was 2.45 am.

Everything in the Sudbahnhof district was worn-out, derelict – or at best shabby if a building was occupied – when you could see anything through the sour fog which clung to the area like a plague. Gaunt wrecks of buildings like huge rotting teeth loomed in the dirt-laden mist. It reminded Lindsay of a no-man's-land abandoned long ago by battle-weary armies.

Paco and Lindsay had travelled in a taxi which sagged to one side, the Monstrous synthetic fuel attachment making the vehicle look distorted. She paid off the taxi in the middle of what appeared to be a desert of rubble and waited until it vanished in the grey pall.

'We walk the rest of the way,' she said briskly, 'then if the cab driver is picked up and questioned he can't lead them to us…'

'Lead them to where?' Lindsay wondered how she knew the direction to take. 'This isn't my idea of Strauss's Vienna at all…'

'It's one of the poor districts,' she said, striding out. 'Quite possibly Hitler knew it well in his younger days. You can see how it could drive a man on to get somewhere in the world…'

They were treading across an open area of rubble when two youths loomed out of the fog. Shabbily dressed, cap-less, they had an ugly look. One carried a length of iron pipe. The youth with the pipe hoisted it to strike Lindsay's skull a shattering blow.

The Englishman stopped Paco with his left hand. He jerked up his right foot and kicked his assailant between the legs with all his strength. The youth screamed, dropped the weapon, crouched over, moaning horribly. The other youth vanished. Raising his foot again, Lindsay placed it on the shoulder of the crouched youth and shoved hard. The youth spun over backwards and sprawled among a debris of stones and broken glass. Blood oozed from his head.

'Move!' Lindsay snapped. 'And put that thing away…'

That thing was a short-bladed knife Paco had produced – Lindsay wasn't sure where from. They hurried through the night as he went on talking.

'If you knifed one of them the police would have started swarming. That we can do without…'

'I know. This way…'

'And get rid of that knife…'

'I didn't expect…'

Paco stopped in mid-sentence. She must be ruddy well played out, Lindsay thought. He knew what she had stopped herself saying: 'I didn't expect you'd cope with those two thugs…'

'You're learning fast, Lindsay.' She linked her arm through his, and a trace of the normal Paco returned as she smiled mischievously. 'You may even survive.

Now, you mustn't be able to identify this place we're staying for the night.'

A fat chance of that, Lindsay almost retorted. The three-storey building they were approaching had plaster peeling off the drab walls. In the swirling fog he made out the word Gasthof but the name which had once followed it had peeled away.

It was a slum. Torn curtains with ragged edges hung across the windows at crazy angles. Nearby he heard the muffled thump of engines shunting freight wagons. Were they that close to the Sudbahnhof? Then they were inside a gloomy hall and he shut the warped front door. An interesting contradiction – the hinges were well-oiled, making no sound.

Paco went up to a plain wooden counter behind which a gnarled old man in a threadbare green waistcoat waited. The place had a musty, dank smell mingled with stale urine. 'Were they going to spend many hours in this hell-hole?'