Colin Forbes - The Leader And The Damned

His voice dripped with contempt as he marched out of the room and along the corridor which led to the outside world.

It was by an equally complex communication route that the news of Lindsay's likely escape route reached London. Within hours of Hitler's ending the conference, Rudolf Roessler at his apartment in Lucerne received a signal in the special code from Woodpecker.

He immediately re-transmitted this to Cossack in Moscow, where Stalin once again summoned Beria into the Presence. Silently, he handed the signal concerning Lindsay to his secret police chief. It was his policy always to show the white-faced man with pince-nez signals from Lucy. Should anything go wrong, Stalin was then in a position to off-load the full blame on to Beria. Lucy would become a Beria operation.

'You think this Lindsay is trying to contact one of those Allied espionage missions?' Beria suggested.

'Surely that is the only possible conclusion,' Stalin remarked acidly. 'When the time is ripe they will send a special aircraft to pick him up and transport him to Algeria, then on the London. We cannot trust Tito to liquidate him, so what is the solution?'

'Your agent in London will have to see he never reaches his chief.'

'Good.' Stalin retrieved the signal from Beria's limp hand. 'On your way out, send in my personal coding officer.'

In the darkened room lit only by a cone-shaped light on his desk Stalin sat down and composed the message, phrasing it with great care. When the coding officer arrived he remained crouched over his desk as though no one had entered, finishing the job. The officer, standing rigidly to attention, saw only a hand holding the slip of paper extend itself past the light.

'Send this immediately to Savitsky at the London Embassy.'

This intricate sequence of events explains why in London the Soviet agent, Savitsky, surprised Tim Whelby by arriving first at the pub in Tottenham Court Road.

For the first time in Savitsky's experience a signal from Cossack had carried the word Urgent. The Russian was also thankful that – by pure coincidence – a routine rendezvous had previously been arranged for this particular evening. Emergency, hastily arranged, meetings were highly dangerous.

And now, so far as Savitsky was concerned, the ball had, thank God, been passed to Tim Whelby. Washington, London, the Wolf's Lair, Vienna and Moscow, life was not so very different. If you were handed a grenade with the pin out, you passed the deadly gift into other hands as swiftly as possible.

As the train from Spielfeld-Strass pulled into Maribor station Hartmann returned to his compartment to find Willy Maisel hauling down his case from the rack. The Gestapo man fastened the top button of his coat to muffle himself against the night cold.

'Not leaving, I trust?' Hartmann enquired with just the right tone of apparent interest.

'I have to keep Gruber in touch with developments which, as far as I can see, amount to zero. I can phone him from military headquarters here. By now he'll be like a cat on hot bricks to report again to Bormann.

'I think I'll stay on board this train to Zagreb,' Hartmann remarked casually as he settled into his seat and lit his pipe.

'Please yourself. I think it's a waste of time.'

Hartmann waited until Maisel had gone and then went back into the corridor and lowered the window again. He peered out along the platform and was just in time to see Paco and Lindsay board a coach near the engine.

The train had left Maribor some time earlier and was proceeding south through the night when Willy Maisel reached army headquarters, flourished his identity folder and tried to call Gruber in Vienna.

He was informed by the operator that for security reasons all calls had to pass through the headquarters in Graz. He gave his name and waited, suddenly aware that he was ravenous. An aroma of food cooking drifted up into the room where he sat. He was quite unprepared for what happened next.

'Is that Willy Maisel speaking?' a gruff voice demanded.

'Yes, I have already asked to be put through.. 'Colonel Jaeger speaking, Maisel. What are you doing in Maribor?'

'I left the train which came through from Spielfeld-Strass. I was with Major Hartmann of the Abwehr 'Put him on the line, please.'

'I said I was with him. That was about an hour ago. He stayed on the train.'

'Did he give any reason for that decision? Where is he headed for now? Is there any sign of the Englishman, Lindsay?'

The questions were fired at him as though Jaeger were issuing commands to troops prior to an attack. Maisel cursed the infernal luck which had put him in touch with the SS colonel. He had no information, so what harm was there in relaying this negative factor?

'Hartmann decided to go on to Zagreb. I have no idea why – it seemed a pointless decision. There is no sign of Lindsay…'

'Hold the line!'

Jaeger covered the mouthpiece and turned to Schmidt who stood next to him. He explained briefly the gist of the conversation. 'See what you can get out of him,' he suggested.

'Schmidt here, Maisel. Can I ask you to be very precise about the sequence of events, please? Now, what exactly did Hartmann do?'

'Nothing!' Maisel was mystified and not a little irritated. 'As the train was coming into Maribor he went into the corridor and looked out of the window. He said something about needing a breath of fresh air…'

'Which side of the train was he looking out of? The platform side?'

'Yes, that's right…'

Maisel was beginning to wonder whether he had missed something but could not fathom what the devil it might be. Why the hell didn't they get off the line and let him speak to Vienna?

'Now, please think carefully,' Schmidt continued. 'Before he went into the corridor and peered out of the window had he given any indication he was staying on the train?'

'None at all. Only after he came back. I was surprised…'

'Thank you, Maisel. I'm handing you back to the operator who will transfer you to Vienna now you are identified. All calls are monitored since the massacre at Spielfeld-Strass…'

'How many were killed..?'

'Here is the operator – goodbye, Maisel…'

Schmidt put down the receiver and looked at the Colonel. He had just taken a nip of cognac from his hip flask and offered it to his deputy who shook his head. Jaeger replaced the screw cap before he spoke.

'You put him off the track, I hope? Get anything out of him?'

'He'll be smarting over the curt way I ended the conversation – which will stop him wondering what I was getting at. He sounded exhausted, I'm glad to say.'

'That's the way I like the opposition,' Jaeger commented with some satisfaction. 'Exhausted! Now…'

'It is interesting. Hartmann looked out of the corridor window as the train was approaching the platform at Maribor. Only after that did he announce he was continuing on to Zagreb. I think he spotted someone on that platform, someone waiting to board the train…'

'And I think you could be right. That clever bastard always was a loner. The train takes a good six hours to reach Zagreb from Maribor. Why don't we steal a march on our secretive friend, Gustav Hartmann?'

'Fly direct to Zagreb from here and be waiting for him at Zagreb station when the train arrives?' Schmidt suggested.

'You're a mind-reader, my dear fellow,' Jaeger said jovially. 'So, what's keeping you? Arrange the flight and we'll leave for Zagreb at once.'

Heljec, commander of the Partisan group operating north of Zagreb, chose a deep gorge near a place called Zidani Most to ambush the train. Six foot two tall, Heljec had thick black hair, dark and wary eyes, prominent Slavic cheekbones and a strong nose and jaw.

Thirty years old, Heljec had been an engineer building dams in peacetime. Now his life was dedicated to destruction. He stood at the brink of the gorge looking down with his deputy, Vlatko Jovanovic, by his side. In his right hand Heljec held a German Schmeisser machine-pistol.