Colin Forbes - The Leader And The Damned

'Nothing! Nothing at all! They are staying at hotels in Berne, in Geneva, in Basel. Not Lucerne as far as we know, thank God! They are so obviously waiting, Hans!'

Hausamann placed a pencil between his teeth, revolved it, and then asked: 'Waiting for what?'

'Hans, that is the hell of it. I don't know! It all smells of Schellenberg, or some devious master-plan

'You could kick them all out,' Hausamann observed. It was what he would have done.

'Then they send in a fresh detachment! Maybe next time we don't track them all. Maybe they slip through the net and we don't know they're here. Now that, Hans, would be very dangerous…'

'What could Schellenberg be up to at this stage of the game?'

'Another development has taken place which I don't like…'

Masson kept pacing round the room as though staying in one place for more than a few seconds was anathema. Hausamann could never recall seeing him so agitated.

'You know what this development is, Hans? Schellenberg sent me a personal message through Gisevius, the German Vice-Consul. He says he may wish to meet me very shortly – preferably on Swiss soil. It's nerve warfare. Or is it? Has he some ace concealed up his sleeve…'

'Wait for him to play it…'

Masson was still not listening. Hausamann would have bet a large sum his visitor had hardly registered a word said to him.

'I'm sure all this concerns Lucy in some way, Hans. I know my Schellenberg. If he ever finds out that we are protecting the man sending the German order of battle to the Kremlin we might as well take straight to the mountains. The Wehrmacht will kick in our front door the following day…'

'What I have never been able to work out,' Hausamann began briskly, deliberately changing the subject, 'is why Woodpecker routes his signals via Lucy. Why not radio direct to Moscow?'

'That is something which has always puzzled me,' Masson replied. 'I'm probably worrying too much. Schellenberg himself may never make the connection.'

'You know, Schaub,' Schellenberg remarked to his aide in his Berlin office, 'I think I must be wrong about this Swiss thing. They would never dare to let anyone act as a post office to re-transmit our Soviet spy's signals to the Russians. The line Meyer drew on his map went through Munich…'

'You think Munich is his headquarters?' Schaub enquired.

'When Meyer comes up with the solution I think the answer may well be Munich, or somewhere outside the city. Now we must emulate the infinite patience of our excellent Meyer so let us turn our attention to other business, as the Fuhrer would say…'

Neither Intelligence chief – Roger Masson or Walter Schellenberg – dreamed how long ago the communications system had been planned. Lucy – RR – was, in fact, acting as a post office for the onward transmission of signals between Woodpecker and Moscow in both directions.

In Soviet Intelligence jargon, Lucy was a cul-de-sac. A dead end. In case of emergency. Should the German monitors ever locate Lucy it would divert their attention from the original source of the signals – Woodpecker, operating from the highest level inside the Nazi apparatus.

This diversionary device had been planned so long ago – way back in the 1930s when Yagoda held Beria's post as head of the Ministry for State Security.

The Soviets had sown so many seeds in so many lands. Some, as they foresaw, fell on stony ground and came to nothing. It was the seeds which flourished that poisoned the wells of the West. Tim Whelby, burrowing his way upwards in London with his charm and habit of listening often and saying little. Woodpecker, Yagoda's crowning glory, scaling the summits in Hitler's Germany…

'Oh, I don't know about that,' said Len Reader, 'he's just out of sorts. Not up to this kind of lark. He's one of the blue-eyed pilots from 1940. That was a million years ago – the Battle of Britain. Maybe he needs a woman,' he added with a wink.

'You bastard.,.!'

Paco's response was venomous. Crouched down beside Lindsay she had been dabbing the Englishman's feverish forehead with a cold damp cloth. Standing up suddenly, she drew back her right hand to slap Reader's face. He grasped her wrist in mid- swing and grinned.

'Don't tell me you've gone soppy over him, because I won't swallow that one. You're a real woman, you need a real man…'

'You are interfering with my patient…' The mild voice spoke from the entrance to the abandoned hovel. Reader swung round and faced Dr Macek who went on smiling as he regarded the Englishman through his rimless glasses. 'That I can't allow. You realize if I summon Heljec I can have you shot? Sorry to put it in such crude terms…'

'Bugger the lot of you creeps…'

Reader let go of Paco, his face flushed with annoyance. He walked out quickly, still holding the sten gun.

'We've just got rid of an expert in crude terms,

Paco said as she massaged her wrist where Reader had gripped her. 'I said at the beginning I didn't like that man…'

'And how is our patient?' Macek enquired, coming forward and frowning as he looked down at Lindsay who lay with his eyes closed on a makeshift straw palliasse. 'Sweating like a pig as they say. Unfortunate phrase…'

Paco waited while Macek examined the Englishman. They were many miles, many weeks, away from the gorge where Colonel Jaeger had turned the tables on Heljec. Lindsay's glandular fever had grown steadily worse. He had become so weak and feverish a makeshift stretcher had been cobbled together at Macek's insistence and two Partisans carried him.

Their new temporary headquarters – one of a recent dozen – was a village of single-storey stone houses of the poorest kind. Perched halfway up the side of a mountain in Bosnia it rose in a series of steps, roof upon roof. Abandoned by the inhabitants who had fled before the advance of a German column, it was cautiously re-occupied by Heljec's Partisans.

By now they had made up the numbers lost in the firelight with Jaeger. In his more conscious moments Lindsay had seen the new men coming in. It was a weird phenomenon – they seemed to materialize out of nowhere. He had commented on it to Paco.

'Heljec has a reputation as an aggressive leader who never gives up,' she had replied wearily. 'So they come from scores of miles to find him, to join him as long as they have weapons. Weapons and ammunition are the Danegeld you need for him to accept you.'

Gustav Hartmann had been with them that night. He joined in the conversation. Unusually, he seemed depressed.

'They enjoy it, you see, Lindsay. Fighting. Killing It has been going on for centuries in this accursed cesspit of Europe. They don't mind who they fight – just so long as the killing goes on. Read the history of the Balkans. Short of an enemy, they fight themselves. Croat against Serb, and so on. Tonight the news for you is good, for me it is bad, for all three of us it is terrible…'

'I don't understand,' said Paco.

By now they had come together almost as a small group of intimates. Lindsay, the Englishman; Hartmann, the German; and Paco, part-English, part-Serb. Dr Macek was not yet a fully paid-up member of the club, but he had visitor's rights.

'Reader,' Hartmann explained, 'brilliantly hides his transceiver by night and transports it by day on one of the mules. He has bribed the mule-train driver with gold. He keeps in touch with the outside world.

Stalin has driven back the Wehrmacht along the whole front. So, Lindsay, for you it is official good news. For me it is official bad news. You see?'

'No, I don't,' said Paco. 'You ended up by saying that for all three of us it is terrible…'

'You believe in crystal balls?'

Hartmann took out his pipe and sucked at it enviously. There was no question of lighting it. Heljec had shot one of his own men who had started a bonfire to warm his freezing hands when the temperature had dropped after nightfall.