James Rouch - Body Count

This one was asleep standing up. Confused, he shook himself awake and pressed a signal bell. The massive slab of steel slid aside to reveal an airlock.

There was another pause, while the outer door closed and the air was sampled for contamination. Then the inner door, of less substantial construction, glided silently into its recess.

It opened to reveal a long, low-ceilinged corridor. Many rooms led off of it. Some they passed were open. Revell saw a telephone exchange, radio and telex equipment, a kitchen, and even a small gymnasium. Shower and rest rooms added to the impression that the facility had been fitted out very thoroughly.

Leaving Ackerman in the corridor, Revell was shown into a large room with map-lined walls. On shelves running below them were banks of telephones. Not too many of them were visible though. The room was filled with staff officers from a host of rear echelon units, all of them engaged in noisy debate.

A short, fat civilian broke from an arguing huddle around a table and greeted the major.

“I’m Franz Gebert, Mayor of Munich while it and I both still exist. Come with me, Major. It was only by luck we found you. Do you know, you’re the only combat commander we can find in the whole city?”

“That I can hardly believe.” Making a quick estimate, Revell reckoned there had to be at least six generals and the same number of colonels in the room.

“Take my word for it. This lot might be great with battalions of packing cases and brigades of filing cabinets, but I don’t think one of them has ever heard a shot fired in anger.” Gebert mopped his face. He was perspiring even though the air-conditioning was working full blast, sending draughts of chill air through the complex.

“Did you have any difficulty getting here?”

“One rooftop sniper. Your own sentries shot one of our escort.”

“Nerves, Major, nerves. When, if this mess can be sorted out, we may find we’ve killed greater numbers of each other than we have of the enemy.”

Revell took an immediate liking to the little German, with his abrupt no-nonsense style. After the reception at the rear of the building, the sleeping air-lock sentry, and the confusion of the room, the mayor shone like a ray of hope.

“What sort of mess do you have? All I’ve been able to gather so far is that a few commie agents and sympathizers are on the rampage.”

“It’s worse than that. How much worse we’re only just beginning to discover.”

“There’s someone I want you to meet.” Gebert towed Revell across the room. On the way they passed two generals in heated conversation.

“…And there’s a tank repair workshop at Fursten-feldbruck. Always a few sitting about on trailers, waiting to be shipped back to the front. A squadron of Leopards, that’ll do the trick. Soon blast them out…”

“…take too long, too much collateral damage. No, I say evacuate the city. Clear out all the civvies, then give the place a good drenching in Sarin, or any of the nerve gasses. That’ll winkle out the snipers…”

The mayor looked at Revell to see if he had heard, and shook his head. “I’ve been listening to that sort of rubbish for the last hour. And those are bright ideas compared with some. This is Karl Stadler, our chief of police. He’ll fill you in on the situation.”

“The fires you probably know about.” Stadler wasted no time with pleasantries. “There’s a ring of them, right around the city centre. Four here, much closer in, and two at either end of the English park.”

“Significant?” Revell didn’t need to look at a wall map to visualize the picture. “We didn’t realize so at first. The fire service resources were stretched. Compared with other outbreaks, these four were relatively unimportant. Also they were buildings that stood alone. No other property was immediately threatened. There were a lot of hoax calls early on, our few pumps were dashing about to military headquarters, art galleries, gas stations, hospitals, high-priority stuff like that. So, I’d say that in those circumstances, a good case could be made for our fire chiefs’ decision to let them burn themselves out.”

“We’ll be going into that at another time, Karl.” The mayor had been quick to see that line of discussion terminated. Revell could see why no representative of the fire service was in on the briefing.

“In any event, when the air-raid alert was sounded, the blackout drill went perfectly, but those damned things were still going strong.”

“No Warpac aircraft homing on the city would have needed visible markers like those. Not with the sort of navigation equipment that they’re fitted with.”

“No,” Stadler nodded in agreement. “No, aircraft wouldn’t. They had to serve another purpose. We believe they were intended, to mark a landing area.”

“Paratroops, Major. Warpac paratroops… I’m sorry, Karl,” Gebert apologized. “Do go on.”

“The Soviets had a few bombers stooging about right on the western borders of the Zone. That was close enough to trigger our alert. After they’d kept it up for a while, they hit our radars with a spot of jamming. We soon got the measure of that, but while our screens were down they sent one of their big transports in on a fast sweep right over the city.”

“No interception, no anti-aircraft fire?”

“None, Major. Surprise, plus some sabotage, plus the fact that our defences have been absolutely stripped to the bone to bolster more active fronts are the main reasons, I imagine.”

Still Revell found it hard to see what the enemy could gain by so limited an operation.

“How come, with all this in the pipeline, neither the police nor the intelligence services got wind of what was cooking? Activating sleepers on this scale must have caused some ripples.”

Stadler stuck his hands deep into his pockets and looked hard at the floor. “I regret to say that every week in Munich, we suffer at least twenty identifiable major acts of sabotage. Most are aimed at industrial production or the public utilities. Very likely twice that number are attempted but fail for various reasons. Also, there must be others that are so cleverly done that we can not be certain that we are not looking at genuine machinery breakdowns.”

“We think there may be as many as one hundred and fifty communist agents active in the city. How many sleepers, deep-cover agents, there may be, we can only hazard a guess. Perhaps twice that number, as we are a university town.” For butting in again, Gebert threw a mute look of apology at Stadler.

“But to get-all this set up…” Revell persisted. “After some earlier successes by my department, the Russians have adopted a new system for initiating and triggering these various acts.” Stadler looked at the map, imagining what it would look like if a pin were inserted for each confirmed act of sabotage in the last two years. There was such a map in his office. He kept it locked from sight.

“Their agents get their tasks from a controller. Usually that’s by a dead-letter box. There must be so many of them in the city as to almost parallel our own postal service. So, they pick up their instructions and make their preparations, construct a bomb or whatever it may be. The order to proceed with the operation they get by telephone. Sometimes they have as little as an hour’s notice.”

Revell could see the problem. “So, unless you pick up and successfully interrogate a suspect between the time he gets the go-ahead and actually does the deed…”

“Precisely. Pick them up before they get the go-ahead, and all we find out is that something is going to happen, we can’t find out when because they won’t know themselves. We have little chance of discovering what is happening even in the near future.”