Spook's Gold (49 page)

For an understanding of the equine essentials, hugs and carrots to the real Polenzara, the best horse in the world.

Above all, thanks to my wife Sue for continued reading and re-reading of drafts, and her never-ending support, encouragement and love.

Sequel
SPOOK’s REVENGE
– Author’s Notes, First Chapter and Historical References

AUTHOR’S NOTES

The following is a first draft chapter of the sequel to
Spook’s Gold
. I stress that it is a draft and that the final version will be modified in content, although it will give you a general flavour of the plot.

Some of the elements may seem somewhat ‘far-fetched’; however, as was the case for
Spook’s Gold
,
Spook’s Revenge
draws heavily on real events and organisations. Those that are particularly relevant to this first chapter are detailed in the Historical References section that follows the chapter.

CHAPTER ONE

The sound of gunfire had awoken Dieter Marner early. Approximately six o’clock by his estimation, although it was difficult to be sure because his wristwatch had been taken from him many weeks ago after his capture in France.

The shots had actually been a single volley of several guns. It was a sad fact that he was too familiar with the characteristic sound of a firing squad. He had looked for any sign of activity in the garden below his barred window, but his view was very limited by the mature trees and high ornamental hedges of the gardens of the manor house in which he was imprisoned.

He remained at the window watching the birds recommence their early search for food after the brutal disturbance. It was almost difficult to watch them; he envied them their freedom, but most of all their activity and exertions. Ahead of him stretched yet another interminable day confined in this room, the minutes and hours ticking by until dark with only the basic interactions for trays of food and the humiliating ‘chamber pot’, as his captors called it. They did not even let him out to use a toilet or to empty it himself.

The scrape and bang of the hatch in the reinforced door startled him. It was far earlier than usual for breakfast. His stomach lurched with the realisation that they may have come to take him for his appointment with the execution squad. He could think of no other reason why they would be here so early. He willed his knees not to sag, to stiffen his features and to turn and stare back at ‘Eyes’, as he had dubbed the man observing him through the hatch.

Eyes would follow the same routine every time that food was brought or the empty tray collected. It struck Marner as absurd and he resisted the urge to laugh. He was clearly visible and yet Eyes always checked the entire room, as if expecting to find another person hiding in here. Or maybe they were wary of Marner having some booby trap that would spring as soon as they entered. Marner himself was prompted to scan the room again, despite the fact that he had inventoried every square centimetre of it from the moment he had been imprisoned in here and several times more in the weeks since. There was nothing that might serve as a potential weapon; the few pieces of furniture were welded steel, too heavy to lift or throw, there was nothing wooden that might be broken into splintered, jagged edges.

Finally satisfied, Eyes slammed the hatch shut and Marner heard the bolts being worked on the door. Four of them, he counted again, for the umpteenth time. As per their standard procedure, two guards stepped immediately into the room and flanked the doorway, performing their own assessment of the room and its occupant. Playing his part, Marner checked their side-arms; holstered and the holster closures snapped shut, as always. No opportunity for him to quickly pluck out a gun. The bearing of both was easy, relaxed. They were supremely confident of their ability to put him down quick and hard; he recognised the type. He had worked out that there were three teams working shifts and alternating days. No one individual had struck him as a weak link. Not one of them had responded to his attempts to strike up conversation.

Today was atypical. They were not carrying his breakfast tray, their hands were empty and this reinforced Marner’s concern, but he was distracted from his rising panic by another first. Eyes now stepped into the doorway and Marner was able to see the man in full for the first time. He had always remained outside and out of sight whilst the guards entered and exchanged trays and toilet pots. Eyes was small and wiry, older than the guards. “Follow!” he barked in his rough but serviceable German. Eyes waited until Marner moved to obey and then stepped out of the door.

Marner moved quickly and deliberately through the doorway and into the corridor. He was hoping for the opportunity to get close up to Eyes, to try to find a way to exploit any physical weakness of this individual. Also, this was his first time out of that damned cell in the entire six weeks that he had been incarcerated here, and some of his haste was simply driven by the need to get out of it. However, he found that Eyes was already ten metres ahead, two more guards in step and separating them. Marner was aware that the two that had entered his room had now fallen in two metres behind him, too far back for him to be able to make a sudden turn and strike. The two in front also had their pistols fastened in holsters.

If he had hoped to gain some information on the layout of the building, he was disappointed. They passed along a bare corridor with plain distempered walls, one window on his right giving him much the same view that he had from his room, one closed door guarded by another facsimile guard. After only twenty metres the procession stopped and Marner found himself beside an open door to his left. Looking through the doorway he could see a small room, bare but for a heavy wooden table and chairs. Seated at it, facing him, were a middle aged man and a younger woman in her early thirties. “Lieutenant Marner! There you are. Come in, come in and be seated, please.”  Marner registered, through his immediate confusion, the heavily accented and poorly conjugated French of the man. He turned to the doorway but paused before entering, looking from side to side at his flanking guards. Satisfied that they were not going to beat him to a pulp, he stepped into the room. It was only ten metres square, the same plain walls and no windows, two more guards already inside the room on either side of the door.

His assumption was that they were simply going to read to him some standard notification of his imminent execution, legal speak to salve their consciences. He still remained entirely confused as to why no one had yet tried to interrogate him. It seemed incredible that he had not been asked so much as a simple question to confirm his identity and basic personal details. Now, after keeping him in isolation and solitary confinement for weeks, they were going to dispose of him without even completing these basic steps. As a career policeman and latterly officer of the SS Kriminalpolizei, it was almost an affront to his professional sensibilities.

Just as he was formulating the determination to make a complaint, the man who was seated in front him and who continued to smile, took the initiative from him. “Come along, have a seat. We have lots to discuss.”  The tone of his voice might be mistaken for one of old acquaintances who had much to catch up on. Once Marner was seated the man spoke to the guards in English and they exited the room, closing the door.

Marner made a brief appraisal of the woman, who remained silent, glaring at him, pure hatred and loathing coming off her in waves. Uncomfortable, Marner returned his attention to the man, who picked up the conversation, tapping a nicotine-stained finger on a large, thick manila folder that lay on the table between them, “Your file says that you speak excellent French but no English. I speak basic French but no German, so we can work best in French, wouldn’t you agree?”

Looking again at the woman, Marner wondered what language she might prefer. Nothing was forthcoming on that subject. The man continued, “My name is David, and I would like to talk to you about the submarine that you were chasing, the ah…” he pulled some type-written pages from the folder, found the item he was looking for, “…the U-180.”

It was doubtful that his real name was David, nor that he needed to refer to the file to check any details. Marner categorised David’s demeanour as ‘good cop’; how and when the hostile silent woman would step in and play the bad cop counterpart remained for the moment a mystery.

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” replied Marner coolly.

The woman exploded with a snort of contempt, her hands rising up and Marner thought at first that she might be preparing to strike him. Instead she slapped the table and turned to David to speak rapidly and heatedly to him in English, gesticulating wildly with her hands, several times in Marner’s direction.

Patiently David endured her tirade, placating her slowly to silence. When he had achieved this, he turned back to Marner, “My dear Lieutenant, I’ll call you Dieter, if I may be so bold?  We have already been fully briefed by your partner, Inspector Lemele, regarding your investigation into the theft of the gold from the U-180, the murders committed by Captain Graf, and so forth. However, our primary interest is in the mission that the U-180 was undertaking at the time that you intercepted it a few weeks ago.”

Marner looked at David for several seconds, trying to read what might be behind the question and where it might be leading. “If the inspector has told you all of that, then you already know as much as I do. The U-180 is just a submarine fitted to carry cargo. I have neither knowledge of, nor interest in, the details of what it is doing. Except for the members of the crew who are complicit in a crime that I was investigating.”

Having anticipated David’s response to this to be anger or disappointment, or perhaps even another outburst from his partner, Marner was completely surprised by what seemed to be elation in David’s face and voice, “Then we clearly know far more than you do, Dieter. And it is your lucky day, because I am about to tell you what else it is carrying aside from gold bullion. This will also solve the mystery of why your own organisation was trying to catch you.”

Once more the woman roused herself and once again a furious debate broke out between them in English. Marner thought that he caught a hard accent in the woman’s voice. The source of this became clear when she eventually fell silent and David was able to explain, “Please excuse our little contretemps. We are going to take you into our confidence, although, as you can see, my colleague Ulrike does not agree.”

“Ulrike?”

“Yes, Ulrike is German. She still has a German passport, don’t you my dear?” David beamed at her scowling face. “Ulrike came here to England just prior to the outbreak of the war.”

Switching to German, Marner asked her what part of Germany she was from, but no answer was given; she just glowered back at him silently. Based on the limited facts, Marner thought it possible that she was of Jewish origin and had, like many others, fled abroad due to the growth of anti-Semitism. It would certainly explain her very apparent personal hatred for him, as an SS officer.

“Now,” continued David, “to return to the U-180. Our intelligence tells us that this particular u-boat has been selected for a very important mission. A mission that falls under the direct orders and control of Adolf Hitler himself.”  He paused to let this sink in. “So it is an incredible coincidence that the U-180 was being used by Graf and certain members of the crew to commit grand larceny. Quite astonishing, you must agree!” he smiled.

This revelation made many things suddenly clear for Marner. If the U-180 was being used for something very secret, at the orders of the Fuhrer no less, it would explain why an SD squad had been sent to arrest him at his residence in Paris. The fact that he was investigating the submarine, talking about it to his colleagues, writing about it in reports, all of that would have been extremely alarming to the high command. “Okay, I agree that it is very interesting. However, now that I am here and a prisoner of war, I do not understand what it has to do with me. Or why you are telling me all of this.”

“Dieter, it is very simple. We want you to help us find the U-180.”

Marner had roared with laughter, genuine laughter at the absurdity of what David had proposed. He detected that his amusement was almost as offensive as his uniform to Ulrike, and it was only her hostility that made him gather in his emotions and control himself.

“You have to be absolutely insane,” he enunciated carefully, as if to an imbecile. “Leaving aside the issue of how I might be of assistance to you, why on earth would you believe that I am going to help you find it?”

David smiled warmly at him, a mannerism that was growing extremely irritating to Marner. He entertained for a moment the fantasy of wiping it off of the man’s face but was pulled from his reverie when David opened the folder and withdrew a smaller dossier that Marner immediately recognised as his own personnel file. Not a copy of it, but the genuine item that was stored in the archives of the RHSA on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse in Berlin. If the objective of putting it on the table had been to impress Marner, then the goal was achieved. Quite how these people had managed to reach into that building and obtain this document, he had no idea. David opened the front jacket and idly scanned the first pages of summary information. Finally he looked up and spoke, “According to your file, you were born and raised in Berlin. Your ex-wife continues to live there, no children from your marriage that was dissolved 18
^th
May, 1942. Your parents still reside in the Charlottenburg suburb, one brother – Matthias – posted missing and presumed killed in action in North Africa.”  Now David looked up and directly into Marner’s eyes, his jocular tone eerily extinguished. “Charlottenburg is one of the central suburbs of Berlin, isn’t it?”

Concluding that these people were going to use threats of retribution against his family to coerce him, Marner was tensing to rise and grab the man, when once again David disarmed him with another change of subject. “I am going to explain to you what we know about the U-180 and how it threatens your family and your home city. It will become very apparent as to why we think that you can and will help us. Are you familiar with the term ‘nuclear’ or ‘atomic’, as-used in the context of weapons, Dieter?”