The Commissar (52 page)

It takes a very long time before Wolf and Sally are convinced that Porta is telling the truth.

Wolf looks as if he is waiting for the firing squad, and Sally looks as if he has already been hanged. Porta is eating jam with a spoon. It calms his ragged nerves.

‘We’ll need a whole lot of excavators, ‘Wolf breaks the heavy silence.

‘I can get those!’ promises Sally. ‘We’ll turn that rotten Russia inside bloody out!’

‘You’ll have to go through the front line again,’ decides Wolf. ‘And this time don’t come back without the gold!’

‘You might as well chuck it!’ says Porta, disillusioned. ‘The earth’s swallowed it down and has digested it long ago!’

‘How about that Commissar woman?’ asks Wolf, after a long silence. ‘We can’t have her running about free! She knows a lot too much, and it can’t be long before the Gestapo’s here doin’ a bit of gold-prospecting!’

‘Funny you should say that,’ smiles Porta in friendly fashion. ‘That’s just what the Commissar said when I asked
him what to do about her. Kill her, he said. Don’t let her get back! She’d talk to people she shouldn’t be talking to!’

‘I’ll send’er a gift parcel!’ Wolf smiles strangely, like Father Christmas in the snow.

‘One you die of when you open it?’ asks Sally.

‘That’s it,’ answers Wolf, and goes out to give some orders to the Chinese.

‘I do believe I’ve developed a weak heart fom all this disappointment,’ says Sally, as he climbs into the Fiesler Storch on his way back to Berlin.

‘Now we’re on speaking terms again.’ says Porta, ‘I’ve got another plan that can get us to Sweden so’s we can go fishing for salmon!’

‘Another plan,’ shouts Sally, looking scared. ‘I get closer to a heart attack every time I hear of one of your plans. But go on. What is it this time?’

‘Sable,’ whispers Porta secretively, looking around him cautiously.

‘Sable?’ asks Sally, looking blank. ‘Those things they make fur coats of for the whores? You’re surely not thinking of going into the furrier line. That’s Jew business. You’d do well to keep out of it!’

‘It’s a lot bigger than that!’ smiles Porta mysteriously. ‘My friend the Commissar let me in on it. There’s more than one kind of sable it seems, and one of the kinds is black and very rare. It’s worth ten times as much as all the other bloody sable. It’s called Barguzhinski sable, and is only found in Russia and there only in very secret places! They export only a few of ’em every third year so Uncle Joe can keep the price up for the little devils. There’s a death penalty for breakin’ the monopoly! But I’ve got a plan! We nip back through the front line and pick up an armful of females and a couple of lusty males. Then goodbye the Soviet at a hell of a lick! We hide the little beasts in some safe place and then all we’ve got to do is get ’em to fuck. Then we’re rich! Stalin has a stroke an’ his moustache falls off!’

‘And then he comes and shoots our heads off.’ Wolf continues, pessimistically.

‘Maybe that idea’s not so crazy after all, ‘Sally is thinking aloud. ‘I’ll have a look at it when I get back to the War Ministry. We’ll see what we can find out about Barguzhinski sable!’ he mumbles with increasing interest as he slams the door of the Storch.

‘Come on,’ says Wolf. ‘Let’s you and me go over and get stinking drunk. We’re rollin’ again some time tonight! So it probably won’t be long before you go on your arse for Führer, Folk and Fatherland. I’ll come over an! spit on your grave!’

‘I’ll come back an’ pee in your tea, then!’ promises Porta.

THE END

*
ADAD: Equivalent to the British AA

*
German special unit for raiding behind enemy lines.

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Polilruk:
A Russian police commissioner

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Hilfswillige: German Work Troops

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Old Viennese song