The Folks at Fifty-Eight (33 page)

They were fourteen faithful comrades from a hundred previous drops, and more scrapes and battles than he cared to recall. They had been together since Leningrad in ‘43. Some had been with him since long before that; the old Seventh Flieger, the first of the Fallschirmjäger. They were men he trusted with his life. They wouldn’t let him down; they never had. Carl Strieder didn’t believe they ever would.

He checked the MP40, and smiled again when he saw the others nudge one another and grin. Before any action he always checked it every ten minutes, and they always grinned at his caution. Peter Lischka had once called it compulsiveness, but then Peter knew all about that sort of thing. The rest just grinned and shrugged, and called it plain old-fashioned craziness. Carl didn’t know why he checked the weapon so often. After all, there wasn’t all that much in the MP40 to check. He just knew he felt better doing it.

After the carnage of Monte Cassino the rest of the Fallschirmjäger had retreated north, up through the Italian peninsula, towards the Gothic Line. Many gave up at Imola, but not Carl and his men. They had gone north and crossed the Apennines with the rest, but instead of surrendering, had kept going north and west across the Po Valley. After that, they threaded their way through the Dolomites to the west of Carinthia, and from there they crossed the Austrian spine to Salzburg.

Some mistakenly believed they were part of Otto Skorzeny’s old 500
^th
SS parachute division, the men who had so daringly rescued Mussolini from his prison on Gran Sasso. Some called them the last of the Blitzkriegers. Others said they were The Führer’s final tears that would one day fall again like rain from the sky.

Most people simply called them the Werwolf. Not the acne-studded Hitler Youth of Heinrich Himmler’s final command and Hans-Adolf Prützmann’s lunatic crusade, but the Fourth Reich’s mythical Übermenschen, the bloodied but unbowed warriors of a thousand battles past.

At the final reckoning Grand Admiral Dönitz ordered the Werwolf to disband, although why Dönitz ever thought that men like Carl would listen to someone like him Carl Strieder had no idea. And while Prützmann’s Werwolf adolescents threw down their arms and lifted their hands in surrender, the Grand Admiral sat in his Nuremberg prison cell, twiddling his thumbs and awaiting a token sentence.

Dönitz, to his amazement and fury, would spend ten years in Spandau. A wiser Carl Strieder and his men would remain hidden in their mountain retreat, recalling the Goumier’s barbarism in Cassino’s aftermath, and awaiting a time when they could take their revenge.

The Russians didn’t believe the Werwolf existed. The French had finer tales of partisan resistance to tell. The Americans and British thought the stories exaggerated, and any potential threat a meaningless one. The Austrians and Italians didn’t all that much care if they existed or not.

Whenever pressed, former Wehrmacht and SS soldiers would say the idea of German partisans and guerrillas was anathema to the national characteristic of order and respect for law. They would argue that for partisans and guerrillas to fight on, there had to be some chance of victory, or at least some measure of hope. Then they would shake their heads in despair, and sadly reflect that their once-glorious Reich had neither.

Only the wives of a defeated nation kept the dream of the Übermenschen Werwolf alive. They told tales to their children, of a hope that still lived and of men who still fought, but it was only the children who truly believed.

But they had all reckoned without Carl Strieder and his men’s loyalty and resilience. And none had any knowledge of the weapons and supplies that magically dropped from the skies to the east of Salzburg on the third day of the third week of every third month.

At the end of the war they had replaced the old JU52 Luftwaffe insignia and camouflage with commercial advertising and lurid colours. An overstretched western alliance had commandeered, and repaired, and repainted it yet again. They now used it for ferrying overnight mail and cargo to and from Salzburg and Vienna. But the pilot wasn’t British, or American, or French. He was an old night fighter and wartime comrade of Carl Strieder, a Dornier 17 pilot from those nights when the Luftwaffe had carried rather more than just mail.

Carl had contacted him two days before, when they knew the young man was somewhere in Vienna, but didn’t know exactly where. Then someone spoke to the bus driver on the route from Schwechat Airport to Innere Stadt. He told his tale of an unusual roadblock outside the Favoriten headquarters, and the arrests of a beautiful young woman and a young man with an American passport. That was when Carl Strieder and his men hitched a ride.

Around twenty minutes after midnight they saw the lights of Vienna in the distance. Ten minutes after that they dropped, using static lines attached to a temporary anchor cable, six hundred feet above fields to the west of Kledering.

Carl Strieder smiled proudly as they buried the chutes and then gathered on him; a night drop onto unknown terrain, with minimal dispersal, and not so much as a twisted ankle between them.

Five kilometres north, and an hour after that, they met their contact and studied the building’s blueprints by torchlight. Then they took up a position to the front of the local Soviet headquarters at Favoriten and finalized their plan of assault.

Two men would position themselves a hundred meters farther on, to watch the road to Wieden and hold off any reinforcement from the north. Two more would position themselves a hundred meters south, and prevent the same from there. Two men would work their way around and cover the rear exit; one would remain where they crouched and cover the front. The last man would wait for the firing to begin, and then rustle up some transport from the vehicle compound at the side of the building. Five minutes for the cover to settle into their allotted positions, and then Carl Strieder and six more would go in through the front.

After that, Carl estimated ten minutes to get the job done, and ten to get out and on their way. Then a final ten after that for good measure and any unseen problems, before half the Red Army arrived from their various barracks and blew the last of the Werwolf to hell.

With the orders complete, and cover dispatched to the four points of the compass, Carl Strieder cleared imaginary dirt from the MP40’s cocking handle and slot for one last time. He grinned across at Peter Lischka. It was time to go.

Then he was up and running, across the road and on to the first sentry post, with six following and only the building ahead. A guard called out and reached for his rifle. Carl shot him three times in the chest. Another ran for his life, and got three more nine-millimetre slugs in his back. Someone came around the corner of the building with a pah-pah-shah raised. Peter Lischka shot him twice. Someone else ran from the vehicle compound and raised his rifle. Two of those running in Carl Strieder’s wake took him out at the same instant. Now they were at the door and the lights were coming on. Suddenly they were inside.

To the north, a returning Soviet patrol picked the wrong time and the wrong place. The two men posted at the side of the north road hit the canvas-backed Gaz with everything they had. It burst into flames and crashed into a disused concrete pillbox. One man screamed in agony, and instantly drew more fire, but nobody else in the burning vehicle stirred. To the south, it was still eerily quiet.

Those inside the building shot everyone they saw not already locked in the cells, male and female, uniformed or not. From the far side of the building they heard the sound of more gunfire. It came from those covering the rear door. Carl Strieder heard the small arms chatter and smiled in grim determination. Not one bloody Bolshevik would escape the wrath of the Werwolf that night.

He found the keys and started down the left-hand corridor, calling out Mathew Carlisle’s name through the smoke, and unlocking each cell door as he moved. A voice at the far end called back. Carl Strieder hurried to unlock the door and get the young man to safety. Upstairs, they could hear the sounds of grenades as they cleared the accommodation section one room at a time. At the back of the building the gunfire had stopped and the men were returning.

He threw open the cell door and barked a question.

“You are Mathew Carlisle?”

The terrified youth nodded his head.

“We are here to get you out. Come with us.”

Mathew Carlisle began to follow, but then shouted,

“Lara! I have to find Lara. They have her here somewhere.”

“There is no time.”

“I have to find her.”

Mathew Carlisle shook his head in defiance and headed along the right-hand corridor. Carl Strieder swore loudly and followed him. All they saw were empty rooms. All they found were the bodies of luckless Soviet soldiers. They climbed the stairs and ran along the first floor, checking each room in turn. Carl saw the bullet-scarred body of Sachino Metreveli, naked and still sprawled across his bed. The body of a naked young woman lay alongside him. He pointed to the woman. Mathew Carlisle shook his head. He said it wasn’t Lara Scholde.

Two of Carl’s men came down from the floor above. He asked them about the girl. They said nobody was alive up there. They also said they were positive there hadn’t been a girl.

Clearly frantic, Mathew Carlisle said he had to check for himself. Carl Strieder stepped in front of him. He shook his head. He said there wasn’t time; they had to leave now. The young man stood his ground, and again shook his head in defiance. Carl Strieder punched him hard across the jaw, and then draped the inert frame across his shoulder and headed downstairs.

Outside, another patrol had returned at the wrong time. Caught in a deadly crossfire, the Gaz sat skewed across the road, with the occupants dead and the canvas back ablaze. A truck waited beyond that with the engine running. It was a two-and-a-half ton Studebaker, decked out in Red Army logos, its belly packed with men anxious to be on their way. Carl Strieder dumped the still-unconscious Mathew Carlisle into willing hands. They lifted him up and dumped him into the back. Carl grinned up at Peter Lischka.

“If he wakes up, punch him again. How many in there?”

“Including me and the boy, there are twelve. Two more to pick up from the south perimeter, and that is it; we are clear.”

Carl nodded and then headed for the passenger seat. He hauled himself up and into the cab, and told the driver to hit the accelerator. The driver stopped to pick up the final two on the south perimeter, and then they were on their way.

The entire assault and rescue at the Favoriten headquarters had taken a fraction over eleven minutes. During the raid they had freed eight bemused prisoners of the MGB from their various calls, and left twenty-three dead bodies in their wake. Seven of the eight bemused prisoners had stolen away into the night. One lay unconscious in the back of the Studebaker. Not one of Carl Strieder’s men had suffered so much as a scratch.

They headed south from Favoriten, and then turned east toward Rannersdorf, then north-east up to Schwechat, before turning south-east on the road towards Schwadorf. They stopped after six kilometres and drove into a field, then headed east again on foot across the fields until they reached the south-eastern end of the runway. A sullen Mathew Carlisle had finally come around. He shook his head to clear the fog and then glared at Carl Strieder.

“What about Lara Scholde?”

“She was not there. We checked.”

“You’re certain?”

“I swear.”

Mathew Carlisle nodded.

“What now?”

“Now we wait here until three.”

And true enough, at seven minutes past three, the returning overnight mail and cargo run from Vienna to Salzburg paused for a few minutes at the south-eastern end of the runway. The pilot called air traffic control on the radio, and said he needed to check a misfiring Pratt & Whitney Hornet. He added that it wouldn’t take long.

At precisely ten minutes after three, the old JU52 took off from Schwechat on time. Nobody noticed that it stayed on the runway a little longer than usual before lifting off. Nobody noticed it straining to get airborne. When it touched down at Salzburg, nobody noticed it pause for two minutes on the far side of that airfield either; or if anybody did, they never felt it important enough to mention.

And while the old aircraft they once called ‘Tante Ju’ took its time in taxiing back to the terminal at Salzburg, sixteen men slipped out of the rear left-hand door and back through the same hole in the fence that fifteen of them had come through around five and a half hours earlier.

Nobody had any idea that it was Carl Strieder and his men who had rescued the young man from Lavrenti Beria’s clutches that night. Nobody knew for certain who it was or where they had come from. But from that night onward the Soviets always claimed open-mindedness on the possible existence of the Übermenschen Werwolf.

Beyond the fourth floor balcony and double-doors, a large spartan room had recently been converted into a large spartan office. Standing against two of the four cream-plastered walls, banks of grey-metal filing cabinets housed a thousand buff-coloured folders, and a thousand terrifying secrets. In the centre of the room the surface of a large oak desk lay littered with photographs of soldiers and spies, and papers containing many more terrifying secrets.

In the Old Town streets the people of Leipzig hurried about their business, unaware of the secrets hidden above or the grand old building’s clandestine purpose. Three floors higher than the street, and sitting motionless at his desk, Stanislav Paslov sat pondering the actions of those around him, and in particular those of his Machiavellian friend and paranoid boss, Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria.