There had been no one in the corridor as Stefan Schmidt walked quickly from the landing to his room. He left the door ajar so that he could see the lamp on the table beside the entrance. Switching on the lamp, he saw that the Englishman was watching him over his shoulder.
He saw, too, the fear in John Pettigrew's eyes as they followed his every movement. His gaze travelled down the length of the naval officer's body; a smile touched his lips as it lingered on the man's pert, inviting bottom. He felt his cock begin to fill out and he pulled his attention back to Pettigrew's eyes.
There was something more in the other man's eyes than just fear, he decided. He sensed sexual desire. His smile grew as he shut and locked the door. The boy—no, the Englishman was a man—wanted him. His brain concentrated on the two nouns he'd used. Sub-lieutenant John Pettigrew was neither boy nor man—not a man like Urnazy. Not old. He was young. Youth. That was the word to describe the Englishman before him. Young and enticing, yet a man still.
He crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed, his hip just below that of the Englishman's. His fingers touched and began to caress Pettigrew's furthest arsecheek before moving over his hip and shoving their way between the youth's body and the bed cover. "You are happy to see me again, yes?" he asked in German as they found the Englishman's erection.
Pettigrew seemed to tremble through every fibre of his body at the touch.
"If I remove your gag, lieber Hans, will you remain silent?"
The Englishman nodded his head slowly, rubbing his cheek against the pillow. Schmidt reached up and untied the kerchief behind his head, and Pettigrew spit the wadded sock from his mouth. Schmidt's fingers had returned to his buttocks and were gently kneading it.
"We must discuss things, my friend."
"What things?" Pettigrew croaked, his mouth dry and his throat rough.
The German chuckled. "What I will do with you. What you can do for me. These sort of things."
"Are you going to bugger me again?"
"Is that what you want, lieber Hans?"
Pettigrew was afraid to say anything; anyway, the German had already found his erection and it seemed that his dick was doing all the talking—just as it had when he was a first former.
"It is what I want. But I suspect that I will need you very much in the next day—and I don't want to force myself on you if you are unwilling."
"You're going to need me?" Pettigrew looked over his shoulder at the man and studied him suspiciously.
"I do not wish to discuss my reasons, John; but I wish to defect—" He paused and it was obvious in his face that he was thinking deeply. "Not defect. I do not want to leave the Fatherland—it is my life. I will … help—" He smiled. "That is the correct word, I think—help. I will help the English. Give them information, I mean. At least, until your England has sued for peace as it did before when Napoleon's armies ruled all of Europe."
"This information—what do we need to do in order to receive it from you?" Pettigrew asked, his mind instantly turning from wanting the German inside him again to this new situation. He almost forgot that he was nude, bound, and that Schmidt's fingers were still kneading his arsecheek.
"Is MI5 at Reynaud's château or is it just the French who are there?"
"MI5?" Pettigrew asked suspiciously.
Schmidt pursed his lips. "We won't play games, lieber Hans. You must understand that this is much too serious for that," he said, leaning closer to the Englishman's ear. "As you must also understand that I am not stupid. There is no time for games. If you want to live to be dressed again, much less have me mount you again, you will tell the truth." He sat back up. "Now, is there an MI5 agent at the château?"
Pettigrew nodded. "Along with a man from the Sûreté and gendârmes."
"I see." Schmidt fell silent for a moment, his fingers ceased kneading Pettigrew's bottom. "The French cannot be allowed to know about this," he muttered finally and, pulling his dagger from his greatcoat, turned to the Englishman's feet.
He quickly cut the rope from Pettigrew's feet before standing and moving to the head of the bed. He freed his prisoner's hands, crossed the room to turn a chair to face the Englishman, and sat down.
Pettigrew sat up slowly, his hands falling on his lap to cover himself. He looked over at Schmidt.
"I must talk with your MI5 agent—tonight. None of the French can know that I wish this or where he is going. You will bring him here—no!" He thought for a moment, then nodded. "Yes. Across the boulevard from the casino there is an alleyway. The two of you will be there at eleven hundred hours."
Pettigrew snorted. "I suspect that man would rather I not be there."
"You will not tell him where the meeting is and merely bring him then. I will not speak to him without you there. I would not know him to recognise him. You must be there."
"I'll be there with him."
"Are you angry at me for taking pleasure with you earlier, John?"
"It wasn't exactly the treatment I expected when you caught me pilfering your room," Pettigrew answered as a smile threatened his lips.
"Helping to turn an officer of the Waffen-SS should be noted in your dossier. It should help you receive your next promotion more quickly than usual—" He smiled across at the Englishman. "It should impress your superiors." Schmidt studied the other man for a moment. "Will you accept what I am giving you as fair payment for what I did to you?"
"I'll take it, but why are you doing this?"
"I don't want to die just yet, John Pettigrew. And I find myself with only this escape from that reality."
"Why don't you just defect then?"
"I have nothing to offer England—no way to earn a living. I would not be able to live comfortably there. Besides, I love the Fatherland, even if I must hurt it a little in order to live. Why don't you get dressed now and bring your MI5 agent back to meet me? There is much still to be done tonight for this to work correctly."
"What reason do I give to ensure that the French know nothing of all this?" Pettigrew asked after he'd pulled his underpants up over his wedding tackle.
"Tell your man only that one of the men killed today was a senior Sûreté operative, the other one was a Major in the French Army. They were both paid agents of the Sicherheitsdienst. I want no record of my treason kept in France; it would be too easy for the wrong eyes to read it." Schmidt fell silent and watched the Englishman as he finished dressing.
Pettigrew sat on the edge of the bed to tie his shoes before succumbing to the silence and looking over to the German. "Second thoughts?" he asked softly as he stood.
"None," Schmidt shook his head. "There is only one course of action for me and it is the one I've now started in motion." He took a deep breath and looked down at his hands. "I regret, however, that I cannot have a week with you to share in bed. You would make a wonderful lover."
"Maybe—" Pettigrew had already started to give voice to the thought before he realised it.
Schmidt grinned up at him. "We'll meet again then—you and I—alone. But, now, you must find your man and convince him to come to Deauville." He quickly pushed himself from the chair. "Let me ensure that the corridor has no prying eyes, lieber Hans. Then you should leave by the back way. It is safer." He crossed to the door and opened it.
Pettigrew waited just inside the door for the German to check the hallway. He saw Schmidt motion to him from the end of the corridor and slipped out of the room. He was quickly out into the cold night and making his way to his car.
John Pettigrew had been unsure if he could believe what Stefan Schmidt told him and Brigadier Dunham in the alleyway between two businesses across from the casino. He'd been so cold and his teeth were chattering so, he'd wondered if he had somehow misunderstood the German. Even now, lying under a goosedown quilt with a fire still burning in the fireplace, he doubted it was possible.
In the alleyway, he'd kept his greatcoat pulled close around him and wished that his gloves were furred. But Stefan had kept Dunham spellbound. Him too, he reckoned—at least, he was gomstruck when he wasn't realising just how cold he was.
If only half of what Stefan had told them was true, the Gräfin von Kys had to be one daft woman. And, bad for him, she was his commanding officer. Some member of her family needed very quietly to have her committed to some fine, secluded, and very private sanitarium like his family had his uncle years ago.
Instead, she was something akin to a colonel in the Nazi Party's army. And she'd decided to kill Petersholme on her own, with no orders from higher up. That was one of the parts of Schmidt's story that he found hard to believe. Pettigrew had no problem accepting that Dunham and the men of MI5 would kill a foreign official. But he accepted as an article of faith that there had to be a very good reason to do so and that the order from the highest authority in Whitehall. Such an order probably even carried the PM's initials on it, it would come from so high up.
This Gisele von Kys seemed to be a loose cannon, however. She was able to make her own law and, if someone tried to thwart her, she trumped up capital charges on him. Or she simply had him killed—like she was doing according to the rumours Schmidt had heard about the night her husband was killed. She might make her own law, but there surely seemed be a rumour mill over there in Berlin. After he and Dunham were back in the car, he had to suspect that a lad couldn't even take a pee without somebody knowing about it.
And there was another part to this sordid mess, too. The bitch had sent some sergeant major and English Sicherheitsdienst agents to kidnap her son from Petersholme at his home in Northamptonshire. That much of it sounded right—a mother should want her son back. But her husband's will had make his Lordship the boy's guardian—he guessed that the man must have known a lot of dirt about his wife to do that.
Dunham had bought Stefan's story. He accepted that the lad would be killed if he went back to Berlin in her tow and they had failed to kill Petersholme. And it was pretty obvious with all the French police guarding the château, that'd he be killed if he joined her in another attack on Petersholme there. It had been decided then that England were going to acquire a guest of His Majesty's government—to wit, one Gisele von Kys.
He, John Pettigrew, was to keep the gendârmes guarding the entrance on the east side of the château tomorrow night occupied from ten to twelve o'clock. Dunham told him any distraction would do. Only what would distract them? He decided to corner the brigadier in the morning on that one; all he could think of was gambling with them.
Stefan would lead the von Kys woman into the house and up the stairs to where the English party were quartered. Dunham would nab them then. Stefan might have to take a flesh wound on the arm but he'd get away before any of the French showed up to mess things up. And they'd have the Gräfin von Kys in quiet custody. Dunham would let the man from the Sûreté take her apart before flying her back to England.
Dunham had left him the moment they were back in the château and called London. He wanted to make sure Petersholme's people were all right before reporting to him.
For the first time since leaving the German's hotel room, Pettigrew allowed himself to remember Stefan as he prepared to enter him. Instantly, he was erect and didn't stop himself from remembering the whole sexual encounter while he relieved himself.
* * *
Dagold stood in the path that led between the cottages and peered into the darkness for any sign of movement. Behind him, using both hands, Miss Murray beat on the farm manager's door; the noise unnaturally loud in the stillness of the winter night. He held the rifle he'd brought from the Hall at the ready.
He was sure that there were no more assassins on Lord Petersholme's estate. In the months that he'd known Horst Müller at Schloß Kys and at the base on Peenemünde, the man had always been disparaging of the English students he'd trained at the Party's war school. Jorsten doubted the man would have put his life in the hands of more than one Englishman at a time.
Jorsten supposed that there was a dead farmhand's body somewhere near the Hall; Müller would have needed a guide to find his way to the house, but he would have killed the man to keep him silent. Probably the fellow was the same one who had radioed Berlin.
But Müller would have carried through his mission with only the one man who was with him, the man who had been supposed to get him out of England. There would be no one else left to attack them again—this time. But, with the Gräfin involved, there was almost certainly going to be a next time.
He heard a muffled grunt behind him and Miss Murray stopped pounding on the door. He turned in the sudden silence and saw the cottage door swing open. A tall, muscular man stood in the doorway pulling a dressing gown close around him.
Miss Murray went to pieces then, crying incoherently and burying her face against the farm manager's chest. Dagold stepped closer to the two people at the door.
"We were attacked up at the Hall," he told the man. "Lord Molloy is dead as are the two men who came to murder us."
The farm manager nodded his understanding. "There may be more of those Huns around still," he said. "I'll just get the Missus to take care of Jane Murray here; then, we'll round up the hands and go search for them."
"There probably aren't any more of them," Jorsten told him. "But the dead men weren't known and probably needed a guide to lead them to the Hall." He shrugged. "We'll probably find at least one of the hands dead before this is over."
"Right," the manager told him as his wife joined him in the doorway and took Miss Murray from him. She led her back into the cottage. "Let me put on some clothes and we'll round up everybody."
Behind Dagold and the farm manager, two men were already dressing. They walked up to the third cottage. "These lads are our farm's troublemakers, Mr. Jorsten," the manager told him, "but they're still good lads. They'll be out fast to join us."
Dagold stepped up to the door and knocked on it. It pushed open as his fist hit it. "Verdammt!" he hissed softly, crouching quickly and bringing up his rifle. "Bring the electric torch here," he called over his shoulder while keeping his gaze locked on the darkness inside the cottage.
He sensed the farm manager come up and stand behind him. "Shine it inside," he told the man.
He blinked as the interior of the cottage flare into sudden light. "Blut!" he gulped as he figured what the dark pools on the floor before him were.
"This don't look right at all," the manager mumbled from behind him.
Cursing himself for not bringing his pistol, Jorsten leaned forward and pushed the door all the way open. The manager began to move the light around the one room of the cottage. "Gott im Himmel!" he yelped when it reached the body lying in even more blood.
"That looks to be young Neville," the manager told him.
"Whoever he was, he's dead."
"He can't be. Why, the boy's barely seventeen, Mr. Jorsten."
Dagold rose and stepped inside, moving to stand over the body. Kneeling, he picked up the boy's wrist and felt for a pulse. There was none. "He's dead all right." He turned the body onto its back. He squeezed his eyes shut when he saw the jagged cut across the man's neck. "Someone cut his throat," he told the farm manager still standing in the doorway and forced himself to swallow the bile that was suddenly in his mouth.
He stood quickly and hurried back to the door. He had seen enough death that night to last him a lifetime. Outside, he felt more bile surging out of his stomach and knew that he would not be able to fight it back this time. He stepped quickly away from the cottage and, bending forward, began to retch.
* * *
"I wasn't able to get the constable in Bellingham," Alice told Dagold as he entered the kitchen. She sat at the small table beside the fire she and Cook had laid. "The night operator put me through to the main station in Coventry." She shook her head. "The night duty officer there told me he would have men out by dawn—and that he'd contact the Home Guard as well."
She realised then that Jorsten had entered alone and had shut the door. "Where is Jane?" she demanded.
"The manager's wife kept her at his cottage. She'll be along shortly, with several of the wives I suppose." He moved across the room to the teapot. "At least one of the farmhands is dead—one of the young ones. Neville," he told her without turning to see her. "His throat was cut." He poured himself a mug of the thick tea.
"Neville? He was so young—what about Clive then?"
"That was the boy sharing the cottage with him?" he asked, finally turning back to face her. She nodded. "The manager and his hands are searching for him now."
Alice saw how pale Dagold was then. "Are you all right?" she asked.
He snorted. "I fear that I am finally beginning to react to what happened tonight." He frowned, tears welling up unexpectedly in his eyes. "They meant to kill me as well as take Willi with them—back to Germany," he said thickly and turned away. "I am sorry that it was Lord Molloy who was killed instead of me. I thought the Hauptscharführer would wait until midnight to attack. I should have taken the first watch."
"Nonsense, lad!" Alice said sharply, rising from her chair quickly and moving to stand beside him. "I'm just glad that you're alive and here with us now."
"Lord Molloy was important to England; he had a young child," Jorsten said in a choked voice. "I am unimportant and have no children. It should have been me." He sobbed.
"Listen to me!" Alice growled sharply. "Turn around and face me, boy," she continued. She knew he was losing control of himself now. She guessed that he was reacting to killing one man and seeing two others killed. And, from what this lad had said, the murderers had been none too gentle with young Neville. Seeing a body that had been brutally murdered would make even the strongest man weep.
She knew that she had to establish control over young Jorsten before he lost all control and pull him back into a proper state of mind for a man. Doing so was no different than how she'd managed to keep Robert and Elizabeth behaved all these years since Robert's mother had died. Dagold Jorsten was still a boy in many ways. She knew just how forcefully she had to pitch her voice to pull a person out of the emotional abyss.
"You will pull yourself together now, Dagold," she told him. "You're the man of this house now—until Robert returns. You'll act like the grown man that you are."
He turned back to her slowly. He sniffed and wiped his eyes with the back of his coat. A smiled tugged at his lips. "You sounded like my mother just then, Fraü Alice."
Alice smiled back at him. "There are only one way to raise a boy, Dagold—and your mother did a remarkable job raising you. She'd be proud of you, lad."
The farm manager opened the door and stepped inside. Seeing Alice, he doffed his cap. He looked from her to Dagold and back again.
"Miss, we found young Clive," he reported to her. "He's dead too. Stabbed in the heart, he was."
"Which one of the outbuildings is clear?" she asked.
"Everyone of them but the one by the stables has things stored in them from the Hall here or what we use for the farm, ma'am."
"That's what I thought," she said nodding. "All right then, have the men lay out the bodies in that one. Cook and I will find sheets they can use to cover them."
"And young Neville too?" the manager asked.
"Of course, bring him up too. As soon as the police are through with their investigation, the undertaker in the village can prepare the bodies. Our dead, at least—" She looked puzzled. "For the life of me, I don't know what to do with the murderers. I don't think they should be buried here, though I suppose they should have a Christian burial."
"They shouldn't, ma'am, not here on the farm with our good people," Cook told her. "There's potter's field in Bellingham village—that's good enough for their sort, I say."
Alice nodded, still looking at the manager."You'll need to have some men inside then. We've got three bodies lying on the landing. Lord Molloy is one of them."
The manager made to open the door but Alice stopped him. "Do you know when Jane will come back up to the Hall?"
The man shook his head. "Send a man down to get her," she told him. "Several of the other women too, I suspect—to help us clean up the mess before his Lordship comes home from France."
As the manager let himself out the door, she turned to Cook. "We'd better get busy, you and I. We've got hungry men to feed." She frowned. "And another load of them arriving at dawn."
Copyright © 2006-2025 David MacMillan
First posted 2006
Updated 2 July 2025