General von Tarlenheim took a long drag of his last cigarette, and then shook the empty box.
‘It may be a while until I taste this brand again. My last box of Player’s Navy Cut. Virginia tobacco is going to be a rarity for a while, now Europe belongs to the Nazis and the Atlantic Ocean to Britain.’
Martin shrugged. ‘Your nephew Pip gave them up a few years ago. He said he didn’t like what they did to his wind.’
‘Hah! He’ll be back on them now he’s a soldier. As for myself I don’t doubt that I’ll soon be smoking God-awful Bulgarian leaf in desperation, though its taste is rather like smoking wet socks. Anyway, thank you for all your help getting my lads to England. They’re just in time from what I hear.’
Martin nodded. ‘London is keeping me updated on the Rothenian squadrons in the Royal Air Force. Some of their group were in the air over Dunkirk during the evacuation. There’ll be a feature in the next issue of Vor Svobodjen.’
The general raised a finger. ‘Which will not mention names of individual Rothenian pilots, I hope. They may have families that the Nazis would target. Nothing is beneath those bastards.’
‘Count on Vor Svobodjen’s editors, Henry. They’ve been thoroughly briefed.’
The general frowned at his cigarette. ‘You must tell me about your connection with London. It’s been obvious the BBC Rothenian service is getting good current information despite the occupation. You have radios?’
Martin shrugged. ‘Naturally. A consignment was smuggled in through the embassy before Vaszny surrendered Mittenheim to Hitler. Some are sited across the country where there are active resistance cells, but I keep most of them in a very secure place. London communicates principally through me. It keeps the message clear. Are you saying that you’d like to talk directly to London?’
‘It would be an advantage. I have my own organisation. It’s ex-military for the most part, and we have our own resources. I hope before long that we can begin operations against the occupation. But it would be as well if we had ways of talking to whoever runs things in London.’
Martin nodded. ‘My people are called the Special Operations Executive. The Executive was only set up last year officially. But I don’t think they’d see you as their kind of thing. You need to be in touch with the Military Intelligence departments, maybe MI9. Its brief is the Nazi-occupied territories.’
‘You seem cautious, Martin.’
‘There’s only one thing that would reassure me about helping you, and that’s if Colonel Moricz Sachert is in your organisation.’
The general smiled. ‘I think I can say he is, though it wasn’t easy to entice him. I had to get Maxim to order him to do it from England. And in the end I had to award Sachert a veto on all command decisions and make over the collecting of intelligence entirely to him.’
Martin laughed. ‘You were more successful than I was. You reassure me, Henry. You’ll have your radios then, and I’ll notify London to send on a codebook for your use. But it comes at a price. I want to know when you plan to do anything … dramatic.’
‘Dramatic, Martin?’
‘Something which will have consequences for my operations. I don’t want us working at cross purposes, Henry.’
‘Understood. Now, have you any news of Pip apart from his renunciation of tobacco?’
‘He had some adventures during the fall of France. His regiment was with the British Expeditionary Force and he had to fight his way to the beaches of Dunkirk. His facility with German helped him a lot. He got cut off from his unit and trapped in a barn around which a Wehrmacht company camped. In the night he knocked out their commander, stole his uniform and took off into the dark. You know what he’s like: full of self-confidence and drama, a young and aristocratic Wehrmacht hauptmann was fully in his repertoire. He blagged a lift to the front line from a staff car, sharing his hip-flask with a staff Oberstleutnant, whom he convinced he was a member of Sissi’s princely Carolath family, posing as a genuine younger brother of the prince called Karl Gustav. He’d met the lad at Sissi’s marriage.’
Henry laughed. ‘That boy! He got back to Kate unscathed, I hope.’
‘Oh yes. No one thought to ask to see his papers. When he reached the front line, he found the German army had pulled back from a final assault, convinced the British would negotiate a surrender. As they dithered, Pip discarded his borrowed finery and slipped through the sand dunes to join the evacuation.’
‘And what’s he doing now?’
‘The story got around. He’s been promoted major and attached to the General Staff. Hopefully that’ll keep him safe for a while, though I hear from Leo that Pip’s hopes are fixed on a posting to Egypt. In the meantime Kate and their girls are living at Belsager with Maxim and your sister, in easy reach of London.’
‘King Maxim. That’s someone I wanted to discuss with you. I know he wouldn’t want to pose as a national leader even in these desperate times. If he’d wanted to be king again, the mess the Republic made of Rothenia in the 1930s would have convinced everyone then that he should be given back power. But he’s a stubborn man, and he’s determined that his time as king has passed. Yet he can still do a lot, as his intervention with Sachert has proved. Good people still regard him as the rightful king of Rothenia.’
Martin gave a helpless shrug. ‘Don’t think there’s not been conversations about this. Lord Halifax spent a lot of time arguing with him that he could assume the crown again and appoint a Rothenian government in exile. You can imagine that went nowhere. My thoughts are that his broadcasts on the BBC Rothenian service do far more than such an empty gesture would. I’m told that the Rothenian electrical grid surges at 6.45 when Maxim’s messages home are on the air. For those who have no access to a radio receiver, Vor Svobodjen prints extracts.’
‘I imagine that really irritates the Reichsprotektor. The penalties he’s published for listening to BBC broadcasts are as draconian as they’re useless. He’d ban radios, but if he did so what use would be his own propaganda broadcasts? The Nazis are even broadcasting in Rothenian in hopes that’ll get our people listening. Their facilities in Mittenheim are high on my list of potential targets. I’d ask what your targets are, Martin, but the less we know of each other’s plans the better, despite the dangers of working at cross purposes.’
Martin chuckled. ‘I heard the voice of Moricz Sachert in that comment. But the old fellow is right of course. Information on our activities has to be treated like gold dust. If ever our key operatives end up in the cellars of the Gestapo on Flavienerplaz, what true information they can give up under torture needs to be limited.’
Martin took his leave from General von Tarlenheim with reluctance. The meeting had given him a sense of progress in his mission in Rothenia, and on top of that it had brought back many pleasant memories of time spent with the Templerstadt family, whose head was now the general’s brother, Professor Welf von Tarlenheim, after the death of their father, the venerable and beloved Count Hugo Maria. Martin shifted his mind reluctantly to ponder present concerns, which were not in fact with the occupation of Rothenia.
***
‘Herr Aschenheim?’
‘You must be Count Antonić, sir.’ Martin Tofts was in his identity as Werner Aschenheim, Viennese commercial traveller. He considered the attractive young man sitting opposite him as he took a sip of his beer. His experienced eye took in the youth’s careful toilette and dress sense. He wondered whether Antonić’s relationship with King Peter of the South Slavs may have been a physical one at some point, it might explain why the king had chosen the count to be his confidential contact with British intelligence. Martin reached across the café table and shook the boy’s hand. ‘Now sir, you wanted to see me.’
‘Yes, Herr Aschenheim. I’m aware that you’re one of the senior British intelligence agents in central Europe. You’ll know the perilous situation here in Yugoslavia. A military coup against the Regent, Prince Paul, has brought the king to power though he is not yet of age. The king was not involved in the coup, but he has found that the people in general do support his accession. Prince Paul’s plan to join the Axis powers was fatal to his power. “Better the grave than a slave” the crowds chanted in Belgrade.’
‘I am aware of this, sir, though what happens in your land is not my responsibility in the agency. But I understand your concerns. The German press in Rothenia is carrying what it calls “cries for help” from the ethnic minorities in Yugoslavia, and features highly-coloured stories of atrocities against ethnic Germans in your land. All are very familiar German strategies to prepare the way for a military intervention, I fear.’
‘We don’t think it will be long in coming Herr Aschenheim. The SOE supported the plot, and threw its weight behind the pro-war party in Simonić’s regime. I am to tell you the king is displeased at the conduct of your agency in this crisis. He thinks that the coup has been driven by emotion and wishful thinking and an unrealistic understanding of our country’s military power. He also believes that the Croatian minority will support a German intervention with catastrophic consequences for our kingdom.’
‘Very dark days are ahead, I have no doubt sir, but what does His Majesty think I can do?’
‘The king believes that you have some influence in London. He asks you to communicate with your superiors and with King Maxim that his country is ill-prepared to withstand the onslaught of the Axis powers. The fact is that the SOE agents in Yugoslavia are feeding a false and inflated idea of the kingdom’s capacity back to London, as well as making unrealistic promises to us of British support should Germany attack.’
‘Why would they do such a thing, sir?’
‘It seems to me that its agents here are not honest men, Herr Aschenheim. They were determined to promote the coup against Prince Paul in part to promote their agency against its rivals in London, as well as to deliver a boost to morale in your war effort against the Axis. The coup they promoted has soured relations within our government between the Serb ministers and the Croat secessionists. Up till then they were willing to cooperate, but now the Croats fear that the plotters have an agenda against them as well as the Germans. We fear that the Croatian parties will use the German intervention to form their own government, a Croatian republic in alliance with the Axis.’
‘You have to realise, count, that I have no standing in the Yugoslav operation. I cannot intervene in their conduct.’
Antonić sighed. ‘We realise that. But we can’t communicate our disappointment and dissatisfaction with the SOE actions directly to London. The Belgrade embassy won’t represent our views. For that we have to count on you. His Majesty was impressed by your honesty and insight on your earlier visit. If only you had been sent to Belgrade by SOE rather than that man they sent from Cairo.’
‘Er … who was that?’
‘His name is Harries …’
‘Harries?’ Martin snarled, and added to himself. ‘So that oaf was behind this fiasco.’
***
After his Balkan expedition Martin was very relieved to be back in Strelzen in his quiet little house off the Wejg. He happily reassumed the identity of Carol Corbichec, which in the covert world in which he now lived seemed to him to be his ‘true’ one.
He found Theo Ignacij at home when he arrived back and very receptive to his advances, as Hugo von Tarlenheim was currently away in Husbrau. Hugo was otherwise becoming more and more a resident on the Wejg and had apparently given up his student accommodation in favour of Theo’s bed.
Martin found the two boys’ relationship a little difficult to categorise. Hugo did not seem to harbour any real affection for Theo, whose bum seemed to be all he was really interested in, and to whom he did not show much in the way of kindness otherwise. Theo on the other hand didn’t seem to expect much of his boyfriend other than his dick. There did not seem to be any mental connection between the two, not that either of them was a particularly intellectual boy. He rarely encountered Hugo with a book, despite his registration at the Rodolfer. Theo amused himself mostly by practising on the upright piano he had installed in the house’s back room, rather than finding a paying tenant for the room, as Martin had expected him to do.
As Martin embraced and kissed Theo in a moment of post-orgasmic warmth, he found himself asking the boy how things were between him and Hugo.
‘Oh … y’know,’ was all the answer that Theo could muster, which irritated Martin.
‘No. I don’t, Theodore. Tell me,’ he responded sharply.
The boy turned in his arms, and with a quirky smile kissed Martin’s nose. ‘I don’t know, really. He’s just sooo good-looking and fucks me so good. But I can’t really see what he sees in me, apart from my availability. I just think at any moment he might drop me. He could have any boy in the White Tree, though the boys there call him the Ice Princess.’
Martin shook his head. ‘So it’s the fact that he’s an aristocrat and you think he’s above you?’
‘Well no.’ Then Theo laughed. ‘I’m an Ignacij! In the Third District that’s aristocracy. We run the place: the bits the police don’t know about or take bribes not to know about.’
‘So how do you explain the … diffidence.’
‘Maybe Hugo’s just that, diffident: unwilling to engage emotionally, and my ass is an available physical outlet he doesn’t have to work that hard to take advantage of.’
‘Is that good enough for you?’
‘Hmm? There’s more available?’
‘Yes. But I’ll admit it’s hard to find.’
Theo chuckled. ‘You say that as if you found it once, Carol, and then lost it.’
‘Cheeky kid. You should talk this through with my brother when next he fucks you. Waclaw’s experience is far greater than mine.’
That night, at the assigned hour, Martin hooked his radio to the sixty-foot copper aerial Waclaw had artfully stapled to the side of the house, disguising it by camouflaging it behind drainage downpipes. He began tapping out his report on his Yugoslavian excursion, without much hope that it would be heeded. He followed up with a number of personal and administrative messages.
Martin’s conversation with young Theo convinced him he needed to see his own true love, Leo. That meant a trip across the border to Heilbrod, but a simple telephone call could arrange that. He would travel as Werner Aschenheim, whose business was travel, the Rothenian Carol Corbichec would draw more suspicion crossing into the Reich.
***
It was a sunny day as Waclaw Corbichec drove Martin up the drive to the house at Heilbrod. Fresh spring greenery brightened the wooded bowl in which the house was set. For once, it had been a quiet trip from the Hauptbahnhof of Worms. Waclaw was unusually reserved throughout the journey.
His prince awaited Martin with his usual warm hug. Martin looked around. ‘Where’s your boy, Gottleib?’
‘Ah, yes. That’s one reason why I’m glad you’re here. Gottleib has been conscripted for military service.’
‘Oh! That explains why Waclaw was unusually quiet on the drive over from Worms.’
‘Poor Waclaw is heartbroken. You will have to do something. Gottleib is horrified at his call-up. I think you can help him dodge the draft. He’s not reported to barracks, so we can assume he’s on the run from the military gendarmerie.’
‘Hmm? Er … let’s go in and talk about this.’
Sitting over glasses of wine in Leo’s study, Martin considered the options. ‘We do have an agency which has been constructing escape lines across Europe, it’s called MI9. But it works at the moment to get escaped POWs and downed pilots back home to Blighty, not facilitate German draft-dodgers. We have one established underground route across Rothenia which is being run by General von Tarlenheim’s outfit with MI9. It’s code-named Hendrik der Leeuwen. It principally takes Rothenian, Czech and Polish pilots down the Arndt and the Starel to the Glottenburg Massif and the Hungarian frontier crossings, where they’re funnelled by various routes to the Black Sea ports and eventually to Cairo. With Greece a theatre of war and the Balkans aflame that’s the way home these days. So is that where you want me to send poor Gottleib? I can get him a warm welcome from SOE who I’m sure will find a use for him.’
Leo smiled but shook his head. ‘Thank you Marty. I knew I could count on you. I don’t think Gottleib is any fan of the Nazi Reich, but even so I couldn’t commit him to working for Germany’s enemies. So perhaps a better alternative might just be to get him to Rothenia. I’d suggest employing him on my Cereszhalch estate.’
‘We could get him there I think, though keeping him out of the notice of local Gestapo agents in Piotreshrad might be a challenge. Your friend the Reichsprotektor of Ruritania has been making noises about drafting Rothenian Germans into the Wehrmacht, so all young German males are under surveillance as potential draft dodgers. In some ways it might be easier to keep him safe in Strelzen where he could lose himself in the urban proletariat.’
‘Talk it through with Waclaw, dear. Now tell me about Pip’s daring escape from the Wehrmacht in Flanders.’
***
Gottleib was not happy when it came to leaving Heilbrod. His regret at leaving Prince Leopold’s service was sincere and touching. He was not happy at all that Waclaw had determined to accompany Martin in their drive to the frontier. They drove in a Volkswagen Type 1 which Waclaw told him he had specially modified for the purpose of smuggling.
‘Smuggling? What is it you smuggle?’ Martin asked.
‘Oh, his royal highness sometimes gets entrusted by German and foreign princes with items that certain higher members of the Party hierarchy want for themselves. We keep quite a refuge for famous art the Reichsmarshall had otherwise set his heart on. There’s a special vault being reserved for them. You should ask to see it.’
‘And this afternoon you’ll be smuggling in your car an item precious to yourself.’
‘Gottleib’s not got any papers that he could use. And the police are looking for him. The check is going to happen at the Merz frontier with the Protektorat. So Gottleib can happily relax in the back seat till then.’
As it turned out Waclaw was wrong. They encountered a queue of traffic on the approach to the medieval bridge over the Ebrendt at Vorplatzenburg, the entry point into Mittenheim which was in those days a province, or Gau, of the German Reich, not a part of Rothenia.
‘Fuck!’ swore Waclaw. ‘I don’t believe this. Quick! Get Gottleib into the hidden compartment. Sorry baby, you’ll have to stay there till we get into Merz, and maybe longer if there are internal road checks mounted in the Protektorat.’
Martin had the difficult job of getting the boy secreted in the hidden compartment, which they managed under the guise of repacking their luggage. Fortunately a lorry was hard up behind the Volkswagen in the queue, and its driver, high above them, was unable to get a view of what they were up to. He thoughtfully provided Gottleib with an empty bottle in case he needed to pee while in hiding.
They safely passed the checkpoint where the relaxed policemen made no more than a casual inspection of the car and admitted they were looking for German draft dodgers, which Waclaw and Carol Corbichec were plainly not. Though the officers were ethnic Germans they were perfectly civil, even friendly, to a pair of travelling Rothenians. It turned out that they had been officers in the police force of the old republic. Their subdued but undisguised contempt for their new Reich superiors told Martin a lot about the failure of the Reich to earn the allegiance of the former Rothenia’s most Germanic province. It made him wonder if there might be some capital to be made for his resistance movement in Mittenheim, which he had initially discounted.
Something similar occurred at the crossing into the Protektorat, and the officers there that inspected their car on the border of Merz province shrugged and said not to worry about further car checks on their route to Strelzen. So it was with some alarm that they encountered long queues as they approached the ring road around the city of Ebersfeld.
‘What the hell is this?’ Martin grunted, as the traffic came to a halt.
Waclaw peered ahead. ‘Looks like this is organised by the Germans, not the local police.’
As the queue inched forward they encountered the green uniforms of Wehrmacht Feldgendarmerie, and officers with silvered gorgets on chains around their necks scrutinising the line of traffic.
‘Hmm,’ speculated Martin,’ this lot are supposed to chase Wehrmacht deserters, so they might be after draft-dodgers. But …’.
‘You don’t think so, do you?’
‘No. This is the first time I’ve seen these units deployed in the Protektorat. It would take something more than runaways boys to bring them out of barracks.’
‘So what then?’ Waclaw asked.
‘Hopefully they’ll tell us, though the look on their faces is not promising.’
In fact they did not need to ask the Gendarmerie, for the soldiers had posted signs by the roadside saying, in German: ‘Partisan-Gefahr von Ebersfeld nach Hofbau und Geldenstadt. Einzelfahrzeuge halt! Waffen bereithaltem.’
‘What does that say, Herr Tov-utz?’ Waclaw queried.
‘Danger from partisan activity from Ebersfeld towards Hofbau and Geldenstadt. Single vehicles stop! Weapons are at the ready.’
‘Partisan activity? Do you know anything about such things, sir?’
‘No I don’t, which is very worrying. This is nothing to do with my outfit.’
***
They passed inspection at that roadblock and at a couple of others before they reached Geldenstadt, and began climbing up into the Spa Hills. They liberated a very unhappy Gottleib from his hiding place in the Volkswagen for a breather on a quiet stretch of wooded road. They explained why he had been penned in for longer than expected and broke the bad news that he would have to return to hide in his compartment.
‘The thing is Gottleib, something’s got the occupiers in Merz very agitated. It’s likely the capital will be locked down too. So have a piss, kid, before you get back in.’
As it happens they encountered no more police checks as they entered Strelzen. Though it was late, Martin went out to pick up the evening papers to see what they had to say. It was not much. The German censored press briefly mentioned nefarious banditry around the city of Ebersfeld by rebel partisans, but gave no details, threatening the wrath of the Reich on those who perpetrated it.
It was not till after dark that a tap came on Martin’s door, interrupting the meal he had been able to put together with Theo’s help for his guests. He was stunned to recognise Colonel Sachert on his doorstep, and quickly ushered him in.
Sachert took a cup of tea and stared across the table at Martin, once he had been introduced to the others.
‘Was it an SOE-ordered raid, Dr Tofts?’ he asked bluntly.
‘Nothing to do with us, Moricz,’ he had to reply, and added, ‘and by the way I don’t really have any details of what it is that has actually happened.
‘Big Nazi rail convoys are using the Rothenian network to get tanks and troops from Bohemia and Saxony south into Croatia. A group of resisters removed rails from the line south of Hofbau, sending one of the biggest trains plunging off an embankment. They had enough arms to machine-gun survivors from the nearby woods. Hell of a mess.’
‘So who did it?’
‘My informed guess is that it was a KRB gang. I’ve picked up intelligence that Kamil Bermann, the KRB Direktor, has taken to the northern forests since the Nazis outlawed his party for refusing to participate in the round-up of Jews or amalgamate with the NSDAP in Rothenia. What I didn’t know is whether he had got British backing for his group. It seems not, from what you say. So now we have the problem of a rogue partisan army wreaking anarchy in northern Rothenia beyond the control of any of the London-affiliated resistance groups. It will not end well.’
Posted 18 December 2024