Clifton Chronicles 02 - The Sins of the Father (21 page)

As the chef began to carve, Colonel Schabacker sampled the burgundy, which caused another smile to appear on his face. Giles returned to the task of topping up any half-empty glasses, with one exception. He’d noticed that the young lieutenant hadn’t spoken for some time, so he left his glass untouched. One or two of the other officers were beginning to slur their words, and he needed them to stay awake until at least midnight.

The chef returned later to serve second helpings, and Giles obliged when Colonel Schabacker demanded that everyone’s glasses should be replenished. By the time Terry made his first appearance to remove what was left of the boar’s head, Major Müller was the only officer still sober.

A few minutes later, the chef made a third entrance, this time carrying a black forest gateau, which he placed on the table in front of the commandant. The host plunged a knife into the cake several times, and the waitresses distributed generous portions to each of the guests. Giles continued topping up their glasses, until he was down to the last bottle.

As the waitresses cleared the dessert plates, Giles removed the wine glasses from the table, replacing them with brandy balloons and port glasses.

‘Gentlemen,’ announced Colonel Schabacker just after eleven, ‘please charge your glasses, as I would like to propose a toast.’ He rose from his place, held his glass high in the air and said, ‘The Fatherland!’

Fifteen officers rose at various speeds, and repeated, ‘The Fatherland!’ Müller glanced towards Giles, and tapped his glass to indicate that he would require something for the toast.

‘Not wine, you idiot,’ said Müller. ‘I want some brandy.’ Giles smiled, and filled his glass with burgundy.

Müller had failed to trap him.

Loud, convivial chatter continued as Giles carried a humidor around the table and invited the guests to select a cigar. The young lieutenant was now resting his head on the table, and Giles thought he detected a snore.

When the commandant rose a second time, to drink the health of the Führer, Giles poured Müller some more red wine. He raised his glass, clicked his heels together and gave a Nazi salute. A toast to Frederick the Great followed, and this time Giles made sure Müller’s glass had been topped up long before he rose.

At five minutes to midnight, Giles checked that every glass was full. When the clock on the wall began to chime, fifteen officers cried almost in unison, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and then broke into
‘Deutschland, Deutschland über alles’,
slapping each other on the back as they welcomed in the New Year.

It was some time before they resumed their places. The commandant remained standing and tapped his glass with a spoon. Everyone fell silent in anticipation of his annual speech.

He began by thanking his colleagues for their loyalty and dedication during a difficult year. He then spoke for some time about the destiny of the Fatherland. Giles remembered that Schabacker had been the local mayor before he took over as commandant of the camp. He ended by declaring that he hoped the right side would have won the war by this time next year. Giles wanted to scream, Hear, Hear! in any language, but Müller swung round to see if the colonel’s words had evoked any reaction. Giles stared blankly ahead, as if he hadn’t understood a word. He had passed another of Müller’s tests.

23

I
T WAS A FEW MINUTES
after 1.00 a.m. when the first guest rose to leave. ‘I’m on duty at six in the morning, colonel,’ he explained. This was greeted with mock applause, as the officer bowed low and left without another word.

Several other guests departed during the next hour, but Giles knew he couldn’t consider executing his own well-rehearsed exit while Müller was still on the premises. He became a little anxious when the waitresses started to clear away the coffee cups, a sign that their evening was coming to an end and he might be ordered back to the camp. Giles kept himself busy, continuing to serve those officers who didn’t seem in any hurry to leave.

Müller finally rose as the last waitress left the room and bade goodnight to his colleagues, but not before clicking his heels and giving his comrades another Nazi salute. Giles and Terry had agreed that their plan couldn’t be put into motion until at least fifteen minutes after Müller had departed and they had checked that his car was no longer in its usual place.

Giles refilled the glasses of the six officers who remained seated around the table. They were all close friends of the commandant. Two of them had been at school with him, another three had served on the town council, and only the camp adjutant was a more recent acquaintance; information Giles had picked up during the past few months.

It must have been about twenty past two when the commandant beckoned Giles over. ‘It’s been a long day,’ he said in English. ‘Go and join your friend in the kitchen, and take a bottle of wine with you.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Giles, placing a bottle of brandy and a decanter of port in the centre of the table.

The last words he heard the commandant say before he left were to the adjutant, who was seated on his right. ‘When we’ve finally won this war, Franz, I intend to offer that man a job. I can’t imagine he’ll want to return to England while a Swastika flies over Buckingham Palace.’

Giles removed the only bottle of wine still on the sideboard, left the room and closed the door quietly behind him. He could feel the adrenaline pumping through his body, and was well aware that the next fifteen minutes would decide their fate. He took the back stairs down to the kitchen where he found Terry chatting to the chef, a half-empty bottle of cooking sherry by his side.

‘Happy New Year, chef,’ said Terry as he rose from his chair. ‘Got to dash, otherwise I’ll be late for breakfast in Zurich.’

Giles tried to keep a straight face as the chef just about raised a hand in acknowledgement.

They ran up the stairs, the only two sober people in the building. Giles passed the bottle of wine to Terry and said, ‘Two minutes, no more.’

Terry walked down the corridor and slipped out of the back door. Giles withdrew into the shadows at the top of the stairs, just as an officer came out of the dining room and headed for the lavatory.

Moments later, the back door reopened and a head appeared. Giles waved furiously at Terry and pointed to the lavatory. Terry ran over to join him in the shadows, just before the officer emerged to make his way unsteadily back to the dining room. Once the door had closed behind him, Giles asked, ‘How’s our tame German, corporal?’

‘Half asleep. I gave him the bottle of wine and warned him we could be at least another hour.’

‘Do you think he understood?’

‘I don’t think he cared.’

‘Good enough. Your turn to act as lookout,’ said Giles as he stepped back out into the corridor. He clenched his fists to stop his hands trembling, and was just about to open the cloakroom door when he thought he heard a voice coming from inside. He froze, put his ear to the door and listened. It only took him a moment to realize who it must be. For the first time, he broke Jenkins’s golden rule and charged back down the corridor to rejoin Terry in the shadows at the top of the stairs.

‘What’s the problem?’

Giles put a finger up to his lips, as the cloakroom door opened and out stepped Major Müller, doing up his fly buttons. Once he’d pulled on his greatcoat, he glanced up and down the corridor to make sure no one had spotted him, then slipped through the front door and out into the night.

‘Which girl?’ asked Giles.

‘Probably Greta. I’ve had her a couple of times, but never in the cloakroom.’

‘Isn’t that fraternizing?’ whispered Giles.

‘Only if you’re an officer,’ said Terry.

They only had to wait for a few moments before the door opened again and Greta appeared, looking a little flushed. She walked calmly out of the front door without bothering to check if anyone had seen her.

‘Second attempt,’ said Giles, who moved swiftly back down the corridor, opened the cloakroom door and disappeared inside just as another officer came out of the dining room.

Don’t turn right, don’t turn right, Terry begged silently. The officer turned left and headed for the lavatory. Terry prayed for the longest pee in history. He began counting the seconds, but then the cloakroom door opened and out stepped the commandant in all but name. Get back inside, Terry waved frantically. Giles ducked back into the cloakroom and pulled the door closed.

When the adjutant reappeared, Terry feared he would go to the cloakroom to collect his cap and coat, and find Giles dressed as the commandant, in which case the game would be up before it had even begun. Terry followed each step, fearing the worst, but the adjutant stopped at the dining room door, opened it and disappeared inside. Once the door had closed, Terry bolted down the corridor and opened the cloakroom door to find Giles dressed in a greatcoat, scarf, gloves and peaked cap and carrying a baton, beads of sweat on his forehead.

‘Let’s get out of here before one of us has a heart attack,’ said Terry.

Terry and Giles left the building even more quickly than Müller or Greta had.

‘Relax,’ said Giles once they were outside. ‘Don’t forget we’re the only two people who are sober.’ He tucked the scarf around his neck so that it covered his chin, pulled down his cap, gripped the baton firmly and stooped slightly, as he was a couple of inches taller than the commandant.

As soon as the driver heard Giles approaching, he leapt out of the car and opened the back door for him. Giles had rehearsed a sentence he’d heard the colonel say to his driver many times, and as he fell into the back seat, he pulled his cap even further down and slurred, ‘Take me home, Hans.’

Hans returned to the driver’s seat, but when he heard a click that sounded like the boot closing, he looked back suspiciously, only to see the commandant tapping his baton on the window.

‘What’s holding you up, Hans?’ Giles asked with a slight stutter.

Hans switched on the ignition, put the car into first gear and drove slowly towards the guard house. A sergeant emerged from the sentry box when he heard the vehicle approaching. He tried to open the barrier and salute at the same time. Giles raised his baton in acknowledgement, and nearly burst out laughing when he noticed that the top two buttons of the sentry’s tunic were undone. Colonel Schabacker would never have let that pass without comment, even on New Year’s Eve.

Major Forsdyke, the escape committee’s intelligence officer, had told Giles that the commandant’s house was approximately two miles from the compound, and the last two hundred yards were down a narrow, unlit lane. Giles remained slumped into the corner of the back seat, where he couldn’t be seen in the rear-view mirror, but the moment the car swung into the lane, he sat bolt upright, tapped the driver on the shoulder with his baton and ordered him to stop.

‘I can’t wait,’ he said, before jumping out of the car and pretending to undo his fly buttons.

Hans watched as the colonel disappeared into the bushes. He looked puzzled; after all, they were only a hundred metres from his front door. He stepped out of the car and waited by the back door. When he thought he heard his master coming back, he turned around just in time to see a clenched fist, an instant before it broke his nose. He slumped to the ground.

Giles ran to the back of the car and opened the boot. Terry leapt out, walked across to Hans’s prostrate body and began to unbutton the driver’s uniform, before pulling off his own clothes. Once Bates had finished putting on his new uniform, it became clear just how much shorter and fatter Hans was.

‘It won’t matter,’ said Giles, reading his thoughts. ‘When you’re behind the wheel, no one will give you a second look.’

They dragged Hans to the back of the car and bundled him into the boot.

‘I doubt if he’ll wake up before we sit down for breakfast in Zurich,’ said Terry as he tied a handkerchief around Hans’s mouth.

The commandant’s new driver took his place behind the wheel, and neither of them spoke again until they were back on the main road. Terry didn’t need to stop and check any signposts, as he’d studied the route to the border every day for the past month.

‘Stay on the right-hand side of the road,’ said Giles, unnecessarily, ‘and don’t drive too fast. The last thing we need is to be pulled over.’

‘I think we’ve made it,’ Terry said as they passed a signpost for Schaffhausen.

‘I won’t believe we’ve made it until we’re being shown to our table at the Imperial Hotel and a waiter hands me the breakfast menu.’

‘I won’t need a menu,’ said Terry. ‘Eggs, bacon, beans, sausage and tomato, and a pint of beer. That’s my usual down at the meat market every morning. How about you?’

‘A kipper, lightly poached, a slice of buttered toast, a spoonful of Oxford marmalade and a pot of Earl Grey tea.’

‘It didn’t take you long to go back from butler to toff.’

Giles smiled. He checked his watch. There were few cars on the road that New Year’s morning, so they continued to make good progress. That was, until Terry spotted the convoy ahead of them.

‘What do I do now?’ he said.

‘Overtake them. We can’t afford to waste any time. They’ll have no reason to be suspicious – you’re driving a senior officer who wouldn’t expect to be held up.’

Once Terry caught up with the rear vehicle, he eased out into the centre of the road and began to overtake a long line of armoured trucks and motorcycles. As Giles had predicted, no one took any interest in a passing Mercedes that was clearly going about official business. When Terry overtook the leading vehicle, he breathed a sigh of relief, but he didn’t fully relax until he swept round a corner and could no longer see any headlights in his rear-view mirror.

Giles continued to check his watch every few minutes. The next signpost confirmed they were making good time, but Giles knew they had no control over when the commandant’s last guest would leave and Colonel Schabacker would go in search of his car and driver.

It was another forty minutes before they reached the outskirts of Schaffhausen. They were both so nervous that hardly a word had passed between them. Giles was exhausted just sitting in the back seat, doing nothing, but he knew they couldn’t afford to relax until they had crossed the Swiss border.