Codeword Golden Fleece (48 page)

Between the gate of the camp and the big block of permanent buildings that housed its offices lay a quarter of a mile of tarmac road lit only by faint blue guiding lights. The moon was not yet up, and the interior of the car was once more in darkness.

With a sudden desperate resolve Rex took off his cap, fanned
his perspiring face twice with it and laid it on his knees. The soldier beside him, knowing that he was not armed, was sitting quietly back, not even looking at him but staring straight ahead.

Gripping the peak of the cap with his knees, Rex thrust his one free hand inside it. Quickly but quietly, and making as little movement as possible, he crumpled back the oiled-silk lining and pulled out the packet from beneath it.

The car was already slowing down as it approached the main entrance of the office buildings. There was not a second to lose. In one swift movement he covered all of the packet but its corners with his great leg-of-mutton hand and taking it from the cap thrust it down out of sight beside his hip. His fingers came in contact with the tight-pressed fissure where the cushion of the back seat of the car met the upholstery of its side. As the car drew up before the entrance he thrust again with all his force, pushing the flat packet down until it was right under the heavy leather seat.

The soldier sat forward suddenly, but he had noticed nothing; he was simply stretching out his hand to open the door of the car. Rex lay back for a moment with an inaudible sigh of relief. Next minute the Major was shouting to him to get out, and he silently accompanied his guards into the Air Force Headquarters.

In the doorway he turned to give a quick look at the car. It was a dark blue Ford V.8. that had evidently seen much service. The dirt upon it was not only superficial, showing that it was not often cleaned really thoroughly, so he felt there was a good chance that the option would remain where he had hidden it at least for some days. As he followed the others he kept on silently repeating its number, UCZ827, to himself.

They were shown into a room on the right of a bare but spacious hallway. In it the Duty Officer, a dark young man of medium height, was seated at a desk. The Major excitedly explained his business, now speaking in French. The Rumanian gave them seats and, picking up a telephone, rang through to his Commanding Officer.

There was a short wait, and during it Rex thought agitatedly of the drastic step he had just taken. Now he had parted with the Golden Fleece, would he ever be able to get hold of it again?

Having freed himself of it, he did not think that he was in any great personal danger. He had nothing on him now which could
lead the Rumanians to associate him with von Geisenheim’s attackers, and he thanked his stars that he had had the sense to speak of himself as Rex Mackintosh to the Poles instead of giving his full name. Sooner or later they would have to produce somebody to identify their captive as the German who had posed as Captain Kilec, and then it would emerge that he was not the man they wanted. Once that was clear he did not see on what either the Rumanians or the Poles could hold him. There seemed no reason at all why they should not accept his story that he was simply an American refugee from Poland who had been attacked and had his clothes and papers stolen the previous night. If things went well they might even let him go right away or, at the worst, after a full enquiry had been held the following day.

As these thoughts sped swiftly through his mind he began to cheer up a little, but he soon became a prey to fresh anxiety as he wondered how on earth he was to set about retrieving the option. The Major had said something about having a long drive before him but that the pleasure of handing Rex over to the Rumanians would be well worth the delay in starting on his journey south. He had also said that he was the Assistant Attaché so he was not an internee like the other Poles but free of the whole country to go and come where he pleased. The probability was that he had come north for a few days only to assist in making the arrangements for the interning of his fellow countrymen and was now about to return to his Legation in Bucharest.

If so, Rex saw that unless he were freed immediately after the coming interview with the Rumanian Station Commander, and could somehow get the option back that night, he would have to follow the Major to Bucharest; and the Duke, Simon and himself had already made Bucharest too hot to hold them. Rex did not like the idea of returning to the Rumanian capital one little bit, but it looked as if that was what he would have to do, and with the least possible delay; as otherwise the packet might be discovered before he could retrieve it.

How he was going to get free access to the Major’s car he had not the faintest idea, but that must wait on circumstances and it would be time enough to worry about it when he had secured his own freedom.

He had got so far in his anxious speculation when a tall, thin officer entered the room. Speaking in French, which seemed to
be the
lingua franca
in use between the Rumanians and Poles, he introduced himself to the Major as the Senior Intelligence Officer on the Station. He then went on to say that the Station Commander was waiting for a trunk call from Bucharest, but as soon as it had come through he would join them. In the meantime, he had given orders that the prisoner was to be searched.

Rex protested to the Rumanian that he was not the man they thought him to be, but his protest was ignored, so he shrugged resignedly.

While they helped him off with his clothes the station doctor was sent for to remove his bandages. This worthy, a fat, jolly-looking fellow, arrived a few moments later, bringing with him a dressing-gown to cover Rex’s nakedness after his clothes had been taken from him.

The doctor, apparently, did not speak French, as he gabbled away in Rumanian with a joking manner after he had unwound the bandages from Rex’s head, pointing at his chin and evidently drawing attention to the fact that, although his jaw had been heavily padded with cotton wool, it had not even a scratch upon it. However, the dried blood in Rex’s wavy hair and the rainbow-hued bruises on his body bore out his story that he had been badly knocked about.

While the doctor was making his examination the tall Intelligence Officer was going over his garments with the utmost care, ripping open the linings of his outer clothes here and there and even examining the buttons to see if they were genuine or could be unscrewed to hold small pieces of folded paper. But neither search revealed anything at all, and the pockets of Rex’s money-belt were found to contain only a considerable sum in Rumanian banknotes.

The telephone shrilled, and after answering it the young Duty Officer said to the others: ‘That was the C.O. He has finished his telephoning now, and I told him of our disappointment, but he wishes to see the prisoner.’

Rex’s clothes were handed back to him and he dressed as quickly as he could; then he was escorted by the whole party across the hall to a much larger office. A square-jawed, determined-looking man with grizzled hair, evidently the Station Commander, was sitting there behind a large desk and near him was standing a beaky-nosed, dapper little fellow, who proved to be the Station Adjutant.

The moment Rex entered the room the beaky-nosed man muttered something in Rumanian, and the Station Commander shook his head. He then spoke sharply to the Polish Military Attaché in French:

‘This is not Captain Kilec; and except for height this fellow bears little resemblance to him.’

The Pole looked distinctly crestfallen, but he bridled at the implication that they still regarded a Polish officer as the culprit. ‘As we had the honour to inform
Monsieur le Commandant
this afternoon, the real Captain Kilec died for his country some ten days ago,’ he said huffily. ‘
Monsieur le Commandant
means that he does not think that the prisoner resembles the man who impersonated Kilec.’

‘I have no grounds yet for accepting your ingenious theory that a German had succeeded in foisting himself on you as your Captain Kilec,’ replied the Station Commander coldly. ‘If it were so it shows an extraordinary lack of elementary security precautions in the Polish Command.’

As Rex listened to this chilly outburst he gained a much clearer understanding of why the Poles had been so anxious to hand him over to this fire-eating Rumanian with the least possible delay. Evidently he had been creating hell’s delight about his missing document, and the Poles, being virtually his prisoners, had the best possible reasons for endeavouring to pacify him and so regain his goodwill.

‘I saw the man known as Kilec only once,’ the Station Commander went on, ‘but I am sure that he was of slighter build, and I think his hair was fair.’

‘But can you be certain of that?’ the Major almost pleaded. ‘After all, if you saw him only once you may be mistaken, and men of such a height are uncommon in any army.’

‘It is not the man,’ cut in the dapper Adjutant decisively. ‘I saw Kilec—’

‘The man who was impersonating Kilec,’ insisted the Major.

‘As you will. I saw the man you sent to us as Captain Kilec on several occasions; half a dozen times at least. It was from the safe in my office that he stole the document when I left it for a few moments because the Station Commander had sent for me. He was as tall as this man but not quite as broad. There the resemblance ends. The other had fair hair, as the Station Commander says, and bright blue eyes; also he had slightly protruding teeth.’

‘Thanks,’ said Rex, entering the discussion for the first time. ‘Now, may I give you my end of the story?’

The Station Commander nodded. ‘Yes. As the Poles don’t seem to know their own officers from Nazi agents and you are dressed as a Polish officer, let us hear who you are and how you came to be mixed up in all this.’

Rex had now been over the story he meant to tell so often in his own mind that he was able to tell it clearly and convincingly. When he had finished it was obvious that the Rumanians believed him; but the Polish Major, angry and disgruntled at being made to look an impetuous fool, through having dragged Rex over to the Rumanian camp without first finding somebody in his own camp who had worked with the false Kilec and could identify him, continued to display a pigheaded antagonism.

‘If he is not the impersonator of Kilec, who is he then?’ he demanded. ‘He says he is an American, but he had no papers to prove it….’

‘Oh, nuts!’ Rex cut in. ‘I’ve told you half a dozen times. They were stolen with my clothes.’

But the Major would not be stopped, and hurried on: ‘He says that he tried to get into our camp to secure redress against the man who attacked him. If that is so, why did he try to slip past the sentry by just waving a pass that did not belong to him? Why did he not come in the daytime when it was light? Why did he not take the pass straight to the guardroom and ask to be taken up to the Camp Offices? Why did he swathe his jaw in bandages when his only injuries were on the top of his head?’

‘I’ve perfectly good explanations for all those silly little points,’ Rex replied briskly. ‘You’re simply wasting time with all this nit-pecking, and I expect these gentlemen want to get back to their evening’s work or amusements, even if you don’t.’

‘I, too, have a perfectly good explanation for these not so silly little points,’ declared the Major, now determined to justify himself in the eyes of the Rumanians. ‘You did these things because you are another impostor. Yes, I have it! You are not the German agent that stole the defence plan, but you are another Nazi spy. The man who passed as Kilec would have known that after stealing the document our camp would be no safe place for him; but, for reasons best known to themselves, the Nazis still wanted a man inside it. You met him last night by arrangement. You gave him your clothes to help him get away from this part of the country unsuspected, and he gave
you his uniform and pass so that you could slip into our camp. Once safely inside, you would have taken the name of another of our missing airmen and got to work at your filthy espionage.’

‘You’re crazy!’ cried Rex angrily. ‘How about the cuts on my head and all those bruises on my body that you saw just now? If the fellow had been a friend of mine is it likely that he’d have handed me out things like that?’

‘Why not?’ snapped the Major. ‘None of your hurts are at all serious. A big man like yourself would think little of such punishment if his life might hang upon receiving it. Those cuts and bruises were deliberately accepted by you in order that, should you be caught entering the camp, they would support the lies you have just been telling us about being attacked and having your clothes taken from you. There is another thing. You did everything in your power to persuade me not to hand you over to our Rumanian friends here. Why was that? It was because you know that the Polish camp is still in great confusion, owing to the constant arrival of new officers who have only just escaped over the frontier, and that we had to leave all our own dossiers about enemy agents behind in Poland. But not so the Rumanians. Their routine for dealing with suspects like yourself has not yet been interfered with. You were afraid that if you fell into their hands their Intelligence Department would soon be able to check up on you.’

Rex was now acutely worried again. He was in constant fear that the Major would make mention of his rash assertion that he was acting for the British and, given help to get out of the country, could prevent further supplies of Rumanian oil reaching the Nazis.

The manner of the Rumanians had noticeably hardened towards Rex while the Major was speaking, and he felt that to prolong the argument would only serve to increase his own danger. The one thing now was to stop the Pole talking before he excited really dangerous suspicions in the Rumanians’ minds by some mention of the oil traffic. So, with great reluctance but from a feeling of essential caution, Rex made no effort to answer in detail the charge made against him. He simply shrugged his shoulders and said: ‘This is all absolute nonsense.’

‘I am by no means satisfied that it is,’ announced the Station Commander. ‘I think Major Serzeski has made a reasonably strong case against you, and you do not seem to be in a position to refute it. In any case, I shall certainly hold you here until our
Intelligence people have gone into the matter and checked your description against their files of suspects.’