Himmler's War-ARC (20 page)

He had no illusions. Some of his men would doubtless not at all mind spending the remainder of the war doing farm work in Kansas, but the thought of the viciousness of the vengeful French was sobering. Any captured German soldier would be fortunate indeed to make it to a prison pen.

Schurmer waved with forced jauntiness. “Come on my brave warriors. Germany can’t be all that far away.” He laughed genuinely as his men hooted at him. With men like these, Germany could have conquered the world. Why in God’s name had Hitler fucked up so thoroughly?

       * * *

Victor Mastny counted his blessings each day but they were more than offset by his hatreds. By forging some papers and stealing others from the body of another prisoner, he was able to pass him himself off as a French prisoner of war.

In reality, Mastny was a Czech and a thief, not a POW, although he had lived for years in France. He was also a drug dealer and had been convicted of both crimes, along with a count of sexual assault. The woman had been the wife of a shop owner. Her husband wouldn’t pay Victor for drugs he’d bought and used, and Victor had used her to punish the man. Victor never dreamed that the fool would go to the police for him screwing his wife, although she did scream all the while he did it.

He was convicted and sent to a small German-run work camp where he was put in charge of a group of other prisoners who hated him with a vengeance. When an Allied air raid hit the camp, he took his phony papers and walked away in the confusion. The decision to work on the Mullers’ farm was based on the sobering fact that he could not wander Germany forever. The local police would stop him and turn him over to the Gestapo. It did not escape him that he was only marginally safer as an alleged French POW.

The farm at least provided shelter and an abundance of food and they needed workers. It wasn’t difficult to convince the Mullers that he’d been assigned to work for them.

Still, he hated the Mullers. He hated all Germans, but not because he was a patriot. No, he hated the Germans because they had interrupted his life and sent him away to prison for several years. He also hated the French for initially catching him and convicting him.

Victor had plans. When the war ended, he would return to France and begin anew plundering the people of that country. For that, however, he needed money and he currently had nothing. But perhaps the Mullers did?

He slept in the barn with a couple of illiterate oafs from Latvia, twins named Janis and Juris. He and the twins barely understood each other, but the Latvians fully comprehended that Victor would kill them in an instant if they crossed him. He could see the terror on their faces when he looked at them and he liked that. It further helped that, even though they were large, they were stupid, even for Latvians.

As usual, they were not locked in the barn. After all, where would they go? He felt that the Mullers had deluded themselves into thinking that their slaves were happy with their lot. Victor would be happy when he could piss on their smiling faces.

He slipped quietly to the house. The dogs recognized him and ignored him. He patted them to ensure their silence and they wagged their tails. Sometimes he gave them pieces of meat to cement their friendship.

Victor was intrigued by the fact that two more women had joined the Mullers. One was older, about Victor’s age, and the other just out of childhood. Both of them aroused him. He had been a very long time without a woman. The last had been one of the workers he was supervising and she’d been old and ugly, although she had worked hard to satisfy him in return for extra food.

The two new women had been out working for the Germans and had returned earlier in the evening. He heard the sound of water running and visualized them naked and scrubbing down. On a couple of occasions he’d managed to get to the bathroom window and watch the beefy and very unattractive Bertha at her ablutions. If he had to, he would fuck her, but he wanted either of the two others. He laughed. Why not take both of them? Of course, after he would do that after they told them where their money was. They’d come from Berlin, after all, and that meant they had money.

* * *

Margarete felt that all of her muscles ached, including some she didn’t know she had. The work on the Rhine Wall was backbreaking. Many of the women, boys, and old men who’d been drafted to do the heavy work weren’t very strong and some had collapsed. Their foremen weren’t cruel men and the worst of the weak were allowed to rest and some were even sent home. It was Magda’s and Margarete’s bad fortune to be healthy and thus able to pick up the pails of dirt that had been excavated and carry them away.

She had experienced a feeling of camaraderie while working with a crew of young girls her own age. They had sung songs and told jokes, some of them shockingly bawdy, while they worked and tried to ignore the growing stiffness in their joints and muscles. They were under the nominal control of a local school teacher whose name she couldn’t remember. The next time she went, it would be with a different crew and another leader, so it didn’t matter.

What impressed Margarete was the massiveness of the construction. Along with hundreds of people like her, she was told there were dozens of other sites each with its own labor force. She thought of herself as an Israelite working on the pyramids until she recalled the Reich’s hatred of Jews in any form.

When she and her mother got home, Margarete let her mother soak in the hot water filled tub first. She’d teased Magda that older people took longer to recover from hard work and her mother had stuck out her tongue and made a vulgar noise that made both of them laugh.

Finally, she slipped into her own tub and let the hot water comfort her. When she finally stepped out, she paused for a moment in front of the full length mirror on the door. She scarcely recognized herself. Her body was leaner and longer and her breasts and hips more pronounced. She smiled. Now let an adolescent idiot like Volkmar Detloff try to paw her again. Not only would he find that she was a young woman and not a girl, but she would slap his pimply face silly.

She shuddered. She had the cold and sudden feeling that someone was watching her. The window to the bathroom was open only a crack, but she closed it anyhow and latched it. Her fears were probably groundless, but it paid to be prudent. What if one of the workers had seen her? What if refugees were wandering around the farm? She was worried about the laborer called Victor. She decided to ask her uncle where he kept his hunting rifles and shotguns.

Outside, Victor waited silently a few minutes after the girl closed the window. Then he moved back to the barn. He was more than pleased by what he saw. Both women, the older and the younger, were magnificent. The older was full bosomed, wide hipped and ripe, while the younger was lean and taut.

He reached inside his pants and began to stroke himself. He would take both of them.

* * *

Colonel Tom Granville waited as usual for General Bedell Smith to notice him. Finally, he looked up. “Okay, who’s dead this time?”

“Now we think its Martin Bormann, General.”

Smith leaned back and laughed harshly. “First Hitler, then Goering and now Bormann? Hell, somebody’s doing a lot of housecleaning in the new Reich. And how do we know about Bormann? Did they announce it?”

A week earlier, German radio had informed its listeners that Air Marshal and Reichsfuhrer Hermann Goering had died of a massive heart attack and then added that the grief of Hitler’s passing had probably played a part in causing it. The announcement had been a eulogy, reminding listeners that Goering had been a fighter ace in World War I and had been one of the earliest of Hitler’s devoted followers. The announcer had glossed over the fact that the Luftwaffe’s performance in the current war had been spotty at best and successes were due to regional commanders like Kesselring, rather than to the drug-soaked genius of Hermann Goering.

“General, Ultra picked up a message that Bormann was kaput. The sender appeared to be Skorzeny. It said that the Bormann problem had been, in his words, resolved. An hour later, a very terse announcement was made to key government officials that Bormann had been killed in an accident on the autobahn.”

“Skorzeny’s a busy boy,” said Smith. “He keeps knocking off people like he’s one of Al Capone’s thugs and, even better for him, he doesn’t have to worry at all about getting arrested. Capone’s murderers had at least a theoretical chance of getting caught. But you’re telling me that no one in Germany’s too terribly upset about Bormann’s demise?”

“Correct, sir. Aside from being a totally unlovable snake, he simply wasn’t all that well known outside of government circles. He’ll be cremated so no one will notice the bullet holes in his head and then be forgotten.”

“But Skorzeny won’t be. That son of a bitch is dangerous. He came really close to killing the Big Three and did kidnap Mussolini.”

The attempt on the lives of Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt had taken place at Teheran, Iran, in 1943 and Skorzeny had nearly pulled it off. At that time Skorzeny had been a fanatical follower of Hitler. Now he appeared to have transferred his allegiance to Heinrich Himmler.

“Tom, we’re gonna have to keep an eye on Skorzeny. God only knows what he’ll have up his sleeve with Himmler to prod him.”

“And with our move to Paris, sir, we’ll be that much closer to Germany, Himmler, and Skorzeny. Have you considered talking to Ike about staying someplace a little easier to guard?”

Smith rubbed his eyes. He would kill for a good night’s sleep. “Like New Jersey? We talked. He agrees it’s a good idea from a security standpoint, but, from a political point of view, SHAEF needs to be headquartered in Paris, at least for the time being. After all,” he said sarcastically, “it is the capital of our brave ally, France. Technically, we’ll be just outside the city and Ike will at all times be in a protective cocoon, surrounded by MP’s and other security types.”

“Are you and Ike aware that Skorzeny speaks both excellent French and English?”

“Just what I needed, Colonel, more good news.”

Granville grinned at the sarcasm. “At least there’ll be some good restaurants in Paris.”

CHAPTER 10

MORGAN’S FLIGHT over liberated Paris was simply a joy ride. He’d informed Whiteside that he needed to check out the Piper’s engine and then told Snyder he could stay home. Neither man believed for a second that there was anything wrong with the Piper Cub which now had the silhouette of a German truck painted on its side. Instead of a regular copilot, Levin sat in the back seat, enjoying the ride and the view.

The 74th was resting. For that matter, almost all the army was sitting on its hands, catching its breath and licking its wounds. The crossing of the Seine had not only resulted in heavy casualties, but had used up vast reserves of fuel and ammunition. Until replenished, it would be unwise, even dangerous, to place the army in a position where they’d have to fight a possibly better armed and well-supplied Nazi force.

Nor would resupply be quick. There were still no major ports close to the Allied armies. Cherbourg was still being rebuilt after demolition by the Nazis and Marseilles was too far away. Stoddard had informed the regiment that the rumors were true—Montgomery’s attempted landings to the north had been a disaster. Britain’s First Airborne Division had finally fought its way to the sea and the remnants were being taken off by U.S. Navy warships, a further insult to the Brits. The British Airborne force had lost half its men and virtually all its equipment. Even those who disliked Monty and the British were appalled. It meant the Nazi tiger still had claws and teeth. Overall the Brits had suffered more than fifteen thousand casualties and there were echoes in Parliament for Churchill and Monty to explain themselves.

Patton’s crossing south of Paris had been successful because he’d not used bomber attacks like Hodges had. The bombers in Jack’s area had tipped off the Germans as to where the attacks would come. Instead, Patton had the bombers drop their load a full thirty miles south of his intended crossing point, which had thoroughly confused the Germans in the area.

Even though the American army had joined the Free French in Paris, a handful of fires still burned, which meant that fighting still continued as the Free French Forces wrested control of the city from Nazi collaborators and sympathizers, along with the communist-led labor movement. It looked more and more like leave time in Paris with a ration of wine, women, and song would have to wait a while.

For the sheer hell of it, he flew around the Eiffel Tower, doubtless exasperating gendarmes and American military police. A few moments later, a pair of American fighters flew by and checked him out. Jack decided buzzing the tower wasn’t such a good idea, even though the fighters had wiggled their wings at him once they realized he was harmless.

“Now let’s fly through Notre Dame and the Louvre and see how many other planes we can scare up,” Levin suggested. “Who knows, if I like the place maybe I’ll convert to Catholicism.” He had been taking pictures. “By the way, I heard you got another letter from Carter’s cousin. You and she are becoming regular pen pals, aren’t you?”

Morgan felt himself flushing. “Yeah, and I kinda like it. It’s nice having somebody fairly close by to write to. And it’s an interesting way to get to know someone.”

“So when are you going to marry her?”

Morgan laughed. “As soon as I can get her pregnant, which isn’t very likely since I haven’t even met her yet. She said her Red Cross unit will be moving to Paris soon, so just maybe I’ll get some time off and get to meet her.”

Jessica had sent him another picture and he’d decided she really was cute in a quiet sort of way. He’d sent her a snapshot taken by the regiment’s photographer. It showed him leaning against the plane and, in his opinion, smiling foolishly. He’d also sent one of Carter and Levin.

“Of course, by the time she gets to Paris, we’ll all likely be too far away.”

“Not a chance,” said Levin. “The way things are shaping up, we won’t be in any condition to move for a couple of weeks.”