The Bloody Road to Death (19 page)

Carl crawls into the back seat and makes himself as small as possible.

‘Jesus if this comes
off
!’ he mumbles nervously.

‘And now we must start quietly,’ says Porta, groping around the dashboard.

‘Ain’t she a beauty!’ says Tiny admiringly, running his hand over the polished instrument panel. ‘Wouldn’t I like to roll down the Reeperbahn in this baby. Old bleedin’ Nass’d lose ’is leather coat an’ is turned-down ’at-brim at the sight of it.’

The motor gives out a sucking sound as Porta turns the starting-key. It sounds like a roar to them, but not even the feeding hens react to it.

Porta tries with a little more choke but the motor merely sighs and gives off a strong smell of petrol.

‘If them SS bleeders come out I’m cuttin’ loose,’ snarls Tiny, positioning his Mpi.

Carl bites nervously at his hand and sends a silent prayer to heaven, although he is not a believer.

‘What the hell’s wrong?’ asks Porta, wiping sweat from his face. ‘These high-compression jobs start off if you just look at ’em, as a rule.’

‘Might be an idea to get a move on,’ says Tiny, blowing his nose on his fingers. ‘Even if we
are a
kind of MP it’d be a bit difficult, maybe, to explain to them SS fellows what we’re doin’ sittin’ in their bleedin’ car.’

‘I can’t understand it,’ sighs Porta, shaking his head. ‘Can it have flooded? Stinks like a blasted Arabian oil-field.’

‘Try to give it the lot,’ suggests Tiny, always an advocate of violence.

Porta pumps desperately at the choke and treads on the self-starter. The motor sighs gently.

‘Hell!’ he shouts, pushing the choke in irritably.

The engine starts with a roar and the exhaust bangs like a gun-shot.

‘Jesus!’ gasps Porta. ‘There must be a bundle of dynamite under that bonnet!’

An SD man comes rushing out to the gate just as the car begins to roll away.

‘Stop!’ he shouts. ‘That’s our car. Stop you bastards!’

Stopping is the last thing in the world Porta is thinking of doing.

The car shudders and shoots forward like a shell from a gun as Porta treads heavily on the accelerator.

An Mpi burst whines above their heads.

‘No peace for the bleedin’ wicked,’ growls Tiny, turning round angrily. He lifts his Mpi and sends two short bursts at the SD man who sinks to the ground.

The heavy Mercedes roars along the road, taking the curves with a long rising whine. The exhaust is backfiring continuously.

‘Holy Mother of Kazan!’ groans Porta. ‘I’ve met a lot of queer vehicles during my time in this blasted army, but this one has ’em all beat. We’ll have to exchange it, somehow, before it turns my stones to bloody gravel.’

Tiny sets the siren going and looks importantly to all sides.

‘You crazy bastards,’ rages Carl from the back seat. ‘You’ll have the Gestapo on our tails in a minute.’

They roll into Brod at a more than respectable speed. Porta stops outside a large army workshop with long rows of wrecked cars lined up outside. He wrestles two WH
⁵
numberplates from an Opel and hands them to Tiny.

‘Put these on instead of those bloody SS plates. I’ll take a look round while you’re at it.’

‘This is forgery, fraud with Army property,’ protests Carl. ‘A court-martial board of deaf, dumb and blind Kaffirs’d hang us for what we’ve done, only up to now, even.’

‘Shut it!’ orders Tiny. ‘You’re shakin’ like a bleedin’ jelly, man!’

Porta disappears, whistling happily, into the large workshop, and runs straight into the arms of a mechanic with obergefreiter stripes.

A carton of cigarettes disappears into the workshop man’s boiler-suit. Porta accepts three tins of paint and a triangular command flag from the wreck of a Horch.

‘All right for movement orders?’ asks the obergefreiter mechanic. He seems to have a sense for the practical.

‘Yes,’ says Porta, thoughtfully, ‘you’ve got something there. May I invite you to partake of a little something in the canteen?’

‘Never been known to say no,’ answers his colleague. ‘See that glassed-in office over there? When you enter the door to the left you’ll find a bookcase behind a blue curtain. In this are kept
open movement orders. Take a bundle. There’s enough in one to take you to America, at least.’

‘Rubber stamps?’ asks Porta, with a cheeky grin, as the third glass follows the first two. ‘Where the Prussians are concerned, orders which haven’t been stamped aren’t worth as much as shithouse paper.’

‘When you have the movement orders,’ explains his colleague, pushing forward his glass for the fourth time, ‘go up the stairs to the gallery, second door on the left. There you’ll find all the rubber stamps you’ll ever need. Take one with an FPO number. They are in the yellow rack. Copies are in the black rack. Look out for Pigface. He’ll shoot you on the spot if he catches you.’

‘How’ll I know Pigface?’ asks Porta, practically.

‘You’d expect him to grunt at you,’ answers his colleague.

‘Live till you die, and make a handsome corpse!’ grins Porta, encouragingly, and stamps up the stairs to the gallery, having removed a whole bundle of movement orders. He looks carefully into the office, and finding it empty walks nonchalantly in and removes two rubber stamps.

‘What are you doing here?’ comes a falsetto voice from behind him.

Porta draws a deep breath, whirls round, and clicks his heels together.

A major of Engineers with a face which bears a remarkable resemblance to that of a pig is standing before him.

‘Sir,’ screams Porta, ‘wish to state,
sir
, I am looking for Workshops Chief Mechanic Lammert,
sir
!’ Porta had seen the name of the glassed-in office below.

‘What do you want with the Chief?’

‘
Sir
, I have a message for him from a friend,
sir!
’

‘He has no time to waste on friendly messages. He is engaged in winning the war,’ grunts Pigface crossly. ‘What are you doing in
my
office?’ He makes a lightning inventory of loose items.

‘
Sir
, I would like permission to use the telephone,
sir
!’

‘What do you think this is? A telephone booth?’ screams Pigface. ‘Get out of here, you idle man, and quickly! If I see you here again in my workshops I’ll have you arrested!’

Behind a wall they paint the black Mercedes with Army camouflage paint. For verisimilitude Porta gives it a couple of dents with a sledgehammer. The Eastern front finish, he calls it.

‘It’s a pity. It was such a
nice
car,’ says Tiny.

They drive slowly through the town.

‘Let’s have a cup of coffee,’ says Porta, pointing at a large pompous building which resembles a luxury hotel. All it needs is the pavement tables and sun-shades.

He swings elegantly in to the entrance.

‘
Don’t stop!
’ shouts Carl. ‘Look at those sentries!’

‘Jesus,’ mumbles Porta. ‘This doesn’t look like our kind of place at all.’

‘SD!’ moans Tiny fearfully. ‘If anybody asks I’m not with you.’

Porta guns the motor and the car shoots forward, letting off a couple of colossal backfires which cause the SD sentries to duck and take cover.

They pass several police patrols and road blocks, but as soon as the police catch sight of the triangular command flag they wave the car on through and soon they are out of town.

The following day they swing into Kukes where they meet an Italian
A jutante di Battaglia
⁶
who is chief cook to a high-ranking staff unit.

To their surprise they discover from him that they are in Albania.

‘
We
are on our way to Germersheim via Vienna,’ says Carl sadly.

‘So you are a leettle off your road,’ smiles the Italian. ‘But now you here you take a leettle food wiz me?’

Two kitchen orderlies lay a table on the pavement under a large sunshade in Italy’s green, red, and white colours.

The first course is turkey with a green sauce.

‘Thees was for my divisional commander,’ says the Italian whose name, he tells them, is Luigi Trantino. ‘I geev heem other food. Luigi’s guests have right to good food.’

They wash the turkey down with mountain wine served in an enormous jug.

‘I am brave soldier,’ states Luigi, pointing at a row of brilliantly-coloured ribbons on his chest. ‘These I get in Abyssinia.’

‘What, were you down there teachin’ the blacks the true Roman faith?’ asks Tiny. Luigi nods, his mouth stuffed to speechlessness with turkey.

They understand quick. Only one God!’

‘Of course,’ Porta agrees, leaning back and dropping a piece of turkey into his wide-open mouth.

‘What’re they like there?’ asks Tiny inquisitively. ‘Do they bite?’

They nice people,’ says Luigi waving his fork about. ‘They not smell, like American say. This with race big nonsense.’

‘Doesn’t worry me, either,’ shouts Porta, dipping his bread in the green sauce.

‘Before war I have first-class hotel,’ boasts Luigi. ‘All big men they come eat wiz me. Musso eat two times. Big ’arem! All kind of cunt.
All
! Then Fascist pigs make peaceful Italian go fight war!’ he sighs. ‘Soldiers take my hotel. Make me wear uniform. All sheet-bad! Africa terreeble! For many month no see
zuppa de cdamaro
. No culture there. Bad as German. Italian die body and soul if there long time.’

The orderlies bring in the next course.

‘
Pasta con le sarde
,’ proclaims Luigi, proudly. ‘This
Mafia
eat when big man plan big job.’

Porta clicks his tongue.

‘You Romans certainly know how to enjoy life.’

‘We no do bad,’ admits Luigi.

‘Have you got spaghetti?’ asks Porta. ‘You know with brown sauce and cheese over it.’

‘We ’ave, of course!’ The order is passed on to the kitchen immediately.

‘I start bordello I never take girl who not brought up on
Spaghetti alia Carbonata
,’ shouts Luigi, delightedly. ‘It grease works good inside.’

Tiny takes a huge helping of spaghetti from the dish in the middle of the table. He chews, swallows and battles with it bravely. It seems as if the spaghetti will never disappear down his throat. Slowly his face begins to turn blue.

‘You must ’ave cheese wiz this,’ says Luigi, with a professional air.

Tiny nods, his mouth stuffed full. He shakes cheese on to what seems to be mile-long strips of spaghetti.

‘He’s going to die,’ says Porta, watching Tiny’s purpling face with interest.

In desperation Tiny grips the spaghetti in both hands and rips it apart.

‘Jesus Christ, ’ow do you Italians
live
through a meal of spaghetti?’ he groans.

‘You must learn eat,’ explains Luigi. ‘See like so!’ Like lightning he rolls the spaghetti around his fork. ‘See now,’ he says again with self-assurance, and repeats the trick several times.

Porta and Carl give it up immediately. But Tiny in his stubbornness gets himself tied up in it. At last he gives up and eats the remnants with his fingers.

‘Thees place a real
sheet
place,’ declares Luigi darkly, when they have gorged in silence for a while. ‘The officer ees a lot of
sheet
I get pain soon in belly. They greedy all time. The wine she ees too cold or she ees too young. Roast duck they weel ’ave, venison, lobster. They no seem know they in middle of thirty-year-long war, with ’unger and misery everywhere. Me I get angry so could
peess
.’

‘You eat and drink well,’ says a voice suddenly to one side of the table.

‘What een ’ell?’ cries Luigi, and can hardly believe his own eyes.

A coal-black Negro with a red fez on his head, wearing a double-breasted greyblue Jugoslavian uniform coat, stands in the gutter grinning broadly. On his left foot he is wearing an Italian mountaineering boot. On the right foot a German officer’s long riding boot.

‘You eat well,’ he repeats, pointing at the food on the table. ‘Give me!’

‘Manners maketh man, me old black son,’ says Porta with dignity. ‘You are in white company.’

‘Get stuffed, German. Want your teeth knocked out?’

‘Well blow me bleedin’ brainless,’ shouts Tiny, indignantly.

‘The bleedin’ Colonials’ve learned to talk! On your way ’ome to the bleedin’ Reich are you, mate?’

‘If he is he’ll get a shock,’ sighs Porta. ‘Socialism isn’t what they say it is!’

‘Where you come from, neegger?’ asks Luigi inquisitively.

‘Fuck you too,
spaghetti
. I didn’t ask
you
where
you
crawled in from, did I? Let’s have some food!’ He pulls out a chair and sits down at the table without waiting for an invitation, pushing Carl’s plate to one side to make room.

‘Beppo!’ shouts Luigi to the kitchen. ‘Breeng a lobster. You like strong sauce?’ he addresses the Negro with a sly grin.