The Leader And The Damned (46 page)

He repeated what he had said. One. Two. Three. Finally he turned on the giant and raised his stick like a weapon.

'Tell him if he doesn't act quickly I'll beat some sense into him with this stick,' he shouted at the top of his voice.

She spoke only a few words when Jovanovic interrupted her and made a gesture beyond the fort, rolling up the map as he finished. Heljec ran through the exit and out of sight.

'Your threat to attack him convinced him,' Paco said. 'We are evacuating at once...'

As they emerged from the fort Lindsay was astounded to witness the sudden appearance of Partisans everywhere. They seemed to rise out of the ground from invisible trenches. He followed Paco to the edge of the plateau where the terrain dropped steeply in a series of gullies. She stopped to help him but he waved her on.

'Just show me the way. I'll keep up. Good God, there's Bora. The devil looks after its own.'

The descent was precipitous and Lindsay half- walked, half-stumbled down a flight of natural steps formed by rock ledges jutting from the mountain-side. Somehow he kept his balance as Paco kept glancing back and he kept waving her on, certain there was little time left to get clear of the plateau.

He remembered his case. Below them he saw Bora carrying it and below him Milic carrying another. Paco's, he presumed. As he continued the diabolical descent he thought of Hartmann and looked back. The German was a few yards behind, followed by Vlatko who carried his machine-pistol. That was when his experienced ears caught the first distant sound of a fleet of planes coming.

The guerrilla force slipped down from the plateau inside a series of deep gulches and defiles, some of which in winter would be raging torrents. The slither of small pebbles told Lindsay that.

He was now close enough to the winding gorge they were heading for to see the dark shadows on the opposite slope which were mouths of caves. Those would be their refuge and their shelter when the bombardment started. If they got there in time.

Paco stopped briefly as Vlatko called down to her. Hartmann was close behind Lindsay who still kept up a furious pace as he went on stumbling down the fiendish descent, saving his balance again and again with the aid of the stick.

'Tell the German if he attempts to signal to the planes I will shoot him instantly,' Vlatko had warned.

'For Christ's sake, he was the one who tried to warn Heljec they were on their way.' Her tone was scathing. 'Go back to your shoemaking if that's the best you can do! And shut up.
We haven't much time
...'

She repeated the gist of the exchange to Lindsay and then, agile as a goat, continued on her way. We haven't much time. She was right, Lindsay thought. They were almost at the bottom but now the sound of the incoming planes was an ominous roar.

The gorge was a river bed. Green water frothed and tumbled over boulders but the winter level had dropped. Paco waited, grabbed Lindsay's arm and helped him use the boulders as stepping stones. He was vaguely aware that to left and right Partisans were scurrying across and disappearing inside the caves. He concentrated on looking down, watching where he placed his feet. Then they were on the other side.

Still clutching his arm, Paco hustled him up a short slope strewn with stones which slithered and rattled under his feet. The mouth of a cave, about eight feet high, loomed up and she hurried him inside. There was a sudden drop of temperature as they paused in the gloom.

Paco was taking in deep breaths, her bosom heaving with their efforts. She saw him watching her and looked away as Hartmann arrived with Vlatko practically treading on his heels.

'Get this enthusiast off my back,' Hartmann said drily and sat on one of the huge boulders which littered the interior of the cave.

Common sense told them to retreat deep inside the cave. Curiosity - the same curiosity which brought Londoners into the streets in 1940, staring up at the German bombers overhead - took them to the mouth of the cave to see what was happening. Lindsay immediately witnessed a grim incident.

A Partisan in the gorge crouched behind a massive boulder was aiming his rifle skywards. Heljec appeared behind the man, raised his pistol and shot him dead. The Serb skipped across the river and vanished inside another cave.

'The murdering swine!' protested Lindsay.

'Heljec had given strict orders,' Paco said quietly. 'There must be no firing at the planes to give away our positions.'

She had just spoken when Lindsay heard a sound which took him back to France, 1940. The high- pitched scream of an aircraft engine. He peered out cautiously. A second plane was following the first over the summit plateau where the crumbling fortress which had been Heljec's headquarters reared up like the mountain's summit.

The plane, a small black dart at a great height, turned on its side and plunged in a vertical dive at tremendous speed. A stick of bombs from the first machine straddled the plateau. The roar of bursting bombs reverberated down in the gorge. A hailstorm of splintered rock flew into the air. A wall of the fortress toppled, spilled down the gulches, dissolving into a thousand fragments. A cloud of dust rose from where the wall had stood.

'Jesus Christ!' said Lindsay. 'Stukas - dive-bombers. If we were up there now...'

The air armada - the sky seemed full of machines - systematically pattern-bombed the plateau from end to end. Then the air commander changed his tactics.

'They've spotted the caves!' Lindsay shouted. 'Get well to the back...'

A crouched, running figure dashed inside their cave. It was Dr Macek. He saw Lindsay and looked amazed. At Paco's urging he joined them at the rear of the cave behind a rampart of rocks. A stick of bombs trod its lethal way along the floor of the gorge, one exploding close to their own entrance. Sharp- edged bits of stone like shrapnel flew about inside their cave, clattering against the rampart.

Crouched down with Paco on his right and Macek on his left, Lindsay felt the reaction to his exertions starting. His legs and hands trembled uncontrollably. Macek placed a gentle hand across his forehead and frowned at Paco.

'All right,' snapped Lindsay, who had seen his expression and mistrusted doctors, 'what is it?'

'You've drained yourself coming down that mountain. I did say you have glandular fever. I did say you needed rest, a lot of rest …'

'So they carried me down instead,' Lindsay commented sarcastically. 'You think we'd ever have made it.

His last recollection was glancing beyond Macek and noticing Hartmann watching him - punctuated by a whole fusillade of bombs filling the- gorge with their hellish sound and dust drifting inside the cave. Then, oh God, he was falling into oblivion again.

Chapter Thirty-One

Kursk!
July 1943...

A town in Russia south of Moscow few people have heard of. It was at Kursk in the summer of '43 that the outcome of the Second World War would be decided.

Here a gigantic Russian salient like a thumb protruded into the German front. The Red Army had crammed the salient with their elite divisions ready for the attack.

This vast area was dangerously over-crowded. There were the huge T-34 tanks, the latest Soviet self-propelled guns, the most battle-experienced infantry and armoured divisions. No fewer than one million Russian troops assembled in this confined pocket waited the order to advance. And Stalin hesitated.

There was no hesitation at the Wolf's Lair. The Fuhrer had made up his mind and his most able commander, Field Marshal von Kluge, fully supported the plan: to attack first, to slice off the base of the thumb and close the immense trap which within days would encircle one million Russians.

'The road to Moscow will then be open,' von Kluge continued at the Fuhrer's midday conference on 1 July. 'There will be nothing left for Stalin to throw in our path. We take Moscow, the hub of the Bolshevik railway system, and Russia is wiped out.'

'We launch the offensive on 5 July,' Hitler agreed. 'Then once Russia is destroyed we transfer one hundred and twenty divisions to France and Belgium. Any attempted landing by the Anglo-Americans will end in catastrophe. Gentlemen,
Operation Citadel
is on. I have decided.'

He looked round the table at Martin Bormann, Keitel and Jodl., who duly nodded their agreement. The Citadel was Kursk. Once it fell, the gates to Moscow were thrown wide open.

Hitler dismissed the meeting and told Bormann to accompany him to his quarters. He strode out of the
Lagebaracke
, across the compound and entered his own simple hut. Once inside the Fuhrer threw the cap he had donned onto a table and told his deputy to shut the door as he settled in an armchair.

'Bormann, you must by now agree that everyone accepts me for who I am. Citadel is the biggest operation Germany has so far launched in the whole war.'

'
Mein Fuhrer
,' began Bormann, 'I have only one anxiety. There is still no news of the killing or capture of Wing Commander Lindsay.'

'Who cares about him any longer? How could he affect me?'

Bormann noted he used
me
, not
us
. Since the impersonation which had begun the previous March, Bormann - who had expected to manipulate Heinz Kuby like a ventriloquist's dummy - had found himself relegated to his earlier role under the original Fuhrer. And, he reflected, there was not one thing in the world he could do about it without destroying himself.

'I have studied Lindsay's file carefully,' Bormann persisted. 'He was once an actor used to studying mannerisms and he was very close to that promiscuous Christa Lundt. Before they escaped together I caught her watching you closely. I think she detected something wrong.'

'So, what do you propose?' Hitler interjected impatiently.

'That SS Colonel Jaeger be sent back to the Balkans in the hope that he can pick up Lindsay's trail.'

'Jaeger is taking command of his unit again for Citadel,' the Fuhrer said brusquely. 'We need every experienced man we can lay our hands on to pull this off. Just so long as that Soviet spy Hartmann insisted was here does not pass on details of Citadel to the Russians. Everything depends on the element of surprise …'

That evening at the pine-shrouded Wolf's Lair on 1 July the atmosphere was tense. It was going to be another sultry, humid night and so much hinged on Citadel.

Three of the leading personalities passed through the various checkpoints separately. None of the trio was likely to want the company of one of his colleagues. Keitel was regarded by Jodl as a stuffed shirt who had been promoted above his level of ability. Martin Bormann was possessed of one universal attribute. He was detested by everyone except the Fuhrer. And Hitler's dog, Blondi.

Keitel considered Jodl a tricky individual, not a man you would ever strike up an intimacy with. Certainly an officer it would be wise to hold at a distance. And so it came about that the three men went their own ways, seeking brief relief from the claustrophobia of the Wolf's Lair before the midnight conference.

In these northern climes it was dark at 11.15 pm, when once again experienced hands opened up the log pile concealing the powerful transmitter in the forest. The signal tapped out with the aid of a pocket torch was unusually long. The operator replaced the logs and returned just in time to attend the Fuhrer's conference.

'Anna, I am exhausted,' Rudolf Roessler exclaimed as he closed the flap inside the cupboard which hid his own transceiver. 'I feel something very important is imminent.'

'And how do you know that?' Anna enquired as she handed her husband a cup of coffee which he drank greedily.

'I have received, in normal code, the longest signal yet from Woodpecker. I have, immediately re-transmitted it to Moscow. I suspect it gives the order of battle for a very major operation...'

'Well, you have done all you can,' Anna said briskly, 'so we shall just have to see.'

Roessler swivelled round in his chair and stared at her, his face lined with fatigue. 'From what has happened so far we know Stalin is not making full use of the information I send. Will he ever come to trust me?'

'Kursk! It could be a huge trap to destroy us...'

Inside the small office in the Kremlin it was the early hours and the atmosphere was strained as Stalin spoke. Two other men stood alongside each other, listening. The aggressive General Zhukov and the quieter, more intellectual Marshal Vassilevsky, Chief of Staff.

Stalin was holding the long signal just received from Lucy which had originated from Woodpecker. Never before had Stalin received from this source such a detailed order of battle for the German Army. It was quite terrifying, the vast amount of war material the Wehrmacht had assembled. If it were true. The Generalissimo read the signal again slowly, repeating aloud a few of the details