Assignment Gestapo (13 page)

‘Insubordination! You heard that, did you? Refusing to obey’ the orders of a Stabsgefreiter!’ He staggered to his feet, thrust out an arm and pushed it under the man’s nose. ‘You see that?’ He jabbed a finger at his stripes. ‘You know what they mean, I suppose?’

The SD merely took hold of the arm between finger and thumb and delicately swung it back towards Porta, screwing up his nose as if he could smell a bad smell – which he most likely could.

‘Well, bugger me!’ cried Porta, growing ever more excited. ‘If that don’t beat all! You see that, did you?’ He turned again to Tiny, who nodded eagerly and pushed back his chair. ‘Make a note of it! Take his name and number! He used violence on a Stabsgefreiter . . . Go on, get it wrote down!’

‘Fuck off,’ said Tiny, sullenly. ‘You know I can’t bleeding write.’

‘Then take him outside and beat the living daylights out of him!’

‘Look here, you uncouth bastard–’

The SD man rose to his feet, and Tiny rose with him. They faced each other across the table. Tiny scratched his enormous chest, hitched up his trousers, reached out a hand and closed it over the man’s collar. ,

‘Come on, little one . . . let’s go talk outside.’

The SD man opened his mouth to shout, but such was the pressure of Tiny’s vast paw that only a strangulated squawk came out. Tiny frogmarched him to the door and Porta sat down again, red in the face and still angry.

The Dutch SS man was now lying across the table with his head in a pool of beer.

‘Look at that,’ I said, to the Legionnaire. ‘He’s passed out.’

And I laughed hilariously, as if it were the funniest thing in the whole world. The Legionnaire, who rarely if ever lost control, merely smiled pityingly at me.

A few moments later, Tiny reappeared – alone.

‘Where’s he gone?’ I said.

‘Lying in the gutter,’ said Tiny. He sent his fist crashing into the palm of his hand and winked at me. ‘Out like a light first go . . . Hey!’ He looked round at the Legionnaire. ‘You remember the day you and me first met?’

‘I remember,’ said the Legionnaire.

‘What happened?’ I asked, just sufficiently drunk to be obliging and give Tiny the chance to show off.

By way of reply, he grabbed my hand as if to shake it in normal greeting and slowly began crushing it until I gave a loud yell of pain.

‘That’s what happened,’ said Tiny, proudly.

‘Very amusing,’ I said, shaking my hand up and down. “What’s the point of it?’

‘Ah,’ said Tiny, winking. ‘That’d be telling, wouldn’t it?’

The Legionnaire gave one of his patronizing smiles and shook his head at me.

‘Allow him his little moment of glory,’ he murmured.

‘Well, that’s what happened!’ protested Tiny.

‘Of course it is,’ agreed the Legionnaire, smoothly. ‘But never again, my friend! I don’t get caught twice the same way!’

‘Nor me,’ I grumbled, tucking my injured hand beneath my armpit.

Porta was banging on the table again, calling loudly and lewdly for more beer. The girls just sniffed and turned their backs on him, but Big Helga, the superintendent, left her place behind the counter and came storming over to our table. She placed herself before Porta, legs apart and arms akimbo, her vast body a mass of indignant ripples.

‘How dare you call my girls by such names? What do you think this is, a brothel?’

‘Brothel, my anus!’ retorted Porta. ‘With a scabby crew like that? Times might be hard, darling, but nobody’s that desperate!’

‘I shall report you,’ said Big Helga, as she said many times a day to many different soldiers. ‘We do a good job here, and I’d like to know where you lot would be without us.’

‘I could tell you,’ said Porta.

Big Helga took a step away from him.

‘They’re all good girls here, and Gertrude, let me tell you, has a boyfriend in the SD. If there’s any more lip from you people I shall have her report you.’

‘Ah, stop bellyaching!’ said Tiny. ‘You know you love us, really.’

‘All we want is some more beer,’ I added. ‘Anyone’d think we’d asked for six whores, the way she’s carrying on.’

Big Helga just sniffed and went back to the counter. She picked out Gerda, the least attractive of a rather poor bunch, and grudgingly sent her over to us with the order. Gerda wasn’t a bad girl, but they didn’t call her ‘Beanstick’ for nothing. She was the nearest thing to an animated telegraph pole I ever saw.

‘If you only had a bit more bum on you, I’d be almost tempted to take you to bed with me,’ murmured Tiny, regretfully sliding a hand up Gerda’s skirt and trying to feel her non-existent bottom.

Gerda showed what she thought of this invitation by slamming the Tiny’s hard on to Tray’s head and stalking away again.

At this point we were rejoined by Barcelona, who brought the unwelcome news that we were on guard duty as from that evening.

Barcelona was wearing an enormous bandage round his neck, which obliged him to hold his head stiff and straight. During our last days in the mountains he had been wounded in the throat by a stray hand grenade, and he had now been temporarily exempted from active service. He could, and should, have stayed in hospital, but thanks to Lt. Ohlsen pulling a few strings he had been allowed to come back to the Company and take up duty in the orderly room – not that he was very often to be found in the orderly room. He was more frequently in the canteen or the armoury.

There were people who thought he was a fool for not having taken advantage of a few months’ rest in hospital, but Barcelona had been in the Army long enough to know that once in hospital and separated from your comrades almost anything was liable to happen to you on your discharge. The chances of being sent back to your own company were remote, and in these days of the war it was almost certain death to be the newcomer in an established group of people. All the worst and most dangerous tasks would automatically come your way, and death seemed to be a foregone conclusion.

‘Jesus!’ said Barcelona, looking at the table with its array of beer mugs. ‘You’ve been packing it away, haven’t you?’?

‘Never mind that,’ said Porta. ‘What I want to know is, where we’re supposed to be on guard duty . . . I wouldn’t mind the local brothel—’

‘No such luck.’ Barcelona shook his head and picked up someone’s beer mug. ‘It’s the perishing Gestapo.’

‘What fool thought that one up?’ demanded the Legionnaire.

Barcelona hunched a shoulder and threw a sheet of paper on to the table. The Old Man prised it up from a pool of beer and looked at it indifferently.

‘Nineteen hundred hours . . . Place Karl Muck, Hamburg . . .’

Gloomily he folded the paper and put it in his top pocket Steiner came suddenly to life and glared at Barcelona as if he personally had made the arrangements.

‘Bloody Gestapo!’

‘Don’t look at me,’ said Barcelona. ‘I’m not the clown who thought it up . . . Anyway, just thank your lucky stars it’s nothing worse. The Fourth Section’s on duty at Fuhlsbiittel . . . execution squad for the Wehrmacht.’

‘I wouldn’t mind swopping,’ said Tiny, perverse as ever. ‘There’s always the chance of picking up a bit of extra lolly on executions. We’ve done it before now, let’s face it . . .’

‘How?’ demanded Stege, suspiciously. ‘How have you done it?’

‘Easy. You promise some guy his life and he’s willing to give you anything you ask for.’

‘You mean you’d take money from a condemned man?’ said Stege, sounding as if he could hardly believe his ears.

‘Well, and why not?’ said Tiny, aggressively. Tou’d be willing to pay someone for getting you off the hook, I bet.’

‘Any case,’ added Porta, ‘it ain’t that easy. They find out what you’re up to and you’d be for the high jump yourself.’

Stege opened his mouth to protest, but before he could speak Heide had woken from a deep sleep and found himself confronted by a solid wall of empty beer mugs. He swept them away, angrily.

‘We’ve drunk too much!’ He belched and reached out for the nearest full mug. ‘How did we get through all that lot?’

‘Beside the point,’ said Tiny. ‘We did, and that’s all that matters . . . apart from the fact that it’s you what’s going to pay for them. You’re the only one with money.’

‘Me? I’m broke!’ said Heide, at once.

‘Like hell! You’ve got a whole wad stuck down the inside of your boot!’

Heide looked at him incredulously.

‘How do you know that?’

Tiny shrugged his shoulders.

‘I had a look, didn’t I? I wanted some money the other day, so I went through your cupboard. It’s the only one with a faulty lock, you ought to get it looked at. Doesn’t close right, you see.’

‘You mean you deliberately went through my things?’

‘Yeah. I suppose you could put it that way.’

‘So it was you nicked that 100 marks?’

‘Now, look,’ said Tiny, ‘just watch it, mate. I never said I took nothing, did I?’

‘But it’s bloody obvious you did!’

Tiny sneered.

‘Try and prove it!’

‘I don’t have to prove it! You’ve as good as admitted it . . . By God, you’re not going to get away with this!’ warned Heide, his face sheet white with rage. ‘I’ll see you in Torgau if it’s the last thing I ever do. I’ll see you hang for this. I’ll see you—’

‘For Christ’s sake,’ said the Legionnaire, languidly, ‘does it really matter?’

‘It does to me!’ snarled Heide.

‘Look here,’ said Porta, as if suddenly possessed of an idea that would solve the entire problem, ‘why don’t we take a few bottles of booze on duty with us? Old Beanstick wouldn’t mind slipping them to us under the counter.’

‘Yeah? And what do we do with ’em when we get to Karl Muck?’

‘Stash ’em away somewhere safe. It’s O.K. I know one of the boys that’s been on guard duty there just recently, he says it’s a real doddle of a place. Right down in the cellars, like. Nobody ever bothers to come and take a look at what you’re doing.’

‘What about the cells?’ Steiner wanted to know.

‘What about them? None of the prisoners ain’t never there for more than one night. Most of ’em are got rid of the following morning. The ones the Gestapo want to pull about a bit, they take up top with ’em. More convenient. Saves ’em running up and down the stairs every time they feel like yanking a few finger nails out . . . You don’t want to worry about the cells. The prisoners won’t bother us none.’

‘How about that statue of the Emperor on his horse?’ suggested Heide suddenly forgetting his hundred marks and taking an interest in Porta’s idea. ‘The legs are hollow. I bet you could stuff quite a few bottles up there and no one’d notice.’

‘I already thought of that,’ claimed Tiny. ‘I was just about to say it myself. I always think of good places for hiding things in . . . That’s why I looked in your boots that time,’ he confided to Heide, who at once relapsed into fierce sulks.

‘We’ll get half a dozen large bottles,’ decided Porta. We’ll have a mixture.’ He beckoned to Gerda, who peeled herself away from the side of the counter and suspiciously approached us. ‘Six bottles,’ he told her. ‘Dortmunder up to there—’ He showed her with fingers and thumb held apart – ‘and the rest, Slibowitz. That O.K.?’

She shrugged.

‘If you say so. I shouldn’t fancy it myself, but there’s no accounting for some people’s tastes, is there?’

She turned away with a sniff, and Porta rubbed his hands together and looked towards the Legionnaire for confirmation.

‘That’s right, ain’t it? Put the beer in first, then the Slibowitz?’

The Legionnaire inclined his head, an expression of faint amusement on his face, as if he were watching a crowd of children.

Gerda came back with the first bottle, shaking it vigorously to mix the two liquids. Porta snatched it from her, horrified.

‘What the bleeding hell are you trying to do? Blow us all up?’

‘With any luck,’ she said, sourly.

She brought the rest of the bottles, banged them noisily on to the table and silently held out her hand for the money. She stood there counting it and checking every bank note to make sure it was not a forgery. While she was doing so, Steiner came out of the bog. He stood by the table, belching and doing up his flies, regardless of Gerda still counting her money.

‘Nothing more satisfying than a good slash,’ he informed us, with a sigh of contentment. ‘Specially when you’ve held on to it a bit . . .’

He picked up his beer mug and emptied it in a few quick gulps, his Adam’s apple bouncing vigorously up and down his throat He men belched again and wiped his lips along the back of his sleeve. Gerda gave him a long, slow look of contempt, placed the money in a bag she wore beneath her apron and marched away from us, her back held very straight.

‘What’s satisfying about it?’ demanded Porta, who was in a mood to quarrel with anyone over anything, no matter how banal.

Sterner looked at him.

‘What d’you mean, what’s satisfying? You’ve pissed often enough, haven’t you? You bloody well ought to know what’s satisfying about it.’

‘Well, I don’t,’ said Porta. ‘What’s the matter with you, anyway? You kinky or something? You some kind of a pervert? You—’

‘Ah, fuck off!’ said Steiner, trying to sit down and discovering that Porta had spread himself out over half the bench.

Porta banged his beer mug on to the table and staggered to his feet.

‘Nobody tells me to eff off and gets away with it!’ he roared.

He swung an arm wildly in Steiner’s direction. Steiner ducked and promptly retaliated, catching Porta a blow on the side of the head. Porta stepped backwards, knocking over the bench, and Steiner followed him, his arms going like piston rods. For a few moments they fought each other in dedicated silence, merely tossing off the occasional oath to encourage themselves, and then Steiner, growing suddenly adventurous, picked up a beer mug and hurled it at Porta’s head. Porta bent sideways and the missile flew past him and smashed into the far wall.

Immediately, Gerda was upon us, a large wooden truncheon clasped in her hand.

‘Who threw that beer mug?’

Enthusiastically, we pointed to Steiner. Gerda, without a second’s hesitation, brought her truncheon crashing down upon his shoulder, and while Steiner was reeling from the blow she followed it up with a quick chop to the head.