Blood and Ice (11 page)

Schulze wiped the mixture of sweat and snow from his broad, scarlet face gratefully and looked down at the little Jew, who was beaming at him. ‘You know, Ikey, you saved our bacon just then.’

‘We survived,’ the little man said easily.

‘Here,’ Schulze said spontaneously, ‘I’ve got something for you.’ He reached inside the Russian greatcoat and tugged out his Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross. ‘Stick that round yer skinny Yiddish neck,’ Schulze said.

Janosz the Pedlar looked down incredulously at the gleaming black and white decoration now hanging from his neck. Then shaking his old head, he followed the other two back to the bullet-holed jeep.

‘
Oi,oi
,’ he muttered to himself as he clambered inside again, ‘a Yid with the Iron Cross.
Meschugge!
’

Moments later they were on their way towards Budapest.

Note

1.
  Imperial and Royal. Title applied to the old Anglo-Hungarian Army, prior to 1918.

‘Otto, we request Otto?’ the radio operator’s cracked hoarse voice was the only sound in the little stone barn. ‘Great Hawk do you read me…we need Otto urgently.’

Habicht, standing next to Kreuz, seemed unconcerned that
Europa
had been unable to raise Division – ‘Great Hawk’ – all day, and that there was no ‘Otto’ – fuel – forthcoming. But Kreuz knew that inwardly the C.O. was worried. They had slipped through the Russian lines quite easily, and now they would make their last dash for Budapest. But to what purpose, if there was no Division
Viking
to follow them up?

With a sigh the radio operator took off his sticky headphones and turned to face Habicht, dark violet circles under his blood shot eyes. ‘Sir, I don’t think I’d raise them if I tried till I was blue in the face. It’s almost as if they’re not there, sir,’ he ended a little desperately.

‘Of course Division is there!’ Habicht snapped. ‘Try again, man!’

Reluctantly the radio operator put on his earphones once more, while Habicht dismissed his young officers.

‘What about you, Kreuz?’ Habicht asked, when his second- in-command showed no signs of moving.

Major Kreuz had had enough. He was not a professional soldier like Habicht. He had joined the pre-war Berlin
Reitersturm
1
of the SS because it was the chic thing to do. In this way he had come to the SS and he had fought their battles loyally enough throughout the war. But he had not the self-sacrificing fanaticism of the regular SS officer. Now he wanted to save his skin while there was still time.

‘
Obersturmbannführer
, I would like to speak to you – outside.’

Habicht looked at him curiously and nodded agreement. Slowly they walked through the sleeping village, the only sound the crisp slow tread of the sentries on the hard snow. Kreuz stopped and faced his commander.

‘Habicht, you must be realistic.’

Habicht looked at the pale, unshaven, self-indulgent face in the cold-blue light of the moon and knew his second-in-command was deathly afraid. ‘What do you mean, Major – realistic?’

‘About the Division. We couldn’t get the Division, because it is simply not there.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Look at the horizon, to the west.’

‘I see nothing.’

‘
Exactly
, Habicht. For the simple reason that the Division has pulled out – isn’t that obvious?’

‘Impossible,’ Habicht snapped icily. ‘Absolutely impossible!’ In sudden anger Kreuz went the whole way. ‘The offensive has failed, I tell you, and we are all risking our necks for nothing.’ He stared at the tall C.O., his face flushed with emotion.

‘You and your precious neck,’ Habicht said contemptuously. ‘We are exactly ten kilometres away from Budapest now. So far Schulze has done his job. With the same luck tomorrow, we could well be in the capital by nightfall.’

Kreuz stared at him aghast. ‘You’re crazy, Habicht! You have lost all contact with reality,’ he exploded, knowing now that there was no turning back; he had said it. ‘There is no bloody follow-up! We will be just joining the rest of the poor bastards trapped there by the Russians.’

‘We shall have made history,’ Habicht harked, iron in his voice. ‘
Europa
will have led the first successful German offensive for nearly two years.’

‘Do you really think anyone cares? You might want to waste your life, Habicht, but I’m not going to let you waste mine and those of all your young men. I don’t suffer from your kind of death wish.’

‘What do you mean, Kreuz?’

‘I mean that I am going to rouse the officers out of their beds and tell them what the real situation is. I shall recommend to them that the Regiment should withdraw, while there is still time, to our lines at Bickse.’

‘That is mutiny!’

‘Not when one is led by a maniac. And don’t believe you can frighten me with the threat of a court-martial. Germany is falling apart too quickly for that to worry me. You can’t stop…’

His voice died in his throat. Habicht was holding a pistol pointed directly at him.

‘What the devil, Habicht,’ he began, his face suddenly contorted with terror.

He never finished the sentence. The pistol kicked in the Hawk’s hand, shattering the silence of the night. Kreuz screamed and flew backwards through the night, the blood seeping through his shattered guts. Calmly Habicht walked over to where he lay in the suddenly darkened snow and placed his pistol against the side of Kreuz’s head. His face expressionless, he blew his skull apart.

‘Major Kreuz has just met with a fatal accident,’ he said to the running sentries, alarmed by the shooting. They stopped short and looked down at the mutilated body, lying crumpled in the ever-growing red star of its own blood, their young eyes wide with shock and bewilderment.

‘You’d better throw some snow over him or something,’ Habicht said carelessly. ‘I wouldn’t like the men to see him like that at dawn.’

Up in front, Habicht’s oddly assorted reconnaissance team had hit trouble. Just before dusk they had reached the river which formed the Russian second-line around the western suburbs of Budapest. No way across was apparent and to make matters worse, as soon as it had grown really dark, the Russians had switched on huge searchlights, which probed the night with long fingers. They abandoned the jeep, which was too conspicuous, and vanished into the snow-heavy pine forest which lined the western bank of the unknown river.

Now the three of them crawled ever closer to a little ford which the Jew knew of. It, too, was illuminated, but according to Janosz unguarded. Between the trees they could make out the river across which searchlights threw sinister patterns at ten second intervals.

‘What do you think, Ikey?’

The little Jew stroked his beard thoughtfully. ‘You need me, Sergeant-Major. I need you. You will be able to get through the river and beyond the wire before the searchlights illuminate it again. I am too slow, too old, too frail –’

‘Knock it off,’ Schulze interrupted him brutally. ‘You’ll have me breaking down and crying in a minute, you short-cocked kike!’

Janosz continued imperturbably: ‘I shall send you, Sergeant-Major to get through the barbed wire, where you will leave our Chinese friend here. Then, you put out those search lights and our friend here will come back and fetch me.’

Schulze looked at him open-mouthed. ‘And why,’ he asked finally, ‘should a senior non-commissioned officer of the Armed SS and his Chink servant come back and collect one scruffy docked-tailed Yid who we don’t need any more, eh?’

The Jew smiled, as if at the folly of human understanding. ‘But you do need him, Sergeant-Major. My dear German friend, you might just want to come out again,’ he hesitated for only a fraction of a second, ‘and who will there be to show you the way?’

‘You!’

‘Exactly.’

Behind them, Chink beamed and said: ‘Jew, him pretty smart feller.’

Jonasz the Pedlar allowed himself another smile.

Note

1.
  SS Cavalry Unit.

Schulze waded cautiously through the shallows hoping the faint hollow boom of the guns at the front would hide the noise. Behind him Chink, laden down with the radio, struggled in the freezingly cold current.

Schulze clambered up the bank and tugged Chink up with one heave of his powerful shoulders.

‘Right, you slant-eyed devil, as soon as those twin searchlights have moved on, I’m going to double for the wire. When I’m over it, you should hear a couple of shots. That’ll be me knocking out the lamps.’ Chink nodded. ‘Then you pull your yellow finger out of your yellow arse and run back like hell to fetch the Yid. Don’t forget to bring the radio with you when you come over the wire.’

‘Chink now savvy.’

‘Thank Christ for that,’ Schulze said and directed his attention to the twin searchlights. Their beams did not always coordinate but he reckoned he might have fifteen seconds to double the hundred odd metres across the field and fling himself over the wire. It was not enough. Then he spotted a slight hollow runnel which led from the river to within about sixty metres of the wire before it petered out where the ground was completely exposed to the searchlights. There was his chance!

Suddenly he set off, crawling swiftly down the hollow. The twin lights caught him just as he reached the end. He lay stock still, face pressed tight to the cold snow. The yellow reflected light seemed to pin him there for an eternity. All his muscles were drawn painfully tight as he fought against the temptation to break and run before they saw him and the machine-guns tore his body to shreds. But no machine-guns opened up. A moment later the lights passed on and he was up and running madly for the wire.

Legs pumping, arms driving, the snow spurting up around his feet, he flung himself upwards and cleared the fence. His heart pounding furiously, he lay still as the lights swept the ground behind him yet once again, while he remained this time in complete darkness. Now for the second phase!

He could see the operators quite clearly, stark black silhouettes against the white glare of the light. They moved slowly and without much energy, in spite of the cold. There were four of them, but that did not worry Schulze. He could catch them completely unawares.

He glanced briefly at the second light. It was about two hundred metres away and the suspicions of the crew would probably not be aroused after the first one went out until a couple of minutes had elapsed. They must be used to technical flaws in such a climate. If he worked quickly, he could get them both.

He rose to his feet and almost casually began to walk towards the searchlight crew, the hoods in which they were huddled drowning the crisp noise his boots made on the frozen snow.

Schulze was only five metres away when the man next to the steadily throbbing generator spotted him. ‘
Stoi?
’ he demanded, obviously startled.

Schulze did not give him a chance to say any more. He belted him with his ‘Hamburg equaliser’, the set of brass knuckles he had always taken with him to the Hamburg whorehouses. The man slammed against the side of the mobile generator and slumped limp-headed to the ground, without a sound. Schulze advanced on the other men grouped around the light.

His big right arm reached out of the darkness and grabbed the nearest man, his hand over the man’s mouth stifling the instinctive cry of fear. He squeezed – very hard. The man sighed, as if tired and happy to go to sleep. He did. For good. Gently Schulze lowered him to the ground.

Something must have warned the survivors. They swung round and stared aghast at this gigantic shape emerging from the darkness. The nearest man opened his mouth to yell, but Schulze’s right boot thudded into his crotch. He went down gurgling vomit. The other man ran. Schulze dived forward. His ‘Hamburg equaliser’ clubbed down. The Russian jinked and the brutal set of brass knuckles hit him on the shoulder. For a moment the two men wrestled violently in front of the blazing light like actors in a Chinese shadow play, then Schulze’s knuckleduster connected. There was a sharp click. The Russian’s spine broke. He dropped helplessly to the snow. Schulze did not hesitate. He ground the nail-studded heel of his big jackboot into the helpless man’s face and churned it to a bloody lifeless pulp.

Blinded by the glare, Schulze fumbled in the red darkness behind the searchlight to find the switch. He snapped it off and at once the bright light died. Schulze sprinted towards the other one.

He ran until he was about twenty-five metres away from it. In a moment the other crew would swing their own light round to check the trouble. Carefully he raised his Schmeisser and took aim. At that range the long hard burst of fire was deadly accurate. There was a sound of splintering glass, curses, a long drawn-out scream of agony and abruptly the light went out. He had done it!

It was nearly dawn now. The little Jew led them unerringly through the kilometre-wide no-man’s land between the Russian and German positions. Across a silent, ice-covered canal. Through a frozen marsh, where the white reeds, heavy with hoar frost, cracked alarmingly when their boots brushed against them. Between two abandoned and ruined farmhouses, dead pigs lying everywhere like tethered barrage balloons.

Just before six, Janosz stopped them.

‘What is it?’ Schulze demanded..

‘We’re there,’ the Jew whispered. He pointed with a skinny finger. ‘Do you see that little height? It is the first German machine-gun position. It’s in what’s left of old Ferenc Kobol’s barn. I have slept there many a winter’s night on my travels.’ Janosz smiled warily. ‘This is where I leave you. I shall make my own way into Buda from here as I doubt if your fellow countrymen would welcome a Jew with open arms. But when yon need me, Sergeant-Major, you’ll find me or someone who’ll know where I am in the Kobanyai Street. It’s near Burgberg, the Citadel.’

‘And who do I ask for – Janosz the Pedlar?’

Suddenly the little man was embarrassed. ‘No,’ he said hesitantly. ‘In Buda, I have another name – Csoki. It means “Little Chocolate Drop”. Because that was what I peddled in Buda before the war – chocolate drops.’