Night of Flames: A Novel of World War II (43 page)

“I already ate,” he replied and took a sip of coffee.

Too famished to talk, Anna fi nished all the food on her plate, then took a Night of Flames

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second pork chop and began cutting it. All the while Otto sat there, watching her but saying nothing.

“
Sehr gut, Otto.
Do you do the cooking?” Anna said, feeling uncomfortable by the silence.

“Ja.”

“Where is Mueller? Did he already eat, too?”

“Mueller left.”

“He left? You mean he doesn’t stay here?”

“Nein.”
Otto picked up the coffeepot and poured more coffee into Anna’s cup.

She fi nished the meal in silence, pondering the situation. A sharp knife was close at hand, but Anna dismissed the foolish thought in an instant. Even if she somehow managed to grab it before she was subdued, it would do little good against this mountain of a man. She glanced about the kitchen and realized that the windows were shuttered from the outside. The only other door was the one that led into the dining room, which was now closed and, she guessed, locked.

When she was done, Otto stood and motioned that she was to return to her room. The door closed behind her, and the key turned in the lock.

Chapter 59

At precisely noon a black Citroen pulled up to where Jan stood outside the hospital in the center of Antwerp. A young Wehrmacht offi cer sprang from the vehicle and opened the right rear door. Jan handed the offi cer his suitcase and slid into the backseat where another offi cer sat.

The offi cer appeared to be about Jan’s age but smaller and thinner. He extended his hand, speaking crisp, cultured German. “
Guten Morgen, Herr
Heinrich.
Ich bin Oberstleutnant
Erich Bucher.
How are you feeling?”

Jan shook the offi cer’s hand and forced a smile. “I’ll be fi ne, thank you. Just some stiffness in my neck. I guess I was lucky.”

Bucher nodded then turned to the front of the car and waved his hand to the driver, who pulled out into the busy street. “Well, at least you weren’t injured,”

he said. “I’m not sure General Stolberg could handle any more setbacks.”

“Ist das so?”
Jan replied, looking out the window. Anna had described the city to him many times, but he didn’t recognize anything. “What’s the situation here?” he asked.

“We’ve had a devil of a time,” Bucher said, removing a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket. He offered one to Jan, who accepted with the fl eeting thought that he hadn’t been told whether Ernst Heinrich smoked or not.

Bucher lit both cigarettes and continued. “When we arrived in June, the state of the garrison was a mess. No proper defenses, the troops were just a bunch of fucking prison guards and invalids along with some Flemish renegades—

schwein—
you couldn’t trust out of your sight. There was no artillery to speak of and nobody trained to use it anyway.”

“I assume you’ve shored it up since then,” Jan asked, shocked at what he heard and trying to look disappointed.

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“
Ja,
natürlich.
But there’s a lot more to do. Fortunately, we still have time, at least a couple of weeks, before the British get here. We’ve built a ring of fortifi cations around the perimeter, but we’ll get into all that soon enough. We’ve almost arrived.”

Jan looked out the window again as the car turned into a large park ringed with barbed wire and concrete bunkers. They passed through a heavily guarded gate and stopped in front of a triangular grouping of three large bunkers surrounded by another barbed wire fence. They got out of the car, and Jan followed Bucher into one of the bunkers, down a fl ight of steps and into an underground tunnel.

The tunnel was about a hundred meters long, lit by bare electric bulbs hanging from wood rafters. When they exited the tunnel they were in an offi ce building on the edge of the park.

“This is our headquarters building,” Bucher explained as they climbed a staircase. “It’s a former bank building, now inaccessible from the street. The only way in or out is through the tunnel. There are several other buildings around the park, all connected by tunnels to the main bunker, so none of the locals—and more important, none of the fucking Resistance groups—know exactly which building is the headquarters.”

Jan kept silent, glancing out the windows, allowing Bucher to talk. He followed him into a large room that looked like a command center on the third fl oor.

The room had no windows and practically every available inch of wall space was covered with maps and aerial photographs of the city and the port. There was a bank of radio equipment along one wall, manned by two offi cers in shirt-sleeves. One of them spoke into a microphone while the other tapped out a coded message.

Three other offi cers sat at a conference table, rummaging through a pile of documents and fi lling out a variety of forms. Bucher took Jan around the room and made quick introductions. Then he took off his coat, hung it on a hook and invited Jan to do the same.

“We’ll be meeting with General Stolberg for dinner,” Bucher said. “My instructions are to brief you in the meantime. Shall we get started?”

“Ja,”
Jan said, ignoring the drops of sweat trickling down the back of his neck. He shoved his hands in his pockets to hide the tremors.

Bucher led him to a giant map of the city of Antwerp hanging on the wall 296

Douglas W. Jacobson

opposite the radios and picked up a pointer. “I’m told you’ve been to Antwerp before, so you’ll have to forgive me if I’m telling you some things you already know, but I don’t want to overlook anything. The Americans and British are kicking our asses in France, and we don’t have much time.”

Jan nodded, thankful for German thoroughness.

Bucher tapped the pointer on the map, pointing to the River Schelde.

“Antwerp, as you know, is one of the best natural harbors in Europe, its ge-ography dominated by the river, which is more than a half kilometer wide.

Here, on the river’s east bank, is the center of the city and immediately to the north is the port, which extends along the east bank for more than nine kilometers. There are several vehicle and pedestrian tunnels that run under the river, connecting the central city to the west bank. They have all been prepared for demolition. We’ll want you to inspect them, of course, but they’re not the fi rst priority.
Verstehen Sie?
”

Bucher glanced at Jan who nodded again.

The offi cer continued, tapping his pointer at a canal. “This is the Albert Canal, which enters Antwerp from the east and fl ows into the River Schelde.

North of the canal is the suburb of Merksem. It’s a workingman’s town, and many of the dockworkers live there. The bridges across the canal, connecting Merksem to Antwerp, have also been prepared for demolition. The main road from the port into Merksem, the Groenendallaan, is heavily protected with machine guns and artillery. If worse comes to worst, our escape route out of the city is to Merksem . . . after we destroy the port.”

Bucher looked at the fl oor for a few seconds as though the thought of this happening was more than he could fathom. Then he took a deep breath and returned to the map. “Now, as you can see, the Albert canal cuts through the center of the port. The older docks, Bonapartedok, Willemdok and Kattendijkdok lie to the south, and the newer, larger docks, Albertdok, Leopolddok and Hansadok lie to the north.”

As he said this, Bucher painstakingly traced the outline of the various docks. “Right here, downstream from the Hansadok, is the crucial point: the Kruisschans Lock.”

Jan took a step closer to the map.

Bucher continued. “This lock not only allows ships to pass into and out of the docks, but it also regulates the fl ow of water to and from the river, Night of Flames

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maintaining the proper level within the port.”

Bucher glared at Jan. His eyes were intense. “Here, at the Kruisschans Lock, we have placed our most important demolition devices. Both the inner and outer gates have been rigged with carefully concealed explosives. We have kept this lock under tight security. None of the dockworkers are allowed anywhere near the area. The lock is manned and operated around the clock by Wehrmacht troops.”

Bucher laid the pointer on the table and pulled out his pack of cigarettes.

Jan accepted the offered cigarette, grateful for something to do with his hands.

Bucher leaned against the wall, exhaling a precise ring of smoke as he spoke.

“If we can’t defend the city, the Kruisschans Lock is the fi rst thing that gets blown. With the gates out of commission, the water level in the entire port will fall with the tide. The lack of water pressure will then cause the walls of the docks to collapse. The port will be out of commission for years.”

Bucher took a drag on the cigarette and blew another smoke ring. “This, Herr Heinrich is your fi rst assignment. I will show it to you today, and you will tell us if we’ve done our job properly. General Stolberg is counting on you.”

He smiled at Jan and slapped him on the shoulder. “
Jetzt,
some lunch? And a nice bottle of Bordeaux?”

Chapter 60

It turned out that the luncheon included three bottles of Bordeaux, con-sumed primarily by Bucher and the two offi cers who joined them. Jan drank as little as possible using the excuse that he had been given pain medication the night before and warned not to drink. He needed to stay sharp for the afternoon and the dinner that evening with General Stolberg.

The other two offi cers were both leutnants who reported to Bucher. One was a big, affable fellow with thick glasses named Karl Rolfmann, who was in charge of the demolition detail. He talked in rapid, clipped sentences, going into great detail about the types of explosives they had used, the detonators and timers, and the clever tricks that had been employed to conceal the charges.

Jan concentrated so hard he was getting a headache. It had been years since he had had any real hands-on experience with demolition devices, and he struggled to absorb as much as possible without asking stupid questions.

The other offi cer was Leutnant Wernher Graf, short and stocky with intense, black eyes, a bald head and a dour disposition. It was unclear what his function was.

“It was a curious thing, the train wreck,
stimmt das,
Herr Heinrich?” Graf said during a lull in the conversation. “Obviously the work of one of the Resistance groups . . . but it was strange.”

“Strange, in what way?” Jan asked.

“Normally these terrorists go after freight trains carrying munitions—or troop transports. This was just a passenger train, it doesn’t make sense. Why would they waste the effort on a train with no strategic value?”

“I don’t know,” Jan said, “but it scared the hell out of me.”

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Graf glared at him with a strange look in his eyes. He appeared ready to pursue it further when Bucher summoned the waiter for dessert.

The security at the Kruisschans Lock was impressive. The land approach was heavily guarded at two checkpoints with barricades across the roadway and machine-gun emplacements on either side. Barbed wire fencing extended well into the scrubland, and fl amethrowers were positioned in front of the outer and inner gates. Jan counted at least twenty heavily armed Wehrmacht soldiers in the immediate vicinity.

They spent almost two hours crawling around the massive structure with Rolfmann pointing out the placement of explosive charges and the well- hidden copper wires that ran back to the main guardhouse. As a competent and thorough German offi cer, he provided Jan with details about the size of each charge and the timing and sequence that had been set for the explosions.

Jan took notes and made a number of sketches for the presumed purpose of doing his own calculations. All the while, Graf hovered around while Bucher stood off at a distance, chatting with the guard detail.

Rolfmann knew a lot more about this than he did, but it was apparent to Jan that the explosive charges had been well placed for maximum damage and were cleverly concealed. Without his notes it would be impossible for anyone to locate them.

Knowing that he needed to make some intelligent-sounding contribution to the discussion, Jan asked several questions about steel I-beams and whether or not the concrete was reinforced.

Rolfmann thumbed through a notebook and produced the answers.

Consulting his notes and sketches, Jan faked some mental calculations, asked another question about the time increment between explosions and nodded.

Graf wandered up and glanced at Jan’s notes. “Will this do the job, Herr Heinrich?”

“I’ll need to do some further calculations but, yes, I believe it will be quite suffi cient, Leutnant,” Jan replied. Then turning to Rolfmann and stuffi ng the notes in his pocket, he added, “
Sehr gut,
you’ve done your work well, Leutnant Rolfmann.”

Rolfmann beamed at the compliment and, just as Graf started to ask another 300

Douglas W. Jacobson

question, Bucher stepped up, pointed at his watch and announced that the general was expecting them for dinner.

It was an elaborate, protracted affair held at a small, out-of-the way restaurant just two streets from the cathedral. It was a favorite of General Stolberg’s, who was obviously enjoying Antwerp’s reputation for excellent cuisine.

The group of nine offi cers and Jan were the only patrons, and Jan had no doubt that the occupying Germans had commandeered whatever fi ne food and wine was left in Antwerp for the pleasure of the offi cers of the Wehrmacht.

Stolberg arrived late and when he was introduced to “Ernst Heinrich” he extended his hand and smiled. “
Willkommen,
Herr Heinrich; we look forward to your assistance.”

“
Danke,
General. I’m pleased to help in any way I can,” Jan said, aware that all eyes in the room were upon him.

“I understand you were with the engineers in Normandy preparing for the invasion,” the general said affably. “Did you meet Field Marshal Rommel while you were there?”