River of Death (2 page)

Captain Reinhardt said: 'God's sake, that last one was a ten-tonner. And straight on top of the U-boat pens. Concrete ten feet thick, twenty, what does it matter? There can't be a man left alive there now, the concussion would have killed them all. In heaven's name, General, let's go. We've had the devil's own luck till now. We can come back when it's all over.'
'Look, my dear Captain, the air raid is at its height now. Try moving out of the harbour now, a slow business as you know, and you have as good a chance of being blown out of the water as you have alongside the quay here.'
'Maybe so, Herr General, maybe so. But at least we'd be doing something.' Reinhardt paused, then went on: 'If I may say so without offence, sir, surely you must know that a captain is in command of his own vessel.'
'Even as a soldier I know that, Captain. I also know that you're not in command until you have cast off and are under way. We complete loading.'
'I could be court-martialled for saying this, but you are inhuman, General. The devil rides your back.'
Von Manteuffel nodded. 'He does, he does.'
At the Wilhelmshaven airfield a dimly seen plane, later identifiable as a Junkers 88, made so violently bumpy a touch-down that its undercarriage could well have collapsed under the impact. The bumpiness was understandable, the drifting smoke being so intense that the pilot could make only a blind guess as to his height above the runway. Under normal conditions he would never have dreamed of attempting so hazardous a landing but the conditions were far from normal. Colonel Spaatz was a man of a highly persuasive cast of mind. Even before the plane had rolled to rest he had the door open, peering anxiously for his waiting transport. When finally he saw it - an open Mercedes staff car — he was aboard it within twenty seconds, urging the driver to make all possible haste.
The smoke surrounding the submarine was, if anything, even denser and more acrid than it had been minutes before although a sudden gusting wind, no doubt the result of the firestorm, gave promise of an early amelioration of the conditions. But choking and half-blinding though the smoke still was it didn't prevent Von Manteuffel from seeing what, despite his coolly relaxed calm, he had so desperately wanted to see.
'That's it, then, Captain Reinhardt, that's it. The last chest aboard. And now your men aboard, Captain, and let the devil ride on your back.'
Captain Reinhardt was hardly in the frame of mind to require any second bidding. Shouting hoarsely to make himself heard above the still thunderous din, he ordered his men aboard, ropes to be cast off and engines slow ahead. The last of his men were still frantically climbing up the sliding gangway as the submarine inched away from the quayside. It hadn't moved more than a few feet when the sound of a motor car screeching and skidding to a halt made Von Manteuffel turn sharply and look at the quay.
Spaatz had leapt from the Mercedes while it was still moving. He stumbled, recovered himself, and stared at the still very slowly moving submarine, his face contorted in desperate anxiety.
'Wolfgang!' Spaatz's voice wasn't a shout, it was a scream. 'Wolfgang! God's sake, wait!' Then the anxiety on his face yielded abruptly to an expression of utter incredulity: Von Manteuffel had a pistol lined up on him. For some seconds Spaatz remained quite still, shocked into a frozen and uncomprehending immobility, then comprehension came with the crack of Von Manteudfel's pistol and he hurled himself to the ground as a bullet struck only a foot away. Spaatz dragged his Luger from its holster and emptied it after the slowly moving submarine which, apart from giving vent to his feelings, was an otherwise futile gesture as the conning-tower was apparently empty, Von Manteuffel and Captain Reinhardt having obviously and prudently ducked beneath the shelter of the steel walls off which Spaatz's bullets ricocheted harmlessly. And then, abruptly, the submarine was lost in the swirling banks of smoke.
Spaatz pushed himself to his hands and knees and then stood upright and stared in bitter fury in the direction of the vanished submarine.
'May your soul rot in hell, Major-General Von Manteuffel,' Spaatz said softly. 'The Nazi Party's funds. The S.S. funds. Part of Hitler's and Goering's private fortunes. And now the treasures from Greece. My dear and trusted friend.'
He smiled almost reminiscently.
'But it's a small world, Wolfie, my friend, a small world and I'll find you. Besides, the Third Reich is gone. A man must have something to live for.'
Unhurriedly, he reloaded his Luger, brushed the mud and moisture from his clothes and walked steadily towards the Mercedes staff car.
The pilot was in his seat, poring over a chart, when Spaatz clambered aboard the Junkers 88 and took his seat beside him. The pilot looked at him in mild astonishment.
Spaatz said: 'Your tanks?'
'Full. I — I didn't expect you, Colonel. I was about to leave for Berlin.'
'Madrid.'
'Madrid?' This time the astonishment was more than mild. 'But my orders -'
'Here are your new orders,' Spaatz said. He produced his Luger.
CHAPTER ONE
The cabin of the thirty-seater aircraft was battered, scruffy, unclean and more than a little noisome, which pretty accurately reflected the general appearance of the passengers who would never have made it to the ranks of the international jet-set. Two of them could have been classified as exceptions or at least as being different from the others although neither of them would have made the jet-set division either, lacking, as they did, the pseudo-aristocratic veneer of your true wealthy and idle layabout. One, who called himself Edward Hiller — in this remote area of southern Brazil it was considered poor form to go by your own given name — was around thirty-five, thick-set, fair-haired, hard-faced, obviously European or American and dressed in tan bush-drills. He seemed to spend most of his time in moodily examining the scenery, which, in truth, was hardly worth the examining, inasmuch as it duplicated tens of thousands of square miles in that virtually unknown part of the world: all that was to be seen was an Amazonian tributary meandering its way through the endless green of the rain forest of the Planalto de Mato Grosso. The second exception - again because he seemed not unacquainted with the basic principles of hygiene — claimed to be called Serrano, was dressed in a reasonably off-white suit, was about the same age as Hiller, slender, black haired, black moustached, swarthy and could have been Mexican. He wasn't examining the scenery: he was examining Hiller, and closely at that.
'We are about to land at Romono.' The loudspeaker was scratchy, tinny and the words almost indistinguishable.
'Please fasten seat-belts.'
The plane banked, lost altitude rapidly and made its approach directly above and along the line of the river. Several hundred feet below the flight-path a small, open out-board motor-boat was making its slow way upstream.
This craft — on closer inspection a very dilapidated craft indeed — had three occupants. The largest of the three, one John Hamilton, was tall, broad-shouldered, powerfully built and about forty years of age. He had keen brown eyes, but that was about the only identifiable feature of his face as he was uncommonly dirty, dishevelled and unshaven, giving the impression that he had recently endured some harrowing ordeal, an impression heightened by the fact that his filthy clothes were torn and his face, neck and shoulders were liberally blood-stained. Comparatively, his two companions were presentable. They were lean, wiry and at least ten years yoiinger than Hamilton. Clearly of Latin stock, their olive-tinged faces were lively, humorous and intelligent and they looked so much alike that they could have been identical twins, which they were. For reasons best known to themselves they liked to be known as Ramon and Navarro. They considered Hamilton — whose given name was, oddly enough, Hamilton — with critical and speculative eyes.
Ramon said: 'You look bad.'
Navarro nodded his agreement. 'Anyone can see he's been through a lot. But do you think he looks bad enough?'
'Perhaps not,' Ramon said judicially. 'A soupcon, perhaps. A little touch here, a little touch there.' He leaned forward and proceeded to widen some of the already existing rents in Hamilton's clothing. Navarro stooped, touched some small animal lying on the floorboards, brought up a bloodied hand and added a few more artistically decorative crimson touches to Hamilton's face, neck and chest then leaned back to examine his handiwork critically. He appeared more than satisfied with the result of his creative handiwork.
'My God!' He shook his head in sorrowful admiration. 'You really have had it rough, Mr Hamilton.'
The faded, peeling sign on the airport building -hardly more than a shack — read: 'Welcome to Romono International Airport' which was, in its own way, a tribute to the blind optimism of the person who had authorised it or the courage of the man who had painted it as no 'international' plane had ever landed or ever would land there, not only because no-one in his right senses would ever voluntarily come from abroad to visit Romono in the first place but primarily because the single grass runway was so short that no aircraft designed later than the forty-year-old DC3 could possibly hope to land there.
The aircraft that had been making the downriver approach landed and managed, not without some difficulty, to stop just short of the ramshackle terminal. The passengers disembarked and made for the waiting airport bus that was to take them into town.
Serrano kept a prudent ten passengers behind Hiller but was less fortunate when they boarded the bus. He found himself four seats ahead of Hiller and therefore was in no position to observe him any more. Hiller was now observing Serrano, very thoughtfully.
Hamilton's boat was now closing in on the river bank. Hamilton said: 'However humble, there's no place like home.'
Using the word 'humble' Hamilton was guilty of a grave understatement. Romono was, quite simply, a jungle slum and an outstandingly malodorous example of the genre. On the left bank of the aptly named Rio da Morte, it stood partly on a filled-in, miasmic swamp, partly in a clearing that had been painfully hacked out from a forest and jungle that pressed in menacingly on every side, anxious to reclaim its own. The town looked as if it might contain perhaps three thousand inhabitants: probably there were double that number as three or four persons to a room represented the accommodation norm of Romono. A typically sleazy end-of-the-line — only there was no line — frontier town, it was squalid, decaying and singularly unprepossessing, a maze of narrow, haphazardly criss-crossing alleys - by no stretch of the imagination could they have been called streets - with the buildings ranging from dilapidated wooden shacks through wine-shops, gambling dens and bordellos to a large and largely false-fronted hotel rejoicing, according to a garish blue neon sign, in the name of the OTEL DE ARIS, some misfortune having clearly overtaken the missing capitals H and P.
The waterfront was splendidly in keeping with the town. It was difficult to say where the river bank began for almost all of it was lined with house-boats — there had to be some name for those floating monstrosities — relying for their construction almost entirely on tar paper. Between the house-boats were piles of driftwood, oil cans, bottles, garbage, sewage and great swarms of flies. The stench was overwhelming. Hygiene, had it ever come to Romono, had gratefully abandoned it a long time ago.
The three men reached the bank, disembarked and tied up the boat. Hamilton said: 'When you're ready, take off for Brasilia. I'll join you in the Imperial.'
Navarro said: 'Draw your marble bath, my lord? Lay out your best tuxedo?'
'Something 'like that. Three suites, the best. After all, we're not paying for it.'
'Who is?'
'Mr Smith. He doesn't know it yet, of course, but he'll pay.'
Ramon said curiously: 'You know this Mr Smith? Met him, I mean?'
'No.'
'Then might it not be wise to wait for the invitation first?'
'No reason to wait. Invitation's guaranteed. Our friend must be nearly out of his mind by now.'
'You're being downright cruel to that poor Mr Hiller,' Navarro said reproachfully. 'He must have gone out of his mind during the three days we stayed with your Muscia Indian friends.'
'Not him. He's sure he knows he knows. When you get to the Imperial keep close to a phone and away from your usual dives.'
Ramon looked hurt. 'There are no dives in our fair capital, Mr Hamilton.'
'You'll soon put that right.' Hamilton left them and made his way in the gathering dusk through winding, ill-lit alleyways until he had passed clear through the town and emerged on its western perimeter. Here, on the outskirts of the town and on the very edge of the forest and jungle, stood what had once passed for a log cabin but was now no more than a hut and even at that, one would have thought, a hut scarcely fit for animal far less human habitation: the grass- and weed-covered walls leaned in at crazy angles, the door was badly warped and the single window had hardly an unbroken pane of glass left in it. Hamilton, not without some difficulty, managed to wrench open the creaking door and passed inside.
He located and lit a guttering oil lamp which gave off light and smoke in about equal proportions. From what little could be seen from the fitful yellow illumination, the interior of the hut was a faithful complement of the exterior. The hut was very sparsely furnished with the bare essentials for existence — a dilapidated bed, a couple of bentwood chairs in no better condition than the bed, a warped deal table with two drawers, some shelving and a cooker with some traces of the original black enamel showing under the almost total covering of brown rust. On the face of it, Hamilton didn't care too much for the sybaritic life.
He sat wearily on the bed which, predictably, sagged and creaked in an alarmingly disconcerting fashion. He reached under the bed, came up with a bottle of some undetermined liquid, drank deeply from the neck and set the bottle down somewhat unsteadily on the table.
Hamilton was not unobserved. A figure had appeared just outside the window and was peering inside from a prudent distance, a probably unnecessary precaution. It is more difficult to see from a lighted area to a darkened one than the other way round and the windows were so filthy that it was difficult to see through them anyway. The watcher's face was indistinct, but the identity of the man not hard to guess: Serrano was probably the only man in Romono who wore a suit, far less an off-white one. Serrano was smiling, a smile composed of an odd mixture of amusement, satisfaction and contempt.