The Generals (37 page)

Even if it appears believable that individual fanatical idealists are to be found in the Ludolfian free companies, I am convinced that Mr Haller is largely right. International Communism’s attempts to gain a foothold in this part of the free world have failed hideously. And with these words, this subject would seem to have been exhausted.

Colonel Orbal
: Good statement, though of course Winckelman knew that it’d take weeks to smoke that mob out of their holes. We’d analysed that on the staff.

Major von Peters
: Now, that’s enough for today, I think.

Colonel Orbal
: Good God, is that the time? The session is adjourned until eleven o’clock tomorrow.

Lieutenant Brown
: Those present: Colonel Mateo Orbal, Army, also chairman of the Presidium of this Extra-ordinary Court Martial, Colonel Nicola Pigafetta, Air Force, Major Carl von Peters, Army, and Commander Arnold Kampenmann, Navy. The Prosecuting Officers are Captain Wilfred Schmidt, Navy, and Lieutenant Mihail Bratianu, Army. The accused is assisted by Captain Roger Endicott, Air Force. Justice Tadeusz Haller has reported his absence.

Colonel Orbal
: Oh, Pigafetta’s here, is he? I can’t see him.

Major von Peters
: What do you mean, Brown? Is Colonel Pigafetta here or isn’t he? Perhaps he’s sent his astral body?

Colonel Orbal
: Hardly.

Lieutenant Brown
: The colonel has been delayed for a few minutes, sir.

Colonel Orbal
: Hoho, yes, yes. And a week today he’ll be a general.

Major von Peters
: I’m not so sure about that.

Colonel Orbal
: It seems quite absurd that the Chief of State should appoint such an unbelievable ass as Bloch as Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force.

Major von Peters
: Want to bet me?

Colonel Orbal
: Keep your money, Carl. Well, Kampenmann, how are you today?

Commander Kampenman
: Very well indeed, thank you.

Major von Peters
: Couldn’t you lure the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy on board one of your old tubs and blow it up? Then you’d be an admiral.

Commander Kampenmann
: I don’t understand what you mean.

Major von Peters
: What a bloody lot of fun you lot must have in
the ship’s mess or whatever it’s called.

Commander Kampenmann
: The gunroom.

Colonel Orbal
: Talking of gunrooms, I knew a ballet dancer in Marbella some years ago. Her name was Florinda. Happened to think of her when I was reading that interrogation of Velder. The bastard maintains he had a hard-on for seven hours before he poked that Clara or whatever her name was. Although she rocked him and sucked him alternately. Liar. I don’t believe a word of it.

Major von Peters
: What’s that got to do with the ballet dancer?

Colonel Orbal
: Well, with her I got a priapism, you know, an erection that doesn’t stop. Fucked her all night and most of … well, of the following day. Then I was forced to fly home. Sat like a bloody candelebra on the plane, about to crack the roof. Well, then I got back to the old woman, and it went over.

Commander Kampenmann
: Excuse me, but what has that got to do with the gunroom?

Colonel Orbal
: With what? Oh, yes. Well, that’s not easy to answer. Next time, anyway, this Florinda ran away as fast as she could as soon as she saw me. After that experience, so to speak.

Major von Peters
: Lay off, now, Mateo. Here comes Pigafetta.

Colonel Pigafetta
: I regret this delay.

Major von Peters
: So do we. Call in the parties, Brown.

Captain Schmidt
: We are still occupied with the last complex of charges.

Major von Peters
: Nice to see you, Bratianu.

Lieutenant Bratianu
: Thank you, sir.

Major von Peters
: Are you Prosecuting Officer today?

Lieutenant Bratianu
: I don’t think so, sir. But the case will shortly be completed and we are preparing the final summing-up.

Captain Schmidt
: I request to be allowed to return to questioning the accused. Concerning his contribution to the so-called Plan B.

Colonel Orbal
: Oh, yes. Push the wretch over then.

Velder
: The eighteenth of November was a Monday. At about eight in the evening, one of our observation posts on the islands reported that the transport ships were just running into Ludolfsport. With that the matter was clear. At half-past eight, General Ludolf gave orders that Plan B should be implemented. Then it was just
a matter of waiting. We couldn’t do anything else; every man and woman in the militia was in place.

Commander Kampenmann
: Were there women on operations too?

Colonel Orbal
: Must you be so damned inquisitive, Kampenmann?

Captain Schmidt
: As far as is known, there were women personnel in both the offensive forces and in the amphibious units.

Major von Peters
: It should be ‘in the so-called offensive forces and the so-called amphibious units’.

Captain Schmidt
: Naturally, sir. I apologise. Let the accused continue.

Velder
: Everything had been so well prepared that we hadn’t a thing to do. But we stayed in the operations centre. We were to stay there for four days, as a matter of fact, keeping ourselves awake with pills. General Ludolf and Colonel Stoloff played chess while we were waiting. They were skilful players, both of them. Shortly before midnight, it came to a draw and they shook hands. I remember that Ludolf said: ‘Have I ever succeeded in beating you with a Sicilian?’ Stoloff said: ‘No. Now it’s time to start work.’ The diversionary forces got away just when they should have, at exactly midnight. Then we heard nothing from them for almost an hour. All the time, we were receiving decoded signals from the enemy’s side, as our people had more or less cracked their codes completely by then. Everything seemed calm, only routine type radio-traffic coming over. It was quite quiet in the operations room. At regular intervals, our woman orderly came in with strips of text from the code technologists and signallers who were working in the bunker alongside.

Colonel Orbal
: Woman orderly, indeed. Whom you all slept with in turns, I suppose.

Velder
: I don’t think so. She was over sixty.

Colonel Orbal
: Ugh! What a piggy-wig.

Colonel Pigafetta
: Sorry, what did you say, Orbal?

Colonel Orbal
: Nothing. Just an old expression; used it when I was a child.

Commander Kampenmann
: The accused is answering questions again now.

Captain Endicott
: Velder has recouped astonishingly during these last two days. He seems to have an unusually strong physique.

Velder
: At eight minutes to one, the first sign that anything was happening came through. It was a brief report stating that suspicious boats had been spotted off the coast just east of Melora and they were being shelled by artillery. It sounded extremely negative, but neither Ludolf nor Stoloff said a word. I remember that Ludolf was standing in front of the operations map with his hands in his pockets, sucking on his pipe. Tobacco supplies were running out by then, by the way, for the general usually smoked cigarettes.

Lieutenant Bratianu
: Don’t presume to call that swine general ever again!

Captain Schmidt
: As long as I am present, I am the one who supervises the questioning.

Major von Peters
: Perhaps so, but Bratianu is right.

Captain Schmidt
: Go on, Velder.

Velder
: In actual fact, the southern diversionary force had already got itself into great difficulties at Melora. Just east of the fishing village, there was a battery of field artillery which we hadn’t reckoned on. The boats were spotted and three of them were sunk by artillery fire. The rest turned back to sea again and the flotilla commander was forced to land the militia force five kilometres west of Melora. The bridgehead wasn’t established until half-past two, under fire from that battery. They didn’t succeed in taking Melora, and the advance was soon stopped by reinforcements from the north. At ten o’clock the next morning, the bridgehead collapsed and only an eighth of the force managed to evacuate and retreat to the southern sector. This looked like a bad start, but the diversion towards Melora had fulfilled its function, all the same. The Fascists had brought troops from the north and that made the second offensive force’s task easier. After that first message, reports came in thick and fast, the code technologists hardly having time to decode them. The second message that we picked up implied progress, as from that we could see that the sabotage groups on the airfield in Oswaldsburg had blown up the runways and set fire to three large hangars before they had been wiped out. As far as we could make out, every single one of the saboteurs was killed.

Captain Schmidt
: Four men and a woman were taken prisoner.
They were executed the next day.

Major von Peters
: Is it really the Prosecuting Officer’s task to give the accused complementary information?

Captain Schmidt
: The interjection was intended as information for the presidium.

Colonel Pigafetta
: In that case, it was superfluous. I signed the death sentences myself. It was one of my first duties. The swine were shot here, down in the basement. They weren’t so big-mouthed by then.

Captain Schmidt
: I beg your pardon. Go on, Velder.

Velder
: Part of the finesse of Plan B was that it was totally unconventional. There was, for instance, no tactical reserve. If any of the operations failed, there was nothing we could do about it. All instructions had been issued and could not be complemented. So we could really only sit and wait and see how things went, and for that we at first had to turn to what we could intercept from the enemy’s radio communications. Our own units kept radio silence and had orders to use couriers and dogs until the signallers had had time to put up telephone lines. So several hours went by before the picture of what had happened began to clear. Meanwhile, we were waiting in front of that map. We said very little to each other.

Captain Schmidt
: Can you try to get the accused to give a more lucid account of what happened, Endicott?

Colonel Orbal
: This is all just damned tittle-tattle. What are you doing?

Velder
: The raid on Melora failed, but things went much better on the point in the north-west. The boats got to the beach without being discovered, the lighthouse and the pilot-boat station were taken without noticeable difficulties and the Army units’ positions on the point were taken from the rear. Resistance was insignificant. By two o’clock, the whole point was in our hands.

Major von Peters
: There was only one infantry company up there.

Velder
: The first offensive force set off at exactly one o’clock and broke through the autostrad line along a five-hundred-yard stretch within less than half an hour. The force was grouped in wedges and by two o’clock, motorised militia units had advanced through the gap. The ground was so waterlogged that some of the vehicles got stuck in the mud, but the light tracked armoured cars went ahead.
In actual fact, they advanced over twenty kilometres in two hours. Soon after three, the northern road was cut off and at a quarter past four … no, it was exactly twenty-three minutes past four when the orderly came in with a telex strip. General Ludolf read it. Then he took his pipe out of his mouth and said quite calmly: ‘They’ve reached the beach one kilometre north of the airfield.’ That meant that Ludolfsport was cut off. Five minutes later, the second offensive force set off. The whole operation was in action. By five o’clock, when the second force had already driven a five-hundred-yard wedge into the Army’s positions in the angle between the northern and western fronts, there was still nothing to indicate that the Fascists understood what was happening. As far as I could make out later, the confusion was almost total. When the first militia units reached the sea north of Ludolfsport and blocked the coast road, the Peace Corps troops stationed at the airfield were moving north to attack the bridgehead at the lighthouse. So they were heading in a direction away from the real offensive. When they tried to turn back later, the convoy fell into disorder and soon after that, they broke out from the bridgehead and attacked the convoy in the rear. The result was that the airfield was left undefended and was taken by our troops almost without any fighting, planes and all. At eight o’clock in the morning, the seconds offensive force had broken through too, and crossed the river and the autostrad. The covering troops began to dig themselves in and set up posts west of the river, and before they’d even made any contact with the enemy, the main militia force had begun to advance through the terrain towards the north-west, to take Brock and cut off the road between Oswaldsburg and the Eastern Province. In Ludolfsport, everything was going according to our calculations. The operation there …

Captain Schmidt
: One moment, Endicott. Can you let the accused rest for a while. There is now a full account of what happened in and around Ludolfsport. It has been compiled with material from a number of sources, of which the most important is the testimony of a certain Alaric Scott. This Scott was a sergeant belonging to a Peace Corps unit stationed in the harbour area of Ludolfsport. Amongst other things, he was partially responsible for the disembarkation and unloading of the transport ships. In connection with the events we are now touching on, he deserted to the Communists.
He was later taken prisoner and was executed more than three years ago. Before that, he gave his testimony, which was marked Top Secret and was only released for the first time a few months ago, because of the Velder investigation. It is to be found in the preliminary investigation as Appendix V X/41. I will now hand over to the officer presenting the case.