Eva (37 page)

T
HE SOLDIER SMIRKED
at Ilse. “Patience little
Schatzi,”
he mocked. “We will get to you soon.” He nodded to his companion. “Let her scream, Helmuth,” he said. “No one will hear her.”

The man called Helmuth took his hand from Ilse’s mouth. He clamped his arms around her naked waist, obviously enjoying himself. Ilse did not make a sound. She tried to pry herself free, but the man held her in an iron grip. She stopped struggling. She stood motionless, glaring defiantly at the man with the gun.

“You bastard!” Woody growled deep in his throat. “
Verflucht nochmal!
Leave her alone!” He tried to sit up.

The soldier stomped his boot down hard on his chest. “Easy,
Kamerad,”
he warned. “If you want to stay around to watch the cherry picking.” Slowly he backed off, his P-38 trained on Woody’s gut. “Now. First things first,” he said. “We must have proper order in the proceedings, must we not? The little
Schatzi
will be
die Rosine im Wurstende
—the raisin in the end of the sausage.” He leered at Ilse. “And a sweet one it will be!”

He gestured at Woody with his gun. “You,” he ordered, “get your clothing together. Empty all the pockets.
Los!”
He grinned. “You can leave hers.”

Woody did as he was told. Advantage number one, he thought. Up and able to move around, instead of flat on his back. He collected his clothing. He turned all the pockets inside out.

“Put everything in a pile,” the soldier ordered. Woody did. Papers. AMG travel permits. I.D., his few personal belongings. And the money he had been given at the last
Achse
stop.

“That nice watch, too,” the soldier pointed.

Woody threw it on the pile.

“Excellent,” the soldier beamed. “Now—back off!”

Woody did. He watched the soldier closely. The man did not give him a chance. Rummaging through the pile, the soldier pocketed the money and the watch. He left the papers on the ground. He picked up Woody’s boots. He felt around inside. “No big bills hidden in the good old
Stiefelbank?
—the good old boot bank?” He found nothing. He tossed the boots at Woody. “Get dressed,” he said.

Woody put on his clothes.

“Helmuth,” the soldier called. “Throw our cooperative friend that chain.” The man tossed the motorcycle security chain to Woody. He caught it. Advantage number two, he thought grimly. A weapon—however awkward.

Never taking his eyes from Woody, the soldier walked to the motorbike. From the tool pouch he fished out the combination padlock. Again he gestured to Woody.

“That tree,” he said. “
Los!”

Woody walked over to the indicated tree. It was a sturdy sapling with a trunk about six inches in diameter.

“Sit,” the soldier ordered. “Put the chain around your ankle. Twist it into a figure eight and put the ends around the trunk.”

Bleakly Woody obeyed. So much for advantages number one and two, he thought. Back to square one, dammit! He looked toward Ilse. The man holding her was pawing her breasts. Rage boiled in him. He controlled it with an effort. Impulsive action could only get him killed.

The soldier walked behind the tree. He picked up the two ends of the chain, pulled them as tight as he could, drawing Woody’s foot up against the tree trunk, held there in the taut loop of the chain. The soldier snapped the lock in place.

“I don’t know the combination,” Woody growled. “If you lock the damned thing, I’ll never get away.”

The soldier shook his head in mock sympathy. “Your little
Schatzi
will have to go for help,” he sneered. He gave an unpleasantly sharp little laugh. “When she can walk again!” He closed the lock with a snap and twirled the tumblers.

Woody watched him put his gun in his belt and walk toward the other man, still holding the naked Ilse. He turned his back on them. He had only a couple of minutes, he estimated. Three at the most.

Feverishly he unlaced the bootlace from one of his boots. He twisted and ripped off the aglet. He pulled out the wire saw and placed it around one of the chain links.

Twenty seconds gone.

With short, strong pulls he began to saw, bearing down, careful not to telegraph his movements with his shoulders. He listened. He did not turn around to watch.

“Now, little
Schatzi,”
he heard the soldier say, the man’s voice grating in his ears. “Now we come to you. And
I
am first.”

He heard the other man grumble. “Always you first, Felix. To the devil with that! This time it is
me
first! And what about the money? I want half.”

“
Schon gut, Helmut, schon gut,”
the soldier placated his companion. “Here. We will divide it.”

Woody doubled his efforts. A minute gone. More. He was too keyed up to gauge time. He peered at the chain link. Already a deep groove had been sawed into the metal.

“So,” he heard the soldier say, “you got your money. Now,
I
will take the girl.”

He heard scuffling sounds. Grunts. A low oath. He expected to hear Ilse scream, but she uttered not a sound.

Two minutes gone.

“
Verdammt nochmal!
Hold her arms, Helmuth!” he heard the soldier pant. “I do not want to have to knock her out. It is no fun that way.”

Almost through. The wire bit steadily into the metal. His fingers were bleeding where he gripped the saw, pulling it rapidly back and forth.

He was through. Bless that Limey bastard, Forbes, he thought. With all his might he pulled on the chain—and the link opened up. In seconds he had it unwrapped from his foot and from the tree.

He stood up, the chain and lock dangling from his bloody hand.

He looked. Eyes burning with hate, he looked.

In the little clearing a short distance away Ilse was lying on the ground. Fiercely, silently she was fighting against the soldier who was struggling with her long, naked legs, his own pants bunched around his feet. Savagely Ilse scratched, kicked, and twisted as the other man, kneeling at her head, pinned her arms to the ground. Totally intent upon subduing the girl, they did not notice Woody.

In a few steps he had covered the ground between them. He swung the chain and lock and struck the soldier a vicious blow to the temple. Instantly the man collapsed across the supine girl. Startled, the other man looked up, in time to register his utter astonishment as Woody’s boot caught him squarely on the chin.

Woody threw the chain away. He pulled the soldier off Ilse and helped her to her feet. He put his arms around her. For a brief moment they clung to each other.

“Quickly,” he breathed, “put your clothes on.”

She hurried to comply.

Woody looked at the two unconscious men. They would live. But they would not forget their little encounter in the woods. Not ever. For a moment he was tempted to take the soldier’s gun. He thought better of it. He had already once made the decision not to carry a weapon. It was the right one. He picked up the gun and hurled it into the woods as far as he could. He retrieved his watch and his money. He picked up the papers and I.D.

Ilse was dressed. Woody wheeled the motorcycle down to the path—and within a few minutes they were back on the road.

It was 0727 hours when they passed through the village of Schnuttenbach, seventy-five kilometers from Memmingen.

They would be at the
Achse Anlaufstelle
before 1000 hours.

Willi looked at his watch. Again. 0942 hours. The truck was more than an hour late.

The worry had been slow to build, but now it was stiff and taut in him.

They were waiting at a little shed near a row of warehouses at the railroad yard. Obviously their transportation could not pick them up directly at the
Anlaufstelle.
The shed was locked and they had to wait outside. Because it was Sunday there were only a few workers about. All men. It was both a blessing and a curse, Willi thought. A blessing because curious would-be inquisitors were few; a curse because they were dangerously exposed out in the open. Especially with Eva, he felt, a woman and pregnant, sitting on a bench at the shed, sticking out like a coffee bean in a bowl of rice.

Anxiously he searched the road with his eyes.

Nothing.

Scheissdreck!
Nothing ever went as planned.

He took a deep breath. Easy. He realized he was becoming edgy. Being shuttled about by a succession of strangers was getting on his nerves. Having to depend blindly on people he knew nothing about. He liked to depend on himself. He had been trained to do so. He was used to it.

Ludwig, the plant manager, had rounded up motor transportation for them, at least. A truck. Delivering the
Ami
newspaper,
Stars and Stripes.
The truck would take them to the next
Anlaufstelle
in Steingaden in the Allgäu, close to the Alps. Willi had raised an eyebrow at this intelligence, but Ludwig had explained to him that, as the
Ami
combat soldiers went home, more and more German drivers were hired by the American Army to drive such nonmilitary assignments. The
Ami
security and screening was so lax, he’d told him, that the
Achse
had been able to place several men, using false names, in such positions. The
Stars and Stripes
trucks could go virtually anywhere, unmolested at checkpoints and by MPs. The driver would simply smile and hand out a few copies of the paper—to be cheerfully waved on by the soldiers, who were blithely unaware that
Achse
travelers were hidden in the back behind the stacked-up bundles of papers. It was foolproof. And not a little ironic.

He frowned. Again he wondered if he should return to the ropery and Ludwig. And run the risk of missing the truck, if it should show up.

He’d give it another five minutes. No more.

He glanced at Eva, sitting quietly on the bench. She seemed composed, patient, as she waited. She was quite a woman, he thought.

Eva hated the waiting. In her mind a problem had the habit of growing in ever greater proportions to the time spent waiting. She felt tense from head to foot. She struggled not to show it. She did not wish to add to Willi’s worries. Only once before in her life did she remember a waiting as unbearably strained. It had been during the afternoon of the 20th of July, about a year before.

She and her friend, Herta Schneider, had gone swimming in the Königsee near Berchtesgaden. She had been lying on a wooden raft out in the lake, resting before swimming back to shore, when she suddenly saw one of the Führer’s private cars approaching rapidly on the road from the Berghof. She had immediately been filled with a feeling of disaster. She had dived into the water and swum as fast as she could to shore, where a white-faced chauffeur informed her that there had been an attempt to assassinate the Führer at his headquarters at Rastenburg in East Prussia. A bomb. No one knew exactly what had happened, but the Führer was believed to be alive. She had rushed back to the Berghof. She had at once tried to telephone Adolf, but she had not been able to get through. And no one could get any definite information. Wait, they had told her.
Wait . . .

And she had waited. And the waiting time had conjured up ever more cruel visions of bloodshed, of mutilation and death. The waiting had been the worst.

When finally she did reach Adolf, he had assured her he was safe.

She had been horrified when, a few days later, he had shown her the uniform he had been wearing when the assassin’s bomb went off. Bloodstained, tattered, and imbedded with splinters and dirt, it had rekindled her terror.

And she remembered Adolf taking her by her shoulders and gazing into her eyes as he said: “It is by the grace of Providence that I have been spared and chosen to lead my people. This miraculous escape from death more than ever has convinced me that it is my sacred fate to be victorious in the war. And in my mission!”

She sighed. Gently she touched her swollen belly.

The Führer’s greater goal would have to be left to his heir.

Her child.

“Eva!” Willi’s voice shook her out of her reveries. “Here he comes!”

The truck skidded to a stop at the shed. Quickly Willi strode up to the cab. His eyes flashed at the driver. “What the devil kept you?” he barked.

“
Nur ruhig
—take it easy,
Kamerad,”
the driver grinned. A stocky, middle-aged man with a neck that disappeared into his shoulders, he leaned out of the cab window. On his weathered, ruddy face, directly under his nose, a small patch of skin appeared lighter than the rest, where he apparently had shaven off his Hitler mustache. “I did not think you would want to share your trip with an
Ami
sergeant.”

Willi gave him a sharp look.

“The
Scheisskerl
bummed a ride,” the driver explained. “Just as I was on my way here. I could not turn him down. Had to double back all the way from Woringen. To pick you up. Be glad I am here at all.”

He looked around the yard, moving his head stiffly on his thick neck.

“Get in the back,” he said. “Behind the bundles.
Los!
We have to be on our way. I have a lot of catching up to do.”

Willi helped Eva into the back of the truck, and in less than a minute they were careening down the road toward Steingaden.

They did not see the motorcycle that passed them, with a man and a woman on it, headed for the area near the railroad yards.

If they had, it would have meant nothing to them.

SS Sturmbannführer
Oskar Strelitz walked rapidly toward the Memmingen
Anlaufstelle
at
Seilerei Rademacher
near the railroad yards.

He had watched Eva and her companion leave in the
Stars and Stripes
truck. They were on their way again. Mingling with the railroad workers in the yard, being inconspicuous and seeming to belong at the same time, had not been easy because there were so few men working. But he had busied himself walking along the tracks with a pail picking up stray pieces of coal for salvage, and no one had questioned him. He had been able to keep an eye on Eva and the young SS officer with her.