The Swiss Courier: A Novel (37 page)

They had to be flying on fumes . . . then the two engines coughed again. Bill shut down No. 1; they would go as far as they could on the center engine. The Junkers shed altitude as the center engine labored to shoulder the load.

He hoped Lady Luck was sitting in A1 next to Joseph Engel. Just three minutes ago, they had left the Schwarzwald foothills and flown into an open valley that drained right into Waldshut and the Rhine River. Three, four more minutes in the air, under some sort of power, and they could glide over this border town and land somewhere in Switzerland.

Then Bill’s ears detected a subtle lowering in the RPMs. Any second, the Ju-52 would become the heaviest glider in Southern Germany. A sinking feeling rose in his throat. They weren’t going to make it to Switzerland. It was time to set her down now.

“Tell your friend to strap himself in,” Bill directed. “Make sure you’ve got your harness on too.”

On cue, the center engine sputtered and stopped spinning, and now the only sound was the wind. Bill pushed the rudder right away to counter any yaw that would send the Junkers into a death spin. While maintaining firm control of the craft, he trimmed the gliding speed to 100 kilometers per hour. Gabi, he noticed, gripped the armrests for all they were worth.

The Junkers’ steering column felt as heavy as a dumbbell. Bill watched the altimeter drop steadily—1,000 meters . . . 900 meters . . . 800 meters. The ground, he knew from the map, was around 300 meters above sea level. He wound the flap lever down to slow their descent.

From his cockpit aerie, Bill saw a checkerboard of farmlands and pockets of ground fog. “There!” He spotted an open field that looked long enough to land on. Their altitude had fallen to 500 meters.

“We’re going in!” Bill lined up the Junkers for the open field next to a beige farmhouse. Traces of wispy fog clouded his view, then a copse of firs lurched up at them, close enough to reach out and touch. The Junkers shook as Bill fought to maintain a level heading.

But they were coming in too high, too fast!

He extended the flaps fully and hurtled past the perimeter fencing. The front wheels slammed onto the grassy meadow with a savage groan, bounced heavily, then bounced a second time before gripping the ground surely.

Bill stood on the brake pedals, but the Ju-52 skidded like a rock skipping across a frozen pond. Without its power assist, the heavy transport plane barely slowed as the brakes shrieked.

“The trees!” Gabi’s hands flew to her mouth as she screamed.

“We’re not going to stop in time. Brace yourself!”

Bill aimed the ship for an opening—and the Junkers careened through a gap at the forest’s edge. Solid tree trunks sheared off both wingtips, causing the Junkers to pancake into the soft forest ground and crumple like a cheap accordion. Amazingly, the steel fuselage remained intact.

Their seatbelts had saved them.

Bill sprang into action, figuring that he and his passengers had only moments before shock set in. “Let’s go!” he shouted at Gabi. He wrestled with her seatbelt and sprang her loose. Together, they freed Joseph, woozy from the rough landing. Bill put one arm over Joseph’s shoulder and dragged him toward the rear passenger door.

The exit door balked at opening. “You’ve been giving us trouble the entire trip.” Bill raised his right foot and kicked the doorknob. The door sprang open. He jumped out first and helped Gabi and Joseph—who was now alert—jump out of the damaged aircraft.

“I’d say we have a minute or two before someone comes running out of that farmhouse with a shotgun,” Bill said.

“Ein Moment, bitte!”
Joseph called, then rambled on to Gabi in German.

“What’s he saying?” Bill’s eyes focused on the trees closest to them, expecting armed men to emerge any moment. “We don’t have any time—”

“He forgot his rucksack in the plane, and it’s very important.” Gabi froze. “The radio! We need it.”

“Then get going!”

Gabi and Joseph rushed back into the passenger cabin. Bill followed and watched the German quickly retrieve his backpack. Unfortunately, the crash landing had thrown the emergency radio against the cabin bulkhead and smashed it to smithereens.

Gabi’s face fell. “We can’t call for help now.”

“Doesn’t matter! Let’s go!” Bill led the way back out the door.

Within a matter of seconds, the three ran deep into the forest.

The local kommandant of the Waldshut Polizei reread the Teletype from Berlin because he thought his eyes betrayed him the first time he scanned it. Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, no less, was loaded for bear; that much he could tell.

His message related to the phone call the Waldshut Polizei had received shortly after 9 a.m. that morning from a local farmer who said he’d walked an hour to the nearest phone. His report was startling: a Swiss Junkers had crash-landed on his property. Not so surprising was his report that the occupants were nowhere to be found.

The Waldshut police chief thought it was only a matter of time before a Swiss aircraft strayed off course into Germany— but this was a tortoise-slow transport plane, not a lightning-fast Swiss fighter. Interestingly, the Junkers hadn’t burned, and a lieutenant he dispatched to the scene confirmed that the aircraft had run out of fuel. So why were the Swiss flying planes around with no gas? And where were the pilots and passengers?

A riddle wrapped inside a mystery. He immediately reported the incident to his superiors at the Freiburg regional office. They must have tossed this hot potato to the Gestapo, who kicked it all the way to Berlin and the Reichsführer.

Himmler’s message stated that underground partisans had stashed an enemy of the Reich onto a Ju-52 belonging to the Swiss Air Force very early this morning at a farm outside of Heidelberg. Apparently, some farmers in the Leimen area had been awakened by the racket of a Junkers roaring off a makeshift landing strip, and they looked out from the bedroom window in time to see a transport plane—the Swiss markings clearly visible in the moonlight—flying due south for Switzerland. Several farmers called the Leimen Polizei, and a detail was sent out to investigate a farm belonging to religious fanatics, the communiqué said. A Gestapo regional commander was found dead, and an aide and several soldiers were missing in action, probably kidnapped by the partisans. The farmhouse was deserted.

The Waldshut police chief thought whoever was in the Junkers that crash-landed was long gone—and probably racing for the border.

The police chief called in a pair of lieutenants and described what had fallen into their district that afternoon. A pep talk was in order. This was their chance to be heroes. A chance to get back in the good graces of Berlin.

Even though a week had passed, he still felt the shame of the recent ambush that resulted in a half-dozen prisoners making their escape. He had lost a couple of good men when partisans—one of them Swiss, according to a bystander who spoke with the man—overtook a truck loaded with traitors destined for the Gestapo firing squad. His only comfort was his men had killed one of the traitors—a woman dressed in a traffic cop uniform.

Finding the Junkers occupants would be one step closer to atoning for what happened last week. If this group of outlaws believed they could pass through on his watch, they had another thing coming.

The rhythmic clacking of hooves on cobblestones echoed off the frescoed three-story buildings that fronted Kirchstrasse, a commercial street around the corner from Waldshut’s courtyard plaza. A doddering farmer, driving a horse-drawn hitch wagon with a faded olive-green tarp stretched over the back, tugged on the bridle reins. A pair of powerfully muscled Fresian horses with thick, black manes whinnied and came to a stop just before the mercantile district locked its doors for the evening.

Wearing a tattered straw hat and denim bib overalls with one strap hanging down the front, the seasoned plowman climbed off the hitch wagon and stretched his back and arms while making a slow turn to surreptitiously study the neighborhood. He spit a stem of green hay into the street and yanked the free ends of several hitch-knots, releasing the ropes that crisscrossed the deteriorating tarp. The farmer then strolled to the wagon’s rear corner and whispered to the three individuals balled up beneath the canvas covering, “You can go now, and may God be with you.”

Gabi’s heart raced when Herr Beyer reined in the horses to a stop. Once the geriatric farmer lifted the tarp, she scooted to the back of the hitch wagon, where she looked in both directions to make sure no one was watching. The farmer gingerly took her left arm and helped her jump to the quiet cobblestone street around the corner from Waldshut’s main square. Then Gabi helped Herr Beyer assist Bill and Joseph from their shared hiding place just as a couple of passersby crossed the street at the corner, but neither looked in their direction.

Even though her heart pounded with urgency, she knew that acting too hastily would draw attention to them. She plucked a stray piece of hay from her hair and told herself to act like any other girl on a visit to town—just in case anyone noticed their arrival.

“Where’s the watch store?” she asked in German. Before they left the farmer’s house, she had stipulated that no English would be spoken in public, meaning that Bill would remain mute.

“Helmut’s is right behind us.” The farmer pointed his thumb over his shoulder.

Gabi’s eyes darted to the gold lettering of “Helmut’s Watch Sales & Service” painted on the storefront window. Underneath the gilded sign, a minimal window display featured gold and silver timepieces with leather bands and a dozen cuckoo clocks. A handwritten sign noted that cuckoo clocks were invented in nearby Schönwald in 1737.

“We have to get going.” Gabi leaned over, and the old farmer lifted his straw hat to receive her grateful kiss on his leathery cheek. “Herr Beyer, I don’t know how we can ever thank you.”

The old farmer blushed. “Please, God brought you to my front door.”

“No argument there. The tall wooden cross in the middle of your vegetable garden certainly seemed like we were led to your doorstep. You were so gracious to take us in.”

After the Junker had crash landed, she, Bill, and Joseph had dashed farther into the heavily forested grove that had stopped the sliding transport plane. Shafts of sunlight had streamed through gaps in the trees’ foliage, seeming to spot- light the fugitives wherever they ran. Gabi expected locals armed with shotguns and pitchforks to chase after them, following their spontaneous plowing of the nearby wheat field. But no one had come.

The threesome skirted a dense thicket of massive firs and towering pines until they found a foot trail dating back to Charlemagne. An hour later, beyond the forest’s edge, Gabi spotted Herr Beyer’s farm and his wooden cross. Surely God had been with them. She prayed he was with them still.

Gabi led the two men toward Helmut’s watch store. Bill hustled ahead and opened the entry door for her and Joseph, which tinkled a bell. They hurriedly moved inside and away from the front window.

Within seconds, a gray-haired man with a walrus moustache and rotund girth stepped out from behind a burgundy curtain tucked away in the shop’s left corner. He wore a white shirt and gray slacks, accessorized by a gray vest whose buttons threatened to pop off from his ample abdomen.

“Herr Helmut?” Gabi asked.

“Yes, how may I be of service to you today?” the proprietor replied.

“We’re friends of Jean-Pierre and Pas . . . ,” Gabi said.

The proprietor raised his eyebrows. “Pas . . . who?”

“I’m sorry. Our transmission stopped, and I didn’t catch the full name. Sir, I was told that you could help us, and to mention Jean-Pierre’s name.”

The proprietor’s gaze scanned the three persons, then returned to Gabi. “Your Swiss accent betrays you,” he said with a smile. “And what’s the story with your friends?”

“I’m a good German,” Joseph Engel declared, which elicited raised eyebrows and a nod from the heavyset owner. Joseph shrugged his shoulders and gave a shy gesture toward Gabi. “I’m with her.”

Gabi leaned over to Bill Palmer and translated what had transpired. Bill nodded and declared in English, “And I’m a good American.”

“
Ach, ein Amerikaner!
That’s a good one!” The jovial watch store owner rushed to the front door, turned over the
Offen
sign to
Geschlossen
, and pulled down the shade. “I think I can trust you. Quick, follow me.”

He motioned them around a rectangular glass-enclosed display case to the burgundy curtain, which hid a wooden staircase.

When they arrived on the first landing, he pointed to a closed door. “These are my private quarters.” Herr Helmut gestured forward. “I have a second flat on the top floor. You will be safe there. You can rest.”

“Rest?” Gabi shook her head. “No, we need to get out of here. We must leave as soon as possible.”

The German folded his arms over his broad chest. “We cannot act too hastily. There is a manhunt—I’ve already heard. I’ll send a wireless message to Jean-Pierre and Pascal, telling them you’re here.”

“So the other person’s name is Pascal?” Gabi tucked the name away in her mind.

“They’re Swiss-Germans like you, but those aren’t their real names. Operational security.” The store proprietor hesitated before continuing. “I’m afraid you now know my identity, but Jean-Pierre wouldn’t have sent you unless the matter was extremely urgent. The name is Helmut Emden.” The watch store owner greeted each one with a hearty handshake, then beckoned them to follow him.

He escorted them up two more flights of stairs, which led them to a flat at the top landing. Helmut’s beefy fingers fished for a key in his right vest pocket and opened the door.