“Where did you learn to do all this?” Kruze asked. He couldn’t resist it.
Herries’ eyes swivelled around the forest briefly as if to warn Kruze that they might be overheard, but he realized that the sound of the stream would have drowned their conversation to anyone standing more than a few yards away.
“I served in a commando unit,” he said.
“It couldn’t have been just any mob.” Herries seemed to flinch. “You must have done a lot of covert stuff behind the lines to have been selected for this. I suppose you’ll be returning to your old unit when it’s over — if we get out, that is.”
“Unlikely,” Herries said. “They’re dead. The unit’s been disbanded, you might say.” He was back in the clearing above Chrudim, standing over Dyer, Gunnersby, McCowan… all of them, very, very dead. He splashed more water over his face. “And you ask too many questions, flyboy. Save your breath for the rest of the journey. We leave here in five minutes.”
Kruze suddenly wanted to get away from him. The forest seemed to call; as the bush below the Mateke had, a long time ago.
“Don’t go far,” Herries said, as the Rhodesian moved off.
Kruze walked a little way from the stream, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his raincoat. He found the ersatz cigarettes that had been provided for him at the airfield, cheap German military-issue tobacco, rolled in tatty paper that was too thick, so they kept going out. Herries would have told him not to smoke, the smell and the glow of the tip being obvious intrusions in the primeval world of the forest.
Kruze saw an outcrop of rock, rising up through the gloom ahead; there would be crags and nooks enough there for him to hide the flare of a match and to hell with the smoke.
Then he saw the movement and froze.
At first he thought it was Herries, but almost as soon as the idea crossed his mind he knew that was impossible. In the fifty yards he had walked from the stream, Herries would not have been able to work his way round to his front, to be standing where this figure was, to the right of the outcrop.
Kruze had never felt so vulnerable. A patch of moonlight illuminated the ground between him and the rock and played delicately over the man standing not more than thirty yards away. He could see a peaked cap, a long coat and a rifle slung over the shoulder. The back was three-quarters to him, but was moving, as if the figure were surveying the forest.
A sentry. Turning towards him.
Kruze began lowering his body, pulling his arms in, hunching his shoulders, so slowly that he knew he would not be able to get to the ground before the sentry’s eyes swept his position. Shooting him was the only other option, but, his mind screamed over the fear, there would be others.
He was bent almost double, with the soldier’s line of vision perpendicular to his own, when a cloud covered the moon and the spotlight above him went out. It was his only chance. He pitched forward, his arms sinking into the deep, wet pine carpet lining the forest floor, muffling his fall. He felt the stick caught between his right hand and the damp earth below, felt it bend beneath his weight. He held his breath.
The twig snapped.
The sentry did not utter a sound, but Kruze heard him unsling the rifle and take a step forward. Then another. He was coming his way. The Rhodesian’s eyes were wide open, but he dared not move his head, whose top pointed towards the advancing sentry, making it impossible for him to see what was going on. All he knew was that the moon was still behind the cloud. But for how long?
The steps stopped. The cloud held. And a new fear gripped him. Herries would bound out from the small ravine and be spotted in an instant. He cursed his stupidity.
The sentry was almost on him. Above the noise of his pounding heart he heard the man’s breathing, the creak of his leather boots. The patch of ground before his face began to glow, its luminescence increasing as the veil slipped from the face of the moon. There was a sudden rush of movement, a muffled cry of animal surprise, then the hands were on him, rolling him over.
Herries looked down on him, a knife between his teeth. Kruze, eyes wide in amazement, drew breath to speak, but Herries silenced him with a hand across his mouth. The traitor jabbed a thumb in the direction of the rock and Kruze slowly got to his feet.
The sentry lay in the middle of the pool of light, an obscene red mouth stretching from ear to ear beneath his jawbone.
Herries sheathed the knife and slipped down towards the rock, gesturing for him to follow. Kruze’s legs wanted to buckle, but he forced them on.
They worked their way around the outcrop, Herries stopping to listen and sniff every few steps, before he disappeared behind the crag. When he, too, rounded the rock, Kruze saw what it was that Herries had smelt, even though to him, there had been nothing unusual to permeate the air, save the essence of the pines and the mustiness of the earth. Herries had told him that in the forest he was king; now the Rhodesian believed it.
Five bodies were huddled round the smouldering remains of a camp fire. There was no movement, the brief struggle that had just taken place having been shielded by the single monolith jutting from the ground between them and the sentry’s station. Herries let out a low, almost imperceptible moan, and rolled back against the rock, his face like a death mask. Kruze followed him back to the body of the sentry, by this time wanting answers.
“What is it?” he hissed in the traitor’s ear.
“We’ve got to move fast,” Herries whispered, his eyes as wide as the thin slits would allow. “We’ve got to get away from this place.” He found what he was looking for beneath the body of the German; a peaked forage cap.
“They’re asleep, Herries. Calm down, for God’s sake.” Kruze had mastered his nerves. He felt elated that he had been allowed to live, to be free, granted a reprieve to carry on with the mission.
Herries waved the cap in front of Kruze’s face. “These aren’t ordinary soldiers. They’re Gebirgsjäger, crack mountain troops of the 13th SS Gebirgsjäger Battalion. They could find a pin in this forest with their eyes shut.” He pointed to the body. “When they find him…”
Kruze felt his blood go cold. He slid after Herries, putting new care into his every stride, as they slipped down towards the valley. It wasn’t merely the troops he had just seen that worried him; somewhere on that mountain there would be a whole battalion of Gebirgsjäger.
It took them another two hours of stealing through the Gebirgsjäger positions to get to the valley floor. Herries was so good, Kruze thought, that they only saw one other patrol on the mountainside, one that they easily avoided thanks to the traitor’s well-developed senses of sight, hearing and smell.
They were poised behind a rock, watching the traffic on the road a hundred yards below. Every now and again, Herries, seeing more headlights through his Zeisses, swore under his breath. There was transport galore, hundreds of Kampfwagen jeeps, armoured personnel carriers and lorries on the road, but all of them were going the wrong way, fleeing Munich for the mountains. To Kruze, Staverton’s theory about the Alpine Redoubt now looked horribly real.
“So what happens next?” Kruze asked.
“We have to take one of those vehicles,” Herries said, still looking through the binoculars. “And that isn’t going to be easy.”
“Make your plan soon, Herries, because when that body is found, this place is going to go up and us with it.”
Herries let his binoculars swing from their strap. “What do you suggest we do, pilot, just go down there and thumb a ride? If we are searched they will find you without papers. They will shoot you, and me with you, for desertion, or espionage — take your pick — no questions asked.”