“God, you’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
Herries shrugged. “There’s no choice, flyboy. As you were kind enough to point out, I’ve nowhere to go.”
A soldier stepped out into the road, MP 40 at the ready in one hand, a torch in the other. Herries stopped the car a few yards short of him and left the engine running. Out of the corner of his eye Kruze saw him scan the guard for identification, but the camouflaged smock he wore over his uniform and the netting that covered his helmet obscured his rank and service affiliation. Beyond the barrier Kruze could see a machine-gun emplacement ringed with sandbags and two pairs of eyes shining beneath dark, coalscuttle helmets in the glare of their headlights.
Kruze tried to take all the details in slowly, as if he were used to passing through high security checkpoints every day of the week, but the images flashed before him like film shown on a projector running out of control.
A dog’s bark close by. The Rhodesian turned his head. The Alsatian seemed to leap from nowhere, growling ferociously. It pressed its nose against his wound up window, the breath that steamed through its slavering jaws mingled with the mist around them. A second soldier appeared from behind and pulled the dog away from the car, slipping a leash round its collar as he did so. Harsh, guttural commands quelled the dog into silent obedience.
That’s two in the road, two in the gun emplacement and probably two more in the tower, Kruze thought. And a dog. Hardly what he had anticipated for a top operational squadron so close to the front lines. Then it crossed his mind that the 234s might have moved on to a new location…
Herries wound down his window. The first soldier flashed his torch at the front of the car, his expression hardening the moment he saw the civilian number plates.
“Was ist los?” the soldier shouted, waving his torch at the driver and his passenger.
The beam swept across the two occupants and then fell back with unshaking precision onto the gleaming Obersturmführer’s flashes on Herries’ lapels. The soldier doused the light and walked over to Herries’ door. In the dull glow from the instrument panel Kruze saw the faded eagle stitched on the tunic and had to stifle a sigh of relief. Oberammergau was defended by Luftwaffe troops and not the Waffen-SS.
“We have been told American commandos are in the area, Herr Obersturmführer,” the guard stammered, “and when I saw the plates—”
“Requisitioned transport,” Herries interrupted. “I didn’t catch your own identification, soldier.”
“Obergefreiter Giesecke, sir, Molders Regiment, 5th Luftwaffe Field Division.” He snapped to attention.
“Open the gate, Giesecke. If you keep us waiting much longer the Americans will be here to do it for you.”
“No one enters without the right authorization, not even the SS.” As if the officer was likely to take his remark as impertinence, he added: “Orders from the OKL.”
“If it weren’t for the Oberkommando der Luftwaffe I wouldn’t be in this God-forsaken hole at all,” Herries spat, passing across his documents.
Kruze kept out of the guard’s line of sight, taking the opportunity for one last look around him before the moment when he would be asked for the transit papers that Schell had prepared. He peered ahead, taking in the guardroom beyond the barrier, the barbed-wire surrounding it, the road that led from their present position into the heart of the base.
“What brings you to Oberammergau?” the guard asked. Kruze felt his muscles stiffen.
“Herr Krazianu needs air transport,” Herries said, jabbing a thumb towards Kruze. “I am his escort. Oberammergau is one of the few air bases left open in this damned country. And that’s all I am allowed to tell you.” He looked the guard straight in the eye. “It’s in the documents.”
Herries snapped his fingers at Kruze and barked something the Rhodesian did not understand. For a second he froze, disorientated, then he realized that Herries was asking him for his papers.
“Rumanian,” Herries said disparagingly to the guard.
Giesecke tried to look sympathetic, but he distrusted the SS as a rule and liked the look of the one in the car even less. He leafed through Kruze’s documents, shining his torch from the photograph on the carnet to the Rhodesian’s face and back again.
“I have not been told about any Rumanian,” he said.
“Is that so? Security here must be worse than I thought,” Herries snapped. “If you look carefully, you will see that this man’s passage through the Reich has been authorized by the Air Ministry in Berlin and countersigned by General Riegl at the OKL. Now I suggest you let us through, or he will miss his aircraft and you will be answerable to the General personally.”
The guard hesitated, looking round for someone with whom he could confer, but the other soldier had disappeared into the warmth of the hut, taking the dog with him. Kruze looked anxiously at his watch. The Meteors would be coming in a little over an hour.
The Obergefreiter shook his head. “I will have to put a call through to the Kommandant, I have no choice. Switch off the engine and come with me please, Herr Obersturmführer, and bring your passenger with you.”
Kruze understood enough to open the door and step out on to the road. There was something reassuringly familiar about the place, something he could not immediately identify, but it lifted his spirits. He followed the Obergefreiter and Herries to the guardroom.
Giesecke pushed the door open. The second guard, a boyish soldier who would not have looked out of place on the sports field of a junior school, was playing happily with the dog. He looked up and smiled at his corporal. The dog let out a low growl as soon as it saw the two strangers in the shadows.
“Leave that damned dog alone and move the car to the secure compound,” Giesecke ordered. “I’m taking them down over to the command post.”
“What command post?” Herries asked, pulling Giesecke round to face him. “What’s wrong with the phone in the guardroom?”
“It does not work, Herr Obersturmführer. You know how it is these days, nothing works anymore.”
“Careful Giesecke,” Herries warned.
The Obergefreiter led the way towards a long bank topped with small pines that was positioned between the guardroom and the perimeter fence. It was only when they got close to it that Kruze realized that the command post was a huge semi-submerged block-house covered with turf and vegetation to make it seem part of the landscape. Giesecke ran down a small flight of steps and tugged at an immense iron door, which opened slowly, its hinges groaning in protest. The smell of paraffin and the sweat of frightened men seeped into the night. A low-wattage bulb dangled from the ceiling near the entrance.
Giesecke ushered them inside. Bunks, stacked four-high from the floor to the concrete ceiling of the immense room, overflowed with men. Some slept with their rifles, panzerfausts and grenades held tightly to their bodies, others stared back at the intruders with eyes filled with terror at the prospect of the flight that lay before them.
“We have been ordered by the OKL to hold Oberammergau to the last man,” the Obergefreiter said. “They say it is worth the sacrifice.”
“And so it is,” Herries said, pulling himself together. “But unless you get me authorization to enter the base this minute, you, for one, will not live to see the first American soldier come down that road.”
Giesecke’s face twitched. He walked through the makeshift dormitory, stepping over the exhausted, filthy bodies that made up Oberammergau’s garrison. He entered a corridor that led off the main room of the block-house, paused by a door half-way along, knocked, listened and walked in. Herries and Kruze followed.