Rogue Justice Read online

  When the fire was well alight I cleared out over the rubble and back to my bay, where I was protected from heat and explosion – provided the effect of the latter was confined to the garage. I had just tucked myself in under a sheet of corrugated iron when explosion there was and the whole of that flat, still-perpendicular slab of wall came down into the courtyard. Before the dust had cleared, I was running for the gate. The firemen were fully occupied. The ambulance men had taken cover. The courtyard was like a disturbed ants’ nest with everyone in movement. I doubt if I was noticed at all. If I was, I should naturally have been mistaken for the crouching, running figure of the late captain.

  Outside the gate I turned left, knowing that the other direction would lead me to a crowd in front of the building. I walked fast and importantly down the street, which was empty, probably having been closed by the police. Looking on to the prison courtyard was a wounded, windowless house with no guard on it, so I entered as if on business. What I needed was a clothes brush, a boot brush and a drink. I found all three, shaved off Don Ernesto’s moustache and sat down to examine Haase’s papers.

  I was unfamiliar with the organization of the Sicherheitsdienst, Hitler’s security service, for it was not publicized. Haase was commissioned in the Gestapo but wore as well the insignia of the SD, so he was no ordinary political policeman. He appeared to be under the direct orders of the Reich Security Head Office with authority to do anything and go anywhere subject to reporting to the commanding officer of the district SD.

  I hesitated between kitting myself out as a civilian from clothes in a wardrobe or continuing as Hauptmann Haase. The risk of the first alternative was too great. The hounds were hot on the scent of Don Ernesto and the chances were that I should again be arrested by the very first person who ordered me to identify myself. The risk of going ahead as Haase was still worse. For one thing, the photograph on his pass was nothing like me and, though I spoke German perfectly, I did not know the common terms, abbreviations and administrative language of the army. The ideal solution would have been to transfer the photograph from my Nicaraguan passport to the captain’s security pass, but the latter had a formidable embossed stamp right across the upper part of it. Only an expert forger could have imitated it.

  All the same I decided on Haase and bluff. The essential was to get out of town as soon as possible and an SD officer ought to be able to manage that without showing his pass. Now fairly clean, I left the deserted house and set out for the railway station. My general manner as an officer and no gentleman was authentic enough. I had watched so many of them.

  The station was clouded by smoke and in turmoil, for lines had been damaged in the raid and it took a deal of shunting and shouting to get a train together. Meanwhile two battalions of infantry which should have been entrained hours before were patiently making themselves as comfortable as possible in the yards and the forecourt. I got into conversation with several officers and found that as a member of the Gestapo I was not welcome. They gave me a minimum of information, no doubt fearing that it might be my duty to report anyone who gave away details of troop movements. I could only gather that they were separated from their vehicles which had gone ahead before the raid.

  I reckoned – rightly as it turned out – that since I did not belong to the units being entrained I should have to obtain some kind of pass, so I hung about the station watching. It looked as if unattached personnel had to apply to the railway transport officer – easy enough so long as I kept a thumb over the photograph and flashed the permit which practically allowed me to travel unquestioned on duty to anywhere. But suppose the transport officer was permanently stationed in Rostock, in which case he would be sure to know Hauptmann Haase? I thought of saying that Haase had urgent duties, had been lightly wounded in the raid and had asked me to find out the first train to the east and get a pass for him. Not good enough. By evening it would be known that Haase’s body was somewhere under the rubble, and a signal would be passed down the line to arrest the unknown man who was impersonating him.

  Then, thinking of the wrecked garage, I hit on a better story. I had arrived from Denmark that morning on my way to report to Berlin and parked my vehicle at headquarters. It had been completely destroyed in the damnable raid and I wished to go on by train. I had a chat with the transport officer about the iniquity of bombing innocent open cities, which good Germans would never do except in justified reprisal, and got my voucher. Yes, a train should leave in twenty minutes. It would not go through Berlin but I could change at Stettin. And where was it going after Stettin, I asked. Suddenly remembering that I was a security officer, he very properly replied that he didn’t know. He never asked for my documents but only for my name. He seemed so twittery that I dared to give him a false one. What an atmosphere of apprehensiveness there was among the stay-at-homes!

  Once in the train I had little difficulty in finding out, without asking questions, where it was bound after Stettin. At Posen the units would he reunited with their troop-carriers and trucks, and then they believed to Vienna. They were all in hope that their final destination would be Italy, not the eastern front in the mud of spring. I have never felt anything but respect for the German army. To them what they defended was their country, not its regime born straight from hell.

  My railway pass stated my destination as Berlin, but I had no intention of visiting such a concentration of security where my face might conceivably be recognized. I told my fellow travellers that I was on special duty and expected to find further orders for me at Stettin. The sooner I got off the train, the better.

  When I left the scene of the disaster, the fire in the garage had been under control and it seemed certain that it would not extend beyond the mountain of rubble which had been the kitchen and reach the guardroom and the cells. Thus Don Ernesto’s death would be taken as certain, and his name crossed off the blacklist. But what about Haase? That evening or next day, when the site had been cleared, his superiors would think it odd that there was no trace at all of his body. Blown to bits or a deserter? Inquiries would be made, especially at the station. The RTO would state that he had indeed issued a pass to a Gestapo captain, but his name wasn’t Haase. So after futile inquiries up and down the line the fate of Haase was likely to gather dust for some time in a ‘pending’ file. I could never show his documents to SD or Gestapo but I could to civilians and, if unavoidable, to the military.

  I have started my story with the bomb that freed me because it is from that point that I date my active participation in the war. But in the interval before my arrival at Stettin I must explain my possession of the Nicaraguan passport and how I used it in the hope of completing my vengeance for the torture and execution of my only love.

  After my single-handed attempt to free the world of Hitler and his agitated decision to return the compliment by eliminating me, I re-entered Germany from France in March 1939 travelling from Tangier as Ernesto Menendez Peraza, landowner of Nicaragua. This passport was the very private property of that ingenious and able fellow who passed himself off as Major Quive-Smith. I know now that his true name was von Lauen, that he belonged to a Prussian noble family long settled in Lithuania and that he was educated at Eton. His enthusiasm for Hitler was due to two causes: a belief, natural to a descendant of Teutonic knights, that it was the mission of Germans to civilize eastern Europe – plus any other handy points of the compass – and a bitter anti-semitism inspired perhaps by the number of impoverished Jews in Lithuania.

  Von Lauen was given the job of tracking me down. The right man. He was a crack shot who had hunted the forests of Europe and he was out for, let us say, the solitary beast which becomes a man-killer. However, his trust in his employers was not so absolute that he failed to supply himself with the means of escape if necessary. After all, Hitler’s early supporters, the Sturm Abteilung, had been mercilessly liquidated in spite of their loyalty. And so, through bribery or friendship, he had acquired this Nicaraguan passpo
rt which I took over from his body. The photograph, allowing for a cheap photographer, could conceivably be of me and would serve. But what I did not know and ought to have guessed was that he had told his secret to his wife so that she could join him in Nicaragua if ever he found it advisable to disappear.

  Names – what are names in the swift flighting of the sparrow from darkness to darkness? I have been Hauptmann Haase, Menendez Peraza, Bill Smith, yet under these phantom identities always that something which I call myself.

  That self now seems to me as futile as his life on earth must seem to a disembodied soul. I lived for sport, for adventure, for killing big game which, thanks to me and my like, may now be risking extinction. My father was British, my mother Austrian. In those gentle and self-satisfied days before the first war, intermarriage between ancient lines was as common as in the royal family. I was thus perfectly bilingual with a fair smattering of other languages.

  When I arrived in Berlin as Ernesto Menendez Peraza I settled down in a small furnished flat in the suburbs. My identity was never questioned, nor was my story that as a mature student of politics I wished to study the ideals and organization of National Socialism. I visited libraries, attended lectures, asked explanations from minor officials and cultivated the society of the scum who believed in their divine Führer and the mission of the Reich. In France I had taken a quick course of Spanish, which I now perfected by lessons from a Mexican secretly and in another part of the city until I could speak fluently the language of my passport. Meanwhile I was careful to avoid Spaniards and Latin Americans. I had good reason to hope that when I had established my bona fides I might obtain an interview or at least be given a privileged seat at some function where Hitler was due to scream his rages.

  I had once thought that a rifle on a roof was the most efficient method of silencing that scream. It was the plan of an experienced hunter without enough knowledge of police protection. I assumed that in their precautions against bomb and handgun they might have overlooked the rifle and telescopic sight in the hands of a crack shot; but they had not. And the weapon itself was impractical. Yes, Don Ernesto could buy one and take it home. But what then? There was no hope of strolling with it to the chosen roof top or of secreting it there beforehand. Security was far too efficient.

  Life did not appear to me as futile as it was, for the ultimate object was always in the forefront of my mind. The months of play-acting, each one showing a slight advance, absorbed me. I began to cultivate higher circles than the scum of the party with which I had started. Living very simply, I had enough money. While hiding in England I had used little of the five thousand pounds which I had obtained from my solicitor and I had naturally relieved von Lauen of the considerable sum of secret funds which he carried on him and was not in a position to spend at the bottom of the Severn.

  As an enthusiast for the world-wide influence of the Reich, I began to talk of establishing dictatorships on the Pacific coast of Latin America which would rule and expand under the guidance of the Nazi Party. This nonsense was taken seriously and I was asked to lecture on the right of the superior man to extend his rule over Indians, negroes and mestizos. The landowners of pure Spanish blood would, I said, welcome the fellow Aryan and his tradition of good government. It was no more absurd than other Nazi dreams, and I delighted in my inventions and parodies. Now known as a propagandist, I was getting nearer and nearer to Hitler – near enough, I hoped, to be able to use my bare hands to break his neck before I was shot down.

  And then came war. At long last my country had become my ally, and there was I stranded in enemy territory and unable to take part. As a neutral I could reach Switzerland, Sweden or Spain. But what then? What were the chances of being shipped or flown to England? I had no fear of returning home. There was no conceivable reason why I should be accused of my two kills. The police had been hot on my trail and my appearance had been exactly described – a man with a damaged eye, always wearing gloves – but the identity of the criminal was unknown. The eye was now fairly normal and my nails had grown back.

  Meanwhile the peoples of peace at any price suffered defeat after defeat. But I could not see my country ever accepting defeat. If only I were home, with what cruelty and cunning I could lead a unit of resistance or attack! And for Nazi Germany victory was not enough. Hidden from the people behind impenetrable, triumphant lines of swastika banners, the slaughter of the helpless began. The plain, decent citizen could not have guessed its extent but, among the excrement of the Reich with which I drank and babbled, rumours of the concentration camps and the liquidation of communists and Jews circulated and were highly approved. I could bear no more of it. The fanatical patience of three years was exhausted; vengeance on the man was beyond my powers. Vengeance on a poisoned nation was not.

  I decided that it was by Denmark and Sweden that I would try to get home. I hadn’t a hope of doing it legally. To obtain the exit permit I should first have to apply to the consul-general in charge of Central American interests for clearance. So far, I had had the least possible contact with him and, as he spent half of his days in sleep and the other half at parties, he had never bothered to keep track of me. But he happened to be a Nicaraguan who probably knew the names of all the members of landowning families in his small country. I foresaw questions I could not answer. He would provide me with a comfortable chair and a drink while from another room he telephoned the police.

  Through influential friends I had no trouble in getting as far as Denmark as a known Nazi sympathizer and propagandist. Once in Copenhagen I was disappointed to find that there was no passenger service at all between Denmark and Sweden. There was, however, more trade than I expected. The heavy and essential imports of iron ore and timber went directly from Sweden to north German ports, but coasters came over on the short passage from Malmö with light cargo and returned with anything that Germany could spare and Sweden needed. It might be possible to cross as a stowaway, provided I was free to enter Sweden on arrival.

  So I applied to the Swedish consul for a visa to enter his country, which he gave me, at the same time warning me that I should never be allowed to leave without a formal German permit. That I knew only too well, but I was determined to be carried across the straits without any permission but my own. I welcomed with all my heart the straight challenge to straight action after three hateful years of intrigue and hypocrisy.

  Since the enemy kept up a diplomatic fiction that Denmark, though occupied, was still an independent country, the port police were officially Danish and allowed small parties of seamen to come ashore. I followed several such groups and sat near them in cafés, but no faces or voices tempted me to gamble. I had to be very careful whom I approached, avoiding any Swede or Dane who was expressing too loudly his pro-British sentiments. It was certain that the Gestapo would have their spies and agents provocateurs in the bars.

  On the third day I noticed that out of a party of six Swedes two were foreigners, to judge by their manner and way of speaking. After a while the two went off by themselves. I tailed them at a discreet distance, passed and re-passed and found that they were talking in Spanish. Worth a try! When they entered another bar I stood alongside and introduced myself as a South American. As soon as the comradeship of the language had been established, I invited them to have a bite to eat with me. Over the table I got their story of how the devil two Spaniards could be working on a Swedish ship.

  It turned out that they had been in the defeated republican army and were among the few refugees who were evacuated to Russia. Like most foreign communists, they loathed their paradise and, as Spaniards, were horrified by the cold of the Arctic circle, for they had been assigned jobs – possibly in the hope that they would die – in one of the little ports of the White Sea. From there they escaped to Finland and applied to go on to Sweden, where a token handful of Spanish refugees had been accepted.

  I could fearlessly tell such men as these that I, too, wanted to escape b
ut had not a hope of getting a permit.

  ‘Easy!’ they insisted. ‘Let’s start by pretending to be drunk and raising hell. We’ll all three be arrested and taken back on board. You will look for your pass and swear some son of a whore has pinched it out of your pocket. We’ll keep on telling the police that you’re a member of the crew, and if they take you back with us the captain will confirm it.’

  I objected that he would do nothing of the sort, and they asked if I spoke English. When I said that I did, they wanted to know if it was good, proper English that an Englishman speaks. I assured them it was. Then they nodded and winked at each other and, before I could protest, started the hell-raising, singing the Internationale, breaking two glasses and chucking smorgasbord at the ceiling. Thereafter everything went as they had foretold except for a deadly moment when the Danish police refused to take me back on board with them. But they linked arms with me, one on each side, refused to let go and the police decided that their fellow Scandinavians on the ship might as well sort it out and save them trouble.

  I could do nothing. I was appalled at the speed with which the worst had happened. We were escorted through the controls, marched on deck and handed over to the first officer. I expected him to say at once that he had never set eyes on me in his life, but before he could explode my two friends started to sing out with good Spanish fury, ‘We demand to see the captain, sir. We demand to see the captain. We have been wrongly arrested, sir. We demand to see the captain.’