Johann and Daniel
by Charles Lacey
Chapter 9
Christopher.
I'd been in touch with HQ, and they were wanting to recall me. It was becoming increasingly difficult to get radio messages through without attracting the attention of the German military, and I had a huge amount of information to give. I'd made a mental map of all the military installations around Linz and much of that part of Austria, and even into parts of Bavaria.
I had to try to make it to some open country further inland, and I scouted around to see if I could find somewhere that a pickup could be arranged. I managed to identify several possible landing places, but there was nowhere that an aircraft could land, turn around and take off again. Not the most dare-devil pilot in the world would have risked landing and taking off anywhere that I could find.
Then came one of those strange encounters which can happen when men are far from home. I had always to project an air of confidence, so as to avoid attracting the attention of the Nazis. I had built up a steady round of companies to visit with my traveller's samples, mostly fabrics of various kinds, and this took me well over the border into Germany, and even towards the Swiss border. I knew, of course, that the border was heavily guarded and constantly patrolled, otherwise there would have been a continuous stream of refugees making their way to neutral territory. There was a wide area which was lit with searchlights at night and watched by guards from high towers. They were armed, and would shoot first and ask questions later.
One day I was in a cafe having a frugal lunch – not that there was any chance of anything more than that, unless one were very wealthy or high up in the Nazi party – and got chatting with a soldier. He was bored, lonely and miserable. Living in barracks, of course, he had no chance to be anything else, but I sensed that he was, so to speak, one of us. I invited him to my hotel room "for a rest". Neither of us got much rest, that afternoon, but we both had a lot of fun. He was a nice looking lad, and equipped with a schwanz of remarkable girth, length and staying power. As I discovered, my rear entrance impaled upon it, to the great enjoyment of us both.
My mind was made up, my plans firm. It would be dangerous, but no more so than remaining in Austria or Germany. I found out from Willi (quite genuinely his name!) when he would be patrolling his section. Then I contacted my bosses in England, to arrange an aircraft pickup well over the Swiss border. Alicia asked me to take two boys with me, picking them up from a house in the better-off area on the western side of Linz. I agreed, rather reluctantly, but Alicia had done me so many good turns that to do one for her was no more than fair. To my surprise and delight, they were the same two boys as before. I was very touched by their obvious affection for one another which had certainly increased since the last time we had met. They looked a bit battered, too; they both had some pretty heavy bruises and one had a bandage around his wrist.
And so we left Linz again, with the boys in the back. I parked near the border, and went for my assignation with Willi. As he was undressing ready for an evening of pleasure I jumped him, held a chloroform pad over his nose, and tied him up.
(Willi, mein liebling , if you ever read this, forgive me, I beg of you. But believe, please, that I could have killed you very easily, and it was the fact that we were of like mind, and the pleasant time we shared together that made me unable to do that; even upon just a short acquaintance I had begun to feel real affection for you. I hope that the chloroform did not leave you with any severe after-effects, and that the pads I put within the cords I tied you up with prevented it from being too painful.)
I knew I had a short time when the patrols were changing over, and that with Willi tied up in my hotel room there would be a short period of confusion while they tried to find him. I jumped back in the car, started the engine and drove madly over the patrolled strip of land, and into Liechtenstein. Once well across the border I eased off and let the boys sit up. An hour later we were at an hotel near St Gallen. I hid the car in a farmer's barn, covered with straw. I wonder if it is still there. Probably the farmer sold it, unless he used it himself. It was a good machine.
Authors deserve your feedback. It's the only payment they get. If you go to the top of the page you will find the author's name. Click that and you can email the author easily.* Please take a few moments, if you liked the story, to say so.
[For those who use webmail, or whose regular email client opens when they want to use webmail instead: Please right click the author's name. A menu will open in which you can copy the email address (it goes directly to your clipboard without having the courtesy of mentioning that to you) to paste into your webmail system (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo etc). Each browser is subtly different, each Webmail system is different, or we'd give fuller instructions here. We trust you to know how to use your own system. Note: If the email address pastes or arrives with %40 in the middle, replace that weird set of characters with an @ sign.]
* Some browsers may require a right click instead
