Wheels of Terror

  ‘Got a lassie just about her age,’ explained The Old Un as he rubbed away a treacherous tear from his bearded cheek. ‘She’s going to be all alone now.’

  The quartermaster came across with a saucepan full of warm milk. Without a word he put it down in front of the girl.

  Tiny raised a bushy eyebrow and whistled expressively through his teeth.

  ‘What’s that?’ shouted the quartermaster, furious at having betrayed any common human emotions. ‘You’re going to pay, you great big swine!’ He waved threateningly with his pencil. ‘I’m going to write with this pencil on a piece of official paper, and I’ll put Tiny’s name down so there’ll be no mistake if I die. Tiny from No. 5 Company. Don’t think you’ll get any credit without interest. No, no, you’ve got to pay the sixty per cent overcharge. Ha, ha, you vulture! You didn’t expect that!’

  Tiny went on whistling and winked confidentially at Porta.

  ‘Did you hear what the dealer said?’ Then he jumped up and threw his flick-knife after the retreating quartermaster. It nearly caught him in the shoulder, but the long blade thumped in the wooden wall and laughed murder at him.

  ‘Bring back my knife, swine,’ roared Tiny. ‘Bring it back! Bring it back!’

  The quartermaster loosened the knife and placed it respectfully in front of Tiny. He was just turning away when Tiny grabbed him by the breast of his tunic, lifted him up and shook him violently.

  ‘You’re a bloody pig and a bloody thief. Aren’t you? Repeat, you …’

  ‘Striped swine,’ Porta helped him out.

  ‘Yes,’ shouted Tiny. ‘A striped swine, a blue striped swine. Bloody hell, you’ll repeat it now!’

  Half-choked the quartermaster repeated the abuse.

  Tiny wanted it three times over.

  Nodding frantic agreement, the quartermaster repeated it, almost purple in the face. Tiny flung him away and he rolled like a ball towards his counter. The last stretch he crawled on all fours.

  Tiny bent down to the girl who had shrunk against the wall.

  ‘Don’t be afraid, my pet. Tiny is a God-fearing man who protects the weak. Amen!’ He made the sign of the cross as he thought was proper when he became God-fearing.

  Stege took a bundle of roubles out of his pocket and threw them to the girl. Several others followed his example. Even Porta, who loved money, took out a sheaf which he counted carefully before putting a rubber-band round it and handing it to the girl.

  Tiny snapped his fingers at the quartermaster, who came running at once.

  ‘A parcel of food for the girl and some roubles,’ ordered Tiny.

  Without a word of protest, the quartermaster made up a parcel and put a bundle of roubles in.

  The girl wanted to go home. She knotted the green scarf firmly under her chin and tied up tightly with a piece of string the old army coat she was wearing.

  Stege and the Little Legionnaire elected themselves to see her home. They took their pistols, put on their snow-coats and went out into the dark with the girl between them.

  The Hindenburg-candle fluttered. Someone threw tallow into the container. The flames danced.

  ‘Do you think they’ll shoot him?’ Bauer asked of the omniscient Old Un.

  ‘Well, it’s become a habit to kill people. Many youngsters have to experience what that lassie with the green scarf is just going through.’

  ‘Good thing we don’t know every time someone dies,’ said Pluto. ‘Do you think that fellow they guillotined the other day in Karali had any children?’

  ‘You never know. But you should never ask; it only hurts. And it becomes too difficult to live,’ replied The Old Un.

  Porta suddenly brightened up and straightened his bent back.

  ‘What about swiping the girl’s father?’

  ‘And how are you going to do that?’ sneered The Old Un. ‘Do you think he’s there without a guard?’

  ‘Why the hell can’t we do it?’ Porta cried angrily. ‘If we can dish it out to Ivan in the trenches do you think we’d find it hard to lay a flock of pale head-hunters horizontal?’

  Pluto nodded.

  ‘You’re right, Porta. Four or five of us could easily pick the adam’s apples out of the gullets of those stiffs, and, hey presto, we’ve disappeared in the night with the farmer.’

  ‘It’s possible, but what’s going to happen afterwards?’ asked The Old Un.

  ‘Afterwards?’ Porta glared at him.

  ‘Yes, afterwards. Do you think the rest of them would go back to bed and forget that someone had cut the throats of a flock of head-hunters?’

  ‘Bah,’ said Porta haughtily. ‘By that time we’d be miles away. They’d never know who did it.’

  ‘No, you’re dead right. They’d never find you, and they’d never believe you if you told them. You see, sonny, they’d do something far worse. They’d raise hell about partisans. They don’t believe they’ve caught a partisan now. They know very well he’s an innocent farmer. But if we get him out by shooting they’ll have a whole SS unit in this district within five hours and several villages will be annihilated. Thousands of women and children will be shoved into concentration-camps as a reprisal for the missing farmer who’ll then become a dangerous and long-wanted partisan leader. If we and others keep our paws off only the farmer Vladimir Ivanovitch Vjatschslav will be hanged. The general will enjoy his day. The commander of the head-hunters will receive his decoration. And it’ll be quiet until the general gets bored again. If Vladimir kicks and makes it difficult for them so much the better. The district will have peace for a bit because it was such a fine execution and it’ll provide the flatfeet with small-talk for a long time. The farmer Vladimir Ivanovitch Vjatschslav is the price of peace in this district.’

  ‘Let me get my hands on these dirty bastards when the war’s over,’ hissed Porta. ‘I’ll pour molten lead down their throats.’

  Stege and the Little Legionnaire had returned. They swore angrily, especially at the military police and the station in Jitomir.

  Then the Little Legionnaire suggested in all seriousness that we should get a few officers from the station and export them to Ivan.

  ‘You must be raving mad,’ The Old Un burst out angrily.

  ‘Don’t you think we’ll manage?’ shouted the Little Legionnaire.

  ‘Easy,’ said Porta before The Old Un could answer. ‘The desert-nomad, Tiny and I can kidnap the whole pack of officers at the station, including Lord High Executioner Hase.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it at all,’ answered The Old Un, ‘but you’d have to be idiots to try. Or perhaps you want hell to descend over all the farmers in this district? Even you madmen must see what would happen here if you pulled this job off?’

  ‘Well, then we’ll—’ Porta stopped as the door opened and stared at the man who stood there shaking the snow off his coat.

  Tiny blinked his eyes, nodded a few times and whistled between his teeth.

  The quartermaster stood at his counter and played with an empty bottle. He gave a nod with his bald bull’s head towards the door as a knife whistled through the air and embedded itself in the floor at the feet of the NCO in the doorway.

  The Little Legionnaire rose and slid like a panther across to the door. He jerked the knife away, kissed it and hummed a tune.

  ‘Allah is great and wise.’

  The silence was evil. It pressed against the walls and roof.

  Sergeant Heide, the clerk, smiled.

  ‘Somebody’s being cheeky here. You think you can have fun with Heide?’ A large Nagan machine-pistol was in his hand. With a click, he cocked his Nagan. ‘I’ll make mincemeat of your mongrel-brains. Just tell me when and where.’

  Silence. Threatening silence. Murder lurked in the shadows.

  ‘Cod-fish!’ decided Heide and ordered a pint of beer.

  ‘Nothing doing,’ came thickly out of the quartermaster’s fat gob.

  ‘A small vodka.’

  ‘Nothing left,’ smiled the quartermaster with th
in lips and eyes full of poison.

  ‘What have you got?’ Heide demanded, pushing his head forward like a butting ram. He rested his right hand in his coat pocket which held the Nagan.

  ‘Nothing, you bastard!’ bawled the quartermaster and crashed the bottle to smithereens.

  ‘You refuse to serve me, Unteroffizier Julius Heide, you greasy grocer?’

  ‘This is all I’ve got,’ growled the quartermaster and held the broken bottle in front of Heide’s face.

  Tiny guffawed.

  ‘Come here, sucking-pig, we’ve got plenty.’

  Heide whirled round, stared confusedly at Tiny and took a few steps across to the table.

  Tiny stabbed his long knife into the table and roared:

  ‘This is what we’ve got, you louse, if you’re not out of this nice room in two seconds.’

  ‘What the hell’s wrong with you all?’ stammered Heide astonished and confused.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ sneered Bauer. ‘What do you think, you bloody coward? Maybe we’ve got constipation.’

  Heide stepped back like a tiger ready to pounce. The Little Legionnaire barred his way. The Nagan pointed coldly at him as he slowly advanced on the nattily turned-out NCO clerk.

  ‘If you take another step, you Moroccan ponce, you’ll sneeze blood,’ hissed Heide, staring desperately at the little fellow with the deadly green eyes.

  We waited for the Nagan to fire, but nobody moved.

  Quicker than a flash the Little Legionnaire’s foot flew up and kicked the Nagan out of Heide’s hand. Heide backed with a shriek of pain.

  Tiny collected the pistol, tore out the magazine and flung it in a corner.

  The Little Legionnaire jerked forward and hit Heide in the stomach. He went down with a crash. Smiling evilly, the Little Legionnaire kicked Heide’s teeth in and broke his nose with a ferocious stamp.

  ‘So you meant to shoot, you rat? You’ll have to learn how first. You’re better at writing, eh?’

  Heide collected himself, sat upon the floor and dazedly wiped the blood off his face.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he babbled. ‘Are you mad? I come to get a pint of beer and for a peaceful natter, and you ambush me without the slightest reason.’

  The Little Legionnaire came across and sat down with us.

  ‘A sweet lad. All holy innocence. Get up, you snotty mongrel, or you’ll get a knife in your gullet!’

  With difficulty Heide got up and collapsed on the bench. Porta handed him a mug of beer. Heide looked thankfully into the inscrutable face of the red-head beneath the top-hat where only the blue, pig-like eyes betrayed any life.

  Heide is bringing the mug to his mouth and is just about to take a sip when Porta with a savage grin knocks it out of his hand and the glass describes an arc through the air.

  Tiny shouts, full of delight:

  ‘The silly has lost his beer, the silly has lost his beer!’

  Heide springs up and glares furiously at Tiny. He scrambles over the table to get at him. Tiny starts to run round the room howling like a small child after a spanking.

  ‘It wasn’t me, it was Porta! It wasn’t me, it was Porta!’

  Suddenly he stops and kicks out backwards. Heide collapses and is thrown against the wall.

  With a dreadful roar Tiny is over him, swinging his arms like a windmill.

  A few half-choked cries, and Heide resembles a butchered pig.

  The Little Legionnaire throws a couple of buckets of water over him. Shaking and sniffing he gets to his legs, but stumbles and falls insensible across the table.

  Pluto flings him into a corner.

  The quartermaster appears from his cage behind the counter and offers us all beer laced with vodka.

  Pluto, spitting at the unconscious Heide says:

  ‘Informer!’

  19

  It was easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for Tiny to enter into Allah’s garden.

  He tried everything after they had told him his life-line was short.

  He threatened, implored, wept, and prayed, but he had to confess to his sins.

  He had much to thank Ivan for when the Russians interrupted the Little Legionnaire’s confessional.

  Tiny Receives Absolution

  ‘Twenty-one,’ bawled Porta and smacked the cards down on the ammunition box we used as a table.

  Suspiciously we stared at the greasy cards. Tiny started to count on his fingers, but it was undisputedly twenty-one.

  With a smooth gesture Porta brushed his winnings into his steel-helmet.

  ‘Want to go on, lads?’

  Porta had won for the thirty-seventh time. Tiny who had lost everything did not want to go on although Porta generously offered him and the rest of us credit against a hundred per cent interest.

  ‘We’d have to be imbeciles,’ said Stege. ‘We can go to the sixty per cent men and pick up a hundred marks. But whatever we do we’d lose.’

  Tiny sat staring thoughtfully in front of him, then he leaned confidentially across to Porta.

  ‘You wouldn’t cheat Tiny, would you?’

  Porta blinked his colourless eyelashes, polished his monocle and pressing it into his left pig’s-eye said:

  ‘No. Joseph Porta would not cheat Tiny.’

  ‘I didn’t think so,’ answered Tiny relieved. A terrible doubt had been dispelled.

  The Old Un came down into the bunker.

  ‘Now we’re sold. No. 2 Platoon is going to be rearguard for the 104th gunner-regiment when they go out of the line. They’re getting ready now. Not one of us’ll get away alive.’

  Porta laughed and pointed to himself.

  ‘You’re wrong, Old Un. The old man here’ll get away with all his whiskers intact.’

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Tiny with interest.

  ‘A fortune-teller whispered it into my ear. First she saw it in my palm. Half an hour later she spread two pounds of coffee-grounds on the table and read the very same thing.’

  Tiny moved nervously and inched along the seat to Porta.

  ‘What did she read, Porta?’

  ‘Well, that French madame told me I’d get away with my life in this war, marry a rich wench and live many happy years as principal shareholder of several prosperous whore-houses.’

  ‘Blimey,’ said Tiny. ‘You don’t think she played you up?’

  Porta shook his head.

  ‘Certainly not.’

  Tiny took an interest in his own hand.

  ‘What’s this line here?’ he asked Porta.

  ‘That’s the life-line, my friend. And it’s damned short.’

  The Little Legionnaire looked up and pointed warningly at Tiny.

  ‘Get your face towards Mecca. Allah is great and wise.’

  Tiny swallowed nervously.

  ‘Who in hell would want to make Tiny cold?’

  ‘Ivan,’ said Porta laconically.

  We had received many new men in No. 2 Platoon. Among them a former SS Unterscharführer who had been two years in Torgau camp. Von Barring had warned The Old Un against him.

  ‘Keep your eye on that fellow. I don’t trust him.’

  Now Stege told us that the SS fellow who had been attached to us, Heide and some others had made a pact to liquidate our gang when the chance came.

  One of the new ones, Corporal Peters, sat down beside us. In his taciturn way he said without any introduction:

  ‘There are twenty-five men who’ve decided to fix you lot up.’

  Tiny was about to react, but a warning glance from Porta made him pause, although he mumbled something about short and long life-lines.

  ‘Where do you get your information?’ asked the Little Legionnaire, his cigarette hanging from his lips.

  ‘Oh, I just know,’ Peters said without expression. ‘And now you know too.’

  The Old Un held him back.

  ‘Where are they going to do it?’

  Peters shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the Russian positions. br />
  ‘Kraus, the SS fellow, thinks Ivan’s behind us and that the platoon’s completely cut off. When your little mob has been made horizontal they’ll be off.’

  The Little Legionnaire spat out his cigarette.

  ‘Aren’t you going with them? Or are you fed up with life?’

  Peters looked at him through slit eyes. He said inscrutably:

  ‘I don’t care about life much, but I don’t like murder.’

  ‘Then you ought to have kept away from here and gone into a monastery,’ said Porta. ‘In the Eastern Front winter-sport society we deal only with murder. Like this!’ he shouted and emptied the magazine of his machine-pistol with a thunder on the ground in front of other members of our platoon farther down the long bunker.

  They jumped up, swearing. The SS man grabbed his machine-pistol but let go of it as if it was glowing hot. He was looking into the muzzles of four machine-pistols and one ‘stove-pipe’.

  ‘Did it scare you amateurs?’ grinned Porta as he flung an empty shell-case in the face of the SS man. He fell backwards with only a grunt.

  Porta pointed to some of the others.

  ‘Fetch the swine here.’

  Smiling satanically he tore a piece of white cloth from his bread bag and ordered them to sew the patch on the back of the unconscious man.

  When the SS man came to, he sat up dazedly and glared at Porta who announced cheerfully:

  ‘You’ve got a white patch on your back. That’s my target. If you get too far away from me your heart’ll leave your body with the help of this comforter.’

  He patted his machine-pistol expressively.

  ‘If by any chance you lose the patch, you’ll be a dead man!’

  ‘Great gun, isn’t it?’ the Little Legionnaire inquired gently.

  Tiny had again been studying the lines of his hand. He jumped up, grabbed Corporal Krosnika, one of the Kraus group of newcomers, by the throat and bashed him against one of the wooden roof supports.

  ‘You bloody goat, did you want to shoot Tiny? You’ve cut away half my life-line!’ Bellowing like a wounded bear, he fumbled for his knife. ‘My life, my life, my short life!’

  Krosnika kicked and hit out to get free. His face turned slowly purple and his kicks and punches became weaker. If The Old Un had not taken a hand he would have been choked.