‘I wish it’d been a hundred times worse,’ rumbles Wolf, viciously making himself a sugar sandwich. ‘Couldn’t you have hung on to our gold, somehow? You don’t let anything valuable as that slip through your fingers! I hope, for your own sake, you can get Sally to believe your horror story! Otherwise something very nasty might happen to you!’
Sally arrives the next day. He has so little time to spare that he has himself flown from the airstrip in a Fiesler Storch which can land on the wide boulevard.
‘They tell me you’re up to something!’ he shouts as soon as he catches sight of Porta, although still a long way off. ‘But that must be a lie! You’re not that stupid!’
‘Drop dead!’ answers Porta, with a disarming smile, aiming his forefinger at him.
‘Let me hear it! What happened? Where’s the gold?’ demands Sally. ‘I don’t give a shit for your Grimm’s Fairy Tales stuff, and I want you to know I’ve brought three interrogation experts with me from Berlin! When they’ve had you and your pals under treatment you’ll confess it was you lot that nailed Jesus and the robber to the cross and stuck a spear in Him and gave Him vinegar instead of vodka like the pigs you are! What a shower!’
Arguing loudly they push their way into Wolf’s sanctum sanctorum. They are so excited they come close to fighting when they stick in the door, trying to go through it all three at the same time.
Sally strides up and down the floor, foaming with rage. With a flourish he pulls the oversized pistol he carries round to the front of his belt and unbuttons the flap of the holster. He changes his expression from one of anger to deep, fatherly perturbation and then back again. He shows his teeth in a horsy grin and bends confidentially down over Porta.
‘I think you’re lying! And d’you know what else I think?’
‘I’m no thought-reader!’ says Porta.
‘Shut up! I’ll do the talking!’ Sally roars. ‘I think you and that filthy Jew Commissar have put that gold somewhere, and are just going to wait till the warring powers have knocked the stuffing out of one another. Then you’ll take off and pick up our gold, and shit all over your good buddies here! See, that’s what I think, you greedy son of a bitch!’
‘Really?’ smiles Porta sarcastically. ‘Look at that, now!’
‘Defend yourself, blast you! And shut up about that cursed quick clay,’ shouts Sally furiously. ‘Not even a drivelling idiot’d believe that! And let me tell you the risk you and your Jew Commissar are running with this crazy scheme! The morons over there know you’ve pinched the gold from under their noses, and now they’re looking for it. It’s enough to make ’em forget the world war! And before you know where you are the whole world’ll be after it! You’ll never be able to get rid of it! Even the sneaky bankers in Switzerland or Liechtenstein won’t touch it!’
‘The Mafia might!’ says Porta, laconically.
Sally sits down again, scowling, and digs out a large black cigar from his breast pocket, while he considers how to shoot Porta where it will hurt most.
‘Let me talk,’ says Porta placatingly. ‘And I’ll explain it to you so it can get through even that thick guard commander skull of yours! I know the gold’s red-hot, so I’d never dream of goin’ it alone. Believe me or not, the bloody earth’s swallowed it up! And all those shits from the OGPU and the Gestapo ain’t ever going to find it!’
It takes a very long time before Wolf and Sally are convinced that Porta is telling the truth.
Wolf looks as if he is waiting for the firing squad, and Sally looks as if he has already been hanged. Porta is eating jam with a spoon. It calms his ragged nerves.
‘We’ll need a whole lot of excavators, ‘Wolf breaks the heavy silence.
‘I can get those!’ promises Sally. ‘We’ll turn that rotten Russia inside bloody out!’
‘You’ll have to go through the front line again,’ decides Wolf. ‘And this time don’t come back without the gold!’
‘You might as well chuck it!’ says Porta, disillusioned. ‘The earth’s swallowed it down and has digested it long ago!’
‘How about that Commissar woman?’ asks Wolf, after a long silence. ‘We can’t have her running about free! She knows a lot too much, and it can’t be long before the Gestapo’s here doin’ a bit of gold-prospecting!’
‘Funny you should say that,’ smiles Porta in friendly fashion. ‘That’s just what the Commissar said when I asked him what to do about her. Kill her, he said. Don’t let her get back! She’d talk to people she shouldn’t be talking to!’
‘I’ll send’er a gift parcel!’ Wolf smiles strangely, like Father Christmas in the snow.
‘One you die of when you open it?’ asks Sally.
‘That’s it,’ answers Wolf, and goes out to give some orders to the Chinese.
‘I do believe I’ve developed a weak heart fom all this disappointment,’ says Sally, as he climbs into the Fiesler Storch on his way back to Berlin.
‘Now we’re on speaking terms again.’ says Porta, ‘I’ve got another plan that can get us to Sweden so’s we can go fishing for salmon!’
‘Another plan,’ shouts Sally, looking scared. ‘I get closer to a heart attack every time I hear of one of your plans. But go on. What is it this time?’
‘Sable,’ whispers Porta secretively, looking around him cautiously.
‘Sable?’ asks Sally, looking blank. ‘Those things they make fur coats of for the whores? You’re surely not thinking of going into the furrier line. That’s Jew business. You’d do well to keep out of it!’
‘It’s a lot bigger than that!’ smiles Porta mysteriously. ‘My friend the Commissar let me in on it. There’s more than one kind of sable it seems, and one of the kinds is black and very rare. It’s worth ten times as much as all the other bloody sable. It’s called Barguzhinski sable, and is only found in Russia and there only in very secret places! They export only a few of ’em every third year so Uncle Joe can keep the price up for the little devils. There’s a death penalty for breakin’ the monopoly! But I’ve got a plan! We nip back through the front line and pick up an armful of females and a couple of lusty males. Then goodbye the Soviet at a hell of a lick! We hide the little beasts in some safe place and then all we’ve got to do is get ’em to fuck. Then we’re rich! Stalin has a stroke an’ his moustache falls off!’
‘And then he comes and shoots our heads off.’ Wolf continues, pessimistically.
‘Maybe that idea’s not so crazy after all, ‘Sally is thinking aloud. ‘I’ll have a look at it when I get back to the War Ministry. We’ll see what we can find out about Barguzhinski sable!’ he mumbles with increasing interest as he slams the door of the Storch.
‘Come on,’ says Wolf. ‘Let’s you and me go over and get stinking drunk. We’re rollin’ again some time tonight! So it probably won’t be long before you go on your arse for Führer, Folk and Fatherland. I’ll come over an! spit on your grave!’
‘I’ll come back an’ pee in your tea, then!’ promises Porta.
THE END
* ADAD: Equivalent to the British AA
*German special unit for raiding behind enemy lines.
* Polilruk: A Russian police commissioner
* Hilfswillige: German Work Troops
* Old Viennese song
Sven Hassel, The Commissar
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