'You and I together. We change clothes into Serbian costume. Bora and Milic provide the diversion to help us through…'
'I should help them…' he began.
'You should do as you're bloody well told! This is my territory. You're a package we have to deliver to one of the Allied military missions…'
'Maybe I should apologize for existing…'
'Now, don't go all sulky. That I can do without…'
During the verbal flare-up Paco had kept her soft voice calm as though they were carrying on a normal conversation. She glanced sideways at him as he stared straight ahead.
'You saved our bacon at the Sudbahnhof when you rushed me aboard the train. We make a good team, Lindsay.' She grasped his free arm. 'We're all exhausted – that's the moment to watch it. We've just passed a couple of Austrian policemen in uniform…'
'I never even saw them.'
'Because we were too busy arguing like a normal couple. I saw one of them grin and make a remark to his companion…'
'You devious little bitch!'
'It's nice to be appreciated…' She squeezed his arm and began walking faster. He stared at her – she had deliberately provoked the row to get them past the policemen. Her quick-mindedness and ingenuity never ceased to amaze him. This, he thought, was how Paco's group had survived so long.
'What did you do before the war?' he asked. 'I don't know much about you…'
'I worked for an advertising agency in Belgrade. I was what they call in London an account executive. To survive in that job you have to be very persuasive with all types.'
'You joined the Partisans after Belgrade?'
'I joined the bloody Cetniks – they support the monarchy, which I was quite happy about. That is, until I found they were collaborating with the Germans. I went over to the Partisans because they were fighting Germans. As simple as that…'
They spent the harrowing waiting time in an old house overlooking the river Mur in the centre of Graz. An old couple occupied the staging post. On Paco's instructions Lindsay exchanged not a word with either of them. He slept in a tiny bedroom with a window facing across the river to a weird clock tower perched halfway up a steep hill rising from the opposite bank.
He slept badly, tossing and turning on the unfamiliar bed, and through the open window chill air flowed into the room – he opened it so he could hear if the police called in the night. On the day they left the place he wondered whether the lack of sleep had been due to premonition. The crossing at Spielfeld-Strass was a bloody affair.
Part Three
The Cauldron: Der Kessel
Chapter Twenty-Eight.
In forty years Spielfeld-Strass has not changed. It is the same today as it was in 1943 – when Paco and her companions arrived in a six-coach train drawn by an ancient steam engine. It is more like a wayside halt than a frontier station.
As Lindsay alighted, following Paco, he saw another train waiting in a siding. The destination plates hanging from the coaches carried the legend WIEN SUDBHF. They crossed the tracks coated with early morning frost and went inside the small station building through the door marked Ausgang. No one was about to collect the tickets they had purchased at Graz.
Paco walked without appearing to hurry, descended some concrete steps and they were out in the open. The station stood perched on the side of a small hill. Down a short slope they walked into Spielfeld, a handful of houses and a police station, a two-storeyed building with a tiled gable and a tiny dormer window like a dovecote. Over the entrance were the words Gendarmerie and Postenkommando.
It was all so entirely unexpected. Lindsay transferred his suitcase to his left hand and caught up with Paco.
'There's no sign of troops or defences.'
'Wait till we get to the border crossing. It's not far.'
'What's happened to Bora and Milic?'
'Questions, questions, questions! You're at it again. They've gone a different way to create the diversion if we run into trouble at the crossing point…'
Lindsay said nothing. He was recalling how he had wandered into the kitchen of the house at Graz. Milic had been packing equipment inside a bag – the 'equipment' had included stick grenades and what looked like smoke bombs. Presumably he had collected his travelling gear from some secret weapons store inside the house. He had not enquired.
'Don't stop!' Paco warned. 'Keep walking – ignore the police van.'
The police station stood at the edge of a deserted square. On the far side reared a huge chestnut tree, gaunt with naked branches along which were perched rows of sparrows. Behind the tree huddled an ancient inn with faded, colour-washed walls. Gasthof Schenk.
It was so incredibly peaceful. The other passengers seemed to have made off in the opposite direction – which made Lindsay feel conspicuous and nervous of the police station. Coffee-coloured hens trod the paving stones, jerking their red wattles. The birds chattered testily. The only other sound was the click of billiard balls from an open window in the Gasthof.
It was 11 am, the sky was a sea of surging grey clouds and there was the smell of rain to come.
Two uniformed policemen sat in the cab of the police van parked under the chestnut. As they walked past the vehicle which bore the word Polizei in white across the front, Lindsay was aware of two pairs of eyes studying him. The two men remained motionless but he knew they were watching. He waited for the metallic grind of the handle being turned as the door opened.
Paco waited until they were descending a country lane before she spoke. Behind there was a faint flapping and Lindsay almost jumped. It was the birds taking off.
'They wouldn't stoop to speak to the likes of us,' she remarked in a perfect cockney accent. 'The way we're dressed!'
They had changed into different clothes at the house in Graz. Now Paco wore a peasant jacket and skirt of Serbian style with a brightly-coloured handkerchief wrapped tightly round her head – again concealing her blonde hair.
Lindsay was similarly attired in the male equivalent and, at Paco's suggestion, had again not shaved so he was well-whiskered. They passed a high green knoll as they proceeded down the empty country lane and now the only sound was the distant whistle of an engine followed by the clang of shunted coaches.
`Milic and Bora may have to wipe out the frontier post if we are stopped,' she remarked casually. 'In case of trouble, put as much distance as possible between yourself and the guards. We have arrived
…'
Acts of violence are shocking not so much by the casualties they create as in the suddenness with which they occur. Rounding a corner in the country lane they were confronted with the frontier post, with war.
German troops mounted guard over the crossing point, men clad in field-grey uniform who moved restlessly about to combat the morning chill. They paused to stamp their booted feet on the iron-hard ground crusted heavily with frost in a hollow. They slapped their gloved hands round their shoulders to get the circulation going. In the descent from the station the temperature had dropped ten degrees.
The rail track had reappeared, the line leading south into the Balkans, into the battlefield. A goods wagon stood in a siding and men loaded it with wooden boxes from an Army truck. Lindsay stiffened and Paco's arm linked inside his kept him moving.
The boxes were rectangular in shape, made of wood and stencilled with broken lettering. Ammunition boxes.
