The rail wagon was almost fully-laden. Sentries with machine-pistols at the ready patrolled on both sides of the track.
'A bad moment to arrive,' Lindsay murmured.
'A good moment,' Paco murmured back. 'Their attention is taken up with that wagon.'
Lindsay glanced up at the grassy knolls topped with copses of trees surrounding the hollow. He was trying to imagine where he would position himself if he were Milic and Bora. There was no sign of the two men. Paco produced some grubby papers and they joined a queue of no more than half-a-dozen peasants waiting to cross into Yugoslavia.
The two old women immediately in front of them chattered in a strange language, a sing-song, zizzing sound. Lindsay had never heard people speaking in that way before. Paco, who was watching him, whispered.
'That's Serbo-Croat. You'd better get used to it, you're going to hear a lot of that..
Strange, Lindsay reflected, her calm confidence that they would reach the Promised Land, Yugoslavia. The border post was a small wooden but very much like those he remembered night watchmen had sheltered inside in England before the war. All papers were being examined minutely by a young Army captain.
'Be careful,' he warned Paco, 'the young ones are the worst.'
'Not for me!'
She really was quite incredible. Lindsay's nerves were twanging. Then he noticed why such a youngster occupied this passive occupation. His left sleeve hung loose like a draped curtain: he had only one arm. He observed the tight mouth, the bitter expression. Paco could have misjudged this man.
The queue shuffled forward. Beyond the hut, maybe a hundred metres beyond, stood a huge tidy log pile stacked in a cube. Some of the logs from this pile' formed a fire which crackled dose to the hut. The captain waved a man across the border. Safety was simply permission to continue walking down a country road – on to Yugoslav soil.
Now only the two old women in front of them had to be checked before it was their turn. Lindsay had never felt so helpless in his life – no experience at the Wolf's Lair, at the Berghof, while they were spending the night at the tumbledown Gasthof near the Sudbahnhof, had been as bad as this. He felt so horribly exposed…
'I thought my aunt looked surprisingly well – considering how ill she has been. Don't you agree?' asked Paco, speaking German in a calm voice.
She caught Lindsay off guard. He had been studying the topography close to the border point. He realized she was making conversation for the benefit of the officer checking papers.
'It was a waste of time our coming in my opinion,' Lindsay responded.
The two old women ahead were handed their documents and the German studied Paco before taking her papers. She smiled at him but he showed no interest, which was exactly what Lindsay had expected. 'These papers are not in order, he said after only a glance.
The top of the green knoll closest to the frontier post below was occupied by three men. Two were alive. One was dead. The German machine-gunner who had guarded this key position sprawled behind his weapon had never heard Milic creeping through the trees. His first inkling that he was not alone was when Milic rammed home the knife.
British field craft, as taught in the training camps in England was an amateurish affair compared with the Serb's expertise. Now it was Bora who lay sprawled behind the gun mounted on a tripod.
Next to him Milic lay on the cold grass with a pair of field glasses focused on Lindsay and Paco as they waited for their papers to be examined. Alongside Milic in neat, rows lay the stick grenades he had extracted from the canvas satchel he had carried on his back. A parallel row of smoke bombs lay behind the grenades.
'I think there is trouble down there,' Milic observed.
'What is wrong?' snapped Bora. 'They may get through without trouble. Trust Paco…'
'She has just given the signal,' Milic replied equably.
Through the lenses of the glasses he clearly saw Paco raise a hand to the handkerchief covering her head. It was the agreed warning. We are in danger…'
'The special stamp recently introduced is absent from both of these documents,' the captain at the frontier post informed Paco.
'But, Captain, these papers were stamped in Graz yesterday…'
'You mean they were forged in Graz yesterday!'
Paco raised her hand to her head as though straightening her handkerchief. She went on talking, holding the captain's attention as she produced another set of papers. Her manner became even more self-assured and with a hint of arrogance.
'We are on a mission. Have you not been informed? We should have been passed through without question. These papers, as you will see, are signed by SS Colonel Jaeger of the Berghof…'
Lindsay glanced round the hollow again, surveying the enclosing knolls as the captain, his eye caught by the embossed eagle holding the swastika in its claws at the head of the documents, began to study the transit orders.
A short, wide-shouldered figure appeared at the crest of the knoll closest to the frontier post. His right hand held something which he hurled in an arc. The object landed close to a group of soldiers and detonated.
The dull thump of the explosion knocked down the soldiers like a row of skittles. A second grenade landed. Lindsay made a fist and hit the captain in the centre of his chest. He toppled back inside the hut.
Grabbing Paco by the arm he hustled her forward until they were running.
'That log pile!' he shouted. The peaceful frontier post had erupted into activity and soldiers milled around like confused ants. 'We must get down behind it – the ammunition wagon…'
He threw her down bodily as bullets from a machine-pistol streamed at them, spinning chips of wood off the top of the pile. Peering round a corner he saw the next grenade describing an arc and dropping inside its objective – the ammunition wagon…
The world came apart in a shattering roar. The ground under their feet – the frost-coated, iron hard ground – trembled as though shaken by an earthquake. Lindsay lay on top of Paco, shielding her as debris rained down. The log-pile remained firm.
He risked another glance round the corner. The wagon had disappeared. A section of the track had disappeared. The Germans who had patrolled alongside the wagon had disappeared. Men with rifles – well spaced out – began advancing up towards the crest of the knoll from which Milic had hurled his grenades. Now, crouched out of sight, he tossed smoke bombs down the slope.
They burst just in front of the advancing file of troops and a wall of fog billowed between them and the top of the knoll. Sprawled full-length behind the German machine-gun, Bora stared, along the gun sight. The first German broke through the smoke. He waited. More troops appeared.
Lindsay checked carefully the position inside the hollow. Confusion still. Distant shouted orders. The frontier post but had also vanished when the ammunition wagon exploded.
'We go now,' he told Paco. 'No one is watching the road to Yugoslavia. What about Milic and Bora…'
'They look after themselves. That was the arrangement. They join us later…'
'Follow me. I'm going to run. Zigzag – it makes a hard target to hit. Keep well away from me…'
He took one final look and started running. Paco followed and kept to the side of the road. Lindsay was running down the centre, dodging from side to side. At the extreme right flank of the file of troops moving up the knoll a soldier saw them.
He stopped, turning as he lifted his rifle to shoulder level. He took careful aim at the Englishman, trying to anticipate, his next position. He was aiming slightly ahead of Lindsay. He took the first pressure. He was a marksman – which was why he was a flanker.
Bora swivelled the barrel of his gun. He sighted it on the man aiming at Lindsay and pressed the trigger. He kept his finger on the trigger, sweeping the weapon's stream of bullets along the line of climbing Germans. The flanker was dead. The steady rattle of the machine-gun continued, then ceased.
They were spread along the lower slope – every man who a moment earlier had been advancing towards the crest. In the hollow there was carnage but no sign of life. Black smoke drifted slowly from a large crater where the ammunition wagon had stood. The truck which had brought the ammunition boxes had vanished. Peace – a peace of horror – settled over Spielfeld-Strass.
'The incident bears the clear signature of the group we are pursuing,' Hartmann remarked as he extinguished
