One of the few building jobs I was involved in occurred towards the end of June, with the much-needed repairs to my own apartment. Karl kindly did the bulk of the work, with a little help from myself and a lot of hindrance from Hellie.
In July the British took over control of their sector, and things started to relax a little. Vehicles were beginning to appear on the roads again, which was my incentive to try to do something about ‘Maggi’ the flatbed. Having completed the Luftwaffe heavy vehicle driving course, I had a good basic knowledge of heavy vehicles and their maintenance. The first priority was a battery. The one on ‘Maggi’ was completely dead.
The following morning Karl appeared with his trolley, and buried beneath sacks of sand, shovels and bricks was a brand-new battery sporting a very fetching red star! I emptied the fuel tank and strained the fuel through a muslin cloth, helpfully supplied by Lottie, before stripping the fuel system and cleaning every component. While assembling it I mentioned casually to Karl that, ideally, we should do an oil change. Needless to say, within a short time, two 5-litre cans of oil appeared, together with an oil filter, an air filter and a fuel filter.
After refilling the fuel tank and bleeding the system, we were ready to try it. I prayed it would start—I was going to look very foolish if it didn’t. After a few splutters it burst into life issuing clouds of steam and smoke as the water that had accumulated in the exhaust boiled off. After five minutes it was purring beautifully. ‘Maggi’ was alive again!
With the flatbed on the road again, life became somewhat easier. It was about this time that an illegal market opened along Charlottenburger Chaussee in the British sector. The British authorities made several half-hearted attempts to close it down, but their efforts were doomed to failure as a good many of the customers were Red Army soldiers. The market proved very lucrative for Karl. It was also about this time that Karl had his first ‘transport’ customer since the war ended. He was a relatively young SS major. I have no idea what he did, or whom he did it to, but he seemed very keen to leave Berlin.
Karl supplied him with new documents, and we dressed him in workmen’s clothes. I drove him to one of the farms we used and offloaded him onto the farmer, along with a sizable envelope which I assumed contained cash.
Shortly after this, things started to go wrong. Our forger was picked up by the Soviet authorities and Karl, fearing he would be given up, decided to move himself and Lottie. The last I heard from one of the farmers was that he had started up again in one of the bombed-out cities further south.
With Karl gone, I was left to my own devices. Without transport and materials, the building trade for me was now finished. I could still trade on the black market, but I was severely limited in the number of goods I could carry. On two occasions I was able to do a ‘transport’—fortunately the farmers were still prepared to assist, but only if the transportee met their requirements. This basically meant that the fugitive must be a member of Thule. They were eager to assist their own, but no one else.
It was through this organisation, via one of the farmers, that I came in contact with Müller, and it was of course because of your desire to capture Müller that you contacted me and consequently arrested me.
Helmut’s Revelation
Dan Kelly sat back in his chair and blew out his cheeks.
“That is some story, Horst. I agree with Karl, it is astonishing that you made it that far. You’re a very resourceful man.”
He paused for a while, then added, “Of course, Schumacher is not their real name?”
“No, of course not,” said Horst. “I changed the names to protect the guilty!”
Kelly laughed. “Quite! But I’m not interested in the Schumachers of this world. I’m after bigger fish. I need to know what happened to Müller after he escaped from the military hospital.”
“If Müller was a member of Thule,” mused Horst, “and I suspect he must have been, it’s almost certain that his escape was engineered by that organisation. He would have then been processed down the line in exactly the same way as he would have been if you hadn’t caught him.”
“The way you would have processed him?” said Kelly.
“Exactly, bearing in mind I would have only taken him as far as one of the farms. His route from there would have been in the hands of the farmers directed by their Thule overlords.”
“Tell me what would happen from there onwards.”
“You have to remember that everything I know about the route south is from occasional remarks by Karl or the farmers, or from overheard conversations between them. Based on that, then my understanding is this.
“The fugitive would gradually be moved further south using agricultural transport—tractors, livestock carriers, hay wagons and so on—until they arrived at Jena in Thuringia. The distance is a little over two hundred kilometres, but it could take a week. The contact in Jena was a haulage firm that subcontracted, though not exclusively, to the Carl Zeiss factory, carrying the company’s products, optical equipment and medical instruments all over Germany, and indeed Europe. The fugitive would be hidden in one of the trucks heading for his next collection point.”
“Where were the transportees heading after Jena?” asked Kelly.
“There were two options at that point. Route one was through France and then into Spain. I have no idea which port they used in Spain. Barcelona has the advantage that
