End of Spies, Alex Gerlis [important of reading books txt] 📗

of the road and watched dawn break in spectacular fashion over the mountains. He shared a flask of brandy with his passengers, but said little until the landscape in front of them had turned from black to grey then to white and he said it was time to go. The Loibl Pass was as good as could be expected at this time of year, he added, in between humming, and then he chuckled.

Mach dir keine Sorgen: don’t worry.

The Daimler pulled into the courtyard of a large house in Trieste later that afternoon. Hanne and Prince were hurried in and taken to a large dimly lit basement where a dozen armed men and women were sitting on the floor, apparently uninterested in their arrival.

Hanne gripped Prince’s hand tightly as the steel door slammed shut behind them and the sound of it being bolted from the outside reverberated. For a few moments they both worried this was a trap, but then a tall figure moved towards them, and when he spoke – enquiring about their journey and the weather over the Alps – his voice was familiar and they realised it was Edvard, the oldest of the Slovenian partisans.

He pointed to the others sitting around the room. They were comrades from the Liberation Front of Slovenia, he said, and reeled off their names. ‘They’ve come to help us. We want to get Friedrich Steiner and catch the others for you.’

‘I thought you’d have done that by now.’ Hanne sounded angry.

‘We have to be very careful. The British have increased their patrols around the city, and especially the port area. And in any case,’ Edvard moved close to them, a strong smell of tobacco on his breath, ‘we’ve been told by our mission in Berlin to wait until we get the signal from them to mount our operation. The British stopped watching the warehouse on Porto Vecchio yesterday, and that same night the Germans must have moved out of it, but we don’t know where to. We’re searching the area, and Jožef and Marija are talking to our contacts on the docks.’

‘Where are we now?’

‘Scorcola. We have to wait here until we find where the Germans are hiding.’

‘And then get the go-ahead from Berlin.’

‘Of course.’

Once it was dark, Edvard took them into a room on the top floor of the house, where Jožef and Marija sat in a cloud of cigarette smoke either side of a short man in oil-stained overalls and heavy boots. His dark face was deeply lined and the black hair sticking out from under his cloth cap was flecked with grey. It was hard to estimate his age, though when he spoke, it was with the rasping voice of an older man.

‘Giuseppe is a docker at Porto Vittorio Emanuele.’ Jožef placed an arm round the Italian’s shoulder as he spoke. ‘He’s Italian but his mother was Slovenian, so he helps us.’

Giuseppe spoke. He sounded as if he was arguing with himself, emphasising some point or other by hitting an open hand with his fist.

‘He’s explaining that his job is to help prepare ships for their departure, making sure the cargo and all the supplies are loaded. On Monday he was allocated to a South African ship, the MV Ankia, which is due to set sail for Durban on Friday,’ said Marija.

Giuseppe stopped her and spoke again.

‘He says he’s the foreman on this job, and yesterday the master took him into his cabin and asked him if he spoke German, which he does – a little. He said he’d agreed to take some passengers from Trieste to South Africa but they didn’t have any paperwork. He knew he was breaking the law but he’d been offered a lot of money and now he was worried about how he was going to get them on board, especially as the authorities were looking for them.’

‘Did he say who these passengers are?’

Marija translated for Giuseppe. ‘He’s not sure, but he thinks they’re Germans or something to do with Germany. The master said that if Giuseppe could find a way to smuggle them on board, he’d reward him very generously. Before he left the port this evening, the master gave him the address of where the passengers are – it’s on Viale Miramare, which is between here and Porto Vittorio Emanuele. His instructions are to go to the building at first light tomorrow morning and discuss with them how he’s going to get them on board: he said they only speak German or English. Giuseppe speaks no English.’

‘He definitely mentioned English, did he?’

‘Yes, he’s sure of that.’

‘Good,’ said Edvard. ‘So we have the address of where the bastards are hiding. Now we just need to hear from Berlin.’

They heard from Berlin in the early hours of the Thursday morning, long before the sun rose over the city and began to glint off the Gulf of Trieste, long before the first shouts of the workers and clashes of metal disturbed the peace of the port and even longer before the curtains of Trieste were drawn and yellowy lights illuminated the homes of its stirring population.

When Edvard entered the room where Hanne and Prince were asleep on a sofa, he told them it was time to get dressed, and dropped two Beretta semi-automatic pistols at their feet.

Downstairs, the kitchen was crowded, but other than the occasional muttered word, no one spoke, the tension preventing anything in the way of conversation. The only noise was of the dozen people in the room checking their weapons, the placing of ammunition in barrels and magazines, the clicks of safety catches, and a few nervous coughs. The room was diffused with the smells of gun oil and coffee: on the stove, two large moka pots were brewing.

As the strong coffee kicked in, the room became busier: snatches of conversation began and a slight easing of the tension was apparent. One or two of the Slovenes slapped each other on the back, and there were brief snatches of laughter.