Vampire Korps of the Gestapo Ch. 04

As he walked to the door Petra told him, "Baby, don't leave this room without contributing to the grocery fund."

"But I'll be right back."

"And while you're out I'll count the marks you give me."

In his mind Brandt added blackmail to her burgeoning list of talents. But he forked over some paper money from his woefully thin bill case. He stepped outside of the office closing the door behind him. Maybe Petra could take the hint.

"Konrad, I thought I heard your voice," Brandt boomed cheerfully. "You're outside late at night shining a torch and shouting my name. What's doing?"

"Unforeseen emergency, I already have Emil Vogt parking cars to block the road in front of the school. I need you out there too."

"But why, Konrad?"

"Besides your duty officer passing along a direct order? Is that why you ask?"

"Not at all, Konrad, I was more interested in the emergency."

Dekker trudged over to the window in the colonel's office through which the romantic moonlight streamed. He asked, before flashing his beam inside, "Who've you got in there? Claudia, Elke?"

"Petra," Brandt admitted.

"Where's your bottle? Behind the couch, desk drawer?"

He grinned in resignation. "Couch."

Dekker shined his light through the window. Petra waved at him. "Brandt, hurry now and join Vogt in front of the school. You can trade Petra for Monika Fuchsmach."

"As in the actress? Did you misspeak or did I misshear?"

"You heard right, Vogt will fill in the blanks." Brandt took a reluctant step toward the main gate but Dekker said behind him: "Before you go let me collect your key to Colonel Hauptmann's office, if you don't mind. Thank you and carry on."

Before he passed out of earshot Brandt heard Dekker say: "Petra, what a nice surprise. I know it's a trifle late, but . . . "

**********

Hex raced the hijacked Mercedes down the bumpy forest trail. Monika found it uncomfortable lying on the front seat with her head in Hex's lap under the steering wheel. She'd banged it one too many times and sat up to better hold on to the edge of the front seat, at least until they got to the road. The beams of the headlamps pierced the darkness permitting her to see what loomed in the murk ahead. She braced herself better with the twists and turns illuminated before her, but the lights jumped and bounced with the car.

Monika wondered how he drove with such unerring accuracy down the unfamiliar path.

"How do you feel?" he asked her. When he conversed with her, like he had with the Gestapo agents all evening, he spoke fluently in German, which Monika thought superior to Scotty's, without any trace of a British accent.

"Better than I felt at the lodge. I still have a sore arse from that riding crop," she laughed unconvincingly. Some actress I am, she thought.

Hex said, "Things could be worse, Monika, we're not out of the woods yet."

She did laugh at his double entendre but he didn't, possibly unaware he'd said something clever but maybe not. Englishmen were known for their dry senses of humor. He slung the wheel back and forth, his left hand constantly reaching down for the gearshift.

She lifted von Schitt's peaked cap off her mop of curls and set it on the seat. Beside the hat she noticed a pair of metal rods with material rolled around half of them. For the moment Hex drove across a smooth patch of ground and since she didn't have to hang on for dear life she idly unrolled the material.

Blood red with a black swastika in a circular white field in the center.

"Shit," she said, threw it away from her onto the floorboard.

"What was that?" he asked, eyes intent on the windscreen.

"Stupid Nazi flag. What were my countrymen thinking when they allowed Hitler to come into power?"

"There are plenty who sympathize with Hitler because of the Treaty of Versailles."

"I'm not one of them. I always pretend I'm too ill to attend his Sieg Heil rallies when the soldiers come around battering on doors. They don't give you a choice, you must attend."

Hex knew of many Germans who did likewise, he speculated, "That may be why you were targeted by the SS. Have you any idea why they arrested you tonight?"

She grumbled, "I haven't had a lot of time to think since the Hippodrom. That vampire colonel seemed personally interested in me," Monika emphasized the personal pronoun. "I never saw her before in my life. Till a few hours ago."

"Were you able to use the shielding method I taught you to protect yourself against her supernatural power?" asked Hex.

Not long ago he had spent an afternoon with her at Tobias Rothschild's estate coaching her in an inexact science he called shielding. A vampire named Vladimir Tarasov in Romania had grudgingly revealed the secret to him. Hex told her he passed this method along to all agents of the Raven Cadre, including Rothschild. Monika knew he underwrote the activities of Hex's vampire hunting group.

"A little, but I haven't mastered being able to look them in the eye and prevent them from clouding my mind like you can. Von Schitt managed to hypnotize me though. I resisted her as best as possible by the way you showed me: unfocusing my eyes and putting my mind in another place. After a while she simply overwhelmed me though. I'm afraid she prevailed, Ryan."

"Sounds to me like you stood up to her very well. Then what happened?"

"I vaguely remember her asking me about what you and the others were doing at the Oktoberfest. I got away with giving her some incomplete and evasive answers on some things, but not everything. My mind was a like a revolving door. I was strong one minute and weak the next."

Hex downshifted furiously. The back end of the Mercedes swerved like a fish's tail but he expertly righted it. "Do you remember what she questioned you about?"

"I do recall her asking who met Odell and me when we got off the Orient Express." She paused as if thinking. At the time he seemed too busy fighting the wheel to be giving her his full attention. She omitted what had happened between Odell and her on the overnight train journey, the same way she had when von Schitt put the question to her on the steps of St. Paul's Church. She continued by saying, "I played dumb, the best I could do was give only Scotty's and your first names."

"You saved my life and yours by pulling that off."

"How?"

"Had von Schitt known my full name she'd have killed me when she caught me behind the car," he said. "She ask about the Raven Cadre?"

"Not by name. She wanted to know if any of you worked as assassins for a foreign government. I told her I wasn't positive about anything more than the three of you were secret agents, planning some kind of operation at the Oktoberfest."

"Do you remember anything else?"

"She wanted to know if any one of you three knew how to shoot a crossbow. That's when I weakened but still hedged my answer. I told her Odell was an athlete, perhaps he might be able."

Hex glanced over at her. "Clever, and vague on your part, a hypnotist has to ask specific questions to get a victim to divulge information."

"I guess that threw her off the track enough because all she asked afterwards was if Odell had any archery equipment among his luggage. I told her the truth, he didn't. Scotty brought that stuff in his car, but she didn't ask me that. But I told her a lot I shouldn't've."

"You did great. We can work on sharpening your skills at shielding. As I said, the way you hedged your answers more than likely saved my life: you avoided mentioning the Raven Cadre and you didn't give her my full name."

"She made me get drunk, that didn't help matters much."

"Von Schitt's fifty years older than you. I think it's safe to say she's the most devious person alive, or undead, that I ever encountered. And I've met some tricky bloodsuckers."

"She obviously worked with those SS officers who arrested me, the ones who brought this car. But why did that bitch have me arrested in the first place?"

"We may never know other than you are an outspoken young woman. As a public figure a private life is something you don't actually have anymore," he explained. "Tobias has warned you that when you talk, unlike most other people, you're quoted in newspapers and magazines."

"I'm not a traitor to the Rhineland and want to be a good citizen. But I'm a Berliner first, a German second, and a Nazi last."

"I know it's a popular sentiment, one plenty of Berliners and German citizens embrace. That is, those who aren't donning brown shirts and throwing their hands in the air."

"I know I'm not the only one. So why single me out?"

"I repeat everyone else isn't a famous film actress," he said with another change of gears. "Who in the Nazi party have you angered recently? Or who misconstrued an imagined slight?"

Monika lent it some thought. "Leni Riefenstahl offered me a role in her new picture. I turned it down without reading the script."

"Why? She's a respected director after Triumph of the Will."

"Exactly, and just another one of Adolf's bootlickers. Leni can shove her propaganda horseshit. I want no part of it."

"There you go being outspoken again," Hex said between his teeth as he fought the steering wheel. "I fear your country's in for hard times ahead with Hitler running the show."

"Your country too. That little twerp isn't going to satisfied until all of Europe is at war with us."

"The rest of the world too, particularly the Russians and Americans," Hex said. She knew he shared information with Rothschild's political friends making him more knowledgeable than the average man on the street in 1938. He changed the subject: "Scotty told me what happened in the Hippodrom before he got killed tonight."

Monika remembered Trommler and Koch's account earlier to von Schitt in the back seat of the Mercedes. They had killed a man at the Oktoberfest who trailed them to the car, she had not known the identity of the deceased. She touched Hex's arm and he glanced over at her. Tears glittered like broken diamonds in her eyes.

"Scotty's dead, oh my God. He stood up to the SS in the 'drom and they hit him in the face with a pistol butt, one of the men you killed. How do you know, did the SS arrest him too?"

Hex recounted what Hoffner told him as he lie dying on the parking apron. When he finished he asked, "Did you hear me talking to Ingrid at the lodge a few minutes ago?"

"I heard some of it, but I was so scared I swooned after she threatened to kill me. What?"

"Prepare yourself," he said quietly, "this is more bad news."

"Oh no! Not Odell?" The memory of the night they spent on the train surfaced in her mind again.

"One of her goon girls attacked Scotty and me in the Wies'n. Odell wanted a piece of the action and jumped in the middle."

Monika tried to hold back her tears, they fell anyway but she did not sob. She looked away from Hex, gazing quietly out the car window. He concentrated on driving but after a time said to her: "When we get to the road I'm going to stop to fix the Nazi flags back in place on the bonnet, don't know why von Schitt took them off. I need to ask you to put her cap back on your head and tuck your hair under it."

"So we look like Nazis? But why?"

"Well, for one thing, so you won't look so much like Monika Fuchsmach. I fear the curtain hasn't rung down on this show just yet."

"But we got away."

"So did Ingrid! You can bet your last German mark she's hell bent on finding a telephone as we speak. When she does we can expect interference, especially headed east back to Munich. That's why we're driving west instead," Hex paused. "We must however appear to be Nazi high command. I have fake SS papers and you're in a Gestapo colonel's uniform. Maybe we can bluff our way through enlisted men, but even that will be dodgy. There's an SS Junkerschule to the south of here. Should she call the school, von Schitt will insist they wake up the officer candidates to use hunting us. South is out of the question."

"You know an awful lot."

"Not nearly enough. Rothschild's money buys information. As you well know he's waging a losing war with Nazi Germany, and I'm dealing with the Vampire Korps front for him. We need to know where our enemies are."

She rubbed her eyes and wiped her nose the uniform sleeve. "I dread thinking about Tobias," she sniffed.

"Don't worry too much about him, he hasn't stayed one step ahead of the secret police all these years by being stupid."

"I haven't been able to reach him since last Friday."

"On Wednesday I spoke to him, he swore me to secrecy not to tell anyone, even in the Cadre. Who knows why? Rothschild does things like that. I shouldn't tell you this but, to put you at ease after tonight's grim business, he received a tip from a spy planted in Himmler's office. Time to go underground, right now he's in hiding at Rueben Feldmann's home."

"My manager?"

"None other than. Do you know why he sent you to Munich?"

"Some publicity stunt he cooked up because he's acquainted with Odell Yell's manager. They wanted to bank on his and my celebrity, he said."

"I'm not buying Feldmann's reason. Rothschild would say nothing on the subject when I brought it up to him Wednesday," Hex said angrily. "That nonsense almost got you killed."

"It did get Odell killed."

"If it helps matters any Odell died a hero. He saved my life and Scotty's, only he gave up his in the process. An unselfish man. So was Scotty."

Monika stared out the passenger window again.

Hex braked to a stop before turning onto the road. "Fetch me those Nazi flags you tossed about." He reattached them, dusted off his trenchcoat and got back in the idling Mercedes. Once on the tarmac again he made a right: west. For several kilometers they rode in silence, rounding wide curves as the way grew more winding.

Shapes in the night whipped past to the left but Monika paid little attention. Had she been she'd have noticed the two cars parked across the road to obstruct further passage less than a kilometer away.

She gulped, "Ryan, is that a roadblock?"

**********

Sergeant Karolin Faust spread her legs for the officer.

Moments after the man penetrated her wet core and began to lunge strongly against Karolin she locked her hands and feet around his back, hanging underneath his body, conforming to the rhythms he initiated. She wanted to scream out with delight but for the paper-thin walls of her apartment, flanked on all sides by the most inquisitive of neighbors. Karolin wondered how many eyes glued to various spyholes saw Kaptain Klaus Eggers on his way up the stairs.

He was hard to miss, a hulking brute of a man, attached to a Wehrmacht battalion garrisoned out of town. By no means her sole supply of affection, the boy was two sinful years younger than Karolin's twenty five, but he served his function well. She knew he could not discern he was only another functionary of hers, obviously thought he was in love. Karolin couldn't blame Klaus. She may have been petite, but nonetheless beautiful. Under any circumstances men as well as women would seek her out, more so in a military environment. The ruggedly masculine and blissfully ignorant Kaptain Eggers probably believed himself to be the only one who noticed.

Unless Karolin judged him wrong, and she knew she hadn't, he was just one more puppy dog in the litter wagging his tail. It detracted nothing from the animalistic energy Karolin thrived on and she wagged her tail right along with him. Too bad the good kaptain had no idea how to carry on an intelligent conversation, or he might really be a catch.

Yet a modern girl can only abide by so much talk.

In spite of Eggers' extensive physical abilities when the blue telephone on her desk rang its special ring and the lights under the dial lit up she scrambled out from under him to answer it.

"Darling, why in hell are you picking up a phone for at a time like this?" the petulant man in her bed asked.

"Vampire Korps business comes before I do unfortunately, Klaus."

"You're not the only one," he grumbled sotto voce.

She took the receiver off the hook, put it to her ear after sweeping her unmilitarily long brunette hair over one shoulder. The gesture left one of her small breasts exposed. Karolin felt Klaus staring at it, and the shadowy patch at the base of her thighs. In times like these she could appreciate a man with a one-track mind, the potential for the ringing telephone to derail her appreciation regrettably high. Subconsciously she crossed her legs, but also crossed her fingers hoping the voice on the line didn't have orders from headquarters.

Karolin tried not to let her face fall as Trudi communicated Colonel von Schmitt's wishes. She rotated on the balls of her bare feet to face away from Klaus. Rigid, he lay on his back in the big brass bed dominating the room, arms crossed over his chest, a cigarette smoldering in one hand.

"You caught me after I went to bed, Trudi. Please repeat the name of the Junkerschule," she located a pen and wrote on the desk blotter. "It will take me all of an hour and a half to get there."

"Sorry it's so spur of the moment, do your best. Ask for the duty officer when you arrive and he'll get you squared away with von Schitt."

Karolin chuckled, all the girls in the Korps called the colonel that, behind her back. "And I have to select seven non-vampire girls for a day team?" Karolin wasn't a vampire but served in the Korps, one of many necessary daytime operatives, except when they needed her in the middle of the night. "I'll make a mental list on the way and compare notes when I meet with Simone to weed out any duplicates."

Eggers started to say something the second she laid down the receiver but Karolin shushed him. "Can't find an ashtray, can you? I know you understand I don't like smoking in my bedroom."

"If I understood correctly, you have to leave."

"What's that got to do with lighting up cigarettes in here?"

He crawled out of the bed and meekly disappeared into the front room where Karolin kept the ashtrays. She liked the view exhibited by his exit but loved the one when he reentered. He sat on her bed, reached for his trousers. Karolin stepped close to him, standing with both breasts at the level of his mouth.

Eggers put the hand meant for his pants on her bottom. Even with a nipple only centimeters from his tongue he asked, "Darling, I thought you had to bottle up and go?"

"That's true, duties calls, damn it," she whispered, moving closer to him.

He put his other hand on her rounded little derriere now, an unavoidable breast in his mouth. Eggers had to mumble, "Don't you have to leave immediately? That's what I heard you say."

"Tell me what I said?" she asked, testing him.

"It will take you every bit of an hour and a half to get to the Junkerschule."

"Very good!"

She kissed him on the forehead, excited by her power over this bull of a man. The closest comparison for Karolin had to be horseback riding. In the saddle back at school she'd become infatuated with the concept of a little girl controlling a large stallion. Maybe the idea transferred into her adulthood but she seldom concerned herself with Eggers' cranial capacities. She had five or six others on the string as tame as he. She found some of them more inventive, though few matched his level of energy.

Karolin disengaged her right breast in order to kiss Eggers on his mouth. "But that's just what I told Trudi."

"You mean you don't have to go? Yet?"

"It will take all of an hour and a half," she smiled wickedly, "by the time I'm done with you!"

"And that means what, Karolin?"

"I can drive there in an hour is what it means," she said.

Eggers appeared delighted. "You can?"

"With ease! So let's get on with rattling these bedsprings."

**********

"What do you think, Monika? Do I ram the Mercedes through them or do we stop and try to bluff?"