Len Deighton 3-Book War Collection Volume 1: Bomber, XPD, Goodbye Mickey Mouse. Len Deighton
staff car will take me.’
‘I’m impressed.’
‘An old friend, on the staff of General Christiansen. He has to go from Dortmund to The Hague several times a month. He often gives me a lift.’
‘You shouldn’t have told me.’
‘I want to tell you everything,’ he said. She packed clean laundry into his case, folding and smoothing it with a newfound dedication.
Sometimes Oberst Max Sepp travelled in General Christiansen’s Mercedes, complete with imperious horn and flying pennant. Today Bach was disappointed to find him in a Citroen. It was a factory-fresh car specially made for the Wehrmacht and newly painted Luftwaffe blue, but it hardly compared with the Mercedes and its throaty roar and silver supercharger pipes. Even Max was less impressive than usual, hunched in a badly creased cape and battered peaked cap. As they stood on the pavement August glanced into the sky. It was a habit he would never lose. Six miles in the sky above him the Met observation Spitfire pilot had seen the whole sweep of the cold front and its attendant hammerhead clouds and black twig-like base. He scribbled upon the notepad attached to his thigh and while his attention was distracted from the controls the aeroplane lost 500 feet of altitude. This brought it low enough for condensation trails to form, although only for a minute. At 420 mph that minute meant a thin white scar seven miles long across Krefeld’s blue sky.
‘One of our fighters,’ said Max. August didn’t reply; he threw his leather overcoat on to the driver’s seat and got in.
Max Sepp was a plump white-haired man in his middle fifties. He was on the staff of the Military Governor of the Netherlands. He was Controller of Civilian Fuel Supplies, about which, as he freely admitted, he knew little or nothing. Before the war he had been a forestry official.
‘This is the life,’ said August, settling into the back of the car with Max as the driver closed the door and saluted. Anna-Luisa waved and August waved back.
The car moved off. ‘The best job in the war,’ said Max. ‘When I go on leave I feel ashamed at the arduous life they lead on the home front.’
The driver had done this same journey a thousand times. From Mönchenstrasse where Bach lived he drove across Dorfstrasse, the big main street, and into Richterend, the short cut round the back of St Antonius Hospital. The old building was dwarfed by the new training centre behind it, while on their left lines of unpainted huts on the waste ground stretched as far as Sackgasse and the slums behind the gas-works.
‘What’s that bloody great place?’ asked Max. ‘A concentration camp?’
August Bach looked at his friend a moment and glanced at the back of the driver’s head before replying. ‘No,’ he said finally, ‘it’s a medical centre for amputees. Men from the East Front and civilians from the bombed cities. They learn how to use false limbs there. They take a walk into Dorfstrasse …’
‘And frighten the kids and look at the empty shops. Lovely.’
‘Is that what a concentration camp looks like, Max?’
‘If either of us knew that, my dear August, we would probably not say.’
‘Probably wouldn’t be sitting here,’ said August.
‘How right you are.’ Max Sepp smiled grimly. He looked out of the window as the car turned the corner at Frau Kersten’s fruit farm and jolted heavily over a badly repaired place in the road.
‘An air raid?’ asked Max.
‘Altgarten’s one and only. Last March. An RAF plane jettisoned incendiary bombs across the potato fields and two high explosive bombs. One on the road, one on Frau Kersten’s outhouse. She has French prisoners of war working on the farm now. She made them fix up the barn and mend the road.’
‘They did a better job on the barn than on the road.’
‘She didn’t give them the road to live in.’
‘Smart woman, Frau Kersten,’ said Max with a laugh. The car turned north-west on to the road that they would follow to Nieukerk and all the way to Arnhem. On the left, Frau Kersten’s potato fields stretched away to the flat horizon. Long lines of bent figures were lifting the waxy yellow potatoes that August liked so much. There were children among them, for the schools had given older boys the traditional holiday to help with the crop. As lines moved forward their forks raised the dry soil so that the breeze carried it in dust clouds across the fields behind them.
‘They are fine potatoes,’ said August.
‘Ah, potatoes! How could the Wehrmacht fight without them. Frau Kersten must be doing very nicely out of the war, August. A smart woman. Now that’s a direction you might be looking.’
‘What do you mean, Max?’ August couldn’t help laughing at the face Max pulled in answer to him.
‘What do you think I mean, you old rogue,’ said Max. ‘You think I believe you spend all your time embracing your binoculars and flirting with those seagulls around that radar station of yours.’
‘Just lately the RAF have been keeping me busy.’
‘Not too busy for that, August.’
‘I’m in love, Max, I’m going to get married.’
‘To the RAD girl?’
‘Yes.’
‘We have a lot of RAD girls working in the Military Government. It never works out.’
‘Whatever do you mean?’ said August.
‘Marriages with the RAD girls clerks. We have a couple of requests every month. I usually post the girl away. Unless she’s pregnant. In that case I post the man.’
‘You’re a cold-hearted swine, Max.’
‘Your girl … is she? …’
‘Damn you, Max, no. At least …’
‘There you are, August. Face the truth, old friend. A moment’s fun, a convenient relationship.’ He paused. ‘For a time. Not for a marriage, August.’
‘I love her, Max.’
‘See how it goes for a month or two.’
‘There’s a war on, Max. And God knows how old I’ll be when it ends! No, this is right for me. And right for her too.’
‘Cigar?’
‘Thank you.’ August sniffed at it appreciatively.
‘The Controller of Civilian Fuel Supplies, Netherlands, is a post that brings a privilege or two.’
‘All right, she’s just a naïve young girl, but I’ve had enough of complex sophisticated people. If she’ll put up with my devious complications, I’ll be happy to have her simple soul.’
Max smiled and lit the cigar for him. For quite a long time they both looked out of the car windows without speaking. It was odd, thought August, one can know a man for many years, and then suddenly half a dozen sentences reveal how little communication there truly is between the two of you. Perhaps all human relationships are like that. Perhaps the best that he could hope for in a marriage to Anna-Luisa was that disenchantment would come slowly, and the bitter aftermath of disenchantment – the black despairing hatred – never even begin. He looked at Max; how indolent and comfortable he was. He leaned back, his eyes closed as they sped along the clear main road.
‘Our roads,’ remarked Max. ‘Could we have imagined such wonderful roads when we were children?’
‘Could we have imagined war on two fronts and the need to move armoured divisions on interior lines?’
‘You’re a miserable fellow today. Admit the Führer’s roads are wonderful.’
‘The roads are wonderful, but are roads the thing we most urgently need? I can’t help