End of Spies by Alex Gerlis (popular ebook readers .txt) 📕

our influence. One way of achieving this is by doing favours for them; making them feel indebted towards us.

‘The country presenting us with most problems at the moment is Yugoslavia. Their partisans fought an outstanding war against the enemy, but now there are indications that they wish to follow their own path. So we need to increase our influence with them.

‘After you left Berlin, I discovered that in the summer of 1944, Friedrich Steiner was transferred from Amsterdam to Maribor in Slovenia. He operated from the Gestapo bureau there under a different name, and he did not use his nickname of the Ferret. His brutality in Maribor was particularly appalling, and the Yugoslavs too are hunting for him. So I went to see them at their mission in Berlin on Cornelius Strasse. I told them about the Kestrel Line and Steiner and about Villach and you and Hanne and… hang on, hang on, hear me out… and in return I can expect favours from them: it will help make them well disposed towards us. They will understand we’re on the same side.

‘I was told they had sent a team to Villach. But it is important that you know I instructed them that under no circumstances should any harm come to you or Hanne: I made it very clear that you’re both to be treated as comrades… Why are you shaking your head?’

‘Because how do I know we can trust them?’

‘They will know not to upset someone like me, but if there are any problems, you can contact me on this telephone number. Someone here in Vienna will answer. If necessary, I can come back here and sort things out.’

Well before her husband had arrived in Vienna – indeed, some time before he’d left London – Hanne found herself in the small wood outside Villach, standing against the base of the tree with her hands in the air as she’d been instructed to do. The man who’d given the order stood in front of her. A woman was next to him, and Hanne recognised them as the couple she’d assumed were hikers when they’d passed her minutes earlier.

Neither of them said a word, and when Hanne began to speak, the woman put a finger to her lips. The three of them stood still as the couple listened carefully. There was not a sound to be heard other than a light wind brushing the tops of the trees. Eventually the man nodded, and the woman stepped forward and searched Hanne then indicated she could lower her hands.

‘Are you alone?’

The man spoke quietly but firmly and Hanne thought she detected a lack of menace in his voice. She replied that she was, and when he asked what she was doing here in the woods, she said she was out for a walk.

‘You walked up a tree?’

She shrugged and said something about looking round, and when the man asked why she was looking at the house, she said she didn’t know what he was talking about, realising as soon as she said it just how unconvincing it sounded.

‘We can talk later, it’s not safe here – but you probably know that. Come.’

They started to walk through the woods, Hanne behind the woman and in front of the man. When they reached the wooden fence, she noticed a younger man crouched by it with a pistol in his hand. He spoke quietly with the couple in a language she couldn’t place before heading off. Hanne waited in the woods with the couple, the three of them sitting down between the trees. She asked what this was all about and said she needed to return to the town, but they shook their heads and said ‘later’.

After about an hour, the younger man returned and they followed him to a car parked on the nearby lane. As far as Hanne could tell, they drove past Villach and ended up somewhere to the south-east of the town. On the outskirts of a village, they pulled onto a rough track and then into a farmyard. The farmhouse was bitterly cold and sparsely furnished.

‘We aren’t Germans,’ the older man said as the four of them sat around the kitchen table. ‘You should understand that we are on the same side as you. I will tell you what we know and then you will tell us what you know.’

He opened a packet of cigarettes and placed it in front of him. Hanne reckoned he was in his fifties, his eyes red with exhaustion.

‘We know you’re on the trail of a Nazi escape line – the Kestrel Line – which is connected to Villach. We know the Kestrel Line is organised by an Austrian Nazi called Wolfgang Steiner and that his son Friedrich is one of the fugitives on it. We know too that there is a possibility that Martin Bormann is also on it. We’re aware that you’re working for the British. We’ve been watching you since you arrived here and we believe you may have a lead – we suspect you think the house you were watching in the woods may be connected to the Kestrel Line. This is all correct?’

Hanne said nothing. A younger woman had come into the room and sat down. All four now watched Hanne closely. ‘Can I ask who you are?’ she said eventually.

‘I’ll tell you who we are and you will answer our questions.’ It was the woman who’d just come into the room. Although she was the youngest of the four, she had an air of authority about her. ‘My name is Marija, this is Branka.’ She pointed at the other woman and then towards the two men: ‘Edvard and Jožef. Your name is Hanne, isn’t it?’

Hanne nodded.

‘Are you on your own in Villach?’

‘Not quite.’

‘With your husband?’

She shook her head.

‘We’re Slovenian partisans – members of Osvobodilna Fronta Slovenskega Naroda, the Liberation Front of Slovenia, which is part of the Yugoslav National Liberation Army. You may have heard of our leader, Tito: the