The Soldier Spies (Men at War 3)

FEG Hoescht am Main, Germany

1540 Hours 30 January 1943

“Guten Tag,” the caller said. “Would you put me through to Fräulein von Handleman-Bitburg, please?”

“Fräulein von Handleman-Bitburg does not work in this office, and she cannot be called to the telephone.”

“I am calling for Generaloberst von Handleman-Bitburg,” the caller said coldly. “Please get Fräulein von Handleman-Bitburg on the line, or let me speak with your superior.”

"One moment, please, mein Herr,” the woman said.

Precisely two minutes and forty-one seconds later—the caller was looking at his watch—Fräulein von Handleman-Bitburg came on the line.

“Hello?”

“Ich liebe dich,” the caller said.

“How are you?” Fräulein von Handleman-Bitburg said.

“Did you hear what I said?”

“I think I already knew,” Fräulein von Handleman-Bitburg said. “But thank you for telling me.”

The caller hung up.

Then he ran across the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof and boarded the Danube Express for Vienna.

Chapter THREE

Leitha, Ostmark

31 January 1943

There was a customs house just beside the station at Leitha. It was sturdily constructed of brick, and above the door there was, carved in sandstone, the double-headed eagle of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. A stark sign, black on white, had been fixed to the building, "GRENZPOLIZEI” (Border Police), but it did not quite cover the sandstone crest. The two eagle heads were visible, for all the world as if they were looking over the sign.

The border divided what had been the two major divisions of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Hungary was now an independent state. And Austria too had been independent, but it had been taken into Greater Germany and was now officially the State of Ostmark, on a par with Bavaria, or Prussia, or Hesse.

Twenty miles north of Leitha was the border between Ostmark and what had been another two parts of what had been the Austro-Hungarian Empire. These were the former Provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, which for a few years had been the Republic of Czechoslovakia.

The Prime Minister of Great Britain, Neville Chamberlain, in exchange for “peace in our time,” had allowed Hitler to take over that country. But it hadn’t fared as well as Hungary and Austria. It was now a “Protectorate,” which meant that the Bohemians and Moravians were not considered quite as good as Germans, and were not permitted to send re

presentatives to the Central Government in Berlin.

Richard Canidy had given this snippet of history a good deal of thought before deciding that the safest place to cross the border between Germany and Hungary was at Leitha. Hungarians and Germans were allies.

Residents of the Protectorates of Bohemia and Moravia seemed not to understand the privilege of their association with Germany, as nearly equal citizens. Not only had they assassinated Reinhard Heydrich, the Protector himself, but they seemed to be always trying to get out of Bohemia and Moravia into either Hungary or Ostmark.

Consequently, the borders between the Protectorates and Ostmark or the Protectorates and Hungary were more closely guarded than the border between Ostmark and Hungary.

At Leitha there would be only one inspection of documents, and that one inspection would probably be more or less perfunctory.

But an inspection was conducted, and it was not pro forma. The primary concern of the authorities was the disparity between food supplies in Germany and Hungary. Hungary, which had been the breadbasket of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, still had surplus supplies of food that farmers or their agents were perfectly willing to sell to anyone with the money.

On the way from Hungary to Germany, travelers were searched for contraband sausage, salami, and smoked pork. That was considerably easier to find than excess-of-the-limit money, which was usually the contraband carried in the other direction.

The inspection of documents and the searching of luggage began almost as soon as the train left Vienna’s Hauptbahnhof on Mariahilferstrasse. It was only fifty kilometers from Vienna to Leitha, and the train covered this in about forty-five minutes. Forty-five minutes was not sufficient time for the border police to search all luggage and to inspect all documents.

The Budapest Express had been stopped at Leitha for thirty minutes as the inspection continued, when the inspecting quartet—the conductor, two border policemen, and a Gestapo agent—slid open the door to a compartment that held an Obersturmführer SS-SD, an attractive young woman, and a tall, erect man whose documents identified him as both the young woman’s father and as an engineer employed by Siemens.