Heil Harris! by Garforth John

Author:Garforth, John [Garforth, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Spies always travel light

The rail journey from Partenkirchen to Innsbruck is stark, majestic and intimidating. It winds rapidly through the mountains high above the valley of the Inn. Steed peered down, God-like, on the river and the tiny road. There were people on foot and motor-cars crawling slowly along but they were dwarfed by the Tirolian Alps opposite. Amid scenery like this it was difficult not to despise the small grocer sitting in the same carriage or the solid fraulein in the comer who was legally entitled to call herself frau.

Steed left the train at Mittenwald. The rest of the journey to Einsiedeln would have to be made by road. He braced himself for the worst and went into the nearest car hire firm. They could only offer him a Volkswagen and when he asked whether they had anything safer they became intensely nationalistic.

“My dear fellow, everyone knows that the Bentley is the finest car on the road. They’d have to be pretty small folk to get into this thing.”

But it was no use reasoning with them, and half an hour later Steed had set off along the Walchensee road in a small black automated bug. Oh well, they couldn’t blame him if he crashed the thing into the river. Damned square-heads, they couldn’t even drive on the correct side of the road.

He found the mountain air a little intoxicating, and by the end of the ninety-minute journey he was feeling positively inspired. No wonder Hitler went mad, spending so much time in this part of the country. There were only the mountain spirits to talk to, or those stout men in short trousers with feathers in their caps.

The road dropped suddenly into Einsiedeln, and stretched out in front of him was the massive lake nearly a thousand feet above sea level. Steed stopped the car and got out to admire the place. There was no doubt about it, when they built Dachau concentration camp in Bavaria they were trying to give the prisoners every advantage.

When he reached the village and tried to book a room at the hotel the fellow asked Steed whether he was an American, and then they had a wrangle about a suitable tea. It was half past four, dammit, and he had been travelling for hours.

“It’s not as if I’m asking for tea and muffins with raspberry jam. A decent brandy, that’s all, with buttered toast.”

As the place had a population of 500 this was the only inn so Steed had to settle for the sickly homebrewed brandy and do his toast in the kitchen.

He had no settled plans until the following morning and Steed spent the evening reading up on the area, finding out who else was staying at the hotel and chatting to the local inhabitants. He had intended to deny all knowledge of the language, an elementary trick, but since no-one else in the village spoke English he had to abandon the idea. Insular people, the Germans.

“I’m an English journalist,” he told Herr Kurtmann, “and I’m writing a book on your country since the war.

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