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Post By The Hooded Hood at the Eastern Front Tue Jun 22, 2004 at 08:43:03 am EDT |
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Sir Mumphrey Wilton and the Lost City of Mystery - Part the Twenty-Third: Frau Steinhauser and the Eastern Front | |
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| Part the Twenty-Third: Frau Steinhauser and the Eastern Front Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of Russia, began on June 22nd 1941. Three and a half million Axis soldiers in one hundred and ninety divisions surged over the borders into the Ukraine and Belorussia, catching the Soviet Union entirely unawares and capturing whole armies. By September 19th the Nazis occupied Kiev, and a week later 665,000 Soviet troops yielded, the largest army to surrender in all history. The Germans captured 886 tanks and 3,718 cannon. Kiev's population in 1940 was 900,000. In 1945 it was 186,000. By the time the winter snows stopped further advances, the Axis had also besieged Leningrad and were entrenched across the river from Moscow itself. Oberst Hansel Wilfram and his assistant Frau Mehlinger arrived in captured Kiev on January 29th, 1941. The streets were deathly quiet after the execution of the Mayor and the massacre of the entire workforce of the dissident newspaper, Ukrainske Slovo. German tanks stood on every corner. German soldiers were billeted in every house. A Soviet-built car, commandeered because it was better suited to the sub-zero temperatures than Western vehicles, escorted the newcomers to the Vulitsya Volodymyrska in the Old Town, where the military governor had occupied the mayor’s residence in the shadow of the eleventh century St Sophia Cathedral. “Ah, there you are, Wilfram!” General Steinhauer noted, rising from an antique oak writing table. “Now perhaps I can get some sense about what happened on the train that brought you here from Berlin.” “Resistance, I’d say,” Sir Mumphrey Wilton lied plausibly. “We stopped at some godforsaken way station to take on water and coal, and all the soldiers took the chance of toilet breaks. The locals were selling food and drink. Some of it must have been drugged, to drive the men mad.” Steinhauer considered this. “And you? Why were you not affected?” “Travel sickness,” Mumphrey explained promptly. “Couldn’t face a bite, let alone keep it down.” That seemed to satisfy the butcher of Kiev. “Then welcome to the Eastern Front, Oberst. You have a lot of work piled on your desk. But tonight you will both join me and my wife for dinner.” “What do we do now?” asked Miss Canterbury after the private soldier had left them in the temporary apartment designated for them. Since no effort had been made to provide ‘Frau Mehlinger’ with a separate room it was obvious that Wulfum enjoyed more than a business relationship with his secretary. “Go to dinner,” Mumphrey shrugged. “Try not to speak too much to give away your poor German. Leave the talkin’ to me. And then tomorrow I’ll see about cutting us some travel papers to take us south. Tour of inspection or something.” “I don’t like that general, Mumphrey. He’s evil. He’s a madman.” “Then he’s picked the right side, what? Y’know, lots of Ukranians welcomed the Nazis when they arrived because they already hated Stalin for his massacres. Poor devils, look what they got instead.” “We’re playing a very dangerous game here, you know.” “Then we’d best make sure we win, what?” “Oberst Wilfram, Frau Mehlinger, may I present my wife Inga,” General Steinhauer said formally. Mumphrey kissed the lady’s fingers with old-school politeness, and if he lingered slightly long it was only in deference to her flawless perfection. Miss Canterbury shook her hand and tried not to feel dowdy. “Delighted,” Mumph told Inga Steinhauer. “Likewise, Herr Oberst,” she replied. “I need you on your toes,” the General told Mumphrey as the soup course was served. Kiev was starving, but there were no shortages at the General’s table. “The whole country is rife with guerrillas and saboteurs. That’s what happened to your predecessor.” “He was a boring little man,” Frau Steinhauer interjected. “I hope you are going to prove more interesting, Oberst Wilfram.” “I shall do my utmost, madam,” Mumphrey promised. “Every second Russian we have working for us is a spy. I shoot one and ten more spring up, I shoot ten and there’s a hundred more” complained the General. “They know every supply route and troop movement. That’s why you have to stay sharp.” “I’ll certainly do that,” Mumph promised. “We cannot halt until every Jew is eliminated from the face of the Earth,” General Steinhauer asserted, his face red as he banged his cruet on the dinner table. “I’ve had nearly thirty-four thousand of the vermin executed here, but there are more in hiding.” Miss Canterbury gripped Mumphrey’s hand under the table as she saw his face begin to colour. “Must we talk about mass executions at the dinner table, leibling?” Frau Steinhauer complained. “Don’t you get enough of that at work?” “We can never rest until the Fuhrer’s Final Solution is in place,” argued the Butcher of Kiev. “The lesser races must be subjugated or destroyed. That is destiny. Don’t you agree, Wilfram?” “I’m sure the history books will see things clearly,” answered Sir Mumphrey Wilton. “I’m sure those who deserve death will get it. I won’t rest until they do.” “We actually tried being kind to these Ukranian scum. We offered them jobs in the war industries back home. Hardly any would go. So now I’m rounding up three million of them to march to Germany to do their duty for the Reich as slave labour.” “Some more wine, Herr Oberst?” asked Inga Steinhauer. “When my husband is in this mood he can go on for hours.” “But not forever,” promised Mumphrey. His hands balled into fists beneath the table. “Could you take me to lie down?” Miss Canterbury asked her companion quickly . “I think the travel is making me ill.” “Stay here,” Sir Mumphrey Wilton advised Miss Canterbury when dinner was finally over and they were back in their room. “I need to slip out for a while.” “Not to kill General Steinhauer? I thought you weren’t allowed to use your pocketwatch like that.” “He’s a marginal case,” the angry Englishman said grudgingly. “But it’s not that, I promise, much as I’d like to shoot the cad. This is a different kind of meeting.” “Really?” Miss Canterbury had noted the covert glances across the table between her travelling companion and the general’s wife. “An undercover mission?” “Not the sort you’re fearin’, m’dear,” Mumphrey promised, as he slipped back into the darkened hallway. “Mumphrey,” Inga Steinhauer breathed as he slipped onto the patio. And she pressed herself into his arms and gave him a scorching kiss. “Steady now,” the eccentric Englishman cautioned, detaching the passionate beauty from his neck. “You’re a married woman.” “That worm? He doesn’t know what to do if it’s not a boy. He’s a miserable sadistic bastard, and I hate him!” “Quite. But you are his wife, and… well, I’m with someone.” “The little brunette? What is she? Secret service? MI6?” “She’s a vicar’s daughter from Hertfordshire, and she got caught up in things rather accidentally.” “I noticed she was very quiet at dinner. Not much German?” “Not enough to pass in a long conversation. But she’s bearing up like a trouper.” The woman took a step back and her eyes narrowed. “Mumphrey Wilton, don’t tell me you’ve finally fallen after all these years? Have you?” “Hmph. Don’t see that’s relevant to the job in hand. Now what we need…” “What has she got that I haven’t then, lover? Is it the English Rose complexion, the sweet virginal gaze? I can do virginal. I did for Steinhauser.” Mumphrey coloured. “You tried it on me as well, as I recall. Gad, but I’ve never been happier to divulge information to an enemy spy.” “It was false information though,” the lady sulked. “You cheated.” “Well I won’t be cheatin’ tonight, old girl. And it’s not because you’re wedded to that pimple. Draw what conclusions you like from that about Miss Canterbury.” Frau Steinhauser sighed theatrically, swelling her bosom beneath her low cut negligee. “Things have become so serious now, haven’t they?” she frowned. “We all have to be so responsible.” “I take it you’re responsible for Steinhauser’s security leaks, and the remarkable things the resistance are up to?” Mumphrey surmised. “I didn’t marry him for his looks or charm,” the dark-tressed beauty noted. “So where are you trying to get to Mumphrey?” “India or thereabouts,” Mumph replied. “Thought I’d try to go south through neutral Turkey.” “Don’t,” Inga advised. “Too much security. You’re better off heading east to the front line, then cross over and stop being German. Travel through Russia and Afghanistan.” Her face became a mask of concentration. “I don’t suppose this is anything to do with Herr Wertham’s little expedition to the Himalayas, is it?” Mumphrey’s eyes widened. “He was here?” “Darling, where else would you pick up experienced cold weather troops and the right equipment? He flew out of here a couple of days ago, with about twenty men and an American mercenary.” “Then I need to follow him,” Mumph determined. “Can you get me a plane?” “Not with my husband twitching for spies and traitors at every shadow,” the lady answered. She thought for a moment and kissed Mumphrey again, softly on the cheek. “Be ready to leave early tomorrow, you and your vicar’s daughter,” she advised him. “I’ll make it possible, for old times’ sake.” The stamping of boots awoke Sir Mumphrey and Miss Canterbury before the alarm bells even started ringing. The travellers dressed and packed quickly before Mumphrey stuck his head out of the door to see what was going on. “Sir, it’s the General,” a frenzied private soldier told him. “He’s been shot. Assassinated.” “Good grief!” gasped Mumphrey. “Take us to his widow at once!” “My cover was getting thin anyway,” Frau Steinhauser admitted. “He was getting suspicious of my extracurricular activities – espionage and erotic – and I was getting tired of his perversions. And he had murdered one Russian too many.” “You’re a spy?” Miss Canterbury realised. “A German fighting against Hitler?” “German?” the widow snorted. “Hardly. I’m Russian through and through, with the blood of the Cossacks in my veins. I’m just very good at pretending.” She gestured down to the street where soldiers were milling around yelling orders at other soldiers. “Here are your travel papers,” she told the Englishman and woman. “I can forge Steinhauser’s signature very well by now. Commandeer a plane and get as far as you can.” “Thanks,” Mumphrey smiled. “And good luck here, Katya.” “Take care of this one,” Contessa Katherine Romanza told Miss Canterbury. “He is a good one. He would make a fine Russian.” Miss Canterbury took Sir Mumphrey’s arm and led him towards the airfield. In our next exciting episode: Chaos in Kathmandu as Mumphrey and Miss Canterbury simply try to hire a pilot and the Aryan Ideal has other ideas. Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2004 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2004 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
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