Secret Operative K-13 Read online

  Secret Operative K-13

  Joel Townsley Rogers

  Copyright

  This ebook edition, the editing, arrangement and presentation, and all new material copyright © 2012 by Black Dog Books. All rights reserved. Except for brief passages for critical articles or reviews, no portion of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any mechanical, electronic or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, xerography and recording, or in any information retrieval and storage system without the express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN 978-1-928619-60-4

  Cover art by Paul Stahr.

  Editing: Tom Roberts.

  Black Dog Books, 1115 Pine Meadows Ct., Normal, IL 61761-5432.

  www.blackdogbooks.net / [email protected]

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and scenes portrayed are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  CONTENTS

  Chapters

  1: The Counter Attack

  2: The Man From Missouri

  3: The German Spy

  4: The Jaws of Von Schmee

  5: K-13

  6: The Butcher’s Beard

  7: The Betrayer

  8: Here’s Your Damned Spy, Soldiers

  9: The Pigeon

  10: Big Dick Steps Out

  11: The Executioner

  12: The Seventh Shot

  Chapter I

  The Counter Attack

  At four o’clock of the afternoon, General-Leutnant Paul Friedrich Hermann von Schmee, Freiherr von Eglesdorf, Graf von Schlossheim, commanding officer of the 7th Corps of Von Falkenhayn’s Second Field Army, was enjoying Frühes Abendbrot mit Tee on a terrace of the château of Oldemonde, in Hainaut, southeast of Mons, when a solitary British Sopwith came diving down out of the sky.

  The general was an enormous black-bearded Prussian with gleaming little eyes. His beard was spread out over his breast in long spikes. When he breathed heavily, his abdomen jiggled and bounced on his lap like a sackful of potatoes. The name of Paul Friedrich Hermann von Schmee, with all its baronial and military embellishments, is one that has earned an imperishable luster on the roll of honor of the late German Empire. To English-speaking people, however, as well as to many common people of the present German Republic, he is better remembered by his simple title of “the Butcher.”

  The air that day was sunless and gray. A ceiling of cloud moved at eight thousand feet. Tame spotted deer in the great quiet parks of Oldemonde stirred restlessly about. It was not the dimmed rumble of guns on the front miles to the south that troubled them, for they had long grown indifferent to that meaningless sound. It was rather a premonition of storm that made them uneasy. A thunderburst hung heavily in the July weather. Soldiers attached to von Schmee’s headquarters staff sweated as they went about their work or stood motionless on guard.

  Then, all at once, spotted deer and green-clad men began running wildly. Straight from the cloud the shadow of the flying Sopwith came diving down on Oldemonde

  Its motor was silenced. Its flying wires hummed with a deep cello note. Its propeller, turning over slowly in the rush of the wind, shimmered like a dragon-fly’s wing. Swift as a thunderbolt and clean as a hawk, it hurtled down toward the pleasant shaded stone terrace where the good general sat at tea.

  “Name of a pig! The English!” shrieked the little Dutch lady who was having tea with him.

  The willow settle on which she had been reclining toppled over behind her. She stumbled up, wrapping her arms about her head as if they would protect her somehow from that terrific thunderbolt that was diving down at two hundred miles an hour.

  “The anti-aircraft, Paul!” she screamed. “The filthy pig will shoot us!”

  The general reached out a big hairy hand and patted her little knee. Stolidly, he swished a hunk of pumpernickel around in his teacup.

  “Be galm, Alys,” he said. “It is nuttings.”

  Since the lady knew no German, and he no Dutch, they were obliged to carry on their lovemaking in the language of the hated English. He popped the soggy hunk of pumpernickel into his mouth, wiping his fingers on his beard. He slapped his knees.

  “We haf der hospital cross spread oud, my child,” he said. “Do you dink any Entente blanes would contravene the rules of cifilized warfare by bombing a hospital?”

  He chuckled and nodded shrewdly, rubbing his hands together. Slowly he arose. He stared up with bright little eyes.

  A thousand feet overhead, the diving Sopwith leveled out. It seemed for an instant to hang motionless in the sky. Then its bow swung twice to the right. Its right wing jerked down twice. It began to spiral downward.

  General von Schmee nodded with quick satisfaction.

  “Leutnant von Reuter,” he said to a young officer standing behind him, “summon Colonel von Kleinhals, Chief of Communications. It is an operative of our Intelligence from the enemy lines. He brings information of the utmost consequence. Prepare to receive him when he makes a landing.”

  The young officer lowered the binoculars through which he had been watching. He was an erect, dark-haired first lieutenant of the Prussian Guards. His hand clicked to the salute.

  “Za Befehl, Excellenz!”

  He was off at a run. The Dutch lady followed his swift, lithe figure with a languorous gleam in her light green eyes. Softly, she waved a palm fan against her bosom.

  “What a han’some young man!” she sighed. “It iss too bad he speaks no English.”

  General von Schmee caught her wrist in a heavy hand. He gave it a quick twist. “Fool!” he said. “Keep dose eyes to yourself! Too much looking around you hass caused brettier ladies dan you to be shod for spies against a wall!”

  He turned his ponderous body slowly about, breathing like a whale. With squinted eyes, he followed the object of the lady’s adoration. He nodded slowly. And again he nodded, as if he was planning something very cruel for the handsome young lieutenant of the Prussian Guards.

  Oberleutnant Ritter von Reuter ran hastily toward an open field where the Sopwith was descending.

  “Find Herr Oberst von Kleinhals, Wolf!” he shouted to his shambling orderly sergeant, who had popped up out of nowhere and was trailing hard behind him. “The general’s orders! It is intelligence from the enemy!”

  A straggling crowd of privates and noncommissioned officers were running along with him, yelling like dogs, in a race to be the first to reach the English ship. Von Reuter halted and heeled about sharply. He slapped his thigh with a swagger stick. There was a flash in his stormy blue eyes.

  “Back to your duties!” he shouted. “Secrecy is of the utmost consequence! Let no man go a step farther!”

  The Sopwith had skimmed down to a hayfield beyond a copse of cedars. It stood, with propeller turning slowly, beside a stack of new mown hay.

  As Ritter von Reuter came through the cedar wood and cut across the field, Colonel von Kleinhals, came up from another direction. The colonel was a large, blond, red-bearded man. He flashed a curious sidelong glance at the young officer. He was a suspicious man, ready to jump at his own shadow, as is befitting a high officer of the Nachrichtenamt, the great and secret German Department of Military Intelligence.

  “General’s orders, Herr Oberst!” von Reuter panted. “Intelligence from the enemy—”

  “I know, I know,” von Kleinhals nodded.

  The pilot of the English ship sat crouched in the forward cockpit. The gunner’s cockpit was empty. Only the spy’s helmeted head showed above the cockpit coaming. The collar of a leather coat was turned up above his nose, meeting a pair of leather-rimmed, amber-colored goggles like a m
ask. His eyes peered forth with the color and sharpness of a fox’s. Except for his masked eyes, not a square inch of his face was showing, to betray if he was white or black or yellow, or even human at all.

  He lifted two gloved fingers of his right hand above the cockpit coaming, pointing down. Colonel von Kleinhals nodded sharply. He seemed to know the man.

  “No formalities!” he said. “I am Colonel the Count von Kleinhals, Chief of Communications of the headquarters staff of the 7th Army Corps. This is my aide, First Lieutenant von Reuter of the Prussian Guards. And you are—?”

  “No names, I beg of you!”

  Ritter von Reuter watched the spy curiously. But nothing could be seen. The man might have been a sack of garments, and nothing more. Oh, yes, there was just one little peculiarity that the young Prussian had noted. The little finger of the spy’s right hand, when he lifted it, was bent in a hook, as if it had been broken at some time and could not be straightened again.

  Von Reuter amused himself by screwing a monocle into his eye and letting it pop out again with a sharp twist of his inquisitive eyebrow. He was a cheerful young officer, with a smile on his red cherubic cheeks. He caught the monocle deftly in the air as it fell, and looked around for an audience for his foolery. There was only his shambling orderly sergeant behind him, Wolf, gaunt and watchful as the animal for which he had been named. Sergeant Wolf had come up silently, on rubber heels.

  “Ah, Wolf, you there?” said von Reuter languidly.

  “Zu Befehl, Herr Leutnant!”

  “Donner-wetter, you are like a disease!” complained Von Reuter.

  Colonel von Kleinhals had received a small packet of papers from the spy. He buttoned it carefully into an inside breast pocket and put his hand over it.

  “Of the utmost importance!” the spy breathed.

  The colonel nodded.

  “Versteh’,” he said.

  The spy leaned over. Beneath the muffling coat collar, his whisper was almost inaudible to Von Reuter.

  “In the name of God, be careful!” he said. “I have learned without question that K-13 is operating with you!”

  “So we fear,” muttered von Kleinhals.

  “Auf wiedersehn, Herr Oberst!”

  Nothing more. The time had been only seconds.

  The spy ducked his head. He opened the throttle with a roar. The idling propeller turned over like lightning. The hurricane blast of it lashed back on von Reuter, blew him sideways, almost beat him down as the ship shot off.

  “Donner-wetter! What’s the hurry?” he complained.

  Across the bumpy field the Sopwith raced in long kangaroo bounds and rose up into the air. Above the parks and forests of Oldemonde, above the carp ponds and the farmed lands, high up in circles it went wheeling, climbing as it turned with a fading roar. So, it corkscrewed into the ceiling of cloud a mile and a half high and droned away unseen.

  Colonel the Count von Kleinhals looked about him with a cold, suspicious glance. Afraid of his own shadow; yes, he knew it. A little breeze wavered in his red beard, causing it to toss about like red seaweed stirring in a tide. He kept his left hand clapped over the packet in his breast pocket. His right hand had crept down to his pistol.

  Three paces behind him marched his aide, Oberleutnant von Reuter. And three paces behind von Reuter there shambled, with a silent tread, Sergeant-Ordonnanz Wolf, von Reuter’s orderly. They crossed the hayfield toward the cedar wood that fringed the château of Oldemonde. Down at a far end of the field, three Belgian peasant women could be seen, walking abreast with swinging scythes, mowing the hay to feed the horses of the conquerors. From the cedar wood there came the slow thud of a woodsman’s ax. But as the three Germans approached it, that sound ceased.

  The late afternoon sky grew darker. Hot spatters of rain dropped over the grounds of Oldemonde. Suddenly Ritter von Reuter burst into laughter.

  Colonel von Kleinhals stopped as if a great fifteen-inch shell had exploded behind him.

  “What’s that?” he snapped.

  “Excuse me, sir,” said von Reuter.

  He couldn’t explain that he had laughed because, seeing himself so solemnly stalking the august colonel, and being stalked in turn so silently by Sergeant Wolf, he had been suddenly reminded of an English quatrain he had learned in school, about the little fleas that have littler fleas upon their backs to bite ’em.

  “You laugh too much, Herr Leutnant,” said the colonel grimly.

  “Yes, sir,” said von Reuter, catching his monocle hastily as it popped out of his eye.

  “Proceed with all haste and give the general my compliments,” said the colonel. “The expected information is at hand. Tell him I beg an immediate conference.”

  Saluting briskly, the young lieutenant ran at a quick pace into the cedar wood, where the sound of the unseen woodsman’s chopping had ceased. He drew his pistol out as he plunged into that shadowy and rather gruesome darkness.

  * * * * *

  Three or four minutes later, von Reuter was reporting at the quarters of General von Schmee. As many more minutes had passed, however, before the sentries were given orders to admit him.

  “The Herr General is busy, Herr Leutnant,” explained a big blond Saxon sergeant, with a sly droop of his eye, rapping again discreetly at the door. “The ambassador from the Low Countries is with him.”

  That was the name of the guardsmen for the fair Dutch lady, Vrow Alys.

  Von Reuter found the general leaning over his desk, scattering papers around like a windstorm. His bearded face was knotted up with a look of rage and alarm.

  “Schweinigelei und Verdammnis!” he snarled in three languages. “Ein Tausend blue Deffils! Sacré nom d’un cochon!”

  He swept to the floor a pile of fluttering papers. Unseeingly, he stared at von Reuter. His small round eyes were popping out of his head.

  “Lost!” he raved. “Plans of great secrecy! I could not have misplaced them! God in Heaven! Who has been in here? This is treachery!”

  In a corner, perched on a priceless oak sideboard that von Schmee had brought down from Louvain, sat Vrow Alys, languidly blowing smoke rings to the ceiling. Von Schmee’s glance darted around him. He saw the amiable gaze that the lady was casting on the handsome young lieutenant, if Von Reuter, in his innocence, had missed it.

  His black beard quivered with the clenching of his jaws. Menacingly, he strode up to von Reuter, who stood like a fencepost at salute.

  “Where is Colonel von Kleinhals!”

  “He extends his compliments, Excellency, and—”

  “I need no compliments!” mouthed the general.

  “He was following me immediately, sir. Information of the utmost importance is in his possession. He begs an immediate conference.”

  “Ach!”

  Von Schmee paced up and down with a short stride. His belly sagged and swayed in front of him like the tail of a sausage balloon. He rubbed his big hairy hands together. He began to chuckle with a sound that seemed to come from deep in his entrails.

  “If the news is what I think,” he muttered, more to himself than to the red-cheeked young lieutenant, “by August we shall be in Paris!”

  He was immersed in profound reflections. Coughing gently, Von Reuter quirked a meaningful glance in the direction of Vrow Alys. The general looked up with a scowl.

  “Ach, she is a fool!” he said. “She knows no German. Do not think about her.”

  He waddled up and down, combing his black beard meditatively with his fingers. He had recovered his good humor. He began to cast quick glances at Vrow Alys, who had curled up like a kitten on the sideboard and seemed to be asleep.

  Perhaps the young lieutenant’s gesture had started a train of thought in von Schmee’s mind. Suddenly he strode up to her and gripped her by the shoulder.

  “Oud!” he growled. “Oud der door! Enough of you is a blenty. I haf business dat does not need you.”

  He hauled her down and with one push sent her spinning toward the door. She swore
like a cat. He stood at the door watching her, growling beneath his breath and shaking his head. He spoke a brief word to one of his aides, a brigadier general, in the anteroom.

  Again he paced up and down. A gilt clock ticked on the mantelpiece, ticking the minutes away.

  “Where is Kleinhals?” he snarled abruptly. “I must have those reports at once!”

  “He was on his way, Excellency. I can’t imagine—”

  “It is not for you to imagine,” said von Schmee.

  He gave Ritter von Reuter an ugly look. He muttered to himself. In a minute or two more, he glanced at his watch. Several times he repeated the gesture at short intervals.

  “Late! Late!” he said. “And carrying priceless information! I cannot understand it.”

  Then, suddenly, he seemed to understand it. The brain behind his sharp eyes was very large and sagacious. It had been working actively. The terrible truth struck him now. His puffy face above his beard went as white as his shaven skull. He reeled toward his great, carved oak desk and began pushing frantically at a whole switchboard of electric signals.

  “Find von Kleinhals!” he shrieked to the men who came running in. “K-13 has got us! We are betrayed!”

  From all directions, green-clad soldiers were running over the grounds of Oldemonde. Staff officers of every rank, from waxen-faced under-lieutenants to grizzled major generals of divisions, came pouring in a hornet stream out of the château.

  “Auswarts die Wache!” someone was bellowing. “Turn out the guard!”

  Lieutenant von Reuter heard that wild voice behind him as he ran straight toward the cedar wood where he had last seen Colonel von Kleinhals and Sergeant-Ordonnanz Wolf.

  “Turn out the guard! Turn out the guard! . . .”

  The dark little copse of evergreens was heavy and still. No bird stirred in it, nor did a shadow move. Yet, as von Reuter drew nearer, he saw that other men had found Colonel von Kleinhals already. Two stalwart noncoms of the Guards were staggering out of the cedar wood, bearing the Chief of Communications between them. His arms clung about their shoulders. His feet dragged and bumped on the ground. There was a sick, sick look in his glazed eyes. Suddenly he slipped from their supporting shoulders and lay like a spilled-out sack.