The Killers 03: Night and Fog

By Klaus Netzen

Nacht und Nebel.
Night and Fog! The words carved over the dark entrances of German concentration camps. For everyone who entered there, those words meant an end of all hope.
Few men or women ever tried to escape from these camps, and fewer still succeeded. For most, the only way to freedom lay through the gas chambers and the crematoria. Yet, one man risks all to break into a camp. That man is John Standish, leader of the Killers.
The camp, one hundred and sixty miles south-west of Warsaw, is Auschwitz!
Despite the dangers, Standish coldly put his life at risk in that place of absolute death to try and rescue a man. One man whose secret could shorten the war—or even end it...
This, the third story in the savage Killers’ series, is played out against the background of war-ravaged Europe in 1941. A time when England stood alone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Piccadilly
• Release date: Jun 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215583609

Klaus Netzen

Klaus Netzen was the pseudonym of Laurence James.

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War Fiction!

Nacht und Nebel.

Night and Fog! The words carved over the dark entrances of German concentration camps. For everyone who entered there, those words meant an end of all hope.

Few men or women ever tried to escape from these camps, and fewer still succeeded. For most, the only way to freedom lay through the gas chambers and the crematoria. Yet, one man risks all to break into a camp. That man is John Standish, leader of the Killers.

The camp, one hundred and sixty miles south-west of Warsaw, is Auschwitz!

Despite the dangers, Standish coldly put his life at risk in that place of absolute death to try and rescue a man. One man whose secret could shorten the war—or even end it...

This, the third story in the savage Killers’ series, is played out against the background of war-ravaged Europe in 1941. A time when England stood alone.

THE KILLERS 3: NIGHT AND FOG

By Klaus Netzen

First published by Mayflower Books in 1974

Copyright © Klaus Netzen 1974, 2023

This electronic edition published July 2023

Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by means (electronic, digital, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book / Text © Piccadilly Publishing

Series Editor: Ben Bridges

Cover Illustration: Richard Clifton-Dey

Published by arrangement with the author’s estate.

Visit www.piccadillypublishing.org to read more about our books

This is for Dick (E.M.C.-D.).

Like a lot of writers, I’m very conscious of how much I owe him for his magnificent covers.

Chapter One

THE APARTMENT LAY halfway between the Citadel Bridge and Danzig Station. It was small, only two rooms, set in a block that first rose above the cobbled streets well over a hundred years ago. The only windows looked out over the narrow cul-de-sac, across more tilted roofs towards the old town of Warsaw.

Snow lay heavy on those roofs, with a dark, melted patch here and there where some heat had leaked upwards through the tiles. There weren’t many of those melted patches. Fuel for heating wasn’t easy to come by in that Warsaw winter of 1940. Nor was food.

People stood in queues for food, huddled in thin coats, with the collars turned up against the biting cold. As soon as they were given their meagre bread allowance, they clutched it to their chests, often hiding it beneath their clothes, in case some thief ripped it from them and made off into the maze of streets.

At street corners, strange fruit dangled on makeshift gallows, the frozen hemp ropes creaking as the corpses turned in the wind. Mute reminders that all Poland lay under the rule of the Russo-German Axis.

Trams still rattled through the streets, even through the centre of the ghetto, while the Jews crossed over by a high bridge. Through the fluttering feathers of snow, it was easy to see the Jews among the muffled Poles. The bright yellow Stars of David, sewn on the left arm, were an easy target for hatred.

In the small apartment, the owner turned away from the depressing sight of the cold street, and tugged the red velvet curtain across the window. Although he was Jewish, he wasn’t thin, nor did he wear the badge on his arm. Nor did he share the frightened glances of the folk in the streets far below.

It was getting dark.

The man turned to the green sofa that stood against one wall, under an old oil painting of a bottle and a scattered handful of oysters. Another man lay on the sofa, apparently sleeping.

The first man walked over to the radio and reached his hand out to turn it on. Just as his hand made contact with the chipped Bakelite, he paused. There was another sound. Not the crackling fall of a charred log in the glowing fireplace. Not a cry from the street. Something more sinister. More threatening. Unconsciously, he hissed between his teeth. His hand dropped away from the wireless, and he moved back to the window. The noise was getting louder.

Rasping engines of half-tracks and trucks. Coming closer. In Warsaw that could only mean one thing. A raid by the Germans after some suspected underground member. Or a black marketeer.

He tugged aside the curtain, watching anxiously through a gap. The wind blew a flurry of snow across the courtyard, making it hard to see. Irritably, he wiped the window, as though that might make a difference.

The roaring got closer, exploding to an ear-tingling noise as the first truck turned into the street, skidding on the ice, gouging an arc of sparks as it scraped the side of the house on the corner. It was followed by another, and another.

Three half-tracks completed the raid, packed with the grey coal-scuttle helmets of the Waffen S.S. swamped by their greatcoats. They tumbled out of their lorries, slipping in the snow, stamping their feet to try and get back some of the circulation. An officer in a high-peaked cap joined them, pointing out where he wanted them to go.

At the window, the man still watched. A movement from the sofa made him jump, and he quickly knelt on the thick carpet, looking closely at the sleeping face.

He rubbed a finger down the side of his nose, and his eyes flicked to an ornately-carved oak desk, roll-topped, that dominated the corner of the room. With an easy grace, he went to it, and rolled back the lid.

Inside were bundles of papers and legal-looking documents, with photographs, account books, and a slim-bladed knife, filed to a needle point. He took a box of vestas from his right-hand jacket pocket.

Before he made any further move, he went back one last time to the window. Already he could hear shouts and screams coming from other apartments round the yard. Indeed, from the ground floor of the block where he lived, there was the battering of rifle-butts on doors, and boot-heels clattering on stairs.

From all the doorways people were being driven, herded by the soldiers. For the first time he noticed that there were German police among the men below. As he watched, the finger still rubbing his nose, the box of matches forgotten for a moment, he saw an old woman, Mrs. Pietrzak he thought, hustled into the cobbled yard by a soldier. She seemed to say something to him, and the man saw the rifle-butt lifted. Saw it fall. Once. Twice.

The old woman fell to the snow. A third blow, and a fourth. She stopped moving, and a thread of blood inched warmly over the trampled snow. Another soldier moved quickly back to avoid getting it on his boots, and there was a burst of laughter. A husband and wife, the man didn’t recognize either of them, came from another door. A tall Unterscharfuhrer grabbed the woman, and tore her dress down the front. The man’s eyes opened wider as he saw her milk-white breasts spill out.

Even by the lights of the vehicles, it was not easy to see down there. More snow blew across, and he couldn’t make out what was happening. There was the single, spiteful snap of a pistol being fired, the noise echoing flatly off the walls of the houses. As the snow flurry cleared, he saw that the husband lay spreadeagled in the yard. A pool of blood from his head mingled with that of Mrs. Pietrzak.

He started as he heard feet now thumping on the floor beneath him. By Casimir! They were quicker than he’d thought. There was little time left. Hastily, his muscles seeming to crack with the effort, he forced the protesting window upwards, gasping as wind tore at his face, taking the breath from his mouth.

Concerned only with the growing crowd of moaning, crying people down below, none of the Nazi troops heard the noise of the window opening. One last glance downwards, and the man turned back to the room, and its contents.

First he went to the sofa, then back to the desk, with the matches in his hand. Finally, he went again to the window. At last, he had done everything that needed to be done. And only just in time. Barely a minute passed before he heard thunderous hammering at the outer door of the apartment. Shouting for them to wait, he finally went and let them in.

The official report on the evening’s raid was brief and to the point. All the documents that had been seized were at police headquarters, where they would begin the slow process of checking them all to see what sort of fish they had dredged up in their nets.

The fire they had found in one of the apartments had been quickly extinguished, and little damage had been done. It seemed to have been started deliberately to destroy papers, but that was being looked into.

There had been the three deaths. All Jews. Of course. The stupid old woman who had tried to attack a soldier of the Reich with a hidden weapon—just what that weapon was hadn’t been specified—and while they tried to restrain her she had fallen and cracked her skull open.

The young man had been shot while trying to resist arrest. The third man had committed suicide, launching himself from one of the high windows at the closed end of the courtyard, to plummet to the stones and smash his head into his body. There had been no papers on the body, and the corpse had been so mangled by the fall that it was quite unrecognizable. The officer in charge of the raid was at some pains to point out that it had been a genuine suicide.

They hadn’t bothered to try and find out which apartment he’d come from. One dead Jew more or less wasn’t worth that much trouble.

All suspected persons were being held in custody, pending a decision where they would be sent. Back home, to the gallows, or, in most cases of the Jewish scum, they would go to do some honest work for a change at the forced labour camps.

It had been an average haul. Forty-seven men, thirty-nine women and eighteen brats.

The report was dated December 8th, 1940.

A Sunday.

Chapter Two

FIRST, THE GENTLE, delicate movements as he guided it into the waiting hole. The careful adjustment, to ensure that all the angles were lined up properly. Then, the first, tentative movements, slow and deep. Thrusting, harder and faster. A pause to check that his efforts were having the reaction that they should.

Harder and faster, speeding to the end!

Although the weather was bitterly cold, out in the open among the Welsh hills, John Standish felt perspiration beginning to gather at the small of his back. It wouldn’t be long now. He knew from experience how long it normally took. Sweat trickled down his forehead, stinging into his eyes. He was so close now, the thrusts coming almost on top of one another, that he didn’t stop.

One last feel, and it was nearly over. His shoulders rose and fell with the effort. Five more and he was done. Three! Two! One!!

Over!!!

Standish gasped and sat back on his heels in the frosted bracken. What a bloody bore it was. That was the one big drawback with cycling. Punctures. He’d wasted half an hour mending it and then blowing up the tyre again. Still, it was done, and he could carry on.

It was close to four o’clock. Nearly dark. High over his head, a lone black-headed gull swooped and hung in the air, crying to itself. The call echoed back off the broken slopes of the Rival Mountains. Twin Caernarvonshire peaks. For a moment, Standish looked up at them, silhouetted against the red glow of the dying sun. Time to be moving.

He swung his leg over the crossbar of the borrowed bicycle and headed back down the dusty road towards his hotel. Behind him he heard one of the quarry lorries rattling towards him, and he speeded up. The road wound across the side of the mountain, hanging on by its fingertips. A driver wouldn’t expect to come across a cyclist that late on a Monday in mid-December. Standish had a vivid imagination, and he could easily visualize being casually flicked off the twisting path, to end up a blotch of blood and broken bones hundreds of feet below in the misty valley.

‘Vortigern’s Valley’, it was called. After the chieftain who fought a guerrilla action against the Romans. A towering place of steep cliffs and sullen waterfalls. At the bottom of the valley, near the sea, stood a tiny quarrying village—Porth-y-nant. Standish’s Welsh wasn’t one of the best of his