The Dominafuhrer - MISS SPITEFUL'S GOLD

Episode 49 - Showdown With Seraph

September 1952

The Taxi rank was empty when we disembarked from the train at Bahnhof Zoologischer Garten and Miss Spiteful led us off on the short walk down the Kurfurstendam to our hotel. Despite it being two in the morning, bars, cafes and restaurants were still buzzing and our little procession invoked plenty of stares and comments and a few ribald remarks.

Miss Spiteful stopped and gathered us around her, well short of the hotel entrance.

“Listen everybody, the hotel might be watched and I promised the hotel manager that we wouldn’t cause any more upsets. So, while we go round the back entrance and use the goods lift, Natalya can go in through the front, pick up our keys and meet us outside my room. I’ve laid in a couple of bottles and you can have a drink on me before we go to bed. I think that we’ve all earned it again.”      

A few minutes later, having sneaked in through the staff entrance, past deserted kitchens and laundry rooms, we arrived at our floor by the service lift, just as Natalya emerged from the passenger lift at the far end of the corridor.

We sorted out the keys that she had in her hands and Miss Spiteful used hers to open her bedroom door.

Miss Spiteful snapped the light on as we all trooped in, with me bringing up the rear.

“Ingrid McNair?” Natalya was holding up a note but I didn’t get the chance to read it after I took it from her hand.

“Everyone stand absolutely still! Nobody will move or speak without my permission.”

Seraph was standing in the doorway of the bathroom, wearing a long black coat, and pointing a gun, with a long silencer attached, at us. She motioned with the barrel.

“Everyone move to the window bay, in single file and then spread out. You!” she pointed the gun at me. “Close the door first and then get over there.”

I gave the bedroom door a push but did not wait for the click of the lock engaging. I joined the end of the line that my friends formed across the window with the bed between us and Seraph and the door. I could see now that Miss Spiteful’s room had been searched; the bed had been stripped, carpets torn up, drawers and cupboards emptied, ripped clothes piled up on the floor and the linings of Miss Spiteful’s suitcases had been slashed.

“You!” Seraph pointed at Natalya. “Collect all the handbags and that canvas bag and empty them, one by one, onto the bed. Do it slowly, with no tricks and no speaking.”

Natalya, wide eyed and shaking with fear, did as she was ordered and made separate piles of all the contents of our bags on top of the bare mattress. Under instruction from Seraph, she turned the items over one by one.

“There, that key and that receipt.” Seraph indicated Miss Spiteful’s possessions. “Throw them over to this side of the bed and then step back.” Natalya tossed the safe deposit key and receipt towards Seraph who scooped them up, looked at them and then dropped them into her pocket.                                        

“There!” she smiled triumphantly. “I knew that the real gold was still in Berlin. You’ve nothing else that would require being locked up in a safe deposit. As you are all here, I take it that Helmut and his clowns failed to kill you in Wedding. Still, it got them out of the way while I bribed one of the staff for their pass key and searched all of your rooms. I knew that you would come back here, a bitch always returns to its basket.”

Miss Spiteful started to say something but closed her mouth when Seraph swept the gun barrel in her direction.

“This time I have really defeated you, Spiteful. All I have to do is go straight to the safe depository and help myself to the gold. Those places are much more obliging than banks. They stay open for twenty four hours, at the weekends too and, if I smile sweetly, they will probably carry the gold out to my car for me. No interfering Communists or bungling Nazis to mess things up or to share with either. And yet?” she put her head on one side. “That’s not enough revenge for me. I could kill you all now but that wouldn’t give me enough satisfaction. I want you to still be suffering while I am spending all that money.”

Once again, Miss Spiteful shifted as if to speak and Seraph shouted at her.

“Stille! I told you not to speak. You! Come here!”

Seraph pointed at me and, when I stepped round the end of the bed, pulled me alongside her and put the tip of the silencer against my temple.

“No Spiteful,” Seraph continued, her voice rising with pent up hate. “I want you to grieve. You might have outwitted Hoeller into letting you go in exchange for gold plated lead and fake money, but I have won in the end. Now, I will take my revenge as well as the gold. I am going to kill your precious transgender slave!”

“No!” Miss Spiteful shouted and moved forward. Solitaire screamed, Kelly went very pale and Sugar crouched, as if coiling herself up to spring on Seraph.

“One more step and I will shoot the nigger first and still kill your freak,” Seraph said coolly. Miss Spiteful stood still and Sugar slowly straightened herself up.      

Miss Spiteful’s face had drained of blood; her lips were a thin red line and her narrowed eyes burned with hate.

“Hurt her and I will hunt you down and kill you,” Miss Spiteful’s voice was low and fierce.

“Your threats are worthless, Spiteful,” Seraph laughed and turned me round so that the gun barrel was pointing at the centre of my forehead. “Say goodbye to the thing that you love.”

“Please don’t kill me,” I wailed as I saw her finger tighten on the trigger. I closed my eyes, and waited for the bullet that would end my life.

There was an explosion that deafened me and something warm and wet splattered my face. I felt heat, smelt gun-smoke and, somewhere far in the distance, I heard screaming.

I was still alive!

I tried to open my eyes and had great difficulty because, whatever was warm and wet, was also very sticky.

Seraph was still there, her mouth wide open, her face screwed up with pain as she clutched at the hand that had held her gun. Blood was pumping out of a ragged hole in her wrist. The gun itself was in a pool of blood on the carpet and I instinctively kicked it away, before looking around.

David, in his army uniform, stood just inside the open door. He was holding his service revolver, from which smoke was still curling from the barrel, and pointing it at Seraph. His lips were moving as he looked questioningly at me, but I could not hear a word that he said.

Then the screaming got louder accompanied by a loud ringing in my ears, as my hearing slowly returned. I shook my head and almost fainted with relief. David, using one hand to keep pointing his gun at Seraph, stepped forward and took my arm.

“Ingrid, are you alright?” his voice so close to me boomed in my eardrums. I nodded and looked around. I realised that it was not Seraph, who had collapsed moaning on the floor, who was screaming, but Solitaire, whom Stiletto was trying to calm. Sapphire had collapsed in a chair and Natalya was fanning her with her rolled up pink boa. Kelly, hugged by Miss Spiteful, was crying silently and it was left to Sugar to come forward, a wide grin on her face.

“Hello David. The Thin Red Line has come to the rescue again.”

“What’s going on here, Sugar? Why does this woman want to kill Ingrid?” David demanded, watching carefully while Sugar picked up one of Miss Spiteful’s stockings to tie a tourniquet above Seraph’s shattered wrist.

Sugar raised a fine eyebrow at me. David was my husband; she was leaving it to me to tell him any lies.

“But what are you doing here, David?” I countered with a question of my own. “Why didn’t you tell me that you were coming to Berlin?”

“I did!” he growled. “I kept telling that idiot who answers the telephone here, but he can’t understand German, let alone English. I said that I was arriving today and came by earlier this evening to leave a note for you.”

I opened my hand. The note that Natalya had given me was crushed into a tight ball.         

“I dined in the Officers Mess at the Royal Scots Fusiliers and was having a drink afterwards when the Battalion was turned out for an alert. The French were in a flap because of a riot and a gunfight in their sector. Turned out to be some gunmen had shot up a dancehall and then six of them were killed by the Frogs. Two more were found with broken necks and there’s an American Serviceman in hospital with a bullet wound and a lacerated back. After the stand down, I came here and was about to knock on your door when I saw this one was partly open and heard your voice. I looked in and found some woman about to blow your head off.”

“David!” thankfully Miss Spiteful intervened. “I’m Kathi O’Hara; we spoke on the telephone last week. As you know, Ingrid was in prison with some of us and this,” she indicated Seraph “was one of the SS guards. We were out enjoying ourselves tonight when Ingrid recognised her and some of the men with her. Obviously, they needed to silence us and, having failed at the dance hall, she followed us back here and was about to kill us one by one when you arrived.”

David was not a stupid man but he had never met Miss Spiteful before so did not know how innocent she could look when telling the most outrageous lies. He was still very dubious though and gave me a questioning look. I smiled and nodded agreement to him but Miss Spiteful had not finished her tale.

“Now, we are leaving for Zurich on Monday to stay with our friend here,” she pointed at Sapphire. “It’s just for a few days but the last thing that we want is to get involved in a long and messy court case. I think that it would be best if Sugar took her down the back way and put her in a taxi to the nearest hospital. Don’t you think so too?”

“But what about the gunshot? Someone in the hotel will have heard it and called the Police. I’ll have to face a Court of Inquiry for firing my revolver and then there’s all this mess.” David indicated the ruined carpet and Miss Spiteful’s scattered belongings.

“Oh, there have been all sorts of strange goings on in this hotel.” She dismissed his objections with a wave of her hand. “I was complaining to the Manager about it this very morning. Now, all we have to say is that when we came back to our rooms, we found a thief in here. He pointed his gun at us but you drew your gun to save our lives and winged him. He got away but dropped his gun. There’s the evidence.” She pointed at Seraph’s weapon on the floor.

“Besides,” she added, lowering her voice. “That way, there will be no awkward questions into Ingrid’s past.”

David knew now that he was being bull-shitted by an expert but his concern for me overrode everything else.

“Och, very well,” he sighed and holstered his revolver.

Sugar dragged Seraph to her feet and handed Miss Spiteful the safe deposit key and receipt from the coat pocket. Sugar found a raincoat to cover her corset and suspenders and then, seizing Seraph by her unwounded arm, marched her out of the room, still moaning and dripping blood.

David put an arm around me and used his handkerchief to dab Seraph’s blood off my face.

“What the hell has happened to you?” he demanded, as any theatrical makeup that had not already been removed when I had mopped my face with my knickers, was wiped off with the blood to reveal the bruises underneath.

“I fell on my face,” I told him truthfully, hoping that I could be more inventive when David discovered my other injuries. “But what are you doing in Berlin?”

Kelly appeared with a tray of brimming glasses, making sure that David got one with scotch, which he downed in one go after the initial sip. Another was almost immediately placed in his hand and David gave Kelly a look that I thoroughly disapproved of.

From the street outside, we heard the familiar refrain of approaching sirens and everyone, except Miss Spiteful and Kelly, began slipping off to their own rooms to find something less exotic to be wearing when the Police arrived.

David watched them leave, his black eyebrows rising in an arch at their outfits and the cheeky looks that Stiletto and Solitaire gave him.

“Well, if you had got all of my messages,” he savoured his next sip of whiskey before continuing. “You would know that the Battalion has been put on the roster for garrison duty here. The Commanding Officer wanted someone to come over straight away and get the gen on the current security situation, barracks, family quarters and all that. When I told him that you were already here, he said that I could have the job. I flew in this morning but I’ve been trying to let you know for days.”

Miss Spiteful chuckled as Kelly zipped her into a plum coloured dress over her leather outfit. She had realised the implications of what David was saying before I had.

“You mean?” I gasped.

“Aye,” he tipped the contents of his glass down his throat, smacked his lips and looked round to see where Kelly had put the tray down. “Within the next year or so, we are going to be living here in Berlin.”

End

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