by Wilbur Smith
•••
In mid-April, troops of the U.S. Seventh Army entered Nuremberg, not far from the estate on which Francesca von Meerbach had grown up. As the invaders added another German city to their list, she and Cora, her lady’s maid, were driven from the Schloss Meerbach to the family’s factory complex. Behind the Mercedes limousine followed a small van.
The motor works that had earned the family its vast fortune had been the target of a dozen or more raids by American bombers. Yet there were still a few signs of life in one corner of the several square kilometers that the works occupied. At the private airfield where so many aero-engines had been put through their paces by test pilots working for the von Meerbachs, a large hanger was still fully staffed and properly maintained. Beside it were bunkers surrounding tanks that contained many thousands of liters of aviation fuel.
This liquid was perhaps the single most valuable commodity in the remaining territory of the Third Reich, since it was in huge demand and almost impossible to come by. But Konrad Meerbach had the full authority of the SS behind him and could afford to pay any price for what he wanted.
Francesca’s car drove into the hanger. As she got out, she saw two aircraft. The first looked like an oversized fighter plane, with a streamlined fuselage and a single propeller at its nose.
“I’ve found just what we need,” Konrad had told her at Christmas, when they’d first discussed their escape plans. “It’s a Heinkel He 70 ‘Lightning.’ It was designed to be a small, express airliner and to carry airmail, so it’s damn fast. The Luftwaffe’s been using Lightnings for courier work, but a squadron captain had one he didn’t need and I possessed a bag full of gold teeth, so now it’s mine.”
“Gold teeth?” Francesca asked.
“Yes, their owners had no further use for them.”
“I’m glad to hear those people can be good for something.”
Her husband had laughed. “By God you’re a cold-hearted bitch.”
“That’s what you like about me.”
Konrad gave a contented smile of agreement, then said, “Anyway, the Lightning can carry four passengers and their baggage. There’ll be room for you and that woman of yours, as well as our valuables.”
The Heinkel had been painted khaki and emblazoned with broad white bands around its wings and body, on which large red crosses were painted. Any potential aggressors seeing it would assume it was carrying sick or injured passengers and, with any luck, leave it alone. Only the closest examination would reveal the faint shadow of the black Luftwaffe crosses beneath the red and white.
The other aircraft looked like nothing Francesca had ever seen in her life. It was not particularly large, but it carried an extraordinary air of menace. This was due in part to its black paintwork, on which there were no markings: no serial number, no Luftwaffe cross, nothing to indicate its identity or allegiance.
The fuselage was a smooth, sleek tube with a slightly bulbous, glazed nose that, to Francesca’s eyes, gave it an unmistakably phallic appearance. From the wings hung four pods, clustered in pairs on either side of the fuselage, both open at either end. She had a sense that these were the engines, but how they worked she had no idea. What was obvious, however, was that this looked like a craft from an entirely new age of history. Not only would it take one further and faster than any ordinary aircraft could ever hope to do, it looked as if it could fly all the way to the stars.
Francesca shook her head at her fanciful thoughts. She had more practical matters on her mind.
“Be careful with those cases,” she snapped as a pair of mechanics in white boiler suits set about moving her luggage from the van to the Heinkel. There were two large, metal steamer trunks and an assortment of smaller cases.
“Oof!” one of the mechanics grunted as they struggled to heft the trunk onto a trolley beside the car. “What have you got in here, ma’am? Lead pipes?”
Gold sovereigns, actually, Francesca thought, lying beneath my dresses and fur coats.
The other trunk contained more clothes and shoes, and three leather tubes in which were rolled the canvases bearing masterpieces by Raphael, Vermeer and a Renoir that Konrad reviled as “sentimentalist, Impressionist, chocolate-box trash,” but Francesca unashamedly adored. The best of the family jewels filled two large hatboxes. And as well as her handbag, Francesca carried a briefcase filled with the two million U.S. dollars in bearer bonds that Konrad had acquired on his trip to Portugal, three years earlier.
The total value of all the assets contained in Francesca’s luggage was enough to ensure that she and Konrad could live a life of luxury and ease for the rest of their days. When she arrived in Switzerland, however, this treasure would take its place in the bank vault that contained the far greater wealth secretly squirreled away by Konrad, before and during the war. He had been looting his family’s firm since his first day at its helm. Since 1939 he had been party to the plundering, looting and thieving that had accompanied every Nazi invasion and that was such a huge part of the Final Solution. Even now, it was not enough: not for Konrad.
Francesca was distracted from this train of thought by the von Meerbachs’ personal pilot, Berndt Sperling, who coughed politely to signal his presence, and said, “Excuse me, my lady, but the plane is now ready for take-off.”
Francesca smiled graciously. “Thank you, Berndt. How long will the flight be, do you think?”
“I’m expecting a nice smooth flight, so I should have you across the Bodensee and into Switzerland within ten minutes of take-off, and landing in Zurich less than half an hour after that.”
“Will you be returning to Germany immediately?”
“Yes, your ladyship. I promised the Count I’d be available in case he needs me.”
“Very good then, Berndt, let’s be on our way.”
•••
Sachsenhausen, like the Reich, was falling apart. The dead lay where they dropped, for the guards had lost interest in clearing them up and the prisoners were too weak to do the job themselves. The closest anyone came to disposal was to make piles of the dead, heaped on top of one another like skeleton puppets whose strings had been cut. They lay around the parade ground, as casually strewn as discarded socks on a bedroom floor. In overcrowded huts, where prisoners were crammed three or four to a bunk, the living lay trapped and unable to move between the dead and dying. Even those who were nominally alive were no more than rotting, breathing corpses.
Disease had spread out of control, as it had in every other concentration camp. The latrines were overflowing with the diarrhea that spurted from dysentery sufferers whose shattered digestive systems could not extract a meager amount of energy from the ever more pitiful rations before they voided themselves again. The lice that infested every man and woman in the camp spread the typhus, which began with symptoms of fever, headaches and chills, before appearing as a rash that spread from sufferers’ bellies and chests, until it covered every inch of their body, and only their faces, the palms of their hands and the soles of their feet remained unaffected. By then they were delirious, babbling incoherently before they fell into their final coma.
Day after day, Russian, British and American planes flew overhead, bombers and fighters alike, apparently untroubled by any resistance from the Luftwaffe. Word had spread around the camp that the Russians were about to make their final march on Berlin. The guards were behaving more brutally than usual, shooting prisoners on the slightest pretext, on a whim, as if they knew their time was up too. Meanwhile the usual routines were collapsing: the Germans no longer bothered with the daily roll call. The workshops and the brick kilns ceased operations. And then came rumors that the SS were going to march everyone out of the camp, to remove the living evidence of what they had done, though those few prisoners who were able to reason wondered what good that would do them when the dead gave such damning testimony.
Gerhard didn’t know how, but his heart was still beating after crawling a circuit of the parade ground. Gerhard had one thought on hi
s mind: food. The daily rations were brought from the kitchens to the huts by teams of prisoners, tethered like oxen to a cart on which sat the steel canister of gruel and the baskets of bread that were supposed to feed the inmates.
There had been a time when the food was distributed properly. It would be brought into the huts and people would line up to receive their paltry ration. Care was taken to ensure that everyone received their fair share, no matter how small. If any dregs of soup or crumbs of bread were left, they were the perks of the men who brought the food. Now there was hardly anyone left to bring the food, or serve it. The half-empty canisters were left outside the huts, with the bread on the ground beside then.
Men died in their beds and were left to decompose where they lay, for there was no one to move or bury them. Those with typhus became too weak to get out of bed, push aside the corpses beside them and make their way outside. They were unable to eat and became more deprived and more certain to die. In this hellhole, survival depended on the ability to make one’s way to the canister and seize whatever sustenance was available, even if that meant fighting off other starving men intent on doing the same thing.
And through it all, the cold refused to release its grip and let spring bring some warmth to the bones of men and women whose fingers and toes were blackened by frostbite and whose bodies had not stopped shivering in the endless, bleak, dark months of this winter without end.
And then one day there was a roll call, summoned as the breakfast rations were being dumped in front of the huts. When it was over, a number was read out and the guard said, “Gather up your belongings and report back to the parade ground immediately.”
The number in question was 57803.
Gerhard had reached the point where he responded to his number automatically and the sound of his name would have confused him. His only possession—his photograph—was safe inside his jacket. He had no belongings to gather. He was about to say as much to the guard when he overheard one man say to another, “I wonder where they’re taking him.”
“Nowhere good,” the other replied.
The cart on which breakfast had been dragged toward the hut was standing outside. The coffee canister was empty. The pieces of bread had been taken from the baskets. But experience had taught Gerhard that it was always worth scavenging. He looked under the cart and saw a piece of bread, and beyond it another. As a nervous pickpocket, he shoved the bread into his jacket pockets: one hard, stale crust on either side.
Having reported back as instructed, he was led away, out of the main camp to another area where a group of people were being lined up beside some trucks. They were prisoners but were dressed in suits and military uniforms, and they seemed healthier and better fed than him. He could see them look at him as he approached, wondering why someone so filthy, no doubt crawling with lice and riddled with disease, was doing with them. One of the men backed away when Gerhard was placed next to him in the line.
He did not want to do anything to attract anyone’s attention. He wasn’t going to waste energy on anything that was not essential. His dignity was irrelevant. The only thing that mattered was survival.
They were driven to a railway yard and loaded aboard two covered goods wagons. The train set off, passing what looked like the west of Berlin and then onward. Still the winter would not break and the only warmth in the wagons came from bodies pressed together. Gerhard, however, was excluded from the huddle. He was unclean and a risk to health. He was left to huddle in a corner, alone.
Progress was slow, for the journey was frequently interrupted without warning and in random locations. The train would stand motionless for hours and, if they were lucky, the prisoners would be allowed out to relieve themselves, a blessing when the only toilet in each wagon consisted of a foul-smelling, overflowing bucket.
When the engine started moving again, the train would retrace its steps before taking another line: one whose tracks and bridges had not been destroyed by Allied bombers or local partisans. The endless delays meant that a journey that should have been completed in hours stretched into several days. Rations ran out and Gerhard was pitifully grateful for his hoarded bread crusts and the isolation that allowed him to nibble them in secret, without the others knowing what he was up to.
On the fourth night, they stopped outside a village. The local people must have heard voices coming from inside the wagons, for after a few hours they emerged from the woods on either side of the track, bearing bread and vegetable soup and even cheese for the prisoners. They spoke the Czech language. The SS guards, who were almost as cold and hungry as their surviving charges, tried to stop the villagers, even threatening to shoot them. But one of the locals, speaking German, offered a simple deal: if the SS allowed the prisoners to be fed, they could share in the meal as well.
The villagers were poor and had little enough to live on themselves. They could only provide each hungry mouth with small amounts of food. But it was just as well, for any larger meal might have killed the man or woman who consumed it: their digestive systems could not have coped.
The food they had received kept almost all the surviving prisoners alive as the train continued on its journey until it stopped at a station. The signs on the platform said Flossenbürg.
“End of the line: everybody out!” an SS guard announced, and they clambered from the wagons before being herded into trucks for another two days of driving, stopping, waiting and moving again.
“We’re heading south,” someone said. “I can tell from the sun.”
“Perhaps they’re giving us a holiday in the Alps,” another croaked.
Gerhard was feeling sick with headaches that seemed to be splitting his skull down the middle. He lay in the back of the truck in a fetal curl, a shaven-headed subhuman identifiable only by his number, completely numb, indifferent to his surroundings, indifferent to life itself.
The truck turned into a side-road that passed through an opening in a barbed-wire fence. It stopped. Gerhard heard shouts, barking dogs, the rattle of chains being unlocked and the slam of wood against metal as the backs of the trucks were dropped open.
Somewhere a voice shouted, “Where in hell’s name have you come from?”
“Sachsenhausen,” another man replied.
“Sachsenhausen? Shit, we were expecting you days ago.” Gerhard heard a mirthless laugh, and then, “Welcome to Dachau.”
Day by day, week by week, the grief of Danny’s passing eased. Saffron had once trained herself to endure progressively longer cross-country runs at Arisaig, or learned how to survive on little sleep. Now she trained her emotions. She made herself go an hour without thinking of Danny Doherty, then two, then a morning. She disciplined herself not to cry in public when a poignant memory struck her out of the blue, and, by degrees, not to cry at all.
She had done it before after all. She had thought that Gerhard was dead, then for an instant recovered him. But as the years had gone by and the chances that they would both survive the war, let alone meet again, grew slimmer, she had told herself not to think of a future with him. It was almost easier that Danny was gone. There was no possibility of suffering from the occasional tremors of hope that even now sometimes took her unawares when she found herself dreaming that she might yet see Gerhard.
It was a foolish delusion. Danny was gone. Gerhard was gone. Soon the war that had done for them both would be over.
And then I will start again.
For now there was work to be done. The Allies had crossed the Rhine in late March, as Amies had said they would. The Germans had fought hard at first, but their line seemed close to collapse as the pace of the Allied advance increased. Meanwhile the Russians were drawing a noose around Berlin. Soon Hitler would be isolated. It was said that he lived underground, hardly ever emerging from his bunker.
On April 15, 1945, advance units of the British 11th Armoured Division, advancing into Lower Saxony, reached Bergen-Belsen, the first concentration camp liberated by the Allies invading Germany from the we
st.
They encountered a scene of unimaginable horror. No matter how evil they may have thought Hitler and his Nazi followers were, the inhumanity of the camps was beyond the powers of any normal mind to conceive.
Two days later, the BBC broadcast the first radio report from the camp. Saffron recalled SS officer Schröder’s speech at The Hague, the banality of his words, the Nazi’s absurd fantasies: “we have not been afraid to liquidate large numbers of hostages,” “Hebrew scum,” “the Jew resettlement will be short-lived.” Now here was the reality. Saffron, along with the rest of a sickened nation, heard about a hellish world of dead bodies left to rot on the bare earth, while the surviving but half-dead inmates wandered aimlessly between them and mothers driven mad by suffering and grief begged for milk to give the dead babies they were carrying in their arms.
The men and women of Baker Street had been through the war, endured the Blitz and the V-1 rocket attacks, seen good men and women sent off to Europe to die, and, like Saffron, suffered personal losses of their own. Saffron had briefed them on her fears of Nazi genocide on her return from Belgium, but this was a crime too dark to be fathomed by any imagination. This was a door being opened onto a bottomless abyss.
A new urgency seized Saffron and the other members of the team who were working on prisoner recoveries. One morning she was summoned to meet Gubbins in the briefing room.
The years of unrelenting overwork and nervous stress had aged the man who’d been the heartbeat of Baker Street. But his eyes retained their crystalline clarity and his energy somehow seemed undiminished.
“How do you fancy going back into the field, Courtney?” he asked her. “Nothing undercover. I want you to go into Germany, track down a group of our people.”
“I would like that very much, sir.”