The Survivors

by Kate Furnivall

‘Where did they take her?’

  ‘To a lorry.’

  He stroked her soft curls, soothed her, held her close.

  ‘It’s all right, Alicja. Shush, no need for panic. I’ll find out where the lorry—’

  She snapped back her head to look up at him, her face stricken with horror. ‘It was a Russian lorry. It had a red star.’

  ‘No, you must be mistaken. There is no Russian lorry in Graufeld today.’

  Captain Jeavons intervened for the first time. ‘Yes, there is. I saw it out in the yard behind us earlier.’

  Fear – bleak and gut-curdling – snatched at Davide. He released the child and ran for the door.

  ‘No,’ Alicja seized his sleeve. ‘It is too late. She’s gone. The Russians drove her away.’ Her eyes were dark blue pools of terror.

  The Russians drove her away.

  Davide reacted by pushing Alicja down into his seat.

  ‘Wait here,’ he told her. ‘Don’t move. I’ll be back.’

  Davide knocked on the door of Colonel Whitmore’s office.

  ‘Not now,’ came the response from within.

  Davide knocked again. This time he walked straight in. Colonel Whitmore was seated at his desk drafting a report on the inadequacy of camp food supplies from the Niedersachsen depot in Bremen. He looked up with annoyance at the interruption.

  ‘What is it Bouvier? I’m busy.’

  ‘Sir, it’s urgent.’

  Whitmore put down his fountain pen and folded his arms across his chest. ‘Go on.’

  ‘A serious mistake has been made, sir. A Russian truck has just removed Mrs Klara Janowska from camp. I believe it is in error. I request permission for a vehicle to be despatched to retrieve her from—’

  ‘There is no error, Bouvier.’

  ‘What do you mean, sir?’

  ‘I signed the transfer. To Soviet Intelligence.’

  ‘Of Klara Janowska?’

  ‘That is correct.’

  The Colonel unfolded and refolded his arms. He looked uncomfortable. ‘I’m sorry, Davide,’ he said less formally. ‘Really sorry. I know she was a friend of yours. But it was unavoidable.’

  The silence in the room spread like water. Neither man wanted to cross it.

  ‘Why?’ Davide asked. ‘Why was it unavoidable?’

  ‘They had a warrant for her arrest.’

  ‘On what charge?’

  ‘For murder.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Berlin

  Have you ever felt Death hold your hand? It is the coldest thing on this earth.

  I could feel it touch my fingers as the truck rattled into a cobbled courtyard. I tried to work out where we were. Clearly within a city. We had seen nothing of it from inside the truck, but there had been the noise of traffic and once I heard a church bell. We had spent at least five or six hours on the road, maybe more, so the obvious choice was Berlin. The Soviet Zone. It made sense. There would be no British protocols here. No Colonel Whitmores with their cups of tea. This was the world of the Russian bear and its claws could tear you to shreds.

  The enclosed courtyard lay at the rear of a nondescript building that bore no signs of what its purpose might be, but the bland anonymity of it just made it worse. A rifle butt between the shoulder blades urged us out of the truck. We stood on the cobbles, stiff and silent. A chill wind whipped around the enclosed area and I was thankful for my coat, thin though it was. Hanna wore nothing but her ridiculous white-sheet tunic. The soldiers stared openly at her abundant breasts under the light material. Rage rose in my throat.

  ‘Tell them everything,’ I said in a low voice to Hanna. ‘Tell them whatever they want to hear. Hold nothing back.’

  ‘You too.’

  Hanna’s teeth were chattering so hard she could barely speak. I looked at my own hands. They were trembling. I hid them in my pockets.

  ‘I intend to.’ I gave her some kind of smile. ‘You’ll be out of here within an hour. They have nothing on you. This is a mistake, you’ll see. You’ve got a laundry to tend to back in Graufeld.’

  A single tear spilled from her and ran down her cheek. She nodded.

  ‘Fuck them,’ she said.

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Klara Janowska.’

  ‘Nationality?’

  ‘Half Polish, half English.’

  ‘Age?’

  ‘Thirty-four.’

  ‘Date of birth?’

  ‘First of March 1911.’

  ‘Address?’

  ‘Graufeld Displaced Persons Camp.’

  ‘Husband?’

  ‘Dymek Janowska. A Polish pilot. Killed in the war.’

  ‘Parents?’

  ‘They lived in Warsaw. My mother was English. That’s why I am trying to get to—’

  ‘Just answer the question. Parents?’

  ‘Killed in the war.’

  ‘Children?’

  ‘One.’

  ‘Name?’

  I hesitated. I could not bear to say her name.

  ‘Name?’ Sharper this time.

  Don’t anger him. Don’t anger him.

  ‘Alicja Janowska.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘In Graufeld Camp.’

  ‘Age?’

  ‘Ten.’

  The relentless questions paused for the first time. He spoke German with a thick Russian accent. I didn’t breathe. I didn’t want him to think about Alicja.

  ‘I left Warsaw to find my only remaining relative,’ I told him. Whether he wanted to hear it or not. ‘My grandmother in England.’

  ‘In Warsaw you knew Sturmbannführer Oskar Scholz.’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was no point denying it.

  ‘You were lovers?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Did Scholz have a female lover?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Did he have a male lover?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Tell me something about Sturmbannführer Scholz that I don’t know.

  I snatched with relief at the brief moment for thought. Tried not to lick my bone-dry lips.

  ‘He’s a good dancer.’

  My interrogator sighed. A quiet sound. But loud in the silence of the room. He rubbed a hand over his large bald head and kept his eyes on me. They were the stone-hard eyes of a man who has much to hide. He rose from his seat and walked over to me. For a full minute he stood in front of me without a word, while I locked my gaze on his boots. Highly polished. Well-cared for. They looked loved. Without warning he smacked a hand across my face and the impact snapped my teeth into the soft inside of my cheek.

  He was gone. The door slammed behind him.

  I have never been raped. But that’s what this felt like. Being mauled. Probed. Ripped open. Nothing left for myself. Every part of me had become the possession of this interrogator. Except what was in my mind. That was still mine.

  I was seated on a hard chair now. Handcuffs dangled from the arms of it but they were not attached to me. Not yet. In theory I could stand up. In theory I could say nothing.

  In theory they could beat me to death.

  This time the handcuffs were on.

  This time they intended to get serious. My fear was solid and heavy. It sat in the middle of my chest, burning a hole in me.

  Help me, Davide. How did you survive the slave tunnels?

  I summoned up his tender smile. His intelligent eyes, warm as melted honey. I held them up in front of me to block out the bleak brown walls of the interrogation room. Behind me by the door stood two Soviet Army guards, young and lanky. I could hear them shift from foot to foot, the creak of boots. It marked the passing of time as I sat handcuffed in the hard chair, hour after hour, waiting for my interrogator to return.

  How do I do it? How do I keep away the blackness churning at the edge of my brain?

  I divide my brain into four sections. Into the first I place Davide. Into the s
econd I place Alicja. The third contains the person I was before the war. And the fourth section, lit up like a Christmas tree, is the future. I spend time in each. I lean my tired head on Davide’s, I feel his warm lips against mine. I play with a strand of Alicja’s silken hair and watch the way her flawless skin flushes rosy pink when I compliment her. I embrace the idealistic happy young woman I used to be and then I look across the English Channel towards a future for us all in a thatched cottage. With roses trailing around the door. All right. Maybe not the cottage. Maybe not the roses. But somewhere safe and secure where we can be together.

  Can you blame me?

  Knowing I will not come out of this alive.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Graufeld Camp

  DAVIDE BOUVIER

  Davide was angry. The kind of angry that doesn’t let up but gnaws right through you. He was sitting with his arm around Alicja’s shoulders, holding her safe, calming her tremors.

  They were seated on a bench that gave them a view of the entrance gates. If they watched long enough, could they conjure Klara back? Alicja stared unblinking and wide-eyed into the distance. Davide didn’t know what she was seeing, but whatever it was, it wasn’t good.

  He was angry at Klara’s Russian captors, angry at Whitmore for handing her over without a fight. Angry at the whole bloody war, at the carnage and the vile mindless stupidity of it all. But nothing came close to his anger at himself for letting go of Klara’s hand. For failing her. For not keeping her safe.

  But Klara was not the easiest of women to keep safe.

  ‘How did they know so soon, Davide?’

  ‘Know what, Alicja?’

  ‘Know about the murder.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Her small hand was tucked in his and he felt her fingers tighten their grip.

  ‘How,’ she said it slowly so that he would understand, ‘did the Soviet Russians know about the murder when it only happened today?’

  With a sense of foreboding, Davide turned to look at the young girl’s pale face. He could see so much of Klara in it. ‘What murder are you talking about that happened today?’

  She glanced quickly up at him, then down at his hand around hers. A flush crept up her cheek, all the way to the tip of her ear, and she uttered a faint mew. But she remained stubbornly silent.

  ‘Alicja, I’m trying to help you.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He spoke gently. ‘It’s not your thanks I want. It’s more information.’

  He wanted to sit her on his lap and rock her, the way he had with his own daughter when she needed comfort, but instead he sat quietly beside her.

  ‘What murder?’ he asked. ‘You have to trust me.’

  It took a long time coming. But finally three words slipped out in a whisper. ‘The card player.’

  The card player.

  What card player?

  Then it came to him. ‘You mean the one that fell ill in the poker game?’

  She nodded, but didn’t lift her gaze.

  Davide frowned, bemused. ‘Your mother did that?’

  Another nod.

  ‘Why on earth would she want to try to murder him?’

  Just the word sent a chill through Davide.

  ‘Mama didn’t mean to. Honestly she didn’t.’ At last her frantic blue eyes turned on him. ‘It was an accident. She meant it for . . .’

  She halted. Looked away.

  He understood. For Scholz.

  ‘Oh, Alicja.’ What do you say to a child who has witnessed such a thing? ‘She is strong, your mother. And she loves you. She will fight to protect you, fight to the death. She has been taken for the moment but she will find a way back to you, just as she did before.’

  ‘She was in the Resistance in Warsaw.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘The Resistance killed Germans.’

  He saw what she was looking for. ‘Yes, the Germans were Russia’s enemy as well. So when the Soviets realise that she was fighting on their side, they should let her go.’ But he knew the Soviets shot Resistance fighters as troublemakers.

  ‘I’ll help her, Alicja. I promise you.’

  She leaned against him.

  Stay alive, Klara. Stay alive for your daughter.

  Please. Stay alive for me.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Berlin

  ‘Oberführer Axel Fleischer.’

  The name on my interrogator’s lips seemed to fill the small room. It was too big for it. Too explosive.

  ‘You knew him in Warsaw?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How well?’

  ‘Well enough.’

  His hard hostile eyes did not attempt to hide his contempt. He possessed the swarthy looks seen around the Crimea and the arrogance of a Soviet Intelligence officer who held the power of life and death in this building in the palm of his hand. The dark shadows under his eyes did not fool me into believing he might regret any of his decisions.

  ‘You were Fleischer’s mistress in Warsaw.’ A statement, not a question.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did you meet him?’

  ‘Sturmbannführer Scholz introduced us.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Yes, it is. At first we played chess.’

  ‘That’s not all he liked to play, I hear. Word has it that he liked threesomes.’

  I stared at the floor.

  ‘Was Oskar Scholz involved in these threesomes?’

  ‘No, Comrade Colonel.’

  ‘Why did he introduce you to Oberführer Fleischer? What did he gain from it?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask Oskar Scholz that.’

  He moved so fast, I had no time to brace myself. The slap came again, but not with his hand this time. With the gun from his holster. Sounds erupted that should not be inside my head. I could not protect myself. My wrists were handcuffed.

  ‘You do not tell me what I have to do, Klara Janowska.’

  The pulse in my throat was too strong for me to squeeze words out. I blinked my understanding. Blood trickled down my cheek with the touch of a spider.

  ‘Take her,’ he ordered.

  It went on and on. Till I thought I would drown.

  The two Soviet guards carried me, still handcuffed to my chair, down a long corridor and into a brightly lit room that was tiled in dazzling white. Along the centre of the floor ran a channel that ended in a drain. For blood, I thought. For blood.

  But I was wrong.

  I and my chair were placed in the middle of the room. From behind a screen one of the soldiers uncoiled a widemouthed hose and he handled it with the ease of familiarity.

  I was so stupid.

  Even then I believed it was to wash away the blood they were about to spill. The other soldier turned a tap and a jet of high-velocity water exploded into the room with a roar. It almost blew my head off.

  The water came at me with the force of an iron bar. Hammering. Punching. Thumping. Thundering into my ears. My eyes. My nose. I fought to breathe. To steal a pocket of air within the torrent of water. It slammed into every inch of me.

  Into the chair. Which shot across the tiles and crunched on to its back, taking me with it. Pain and water. Nothing else existed. I thought the torrent would stop then. But it didn’t. It kept coming.

  Don’t think that I didn’t beg.

  Because I did.

  Whatever had once existed inside my head had drowned. I sat slumped in the chair. Chin on my chest. Blood on the handcuffs.

  I could barely open my eyes a crack. It might have been the interrogation room I was in or it might not. I no longer cared. In front of my face I could make out a patch of khakibrown. It took a while for me to work out that it belonged to my interrogator. He was talking. But his words sounded underwater. They came nowhere near my ears.

  Abruptly the patch of Soviet uniform transformed into a pair of eyes. A nose. A mouth in a hard, tight smile.

  ‘Welcome back, Klara.’ He unlocked my handcuffs.r />
  My tongue tried to move inside my mouth. It was slow and heavy.

  ‘Klara, can you hear me?’

  My tongue was getting there.

  ‘Klara, you are a sodden mess. We can go on engaging with the hose all night, if that’s what you want. But I don’t believe it is what you want.’ The eyes seemed to climb inside my head. ‘Now, Klara, let’s talk about the murder.’

  ‘I know nothing about a murder. Except the murder of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto.’

  He released a long impatient sigh. ‘More importantly, let’s talk about diamonds.’

  ‘Go fuck yourself.’

  The smile dropped from his face.

  I honestly think he would have killed me there and then had the door not burst open, sending waves of garbled sound washing in and out of my brain.

  ‘Comrade Colonel,’ a frightened voice said something urgent in Russian.

  I heard it then. A siren.

  It was panic. But an orderly panic. Russian-style. The corridor was heaving. The stink of sweat heavy in the air. Uniformed men in a hurry, desperate to get out of the building. Pushing. Elbowing. Shouldering a pathway. Shouting orders. Young faces wide-eyed with fear.

  I had no room left inside me for fear. Nor panic. I forced my mind to think.

  Was it a fire? I could smell no smoke.

  My guard had clamped his grip on my arm and dragged me out into the crush of bodies all struggling to reach the top of the stairs. My sluggish brain remembered now. The stairs. That’s what was causing the jam. We were on the first floor. But my bruised and battered muscles rebelled against fighting my way through it, with legs limp as rags. I dug in my heels. I became a dead weight on my guard and he quickly abandoned me to make his own escape.

  I groped my way to a wall. I leaned against it. Relief enveloped me and my wretched brain cells started to wake up.

  Hanna.

  Where the hell was Hanna in this stampede?

  The crush was thinning now but those who were left were moving faster. I pushed myself off the wall and was immediately run down by a lithe young soldier.

  ‘Prostite,’ he said and helped me to my feet.

  He had the sort of face and shoulders that looked all wrong in a city. They belonged on a farm behind a plough. He looked at me, took in my sodden hair, my drenched clothes and his wide-open face shut down with distaste. Not for me. But for what he saw. He knew where I had been.