by Alex Gerlis
He was a general from the 2nd Belorussian Front, confident that he was senior enough and with sufficient battle honours to get away with speaking like that to an officer from the NKGB. They were in the Red Army garrison in Rostock, the city looking as if the battle for it had ended that morning as opposed to a month before.
‘His name’s Heinrich Mohr. Apparently he was deputy head of the Gestapo here.’
‘And you’ve brought a British officer to help you?’
‘The British are our Allies, Comrade, and that British officer helped us find a war criminal, but if it’s a problem for you, I can always let Moscow know that you…’
The general stared at him through narrowed eyes, chewing something noisily. ‘No, no, no, Comrade: that’s not necessary. Of course I can help. We’re holding a dozen Gestapo officers in the prison: we’ve already executed two others.’
Gurevich told the general he wanted a junior Gestapo officer brought to him.
‘Are you sure?’
‘I do have some experience of interrogating prisoners, Comrade. A junior officer is far more likely to spill the beans about a senior one – especially if he believes that will save his life.’
The man they brought along was in his early thirties, filthy and unshaven and unsteady on his feet. His right arm was in a sling and he winced every time he moved. Gurevich told him to sit down, then nodded at Prince to ask the questions.
The German told them he wasn’t even an officer in the Gestapo, no more than a senior sergeant. He looked after records and that kind of thing: he wanted to assure them he never dealt with prisoners or anything like that. Prince recognised the pleading look, the desperate protestations of innocence.
‘Do you know Heinrich Mohr?’
‘Of course.’
‘Tell me about him.’
‘He was the deputy head of the Gestapo in Rostock and indeed for much of Mecklenburg. He dealt with political issues and had good contacts in Berlin; in fact I believe he’d worked there earlier in the war.’
‘Do you know where he is now?’
The prisoner shrugged: You’re asking me? ‘I’ve no idea. The office closed down at the end of April, when most of the staff fled west. Those of us who stayed had family in Rostock, like I did – and Mohr.’
‘Really?’
‘I told you, I worked in our records department, which included staff records. Mohr had an apartment in Rostock but that was destroyed during the battle for the city. I do know Mohr moved his family to his wife’s family farm in Mecklenburg – my guess is he’ll be there.’
The prisoner fell silent, gingerly moving his arm and shifting uncomfortably in his seat. Prince studied his papers: there was no question he was indeed as junior as he claimed to be.
‘I can take you there if you want.’
* * *
They left Rostock as first light broke with none of the usual bustle that normally accompanied a city coming alive: no lights turning on in buildings, no curtains being drawn, no queues at bus stops or noise of early-morning deliveries. Instead their convoy slowly picked its way through damaged streets and along barely passable roads.
The prisoner sat in the front of a staff car alongside Gurevich, Prince in the back seat. The general had given them an NKVD platoon of thirty men. The prisoner clutched a map and told them to head south-west out of the city.
By the time they’d been driving for an hour, the Mecklenburg countryside was bathed in sunlight. The prisoner kept glancing at the map, occasionally asking them to stop so he could check the name of a village they were approaching, and then giving directions to take them on for another few miles. There was something about him that made Prince trust him. He was also smart: he realised it was in his interests to reveal details of Mohr’s whereabouts bit by bit. Prince felt his own breathing quickening: he was convinced they were getting closer to Hanne.
An hour and a half out of Rostock they came to a village and the prisoner said they should stop. ‘We need to ask someone now. The farm’s supposed to be somewhere round here. The family’s name is Brandt.’
They found the village priest and dragged the terrified man to the small convoy gathered in front of his church. No, I’m sorry, I don’t know any family of that name in this area… You must have the wrong village… Possibly one closer to Rostock?
Five minutes later, with his family lined up against the wall of the church, he displayed a power of recall that had previously eluded him.
Now I think about it, yes, of course I know the Brandt family, good God-fearing folk. I think you must have made a mistake, though. They’re just poor farmers… not involved in the war at all.
The priest guided them to the farmhouse, which was only just visible from the top of the narrow lane that led to it. Gurevich spoke with the major in charge of the troops accompanying them. Half of the men were to form a perimeter fifty yards from the building and hold its line as he moved in with the others.
A hundred yards from the farmhouse, Gurevich ordered them to stop and leave their vehicles. The platoon approached on foot. At the farmyard gate the troops took cover. The priest was ordered to go to the front door and ask for help: he was to tell them his car had broken down.
‘I don’t have a car.’
‘Just go and tell them. You see the rifles these men are carrying? A dozen of them will be trained on you.’
There was a small ditch by the open gate and Prince dropped into it, watching the priest’s tentative approach to the front door. A long wisp of smoke spiralled from a chimney and he was sure he saw someone walk past a window. Inside an open barn he spotted a black Mercedes-Benz 320.
When the door opened, there was no sign of danger: a couple perhaps in their fifties greeted the priest and appeared to invite him in. He retreated down the steps and pointed to the drive. There was still no sign of concern from inside the house. The man – who Prince guessed was Mohr – strolled into the farmyard behind the priest and followed him to the gates.
They were just feet away when Gurevich leapt up and shouted in Russian. Within moments the two men had been thrown to the ground and the rest of the NKVD platoon raced into the house. Despite Gurevich telling him to wait, Prince ran in too. Two women were on their knees in the hallway, their hands high in the air. Some of the troops had rushed upstairs, from where there came the sound of children screaming and of doors being slammed and furniture pushed over. Downstairs, other troops were moving from room to room and into the basement.
‘They say there’s no sign of her, sir.’
Prince ordered the women to stand up. One was middle-aged, the other much older. ‘Is there another woman here?’ The pair shook their heads.
‘A foreign woman – from a camp? You must have seen her!’
The women began to sob but said nothing as they huddled closer together. Gurevich shouted orders in Russian and marched outside telling Prince to follow him. The man from the farmhouse was on his knees, and they were now joined by the Gestapo sergeant they’d brought from Rostock.
‘Who’s this?’ Gurevich asked him.
The sergeant said nothing as he stepped back and looked away from the man on the ground.
‘Come on, you’d better not be wasting our time.’
‘That’s Heinrich Mohr.’
Mohr shot a furious look at his former colleague and then looked down at the ground. He coughed violently and spat a mixture of blood and phlegm and a couple of teeth onto the ground.
Prince bent down to him. ‘Look, Mohr, we know you were at Ravensbrück the day before the Red Army arrived there, and that you took away a Danish prisoner called Hanne Jakobsen in a black Mercedes-Benz 320, just like the one parked over there. I want to know where she is.’
Mohr said nothing; blood trickled from his mouth. A bruise was forming on his temple and one of his eyes was swollen. Prince leaned closer. ‘Let me tell you this: I’m a British officer. I’ve been sent to find this woman. All the others are Russians and they have a very differen
t approach to prisoners, so I think it would be in your interests and those of your family to tell me where she is.’
Mohr coughed again and his face turned red. Gurevich was shouting in Russian; moments later, three children were dragged out of the house and lined up in front of Mohr: two teenage girls and a younger boy.
Prince whispered into the Russian’s ear. ‘Not the children, Iosif, please.’
‘Don’t you want to find your woman?’ Gurevich turned to Mohr. ‘You: I’ll give you one chance to answer his question. Where’s the Danish woman you collected from the camp?’
Mohr looked up as the Russian trained his revolver on the three children.
‘But I rescued her – I let her go! I was driving back to Rostock from Berlin and stopped off at the camp: she’d helped me with an investigation and I wanted to help her in return. I dropped her off at a crossroads just outside Malchow. I even gave her money to escape.’
‘Ha! Who needs the Red Cross when we have the Gestapo?’ Gurevich took aim with his revolver. ‘I don’t believe you!’
‘No, Father, please… I beg you to tell them where she is!’ It was his son, looking terrified.
‘Shut up, Hans!’
‘She’s in the barn!’ The boy was crying. ‘I’ve seen him go there: there’s a trap door underneath the car. Please spare us!’
Mohr looked up at Prince, a look of terror on his face as his body hunched into a pleading position. ‘Please, you must believe me. I knew this woman was important to the Allies; that’s why I took her from Ravensbrück. I hoped saving her would save me. I thought if I was ever questioned, I’d be spared because I’d rescued her. But I had no idea she was so ill. It’s a miracle I kept her alive so long! I swear to you I was going to get a doctor for her, that’s the honest truth – I swear on my children’s lives. When I checked her last night she was very poorly. I pray she hasn’t died overnight, but if she has, it’s not my fault, I tell you… How was I to know she was so ill?’
* * *
They brought her out and laid her on the floor of the lounge in the farmhouse. Prince was in a state of profound shock. The woman stretched out on the floor didn’t appear to be alive: her chest wasn’t moving and her eyes were glazed. Nor did she look like Hanne, her skin taut and deathly white, her hair filthy and matted.
But he hadn’t counted on the battle-hardened medics of the NKVD platoon, more skilled than many doctors, and now two of them worked on Hanne with an intensity that appeared like an act of religious devotion. At first it seemed a hopeless cause as they urgently gave her chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Her eyes had now closed. One of the medics spoke to Gurevich, who called Prince out of the room.
‘You can see how ill she is, my friend.’ He gripped Prince’s arm as he spoke.
‘I realise.’
‘They say she may have typhus or another disease and her heart is in trouble. They fear she may not have long. You need to prepare yourself.’
Prince felt the hallway swirl around him and he leaned against the wall. Gurevich’s grip tightened.
‘They’re going to try one more procedure. They say really a doctor should do it, but there’s nothing to lose.’
A medical bag was rushed in from their truck and Prince watched from the doorway as they appeared to inject her around the heart. He moved into the room: he wasn’t sure if it was his imagination, but he thought he saw her eyelids flicker and she appeared to be breathing on her own, though the breaths were shallow and with long gaps between them. One of the medics – a boy who looked hardly out of his teens but with the knowing eyes of an old man – gestured for Prince to come closer and gently lifted her hand and put it in his.
‘He says she may be able to hear, my friend. They say to talk to her.’
Prince lay on the floor next to her, still gripping her hand and whispering into her ear. He told her who he was and how much he loved her and how he’d always known he’d find her and she must be strong and hold on. They gave her another injection, this time in her neck, and her lips briefly moved. One of the medics shouted out Voda! Voda! and a flask of water was produced and pressed to her lips. The younger medic gently raised her head and gave more urgent instructions. Someone passed him a bottle of brandy and he spooned a tiny amount into her mouth as if he was feeding a baby. Some colour briefly returned to her face before she turned deathly white again and her breathing became even shallower.
She seemed to be slipping away, and Prince held her hand as if to stop her falling.
‘The medics say to wait. If the injections are to work, then maybe…’
Prince stroked her face and gently kissed her cheeks. One of the medics felt for the pulse in her neck and shook his head, and Prince tried to scream but couldn’t make a sound. But then came the most remarkable few moments of his life, and he wouldn’t have believed it had happened had Gurevich not confirmed it later.
Hanne’s eyes opened. Not in the gradual way they do when someone emerges from a long sleep; rather they shot open and she stared ahead of her as if unfocused. Prince remembered being told that people often did this at the moment of death, and feared this was what was happening, and he screamed, ‘Hanne!’
Her head tilted in his direction and her eyes now appeared less glassy, and he could have sworn she recognised him. She closed her eyes again slowly, but the faintest of smiles had appeared on her lips and he could feel her hand gripping his, weakly at first, but soon quite firmly.
As they carried her stretcher to the ambulance in the farmyard, Prince noticed the troops from the NKVD platoon come to attention, including those about to hang Heinrich Mohr from the beams of the barn.
Chapter 33
Germany and England, June–August 1945
The day the war ended in the middle of August also happened – by coincidence – to be the day Edward Palmer’s new life began.
He had fled London four months before and done his best to stick to his plan: head north and keep moving, never more than two nights in one place, use buses where possible and wait for the war to end.
By early June he was in Manchester, and he felt it would be safe to stay there for a while. It was a busy city still recovering from heavy bombing and no one appeared to have much time for anyone else. He found a bedsit in Salford, and when he realised the landlord was never around, he decided to stay there for a month.
He was outside Oxford Road station in the city centre when he first saw the horrific poster: WANTED FOR MURDER: EDWARD PALMER. He hurried to find a bus back to Salford and spotted another poster outside a police station. He didn’t leave the bedsit for a week, lying on the bed or pacing round the room, feeling like he really had murdered a child and waiting for the door to burst open. By the time he ventured out, he’d begun to grow a beard, and although his first outing was tense, no one gave him so much as a second look. At a busy market he bought a bottle of black hair dye and a second-hand pair of thick-framed spectacles, which were weak enough to make them quite wearable. Within a fortnight he had trouble recognising himself in the mirror.
Before leaving Manchester, he took a gamble he’d always planned: buying a new identity card on the black market because he reckoned any false identity had a limited shelf life. It took him the best part of a week to arrange: finding someone in a pub, money changing hands, arranging to meet someone else in a different pub the following night, more money, the process repeating itself and depleting his wallet further until one Thursday night, when it was raining so hard he feared the dye from his hair would be running down his face, he knocked on the door of a dark basement within sight of Old Trafford.
But the man he’d been told to meet was charming and reminded him of his grandfather. He sat Palmer down with a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits and said to call him Michael, and fussed over him just like his grandfather used to, saying this would be no problem at all, sir, and everyone had a reason for needing new papers, and of course it was none of his business, this was his job after all, and
there was no one out there who didn’t have a little secret or two, and we’re nearly done, sir, and I hope you understand, sir, but there will have to be a surcharge of ten pounds, but I think you’ll find the quality is second to none.
Palmer was conscious of his stammer but insisted that for the extra ten pounds Michael must hand over the negatives and the roll of film. He had to admit his new papers were very good. He immediately felt comfortable as Harold Hamilton: he’d ask people to call him Harry.
He’d had plenty of time to think where to go next: anywhere near his home town of Kidderminster, or Cambridge where he’d lived for so long, was out of the question, as was London, of course. He’d read something in the paper about how farms were desperate for people to help with the harvest, so he headed to south Lincolnshire and found work on a farm just north of Boston, where the fields backed onto the River Witham and the elderly farmer and his wife were grateful to have him and were more than happy to leave him to get on with the job. He had his own room in an outbuilding, and although it was gruelling work, by the middle of August he’d lost more than a stone in weight and developed a tan, making him look even less like the child killer Edward Palmer.
He almost relaxed at the farm: it was as if time was suspended while he was there. He never left the premises and could just be Harry, a quiet man who was happy to work hard in return for cash and his meals and being left alone. But he knew he’d soon have to move on and find somewhere more permanent.
One evening in the second week of August, the farmer’s wife asked him to help out in their garden. She followed him around, giving her opinion on the bombs that had just destroyed two Japanese cities and asking him why they couldn’t have done the same to Berlin, and he said he had no idea and do you want me to cut this shrub back?
No, she replied, I like to keep it as it is: it’s a myrtle. And without thinking, he replied that was nice because he had a friend called Myrtle.