die Stunde X

by Shaun Stafford

“Jerome, I’m going to be honest with you,” Liam said, “because I think you deserve it. I don’t believe in giving anybody false hopes.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Gestapo have taken your family.”

  “What? How do you know?” Jerome asked, looking at Ben. Ben looked as surprised as he did.

  “You live at 52 Goebbelsstrasse,” Liam explained, “and it was reported to us that last night, the Gestapo moved in and took a family from that house. Two women in their forties, a teenage girl and a young boy.”

  “Two women?”

  “That’s the report we have.”

  “But …” Jerome stopped, his eyes widened. Mary. Mary had been at the house. They’d taken her too. Jerome’s head dropped into his hands once more and he shuddered. “What have I done?”

  “Not you, Jerome, the Germans. The Germans did this,” Liam told him. “Remember that. The Germans have your family, and they will kill them, just as they killed your father.”

  Jerome jumped to his feet. “No!”

  “Jerome, there’s nothing you can do,” Liam said calmly.

  “They can’t kill my family. I … I’ll give myself up.”

  “Jerome, if you give yourself up, you’ll be tortured and executed. And you won’t save your family. They may even be dead already.”

  “But if they’re not–”

  “If they’re not, by giving yourself up, you might sentence them to a couple of years in a concentration camp before they’re gassed.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Jerome snapped, jabbing a finger at Liam. He couldn’t believe what Liam was saying. He didn’t want to believe it. But deep down, he knew it was true. He wanted to run away, kill the next German he came across, but that wouldn’t help. He was stuck. He glared at the three other men in the room.

  But there was only truth on their faces.

  “I’m sorry, Jerome,” Liam said. “But we have all lost family. That is why we are here. This is our family now. We want you to be part of our family too. Will you join us?”

  Jerome sat down, let out a deep sigh, wiped his eyes, his nose, with the sleeve of his jacket, and then nodded his head. “I don’t have any choice.”

  “Ben will take you to see somebody,” Liam said, “and they’ll give you a new identity.”

  Ben stood up, tapped Jerome on the shoulder.

  “Come on,” he said.

  And Jerome followed him.

  34

  Jerome was led through the other doorway in the meeting room, and into a large office beyond. Compared to Liam’s office, this was brightly lit, easily three times as large, and held a number desks and computer terminals. In the corner of the room was a camera, mounted on a tripod, and on the ground in front of the camera was painted a pair of footprints. A woman took him from Ben, who then returned to Liam’s office.

  She was in her thirties, and exuded a look of distaste that Jerome assumed was her usual expression. She wore glasses that were large for her face, her hair hung down in straggles over the shoulders of her jumper, which turn was worn out at the elbows. In her hand was a cigarette that she puffed on every few seconds.

  She pointed to the footprints on the floor, and ordered Jerome to stand on them. She told him to look at the camera as though he were posing for a normal pass photograph. The flash went off, accompanied by the loud click of the shutter release and then whirring of the camera motor as the film was wound onto the next frame. The woman took five more photographs, and then announced that his ordeal was over.

  The meeting, he was told, would go on for another couple of hours. By then, he would have his forged papers. She asked him if he understood that the papers, whilst being excellent copies, could be, and occasionally were, distinguished from the real thing by experienced Gestapo officers. He told her he understood all that. He was about to tell her that even a chance like that was better than no chance at all, and he appreciated it, but he didn’t have time. She jabbed a finger in his direction and sneered at him. “If you’re captured, you keep your mouth shut, right? I don’t want anything to happen to me or my family, understand?”

  Jerome meekly nodded his head and the woman led him back out into the meeting room. Jerome found a seat at the back of the room and sat down, far from anybody else.

  He felt like an outsider.

  He was an outsider.

  Ben sat down beside Scott and looked at Liam, whose face was taking on a distinctly ominous appearance due to the subdued lighting. Liam was sucking on a cigarette, the tip glowing brightly in the dimness. He removed the cigarette from his mouth, tapped off an inch or so of ash, and then turned to face Ben.

  He was smiling.

  He said, “We have a big job coming up, Ben.”

  “You said at the meeting,” Ben reminded him.

  “We want you to do it.”

  “Me?” Ben asked, raising his eyebrows. If they wanted him to do the job, then it could only be one kind of job. “Who is it?”

  “Can’t tell you,” Liam replied. “Not yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “We need further information.”

  “But it’s a big job?”

  “Right,” Liam said. “I’m not going to bullshit you, Ben. It’s a risky job. You could call it … a suicide mission.”

  “Only a fool would volunteer for a suicide mission,” Scott said.

  “Or a patriot,” Liam added.

  Ben sighed deeply. They were testing his commitment.

  “You’re the only man who could possibly do it,” Liam said with a smile. He smoked his cigarette, blew out the residue. “But as Scott so eloquently put it, only a fool would volunteer for this mission. The fact that Combat UK would risk losing one of its best assets should tell you how important this mission is for the future of our country.”

  “I’d like to know more,” Ben said, “before I actually commit myself.”

  “All I can tell you, Ben, is that we may be condemning thousands of innocent civilians to death, and if you can’t live with that on your conscience, then this isn’t the job for you.”

  “But I’m the only one who can do it?”

  “Something like that,” Liam said. He was still smiling. “You’re the best fucking shot in the whole outfit. And this is one thing we can’t fuck up. We’ll only get one opportunity at something like this.”

  “Why can’t you tell me more?”

  “Security reasons,” Scott answered. Liam looked at him, his face expressing annoyance.

  “What he means,” Liam said diplomatically, “is that if you can’t do it, somebody else will have to. And we can’t risk that information falling into enemy hands.”

  “I wouldn’t talk,” Ben said indignantly, but he knew full well what Liam meant. The Gestapo had ways of making a man talk. Whether he wanted to or not was immaterial.

  Liam didn’t answer.

  “When will I learn the identity of the target?”

  “A few days at most,” Liam replied. “If you haven’t already guessed by then.” He finished his cigarette, stubbed it out on top of the pile of dog ends in the ashtray. “But we want you to take a few days off from work, go to Scotland, get in some practice.”

  “Sure.”

  “Will you be able to get the time off? I mean, what with this thing with Jerome …”

  “No problems,” assured Ben. “But I’d like to know the target and the location beforehand.”

  “Naturally,” Liam said, “and, as usual, the location will be in your hands. But we’re still waiting for further information. Once we have that, you’ll be fully briefed.”

  “I’ll be waiting for your call,” Ben said, getting to his feet. “Oh, and Liam, thanks for helping Jerome out.”

  “No problem. He deserves a break.”

  “Yeah, well, thanks,” Ben said, going for the door.

  “Ben, you do understand fully the implications of this mission?”

  “A possible suicide mission, yeah.”

&nb
sp; “Yes,” Liam said, nodding his head sorrowfully. “The thing is, on this suicide mission, you may have to pull the trigger yourself.”

  Ben was stunned, but tried not let it show.

  But Liam’s statement could mean only one thing.

  The target was important. Very important.

  Only two men in the German State of Great Britain were that important. The Reichsstatthalter, Erich Klarsfeld. And the DSvG SS-Oberstgruppenführer, Röhm.

  But Ben had another target in mind. The most important man in the whole of the German Reich.

  The Führer himself.

  35

  The birds often sang in Konzentrationslager Chigwell, for they were free, and didn’t know the meaning of imprisonment. And after their songs as they roosted in the trees that grew within the perimeter fence, they could spread their wings and fly.

  The inmates of the camp were all envious of the birds.

  Konzentrationslager Chigwell, like the other Konzlags in England, could comfortably house 20,000 inmates. Each of its one hundred huts held two hundred bunks. The camp was guarded by 500 men and women, staff of the Gefangnisdienst – the warders.

  Rarely was the camp full. Most the time, there were fewer than 5,000 inmates, each performing menial tasks. Cleaning and repairing uniforms, road repairs, farm labour. Those deemed worthless, those incapable of performing their duties, were cleared out of their bunk and led over to the Krematoriumblock, where they waited in a small, single cell for the mass execution. Once there were ten inmates prepared for the mass execution, they would all be stripped naked and then led into the Gaskammer. Here they would breathe their last breath of fresh air, before their lungs were filled with a poisonous gas that would kill them within twenty seconds.

  The inmates of the Konzlag were constantly on edge, constantly waiting for the warders to come for them, take them to the Krematoriumblock. It was an inevitable fact of life. It happened to almost every inmate at the camp sooner or later.

  Few escaped such a fate, and those that did, those fortunate few who were released from the Konzlag after serving their sentence, lived in constant fear of re-arrest. Next time, they had been told, they would not be so fortunate.

  Abigail Varley stared out of the window above her bunk in one of the hunts and saw the birds flutter from the trees. Sparrows, crows, blackbirds and a few seagulls, and other birds she couldn’t identify. She watched them fly over the perimeter fence, beyond the watchtowers where warders armed with assault rifles and machineguns surveyed the surrounding terrain.

  Abigail turned and looked inside the hut, at the sight that had greeted her for the past two mornings and would continue to greet her indefinitely, for as long as she remained a guest at this camp. Two rows of one hundred bunks, each with a small cabinet and a wardrobe on either side. Abigail had few belongings in the wardrobe. Just the clothes she had been wearing the night when the Gestapo had come for her and her family. The Gestapo had already taken her husband, and they were tracking down her eldest son. It seemed as though the Germans were intent upon wiping the entire Varley family out of existence.

  Abigail saw the faces of the people in the hut. There were no more than fifty of them, herself included. Her daughter, Nicole, and her sister, Mary, also had bunks in the hut, but the guards had taken them both for questioning earlier that morning, and neither had returned. Abigail presumed her youngest son, who was just twelve, had also been taken, but she had no way of knowing. Campbell was in a male hut on the other side of the camp. She knew nothing of his fate, and she really didn’t want to think about it.

  She especially did not want to think about it yesterday, when she saw the smoke rising from the chimney stack in the Krematoriumblock, where those inmates who had outlived their usefulness were gassed, before their bodies were disposed of. Abigail had also heard the rumours of the existence of a guillotine in the Krematoriumblock, but since her arrival at the camp, nobody had mentioned it. The women who shared the hut wore faces that seemed to be in a permanent state of shock and disbelief. In her mind’s eye, Abigail could see her own face rapidly turning into a display of the same emotion.

  Abigail sat down on her bunk and looked at the clock positioned on the wall above the door. It was eight-thirty in the morning. Work for the inmates began at a fairly reasonable nine o’clock. It ended at five, with a one hour lunch break at midday. There were no tea breaks.

  She looked down at herself, at the clothes she now wore. A dull, grey overall that came to just below her knees, and black plimsolls. She even had to wear prison underwear. What horrified Abigail was the fact that her clothes had probably been worn previously by some poor victim of the gas chamber – a woman who was now dead.

  Abigail shuddered whenever she thought of that.

  The door at the end of the hut banged open, and three warders marched in, swinging large batons before them. As with all prisons, firearms were not permitted in the places where inmates were found. But the warders seemed to know how to use their batons to maximum effect, and Abigail didn’t doubt that in a capable hand, a baton could be just as lethal as any firearm, albeit at a closer range.

  Abigail watched the warders as they marched down the wide aisle separating the two rows of bunks. She knew where they were going, as did all the other women in the hut. They were coming for her. They were going to take her away, like they had taken away Nicole and Mary, and probably Campbell too.

  In a way, Abigail was happy. At least she would find out what had happened to her family. But there was still terror in her heart, as the warders gestured for her to stand, and then led her out of the hut.

  Terror, because she had a feeling that the Krematoriumblock would be her next stop. She didn’t want to die, even though her family had probably already been executed. She didn’t want to lose her life. It was a natural reaction. She wanted to be with her family, but she didn’t want to die.

  But she had a feeling that dying was the only way she would be reunited with her family.

  Instead of leading her along the kilometre long path that led to the Krematoriumblock, the warders took her to the administration centre, a row of buildings positioned by the gatehouse, beneath two gun towers.

  Inside, there was no waiting.

  She was just led into an office and ordered to sit down.

  A man behind the desk smiled at her.

  To his right, a large grandfather clock ticked the time noisily.

  Abigail began to shiver.

  The man just continued smiling.

  36

  He wore a smart suit, his tie was colourful, not at all drab, and Abigail could see the expensive jewellery that adorned both his wrists. A Tag Heuer wristwatch, a gold chain bracelet. He was a wealthy man, that she could see, and had all the trappings of a German industrialist.

  But why would a German industrialist be interviewing her?

  The man smiled at her, ran his hand through his thick hair, and stared at her as though he were reading her mind with his steel grey eyes. He was short, wide, the flab of his arms bulging in places along the sleeves of his jacket. But that didn’t detract from his affluent appearance.

  Abigail began to feel slightly at ease.

  Until he spoke.

  “Frau Varley, it is a pleasure to meet you at last,” he said, picking up a pen and tapping it on a notebook in front of him. He had written a page full of texts, but Abigail couldn’t read it. She’d always had problems understanding German. “I am SS-Standartenführer Rauter, Geheime Staatspolizei.”

  All of Abigail’s illusions were shattered at once. This man was a Gestapo officer, and a very important one, judging by his appearance. Her horror was not yet over. She would’ve collapsed if she wasn’t already sitting.

  “Frau Varley, I think you know why you and your family have been brought to Konzentrationslager Chigwell, do you not?”

  “I … I was given a reason, yes,” Abigail replied hoarsely.

  “Mm.” Rauter looked down at the notes he had written
and then nodded his head. “Mm, yes, yes, you were. You see, Frau Varley, the Geheime Staatspolizei is interested in locating your son, Jerome.” He looked Abigail in the eye and smiled. “I have been assigned that task.”

  “I see.”

  “Frau Varley, my junior officer, SS-Obersturmführer Loritz, has informed me that you were not particularly forthcoming in your assistance.” Rauter looked at her accusingly, his eyes blinking rapidly.

  “I … I couldn’t tell him anything,” Abigail explained. “I don’t know where Jerome could be. I told him everything I do know.”

  “Mm,” Rauter said. “Which is?”

  “Jerome left our house for the funeral directors,” Abigail explained, her hands shaking. “That was the last … the last I saw of him.”

  “Mm.”

  “I swear.”

  “I understand,” Rauter said, sympathetically. He looked her up and down and then smiled. “You know, Frau Varley, your passbook photograph does not do you justice. You are a beautiful woman, almost Aryan in your features.”

  “I … thank you,” Abigail responded tentatively.

  “It would be a shame, therefore,” Rauter continued, “if men were deprived of the pleasure of your company.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Frau Varley, I require answers from you. Answers that will assist my men and I in the search for your son. If I do not get satisfactory answers, well, I cannot guarantee your future.”

  “I don’t understand,” Abigail said, fearing that she actually did understand Rauter – only too well.

  “Frau Varley, there are ways of … extracting information from people,” Rauter explained. “However, I have to be honest with you and say I would not wish to use such methods on somebody as … lovely as you.” Abigail didn’t speak. “You see that door to my left?” She looked to where he was gesturing. “That room will be your next destination if you do not answer my questions. Do you know what is beyond that door?”

  “No.”

  “An interrogation chamber, Frau Varley.”