by Robert Ryan
‘Forty-eight. Maybe fifty-two.’
‘Let’s call it fifty. Fifty sailors dead in the English Channel. Fifty good Germans. Because of you.’
Erich looked down at his shoes. It was true.
‘I know all about what happened in the recreation hut,’ said Schuller. ‘On the pretext of getting your gloves.’
Erich stayed silent. This could be bluff.
‘You were overheard.’
‘Saying what?’ asked Erich through his clamped teeth.
‘Telling Dietrich about the rendezvous. Saying it was crazy. That I had to be stopped. We know you must have left some kind of sign or signal behind for the British. You are a disgrace.’
Erich stole a look at Dietrich. He had gone white. He realised how much trouble they were in. Erich watched Hetz and Bauert move away from Schuller and position themselves on either side of the two accused men.
Schuller stood and pointed a finger. ‘You stayed behind with the Englishman Ross in the hut! You were seen, Dietrich. You must have helped them with whatever the message was.’
It was a distraction and as Erich turned his head towards his friend the blow from the iron poker came hard and savage. Blood arced from Erich’s crushed cheek as he stumbled into the arms of Hetz who thrust him upright. The singing faltered and then resumed.
‘No, you’re mistaken—’ began Dietrich.
‘Shut him up,’ said Schuller.
A hand clamped around Dietrich’s mouth. Erich managed to stand straight, the side of his face white-hot with pain.
‘That’s right, isn’t it, Erich? You told Ross where to find us and the submarine.’
‘Nobe,’ he managed to say before Bauert hit him with the bar again, spreading his nose across his face. There was a ripple of dismay through the hut now. Schuller glared at the singers, who resumed once more, their voices frail.
Erich tried to speak. He had to save his friend. Dietrich had given away the scrawlings on the scoreboard to Ross but it was he, Erich, who had chalked up the warning message in the first place. They must let Dietrich go.
‘Werner did nothing—’
The poker swung into Erich’s mouth, shattering his teeth and ripping the jaw wire, sending the raw ends into his lips and tongue. Dietrich wrestled himself free. ‘For God’s sake. Stop this. Stop it!’ He shouted as loud as he could, hoping that someone was at the other end of the microphones hidden in the ceiling. ‘Stop it. You’ve got it wrong.’
‘Werner Dietrich. You are sentenced by this court—’
‘Court? What court? You’ve gone mad, Schuller.’
‘—to be shunned.’
When Dietrich tried to speak again, two of the Rollkommando thrust their faces into his and chanted: ‘We can’t hear you, we can’t hear you.’
Schuller pointed at Erich, who was now on his knees, bent over a growing pool of blood on the concrete floor. ‘Take him away.’
As Dietrich lunged for his friend, Schuller said quietly, ‘And tie this man to his bunk.’
Ross sat near the bar with his father, their faces glowing red with alcohol and the heat of the crackling logs. Despite the shock of finding Erich here, alive, he felt relaxed. His father was easier company these days, and Uli was surely his. He had long worried about Erich, seen him as a great rival, until he came face to face with him once more. Now he wondered why he had been so concerned about the poor boy. He supposed that the ultimate test of his confidence would come when he allowed the two of them to meet. Not yet, though.
Ross even felt confident enough to tell the whole story to his father, from the first meeting at the Walters’ party, through his embarrassment in the hallway when he’d tried to hand over the perfume, and the feeling of unfinished business that had haunted him right up until he got Uli back from Canada. His father listened in silence, realising, for the first time perhaps, the enormity of what he had done to his son back when he had intercepted the letters in 1938 and 1939.
It was gone eleven when Ross looked at his watch and said to his father, ‘I’ll go and get Uli. OK?’
‘Absolutely. I thought Christmas Eve was their big night? For presents and so on?’
‘You’re right.’ Ross stood. He would give her the gift tonight, the German way. But first she should have a drink. He stumbled up the stairs, unsteady after four pints. He shook his head to try and sober up. There was nothing worse than a drunk imploring you to come and have some fun. He entered their room and could see her lying on the bed. He stood for a moment, watching the steady rise and fall of her chest. Uli was asleep. He resisted the urge to go over and kiss her. Let her rest, if that was what she needed.
Ross was about to close the door when something about her made him hesitate. He stepped inside to take a closer look. She had a sheet of paper in her hand, and there were others scattered around the bed. Now he could see that her face was red and puffy, streaked with dried tears. She had cried herself to sleep.
Ross picked up the letters from the floor, careful not to disturb her, and retreated to the desk, ignoring the inner voice telling him that this was a despicable invasion of privacy and a betrayal of trust. He clicked on the scallop-shaped reading lamp and sat, reading through the handwriting quickly, his brain snapping into sobriety over the course of the first few pages and forcing him on and on, even though he felt as if razor blades were nicking his insides.
Uli stirred as he was on the fourth of the letters, her moist eyes blinking, trying to focus on him.
‘Ross,’ she said, pushing herself up on one elbow as she realised what he’d been doing. ‘Oh, God. You had no right, Ross.’
‘He still loves you, doesn’t he? After all this time. Erich still loves you.’
She nodded. ‘Yes, he does.’
Don’t ask, you don’t want to know. ‘And do you still love him?’
There was an urgent knocking at the door.
‘Go away,’ said Ross. ‘Well?’
Uli shook her head. ‘You expect me to answer that?’
Another knock and the Colonel burst into the room, his eyes wide, gasping for breath from his sprint up the stairs. At first Ross thought that his father was about to have a heart attack, but the Colonel gulped air and said, ‘There’s been an incident. At the camp. Carlisle just called.’
‘What kind of incident?’ asked Ross.
‘A hanging. They’ve hanged a fellow prisoner. The Germans have murdered one of their own.’
Uli put a hand over her mouth.
‘Hinkel?’ asked Ross. ‘Was it Erich Hinkel?’
‘I don’t know,’ the Colonel said, puzzled by the question. ‘But we’d better get down there. Happy bloody Christmas this is going to be.’
They had dragged Erich over the snow towards the shower block. Dietrich, who had eventually freed himself from his bunk, could see the dark splashes of congealed blood every few feet marking his friend’s progress. Hetz and Bauert must have been beating him as they went, because there were fine sprays of crimson in the churned snow.
He followed the path to the cinder-block latrine and wash-house and paused in the entrance, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gloom within. Erich was a few metres from the doorway. They had thrown a rope over the crudely lagged pipes that criss-crossed the ceiling and hauled him off his feet. It was impossible to tell from the mess that was his face, but Dietrich suspected that Erich had died of strangulation rather than a broken neck.
Dietrich knelt down to untie the rope from where it had been connected to a sink’s outflow pipe but a voice made him jump. ‘Leave it.’
He turned to see Schuller standing over him.
Dietrich said: ‘He wrote the message. But I pointed it out to them.’
‘I know,’ said Schuller. ‘Count yourself lucky you aren’t beside him.’
‘Why, Schuller?’
Schuller looked up at the mutilated face. ‘He had to pay for his treachery. It wasn’t personal. I liked him, you know.’
‘He was a good man, Schuller. A brave man.�
�� Dietrich began to cry. ‘He didn’t deserve it.’
Schuller acknowledged this with the barest inclination of the head before he said softly: ‘I can’t hear you.’ He walked out into the thickening storm, leaving Dietrich gripping the legs of his dead friend.
‘Keep the woman out, for God’s sake,’ snapped Colonel Ross as they looked up at the body. A dozen of them crowded in the doorway. Even so, the desperate cry he heard told him that it was too late. Ross senior turned to his son. ‘Get her back to the hotel. And get her sedated, man. And Cameron—’
‘Yes?’ Ross turned back.
‘How did you know it was Erich?’
‘A guess. I just thought that if they put two and two together, he was the most likely candidate.’
The Colonel spoke very softly. ‘It wasn’t wishful thinking?’
‘What?’ Ross gasped.
‘No. Course not. Go and sort her out, then come back. Cut the body down, Sergeant. I think we have a reasonable idea of the cause of death. Is the MO here? Well, get him …’
Ross stepped outside, looking for Uli. There was no sign of her, and the snow had been turned into slush by heavy boots, so it was impossible to know which way she had gone. He strode off towards the main gate and was passing one of the huts when a voice came from its shadow.
‘Sir? Mister Ross?’
He peered into the darkness. ‘Who’s that? Dietrich? There’s a lock-down. Get back to your hut.’
‘I saw it all. I can name names. I can tell you what happened.’
Ross was torn. He should go and find Uli, but there was a duty to be done here. Uli would be all right, she was a strong woman, she’d survive the shock. His mind made up, he said, ‘Come with me. I’ll get a stenographer and we’ll take your statement.’
He pulled two of the corporals aside, sent one to find a stenographer, ordered the other to check the camp for Uli and took Dietrich over to the reception hut, trying to keep his mind focused on the job in hand.
Nobody stopped Uli as she made her way through the snow to the main house, one hand cupped over her mouth to stifle her sobs. She walked across the hallway and up the darkened stairs to the first-floor interrogation rooms and found one that wasn’t locked. She slipped inside, closed and locked the door behind her and switched on the lights. It was one of the transcription rooms, the floor space occupied by six metal tables for typists, each table with a wire-spool recorder next to it, and the walls lined with four-drawer grey filing cabinets.
Uli sat down at the nearest table, and only then did she let her grief consume her. As she cried, she pressed her head down onto the cold surface of the desk, harder and harder, trying to blot the image of Erich from her mind.
Uli couldn’t shake the feeling that, somehow, this was all her fault. She was the centre of the events that had started in Berlin with her flirting with a visiting policeman and had ended up here in a prison camp in England.
Yet she couldn’t work out what she could have done differently. Even if she had never met Ross, Erich would still have joined the Bootwaffe. He would still have been captured, brought to Stanhope and killed by his own countrymen in a brutal reprisal for what they saw as his treachery. To have survived those years under the sea, only to be murdered by his comrades-in-arms—that was a savage irony.
The guilt wouldn’t go away even though she knew who was to blame for Erich’s death. Those evil men who had taken his youthful energy and idealism and corrupted it, turning him and millions of other Germans into instruments of destruction. Ultimately what was being destroyed was Germany itself.
What would she do now? She couldn’t face Ross for the moment. He wouldn’t understand why she felt as if a part of her had died out there in the snow.
Uli stood, dried her tears on her sleeve, crossed to the door and pressed her ear to it. There were voices on the landing.
As she leant her cheek against the door jamb, listening to the muffled conversation, she understood that she had witnessed the finale of one small act that would be repeated over and over as the repercussions of this futile war killed the bravest and the best and wrecked countless lives. Including, now, her own.
Ross got back to the hotel just as dawn was breaking. Downstairs stank of stale alcohol and vomit, and there were some diehard revellers lying on the banquettes and on the floor, snoring. Ross climbed the stairs, reflecting on how a few hours could turn your life upside down. One thing was certain. No matter what he felt about Erich personally, the man had been murdered in cold blood. Those who had done this to him would have to be punished.
He crept into his room, but sensed immediately that there was no one there. He flicked on the overhead light. The bed still showed the imprint of Uli’s body, where she had lain and read the letters and cried over her U-boat man. Her side of the wardrobe and her sections of the chest of drawers, though, were empty. Her case was missing from its stand. The letters were nowhere to be seen. She’d taken those, too. Where on earth could Uli have gone in the middle of the night on ą Christmas Eve? Anywhere away from you came the unwanted answer.
Part Four
1945
Thirty-Seven
THE LONDON CAGE: July 1945
Just a few more minutes, Uli reminded herself, and the trial would be over. The door at the far end of the room opened and the six members of the tribunal marched in. The Presiding Officer, a gaunt, expressionless Guards colonel, nodded as those already in the room rose to their feet, and there was a scrape of chairs and a brief expectant murmur as all sat once more. Uli could read in the tribunal’s grim eyes what the sentence was to be, and she glanced over at Schuller and his co-defendants, Hetz and Bauert, for the last time. She imagined first the black hoods and then the intricately knotted ropes passing over their heads and she was surprised that the thoughts gave her no pleasure at all. As a bitter taste soured her throat and her stomach heaved, she rose from her seat and hurried from the court, conscious of the clacking of her heels on the linoleum as the NCOs moved quickly aside to let her pass.
There was a summer drizzle outside. Uli put up her umbrella as she left the building and walked up the path towards the guardsmen who flanked the gate to the street. He appeared between the two giant figures, blocking her way. One of the sentries turned, wondering why she had halted.
‘You all right, miss?’ asked the guardsman.
‘Yes. Yes, thank you.’
‘I’ll look after her,’ Ross said. As she stepped onto the pavement she felt his hand on her elbow, guiding her to the left. ‘The Prince of Wales,’ he said. ‘I need a drink. You look as if you need a drink.’
‘Cam. I didn’t see you in there,’ she said, unable to keep the surprise from her voice. ‘And I’ve been there every day.’
‘I gave my evidence in camera. Just the tribunal present.’
‘Why in camera?’
‘Well, SIS don’t like their men to be known to the public.’
So he was in the Secret Intelligence Service full-time now. ‘You’re SIS staff?’
‘Kind of.’ Ross had spent the first half of the year abroad, working as an interrogator for the various war-crimes tribunals. Now he had accepted an assignment to the German desk of MI6, on condition that his father was allowed to be his paid consultant. It was his way of letting the Colonel fade away with dignity and, if he was honest, of tapping into his vast bank of tradecraft, before it was lost for ever to the hardening arteries of his brain.
‘What about the police? I was sure you’d go back.’
‘The world is awash with ex-servicemen wanting to stay in uniform. Any uniform. They’ll manage without me.’
‘You’ve lost the beard.’
‘Yes.’ He touched the slight lump in his jawline. ‘I thought I’d been hiding behind it for too long.’
‘You look good.’
‘So do you. Are you playing the violin?’
‘Yes. Taking lessons from one of the men whom father met on the island. I’m grabbing him while I can still
afford him. He’ll be a star once things settle down, and out of my league.’
Uli looked up at Ross as they walked, trying to think what had changed, apart from the beard. A purposefulness, a strength had invaded him. There was no trace of the self-doubt, the vulnerability that she used to sense buried within him. She felt a tremor of fear. They hadn’t seen each other since that Christmas Eve when she’d run away. She had sent a message a few days later to say that he shouldn’t worry, she was all right, but she wouldn’t be coming back to work for the foreseeable future. She needed time alone.
They reached the pub and she collapsed her umbrella as they entered through the etched-glass double doors. Inside, the Prince of Wales smelled damp but welcoming, the bubbling conversation light and carefree, about sport and weather and local scandal. Anything but war.
Ross found them a table and fetched a pint for himself and a gin and tonic for Uli. He shook the rain from his hat as he sat down, placed it on the stool next to him and they clinked glasses. She sipped, relishing the unfamiliar tang of the lemon slice, a sign that normality was returning. ‘What have you been doing, Ross? I called Scotland Yard once or twice, Latchmere, the Cage, but they denied all knowledge of you.’
He explained he had been based at the Prisoner of War Intelligence Service outposts in Europe, first in Holland, then in Germany, for the past six months. The war-crimes files that he had helped compile now filled several warehouses, most of which made grim reading. ‘You know that they dragged Canaris out naked from his cell at Flossenbürg? He’d been arrested after the 20 July plot when it became obvious that he was anti-Hitler. Strung him up from the rafters, using an iron collar. Took him thirty minutes to die. Slow strangulation. At least Schuller and the others will be spared that.’
‘What exactly will happen to them now?’
‘Pierrepoint,’ he said. When he saw her expression he added: ‘Albert Pierrepoint. I don’t know why, but we use a publican as an executioner. He’ll hang them at Pentonville. In a month or two, probably. It’ll be quicker than what the White Fox had to suffer. God, I’ve missed you, Uli.’