The next morning, Jonny, found the hire car in the basement carpark and headed to northwest out of the inner city passed the Nymphenberg Palace veering north towards the Olympic park and arriving at a gated two storey 1970s building more in the form of a school house dormitory than a Care Home. He waited patiently in reception and was shown into a large bedroom with the wall littered with photographs, pencil sketches and paintings. In the corner was a large bookcase with what appeared to be a collection of the world’s literature in several languages.
‘Captain Bron will not be long. It’s his day for physiotherapy and we are running a bit late.’
‘It’s not a problem. He seems to be well read,’ said Jonny pointing to the bookcase.
‘Oh yes. The Captain also speaks several languages fluently. You find him a fascinating man, Mr Wightman.’
With that the matron left Jonny alone. He started to study the pencil sketches that were clustered together all dated between 1945 and 1952. They’d been folded and rolled many times until finally they’d been allowed to see the light of day permanently.
Captain Johann Bron threw out his hand as he walked purposefully into his room. Jonny shook it generously. Bron stood proud and tall for a man of his age, his head slightly stooped. He had deep blue eyes and a kindly face masked behind years in a Soviet camp, thought Jonny.
Please call me, Johann, and I will assume, Jonny, will do for you.’
‘I see you’ve been examining my drawings?’ said Johann standing beside him, in English with the barest hint of a German accent.
‘You drew them!’ said Jonny surprised.
‘After my capture, I was taken to one of the camps near the coal mines in the Siberian town of Vorkuta. It was there that I started drawing, as a record of that terrible time. It gave me hope and a little peace, as when I was sketching my mind was totally focused forgetting all other thoughts.’
As they moved from one drawing to another, Johann added some description.
‘That’s the latrine. It was a long deep pit with a log across it. For fun the Russian guards would wait until it was loaded with prisoners, then they would roll the log causing them to fall into the cesspit where we were supposed to drown in their own shit. Some of us survived as you can see,’ he said smiling.
‘That’s barbaric.’
‘I know, but they were paying us back in some small way for the German Army’s treatment of them and their citizens as we butchered and killed our way across their land towards Stalingrad in 1942 and 1943. It was their revenge. Look at this one,’ said Johann pointing to two sketches side by side.
‘We were starved most of the time. One of ours found a way of supplementing our diet. The cattle corn we were occasionally fed would not digest so at night they would sneak to the cesspit and strain that ocean of shit for the undigested corn kernels to grind, washing them as best we could, mixing with sawdust and make cornbread.’
‘A picture of revulsion,’ said Jonny looking at Johann Bron. ‘What’s this one?’
‘Even worse, Jonny. I didn’t witness this personally but drew the story. A soldier described to me one night how he was forced to work burying the dead from a Russian field hospital just before we were shipped East. He heard one of the sick saying that he must have his leg amputated but asked to keep the leg because it still has some fat on it for stew.’
‘My God, sorry, but did he get…… get his leg back?’
‘The leg disappeared and later someone brings him a cup of stew.’ Johann drew back from the wall and sat down.
‘Jonny, back then no one saw this as an irrational statement. Life was hell, he knew he eating his own flesh in that stew. He never asked. You must remember that the men who surrendered at Stalingrad were already in very poor shape. There had been no consistent food for weeks. Cannibalism was a common occurrence. I don’t know if he ever survived the war. Most prisoners didn’t, despite the Russian statistics that you and I have read.’
There was a pause as Johann ran his fingers through his hair and then placed them in his lap as if remembering some other awful detail and finally lifted his eyes and looked at Jonny.
‘This broken army, my broken army in threadbare rags for uniforms, with no supplies, was forced to march in temperatures approaching -50F at night for miles, without food. So, by the time the Russians got us to the holding camp, hundreds had fallen or had been shot for not marching. Our main fear was getting sick. Getting sick was an automatic death sentence.’
‘Johann, you survived.’
‘Yes, I did indeed.’
He smiled, remembering with fondness the moments with Nadine before the night he told her to save herself.
‘You were one of the last to be released.’
‘Yes, I still don’t know why, many others had gone home by 1950. I think it was the political hostilities between East and West Germany that made things worse. It was Chancellor Konrad Adenauer who succeeded in concluding negotiations for our release. By the end of 1955, I was one of the last prisoners of war to come home.’
‘What did you come home to?’ asked Jonny, knowing it was a chilling experience for Johann, but he wanted to see if this man held other secrets in his heart. Jonny hadn’t told him anything other than he was researching pre and post WWII experiences.
Johann looked at Jonny. His face became contorted, the smile had got lost in the agony of realisation that he came home to nothing and was lost in a world that had changed. He’d been a prisoner of the time he’d spent in the Army, then a prisoner in a gulag and then in 1955 he had been a prisoner in his own freedom. Not knowing what to do, where to go and who to see.
‘Nothing that was familiar to me,’ said Johann sadly. ‘I was an only child, I found out that my mother and father had died when their house had been bombed and obliterated following blanket incendiary firestorm that enveloped everything in this beautiful city. My wife and family had been condemned to live like refugees after the Nazi’s stripped us of everything and sent me to the Eastern Front. The house they were living in suffered the same fate. Everything had gone.’
Jonny nodded. There had been no mention Nadine in the story so far. Was Johann going to say anything?
‘Sorry, Johann, can we go back to your capture by the Russian Red Army. You must have been one of the lucky ones to have survived alone in no-man’s land between two opposing armies. How did that happen?’ pressed Jonny.
‘I was lucky, yes. I haven’t ever spoken of this before, Jonny. What kept me going was hope. After running away from the Russian counter assault at Stalingrad, I stumbled across an old farmhouse.’
Jonny listened to the story that came from Solomon Isaacs’ manuscript. Although some of the details sometimes varied, Johann told Jonny about Nadine. He noticed a sadness in Johann’s eyes as the remembered Nadine Rekova. Jonny had already decided not to mention what Solomon had said or what he’d learnt about Nadine. He didn’t want to muddle Captain Bron’s thoughts at this stage. The right time would come.
‘War puts some interesting people together just by chance and circumstance.’
‘It does, when you least expect it. I believe those months living off her hidden vegetable garden, gave us both the physical strength to endure what was ahead of us.’
‘Johann, you mentioned something that intrigues me, some moments ago when you were talking about the Nazi’s. You said, ‘they stripped us of everything’. What did you mean?’
Johann got up slowly, his knees creaking as he rose, and walked to the desk. He rolled back the top and took a key from his pocket and unlocked a drawer and pulled it towards him. He turned and in his hand, he held some medals, a commission certificate into the German Army with a Swastika emblem at the top and handed them to Jonny.
‘That’s who I was before….Rising star of the Wehrmacht. Look at the date. A Captain at 23 years old.’
‘Before?’
Jonny noticed hidden in the same drawer what looked like a Walther P38.
‘Before. Yes
, before some Nazi reported us for a son being born out of wedlock by my daughter, Roberta. We tried to bring him up as our own, but someone found out and told the authorities.’
‘Who was the father?’
‘Roberta would never tell us, but she loved little Schatzi. It means ‘treasure’, I think, in English. He was a little treasure. So bright, always asking me things. He had his head in a book most days as soon as he could read. I used to tell him words in Russian, he’d soak them up like a sponge. I used to tell my wife he was a genius. He was the son my wife and I never had between us, but I thank my Roberta for giving him to us for those few years. But they’re all gone now. Just me left.’
‘Have to go too often these days. Old age can be a bugger, Jonny. Excuse me, I’ll be back.’ Bron disappeared to the bathroom.
Jonny took the opportunity to inspect the Walther. Good working order, he thought to himself. They talked more about the war and his survival for another hour, then Jonny switched off the recorder.
‘Thank you for your time, Captain, it’s been a pleasure to talk to you. Take care of yourself.’
‘You too, Jonny.’
Just as he was through the door, Jonny, turned.
‘Do you get away from here at all, Johann?’
‘No. Not much. The odd pre-arranged trip, it’s not a prison here, you know but it’s not easy for me these days.’
Jonny walked through reception towards his hire car and on the spur of the moment walked to the front desk.
‘Excuse me. Just been seeing Captain Bron. He a remarkable fellow. So much history, I couldn’t get a word in edgeways. He must be sad sometimes not be able to see the outside world, a man like him.’
‘Oh, he gets out, not very often but when he wants to. Just back from a week away, actually, we do have records just to keep an eye on some of them. They’re sometimes very forgetful but not Captain Bron. Here let me see. It was some time ago. Don’t know the exact dates. It’s a bit vague, somewhere in France, by the look of things. An address in Caen, sounds like a hotel or bed and breakfast, Port de Plaisance.’
‘Yes, that’s what he said,’ lied Jonny. ‘I’m glad he gets out. Thanks.’
Chapter 38
London
Jonny thought long and hard about Nadine and Johann Bron on the flight back to Heathrow Airport in London. He knew that both would want to be re-united. A lot of water had passed under the bridge, still, maybe it was a good thing he hadn’t told Captain Johann Bron just yet. Solomon wouldn’t have wanted it, he told himself.
Jonny wondered what Johann Bron had done in his time away from the Care Home. Had he been to England what did he do and who did he see? Why didn’t he tell Jonny?
Later that day at the board in his flat, Jonny added the photograph of Captain Johann Bron for the first time and then stared at the other names. The one thing he had to keep reminding himself was that whatever was in ‘Stealing the Staircase’ was almost certainly accurate and came from a man who had a remarkable memory for details and dates.
‘So, where next, Mr Wightman?’ Jonny said to his empty office at home. If evidence pointed to Johann Bron, the Walther P38 would be available for forensic examination later.
There was the sound of the intercom.
‘Parcel for your Mr Wightman. It needs to be signed for.’
‘I’ll be down,’ said Jonny already halfway out of the flat, keys jangling in his hand.
He carried the parcel to his desk, ripped it open and stared at the first photograph, with his heart beating fast laid out the rest covering the whole surface. He couldn’t help ringing Rod immediately.
‘They’re amazing, Rod. I’ll call in one of these days so you can see the difference, if any, between fact and fiction, your fiction.’
Slowly and methodically, he fixed them onto the board next to the names from Solomon’s treatise. ‘It was almost always someone you know’, he said over and over again staring at the new images.
‘One step at a time,’ Jonny recited to himself. He tentatively pinned a photograph of Captain Johann Bron on the suspects’ side. He had a gun, not necessarily, the gun, but Jonny was almost certain he’d been in England at the time of the shooting but did the image of the murderer fit the old man. Jonny’s recollection of the dark figure gave him nothing but for now the all-important motive was missing.
‘Rachel. Hi, all OK? Could check passenger list and entry and exit records for a Captain Johann Bron coming from Caen, address in Munich. Ship, I would think but if that doesn’t bring up anything, nearest airports in the area.’
‘When?’
‘Last three weeks.’
‘Thanks.’
Jonny opened the page he’d marked `Nadine’s story’. His rough notes were in the new folder. He added Rachel’s lifestyle resume and the new photograph of her which tallied almost exactly with Rod’s version of ageing. The woman at the graveside was Nadine. He rifled through the rest of the file then remembered he’d put her latest known address and telephone number on the board. ‘Amazing what information you can get on people these days. Nobody’s privacy is sacred these days’
‘My name is Jonny Wightman.’
‘I know who you are, Mr Wightman. The question is ‘what do you want with me?’ Her tone was harsh yet not dismissive.
Jonny was not surprised by her tone realising that she would blame him for the revelations that put Solomon into prison. It must have been shocking for her, but Solomon did save her life in Auschwitz.
‘I’d like to meet, please. At your convenience.’
‘For what purpose, may I ask again?’ This time her slight Russian accent came to the fore as she raised her voice authoritatively.
‘According to interviews I have had with the police, they seem to me to be making very little progress in finding your husband’s killer. I want to know more. You know who I am and why I am interested. Please can we meet.’
There was a long pause and Jonny held his breath.
‘OK, Mr Wightman, Mona Lisa Café, 417 Kings Road, Chelsea. Shall we say lunch on Thursday 12.30, suit you?’
‘I’ll be there. Thank you. Mrs Solomon, I will be sure to book a table away from flapping ears. Unless I am mistaken, I do believe there’s an overflow room upstairs.’
Clutching a photograph of Nadine, and the one enhanced by Rod, Jonny recognised her sitting in the corner. He handed her a blurred, black and white photograph of her with Solomon taken in 1945. Then Rod’s update, followed by his taken at the funeral in full colour. She stared at them as he laid them on the table, moving the cutlery and plates to one side.
‘Would you like a drink?’
Two dry white wines arrived with the glasses frosting at the edges.
‘Cheers.’ Nadine clinked her glass in recognition of Jonny’s chivalry.
‘Where did you get this one?’ said Nadine holding up the small 1945 photograph.
‘My office obtained it from immigration records. We have a lot of contacts and information passes both ways,’ lied Jonny.
‘Nadine, tell me about Solomon. Things that are personal that I cannot read about in the public domain.’
‘Mr Wightman, surprisingly, there are many things I still do not know myself. We both had to sign the Official Secrets Act as soon as he finished his doctorate at University here and from then on, we never discussed his work.’
‘But he did come home each night after work.’
‘Not always, as he’s told you, he was stationed in Wiltshire. I saw him each weekend. I never wanted to move to Wiltshire. He understood that and I honestly don’t think he wanted us there. It was hard at first, but I got used to it. I think our son, Stewart, suffered more. He used to rely on his dad answering all his questions. I wasn’t as good, they were always about scientific things. I must have spent a fortune on books over those years. I’d get Stewart to write down the questions and wait for Solomon to telephone.
‘You know he saved my life.’
‘I escaped from Russia
with the help of a German soldier, Johann Bron. I never heard from him again. I left him in a snow-covered field. He’d run out of hope of ever making it home to Germany. After that, I ended up in German camps and finally in Auschwitz.’
‘Forgive me,’ said Jonny glancing at her left arm. ‘No number?’
‘Surprising really, but it was 1944 and things were beginning to fall apart. After he had put me in a nurse’s uniform in the hospital, Solomon came up with an idea that would give me the possibility of survival. I had to do the right thing for the Nazis.’
Her face coloured and she looked away from Jonny, embarrassed at the memory.
‘Sorry, I know this is bringing back painful memories. Please stop if you want to.’
‘No, it’s all right.’ She continued, ‘The right thing was to become pregnant with an Aryan child with a proper bloodline. Solomon assured me that he’d be the father and would marry me if we all survived and that they’d never know. Stewart was born just before our freedom came. The chaotic last few days when the Germans realised they could not defend their actions in Auschwitz and fled, leaving Solomon and I and Stewart hiding in the hospital block.
‘A British officer, Captain Campbell, helped us resettle in England because Solomon had helped identify a number of war criminals. Solomon then went to work for him after his doctorate.’
‘Stealing the Staircase’ had told Jonny how his son, Stewart had been conceived.
‘Forgive me for prying, Nadine, but you and Solomon never had any other children.’
‘We tried but there was something wrong inside me. I never found out what. I don’t think they knew exactly. Solomon kept the Reports. I read them but they were too technical. Anyway, I had Stewart and he was a handful, but I was grateful for him.’ She smiled.
‘You said on the telephone that you knew who I was. How did you know me?’
‘I read your piece on Mrs Osborne’s son back in the 1950s, the one who died during the Porton experiments. It caused waves throughout the Ministry. They closed down various experiments immediately. Everyone was under suspicion for breaching the Official Secrets Act. The interrogations that followed were very upsetting for me and Stewart despite the fact that we knew nothing.
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