Silesian Station (2008) jr-2

by David Downing

She was cowering in a cupboard, knees pulled up against her chin. 'Miriam,' he said, touching her shoulder as gently as he could, and she jerked back as if he'd given her an electric shock. 'Miriam, I'm here to take you away from this place. I've come from your mother and father. From Wartha. They're worried about you.'

  She lifted her head and examined his face with a small child's eyes.

  'Come,' Russell said gently. 'We must go.'

  She wouldn't allow him to help her out of the cupboard, pushing his hand away with a sharp intake of breath. She extricated herself and stood looking at him, dressed in a long white nightgown which accentuated her black hair and olive skin.

  He took a robe, and handed it to her. 'You'll need this outside.'

  She put it on, and looked at him again, as if awaiting another instruction.

  'Let's go downstairs,' he said, and, after only a slight hesitation, she accepted his invitation to walk down ahead of him. Outside she shied away from Wilhelm's helpful arm, but meekly laid down on one of the remaining stretchers.

  'It's Miriam, isn't it?' Effi said, squatting down beside her.

  The girl just looked up at her.

  'Let's get Sternkopf out of the ambulance,' Russell said, but the sudden sound of an approaching vehicle stopped him in his tracks. Two thin head-lights were coming towards them. 'Keep going,' he murmured, but the vehicle was slowing down. As it inched past the ambulance and turned into 403's parking space Russell caught an unwelcome glimpse of silver runes on a black collar.

  The car door slammed, and a bright torchbeam leapt out of the darkness, illuminating the pavement in front of the house. 'What is this?' a voice asked.

  Russell turned his weaker beam on the intruder. 'This is an ARP exercise and your torch should be masked,' he said sharply, noticing, with a sinking heart, the uniform of a Waffen SS Standartenfuhrer, the holstered gun. He turned to the others. 'Let's get the wounded in the ambulance.'

  'Not that one,' the Standartenfuhrer said. He was shining his torch at the fifteen-year-old. 'Rachel and I have a date.'

  'You must postpone it,' Russell insisted. 'We can't leave her behind.'

  'You can and you will,' the Standartenfuhrer told him, his tone hardening. 'This time tomorrow I shall be with my unit, and I have no intention of letting an imaginary air raid spoil a very real pleasure.'

  Several options flicked across Russell's mind, none of them good. Should he, could he, leave Rachel behind to save the others?

  A decision proved unnecessary. There was a sudden shift in the darkness behind the Standartenfuhrer, a glint of metal. The man's head jerked forward and his legs gave way, pitching him onto the pavement. Wilhelm had hit him with what looked like an ancient Luger.

  'I couldn't see any alternative,' he said almost apologetically, and gave the prone body an exploratory kick in the ribs. 'He'll be out for a while.'

  'Let's put him on a stretcher,' Russell heard a voice say. His own.

  'No need for fake blood,' Wilhelm said cheerfully, as they carried him across.

  He was right - the back of the man's skull was bleeding most convincingly. 'Sternkopf next,' Russell decided. As they carried the caretaker back to the pavement he gave no sign of having overheard the confrontation, but he did recognize the body on the stretcher.

  'Standartenfuhrer Geisler,' Sternkopf muttered to himself. 'Another serious head wound,' he added, reading the placard which someone had already put round the unconscious SS officer's neck.

  'The Standartenfuhrer is taking the exercise seriously,' Russell told Sternkopf reprovingly.

  The rescued girls were sitting in the back of the ambulance, each wearing a placard describing a slight injury. Freya and Effi got in with them, leaving Wilhelm alone in the front. Erich and Max were waiting for Russell in the lorry cab.

  'We'll be back in twenty minutes,' Russell told Sternkopf, and clambered up into the cab.

  'Why can't you take us on the lorry?' the man complained.

  'Health regulations,' Russell said glibly, and started the engine. Since they were supposedly headed for a hospital, they had included one in their itinerary. If they were stopped before they reached the Elisabeth on Lutzow-Strasse, they had their explanation ready. If they were stopped between the hospital and the Landwehrkanal, they would claim they'd got lost in the dark.

  No one stopped them. Fifteen minutes after leaving the house on Eisenacher Strasse the two vehicles pulled up alongside the wall separating Schoneberger Ufer from the dark waters of the Landwehrkanal. As Effi swapped vehicles with Max and Erich, Russell handed Beiersdorfer's helmet over to Wilhelm. 'See you tomorrow,' he said.

  The ambulance drove off, leaving Russell and Effi alone. 'Miriam didn't say a word,' she said, her voice sounding harsh in the darkness.

  Russell drove north through the deserted Tiergarten and across the Moltke Bridge. Beyond the blue-lit Lehrter Station the streets seemed darker still, and he was past the entrance to Hunder's garage before he realized it. He backed up and drove in through the open gates.

  Ten minutes later the lorry was back in its corner, complete with its original number-plates. Russell and Effi sat in the front seats of the Hanomag, helping each other remove their make-up by torchlight. 'We're back,' Effi said when they were finally done, and leaned over to kiss him. 'We did it,' she added, sounding almost surprised. 'We really did.'

  'We're not home yet,' Russell reminded her.

  As they headed south the sirens began sounding the all-clear, but it seemed as if Berlin had already written the night off and gone to sleep. Russell stopped the car halfway across the Moltke Bridge, checked that nothing was coming, and dropped the two Adlon number plates, the false moustache and Beiersdorfer's armband into the Spree. He hoped Wilhelm was being equally thorough.

  It felt good to reach home, but the feeling was short-lived. As they came in through Effi's front door the telephone began to ring. They looked at each other, wondering who it could be. 'Did you give Wilhelm this number?' Effi asked.

  'No.'

  Effi picked up, listened, and said 'Yes, he is.'

  'Someone named Sarah,' she told Russell.

  He took the receiver. 'Sarah?'

  There was a gulping noise at the other end. 'I have to see you,' she said.

  'Okay, but...'

  'And it has to be now.'

  'Ah. All right. I'll walk over.'

  'No, no. You must bring the car. Park it round the back. There's an alley runs up from the river end. I'll be waiting.'

  Russell replaced the receiver and told Effi he had to go out again.

  'What's happened?'

  'Trouble,' he told her. 'She didn't explain.'

  'You have to go?' It wasn't really a question.

  'It's not far,' he said, as if that helped.

  'Would it be useful if I came?'

  'Probably. But this is one for me to sort out.'

  She clung to him for a moment, then pushed him away. 'Hurry back.'

  It was noticeably brighter outside - the recently-risen moon was bathing roofs and sky with pale light. The still-warm Hanomag sprang to life, and Russell sat behind the wheel rubbing his eyes and wondering which route would be safest. He then remembered that the all-clear had been sounded, and that he was driving his own blacked-out vehicle. Until he reached Altonaer Strasse he had nothing to worry about.

  The streets were not as empty as they had been earlier, but he encountered only a dozen or so vehicles during the ten minute-drive. The cobbled alley that ran behind the houses on Altonaer Strasse was as dark as anything he'd encountered that evening, and he had to proceed at walking pace to avoid scraping the walls. He was about two hundred metres along when a light ahead flickered on and off.

  Another hundred metres and his slitted headlights picked her out, a ghostly figure in a long white nightgown. 'This way,' she whispered, opening a back door and almost shoving him in. In the dimly lit kitchen he got his first good look at her, and his heart sank. She looked on the edge of hysteria, and her
nightgown was splattered with what had to be blood.

  'I've killed him,' she said, as if confirming the fact to herself.

  Oh Christ, Russell thought. Several chains of consequence jostled for consideration in his mind, including the one featuring her arrest, her torture, and his name being taken down by an eager Gestapo scribe. 'What happened?' he asked, much more calmly than he felt.

  She looked at him blankly for a moment, then snapped back into the present. 'He's upstairs,' she said. 'I'll show you.'

  She raced up the carpeted stairs, Russell following at a suitably reluctant pace. Her Gruppenfuhrer was lying on his back by the empty hearth in the front bedroom, one arm at his side, the other twisted beneath him. His uniform tunic was unbuttoned, the jackbooted legs splayed out. A dark corona of blood surrounded the head, and his face had been battered beyond recognition.

  'It was an accident,' she said.

  Russell looked at her with disbelief.

  'Not the face,' she admitted. 'But he fell. Honestly. He...I'd been reading some of Richard's poems, and I forgot to hide them away. He found them, and started reading one out loud, like it was all a huge joke... I tried to take the book away from him and he fell back across the arm of the chair and cracked his head on the edge of the fireplace. And then...I don't know, I just went out of my mind. I knew he was dead but I could still hear him laughing and I started hitting him with the poker and I couldn't stop.'

  Russell ran fingers through his hair. Even if it had been an accident - and there was, he noticed, blood on the tiled surround of the fireplace - there was no way they could pass it off as one now. Even without her Jew-tainted past, she would be facing a murder trial and execution. With it, the process would be that much quicker. What could she do? He stood there staring at the body and its red mess of a face, trying to get his mind in gear.

  'Who knows he's here?' Russell asked.

  'The maid let him in. The neighbours on that side' - she gestured towards one wall - 'have left for the country, but the couple on the other side may have heard us arguing. I doubt it though - they're both quite deaf, and they sleep at the back.'

  She could tell any investigators that the man had left, Russell thought. As long as the body wasn't found, no one could prove she was lying. Ah, but who was he kidding? This was Nazi Germany - they'd investigate her past, and once they knew who they were dealing with they'd get a confession. She might have money, but there was no way someone with her past could brazen it out. She had to disappear.

  He asked when the maid would be back.

  'At eight o'clock.'

  'What will she do if no one answers the door?'

  'She has a key.'

  Russell exhaled noisily. 'Okay. First things first. We need to wrap him up and get rid of the blood.'

  'A blanket?'

  She looked better, he thought. The shock was wearing off. 'A thin one if possible,' he answered. 'He's going to be heavy enough as it is.'

  They got to work. Russell rolled the body into a brown blanket, tying the ends with some twine until the whole ensemble resembled a giant Christmas cracker. Sarah mopped up the blood and got to work on the stain, scrubbing and scrubbing until it made no difference. The patch no longer attracted attention, but anyone who knew what they were looking for would find it.

  Russell was already wondering where to take the body. It was a pity there was no locomotive depot nearby, no glowing firebox to cremate it in. 403 Eisenacher Strasse came to mind, but only for a moment - the Standartenfuhrer might still be unconscious but Sternkopf would have smelled a rat hours ago. And the moon would be up, making it much easier for the police to see what was going on. The shorter the distance he had to drive with a dead body in the car the better.

  Which ruled out a trip to the country, and a clandestine burial in the woods. It had to be the Spree or the Landwehrkanal, he told himself. The simple option. The canal, he decided - the river bridges were too exposed. The spot where they had said goodbye to the ambulance earlier that evening.

  'Time you got dressed,' he told her. 'And you can't come back here, so pack yourself a suitcase - nothing too big. Just a few changes of clothes and whatever else you want to keep.'

  She didn't argue. As she began gathering things together Russell slid the wrapped body down the stairs and into the kitchen. Slipping out through the back door he found the sky had lightened, but the alley was still cloaked in darkness. There were no signs of life in any of the neighbouring houses.

  He opened the passenger's side door, tipped the seat forward, and went back for the body, dragging it as quietly as he could across the stone, ears alert for the sound of any curious onlooker opening a window. He propped the legs up in the opening, walked around, pushed the driver's seat forward, and laboriously levered the whole bundle into the back seat. By the time he'd finished his breathing seemed loud enough to wake half the neighbourhood.

  Back indoors, he stood in the hall thinking about the maid. 'You should leave a letter on this table,' he told Sarah when she came downstairs. 'Tell her you've gone away for a while and leave her a couple of weeks' wages. With any luck she'll just take it and go.'

  Sarah did as he suggested, taking the required Reichsmarks from a healthy-looking bundle. 'I was afraid this day would come,' she said, leaving Russell to wonder whether her expectation had included these particular circumstances. She took a last wistful look around, and turned off the light.

  Russell squeezed her suitcase into the boot and got in behind the wheel. 'Can we get out this way?' he asked.

  'No. But there's a space at the end for turning.'

  He started the engine, which sounded deafening. He told himself it didn't matter if people saw and heard them. As long as no one stopped them...

  He drove slowly forward, the dark wall of the Stadtbahn viaduct looming to meet them, and turned the car in the circular space beneath it. The drive back down the pitch-black alley felt like an epic voyage, and Russell's shirt was slick with sweat when they reached the street beside the Spree. Everything seemed quiet, and dropping the body off the nearest bridge seemed, for a few moments, a more tempting prospect than driving round Berlin with a high-ranking corpse in the back seat. He told himself to be sensible. The quarter-moon had risen above the buildings to the west, greatly increasing visibility. And while a body dumped in the Spree would float and be found within hours, it might take days to arrange Sarah's escape from Berlin. Stick to the plan, he told himself. Schoneberger Ufer would be dark and deserted. They could take their time, do it right.

  Assuming they reached it. As he drove back down Altonaer Strasse Russell had enough butterflies in his stomach to start a collection. He half expected to find police cars drawn up outside Sarah's front door, but the street was mercifully empty. Crossing Hansa-Platz, they headed into the Tiergarten, and as they arced round the Grosserstern circle a car went by in the opposite direction. Russell found he was approaching each bend as if the enemy was hidden around it, and almost gasping with relief at finding another stretch of empty road.

  Sarah Grostein sat silent beside him, hands clasped together in her lap. What she was feeling he could hardly imagine - a few moments' loss of control had cost her everything but her life, and that still needed saving. He remembered her saying she liked the man, and tried to square that admission with the obliterated face. Maybe liking him had been the last straw.

  Russell realized he didn't even know the man's name. He asked what it was.

  'Rainer,' she said. 'Rainer Hochgesang.'

  They reached the canal above Lutzow-Platz and drove along the southern bank towards Schoneberger Ufer. A car pulled out in their slipstream and stayed behind them for several blocks, before vanishing down a side street. Heart thumping, Russell checked the mirror several times to convince himself it was gone.

  Finally they were there. Schoneberger Ufer was certainly deserted, though less dark than it had been a few hours earlier. He asked Sarah to stay where she was and walked across to the wall. The moon h
ad turned from yellow to cream, and the waters of the Landwehrkanal were glistening with a beauty they hardly deserved. The usual red light was shining atop the distant Funkturm, which seemed like a sensible breach of black-out regulations. He wondered if they'd turn it off in a real air raid, and sacrifice the tower for an English bomber.

  All was silence and stillness. The street on the far side of the canal was lined with old workshops, most of which now served as offices. On this side the overgrown site of a ruined synagogue lay between two warehouses. They should all be empty, give or take the odd night-watchman.

  There was no point in waiting. Russell gestured Sarah to get out, pushed her seat forward, and pulled the blanket-bound body out onto the pavement. He dragged it quickly across to the wall and left it there. 'We need to weigh him down,' he said. 'You untie the strings while I find something.'

  He hurried across the road and into the site of the burnt-out synagogue, searching for ballast. The remains of a fallen wall were scattered along one side. Somewhat appropriate, Russell thought, sending a dead Nazi to the bottom of the Landwehrkanal with Jewish bricks. He could almost hear the celestial applause.

  He piled six bricks in his arms and staggered back across the road, ears straining for the sounds of an approaching car. Sarah had undone the strings, and they rammed three bricks into each end of the roll.

  'Okay,' Russell muttered once they'd rebound the ends. He began lifting one end up towards the chest-high parapet. The canal was just as deep at the sides, and there was less chance of the Gruppenfuhrer catching on a propeller.

  Sarah helped him lever the body onto the parapet, and held it in balance while he made sure he had it round the ankles. As they pushed it over, the strain on his arms was almost too much, but he managed to hang on, and to lower it down for another foot or so, until the hidden head was only a metre or so from the water.

  He let go. There was a louder splash than he expected, but no lights appeared in the surrounding buildings. He stared down at the surface of the water, half-expecting the body to flop back up, but there was only a flurry of bubbles.

  A small indeterminate sound escaped from Sarah's lips.