Courtney's War

by Wilbur Smith

  She was holding it, steady, aiming at the center of his forehead.

  “I know how to use this,” she said, speaking calmly, making him aware she was serious. “And I know how to kill with it.”

  He stood, the rage building inside him, the pent-up energy visible in every fiber of his being as he calculated the odds.

  Panchewski scuttled away to the back of the tent, terrified of what Shevchenko might do.

  “I’ve got you covered, ma’am,” Dunnigan said, raising his own gun. He was trying to sound reassuring, but he could not hide his own tension. Saffron could not count on him holding his nerve.

  “That won’t be necessary, Sergeant,” she replied, not taking her eyes off Shevchenko.

  “Pick up the table,” she said to the Ukrainian. “Slowly. Don’t try anything, or you die.”

  Shevchenko had been a kapo at Sachsenhausen. He knew how easily human life could be extinguished. He did as he was told.

  “Now the chair . . . Sit in it.”

  Saffron turned to Panchewski. “You can come back now. It’s safe. Mr. Shevchenko and I understand one another. If he gives me good information, I will be reasonable. If he tries anything foolish, I will kill him.”

  “But the Geneva Convention . . .” Hart protested.

  “If you have an objection, you may discuss it with me afterward.” Saffron sat down. “Now, Shevchenko, please tell me about your duties at Sachsenhausen . . .”

  Over the next few minutes, occasionally switching to Russian as the things he wanted to describe exceeded the limits of his German, the kapo outlined what the camp had been like and what role he had played. He did his best to understate the truth of it, and to insist that he had taken no part in any of the atrocities. But even so, there was no way of hiding the unspeakable nightmare that the SS had created there, as at so many other camps.

  “Now, can you please tell me what happened to the prisoners at Sachsenhausen once it became clear that the camp was about to be liberated by the Russians.”

  “The Germans did not want any witnesses who could testify to what they had done.”

  “Wasn’t the camp itself enough evidence? You said yourself it was filled with dead bodies?”

  “The dead cannot talk. Almost all the prisoners were marched away from the camp. A ‘death march,’ the SS called it. They wanted as many people to die as possible.”

  “Where did this death march go?”

  “I don’t know. Not exactly. They started walking to the northeast. I was with them, but I got away.”

  “How?”

  “How do you think? I killed a guard and ran. Some others from the march tried to follow me, but I think they were shot.”

  “Were there any British prisoners on this march?”

  Shevchenko shook that massive, buffalo head. “No, I don’t think so. I think they were with the other prisoners. The ones that left earlier. But if you want me to tell you about them, I must know what I get in return.”

  Saffron was about to speak, but Shevchenko held up a hand to stop her. “Don’t say I must talk or I die. If I die, you have no chance of finding your people. Only if I live do you have a chance. What do you offer?”

  “A head start,” said Saffron. “When the war is over people like you, who collaborated with the Germans in the camps, will be hunted down as murderers and war criminals.”

  “I had no choice!”

  “They will all say that . . . Now, I cannot give you a pardon, or say that you will never be brought to justice. But I can say this: tell me something that proves to be accurate and you can walk out of this camp. After that you are on your own. And one other thing . . .”

  “Yes?” Shevchenko sounded almost hopeful, as if she was about to add something to her offer.

  “On reflection, it would be foolish for me to kill you today. We British are not like the Nazis. We don’t approve of murder, and there are three witnesses who would be obliged to give evidence against me. Correct, Lieutenant?”

  “I’m afraid so, ma’am, yes,” Hart replied.

  “But there is a fate that would be worse for you than death, Shevchenko, and legal. You served in the Red Army?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it would be proper for us to return you to your own people. That’s right, isn’t it, Lieutenant?”

  “It is,” Hart agreed. “It’s probably obligatory, actually.”

  Panchewski, seeing where Saffron was going, translated the exchange between her and Hart into Russian.

  Shevchenko’s eyes widened in horror. He was more frightened by that thought than he had been by Saffron’s pistol. “No! Please! I beg you . . . not that. If they find out what I did . . .”

  “Talk to me and they won’t.”

  “There was a small group of prisoners, maybe fifty or sixty. I had to help round them up and take them to the train.”

  “A train?”

  “Yes . . . just a small one, two wagons.”

  “Did you know who these prisoners were?”

  “No, there were no names in camp, only numbers. But most were from the Special Camp, where they kept the prisoners who were important people—you know, on the outside. I heard two officers talking. They were being taken away as hostages, so that maybe . . .”

  He jabbered a few sentences in Russian to Panchewski, who told Saffron, “He says that the idea was to take these away to the fortress where the SS were preparing their last stand. Then they could be used as bargaining chips with the Allies, exchanging the prisoners’ lives for those of SS men.”

  “What kind of fortress?” Saffron asked.

  “Excuse me, captain, but I may be able to help here,” Hart said. “We’ve heard people talking about this, too. They’ve referred to an ‘Alpine Fortress,’ by which they mean a large area of mountains in the Alps that could be defended against the enemy.”

  “Is that where they were going—to the mountains?”

  “No,” Shevchenko said. He looked uncertain. “There was a change of plan. They went south, but not to the mountains, to another camp. I don’t know the name exactly, but it began like ‘Dak-something.’”

  “You mean Dachau?” Saffron asked.

  “Yes . . . Dachau . . . that is the one. I am sure. I speak the truth, I swear it.”

  “Stay there,” Saffron told Shevchenko. Then she spoke to Dunnigan. “Keep an eye on him. If he moves, and you feel threatened, you have my permission to shoot.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Lieutenant Hart, a word, please.”

  They walked outside the tent.

  “That was jolly impressive,” Hart said. “The way you went for Shevchenko. It took me by surprise, I must say.” He grinned. “One had heard rumors about all the things you SOE people got up to. I have to admit I didn’t believe them. But—”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Saffron briskly. “Now, Shevchenko could be telling the truth. There’ve been reports of other British prisoners being taken to Dachau. And some of the people I’m looking for would certainly be seen as ‘important people’ by the Germans.”

  “If he is, that may not be good news. We had reports this morning: the Americans have just liberated Dachau. Apparently the scenes there were indescribably ghastly. The worst yet.”

  “Who’s in charge of the place now?”

  “Units of Fifteen Corps, part of the Sixth Army Group, under General Devers.”

  “Can you put me in touch with Devers’s HQ, please? I need to find out what they know. See if anyone’s found our people.”

  “I can, but . . . may I give you some advice, Miss Courtney? If Dachau is as bad as they say, and if our experience at Belsen is anything to go by, then I doubt anyone there has the first idea who any of the prisoners are, and I doubt they’re going to be inclined to go looking for you, on the basis of a radio message . . . whatever that letter from Number Ten might say. The best way to get to the bottom of this is to go there yourself. By the time you’ve got ther
e, the Yanks may have established some order, and I’m sure they’ll be more helpful if they get the request from you in person.”

  Saffron considered what Hart had said. “In that case, could you please put me in touch with Major Farrell at divisional HQ. I’m going to need Sergeant Dunnigan and his Jeep for a while longer. And if you could spare me a decent map of Germany, and a few days’ supply of basic army rations, I’d be much obliged.”

  “Certainly, ma’am. But what about Shevchenko? You aren’t going to let him go, are you? I mean, after all the things he must have done.”

  “No . . . I don’t like to break my word, even with a man like him, but I think we should stick to proper procedure. We can’t have the Russians kicking up a fuss because we haven’t handed back one of their people.”

  “It could cause a diplomatic incident—very embarrassing.”

  “Then we must do the right thing and return him to the bosom of his people.”

  “Yes, ma’am . . . I most heartily concur!”

  •••

  Saffron studied the motorist’s road map of Germany, found by Hart in an abandoned Volkswagen Beetle, a “Strength Through Joy” car that he had passed to her. She reckoned the distance from the camp on Lüneburg Heath to Dachau was about six hundred kilometers as the crow flew, so three hundred and seventy-five miles. But the fastest route, and the safest, since it curved away from the battlefront, would be to get onto the autobahn that ran south from Hamburg, down past Frankfurt to Stuttgart. Then they’d pick up another autobahn that ran from Stuttgart to Munich, a stone’s throw from the camp.

  If this had been the spring of 1939 and Saffron had been sitting beside Gerhard in the front of his thrillingly fast Mercedes Cabriolet, he would have comfortably completed the drive in a single day, and arrived at some wonderfully smart hotel in plenty of time to bathe and change for dinner. She tried hard not to remember the joy of sitting beside him, gave in to the temptation, wallowed briefly in the memory of the feel of his body close to hers and the strength of his hands on the wheel, and then cursed herself for being so stupidly self-indulgent.

  He’s not here, he’s probably dead, we’ll never meet again and I’m not a spoiled little girl, going to some divinely luxurious hotel. I’m an SOE officer on her way to hell on earth. She sighed. We might as well get on with it.

  She saw Dunnigan approaching with a khaki rucksack over one shoulder. He heaved it into the back of the Jeep, where it landed with a sound of rattling tin, and he rubbed his shoulder ruefully.

  “Weighed a fu—” He stopped himself. “Sorry, ma’am. It weighed a lot, what with all them cans and all.”

  Saffron laughed. “It’s all right, Sergeant. I’m used to military language. I won’t faint at the sound of a swear word.”

  “Right you are, ma’am.” Dunnigan grinned.

  “So, how are we set?”

  “The Jeep’s been filled with petrol, and I’ve got three more full jerry cans, so we should be able to make the journey, even if I can’t scrounge any more along the way. We’ve got another large can of drinking water. You know what it’s like. Once you’ve fought in the desert, you never go anywhere without water.”

  “Probably just as well. I shouldn’t think there’s much clean water anywhere in Germany.”

  “I’ve got a stove and plenty of tea, so we can always brew up. And there’s a tent for you, ma’am, in case we’re out overnight.”

  “What about you?”

  “I can kip in the Jeep, or under her if it’s raining.”

  “I wouldn’t worry. I’d rather not stop for the night anywhere unless we have to. We can drive in shifts . . .”

  “Yes, ma’am. The sooner we get there the better, eh?”

  “Quite . . . And the longer we take, the greater the chance we don’t find the people I’m looking for, or they’re dead when we do.”

  “Hop in, ma’am, and we’ll be on our way.”

  •••

  They drove out of Lüneburg, heading for the nearest autobahn junction. It was slow going at first, pushing against the tide of the oncoming British army. They were traveling across a rural landscape covered with shell and bomb craters, and littered with ruined houses and dangling power and telephone lines; the wrecks of burned-out tanks, some blown onto their sides or upside down; artillery guns pointing blindly to the sky; abandoned trucks; and, here and there, the bodies of dead soldiers that no one had found the time to bury.

  The air was filled with warplanes, from beautiful, nimble Spitfires to lumbering Lancaster bombers, streaming north to pummel the last remnants of the German war machine into the cold, frosty dirt. And all the time British vehicles kept coming toward them, filled with cheerful, occasionally wolf-whistling troops.

  “They’ll have the grins wiped off their faces soon enough,” Dunnigan said. “Thirty Corps had a hell of a job taking Bremen and Hamburg’s still holding out.”

  After four hours, they stopped to stretch their legs and make a hot drink from an Army “Tea Block” that came ready mixed with powdered milk and sugar. Saffron opened a packet labeled “Biscuits, Plain” and another of “Chocolate, Vitamin Fortified.”

  “That’s what I call a proper feast,” Saffron said as they packed up. “Now get in the passenger side, Sergeant, and feel free to have a snooze. It’s my turn to drive.”

  Saffron kept going as the evening drew on, aiming into the setting sun, for if she headed west long enough she was bound to hit the autobahn eventually.

  Suddenly, in the last light of the day, with the sky and the land reduced to shades of gray, a sign loomed up directing traffic Nordern, or north, to Hamburg. She ignored it and drove a little further until she caught sight of another sign, drunkenly tilted to one side because one of its supporting poles had been smashed, which said Süd to Hanover and Frankfurt.

  “That’s the one!” she said to herself and followed the slip road onto the autobahn.

  It was deserted. The clouds that had hung heavy in the sky all day parted to reveal a full moon, and there was the road, broad, inviting and stretching away into the distance, begging to be driven upon. And with silver moonlight illuminating the scene, it no longer mattered that the blackout rules meant she couldn’t use her headlights, for it was almost as clear as day.

  Saffron gave an exultant smile as she pressed the accelerator to the floor, shifted into third gear, the highest the vehicle had to offer, and raced away down the highway.

  The Jeep was a nimble creature, whose “Go Devil” engine was loved by soldiers for its performance, and Saffron soon had this one cruising at almost sixty miles per hour. Ten miles went by, then twenty, and it occurred to Saffron that if they kept up this rate of progress, they would be at their destination by the morning. Beside her Dunnigan was asleep; soldiers as experienced as him had long since acquired the ability to grab any kip that was going, no matter where or when.

  Saffron had been driving for almost fifty miles, maintaining her pace, though the monotony of the road seemed to be making it harder for her to keep her eyes from closing.

  Just a little while longer and then we can switch places, she thought.

  As she crested a shallow hill, something caught her eye a few hundred yards ahead, lower down the slope. There were large black shadows scattered across the road on both carriageways, a dozen of them or more cutting right across her path.

  She blinked, tried to focus, did her best to prod her weary brain into making sense of what she was seeing.

  The shadows were getting closer.

  If they were shadows, then something had to be casting them. She looked up. The only clouds in the sky were light and high overhead, scudding across the heavens.

  Saffron was exhausted. Something nagged at her brain. The clouds were moving . . . The shadows are motionless . . .

  She was almost on them, repeating in her head: the shadows are motionless . . .

  And then it struck her: not shadows . . . bomb craters!

  Now she was awake
.

  She slammed on the brakes, but the little car was heavily laden, going downhill at top speed and it barely slowed at all. As the first of the craters loomed open in front of her, opening its jaws to swallow them up, Saffron yanked at the handbrake and heaved the wheel to the left.

  The car slewed wildly, turned, skidded and skimmed around the rim of the crater, its tires inches from the drop.

  Dunnigan was thrown against Saffron’s shoulder, almost knocking the steering wheel from her hand. She shoved him away and he banged headfirst against the metal frame of the windscreen. He shouted in pain, and was flung the other direction as Saffron slalomed the Jeep with an opposite turn.

  The land had started to flatten and their speed was slowing, but only a little, and there was another, slightly smaller crater. She was able to swerve around that, and a third one, this time a little more steadily, until the car finally came to a halt.

  Saffron got out of the car, holding onto the side as she steadied her feet and cleared her head. She looked around. The car had ended up about half way across what must have been an entire string of bombs dropped from a single plane. It was as if they were stuck in the middle of a giant piece of Swiss cheese, resting on one of the thin, solid sections, with great holes all around them.

  She realized why no one else was on this section of the autobahn. The R.A.F. had made sure it was unusable by convoys of tanks and trucks to inhibit German troop movements.

  Dunnigan stood by the other side of the car, rubbing his head. “Mind if I make a suggestion, ma’am? If ye going to drive like a bloody maniac, probably best to do it in broad daylight.”

  He looked around at the lunar landscape. “Now, ma’am,” he said. “It’s my shift, and I’m never one to shirk. I’ll take the wheel . . . once we’re on that nice, solid road over there. Excuse me impertinence, ma’am, but tha’ can bloody well get us from here to there, ’cause I’m bloody not.”

  “You’re right, Sergeant,” Saffron said. “That was impertinent . . . but entirely deserved. Hop in and I’ll get us across . . . nice and slowly, don’t you worry.”