by Wilbur Smith
He nodded approvingly. “And what is a FANY doing all by herself in the Tyrol?”
“Looking for you, sir, among others. I’ve been sent to track down prisoners of particular interest. I followed your trail from Sachsenhausen, to Dachau and now here.”
“Hmm . . . I see you’re armed. Hardly the usual FANY style. I take it you know how to use that gun.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you in the same game as my namesake Peter, by any chance?”
“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to tell you, sir.”
Churchill laughed. “That’s what he says, too.”
“May I ask how you all ended up here, after Innsbruck?”
“Well, we kept heading south. All this time the Germans’ whole show was falling apart, organization and discipline going to pot. Made us distinctly concerned that the SS were going to bump us all off.”
“They were. They had orders to shoot everyone if they were in danger of being captured.”
“Yes, we thought as much. Anyway, a few chaps in our group were senior German officers who’d fallen out with Adolf. Some were involved with that whole Stauffenberg show, another was imprisoned for ordering a retreat on the Russian front. Cut a long story short, we got word to the German army. They came along and chased the SS off and we were brought here.” He chuckled. “A group of Jerry generals had decided to see out the war in comfort. We rather barged in on their holiday.
“After a few days, the Germans disappeared. Dare say they planned to make their way discreetly home to their families, rather than become POWs. I went to see if I could fetch our American cousins. A few of our number needed medical help, one or two rather seriously. I’m afraid I may not have brought it on time. Ah, here’s Peter . . .”
Churchill waved toward a bespectacled man in an ill-fitting suit and beckoned him over. “Peter,” he said. “Meet Captain Courtney. She’s a FANY. Come all the way from England to find you.”
Peter Churchill shook her hand. “Where in England, exactly?” he asked. He seemed distracted.
“Baker Street . . . on Brigadier Gubbins’s orders.”
“Aren’t you going to give one another the secret handshake?” Jack asked with a grin.
“Look, I’m very sorry, Courtney, but I can’t talk at the moment. Something’s come up.” He looked at Jack. “It’s von Meerbach—the doc thinks he’s close to the end.”
Saffron gave a strangled cry.
“I say, are you all right?” Peter asked.
Her face suddenly ashen, her eyes staring, she grabbed his arm. “Did you say von Meerbach?”
“Yes, but why on earth . . . ?”
“Gerhard von Meerbach?”
“Good Lord,” Jack said. “You’re not looking for him too, are you?”
“I have to see him!” she cried. “Please, I’m begging you. Take me to him now!”
This moment had been foretold. Four years had passed since Saffron climbed to the top of a mountain that rose from the plains of her father’s lands. There she consulted Lusima, the tribal queen and sorceress after whom the estate was named. Lost to the material world, in the trance of second sight, the venerable seer had told her, “You will walk alongside death, but you will live. You will look for him, but if he is ever found, it will only be when you have ceased your search, and if you see him you will not know him, for he will be nameless and unknown, and if your eyes fall upon his face they will not see it for they will not know it to be his. And if he is alive, it will be as if he were dead. And yet . . . and yet . . . you must keep searching, for if he is to be saved, only you can save him.”
Now, standing in a room in the Pragser Wildsee Hotel, Saffron finally understood the meaning and the truth of those words. She gazed upon the shriveled, shaven-headed, barely human creature who lay in the bed with an intravenous drip in his arm. Every scrap of flesh had been starved from his face. Above his protruding cheekbones his temples were as concave as saucers. Below them the cheeks were parchment-thin skin, stretched to breaking point. The bare arms that lay unmoving on the sheet with which he was covered were livid from top to bottom with a scarlet rash, as were his shoulders and neck. She could not see or hear if he was breathing, so weak was the rise and fall of his chest. And yet she knew it was him.
“Is this who you’re looking for?” Peter Churchill asked.
“Yes,” Saffron replied, without the faintest tremor of doubt in her voice.
“How can you be sure?”
“Because . . .”
Saffron fell silent. How could she explain the prophecy? The men might be polite to her on the surface, but she knew what they would be thinking inside: another foolish woman believing in nonsense and mumbo-jumbo. Then something caught her eye, a piece of card, brown with age and dirt, folded into quarters, sitting on the table beside the bed. She picked it up and unfolded it. She wanted to scream, to weep, to rend her clothes in Biblical mourning. But she forced herself to stay calm and blinked back the tears as she put the card down on the table and smoothed it out so that it could clearly be seen as a photograph, though the image upon it was worn and faded to gray.
Saffron reached into her bag and took out the photograph that was always with her. She placed it on the table, next to the other one. “Look,” she said.
The two Englishmen and the young American doctor, who had been standing beside the bed when they walked in, bent over the photograph.
“Good Lord,” murmured Jack Churchill.
“Unbelievable,” said the doctor.
Peter Churchill straightened. “I can see that’s you, but is the man you’re with really him?”
“Yes, in Paris, the spring of thirty-nine.”
The doctor took her by the arm and led her to one side. “Ma’am, I have to tell you that Mr. von Meerbach is close to death. He has typhus fever. I administered penicillin as soon as we found him, but . . . well . . . I fear we were too late.”
“No,” Saffron said, and now her voice was firm and unwavering. “That’s not true. I know it’s not. He has to live. I . . .” She wondered how she could explain the faith she had in the prophecy and decided there was no point even trying.
“He has to live,” she insisted.
“Ma’am, I feel for you. Truly I do. But sometimes we have to accept the inevitable.”
“We do. And I’m telling you that it is inevitable that Gerhard von Meerbach will survive. And I will be the one to make sure he does.”
•••
For three days and nights, Saffron stayed at Gerhard’s bedside. A camp bed was brought in and set up along one wall for her to rest on for the few brief moments of sleep she allowed herself. When the fever came upon him she soothed his brow with cold compresses. Then she replaced the soaked sheets with fresh ones while the doctor, or one of the Churchills, lifted Gerhard up in their arms, for he weighed no more than a child. When he was chilled, she covered him in eiderdowns and blankets.
All the while, the doctor made sure that the glucose/saline drip kept Gerhard hydrated and provided him with enough energy to keep his body functioning.
“I have to warn you,” he said, “malnutrition on this scale is enough to cause sudden, total organ failure by itself, let alone when it is accompanied by a disease as serious as typhus fever. He could go at any moment.”
“He won’t,” Saffron insisted. Yet she knew that Gerhard was still just existing, rather than living. He remained unconscious and immobile, deep in a coma from which there seemed no escape. But she refused to let him slip further into the final blackness of death. She talked to him, telling him about her life in Baker Street; her training in Scotland; her adventures in North Africa, Greece and the Low Countries—everything except Danny. She had books from the hotel library brought up and read to him in both German and English.
Somewhere inside he can hear my voice, Saffron told herself. That’s what will wake him up.
But he did not wake and then, on the fourth night, Gerhard’s body was swept by fe
ver. And this time it did not go away.
“This is the crisis point,” the doctor told her. “I guess you could say it’s make or break.”
The hotel maids brought her a pile of bedsheets and towels. Saffron spent hour after hour doing everything she could to cool Gerhard’s temperature and keep his bedding fresh. Night became day and still the fever raged. Gerhard’s frail body seemed to be burning itself up from within. It did not seem possible that he could become any more reduced and yet he was visibly losing weight.
At eleven the following morning, Gerhard’s temperature began to go down. Within the hour, it was back to normal. He seemed more peaceful. But still he was deep in his coma.
“There’s nothing more you can do for him now,” the doctor told Saffron. “Like I said, it’s make or break . . . Now we have to wait and see which.” He looked at her, as if examining her as another patient, and said, “You’re exhausted. You should get some rest.”
“I can’t.”
“Sure you can. You have to. You’re no use to him like this.”
It was the only argument that could have persuaded her, and the doctor knew it.
Saffron kissed Gerhard on the brow. “I’m going to have a little doze,” she said. “But don’t worry. I’m still here. I’ll never, ever leave you.”
She lay down, not wanting to sleep, fearful that he might die without her beside him. But her body was shattered and seized the sleep it so desperately required.
Two hours later the doctor came in, felt for Gerhard’s pulse and shook his head, for it was fainter than ever. He looked at Saffron’s unconscious figure, then back at the dying man. He paused, considered his options, then let her be and left the room.
•••
Saffron was dreaming that she and Gerhard were together. He was as handsome and full of life as he had been before the war, laughing and holding out his hand, saying, “Take it. Come with me.”
But she could not take it. She couldn’t lift her arm. It wouldn’t move, no matter how hard she tried. Then she found a way to raise it, but she couldn’t reach Gerhard’s hand. He seemed far away and his voice was so quiet that she couldn’t hear it as he summoned her to join him: “Saffron . . . Saffron . . .”
She couldn’t bear it, the frustration was too awful.
Saffron forced herself awake. And then she heard it again, so muted that it was as if she were still dreaming it: “Saffron . . . Saffron . . .”
She was fully awake, leaping off the camp bed, dashing to where Gerhard lay. His eyes were open, looking at her. He blinked again, unbelieving, and said, “Saffron, my darling . . . is that really you?”
She fell to her knees beside the bed and took his fragile, bony hand in hers as she said, “Yes, my love . . . I’m here.”
Tears were pouring down her face, but they were tears of joy, tears that released all the emotion she had kept buried deep inside her for so long. “I love you,” she said. “I love you so much.”
“I love you too.” He smiled weakly, but somehow it told her that the real Gerhard was still there.
From the open window, she heard a cheer ring out and she laughed through her tears as she thought, Can they be cheering for us?
The cheering grew, and it spread so that she could hear it all around her, from every part of the hotel, people shouting and clapping and whooping with joy.
There were footsteps running up and down the corridor outside.
The door opened and the doctor stuck his head into the room and asked, “Did you hear? The Germans have surrendered! The war is over!” He paused as a huge smile of disbelieving joy spread across his face. “We won!”
Saffron looked down at Gerhard. She knew now that the prophecy had come true. She had found her lion and brought him back to life. Now nothing on earth could part them.
“Yes,” she said triumphantly. “We won.”
If you would like to hear more about my books, why not join the WILBUR SMITH READERS’ CLUB by visiting www.bit.ly/WilburSmithClub? It only takes a few moments to sign up, and we’ll keep you up-to-date with all my latest news.
On Leopard Rock
The first ever memoir from the Number One global bestselling adventure author
Wilbur Smith has lived an incredible life of adventure, and now he shares the extraordinary true stories that have inspired his fiction.
From being attacked by lions to close encounters with deadly reef sharks, from getting lost in the African bush without water to crawling the precarious tunnels of gold mines, from marlin fishing with Lee Marvin to near death from crash-landing a Cessna aeroplane, from brutal school days to redemption through writing and falling in love, Wilbur Smith tells us the intimate stories of his life that have been the raw material for his fiction.
Always candid, sometimes hilarious, and never less than thrillingly entertaining, On Leopard Rock is testament to a writer whose life is as rich and eventful as his novels are compellingly unputdownable.
Available now