Schreiber's Secret

by Roger Radford

“I mean, you, you arsehole!” shrieked the guard.

  The prisoner to his right dug Soferman in the ribs, breaking the spell. The tall man looked up at the guard sitting on the bank.

  “Yes, you. Get that carcass out of there.”

  Soferman’s blond head swivelled slowly to the left. For a few moments, he stared in disbelief at the body hunched face down beside him.

  “Don’t just stand there, you great oaf. Lift him out of there.”

  “Oskar,” gasped Soferman. “Oskar.”

  The body bobbed as the Berliner waded the couple of metres between them. He turned it over and lifted, cradling the slight form in his arms. The eyes were open. The inkspots that once used to sparkle in defiance of adversity were now opaque, impervious to the perfidy of man.

  Soferman, showing no emotion, lifted the lifeless form onto the bank. He would not say Kaddish for his friend, for now he believed that God was dead.

  “Leave him there,” the guard called out, “and get on with your work. Schreiber will be here in a few minutes and you lot will wish you were also corpses.”

  Soferman returned to his digging, but not before he had closed Springer’s eyes. Even in death, he did not want them to bear testimony to whatever new horror Schreiber was planning. The little man-boy lay like a discarded rag doll. Iniquity’s jetsam.

  Schreiber was soon on the scene, accompanied by a bevy of guards and two wheelbarrows filled with sharpened sticks and pitchforks.

  “Time for some sport, Jew-pigs,” he cried out from high on the mound. “I see that one of you has already succumbed.” The Nazi chuckled. “He’s the lucky one.”

  Schreiber’s entourage burst into laughter. They knew what was coming and eagerly took up their positions. Soferman counted up to a dozen guards perched on the parapet of the bridge overlooking the trench.

  “You and you,” Schreiber called out, pointing to the two smaller men alongside Soferman. “Each take a pitchfork and stick. The winner will get extra rations tonight … the loser’s.”

  Again there was hearty laughter from the gallery.

  The two men, both in their thirties and both of about the same build, climbed out of the trench and reluctantly took their weapons from the wheelbarrows. They stood about a metre apart and for a few moments stared at one another in desperation and fear.

  “Well,” Schreiber called out ominously, “why are waiting.”

  “They’re brothers,” a voice cried out from the end of the line of prisoners. “For God’s sake have mercy.”

  Schreiber laughed satanically. “Even better. Let’s keep it in the family.”

  The gallery once more applauded. The Obersturmführer could always be guaranteed to put on an excellent show.

  One of the brothers suddenly dropped to his knees and bowed his head. It was obvious that neither man was prepared to bear arms against the other.

  Schreiber, incensed by the delay in the performance, raced down the mound. Hurling abuse at the two men, he picked up a shovel and hoisted it high before bringing it down with all his might on the head of the kneeling man. There was a sickening crunch, blood and brain spurting in all directions. Schreiber himself was hit by the human debris and this incensed him even further.

  “You’ve ruined my uniform, you swine,” he screamed at the corpse. “How dare you.”

  The Nazi brushed off the human offal with manic fervour, failing to notice the pitchfork being raised by the brother of the dead man. Soferman watched in morbid fascination as the two prongs came level with Schreiber’s shoulders. Even though it meant his own death, Soferman willed the prisoner to strike home hard and true.

  But the man, unused to the mechanics of murder, wavered for the split second that separated good from evil. A shot rang out and the prisoner crumpled, driving the pitchfork into the ground and sliding slowly down its handle.

  Schreiber, visibly shaken, wheeled around to face his would-be assassin. The prisoner groaned, the red stain on his prison garb broadening. He lay on the ground face up, his left arm attempting to shield his eyes from the sun. The Nazi kicked the arm away and rolled the wounded man over with his jackboot. He then withdrew his service pistol, a 9 mm Luger Parabellum, and placed the barrel against the nape of the prisoner’s neck, angling it slightly upwards. Without hesitation, he fired.

  Soferman flinched. In the splitting of a second one life had been saved and another taken. But the wrong ones. He watched with heavy heart as Schreiber knelt by the remains of the dead man’s face and withdrew a dagger from a black scabbard at his side. The Jew could make out the SS motto “Loyalty is my Honour” inscribed in large Gothic script along almost the whole length of the blade. At right angles to the slogan and close to the hilt were the initials HS. The Nazi began carving a swastika on the prisoner’s forehead. Satisfied with its artistic merit, he passed to the other brother and repeated the procedure. Replacing his pistol, Schreiber acknowledged the guard on the bridge who had saved his life and then turned once again to the prisoners in the ditch.

  “Woe betide any of you who try this sort of thing again,” he cautioned breathlessly. “Otherwise there will be another couple of losers.” With this, he climbed further up the mound and turned to face the prisoners from a safe distance. “Now, SOFER-man. You and that pig at the end of the line take up your weapons. I’m counting on you, SOFER-man.”

  Soferman felt his heart plummet. The man he was expected to fight was smaller than himself but looked about ten kilos heavier. The pug-face and squashed nose suggested experience as a prizefighter. The man wore the yellow star but did not look Jewish. Nevertheless, he thought, it was indeed two Jews who were being ordered to fight the ultimate fight, one man having to die in order for the other to live for perhaps one more minute, one more hour, one more day.

  As Soferman picked up the sharpened cudgel in his right hand and the rusting pitchfork in the other, he was reminded of the arenas of ancient Rome. The gallery was baying for blood and the supreme arbiter, the black patrician of the Small Fortress, sat on his haunches, arms crossed and resting on his knees, watching impassively. Schreiber was not satisfied with simply killing Jews. He demanded the ultimate indignity: that Jew should kill Jew for sport.

  The Berliner turned to face his opponent. He felt Schreiber’s beady eyes boring into his neck. He was the patrician’s favourite. He was expected to uphold the honour of the Dark Empire. He was expected to satisfy his master’s whim with the blood of an innocent.

  “Wait!” ordered Schreiber. He withdrew a camera from his pocket. It was his favourite pastime. He focused the Leica and then smiled the most evil of smiles. “Okay, fight!”

  “I shall live to testify, Schreiber, you bastard,” Soferman muttered through gritted teeth, at the same time raising the cudgel. “I’ll never rest until you’re brought to justice.”

  London, June 16 1989

  To: The Rt Hon Douglas Hurd, CBE, MP, Secretary of State for the Home Office.

  On 15 February 1988, you appointed us to undertake an inquiry into war crimes with the following terms of reference:

  “(1) To obtain and examine relevant material, including material held by Government departments and documents which have been or may be submitted by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre and others, relating to allegations that persons who are now British citizens or resident in the United Kingdom committed war crimes* during the Second World War;

  (2) To interview persons who appear to possess relevant information relating to such allegations;

  (3) To consider, in the light of the likely probative value in court proceedings in the UK of the relevant documentary material and of evidence of potential witnesses, whether the law of the United Kingdom should be amended in order to make it possible to prosecute for war crimes persons who are now British citizens or resident in the United Kingdom;

  (4) And to advise Her Majesty’s Government accordingly.

  (*For the purposes of this inquiry, the term “war crimes” extends only to crimes of murder, manslaugh
ter or genocide committed in Germany and in territories occupied by German forces during the Second World War.)”

  We have now completed our enquiry and have the honour to submit our report.

  Sir Thomas Hetherington

  William Chalmers

  Jewish Chronicle, London, May 3 1991: There was barely enough room to nod off in the Lords on Tuesday as peers, including a feisty nonagenarian, fought to prevent the War Crimes Bill from becoming law.

  It was a doomed battle against the Government, and many succeeded only in humiliating themselves and insulting the victims and survivors of the Holocaust.

  The enemies of the War Crimes Bill did not suffer from self-doubt. Never, in the estimation of Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, the former Labour Home Secretary, had there been assembled against a Bill such “a combination of intellectual weight, legal distinction, and practical experience of Government… in the highest offices of the land.”

  But even the best brains in the land were not going to bring victory closer, pledged former Home Secretary Lord Waddington, a mere stripling at 61. In a strong, clear voice, he said acts of appalling brutality had been committed not in the heat of the moment but as the “cold-blooded mass murder of defenceless victims ... The evidence is there and we can’t close our eyes to it.”

  Ninety-two-year-old Lord Houghton of Sowerby thought otherwise. Opposing the Bill, he suggested to peers, meant retaining their honour. The alternative was to yield to the Commons.

  He remembered as if it were yesterday how, aged 13, he had observed the progress of the Parliament Act of 1911. His memory had served him well, casting doubt over one of the main arguments against war crimes trials, that the memory of elderly witnesses would be uncertain.

  Lord Hailsham, the former Lord Chancellor, urged peers to do what was right, rather than what was popular. “Populism is the enemy of justice, freedom and democracy,” he said.

  “This is not a house of wimps,” remarked Lord Shawcross, chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials. “Do what your consciences tell you,” he urged.

  Then Lord Jacobovits, the Chief Rabbi, made his contribution. It was the peers’ task, he said, to ensure the law would not exonerate those involved in horrendous crimes. Thousands of voices were crying out from the earth, he said. The echoes were hardly heard in the chamber of the Lords.

  Fifty-three speakers took nine hours to defy the government. Full of sound and fury, they signified absolutely nothing. The Bill would still become law.

  CHAPTER 2

  London, 1995

  Danielle Green strode out of the glass menagerie off High Street Kensington with the sort of purpose that only beautiful career women seem to manage. Someone, somewhere, once said that looking good was three-quarters of the battle in getting any job. True, maybe, but you had to have a certain amount of talent in order to keep the job. And talent was the hallmark of her people.

  Jews, however, were not especially noted for being tall or blonde, so the fact that Danielle had short satin hair and legs “all the way up to your armpits”, as one of her former boyfriends once declared, proved a surprising bonus. So, too, did the emerald eyes, almond-shaped as a throwback to some distant Sephardi scion, the high Ashkenazi cheekbones from somewhere in central Europe, and firm, well-rounded breasts. The upper of her fulsome lips, which owed nothing to collagen, supported an alluring beauty spot. The nose, small and straight, completed the perfect features. These attributes, however, were not necessarily in themselves enough to guarantee further promotion in one of the world’s toughest trades.

  Danielle Green, of the green eyes, firm breasts and long legs, had something else which proved highly combustible. An added ingredient in the magic potion, an ingredient that appealed only to the strongest willed of men: intelligence.

  She had entered the Associated Newspapers glasshouse six months earlier, a raw graduate trainee keen to learn what made newspapers and newspaper people tick. The Mail on Sunday was popular mainly by virtue of its colour supplement, the features of which balanced delicately on the tightrope separating the middlebrow from the crass inanities of the gutter press. She was now chief feature writer – a meteoric rise indeed.

  Danielle Rachel Green was the second daughter of Stanley Green (whose father changed the family name from Greenbaum), a six-foot-three taxi driver from Redbridge, a borough with more black cabs per square mile than any other in the United Kingdom, and Esther (née Hyams), a petite and dutiful housewife and mother. The looks came from her, the height from him.

  It was already seven in the evening by the time Danielle arrived at her rented one-bedroom apartment in the Docklands. She was running late for her appointment with a man she had been eager to interview ever since she’d been told about him by Howard Plant. While Plant was the typical middle aged Jewish business entrepreneur who loved to court and direct publicity about himself, Henry Sonntag had been the background boy who played the money markets with such genius that he had made his clients, and himself, very rich indeed.

  As she showered and dressed, choosing a smart black suit by Frank Usher, Danielle mulled over what little she knew about Sonntag. He was said to be in his early seventies and a survivor of the Holocaust. He’d come to England as a penniless refugee just after the war and got a job in the City. According to Plant, Sonntag only started to amass fortunes for himself and his clients about three years prior to the Big Bang in the eighties. The man lived alone and had been a confirmed bachelor all his life, so where would all the money go? Danielle knew that there were a million questions that it was always possible to ask interviewees. There were also a million answers. Some people were more forthcoming than others, and the mark of a good interviewer was wheedling information from those who weren’t. Whether or not what she was told was the truth was a moot point.

  She gave herself the once-over in the mirror, shuddering slightly as she felt the familiar tingling sensation she always experienced before going out on a story. It would probably take less than an hour to drive to Chigwell. She hoped Henry Sonntag would reveal enough to make her visit worthwhile. If not, she would console herself by buying something at Debra’s fashion boutique nearby.

  The detached house was big. Too big for an old man living alone. It loomed out of the darkness like a sentinel on Salisbury Plain. It had the air of a manse about it, and she almost expected the heavy oak door to be opened by a resident clergyman.

  Henry Sonntag, however, was definitely no cleric. The man who now faced her was tall, perhaps a little over six feet, and had the bearing of an aristocrat.

  “Do come in, my dear,” he said, his beady brown eyes glinting in the porch light. “My abode may not be humble, but at my time of life one expects a few home comforts. Please, let me take your coat.”

  As Danielle slipped out of the fake fox – she hadn’t had the heart to buy an original and, anyway, it was almost as good as the real thing – she could feel Sonntag’s breath on her neck. It reeked of lavender. The perfume permeated the house. She looked around. A first glance at the house’s interior belied the impression given by the dour exterior. It was sumptuously furnished with what she could only believe were original antiques, ranging from forbidding Victorian chests to exquisitely decorated Ming vases, a few of which had sprigs of lavender protruding from them. He must have had them imported, she thought, for it was definitely out of season.

  “Hmm, I see you like lavender,” she said, sniffing the air. “So do I.”

  “Yes,” smiled Sonntag. “I make sure I have a supply year round. Childhood nostalgia, you know.”

  “Quite a place you’ve got here, as they say.”

  “Never judge a book by its cover, they say also,” said her host knowingly. “I know the outside’s a bit drab, but ostentation attracts thieves.” His accent was German, but not overbearingly so. “Please come into the drawing room and I’ll fix you a drink.”

  The deep pile beige carpet beckoned her into the drawing room. It too was decorated tastefully along graceful Georgi
an lines. A large old painting hung over a dormant fireplace.

  “A Titian,” said her host with pride. “Cost me a few million. It’s the only classical painting I wanted to possess so I lashed out a bit ... Gin and tonic?”

  “That’ll do nicely, thanks.”

  Danielle took the glass and, as she sipped, studied her host more closely. Sonntag had lost hardly any hair. It was brushed back and was the sort of yellowy white that told you its owner must have been a handsome blond in his youth. The skin, however, had the waxen texture of one who did not see much sunlight. The nose was firm and straight, the jaw strong and angular. The beady brown eyes were mobile and friendly yet curiously unreadable. The only sure impediment on the visage before her was the array of small scars around the mouth. The overall impression was of an elegant yet brittle carapace. “You know, you certainly don’t look Jewish,” she said, regretting the impertinence immediately.

  Sonntag’s laugh put her at ease. “Neither do you.”

  “Touché. But how did you know?”

  “I told your features editor I would only consent to be interviewed by a Jew.”

  “Why?”

  “Why not?”

  “Ah ...” It was Danielle’s turn to laugh. “Typically Jewish.”

  “What is?”

  “Answering a question with a question.”

  “Of course. We Jews are strange and wonderful creatures. Come, my dear, now that we’re family, let me show you around the hub of my fortune.” As Danielle followed her host into a room to their right, she could not help feeling slightly in awe of the big man. There was an extraordinary presence about him.

  “Wow!” she exclaimed. “There are more screens here than in the whole of Northcliffe House.”

  “Information, my dear,” said Sonntag, tapping his nose with his right forefinger, “is the key to my fortune.”

  “And your clients’.”