by Anton Gill
'What have you got?'
'Bloke dumped by the canal. Obviously thought they'd killed him. Smashed to pieces but he'll pull through, probably. He's conscious but not very lucid. They broke him. You need to talk to him fast.'
'Do I know him?'
'Veit Adamov, the film director,' Hanno curled his lip as he described the job.
'Where is he now?'
'I'll take you.'
122
Adamov was at Schlemmer's brothel on the Fischerweg, the one the Gestapo left alone because it was patronised by senior SS officers. They'd got him in a room on the top floor, a garret, really, but it had a large bed and he lay on it, propped up by a variety of cushions and covered with an eiderdown. He was in a white nightshirt, and the girls had cleaned him up as best they could, but Kessler wouldn't have recognised him. The face was distorted with swellings, and when Adamov opened his mouth, Kessler could see tears in the gums where teeth had been broken or ripped out. He'd need stitches in a huge gash on his left temple, and his scalp was raw and bloody. His hands were like claws; they'd have to get someone to set those fingers soon, or he'd never be able to use them again.
'We're getting him a doctor. One of ours,' said Hanno. 'Poor sod. But he's lucky we found him.'
'Why did you pick him up? Why didn't you just leave him?'
Hanno smiled, 'Because we're soft-hearted. Because we thought he might just be an investment. Not many people get out of there alive, unless they're being shipped to the camps.' He moved closer to the bed, standing so that Adamov could see him, and spoke more loudly. 'Brought you someone.' Turning again to Kessler he said, 'Hope you can make sense of what he's talking about. We couldn't. But if it helps, well, remember your promise.'
He left them, and Kessler took up his position in Adamov's line of vision. Only one eye was open and that glittered deep within a mound of purple bruises, but Kessler thought he sensed a change of expression. The voice when it came was a kind of slurred mumble as the swollen tongue struggled to articulate sounds.
'Paul... is that you?'
'You remember me?'
'Friend of Maxie's.'
'Colleague. Assistant.'
'Friend. Shit, the way he used to talk about you. Come closer.'
Kessler approached the bed. There was a smell of disinfectant, covering a stale odour of decay. Adamov would be lucky if he made it, Kessler thought.
'I've got to talk to you, fast,' said Adamov. It was hard to hear him and Kessler had to lean in closer than he wanted to. 'God must have sent you.'
'Tell me what you can.'
Adamov said, 'I couldn't take it. I told them what they wanted to know, and then they tried to kill me. I should have put up with more pain. I was beyond pain anyway by then.'
'You don't know what they would have done to you next. You don't know what else they could do.'
'I couldn't stand it,' Adamov repeated, and though he did not sob, tears rolled down his cheeks. 'I couldn't help it.'
'Who questioned you?'
'Schiffer. Remember him?'
'What did you tell him?'
'Where they are. He's been to Iphofen. He had an idea. He kept at me until I broke.'
Kessler took his wrist and squeezed it gently. 'Perhaps you're right. Perhaps God did organise this meeting.'
He left hastily, without another word.
123
Waiting is the worst thing, thought Hoffmann. You can't concentrate on anything but the arrival, and a point can come in the waiting, towards the end, when your sixth sense tells you that you're waiting in vain.
He was beginning to feel like that in the late afternoon of the second day. Brandau's emissary wasn't going to get there. Two days wasted, and they were increasingly vulnerable. He'd seen his son, his son was all right, it would be placing him in greater danger if Hoffmann continued to stay, though the fact that Stefan was safe seemed proof that Hagen didn't know about him.
He'd recovered, and for two days he'd been able to eat well, wash, change his clothes, and rest. He played a few games of chess with Stefan, who usually beat him; he tried to talk to Stefan about dinosaurs and cowboys; he walked in the gardens and talked with Tilli about Kara, about the old days, about Tilli's husband, and whether she would ever see him again. Years of separation change people.
Hagen never strayed from his thoughts. Hagen wouldn't leave for South America while there was still profit in the Party. The enemy might have established a bridgehead in France a couple of months ago, but the transports to the camps went on, and supplies of Zyklon-B for the gas chambers continued to roll eastwards. As long as there was money to be made, Hagen would go on taking their commission on the shipments. The question was only whether greed or safety played the higher card in Hagen's mind. Hoffmann knew that Hagen would have his escape route planned. After so many years, he knew his man. A prior move to the relative safety of Bamberg or Nuremberg, somewhere in the Nazi heartland, would be prudent and logical.
These thoughts gave Hoffmann some relief. But he still had to track his quarry down. The man who had killed his love, and who in doing so had killed his ability to feel anything but a desire for death himself. But Hagen floated like a cork on a stream. He flourished, he never looked back. He had taken his vengeance for his own thwarted love, and enjoyed it. Now he was making a fortune out of death. He had to be brought down. Otherwise the entire fight would end without any meaning at all.
'We're not travelling without you – are you mad? What do you mean?' Tilli ground her cigarette out irritably, and took another sip of her martini.
'You've got to go, papers or not. They're after me, and sooner or later they'll find me. I can go in any direction I like, but if they track me down here, and find you and Stefan, they'll take you both.'
'I don't think Emmy and Hermann would let that happen.'
'They might not hear about it until it was too late. And if they did, do you really think they could do anything about it? The game's nearly over. The last time I saw Hermann he was so coked up he could barely cross a room; and Emmy only has power through him. We are on our own. Brandau tried to help us, but his man hasn't got through. What if they've tortured him? Got his destination out of him?'
Tilli paced the room, poured more gin for both of them.
'We must all leave,' Hoffmann continued. 'I don't think I've led them here, but I needed to know that Stefan was safe. You say the car is ready to go, and you have enough fuel for the frontier. Go fast, a car like yours would draw attention at the best of times, let alone now, but at least around here they'll know whose it is and let it go.' He paused. 'You must try to get to Switzerland, or at least somewhere where you can sit autumn and winter out - and spring. It will be over before next summer. It's a simple question of matériel. We haven't got enough supplies left. Germany is finished.'
'We're not going without you.'
'I'll follow if I can'
Tilli let her shoulders fall, elegant shoulders in a loose cocktail dress she'd put on, because, she'd no idea why, really, she would have liked to seduce this embattled man. Strange, they'd been friends for so long without her ever having felt like this about him before. Now, she wanted to be with him, even, mad as it sounded, to protect him, as she had protected Stefan. But she put the thought back. It may just have been, she supposed, because she'd been without a man for so long.
'What about travel papers?' she said. 'How am I going to cross any border without them?'
Hoffmann said, 'You must try.'
'He might still get here. Brandau said two or three days.'
'No.'
'I can't leave without you.'
'You must.'
'Give him another day.'
'The longer we leave it –'
She couldn't bear it. She walked over to him. 'Please hold me, once.'
124
The stay at Schloß Kupferstein didn't last long. Even in the last hot days of summer, the unpleasant medieval pile perched on its rock above a valley was fo
rbidding, and though they were treated with a kind of distant consideration, none of the fifty or so prisoners who'd been plucked out of Dachau for this lost castle could think that their Calvary had come to an end. Whether there were other prisoners here or not, Emma never discovered. She never saw anyone other than her travelling companions, and during that time the men were sequestered from the women.
Ten days after their arrival, Emma and the others were reunited and gathered in the great hall, where they were confronted by a jittery SS officer, who hectored them for several minutes in a thick Schwabian accent before announcing that they had a quarter of an hour to pack. When they were ready, he said, they should report to him in the principal courtyard. Once there, they were arranged in a column, five abreast, and marched out of the castle into the weak sunshine of an autumnal day. It had rained during the night, and the leaves hung heavily on the trees, spilling raindrops onto them as they marched down the long drive which led to the road. Emma walked with General Richter. She was glad to see him again. In the ten days, none of the prisoners who had travelled here had disappeared or died.
'South-west,' said the thin man after a while, but only those in his line heard him, and, away from his home turf, he wasn't entirely sure himself.
They stopped for lunch at a Wirtshaus by a river, a large party over which their SS guards hovered nervously. The sun shone more brightly now, the trees by the wayside quivered in a light breeze, and the countryside spread itself, wide and green, all around. Lunch was a simple affair, black bread and elderly cheese, gherkins, water and beer. They sat at wooden tables, on benches in the open air. They exhausted the resources of the place, and the two women who served them were scared, but otherwise it might have been a works outing. A camaraderie had developed between the prisoners, and when, in a moment of irony, someone stared singing In diesen Heilig'n Hallen, all those who knew it, including two SS-men, joined in. They laughed and clapped when it was over.
It was late when they reached the village where they were to spend the night. The SS escort corralled them in the square, nervous because they hadn't bargained on finding a detachment of regular army soldiers billeted in the same place.
'What's going on here?' Emma sensed their guards' mood change.
'They don't like the army,' General Richter said, and added, with a little more feeling, 'and the army doesn't like them.'
'One or two of our guards don't seem too unhappy about it, though.'
'I've noticed that. Probably they're men who've been forcibly conscripted into the SS.' He paused. 'It happens. Good people, usually, paratroopers, commandos, tank crew, soldiers like that. Not that putting them into black uniforms turns them into model SS-men, much as Himmler would like to think so.'
'I see.' Emma hesitated. 'Will there be trouble?'
'It's unlikely; but it's a situation worth watching.' Richter sounded thoughtful. 'We might even be able to use it. I'm sure Sun-tzu has something to say about it somewhere.'
'Who?'
Richter smiled. 'A general from years ago. Worth a read, if ever you have an idle moment.'
The regular soldiers, curious, wandered round the encampment, eyeballing the SS, offering cigarettes to the captives, tobacco-and-acorn blend, exchanging jokes, not giving a damn really. They weren't happy to see one of their generals among the prisoners.
It was a well-equipped unit, one hundred men, three trucks, two motorbikes, three jeeps, a half-track, five or six NCOs, two lieutenants, all led by a captain. General Richter recognised one of the lieutenants, who saluted him. They'd fought together somewhere - where? Maybe it'd come back to him. He made a decision, and, politely waving aside the SS-Obersturmführer who made a hesitant motion of objection, he walked over and exchanged a few words with the captain. The SS-officer watched. He didn't know what to do. He was outnumbered and outgunned, and he didn't know whose loyalty he could trust, even among his own men.
The next morning at dawn, following a night during which only the few children in the company slept at all, Richter asked the army captain and the SS-officer to join him. The general smoked, the SS-officer stood to attention, and they talked, coming to an agreement. The SS-officer kept glancing round. The regular soldiers had his men surrounded. There were five times as many of them as there were SS, so the bargain wasn't very hard to drive. It barely took half-an-hour. The four SS-men who'd been conscripted from other units embraced their old comrades and joined them. They'd have to be found different uniforms, but the quartermaster thought he could organise something. The other SS fled, shedding their firearms and their uniform jackets, leaving their officer impotent. He hesitated, bowed to Richter and the army captain, begged to be allowed to keep his service pistol. Granted this, he too fled, northwards.
'Will he shoot himself?' the captain wondered.
'He'd like us to think so,' replied Richter. 'He certainly can't go back to his unit. I think he'll try to get home. Have to lose that uniform somewhere, though.'
They turned to the crowd of prisoners, who stood about, relieved and bewildered, waiting to be told what to do.
'What are we to do with them?' said the captain to the general. 'We can't look after them, we're fucked - we'll be prisoners ourselves soon.'
'Then we'd better tell them how things stand,' said Richter, and turned to address his former fellow-prisoners. Emma watched the man becoming a general again before her eyes, as if he had ever been anything else. Richter looked at the crowd of anxious faces gathered around him and raised his voice a notch.
'We are liberated,' he said, 'but we are also alone. The army can't protect us, so we must rely on our own resources.' He paused. 'Try to head west, towards the Americans. If you want to make your way home, take indirect routes. The danger is far from past.'
'What about safe-conducts?' someone asked.
The general turned to the captain, who said, 'We can patch something together. But each one'll have to be handwritten on what paper we've got. It'll take time.'
'Do it. I'll sign them,' said Richter.
'The quartermaster has a rubber stamp and a date stamp.'
'Excellent.' Richter grinned. 'Efficiency like that, it's a wonder we didn't win.'
'They won't guarantee anything,' said the captain.
Richter looked at him. 'I know. And most of them won't have a clue how to get anywhere. But at least they're free, and no-one will come looking for them. The bit of paper will give them confidence.'
By mid-afternoon only the army detachment remained, with Richter and Emma.
'We must move on, sir,' said the captain. 'We need to put a bit of distance between us and the scene of the crime.'
'Good luck,' said Richter.
'What will you do?'
Richter spread his hands. 'Make for safety. Himmler will want me dead when he hears about this.'
The captain looked thoughtful. His troops were climbing aboard their trucks. 'You can hardly walk to Switzerland,' he said.
'What do you suggest?'
The captain excused himself, and went to talk to his lieutenants. Quickly he was back. 'We're moving out now, sir. And we're leaving you a little present. Lieutenant von Hammerstein served with you in Libya.'
'I remember now,' said Richter, saluting von Hammerstein again. 'What are you leaving me?'
'Something you have commandeered from us, sir. Officially.' He nodded to his right. Richter followed with his eyes and grinned.
The captain stood back a pace, saluted, and climbed into the lead jeep. The two lieutenants climbed into a second jeep, the NCOs and the remainder of the troops not already in the trucks clambered into the half-track, and the motorcyclists mounted and started their machines. The noise of the engines battered the silence of the countryside as they moved off, trailing exhaust fumes and dust.
Richter and Emma watched the column out of sight. Then the quiet returned, and there was nothing but the sound of the wind in the trees, and, from somewhere, the insistent, repetitive song of a yellowhammer.
> 'A little bit of bread and no cheese,' murmured Emma to herself, her eyes far away, remembering a distant English lesson.
Five metres away sat the third jeep, with two jerry cans of water and one of petrol, and a half-full tank.
'We'd better get going,' said Richter. 'Coming?'
125
Bureaucracy having guaranteed that communication between the Gestapo and the regular police, never good, was now virtually non-existent, Schiffer spent a long time on the telephone and throwing his weight around in offices before he was grudgingly signed over a car and three men.
He'd lost valuable time, but now he was on the road. It was a roomy car, big enough to take his prisoner back securely, and he tried to settle himself for the journey, looking at the outskirts of Munich as they gave way to scrappy countryside. He'd had no news of Kessler, for his contact with his tracker had been broken off for a crucial day; but he couldn't indulge the hope that the man was nowhere near. For the seventh time in five minutes, he looked at his watch. He couldn't sit back for long, he preferred to sit upright, lean forward even, willing the car on, though it was already going as fast as the road would allow. Would they have already left? Would he find Hoffmann there? If he did, it would be the coup of his life. Why then, in a remote corner of his mind, lurked the hope that he would not?
But it was too late for that.
They got lost once, and consulted the map. That was the only time anyone spoke. The men had their orders, were experienced, knew the drill. The additional waste of time irritated Schiffer more, he knew, than was reasonable. The last thing he wanted to do was to antagonise his crew, men he did not know. But at last they saw the trees and the broad red roofs.