Alphabet House

by Adler-Olsen, Jussi

  James got up and grabbed hold of Bryan just as a long burst of machine-gun fire ceased. The slope was steep. It was extremely dangerous to charge down it in their stiff boots, not to mention their stiff, frozen feet that were incapable of feeling any unevenness in the ground. The bullets started whistling over their heads again.

  Bryan reached some flatter ground a few hundred yards further on and glanced quickly behind him. James was running after him as if all his joints were frozen, fingers splayed and his head cocked backward. Behind him a torrent of soldiers poured softly over the hillside and slithered down the first steep incline on their backs as they approached.

  This delayed the soldiers a bit and the shots ceased for some valuable seconds. When they started firing again they were off target. Maybe the bastards were already tired! Perhaps they would leave the rest of the work to the dogs.

  Lithe and muscular, the barking killing machines broke rank without hesitation as they’d been taught.

  When Bryan reached the bottom of the slope he could see a fair distance in both directions in the pale morning light.

  In front of him two trains were approaching, one from each direction, thus preventing them from disappearing into the windbreaks on the other side of the tracks. A loud explosion made Bryan jump. James had managed to draw his Enfield revolver on the run. A sprawling black patch in the snow behind him confirmed that James had wounded an attacking dog.

  The three remaining dogs made instinctively for the two men’s tracks and headed straight for James’ back.

  In its thirst for blood, a German shepherd had torn itself away from its master so the chain entangled between its legs slowed it down somewhat compared to the two Dobermans.

  The snow whirled around Bryan and James again. The scattered gunfire was sure to get them before long.

  James fired again. Bryan fingered the flap of his revolver holster and took hold of the butt. Then he stepped to one side and took aim as James dashed past him.

  For a fatal second the dog James had just wounded was distracted by Bryan’s manoeuvre, snapping in the air just as the shot rang out. The animal rolled over several times before lying still. Without hesitation the other dogs made instinctively for Bryan’s arms and chest. He was knocked over, managing to shoot one of them as it fell on him, but not wounding it seriously.

  He struck a hard blow to the neck of the German shepherd on his left with his revolver butt. It fell beside him, lifeless. Jumping to his feet, he faced the first animal, which was already springing towards him.

  The instant the dog seized hold of his arm, it began shaking its victim. It had no intention of letting go in this lifetime. A hard kick from Bryan lifted the cur off the ground, making it possible for him to turn his hand and fire his revolver. As the animal’s body hit the ground, he slid and dropped the revolver. Then the sub-machine guns began rattling again. There was no longer any danger of them hitting their dogs, since all three were now lying stretched out in the snow.

  James was about a hundred feet ahead, stooping as he ran, his leather jacket hanging loosely on his shoulders. His whole body quaked every time his foot hit the ground.

  Then, a few hundred feet further down the hollow to the east, another patrol came into view. Their aim was unsure but their very presence left Bryan and James no other alternative than to keep running straight down towards the railway line and the two trains that would soon block their path.

  Bryan was out of breath, casting his head from side to side in an attempt to catch up with James. A crazy idea had struck him. If they were hit, which seemed inevitable now, it would nevertheless be better to die close to one another.

  The first train to cross their path arrived from the east along the line nearest to them.

  The engine crew watched passively as the patrols gained on them from behind and from the sides. One after another, the absurd sight of brown, wooden carriages with red crosses painted on them rumbled past in the barren white countryside. Not a single face was to be seen in the carriages’ few windows.

  Next, two joined armoured engines pulling their grey-green string of carriages came snorting along the eastbound track and soon disappeared out of view behind the engine of the hospital train in the foreground. The soldiers on the roofs of the armoured train’s rear carriages had already caught sight of them and were making a move, but couldn’t fire at such an oblique angle for fear of hitting the hospital train.

  Bryan took long strides forward, stepping in the bootprints James had made a moment before. James’ laboured breathing in front of him made a whistling sound. Bryan slowed down and looked back.

  James reached the train just as two carriages were passing. He set up his pace and reached for the nearest handrail. In a flash, he was caught in a grip so far down the metal railing that it was impossible to swing his foot up on to the bottommost step. The sweat in his palm had instantly frozen to ice. He was just about to lose his balance and fall under the axles when Bryan caught up and tried to grab hold of him.

  The hard shove forced James forward towards the nearest stepladder. Running awkwardly sideways, he swung his free arm round like a windmill so as not to lose his balance. After a few whirls he lost his Enfield as it was flung up over the train in a wide arc. Then he stumbled and was dragged along the railway sleepers for a moment, fastened to the carriage by his frozen hand. Every time a sleeper struck him, he swung dangerously close to the wheels. Then, with a superhuman effort, he kicked out one leg and regained his balance. Bryan took a few more running steps and sprang onto the front of the carriages, grasping the handrail so briefly that only a tiny piece of skin froze to it and was torn off.

  ‘I’ve got hold now!’ shouted James, hauling himself upward so violently that he was almost slung sideways into the metal steps.

  Diagonally behind them, the advance guard of the first patrol came into sight, their faces blue with frost and far too tired to keep their balance in the gently drifting snow. One of the soldiers tried to grab the ladder to the roof of the last carriage, but he tumbled forward in the attempt, tripping along on his toes. Finally he stumbled, somersaulting heavily over the railway sleepers.

  Then he lay still.

  Meanwhile, the armoured train had passed them in the other direction and the hospital train was still accelerating.

  Only then did their pursuers give up the chase.

  Chapter 3

  Faint, dancing silhouettes of naked trees appeared on the hilltops south of the rumbling train.

  James had gradually recovered his breath and was patting his friend on the back. ‘Sit up, Bryan. You’ll catch pneumonia!’

  Both men’s teeth were chattering.

  ‘We can’t stay out here,’ said Bryan, who lay flat on the platform of the icy carriage.

  The track curved gently towards a row of hills, allowing them a brief view of where they were heading.

  ‘If we stay out here we’ll freeze to death or be picked off when we pass a station. We have to jump off as soon as we can.’

  Bryan stared blankly in front of him as he listened to the accelerating thumping of the rail joints underneath him. ‘Awful business – all of it!’ he added quietly.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ James didn’t look at Bryan. ‘Can you get up?’

  ‘I don’t think I’m any more the worse for wear than you are,’ James replied.

  ‘At least it’s a good thing we wound up on a hospital train. We’ve got beds just inside that door.’

  Neither of them laughed. James reached for the handle and wriggled it a bit with his fingertips. The door was locked.

  Bryan shrugged his shoulders. The idea was crazy. ‘We’ll just get shot the instant we open the door. Who knows what’s behind there?’

  James knew what he meant. No one trusted a red cross when it was painted on something German. They’d been misusing that sign of mercy for a long time, which was why Allied fighter pilots no longer spared transport trains like this one. James and Bryan knew this all too well. />
  And so what if it really was a hospital train? The Germans’ hatred of Allied pilots was understandable, just as he himself had good reason to hate the pilots in the Luftwaffe. They all had much too much on their conscience to find room for mercy. All of those who were taking part in this demented war.

  A single glance from James drew a nod from Bryan. His eyes showed nothing but sadness.

  Their good luck couldn’t be interminable.

  The train rushed past a level crossing with a jolt. James stuck his head out cautiously and looked ahead. It was morning, but still dark. The countryside lay sleeping. There was no clue as to what the next curve, or the curve after that, might bring.

  Sounds of movement were beginning to come from inside the car. Morning had arrived. Now the medical orderlies could start their work.

  A quick tap on his woollen collar made James look up. Bryan had drawn himself in completely behind the door and signalled to James to do likewise.

  A second afterwards the handle turned. A very young man stuck his head out, drew in a breath of fresh air and sighed contentedly. Thank God the wind was coming from the north, so the orderly had to step all the way to the edge of the platform with his back to them before unzipping his fly.

  Bryan laid his hand on James’ arm as it started trembling nervously, but James withdrew it and transferred his weight onto the leg best situated for a sudden leap. The orderly bent his knees a little and farted. Then with satisfaction and relief he shook the last drops of urine out into the wind.

  From Bryan’s position it looked as if James didn’t move until the orderly turned around. The blow fell mercilessly across the German’s dumbfounded face, and toppled him backwards. A dull thud and the body’s abrupt angles signified the orderly’s death against a naked elm trunk standing in solitary majesty on the embankment they’d just passed. The body continued its fall and disappeared behind some frosted scrub.

  It would not be discovered for the time being.

  Bryan was appalled. Never before had they stood face to face with the death they had so often occasioned others. James leaned against the vibrating end wall. ‘There was nothing else I could do, Bryan. It was him or us!’

  Bryan laid his forehead against James’ cheek and sighed. ‘It won’t be easy to give ourselves up now, James!’

  The chance of doing so had otherwise been perfect. The young medical orderly had been alone and unarmed. But it was too late for regrets. What was done was done. The tracks rushed past beneath them and the bumps from the rails ticked faster and faster.

  If they jumped off now they would be pulverized in the fall.

  James turned his head and put his ear to the door. All was quiet inside. Recent experience had taught him to dry his palms on his trousers before he gingerly took hold of the handle of the rattling door, put his finger to his lips and stuck his head halfway through the crack in the door.

  Then he signalled for Bryan to follow.

  The light was dim inside the carriage. A partition marked the transition to a larger compartment beyond, from which muffled sounds and a tiny chink of light reached them. Just below the roof were hung some shelves stuffed with jars, bottles, tubes and cardboard boxes of every conceivable size. In the corner was a footstool. This was the domain of the night orderly.

  The kid whose life they had just taken.

  James cautiously zipped open his jacket and signalled to Bryan to do likewise with his flying suit.

  Soon they were wearing only shirts with torn sleeves and long underwear. James had flung the rest of their clothes off the carriage platform, out into the wind.

  They were just hoping that anyone seeing them in such get-up wouldn’t immediately shoot them.

  The sight behind the partition made them stop dead in their tracks. Scores of soldiers lay packed closely together in narrow steel beds or on grey-striped kapok mattresses jammed against one another on the floor. A narrow strip of bare wooden planks led down to the other end. It was the only way they could go. Several expressionless, sleepy faces turned towards them without any apparent reaction. Many of the shapes lying there were still in uniform. None were rank and file soldiers.

  There was an oppressive stench of urine and faeces blended with the faint, sickly smells of camphor and chloroform. Many of the badly wounded men lay there making gurgling noises, jaws hanging. But none were complaining.

  Walking slowly past with measured steps, James nodded at those in which he could see a bit of life. Thin, unwashed sheets were all that shielded them against the cold.

  One man reached out weakly towards Bryan, who smiled weakly in return. James almost fell over a protruding foot. He put his hand to his mouth to stifle his cry of surprise and looked down at the soldier. The gaze that met him was cold and lifeless. The officer had presumably lain dead on the floor all night and was still lying there, clutching a gauze compress.

  The gauze bandage was clean, but along the mattress were clotted crusts of the blood that suddenly and profusely must have left the poor devil.

  James whisked the roll of gauze out of the dead man’s hand and put it up to his lacerated earlobe from which blood was streaming again. Just then they heard a rumbling and clanking sound from the end of the carriage from which they’d just come.

  ‘Let’s go!’ whispered James.

  ‘Mightn’t we just as well stay where we are?’ asked Bryan, as they stood in the passageway. Most of the floor here was covered with used surgical dressings that left a sickly stench.

  ‘Haven’t you got eyes in your head, Bryan?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The officers in this carriage are wearing SS insignias. All of them! What do you think will happen if it’s SS soldiers who discover us first, instead of the medical orderlies?’ He flashed Brian a dark smile. Then his lips tightened and his gaze hardened. ‘I promise I’ll get us out of this, if you just leave the decisions to me!’

  Bryan was silent.

  ‘Is that OK?’ James’ expression became urgent.

  ‘Yep, that’s OK.’ Bryan attempted a smile. A bucket full of chrome-plated instruments jingled at his feet. An indeterminate dark liquid was splashed up its sides.

  Everything seemed to indicate that this train’s main purpose was to take Germany’s sons home in – rather than to – German soil.

  If this was a standard hospital train, the Eastern Front must be hell on earth.

  The next carriage was not dark. Several light bulbs shone down over the two rows of beds that were packed together along the walls.

  James stopped behind one of the beds to flip through the patient’s chart. Then he nodded to the patient, who was in another world, and went on to the next bed. At the sight of the next chart he stopped abruptly. Bryan walked cautiously up to him and glanced at the chart.

  ‘What’s it say?’ he whispered.

  ‘It says “Schwarz, Siegfried Anton. Born 10/10 /1907, Hauptsturmführer”.’

  James let the chart fall and looked him straight in the eyes. ‘They’re all SS officers! This carriage, too, Bryan.’

  One of the patients nearest them had already been dead for some hours. A resourceful orderly had secured the maimed arm to an overhead beam, so it was undisturbed by the sporadic jolting. James looked at the man’s armpit, started, and grabbed Bryan.

  A scream from the carriage they’d just left aroused the man whose chart they had just studied. He looked at the two of them with saliva bubbling in the corners of his mouth.

  Further along the train, where the carriages were coupled together with coarse, dark brown, concertina-pleated canvas, they sensed the next carriage was different. The sound of the rails was more subdued. The door handle was made of brass and the door slid open without creaking.

  Here there was no partition. A few light bulbs shed their yellowish glow over ten beds placed in parallel rows so close together that the nursing staff could scarcely wedge themselves between them. Glass bottles containing life-sustaining liquids hung over th
e beds and clinked faintly against the metal stands. It was the only sound that came in that carriage. But voices could clearly be heard from the next.

  James squeezed in between the first beds and bent over the nearest patient. He stood for a moment observing the sick man’s chest, which rose and sank almost imperceptibly. Then he turned round without a word and put his ear to the next patient in the region of his heart.

  ‘What the devil are you doing, James?’ protested Bryan, as quietly as he could.

  ‘Find one who’s dead – but hurry!’ said James, without looking at him as he swept past to listen to the next one.

  ‘You don’t intended us to lie in these beds, do you?’ Bryan didn’t believe this crazy notion for a moment.

  The look James sent him as he briefly straightened up gave him no reason to think otherwise. ‘Got a better idea?’ was all his eyes seemed to say.

  ‘They’ll kill us, James! If not for the orderly, then for doing this.’

  ‘Shut up, Bryan. They’ll kill us anyway, on any pretext they can get away with. Be sure of that!’ James suddenly stood up from the next bed and shoved the body forward into a sitting position. Then he stripped the hospital shirt off over the man’s head and let him fall back again, arms dangling heavily and limply over the sides of the bed.

  ‘Help me with this,’ he ordered, as he pulled a hypodermic needle out of the dead man’s arm and whipped the blanket off him. A rotten stench made Bryan gasp.

  Next, James pushed the body further forward, forcing Bryan to grab hold of it. The dead man’s skin was bruised and cool, but not cold. Waves of nausea made Bryan hold his breath and look away as James wrenched at the hasps of the nearest window, his knuckles hard and white.

  The icy air from the half-open window made Bryan feel faint and almost fall. James pulled the body partly out of Bryan’s grasp, raised its left arm slightly, glanced underneath it and then at the soldier’s face. He was not much older than they were.