by Alan Glenn
Aches and pains everywhere, Sam walked out into the cloudy sunshine, the sound of the equipment thumping in his brain. Up ahead, a gate opened at a fence, and he was pushed in.
“Barracks Six, your new home. Work hard, and you’ll have a nice life.”
More laughter, and he walked unsteadily forward, by himself knowing he was no longer Sam Miller, police inspector for the city of Portsmouth. He was cold, he ached, and his ribs and jaw hurt. He was inside the camp for real, in an area filled with barracks, the ground packed dirt. In the distance the walls of the quarry rose up on three sides, smoke and dust in the air. He stood before one of the barracks, shivering, the thin clothing providing hardly any protection. He rubbed at his eyes, crusted from the stone dust in the air. Barracks Six, the numeral painted in dark blue. It was made of rough-hewn wood and built on square concrete piers. His new home. He opened the door. It creaked.
Darkness.
Strong stench of unwashed bodies, other odors as well.
He took a step in, his eyes adjusting to the weak light. There were bunks crammed tight, floor to ceiling, four beds up. Movement as well, as men turned to stare at him, raising their thin shaved heads. He took a step forward, winced at the sharp pain in his ribs and hips.
“Hello?” he said.
Voices murmured in his direction. He took another step forward, the boards creaking underfoot.
The heads turned away. He kept on walking, trying to breathe through his mouth, to block out the stench that seemed to surround him like an old blanket as he went deeper into the barracks. Two small coal stoves with chimneys going up through the roof, more bunks, and in the very rear, what had to be the latrine, for the stench was thicker there. By the latrine was an empty bunk. He saw a bare mattress, a single blanket folded at the end, and a threadbare pillow.
One man unfolded himself from a nearby bunk and came over, favoring one hip. “You new, eh?” the man said.
“Yeah, I am,” Sam said.
“Thought so. Look too clean, too fresh. American?”
“Yeah.”
The man was about six inches shorter than Sam, his head close-shaved. He had a thin dark beard and a prominent Adam’s apple. His prison uniform hung like old laundry on his thin body. “My name is Otto,” he said.
“I’m Sam. Are you German?”
Otto shook his head. “Netherlander. Dutch. Though originally German. Are you Juden?”
“Excuse me?”
“Juden. Jew.”
“No, I’m not.”
Otto looked nervous. “Ah. So why are you here?”
“Because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and asked the wrong questions.” Sam looked at the faces and said, “Why are they staring at me?”
Otto glanced back and said, “They are nervous. You are clean, an American, and you say you’re not a Jew. They think you are a spy. An informer. Who can blame them?”
“And you?”
The Dutchman cocked his head. “Not sure. Maybe I’m more trusting. Who knows, eh?”
Sam said, “Look, are you all Jews here?”
“Of course.”
“From where?”
Otto shrugged. “Everywhere. Germany. Poland. Holland. Even some English in another bunkhouse, all Jews.”
“How did you get here?”
Another shrug. “How else? We were taken from other camps, brought into trains and then ships. Ships across the Atlantic. All of us got very sick. And then to a military port. Virginia, I think, and then another train here.”
Sam could barely believe what he had just heard. “You mean you all came here from Europe?”
“Yes, of course.”
“But why are you here?” Sam asked.
Otto smiled, his lips twitching mirthlessly. “We all volunteered.”
“Volunteered? To come here to this camp?”
Otto’s smile remained. “Of course. Why wouldn’t we?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Why would you volunteer?”
“America. We were told we would come to America to work, to survive, and even if we came here to work, who would not want to come to America?”
Sam looked to the man’s wrist.
It bore a series of tattooed numbers.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Sam was in his bunk, breathing in the stench, listening to the wheezing and snoring from his bunkmates. Every now and then somebody would crying out in a dream in a foreign language. His shoes were off and tied about his neck—earlier Otto had warned him, “Thieves everywhere, so keep your shoes close”—and he stared up into the shadows.
At last he knew the secrets of the camps. Refugee Jews from Europe were being transported to America to work in quarries, mines, and forests. Slave labor, long hours, long days, and all they got was poor food—supper had been oatmeal and chunks of stale bread—and a place to sleep. They had all volunteered to come here.
Petr Wowenstein had escaped from a research facility in New Mexico and had been murdered in Portsmouth.
But why?
Sam rolled into his pillow, his shoes striking the side of his face, trying to get comfortable and failing.
Did it matter anymore?
Petr Wowenstein had escaped from a camp and ended up in Sam’s hometown.
Investigating his murder had brought Sam to the same kind of camp. But as a prisoner, not an investigator.
* * *
He woke with a start, hitting his head on the overhead roof frame, the shoes nearly strangling him. Men were shouting, banging gongs, yelling, “Out! Out! Raus! Raus! Everybody out! Jeder heraus!”
He dropped out of his bunk, pulled his shoes off his neck, and struggled to put them on his swollen feet. The bunkhouse was still unlit, so he bumped into his bunkmates as he moved outside into the assembly area. The morning air was frigid and he started shivering, rubbing at his arms. He could not believe what he saw. Long’s Legionnaires were there, overseeing the rows of prisoners, but they had been joined by German soldiers … No, not soldiers. Their uniforms were black, with polished black boots, caps with skull symbols in the center. SS. German SS were there, helping the Legionnaires, laughing and joking, carrying short whips.
“Bunkhouse Six, Bunkhouse Six, at attention!” yelled a tall, thin Legionnaire who was joined by an SS trooper who yelled out, “Bunkhouse Sechs, Bunkhouse Sechs, an der Aufmerksamkeit!”
The Legionnaire counted out the number of prisoners before him, making notes, and Sam kept on shivering, thinking, This can’t be real, cannot be true, German SS and Long’s Legionnaires, stormtroopers from each side of the Atlantic, cooperating and working together as one in the mountains of Vermont. There had been a few news reports of Long’s Legionnaires traveling to Germany to visit their compatriots, but never had there been mention of the reverse. It was like some nightmare that his upstairs neighbor would be writing for one of those fantasy magazines.
The Legionnaire yelled something to a camp official, and then Sam joined his bunkmates as they marched out to the quarries, flanked by Long’s Legionnaires and SS stormtroopers.
* * *
His job was simple. By an area where cutting tools and drills made incisions into the marble wall, he had a shovel to scoop up marble chips that were processed later for some other use. The stone reared above him for scores of feet, and other prisoners scrambled up and down scaffolding, carrying tools. Only a few Legionnaires and SS men watched, content to sit in wooden chairs and gossip among themselves. Sam’s hands quickly blistered as he shoveled marble chips into open wooden wagons. Once during the morning, he had a few words with Otto, who was carrying lengths of wood scaffolding.
Sam said, “You volunteered for this?”
The man laughed. “It is easier work than before, over there. The food, not good, but enough. And here, the guards are forbidden to shoot us unless we try to escape. We may be beaten here and there, but to live, we are living here better than in the camps in Germany and Poland. And you? Why are you here?”
>
Sam shoveled up some chips. “I’m a cop. From a city called Portsmouth. In New Hampshire. Came here investigating a murder back home.”
Otto said, “You should have stayed home, eh?”
Sam coughed, leaned on his shovel. “Maybe so. What about you?”
Otto’s face darkened. “Ach, we are the lucky ones. You see there are no women and children here, eh? Only we capable of work were allowed to leave. Our family members, left behind. For them, who knows how they are …”
The Jew scurried away. Sam picked up his shovel and went back to work.
* * *
Breakfast came after two hours of work, a soup wagon pulled by a tired horse, ribs showing, plodding along. Thick oatmeal, cold toast smeared with foul-tasting margarine, and a mug of weak coffee. It was filling but something Sam would have sneered at earlier.
God, he thought, earlier. He went back to the marble chips, picked up his shovel, waited a moment. Look at what doing his job had gotten him. Right in the very heart of hell. His brother, Tony, would probably bust a gut laughing. Tony the hell-raiser, the criminal—Tony was a free man. And his Eagle Scout and high school football star brother, his Goody Two-shoes brother, he was in a camp, a place worse than Tony’s, a place where—
The blow to his back knocked him to the ground, the marble chips shredding his clothing, bloodying his knees. He got back up quick, shovel held up, facing the SS officer who had just belted him with his whip. The officer had fair skin, blond hair, and a sharp nose, and snapped, “Zurück zu Arbeit, Juden!” Beside him was a Legionnaire wearing glasses and a thick mustache, his uniform muddy and worn. Sam choked out, “I don’t know what that fucking Nazi just said.”
The Legionnaire laughed. “Man, I guess you’re not from away, ’cause no guy here would raise a shovel to a Kraut. He said, ‘Back to work, Jew,’ so I suggest you do that. Even if you are an American, you ain’t an American here.”
Sam was going to say that he wasn’t Jewish but didn’t. He lowered his shovel.
Lunch wasn’t as rushed as breakfast. The prisoners were allowed to sit and stretch their legs and eat from metal bowls of stew with water and chunks of stale bread. Again Sam found himself next to Otto, who was leaning up against a pile of lumber. Sam said, “What did you do before the war?”
“Before the war? Ran a business in Amsterdam. Nice, safe, boring job. Someday I hope to be picked for my skills and get away from this stonework. They do that, you know. If they have a need—electricians, plumbers, university professors—they get picked and sent where they’re needed at special camps.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Eight months. Before that, I was somewhere in the South. Very hot. We cut trees in the swamps. Lots of bugs, too.”
“And before that?”
He shook his head. “Don’t want to remember that. It was a camp in Poland, very bad. Then one day an officer came in with an American in a nice suit. Volunteers for labor in America. Who would go? All of us, if we could, and here we are.”
Sam shoveled in a few more spoonfuls of stew. “What happens to the marble? Or the wood that was cut? Where does it go?”
“Trains,” Otto told him. “Loaded on trains. And why do we care? We work, we survive, we even get paid.”
“Paid? Money?”
“Yes, one dollar a week. We can use the money to buy things at a camp store on Sunday. Like soap. Razors. Tea.”
Sam finished his stew and wiped the bowl clean with a piece of bread. “Otto, have people escaped?”
“There have been attempts, yes. But how far can someone go, someone who is a stranger here? Eh? And dressed like this?”
“Have any attempts succeeded?”
Otto stared at him. “Are you thinking of escaping then, eh?”
Sam thought for a moment, not sure he could trust this fellow prisoner. “Just thinking aloud, that’s all.”
“Then think about this, my friend. If someone escapes from our barracks, everyone is sent to the cooler for punishment. Water only, no food for a week. And then one man from the barracks, he is chosen by lot and shot. For it is thought by the guards—helped by the Germans, of course—that shooting one from a barracks will discourage the others. It works. Most time.”
Sam kept quiet, stopped eating.
“So I ask you, my new American friend, is that what you will do? Try to escape? To sentence me or one of my bunkmates to torture and then death?”
Sam said, “I don’t know what I’ll do, but I need to get out and—”
“We all need to get out.” The voice was harsh. “We all want to leave. But where to go, eh? To be a Jew in this world now … there are no longer any safe places. None! So we live to live another day, and that is what we do. And here we are reasonably safe. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I do.”
“No, you don’t,” the Dutchman shot back. “Here. I will tell you a tale. Mmm, no, not a tale but a true story. In the South, cutting trees, I knew a schoolteacher from a village in Poland. His name was Rothstein. One day, months after the invasion, special German police units came to his village and took out all the Jews and brought them to the town square. There, in the hot June sun, they made them sit still. No water. No shade. No food. And the Germans laughed. And they took photographs. They told the Jews, ‘You move, you will die. Understand?’ An old man, he couldn’t help himself. He tried to stretch his cramped legs. They shot him. A woman screamed. They shot her. Near Rothstein, his two-year-old nephew, he squirmed out of his mother’s arms, tried to run away, and the mother cried and a German policeman, he picked up the boy by his ankle, dangled him before everyone, and put a pistol to the child’s head and shot him. Rothstein, he was splattered with his nephew’s blood and brains. That happened in a place where Jews had lived for hundreds of years in safety and sanctuary. Now … nothing. Even here, in your America. We are no longer safe. So tell me, are you going to have me killed? Or one of my bunkmates? Are you so important that this will happen?”
Sam didn’t reply. Otto said, “And about your Jews. They have moved themselves to ghettos, haven’t they, afraid of what might happen to them. We know that news as well. Your Jews have not been rounded up, eh, not yet the pogroms and the arrests. But will their time come? Like ours?”
A whistle blew, sending them all back to work, ensuring Sam didn’t have to come up with an answer, for he had none to give.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
The afternoon dragged by, monotonous and backbreaking work, splinters from the shovel handle digging into his palms, blisters breaking into blood and pus, keeping his head down, just shoveling, trying not to breathe in the stone dust kicked up by the drilling and cutting. When the whistle blew again, he trudged back to the barracks with his new bunkmates, and he understood the look of those prisoners he had seen. It was the look of hopelessness, of giving up and knowing one’s place. What was real was what was before one’s nose, and nothing else. To live was to get through a day without being beaten, without being shot, and to eat as much food as possible, all to live one more day.
That was the life inside the wire.
And to get out, to successfully escape, was to doom some stranger in his barracks to death. Up ahead was Barracks Six, and the line of men moved in. A Legionnaire he recognized from yesterday was standing by the door; he crooked a finger at Sam’s direction.
“You, cop.” The Legionnaire’s face was pockmarked from old acne scars. “Time to finish some business.”
The Legionnaire grabbed Sam’s arm and pulled him out of line. Sam’s bunkmates cast their eyes down, as if afraid that by paying any attention they, too, would be dragged away. Sam shook off the man’s arm and the man laughed easily. “All right, pal, just come along and there won’t be no problem.”
He walked with the Legionnaire, each step heavy and painful, seeing a wooden and wire gate ahead of them open up, with watchtowers on every side. Now they went to the right, to a small concrete building that stood next to yes
terday’s processing facility. Inside it smelled of chemicals and sweat, and an older man in a white coat and with wavy gray hair sat at a wooden table, glasses perched on the end of his nose. Nearby were bottles of ink and shiny instruments. The old man looked up and asked in a German accent, “He’s not a Jew, is he?”
“Nope,” the Legionnaire answered. “But he’s a guest here, just the same.”
The old man laughed. “Knew he wasn’t a Jew. Can always tell. All right, bring him over.”
At the man’s elbow was an open thick leather-bound ledger, and Sam saw rows of names and numbers. It was as if icicles were tracing themselves up and down his back. He knew what was planned for him. He was about to be branded as a hunk of meat, like the poor bastards around him, like his homicide victim.
“Hey, now,” the older man instructed. “Hold your wrist out. And be quick, I’m late for my supper.”
Sam didn’t move.
The Legionnaire slapped him. The pain shot through him. The Legionnaire urged, “Now, boy, hurry up!”
Sam glared at the Legionnaire, then rolled up the sleeve on his left arm. He held his wrist out, the man pulled a humming metal instrument close, a tattooing needle at the end of a handle, brought it down to Sam’s wrist, and he felt the harsh sting as the painful marking began, branding him forever as a prisoner—
Sam balled his other hand into a fist, punched upward, caught the old man under the chin. The old man grunted in shock, and Sam heard the Legionnaire call out. Sam grabbed the needle, seized the man’s right hand, pulled it forward, took the needle, and slammed it into the hand. The man howled and then the Legionnaire was on him, beating him, and Sam hurt as he punched and kicked, and through the pain, it all felt good.
He had fought back.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Hours later, Sam lay on his side, breathing shallowly, his ribs hurting. He had been dragged from the tattoo room to a place called the cooler, and damn, that was a good turn of phrase, because it was fucking freezing. It was a concrete cell block without a mattress pad, blanket, or pillow, just a covered bucket in the corner for shit and piss, and right now, even though his bladder was screaming for release, he couldn’t drag himself the four or five feet to the bucket.