by Ben Stevens
This time, he walked with the crouched, dejected air of a man who knows he is finished. He entered inside the front reception, where several smartly-dressed men and women were still working despite the lateness of the hour. He had on his thick black coat, and hat.
‘I am here to see…Major Fleischer,’ he said almost in a murmur to one stern-faced young woman.
She did not reply, but merely nodded and picked up a phone-receiver. Turning her head away from him, she quickly said something he could not hear and then put the receiver back down.
‘Wait,’ she instructed Reinhardt curtly. Clearly, she was already aware that this facially-disfigured man was effectively under arrest.
A couple of minutes later, a tough-looking young man in a black uniform approached.
‘Come with me,’ he said, taking Fleischer by the arm.
The Captain allowed himself almost to be pulled along, despair and fear registering on his damaged face as he was led out of the lobby and down a succession of staircases – descending into the very bowels of this large building.
Soon he was walking along long, ill-lit corridors, with doors of thick wood braced with metal on either side. They looked strong, sturdy – and soundproof.
At the end of one corridor, outside one of these doors, the uniformed man pulled Reinhardt to a halt. The man pushed first the door open, and then Reinhardt inside.
The room stank of damp, sweat, fear and something else which Reinhardt didn’t even want to try identifying. Moisture rolled down the exposed brickwork and the crumbling cement. The floor was of cement and stained in numerous places a dark-red color. An exposed bulb dangling from the ceiling gave a weak, sickly light.
In the centre of the room was an old wooden desk with a black telephone and an angled lamp set upon it. Sat on one side of this desk was Major Fleischer, his skull-like face smirking up at Reinhardt.
An unoccupied wooden chair was on the other side of the desk. It was much-chipped, as though it had violently impacted with the concrete floor on numerous occasions.
‘Take a seat, my dear Captain,’ said Fleischer, his soft lisping voice instantly causing fear to shoot like ice along Reinhardt’s spine.
There was a thud as the door behind him was closed – and then the sound of a key being turned in the metal lock. Reinhardt swallowed thickly, and blinked rapidly several times.
‘We are very much alone down here, Captain Reinhardt, of that I assure you,’ continued the Gestapo Major. ‘Also, Captain… But – why am I still addressing you by your rank? After all, we now know you’re just another filthy Jew, who’s managed to conceal his identity up until now…’
He paused, his beady, rat-like eyes staring unblinkingly at Reinhardt. Reinhardt bowed his head, nodding slightly as though he felt compelled to agree with Fleischer’s description of him.
Evidently satisfied with Reinhardt’s dejected appearance, Fleischer said then –
‘For your sake, I hope you have some information concerning other Jews who are currently in hiding. For I’m certain that you do know something – and I will get this information one way or the other. This room is very soundproof; and the man stood behind you has such… shall we say, persuasive methods of getting people to talk…’
‘For heaven’s sake, Major…’ Reinhardt almost squealed. ‘I have a list, I promise you…’
‘Show me it,’ ordered Fleischer. ‘And then sit down…’
Nodding in a servile manner, Reinhardt put one shaking hand inside the top of his thick coat...
Then abruptly his expression of crippling fear disappeared, along with any trembling. A pistol appeared in his hand – he spun round, firing a single shot. The young man in the black uniform barely had a second to register what was happening, before his brains blew out of the back of his head and spattered onto the brickwork behind. The man fell first to his knees, and then face down on the concrete floor.
Reinhardt didn’t see the man fall. Already he was back facing Fleischer, who snarled as he realized that he wasn’t going to be able to draw his own gun quite in time. The snarl then changed to a cry of pain as Reinhardt fired low, into his gut.
The Gestapo man – who’d hurriedly stood up in his attempt to draw his own gun – collapsed backwards over his chair, onto the floor.
‘Really, Major, I’m disappointed,’ declared Reinhardt, walking around the desk and kicking the gun out of Fleischer’s hand. It went spinning across the floor.
‘You took great pleasure before in boasting to me about this ‘methodical patience’ of yours; how you systematically set about gathering the information you require, and yet you did not know that I – just like all members of my department, even Jonas Schroder – had compulsory weaponry training some time ago? And that I showed a certain ability, shall we say, at using a pistol – so much so that I’ve kept in regular practice ever since?’
Reinhardt tutted, and shook his head.
‘If you’d known this, you might well have had me searched upstairs – just as I was searched that time I met Adolf Hitler, seeking to secure the release of Jonas Schroder from out of your clutches and also to obtain authorization for a certain… project.
‘Anyway – this failure to have me searched was a bad oversight on your behalf, if I may say so, Major.’
The beady little eyes now burnt with pain and rage, staring murderously up at Reinhardt. Fleischer was sat slumped against one wall, both hands covering his bullet wound.
‘Painful, isn’t it Major?’ observed Reinhardt almost sympathetically. ‘One of the worst places to be shot other than the groin – at least, so I was informed on that firearms’ course I attended.
‘Anyway, I currently find myself in a dilemma. You see, originally it seemed enough that I would have the satisfaction of killing you, Major. Hopefully also having the opportunity to exchange a few… shall we say, ‘free and frank’ words first – as indeed is currently the case. Then I would turn the gun on myself. But now…
‘No, no, no! Now I discover that I’ve not got the slightest desire to end my life so prematurely.
‘In fact…
Reinhardt paused, nodding contemplatively as he stared down at the panting Gestapo man.
‘But before I outline my plan now, let me tell you just what you’ve achieved here, Major,’ said Reinhardt then. ‘Through your actions, you’ve managed to get shot, firstly. That’s probably uppermost on your mind at the moment.
‘But you’ve also caused Germany’s finest scientist – a true genius – to take the machine of destruction he created for the Third Reich and to head for that camp named Mittlebruck, a short distance over the German-Polish border, where his Jewish mother is incarcerated. Or perhaps already dead. And I fully expect that Schroder will order his creation to tear that camp apart – along with anyone who dares to try and stop it.
Reinhardt paused again, smiling amiably at the sweating Fleischer.
‘Jewish… bastard…’ hissed the Gestapo man.
‘And I realize now that, actually, I have a strong desire to join up with Schroder and the Metal Man – you’ve heard about the Metal Man, I presume – and witness this destruction first-hand,’ declared Reinhardt. ‘But how do I get out of this building, unnoticed, first of all…?’
With that, Reinhardt walked over to where the dead young man in the black uniform lay. Grabbing the collar of the man’s tunic, Reinhardt briefly pulled him up.
‘Would you believe it, Major!’ Reinhardt then cried almost in delight. ‘Approximately half of the back of this gentleman’s head is missing, and the wall and floor is much stained with his blood – and yet there are barely three or four drops of blood on his jacket! And as this jacket is black, you would hardly see these drops unless you really looked hard; and furthermore, I believe this jacket – and trousers – are about my own size. What luck!
‘So much easier to leave number eight, Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse – I think this time via the back courtyard, which if you remember is where you showed me out
of last time I was here – dressed in this black uniform, wouldn’t you say, Major?’
Fleischer attempted a cynical laugh. But it came out more like the wheezing of a slowly dying man.
‘’They’ll see your… face, idiot… You can’t hide… that…’
Reinhardt pursed his lips and nodded, as though in consideration of this point.
‘Well, yes,’ he began. ‘But it’s late now, few people are around. I’ll just try and make my way quietly towards the back of the building. In any case, if the worst happens, I’ll be carrying my gun, yours and the weapon this young man lying on the floor doubtless has upon his person. So I’ll be able to do for a few more of you bastards before I’m done – saving the last bullet for myself, of course…
‘As I say, I’d much rather not commit suicide, but given the choice between that and dangling on a meat-hook…’
Reinhardt looked towards the locked door of wood and metal. The key for it was in one of the dead young man’s trouser pockets – of that Reinhardt was certain.
He’d retrieve it in a few moments.
But first…
‘You said when I first came in here that this room is very soundproof, Major,’ said Reinhardt, walking over to the Gestapo man and crouching down beside him. ‘It seems you were right – two gunshots and no one’s come down to investigate…’
Reinhardt pressed the barrel of his gun hard against Fleischer’s chest, above the area of his heart.
‘So I’ll risk a third shot, now,’ said Reinhardt amiably. ‘Then I’ll quickly change into that uniform, lock the door behind me and try and get out of the building. Then, all going well, I’ll get a car and head for the border! Isn’t that wonderful, Major?’
‘Kike…’ hissed Fleischer, fear now evident in his rodent-like eyes as he tried staring down at the barrel of the gun.
Abruptly, all trace of good humor disappeared from Reinhardt’s face.
‘This is for everyone you’ve ever caused to scream out in pain and terror, Fleischer,’ he said into the man’s ear. ‘Everyone you’ve had tortured, and killed, and shipped off to those bloody ‘camps’ every German knows about, but still pretends that they don’t.’
Fleischer’s eyes swiveled round now to meet Reinhardt’s. The disfigured Jew almost started at the pleading expression they contained.
‘Please…’
‘Give my regards to hell, you Nazi bastard.’
With that, Reinhardt pulled the trigger. There was a muffled roar and Fleischer’s body bucked as the bullet tore into his heart.
Reinhardt stood up, shaking slightly with the adrenalin rush that was only now making itself felt. He remembered how nervous he’d been meeting Hitler; how he’d even thought he might wet himself.
So remarkable what he was capable of doing, he then considered almost abstractly, when his back was against the wall, so to speak…
…Fleischer’s body sagged sideways onto the floor. Reinhardt walked over to where the other dead man lay.
He had to move quickly, now.
20
Mayer and the three other soldiers shared the last of their rations – dried sausage and some bread so stale it was like trying to eat a brick – with the five Polish men and women whom they’d saved from getting shot at the hands of Ackermann and his unit.
The woman whom the SS officer had repeatedly slapped in the face stared at Mayer as he handed her some food, saying something several times in her own tongue.
‘She says thank you,’ interpreted the man who spoke German.
‘Tell her we’re not all bastards,’ returned Mayer gruffly, trying to disguise the strange effect the woman’s gratitude had upon him.
With the last of the food now gone, it became essential that the soldiers, and the five Polish men and women, find some more supplies.
It was the German-speaking Polish man – who gave his name as Arnold – who informed them that there was a town no more than a day’s walk away.
‘It is call Tornik,’ said Arnold. ‘I not go there for some year now, but often go when I child.’
The four soldiers doubted they’d find anything in this town – as likely as not it would be as wretched and desolate as all the other towns and villages they’d come across in Poland, the inhabitants half-starving.
But there was no choice; they were currently in the middle of a large forest of tall pine trees, following a path that seemed to get ever narrower, and they were out of food.
‘I can show you way, through forest,’ declared Arnold.
‘Okay, thanks,’ said Mayer. ‘When we get to this town, you and the four others are free to go.’
Arnold nodded, and the group kept walking. The four bearded, hollow-eyed soldiers dressed in their filthy, camouflage-pattern jumpsuits, sub machineguns dangling from shoulder-straps, and the five peasants in their old clothes and clogs. Their breath blew out in clouds in front of them (visible in spite of the night’s velvet darkness), their feet crunching on the snow blanketing the ground.
Mayer assumed the temperature was somewhere below freezing, although this wasn’t really cold – not for someone who’d experienced real combat on the Eastern Front…
The Front…
Mayer remembered Karl Brucker shaking two of his own toes out of his boot – frostbite – and then putting this boot back on and proceeding as if nothing had happened.
Tough bastard, Brucker. Toughest man Mayer had ever known, in fact – and the SS was hardly short of such types. But Brucker had had something else – an intelligence and… (Mayer fumbled for the correct word) morality, as it were, that had quickly caused a bond to develop between him, Mayer and the three other soldiers currently traipsing through the forest.
Numerous times it had seemed certain they’d die, and always Brucker had somehow managed to pull them through. Always with the same curt, yet at the same time almost half-humorous instruction – Move your ass – as bullets flew around them and shells exploded nearby…
And now he lay dead and buried somewhere, his body for some reason transported to Berlin all those months before…
Why had they taken Brucker’s body to Germany’s capital city? That was the question Mayer, Bach, Weber and the radioman Amsel had previously discussed among themselves – and the question Mayer again pondered now…
While a good soldier, and leader, Brucker had hardly been one of the military ‘elite’, as it were. Just another commanding officer, who should just have been buried where he’d fallen – if, indeed, there was the time and opportunity to do such a thing.
Try as he might, Weber could not think of the slightest reason why a lorry had been dispatched to drive the few hundred miles to Berlin with the body of Lieutenant Colonel Karl Brucker onboard…
*
Some hours passed as the group trudged on in silence, the night slowly lightening into dawn. Then at once the group abruptly left the closed shelter of the pine forest, entering into a clearing.
On one side the ground fell sharply away to a rocky pit below– a quarry, perhaps.
And, straight ahead…
‘What the hell is that?’ murmured Mayer.
It was a sprawling complex of wooden huts and other, brick-built structures, enclosed by two high, barbed-wire fences situated several feet apart from one another. There were watch-towers on every corner, and two high chimneys.
But one of these chimneys was partially demolished; to Mayer’s expert eye, it appeared as though someone had recently attempted to blow it up.
This was also true of a number of other brick-built structures within this…
What? thought Mayer. Prison camp?
An evil smell wafted across to the group who’d emerged from out of the pine forest. A stench of disease, death and decay. Figures appeared behind the high, inner barbed-wire fence, dressed in a striped uniform, their heads shaved, horribly emaciated. It was hard to tell even if they were men, or women.
Some of them had ragged blankets thrown over their shoulders
or wrapped around their bodies, in defense against the cold. They stared at Mayer and the three other SS soldiers with a chilling mixture of fear and utter hatred.
‘This – ’
Mayer’s voice came out like a croak.
He coughed, and tried again –
‘This place,’ he said, addressing Arnold. ‘What the hell is it?’
At once, Arnold appeared to have trouble meeting Mayer’s eye.
‘This is type of camp your country make,’ he muttered. ‘For the Jew.’
‘Shit,’ breathed Bach. ‘I thought that ghetto, back where they brought in the Metal Man, was bad enough – but this place…’