A Pious Killing

by Mick Hare

  “Don’t worry about me, headmaster,” said Friedrich. The SS guard who kindly loaned me this uniform also passed over his ID papers.”

  “That is useful,” replied Herr Todt. “But I’m not sure they will see you safely all the way to Spain. You might need to find some other form of ID before you reach your journey’s end.”

  For the rest of the ride to the Hauptbahnhof, Robert and Lily scrutinised the paperwork they had been assigned. If Robert’s distinctive facial injuries were known to the SS they were not sure that new papers would help disguise their true identities, but they had no alternative to fall back on. With the added complication of Friedrich’s predicament to consider as well, they would surely need to improvise.

  “These papers authorise us to travel to Spain to recruit and train Francoists who wish to become non-combative medics in war zones. What if we choose to get out through Italy? Will our papers allow that?”

  “Certainly not,” responded Herr Todt. “Your escape route is over the Pyrenees to Spain. Once there you declare yourself as the citizen of neutral Eire.”

  Robert raised his head to look at the section of Herr Todt’s face available to him in the rear view mirror. This man knew much more about him than Robert had realised. He wondered just how high up he was in the conspiracy.

  “Wrong, Herr Todt. My destination is Rome.”

  “Rome!” exclaimed Herr Todt. “Why on earth wou…”

  “You don’t need to know the answer to that. I have unfinished business and it is of a personal nature. However, my two colleagues will be taking the Spanish route.”

  “I’m going with you!” declared Lily abruptly.

  Before Robert could dismiss this suggestion he was anticipated by Friedrich.

  “Me too!” was all he said.

  Silenced and at a loss for a reply Robert accepted the inevitable.

  Ten minutes later they were parked two hundred metres from the entrance to Hauptbahnhof. The doctor, his wife and their SS escort stepped out. Their farewell to Herr Todt was nothing more than a moment’s glance. It was not a lack of gratitude; it was a complete incapacity to express the gratitude his actions deserved. War muted all emotion.

  Fifty-five

  The chaos caused by the air raid, which had now finished, made entry to the station and then the train itself easier than anticipated. Although they had had to stop the vehicle several streets away from the Hauptbahnhof, there was no one to intercept or question them. They hurried past whole blocks ablaze as fire-fighters struggled to contain the inferno. There was no more than a cursory examination of their papers at the ticket office. Friedrich’s uniform carried the most weight. It would be a brave railway employee who would challenge the authority of that uniform. The downside was that there was no guarantee that the train would be leaving Munich at all that night, although the official who informed them of this was quite happy to take their money for the tickets.

  As the post-raid silence settled upon the city, Robert, Lily and Friedrich sat aboard the train. They had little to say to one another. The carriage was unheated and their breath was visible whenever they sighed or exchanged a word or two. There was nobody else in their compartment, but a trio of men in large crombie overcoats and identical briefcases had also boarded the train further along the platform. The compartment next to theirs had been occupied by a family and one other man. Father, mother, two daughters and one son. These were obvious from the resemblance the children bore to the woman and one of the men who was obviously her husband. The other man was perhaps ten years younger than the man and wife. Somewhere in his early to mid twenties, prematurely thinning hair and thick spectacles perched on his nose. Lily could not guess what might be the purpose of their journey to Rome. Or perhaps they were bound for one of the intermediate stops en route.

  Robert was awakened from a doze by the sound of a train braking alongside theirs. From the darkness of their compartment he could see the lights of the adjacent train. On board there was a great deal of activity. From the robes worn by the men and women rushing to and fro he knew they were priests and nuns and could make the logical supposition that this was the Pope’s train being readied.

  Suddenly the echoing silence in the cathedral of the platforms was invaded by the screaming of sirens and the screeching of brakes. The coarse gunning of engines continued to reverberate when the sirens had fallen silent. The convoy of vehicles disgorged its passengers, who jumped into action. Foot soldiers spread out around the station taking up armed defensive positions. The clatter of soldiers’ boots rang out accompanied by barked orders.

  The looks that passed between Lily, Robert and Friedrich expressed their mutual fear of imminent capture. If they had not been taken so completely by surprise, they might have taken some action, attracting unwanted attention. Fortunately, their inability to move gave them time to realise that they were not the subject of this military manoeuvre. Through the window of their compartment and through the two windows of the adjacent train they could see a stretcher being carried from the back of an ambulance towards a carriage door. The cluster of clergy and military officials shuffling along with the stretcher made clear identification impossible, but in Robert’s mind there was no doubt. Here was the body of Pope Pius XII being delivered for transportation back to Rome.

  One of the businessmen from further down the train stepped onto the platform and walked along towards a railway guard. As he passed by their compartment Robert noticed the father from the family next door joining him.

  “Inquisitive fools,” he thought.

  An SS officer from the convoy saw them talking with the guard and lighting up cigarettes. He screamed orders at the nearest soldiers and they rushed the group of three, rifles aimed at their heads. Robert, Lily and Friedrich watched from behind their curtains as the three were spread-eagled out on the floor. The officer who had spotted them screamed questions at them. The father lifted his head up to answer and was met with the butt of a soldier’s rifle. A man rifled through their pockets and the officer scrutinised their papers. Taking in the information on the paperwork the officer turned his gaze to the train they had come from.

  ’Stupid bastards,’ thought Robert.

  “Quick,” he said. “They’re going to search the train. Come with me.”

  He hurried out of the compartment and along the corridor with Lily and Friedrich right on his heels. At the end of the carriage he turned left towards the door facing away from the platform. Tugging at the leather strap he lowered the window. He took a careful look up and down the track to make sure there was no one there before opening the door and jumping down between the trains. He turned and took Lily by the waist, lowering her to the gravel and then assisted Friedrich by offering him a shoulder to lean a hand on. Robert then carefully closed the door.

  “Okay,” he whispered. “Under here.”

  They ducked under the belly of the train and squatted uncomfortably in silence. The train above them began resounding with the banging of boots, the slamming of doors and the barking of orders. The young son in the family compartment looked away from the window and said to his mother, “Look mama! There’s an SS man going under the train.”

  His mother put her arm around him and said, “Shush, darling. I’m worried about papa.”

  The younger man kept his eyes on the book he was reading. Just then the door to their compartment was flung open and her husband was thrown in. His face was already bloodied and beginning to swell around the left eye. The curved imprint of a rifle butt was showing. The young wife leapt up and caught him in her arms. “What has happened to you?” she screamed. But the SS officer who followed her husband in interrupted her.

  “I am Untersturmfuhrer Kremer,” he said. “Do you have a complaint to make about the state of your husband?”

  The woman bowed her head. She knew that to complain about any activities of the SS or the Gestapo was considered an offence against the state. “No mein Untersturmfuhrer. I merely wanted to know how my husb
and had fallen and hurt his face.”

  Kremer gave her a knowing look and then demanded her papers and those for the children. As he scrutinised them the little boy tugged at his mother’s coat and repeated over and over again, “But it’s true. I did. I did see one.”

  “Please, my darling, shush.”

  “What is the purpose of your journey? Why is your whole family leaving Germany?”

  The woman looked at her husband but he could not speak. “My husband is a linguist. He has been ordered to the Reich embassy in Rome. He works on translating documents. It is quite normal for families to accompany state servants on long-term postings.”

  “And who is this?” he asked turning to the young man in the corner of the carriage who now had his book face down upon his knee.

  “I am also a linguist,” the man answered nervously. “Herr Lindow and I are colleagues. We are additions to the embassy staff in Rome.”

  “Why are you not in the Wermacht?”

  With a nervous push of his spectacles and an embarrassed frown he replied, “My eyesight. I failed the medical.”

  Kremer finished with their papers and handed them back. He turned to leave. At the door he paused and turned back. He looked at the boy. Approaching the boy across the compartment he was not altogether surprised to see the mother enfold her son protectively in her arms. Suddenly the boy became afraid and hid his head in his mother’s chest.

  “What did he see?” asked Kremer.

  “He said he saw an SS officer outside the train.”

  Kremer was nonplussed by this response and failed to react for a moment. The boy attempted to lift his head and turn his face towards Kremer. He wanted to tell the man what he had seen. Very firmly but with little display of strength, his mother pulled his face back to her bosom.

  “He probably meant you,” she ventured.

  This seemed to satisfy Kremer and he went out.

  Underneath the train Robert was peeping above the edge of the platform. He watched jackboot after jackboot dismount from the carriages and heard them batter away at the double along the platform. When all was clear he turned back to Lily and Friedrich.

  “I think it’s safe to get back on board. Come on!”

  He crept past them into the space between the trains.

  “Lily first,” he hissed. Lily stooped out and he whispered, “I’ll lift you so that you can climb in through the window.” She nodded.

  He bent down and wrapped his arms around her thighs. He lifted her so that she could easily pull herself through the window and open the door for them.

  “Okay Friedrich. Me next. You follow on.”

  Robert jumped up onto the train using his knees and elbows to lever himself in. He turned and reached down a hand to assist Friedrich. As he did so his eyes were distracted by a movement in the Pope’s train. It was a figure in the facing compartment. It was reaching up to place a box onto the overhead rack. In the lit compartment the figure could not see out but looked at its own reflection in the window. Robert found himself looking straight into the face of O’Shea.

  Fifty-six

  At six the following morning the Pope’s train laboured out of the Hauptbahnhof. Two hours later the Munich-Rome international commenced in pursuit. Apart from the arrival of more passengers nothing else had occurred during the long wait.

  It was Lily who raised the issue that they needed to resolve quickly. They were speeding south through outer Munich. From the tracks they had a comprehensive view of the city they were leaving. They ran between burnt out buildings, some still alight. They passed through suburbs where whole blocks of domestic accommodation were bombed out. They ran alongside roads choked with refugees heading south, hoping to find safety in the Bavarian countryside or over the border in Austria.

  “How are we going to pass the checkpoints?” asked Lily.

  The question was so vital to their survival and, at this present moment, so unanswerable, that Friedrich and Robert both grunted in a perverse laugh.

  “Well,” mused Friedrich. “We all have papers. Yours would be fine if we were going to Spain. As we are bound for Rome they are really not much use. They might fool some unconscientious border guards with the help of my SS authority. But then my authority might not hold out.”

  “We have papers that allow us to go to Spain,” grunted Robert. “We are on a train to Italy. They are useless!”

  Nobody spoke as several miles rattled by.

  The first scheduled stop was at a small town called Rosenheim. It was still in Germany. Innsbruck was the stop after that inside Austria. There should not be any major problem at the Austrian border because the Anschluss in 1938 had absorbed Austria into the Reich. ‘However,’ thought Friedrich, ‘it would be better to be safe than sorry.’ He got up from his seat attracting the immediate attention of Robert and Lily.

  “I have an idea,” he said. “I will be back soon.”

  Placing his SS hat upon his head and drawing himself up to his best SS height he went out of the compartment. In the corridor he adjusted his balance to the rocking of the train. He then went the length of the carriage asking all passengers for their papers. In the third compartment he entered he was followed in by a railway official; a ticket inspector.

  “Excuse me, mein Herr,” the official began. “What is happening here?”

  Friedrich bowed to the occupants of the compartment and excused himself. He took the official by the arm and guided him into the corridor. He put his face up close to the officials and spoke with controlled anger through gritted teeth, “How dare you question me in the pursuance of my duties! What are you? An asocial who questions the activities of the state?”

  The man was clearly shaken by the reaction he had sparked. He climbed down apologetically and begged forgiveness. As he watched the man, Friedrich was thinking ‘so this is what we have reduced manhood to in our era of Aryan superiority.’

  “Get a grip of yourself, mein Herr. You were only doing your job. I can inform you that there has been an incident in Munich that could have international repercussions. I have been assigned to this train to monitor the passengers and to ensure cowardly conspirators are not on board. I will be checking the papers of all passengers. Do you have any objections?”

  “No mein Herr. I am a loyal follower of the Fuhrer. I have been a party member since 1933.”

  ‘Yes,’ thought Friedrich. ‘When every coward signed up.’

  “Go about your business,” he said, “And report anything suspicious to me.”

  “Certainly, mien Herr, Heil Hitler.”

  “Heil Hitler!”

  Friedrich found what he needed in the compartment right next to his own. When he walked in the occupants gasped. The first to speak was the young son.

  “You see mama! I told you I was right. That’s him, the one I saw.”

  “Be quiet, Willy,” his mother snapped.

  “Papers please,” demanded Friedrich.

  The mother fumbled with her bag. Her husband sat slumped in the corner by the window. His face was as white as a ghost and from the stench in the compartment Friedrich guessed he had been sick.

  The papers were handed to Friedrich and he scrutinised them carefully. Looking at the parents he guessed their ages were not too different from Robert’s and Lily’s and when he read them on their ID papers he was happy that they would fit.

  “Thank you Herr and Frau Lindow. Everything is in order.”

  He handed everything back to the woman and nodded at her with a faint smile. Turning to the young man he snapped, “Papers!” The young man handed over his papers. Friedrich read them carefully and looked intently into the man’s face. In a voice that came out much more high-pitched than the nervous man had intended he said, “They have been checked already.”