An Army of One: A John Rossett Novel

by Tony Schumacher

  “You’ll have to shout.” The jailer smelled of rotten teeth. “The minute we open the flap they all start barkin’ like dogs in a kennel.”

  Rossett didn’t reply.

  “You wait till they get a bit of fresh air.” The jailer laughed, then stopped next to a metal-framed wall light in which a bulb was flickering reluctantly. He banged it with his fist and the flickering stopped as the bulb blew, adding to the gloom. He tried the fist again, and when it didn’t work, turned back to Rossett. “Shithole, this place, absolute shithole.”

  Rossett didn’t argue. The jailer started walking again and Rossett followed.

  The walls were running with water, and as the two men went farther along the corridor, their feet began to splash across the uneven floor.

  “Why is it so wet?” Rossett ran a finger down the wall while he waited for the jailer to find another key, for another door, on their journey to the depths.

  “We’re belowground, and the sewers overflow when it rains.”

  Rossett sniffed his finger then wiped it on his leg.

  “If that isn’t bad enough,” the jailer continued, “a river runs underneath us on its way down to the Mersey. They built this place on top of it, and whenever it rains the basements flood.” The key rattled into the lock, and he pulled on the rusty door. “Sometimes the electrics fuse. You should ’ear these fuckers scream when it goes dark.”

  The jailer smiled at Rossett, who caught sight of the reason for the smell of rotten teeth.

  The shouting died down a little as the splash of their footsteps gave their approach away as they made their way along a row of cells. They stopped at the end one. The jailer winked at Rossett, and flicked his head toward the door.

  “’Ere, watch this.” The jailer dropped the flap in the door, and the screaming and shouting started up again, louder than before.

  Rossett took a step backward.

  Arms, hands, fingers fired through the eighteen-inch slot and reached toward them. Through tiny gaps Rossett caught sight of teeth and eyes, the odd flash of hair, a snatch of colored cloth, all crushed into a space so small it seemed to squeeze the sound through the hatch like toothpaste out of a tube.

  The arms were like flames out of a furnace.

  Rossett took another step away.

  The jailer pulled a short wooden truncheon and started to beat the prisoners back through the slot. He hacked and slashed like he was cutting bamboo, but it still took a minute to clear the desperation.

  He nodded his head, indicating that Rossett could move closer to inspect the contents of the cell again. As Rossett moved, the shouting and screaming seemed to fill his head and push against his skull.

  One hand snaked out, but the jailer flicked it away with a solid swipe that probably broke a few fingers. “Take a look. If they grab you I’ll knock ’em off, don’t worry.”

  Rossett placed a hand on the cold steel door and leaned in closer.

  The sound was nearly swamped by the smell.

  Humanity.

  Its basest form.

  Stinking, sweating, screaming, slammed into a space too small.

  Faces swirled in the gloom like they were circling a drain. Rossett saw his past. He heard the Jews, their screams, the smell of fear and desperation washing over him and knotting his stomach so tight, it seemed to pull his knees up to his chest.

  He put a hand on the wall to steady himself against the guilt.

  He couldn’t look through hell’s gate; he didn’t want to see his future; he didn’t want to see his past.

  He turned, and then started walking back to the light.

  Becker was waiting in the sergeant’s mess.

  Two enamel mugs of black coffee were sitting on a bald wooden bench. There was a metal plate with a little cheese, three inches of dried sausage, and a chunk of black bread that looked like it had been ripped out of a bowling ball.

  Rossett sat down heavily across the table from Becker, who slid a coffee toward him.

  Neither of them spoke.

  It took Rossett two minutes to pick up the mug and take a drink. He stared at the food, his hands still wrapped around the mug.

  Becker broke the silence. “I got you some food. You should eat.”

  Rossett looked up. “Do you have a cigarette?”

  Becker took out a tobacco pouch and papers. “I can roll you one.”

  “Please.”

  Rossett watched as Becker’s ham hands produced a cigarette that looked like a toothpick, passed it across, and lit a match.

  Rossett took a drag, then took hold of his coffee mug again. He held on to the smoke awhile, then finally let it go as he started to speak.

  “Have you been down there?”

  Becker was busy rolling himself a cigarette, so he just nodded without looking up. Rossett took another drag and looked around the mess hall. It was all bare walls and benches. The kind of place that might host a Bavarian beer festival, but without the beer.

  Hitler was there, same as usual. This time in a plain frame that made it look like he was peering through a window. Down at the other end of the hall was Himmler, in a slightly smaller frame. Rossett stared at him for a minute, wondering how someone who looked like a librarian could climb to the top of the Third Reich.

  Another match flared. Rossett looked up and saw that Becker was lighting his own cigarette, while pulling at the top button of his tunic to free his tree-trunk neck.

  “It’s wrong.”

  “The people in the cell?” Becker settled again, then flicked the cigarette to the corner of his mouth with his tongue as he answered.

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm.” Becker squinted through the smoke.

  “It’s inhuman.”

  “It’s no worse than what you did with the Jews.”

  “I never did that.”

  Becker took a pull on his cigarette. “How much elbow room do you think those Jews had by the time they made it to Poland?”

  “When I saw them off from London, they—” Rossett knew he was losing the argument before it had even begun, and he hated himself for trying to justify his crimes. Embarrassment broke off his sentence like a snapped stick.

  Becker filled the silence.

  “You need stop thinking about them as people. Don’t listen to their voices, don’t for a minute ever think they are like you. You work for us now. You have a job to do, same as I do. If you can keep them at arm’s length and see them as being totally different from you, well . . . I think it is easier.” Becker shifted on the bench and tapped the cigarette against the tin ashtray at his elbow.

  “You don’t care about them?”

  “I don’t even think about them.”

  “Those people down there have families.”

  “Not like ours.”

  “I’m English, same as them.”

  “You’re a Nazi, or at the very least you work for us, so therefore you are different. Besides, you’re from London, this is Liverpool. These people aren’t really British. Most of them are immigrants, Irish, Welsh. There were even some Gypsies, blacks, and Chinese here when we arrived.”

  “They are human beings.”

  Becker tapped a finger against his right temple. “Just accept it, they aren’t like us.” He took another drag on his cigarette and picked a piece of tobacco off his tongue. “Anyway, does it really matter if a few more die?”

  “It matters to them.”

  “On a grand scale, though, does it matter? How many in Europe have died in these last few years?”

  Rossett didn’t answer Becker’s question as he ripped off a hunk of bread.

  “A million?” Becker conjured a figure. “Five? Ten? Fucking hell, it could be twenty in Russia alone for all we know. I saw the bodies piled as high as houses when I was out east, thousands of them. When they were burned they stank of pork, and you could smell it for ten miles around. They had to dig ditches to trap the fat that was running out of the fire . . . fucking ditches.” Becker looked off
into the distance and shook his head. “Ditches.”

  Rossett dropped the hunk of bread back onto the plate uneaten.

  “All I’m saying is, those people down there”—Becker pointed with his cigarette to the floor—“they don’t matter. Same as the Jews, same as the Russians, the Poles, the French . . . even the Germans. None of it, none of them, and none of us matter. If I die today, who cares? I’ll be gone and that will be that. You should realize, we are alive only for this moment. Accept that they are already dead, accept that you’re dead, Neumann is dead, I’m dead, fucking humanity is dead. Trust me, it’s easier that way.”

  Becker turned on the bench, then stood up. He pinched the end of the cigarette between his finger and thumb, and fastened the top button of his tunic again.

  Rossett watched, and then spoke. “I need to speak to my headquarters, down in London. Do you have a telephone?”

  Becker picked up his field cap off the bench and looked at his wristwatch. “The lines to London are down, so you’ll have to wait.”

  Rossett nodded. Problems with communication between London and the rest of the country were common. Phone cables were easy to cut, and radio time was often at a premium.

  “I’ll still need to speak to the people in the cell, but I can’t do it down there.”

  “They’re being transported shortly; the major had already suggested you should come with us, and it’s only a short journey. You can speak to them as they are assembled off the trucks. If you find someone who can help you with your enquiries, I’ll pull them out of the line so you can interview them at length later. Okay?”

  “Thank you.”

  The German rechecked his top button, and walked to the door.

  “Becker?”

  Becker turned.

  “How do you do it?”

  Becker smiled, opened the door, and stepped halfway through before pausing, then looking back at Rossett.

  “You of all people should know, it’s easier than it looks.”

  Becker had been right; the journey hadn’t taken long.

  Rossett was standing next to the staff car, squinting into drizzle and staring out across a windswept River Mersey. Waves were flecked with froth, and the tide was heading back out to sea, like it was attempting to get away from what was about to take place on its bank.

  Across the river, Rossett could see thick black smoke rising from what looked like a tire fire in the far docklands. The wind was pushing the smoke low for the first few hundred yards. It scraped across slate-roofed warehouses, then finally up and away in a column that fattened at the top into a dark smudge on the sky. At the smoke’s source Rossett caught glimpses of angry orange, as the flames bubbled their way toward what little oxygen seemed left in the world.

  Rossett turned away from the river and rested an elbow on the roof of the car. He was standing on a square plaza at the foot of three tall buildings. The buildings had once been famous. They’d once stood sentinel proudly over Liverpool’s riverbank flank.

  Not anymore.

  It had taken a while, long after he had been driven to the plaza, for Rossett to finally recognize the Royal Liver Building and its neighbors. He’d once watched a cinema newsreel, back before the war, about the Mersey ferries that had docked at the Pier Head, where he was now standing.

  The ferries were long gone. And the floating landing stage they had used was now half submerged in the quickening Mersey. The crowds of commuters were replaced by sour-looking troops, drenched by the falling rain and misery.

  All that was left from the newsreel was the occasional shell-shocked pigeon, limping around with glassy eyes and cold-looking salmon-colored feet.

  Rossett looked up at the remains of the three buildings in front of him. In the newsreel they had looked like they would last forever, but now they barely clung onto existence. Where there had once been windows, smoke-smudged cavities dotted the walls. There were more holes blasted by artillery, and piles of rubble where gravity and indifference had dumped falling stonework and masonry.

  The city’s famous Liver birds looked down sadly at the scene below them.

  The plaza was cordoned off with a twelve-foot barbed-wire blockade fence. It had the look of something that was intended to be temporary but had ended up becoming permanent. The gates Rossett had just been driven through hung on hinges that seemed more rust than metal. The plaza itself was maybe two football fields wide. There was no grass, just concrete, and the wind whipped through the fence, sweeping the place clean.

  A truckful of miserable Waffen SS soldiers were jumping down into the rain and forming up into awkward ranks that had to be jostled into some sort of shape by shouting NCOs.

  It struck Rossett that the men were green, untested, and lacking in discipline. They were chatting among themselves, shifting from foot to foot as they casually ignored orders.

  They were different from the soldiers he saw in London. These were the dregs, wasting away their service in a distant outpost hoping not to get shot.

  Rossett looked around for the driver who had brought him to hell. The car was there, but the man himself had melted into the gray mass of uniforms that was getting bigger by the minute. There were three trucks now, and two old half-tracks had also rumbled into the compound. Machine gun nests were being set up with several heavy MG42s, their crews keeping their heads bowed to the wind that was gusting into their faces.

  The circus had come to town.

  Rossett needed another cigarette.

  He started to walk toward the nearest troop carrier.

  “Cigarette?” he asked a fresh-faced corporal, who produced a packet of German Ecksteins and a lighter.

  Rossett cupped his hands over the flame, nodded thanks, and then turned as two BMW motorcycle outriders led a canvas-backed Opel Blitz truck through the compound gates. It sounded like one of the motorcycles had a defective muffler. It was popping and roaring, and its echo bounced back off the buildings and out onto the river.

  The truck lurched as it bounced up onto a low curb, closely followed by two beetle-black cars, with men crammed into them like sardines. Rossett watched to see if Dannecker’s staff car was going to follow them through the gates.

  It didn’t.

  He turned back to the newly arrived vehicles and saw Becker climbing out of one of them. The German put on his cap and took an StG 44 assault rifle from one of the men who had got out behind him.

  Becker held up a hand to someone Rossett couldn’t see in the back of the truck, then scanned the scene for a few seconds until his eyes met Rossett’s. He gestured that Rossett should approach, so Rossett walked across the plaza like an actor on an empty stage. He felt the tickle of the gunsights on the heavy machine guns as he passed between them and the three derelict buildings that flanked him on his right.

  He dropped the cigarette as he joined Becker near the back of the truck.

  The canvas was flapping and whipping, but as he stepped into the lee between the truck and buildings, the wind dropped to become cold, still air.

  He could hear voices in the truck to his left. He strained, tilting his head as he approached Becker, trying to catch words he could make out. The German worked the bolt on the StG 44 and nodded to one of the troops standing near the back of the truck.

  Rossett glanced over his shoulder and saw that the soldier was untying a frayed rope that was holding down the canvas flap. Rossett turned back to Becker, who pointed at the truck.

  “You can speak to them as they climb down, but make it quick, just one question. If they have something interesting to say, or if they saw anything, I’ll pull them out and you can have them for a few minutes. Understand?”

  Rossett nodded that he understood, even though he wasn’t sure that he did.

  “Don’t waste my time by dragging half of them to one side, though. I haven’t got all day.”

  Rossett wished he hadn’t thrown away his cigarette. He took up station near the back of the truck, then had to step away again as two sold
iers lowered the tailgate to allow the people inside to jump down.

  Three tumbled out all at once into the arms of the waiting guards.

  “One at a time!” Becker shouted, and in turn the guards held up their hands and gestured that the people on the back of the truck should wait until they were summoned.

  Rossett leaned in, so that he could see under the canvas flap that was now hanging free.

  It was crowded full of shifting shadows and blinking eyes.

  He looked at Becker, who gestured that he should speak to the people who had climbed down. They looked nervous; one had his hands folded across his stomach, as if he had just eaten a heavy meal. His head hung low, his eyes hidden behind a loose fringe of hair.

  Rossett glanced back at Becker and noticed for the first time that there was a soldier carrying a small movie camera. He was filming the scene, walking behind Becker and the other men, capturing a tracking shot of the unloading of the prisoners.

  Becker nodded and pointed at the prisoner standing closest to Rossett.

  Ask him.

  Rossett didn’t know what to say.

  The words were lost.

  Two British Home Defense troopers pushed the first prisoner even closer to Rossett, who realized he hadn’t noticed the HDT arriving. He stared at them, then at the prisoner.

  “I’ve got a family,” the prisoner said quietly, without panic. “I don’t deserve this.”

  Rossett didn’t reply.

  The prisoner tried again. “I was just on my way home for lunch. I don’t know anything about the resistance. I just want to go home.”

  Rossett looked at the cameraman and then back at the prisoner.

  “I can’t help you,” Rossett said.

  “They took the pictures of my kids.” He finally looked up at Rossett. “Can you get them for me? I want to see them again.”

  One of the soldiers lightly jabbed a rifle butt toward the man, who took a step forward and then looked back at Rossett. “They’ll be worried about me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t want them to be worried, that’s all . . .” This time the rifle hit home slightly harder, and the man took the hint and walked away.