by Chris Petit
Having lined up his ducks, Morgen was still left with a sense of utter defeat. Sybil’s whereabouts remained unknown. As for Schlegel, he was at his wits’ end trying to come up with a way of sorting out the boy.
Morgen drank alone at night. The space around him, if not polite, was at least unobtrusive. He used the drink to try looking at things in a different way. What if the answer lay not in geometry and calculation but in leverage. He had been trying to work out everything by himself. He asked himself where he had leverage. The answer was obvious.
The commandant’s wife was, Morgen was pleased to see, so astonished at the sight of him he thought she might faint.
‘This will only take five minutes,’ he said.
It took seven.
Schlegel got his execution. In the yard against the wall. He was the only one. Broad was the shooter. Unceremonious. He wouldn’t want to do it again.
It was Morgen’s idea. ‘Otherwise they will keep you locked up here for months with all the red tape. I need you on the outside. Are you up for it?’
‘Do you trust Broad that much?’ was all Schlegel could think to ask. It was an astonishing proposal.
‘Give him an extra packet of cigarettes to be sure.’
Not funny, thought Schlegel.
Meanwhile, Sybil was being brought back within Groenke’s orbit.
Frau Hoess had been quick to see the sense of his proposal. Unless she acted on his behalf to find Sybil he would be forced to reveal to the Reichsführer-SS the worthlessness of her jade mine and that she had been hoodwinking him. There was also the small matter of Schlegel’s courtroom accusation, which suggested she was with him when he was supposed to have been setting the fire.
Morgen sighed. ‘Both would involve considerable dishonour. There would be no question of you being able to stay.’
She carried it off well, he thought, with grudging admiration. Monstrous as she was, the woman was a terrific horse trader.
Schlegel left the punishment block technically as a dead man, in a cart of his own, with Broad driving.
Right up until the last second he could not be sure if he wasn’t the victim of the ultimate practical joke and instead of firing wide the bullet would drill his brain and that would be that. It was done at night. Broad seemed sheepish almost as he slouched up the steps behind Schlegel. Schlegel addressed the wall.
‘Any last words?’ asked Broad, a joker to the last.
Schlegel felt the barrel against his neck, shut his eyes like he had been told, to stop brick dust getting in them, heard the bang in his ear, which vibrated from the report, and stood there in shock until Broad said, ‘Now you have to fall over.’
After that they stopped pretending. No one was around. Broad stuck a cigarette in Schlegel’s mouth and said, ‘A new life.’ The cigarette tasted foul but he persisted. He got up in the back of the cart of his own accord and lay down. Broad rode them through the camp gate into the garrison. Instead of going to the morgue he stopped by the remains of the burned-out building to let Schlegel down and tip an imaginary hat in farewell. Everything else was as Schlegel had been told, except there were no matches. The commandant’s garden gate was still broken from when he had kicked it in. The door to the cellar was open, as was the steel door into the tunnel. It had been his idea to use it as his escape from the garrison, on the condition there was a torch or matches to light his way. As it was, he had to go through the whole business of scaring himself stupid in the dark, far more unsettling than the business in the yard. More than once he thought perhaps he was already dead.
He felt his way down the tunnel with agonising slowness until he reached the split and ran the rest of the way, stumbling in blind panic. After the dank oppression of the tunnel the night air was cool and sweet. He was to stay there, in the undergrowth by the road, for Morgen to collect him with Sybil and a car. That was the plan, except he waited and they didn’t come, leaving him standing like a fool, paperless, without money, technically dead, wondering what on earth to do next.
The commandant’s wife ate alone, thinking: I have my happy ending, staying on in my beautiful house with its fabulous garden. The only thing that spoiled her mood was that horrible little man Morgen with his insufferable moral superiority, which was why she had arranged for Juppe to be waiting for them at the gate, ‘to check everything is in order’. Let them stew! Anyway, she had taken the precaution of telling the Reichsführer how she had been deceived by a Jewish conspiracy to discredit her and what she had been led to believe was the product of the mine was nothing of the sort. She had taken the necessary steps and those responsible had been punished.
She went upstairs, content, to join her younger children for their bedtime story. Her only remaining concern was that she was pregnant from before taking the precautionary measure of inviting her husband back into her bed.
She listened to Schlegel’s mother read to the children. She had a beautiful voice but the children laughed at her because she couldn’t remember her words, sometimes even the simplest.
Chris Petit has written a trio of acclaimed “beyond black” political thrillers covering a serial killer operating in sectarian Northern Ireland (The Psalm Killer); dirty money in World War II (The Human Pool); and terror, arms trading and the bombing of a civilian aircraft (The Passenger); as well as The Butchers of Berlin which also features the characters Schlegel and Morgen. He is an internationally renowned filmmaker.
Also by Chris Petit
Robinson
The Psalm Killer
Back from the Dead
The Hard Shoulder
The Human Pool
The Passenger
The Butchers of Berlin
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2017
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Copyright © Chris Petit, 2017
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