Volker turned to Johann and simply smiled at him, saying nothing, as though he was too proud for words at his efforts to instil such discipline at Dachau. A moment later, he turned abruptly on his heel and continued the tour. Johann was glad to move on.
‘You know,’ Volker said, ‘I’ve a mind to take a bride of my own.’
Johann couldn’t imagine what had prompted Volker to think about marriage after what he’d just seen. ‘Aren’t you going to dismiss those prisoners?’ he asked. Looking back, he could see that they were still standing to attention.
Volker waved his hand, as if flicking at a fly that was irritating him. ‘They will remain there until we leave the enclosure. Do not feel sorry for them, Johann. Those workers were selected because they are in need of discipline. Now where was I? Ah, yes, you remember Trudi, don’t you? The beautiful Trudi Scheffler?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Well, I think I’ll marry her after all. I’m sure she’d like that. Then you and I will both be married. And someday, when this war is won, our children, and perhaps even our grandchildren, will be the best of friends, just like us. Wouldn’t that be something?’
Johann just nodded and feigned a weak smile, distracted by everything around him. He considered himself fortunate that he was not in Volker’s shoes. The perils awaiting him on the Ostfront were a far greater enticement to a fighting soldier of the Waffen-SS than to be assigned duties at a work camp such as this, where discipline was seemingly demanded through cruelty over a sense of honour.
‘You’re a very lucky man,’ Volker continued.
‘How so?’
‘For marrying Ava, of course. For winning the girl.’
Johann had wanted to believe that Volker was over Ava Bauer, as he had told him that night in the bar after they dined at the Osteria Bavaria. He wondered then whether his friend was only interested in marrying Trudi because he himself was now married. It was a childish thought, but if there was any truth to it then Johann could see that his friend clearly was not over losing Ava Bauer to him at all. He said no more about it as they continued to pace alongside the prisoner barracks, but it concerned him just the same. When they came to the last of the barracks, Volker led them around it.
‘We’re being sent many Russian prisoners by the Wehrmacht,’ Volker said. ‘I hate those Bolshevik bastards all the more for what they did to you, Johann. The SS Inspectorate of Concentration Camps has recently postponed the execution of prisoners of war who are able to work, but a few more won’t be missed. I said I’d arranged something special for you.’
They arrived at the Desinfektionsgebäude—the disinfection building at the far corner of the compound where Johann saw a single line of five prisoners, again with guards to either side of them. These men were not standing to attention, but were facing the wall of the building with their shoulders slumped and their heads slightly bowed, as though resigned to their fate.
‘Here are your Bolsheviks, Johann. Here are the butchers who defile our women and mutilate our men.’ They represent those who killed your Kameraden—those who tried to kill you.’ Volker unholstered his Luger and offered it to Johann. ‘Here. They are my gift to you.’
There was no doubt as to what Volker had in mind, but Johann would not do it. ‘Your gift to me?’ he said, incredulous. ‘You want me to shoot these men simply because they’re Russians?’
Volker extended the pistol towards Johann again. ‘These inmates have been identified as troublemakers. So go ahead, have your revenge. It will do you good, believe me. I shot several of them myself when Ava told me what the Russians had done to you, and I slept better for it, I can tell you. They’re usually shot at the SS shooting range at Hebertshausen, but as that’s almost two miles away, I had them brought here, just for you.’
Johann began to shake his head. He stepped back. ‘I will not shoot them, Volker. It’s against the Geneva Convention and you know it. Even if the Russians didn’t sign, Germany did. What you’re proposing here is not only wrong, it’s both immoral and illegal.’ Johann shook his head again in disbelief. ‘And you call it a gift? You cannot summarily execute prisoners of war like this.’
Volker gave Johann a thin smile that was clearly not well meant. He withdrew his pistol and raised it to the head of the prisoner closest to him, and then he pulled the trigger. The gun’s report cracked out and the air around it filled with the familiar reek of cordite. The prisoner Volker had shot had crumpled to the ground before the sound of the shot that killed him had faded.
‘As you can see, Johann, at Dachau I can do whatever I wish. I do not take my orders from Geneva.’
He raised his pistol again and shot the next prisoner in the same manner: a single bullet to the back of his head.
‘Stop this!’ Johann said. It was clear to him now that Volker appeared to take his orders from no one. He had become a law unto himself. ‘I’ve seen enough of your work camp. I’m leaving.’ Johann turned to go, but he had only taken three strides before he felt Volker’s hand on his arm.
‘Wait, Johann! I thought this was what you wanted.’
Johann turned to Volker with an expression of loathing. His eyes narrowed. ‘Well, I don’t. When I kill Russians, it’s because they’re trying to kill me!’ He shook his arm free. ‘I can see myself back to the main gate,’ he added, and then he set off at a march, unable to endure Volker’s company a moment longer.
Chapter Seventeen
Present day.
Following what had proved to be a very informative visit with Rudi Langner, it was just after three thirty in the afternoon when Tayte and Jean climbed back into their hire car. With no other appointments in their schedule, Tayte thought now would be a good time to pay a visit to the building in his mother’s photograph: the former Hitler Youth training academy, which Johann Langner had turned into an education centre. They drove northwest in the ever-present traffic, talking over what Rudi had just told them about Volker Strobel.
‘I sincerely hope Strobel isn’t my grandfather,’ Tayte said, reflecting on how anyone could think that giving their friend a free hand to execute people was a great idea for a wedding present. ‘But I guess you never really know where you come from until you look,’ he continued, thinking that he was always finding surprises in other people’s family trees and now the surprise was potentially on him. ‘I mean, what if the Strobel gene is kicking around inside me? Am I capable of such things?’
‘I think you’d probably know about it by now,’ Jean said. ‘And we can’t choose our ancestors. You of all people know that.’
‘You sound just like Marcus Brown.’
‘Well, I did have the privilege of knowing him for quite a few years, and I’m sure he would have told you the same thing. We’re not accountable for the things our ancestors may or may not have done. It’s what we do during our own lives that counts.’
Tayte laughed to himself. ‘Marcus would definitely have said that.’
‘That’s because he was a very wise man.’
Tayte nodded, and slowly his smile faded. He’d first met Jean on a visit to London to see Marcus, unaware that his friend had set them both up on a blind date. He recalled the day with startling clarity—the day Marcus was murdered.
‘I still miss him.’
‘Of course you do. So do I. I can picture him smiling down at us, feeling very pleased with the way things are going between us. And he’d be over the moon to know that his research has brought you closer to finding your family.’
‘I owe him so much,’ Tayte said. ‘Did you know he used to teach family history back home in DC? This is going way back. It’s how we met.’
‘Yes, he mentioned it when he first told me about you.’
‘Of course he did.’ Tayte thought back to those times and smiled to himself. ‘I’m sure he was just as keen to find my family as I was. It hurts to know I can never repay him.’
‘Find your family,’ Jean said. ‘For yourself and for Marcus. That’s how you can re
pay him. I can’t imagine anything would have made him happier.’
Tayte reached over and put his hand on the back of Jean’s. He’d never been one to show his emotions too readily, and he was finding it hard to tell Jean exactly how he felt about her now. But he sensed Jean understood that about him. They exchanged smiles, and in that moment he knew his message had been received and understood. Then the voice on the sat-nav interrupted the moment to let them know that they had arrived at their destination.
‘There it is,’ Tayte said, gazing through the windscreen at the wide, neo-classical structure with its high, pillared portico.
Apart from the grand entrance, it was little more than a dressed-up blot of concrete and windows—a lot of windows. Tayte thought the building looked even more oppressive in reality than it did in the newspaper clipping Marcus had left him, despite the obvious effort to enhance the surrounding space with trees and shrubs, and what appeared to be a picnic area with wooden bench tables. The building’s façade was in shade, which didn’t help. Tayte drove into the car park at the front of the building, which he supposed was once a Hitler Youth parade ground, and found a space with ease.
‘It’s not very busy,’ Jean said, reading his thoughts. ‘I suppose it gets busier at weekends.’
They got out of the car and strode up to the entrance. Tayte’s eyes immediately fixed on the two stone lions at the top of the steps to either side of the main doors. He pictured his mother standing between them a little over fifty years ago and his eyes wandered up to the restored words above the entrance: ‘Blut und Ehre’. Tayte climbed the steps and put his hands on one of the lions, feeling the cool stone against his palms. He wondered whether his mother had perhaps touched that very spot, and for a moment he felt so close to her that a shiver ran through him.
As he followed Jean into the building, he felt as if he had just stepped back in time to the 1930s. He heard faint but rousing classical music that crackled as though being played through an old gramophone or Bakelite radio set. It was disconcerting at first to see Nazi Party flags being displayed so flagrantly in the hall they had just entered, but he supposed it was all part of the experience, and he had to admit that it was working. He thought it was going a bit too far though when he saw the young attendant waiting to sell them their tickets. He was kitted out in a Hitler Youth costume, replete with achievement badges, and he even wore a short blonde wig to complete the stereotypical Aryan look, although it was poorly fitted and curled at the edges.
‘Zwei, bitte,’ Jean said, while Tayte was still staring at the young man in disbelief.
They followed the guide book they had been given to their left, into a room full of cabinets displaying items from the period. One wall showed a line of boy-sized mannequins dressed in the various iterations of the Hitler Youth uniform through the years.
‘I don’t know about you,’ Tayte said once he thought the attendant was out of earshot, ‘but I found that more than a little unsettling.’
‘I know what you mean,’ Jean said. ‘You can’t knock the place for authenticity though, can you?’
They came to a display of Hitler Youth daggers and Tayte wondered why none of these boys’ parents thought it just plain wrong to have their thirteen-year-old child running around with such a weapon attached to his belt. He imagined some mothers must have, but were perhaps too afraid to voice their concerns. On their way around the education centre they saw several other visitors and a few more members of staff in their Hitler Youth costumes, although if this was a typical day’s business, Tayte thought Johann Langner must be running the place at a loss in order to keep the past in people’s minds. They saw numerous display cabinets as they wandered through lecture rooms, classrooms and a large sports hall, which were all connected through a matrix of corridors whose parquet floors, as with everything else, had been painstakingly restored to their original form.
Over an hour had passed by the time they had gone full circuit, and when they arrived back at the entrance hall Tayte thought it was good to have visited the place, even if he had to concede that it had done nothing to further their understanding of why his mother had gone there.
‘I think I’d like to go someplace and get my laptop out,’ Tayte said. ‘Do some digging around online.’
‘Do you want to get a coffee?’
Tayte had seen a sign for the on-site coffee shop. ‘You mean, here?’
Jean frowned. ‘No, definitely not here. We can’t be too far from a decent café, though. Maybe we could stop off somewhere on the way back to the hotel.’
‘Sure,’ Tayte said. ‘That sounds great.’
As they made their way back to the car, Tayte said, ‘Would you like to go out for dinner tonight? We can get a coffee first, have a stroll through the city, and find somewhere fancy to eat.’
‘I’d love to, but I’d like to get out of this day dress first.’
‘You look great,’ Tayte said with a grin. ‘Sometimes it’s nice just to go with the flow and see where it takes you. Don’t you think?’
Jean laughed at him. ‘And there I was thinking you were a routine kind of guy.’
‘Hey, I’m working on it, aren’t I?’
‘Yes, you are,’ Jean said, laughing again. She reached up and gave him a kiss. ‘Thank you.’
As they got back into the car, Tayte smiled to himself and thought he would have to work on it more often.
Chapter Eighteen
They found an independent café in a sunny spot set back from the main road just outside Munich’s city centre, where it was also easier to find a parking space. Jean ordered a single pastry between them to go with their coffee.
‘We should share one,’ she said. ‘We don’t want to ruin our appetites for that fancy dinner you mentioned.’
Tayte had to smile. They were still getting to know one another, and he thought that Jean clearly didn’t know him all that well yet, or she would have known he could have eaten her half of the pastry and another two besides without putting so much as a dent in his appetite.
They set up at a table in the window, looking out at the tables and chairs in the forecourt, rather than sitting out in the early evening sunshine, because Tayte’s laptop screen didn’t handle bright light very well. He got his notebook out and flicked through the pages to find the information he’d written down when they left the elderly lady at the apartments by the waterway earlier. As he opened his laptop, he was glad to see the place offered free Wi-Fi.
‘I’ve been wanting to explore the drowning of Geoffrey Johnston,’ he said, ‘so why don’t we start there. Maybe his death was an accident, but I’d like to satisfy my curiosity.’
‘I’ll see what I can find on my tablet,’ Jean said.
Using Google’s translation services to better understand his findings, Tayte started with the German national broadsheet newspaper, Die Zeit, which he’d used a few times whilst looking into Volker Strobel before he and Jean left England. It was the country’s most widely read weekly newspaper, and it had a good digitised archive available online that dated back to the newspaper’s creation in 1946. Tayte started with the year he was most interested in—1973, the year his mother and Karl had gone to see Elijah Kaufmann. He figured Geoffrey Johnston, whoever he was, was likely to still be alive at that point. Tayte entered Geoffrey Johnston’s name into the search field. No results were found, so he tried 1974 and was presented with a single result from January that year.
At that moment, Jean looked up from her tablet PC and said, ‘You’re kidding me?’
‘What?’ Tayte said. ‘What is it?’
Jean put her tablet PC on the table and spun it around for Tayte to see. ‘Geoffrey Johnston has his own Wikipedia page. He was a British diplomat with the Foreign Office. His last role was Consul-General, Munich.’
‘Are you sure that’s the same Geoffrey Johnston?’ Tayte asked, scrolling through the information Jean had found.
‘It says he drowned in Munich in January 1974.’
‘Bloated body found in Eisbach,’ Jean read aloud. ‘There doesn’t seem to be any suspicion of foul play, though.’
‘No,’ Tayte said, ‘although seeing just how close Johnston’s death was to my mother’s and Karl’s visit with Elijah Kaufmann, it still strikes me as highly suspicious. He drowned four months later.’
‘I’m sure Elijah Kaufmann didn’t have anything to do with it,’ Jean said.
‘As am I, but perhaps someone could have gained access to Kauffman’s files—maybe someone else who worked for him.’
‘Or perhaps someone knew your mother and Karl were looking for Strobel and followed them to Johnston’s apartment. Just like they followed us after we left the offices of the FWK yesterday. They must also have visited other people during the time before Johnston’s death. Maybe they went to the FWK, too.’
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