The Black Life

by Paul Johnston

  ‘The Son,’ Mavros said, his heart hammering. ‘The fucking Son.’

  ‘We don’t know that, my love. Yiorgos might be in one of the hospitals. Maria’s ringing round.’

  ‘It’s him,’ he said, inhaling deeply. ‘Who else could it be?’

  Niki was silent for a while. ‘Are you coming back, Alex?’

  He dropped into a squat, his mind racing. ‘There are things I have to do. Talk to Mother and the others …’

  ‘I’ve done all that. They’re in emergency lockdown.’

  ‘Really? Thanks for that. But, Jesus, where is he?’

  ‘Get the first plane, Alex. I’m waiting for you.’

  Mavros got to his feet and saw Rachel looking at him seriously. Yiorgos. Had his best friend been cremated, or could he have got out? Given how slow-moving the Fat Man was, the latter seemed less than likely.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  By the spring of 1946 we were fully recovered physically and we had what we needed – changes of clothing, good boots, gold coins, weapons (we bought Colt .45 automatics, grenades and combat knives from American soldiers whose quartermasters were open to bribery) and, most important, information. The SS had been declared an illegal organisation and many of its surviving members were in camps undergoing the de-Nazification programme. A few, very few, were put on trial and some of the high-ranking officers would later be executed. But many of the low ranks had disappeared, back to their home cities, towns and villages where they either changed identity or lived openly, to the indifference or approval of the residents. The Americans caught many, but they were losing their appetite as it became clear that a new form of war with the Soviets was building up. For us, that was good. We got lists of SS men still at large. We also extracted names from mayors and other officials in small towns, sometimes leaving our terrified sources alive. It was pleasing to put them under threat of death – them and their families. Now they knew a little of what the Jews had experienced.

  There were other groups of avengers operating throughout the former Reich, but we avoided joining them or infringing on their field of operations. Some had the shadowy backing of Zionist groups in Palestine. We were Greek Jews and saw what we were doing as retribution for our own community. When we had amassed enough victims, all three of us intended to return to Thessaloniki and rebuild our lives. An independent state for the Jews struck us as little more than a ghetto with a warmer climate. We had suffered enough for many lives, but we were still young and naive – not least in imagining that our lust for vengeance would ever be sated.

  At first we were amateurish, killing men before they had time to reflect on their deeds, injuring bystanders in grenade attacks – not that we viewed anyone in Germany or Austria as innocent – and allowing our fury to get the better of us. There was a corporal who had been in the Waffen-SS before being transferred to Ravensbrück as a guard because frostbite had taken some of his toes. He fought us to the death – his own – leaving Zvi with a knife wound to his upper arm and me with cracked ribs. Shlomo finally cut the swine’s throat, which led to us all being drenched in blood. We burst into paroxysms of laughter as we sat around the body, gore dripping from our faces and hands. Then we agreed that we had to be more controlled.

  ‘We do to them what they did to our people,’ I said.

  ‘Are you planning on building a portable crematorium?’ Shlomo asked. He was the joker, even though his father had been beaten to death in front of him by a German criminal who had been put in charge of a sleeping block.

  ‘I don’t care about their bodies,’ I said. ‘I want them to die in full awareness of who killed them and why. So, we gas them in their cars. We hang them like they did the misguided escapers from the Lager. We tie them down and cut pieces off them like the bastard doctors did, without anaesthetic.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Zvi said solemnly. He pursued our goals with the dedication of a zealot. Soon that turned into full-blown religious devotion.

  So we stole vehicles – usually American staff cars – and tied the former SS men down inside them, often after using our knives on them, but never injuring them badly enough that they lost consciousness. We told them who we were and what they were being punished for. Threats to their families usually meant that they went quietly, their trousers stinking. We ran a hose from the exhaust to the window and watched the murderers slowly choke, their eyes sticking out and their tongues swollen. Then we dragged them into the undergrowth, cleaned up the driver’s seat and took the car back. The last thing we needed was the Americans turning against us. Sometimes we even found a helpful driver who let us pay for our transport; once a Jewish soldier came along for the ride. He shouted and swore as the victim died. Eventually Zvi had to knock him out. We were on the outskirts of a village.

  After six months roaming and executing around Bavaria and western Austria, we finally got a sniff of Knaus. He was cunning and obviously had good connections. We had been paying a clerk in Munich to keep an eye out for him on the lists. Nothing. Then we struck lucky. American soldiers at a checkpoint caught a courier for one of the old-comrade organisations that had sprung up with such speed that they must have been planned during the war. Whether he was tortured by an enraged Jewish serviceman or whether he was just a coward – there was no shortage of those in the SS – he gave names. It turned out that his contact in south-western Bavaria was Knaus, now calling himself Herr Entreis. We took special care with planning his end. Even Shlomo had heard of him, though he hadn’t been in the SK.

  He wasn’t an easy man to isolate, this Gustav Entreis. He lived with his family of three – a blonde wife and five-year-old female twins – in the centre of a small town that no Allied bomber had reached; wooden buildings with steep roofs, a small park on the banks of a rapidly flowing stream, birds singing as if there had been no extermination programme.

  ‘Why don’t we burn the whole place down, turn it into a crematorium?’ Shlomo asked, after we had reconnoitred. ‘If he escapes the flames, we can take him out in the chaos.’

  ‘We want him to go slowly and in full possession of his twisted mind,’ Zvi said. ‘We want him to die screaming insults at the Führer.’

  ‘And he might get away in the chaos,’ I said. ‘We need to lure him out. We know he’s trading on the black market. What have we got to excite him?’

  Shlomo rooted around in his haversack. ‘How about the jewellery?’

  We had been robbing German homes between killings. Much of the loot went on bribing the occupation forces for information and supplies, but we had kept a stock.

  ‘That’ll work,’ I said. ‘He always struck me as the rapacious type.’

  ‘As well as a murdering pig,’ Zvi said, his eyes wide. He had the same memories of the compound and the execution pits as I did, only not as many.

  ‘How do we approach him?’ Shlomo asked.

  ‘The safe way would be for you, the one he doesn’t know, to go,’ I replied, with a smile he didn’t return. ‘But I want to do it. He won’t recognise me now I’ve put weight on and have normal-length hair. And if he does, I’ll have his guts out before he can move.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Zvi said. ‘Your German is all right, but it’ll still make him suspicious.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing. I’ll go this evening. Wait for me at the edge of the woods above town, at the first bend in the road.’

  ‘He won’t go there in the dark,’ Shlomo objected.

  ‘If he’s as greedy as I think, he will. Stay there till midday. If I haven’t appeared by then, say Kaddish for me and burn the place down. You noticed the fuel tank by the town hall?’

  They nodded dubiously, then let me sleep in the shelter of the trees to the west. I woke refreshed, a plan having crystallised in my mind. I put a pistol in my belt and a sheathed knife in my jacket pocket. The bag of jewels went in the other pocket. I was wearing a poorly cut suit and a Homburg hat that had seen better days.

  ‘See you later,’ I said, nodding to the o
thers. I didn’t offer them my hand – I was sure I’d be back.

  The town, really an extended village serving the surrounding hamlets as a market, had a post office and some shops but not much else. There were more streetlights than was usual at the time, suggesting there was money to run generators. I saw men drinking beer in an establishment with deer and wild-boar heads on the walls. They didn’t look as if the war weighed greatly on them. Knaus was among them. I waited across the street, then ran to catch him up when he came out.

  ‘Sir, sir,’ I said, breathing heavily as if I was exhausted.

  ‘What is it?’ he said, turning and eyeing me suspiciously. His hand went to the pocket of his jacket. Although he too had put on some weight, his expression was as it had been in the Lager – overbearing, vicious, selfish.

  ‘A moment of your time, sir,’ I said, playing the nervous bottom-feeding shyster we’d seen so many of. ‘I have something that will interest you.’

  ‘Who are you?’ he demanded. ‘Where do you come from?’

  ‘Werth is my name. I am a Sudeten German, but now …’ I shrugged.

  He didn’t look convinced. ‘You sound like a Yid to me.’ He drew a Walther P38. ‘Give me a good reason not to shoot you. No one will care.’

  I raised my arms. ‘Left jacket pocket, Mr Entreis.’

  ‘How do you know my name?’

  ‘Marcus in Munich recommended you.’ That individual was a former SS man, a big black-market player and an Allied informer.

  Knaus relaxed slightly, then stuck his hand in my pocket. He opened the leather pouch and looked in. His lips twitched and he licked them.

  ‘Very good,’ he said, then laughed harshly. ‘So kind of you to donate them.’

  ‘But, sir, I have more.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I left my suitcase in the woods above town.’

  He stared at me and for several moments I thought he had recognised me. Then he looked away, calculating the odds.

  ‘Keep your hands up and come with me,’ he said, leading me to a narrow passage beside the town hall. He lived in the next building. When we were out of the direct light, he pointed the pistol at my groin. ‘Take your cock out.’

  My heart rate remained steady. I hadn’t expected Knaus to be easily duped. ‘So I must lower my hands,’ I said, my voice uneven.

  ‘One hand. The left one.’

  I did as he said, extracting my member after struggling with the buttons.

  ‘I knew you were a Yid,’ he said, stepping closer.

  I pissed at him and that distraction gave me the second I needed to whip the knife from my pocket and bring it down heavily. The blade hacked at least halfway through the bones of his right wrist and the Walther dropped to the ground. I cut his scream off by ramming the muzzle of my Colt into his mouth, hearing teeth break.

  ‘Silence,’ I hissed. ‘Silence and I won’t rape your daughters.’

  I wasn’t sure if the threat would work, as the SS man had only ever shown self-interest, but he bit his lip and I stuffed a rolled-up length of fabric into his mouth before he could react, tying another strip round the gag. Then I pushed him down the passage towards the fuel tank. The truth was, I had never intended taking him to the others in the woods. Knaus was mine.

  I took off the second of the belts I was wearing and secured him to the pipe leading from the tank. Then I turned the wheel and let diesel flow towards his feet. Soon his trousers had absorbed plenty of it.

  ‘And now it’s time to talk,’ I said. ‘For me, that is. You only have to listen.’ I stabbed him in the upper thigh. ‘Understand?’ He nodded vigorously.

  I took off my jacket, having retrieved the pouch of jewels. It was only then that I noticed I was still exposed and put my penis away. I removed the grenades from the straps I’d tied beneath my knees and lined the four of them up next to the puddle of fuel. Then I pulled up my left sleeve and showed him my Lager number.

  ‘Do you recognise me now, Sergeant Knaus? I was in the Sonderkommando at Auschwitz-Birkenau for many months.’

  He started making sounds – no doubt trying to plead, offer me money, maybe even compliment me on my good service and my survival.

  ‘The time has come for you to hear the judgement passed down by the thousands of souls you sent into the cold Polish skies. You beat people to death.’ I clubbed him across the side of the head with the Colt. ‘You shot them in the back of the neck in their hundreds. Don’t worry, that’s too quick for you.’ Instead I ran the knife blade across his throat, watching the blood drip but not spurt. ‘You drove people into the gas chamber.’ I laughed, staring into his terrified eyes. ‘Quite a lot of diesel fumes here, aren’t there? You ordered their corpses to be burned. You will experience that, but with a difference – you’ll burn alive.’

  He whimpered though the gap, jerking his head from side to side. That stopped when I stabbed him through the other thigh. Blood flowed rapidly from the femoral artery and I realised time was short.

  ‘You were also responsible for the deaths of the mutilated victims of the doctors.’ I jabbed the point of the knife into his groin. ‘Do you have anything to say before sentence is carried out? I thought not.’

  He was desperately trying to communicate, looking up at the wall to his right.

  ‘Your family?’ I was disappointed he was concerned about them, then I realised he was using them for his own safety. ‘Are they at home? That is unfortunate. Then again, think how many families you incinerated. Heil Hitler!’

  Knaus struggled to get free as I pulled the pin from one of the grenades, kicking the other three into the diesel. I looked him in the eye and laughed, then dropped the grenade and ran for the end of the passage. I made it just before the explosion.

  I walked quickly up the hill as people ran towards the blaze that had ignited the rapid series of blasts. No one paid me the least attention.

  ‘What happened?’ Shlomo asked.

  Zvi glared at me and swung a punch, which I avoided. ‘You did that deliberately, didn’t you? Why couldn’t you share him?’

  I explained what had happened, but Zvi wasn’t convinced. We were never as close again.

  A few days later we heard that thirty-seven people, including nine children, had died in the fire, which was put down to an electrical fault. I felt, and still feel, no guilt.

  When we parted Zvi told me I had become one of them, a Jewish monster. The words meant nothing to me. They were men, I was a man, and we each had to make choices. I chose to survive and become an avenger. The Nazis were misguided. I don’t think I was.

  Do you?

  TWENTY-FIVE

  ‘What is it?’ Rachel said.

  ‘My … my friend in Athens. His house was burned down. They don’t know if he was inside.’

  ‘Oh my God.’ She clutched his arm.

  Mavros was still squatting, holding the phone away from him as if it had dealt him a blow. Suddenly it rang again. Mavros activated the connection but was unable to speak.

  There was a cough. ‘Is that you … half-Scottish tosser?’

  ‘Yiorgo? You’re … you’re alive. Where are you?’

  ‘I’m – get off, I can take my trousers off myself, thank you – I’m in the General Hospital.’ More coughing. ‘With a nurse who seems … to have an extreme interest in my privates.’ A firm female voice could be heard in the background. ‘Apparently I’m a –’ this time the coughing lasted even longer – ‘difficult patient.’

  ‘What a surprise. Tell me what happened.’

  ‘Bastards threw … Molotovs.’

  ‘But you got out.’

  ‘Thanks to the shotgun. There isn’t much left of the door.’

  It sounded like the Fat Man didn’t know about the destruction of his family home.

  ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘Some burns, I don’t think … they’re too bad … some minor cuts.’

  ‘How come you disappeared?’

  ‘This young guy picked me … too
k me to the hospital. I passed out for a bit. The traffic was fucking … awful so we got delayed.’

  ‘Young guy?’ Mavros asked, thinking of the Son.

  ‘I had the feeling … I’d seen him somewhere … before.’

  ‘Was it the Son?’

  ‘No … I don’t think so. Blinded … couldn’t see properly.’

  Mavros thought about that. Even it wasn’t the Son himself, he could have put someone else up to it. But why make a move on Yiorgos rather than him or Niki? Or his more vulnerable mother?

  ‘Who would have burned … tried to burn you out?’

  ‘I’m taking them off … What? Burn me out? I don’t know. You haven’t made … enemies up there, have you?’

  A bony finger twisted in Mavros’s abdomen. Shimon said he’d been on the TV news. Could some fucker in the Phoenix Rises have recognised him and tried to get him out of Thessaloniki by striking at the Fat Man?

  ‘They’re trying … they’re going to put a mask on me. Listen, Alex, don’t come back for me … you hear? Unless you’ve … finished up there. Do your job, all right? I’m in good hands. Well, quite good hands. … severe, really, but …’ The connection was broken.

  Mavros slumped against the wall and drew his arm across his eyes.

  ‘Is he OK?’ Rachel asked.

  ‘So it seems.’ He shook his head. ‘His house was firebombed.’

  ‘Shit. Who by?’

  ‘Too early to tell.’

  ‘Let’s get a coffee,’ she suggested. ‘You look like you need several.’

  Mavros let himself be taken to a nearby café, where he ordered a triple sketo. He felt better soon afterwards.

  ‘Sorry, I need to make some calls.’

  Rachel nodded and occupied herself with her own phone.

  ‘Niki? Panic over. He’s in the General.’

  ‘Oh, Alex, thank God. How is he?’

  ‘Cantankerous.’

  ‘I meant physically.’

  ‘Nothing too serious, though he’s coughing like a bull in a, er … bull ring.’