The Devouring

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The Devouring Page 23

by James R Benn


  There is no abuse here, but on the contrary, strict control on the part of the commandant.

  And this from an unnamed internee:

  The camp is a relaxing place I would happily return to after the war.

  “May we speak to the prisoner who made that comment?” I asked.

  “No,” Wurz said, hardly bothering to pretend the quote was real or not coerced. “But we should talk about Captain Bowman. His adjustment to this camp has not been easy. Things would be much better for him—perhaps even a release could be arranged—if he provided information leading to the return of certain stolen documents.”

  “Documents stolen from Max Huber, perhaps?” Kaz asked.

  “Captain Bowman was on the premises when the theft occurred,” Wurz said. “As were you both.”

  “I thought you didn’t know why Bowman was sent here,” I said. “You said that was a decision of the courts and the government.”

  “Here, we are the court and the government. I think you understand me,” Wurz said. “Provide what I ask for and Captain Bowman will once again be granted evadee status. If not, he will remain here, subject to our hospitality.” He snapped out an order in German, and our two pals were back with their pig stickers. Wurz crushed out his butt and smiled, thin lips stretched across yellow teeth.

  Our car had been thoroughly searched, their disappointment at not finding the documents conveniently stashed in the glove box evident in the mess they’d left behind. Papers were strewn on the floor, seats lifted out, and the spare tire on the ground. But our pistols were in the trunk, which I took to mean Wurz and company didn’t mean to ambush us anytime soon, having left us with a couple of six-shooters.

  Or it meant that they’d come in numbers with superior firepower.

  The only good news was that they’d wait until we found Max Huber’s stolen documents. And we were no closer to finding them than we were the night Henri was killed. Which was very bad news for Walter Bowman. We drove out the main gate, tires spinning in the thick mud of the prison camp in the swamp of Wauwil.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “You were smart not to go inside,” I said to Lasho as he took over driving.

  “Maybe you were not so smart to go in,” he said. “Hospitals and prisons, I try to stay away from both. I like being alive and free.”

  “The Swiss took the food for themselves. We saw Bowman, but all I did was make promises I’m not sure I can keep,” I said.

  “You promised to help,” Lasho said, shaking his head at such foolishness. “They will live on hope for one or two days. Then they will come to hate you.”

  “Unfortunately, you are likely correct,” Kaz said. “But there was little else to do. Dulles wanted a report on the prison, and now we have one for him. Little good that it will do.”

  “We did learn something,” I said, gazing out the window at the flat wetlands, wondering what it meant, if anything.

  “Maureen Conaty lied to us about where she spent the night after the reception,” Kaz explained. “She said she left Bowman at the hotel bar and went to spend the night with Victor Hyde. Bowman said she stayed with him until six in the morning.”

  “Men have been known to lie about their experiences with women,” Lasho said.

  “Captain Bowman was not bragging about a conquest,” Kaz said. “He seemed genuine to me.”

  “Well, we can ask Victor in a few hours,” I said. “You all set with the route?”

  “Yes,” Kaz said. “North of Lucerne, along the lake shore, and then backroads into the mountains. The route is the most straightforward thing about this entire affair.”

  “Men, women, gold, greed, these are not complex things,” Lasho said. “Understanding how they fit together, that is difficult.” He rolled down the window, warm air filling the automobile. The road rose into hilly terrain, leafy green trees shading the route and hiding the dank marshland from view.

  “Especially when things are not as they seem,” I said. “Like the neutral Swiss. Or the Red Cross.”

  “We attempt to enter the office of the Swiss Red Cross and we are shot at,” Kaz said, turning in his seat to face me. “We attend a reception for the International Red Cross, and Henri enlists your aid in the theft of certain documents. Then we are followed. Henri is killed. Victor disappears. Bowman is arrested. We discover the Gestapo has based their search out of the Alusuisse warehouse, another connection to Max Huber. Then we are followed once again, to Doctor Moret’s house.”

  “And then we visit the prison, which recently received a glowing testimony from the Red Cross about their five-star resort,” I said, giving Lasho a run-down on the report Wurz had given us.

  “Do not forget Georg Hannes,” Lasho said. “A Gestapo man wanted by the Gestapo. Not to mention Ernst, who seemed to be a decent sort. I thought the world had gone insane, but I did not think it had turned upside down as well until I came to Switzerland.”

  “Let us focus on finding Victor, and bringing Henri’s killer to justice,” Kaz said.

  “Swiss justice?” Lasho asked, giving Kaz a sideways glance.

  “I had something in mind much less elusive,” Kaz said. “But first, we have to determine who is responsible. It would be easy to say the Germans, along with their SVV allies, but there may be more to this case than the obvious. As you say, everything is upside down.”

  “So we need to start thinking upside down,” I said. “Or inside out.”

  “Does that mean you’ll be taking another nap?” Kaz asked with a grin. I could see Lasho smiling in the rearview mirror.

  I didn’t sleep. I watched the countryside flow by as we drove north of Lucerne, lush fields of farmland dotted green against the hillsides. On one side of the road, the land sloped upward, stands of pine hard against the deep blue sky. Below, a sparkling lake glittered in the distance. I tried to think upside down, going back to the beginning.

  Safehaven.

  Who wouldn’t want it to succeed? Bankers. Swiss politicians. The SVV.

  What about the Germans? Safehaven was essentially a postwar operation. Once it got rolling, the Third Reich would be a pile of rubble. I could see the Nazis protecting their looted gold and the laundering mechanism the Swiss banks gave them. But with the war getting closer to their doorstep, I didn’t see them worrying about the long term.

  Except for those rats deserting a sinking ship.

  Georg Hannes was a blackmailer. Henri Moret took papers from Huber’s place that he thought would help him take revenge for his uncle’s treatment by the Swiss government. So, those who were threatened by the documents would pay well to get them back. Classic job for a blackmailer. Hannes could extort the high and mighty in Swiss society and further fund his nest egg.

  Siegfried Krauch and the Gestapo would want to stop the scandal as well, since nothing embarrasses bankers like the bright light of day.

  So who roughed up Henri, perhaps killing him inadvertently? And where was the cigarette case? Obviously the Krauts—all the above factions—didn’t have it yet. Or the SVV, judging by Wurz’s declarations of mercy for Bowman if we handed it over.

  And why the hell had Maureen lied about where she spent the night? One guy or the other, what did it matter? She was a big girl, and there was a war on. Aside from the chaplain, who cared? All that was left was to find Victor and see what he knew.

  Lasho braked, and I slid forward on the seat. I hadn’t been paying attention to the road, but we were stuck in a line of traffic. Trucks and farm vehicles moved slowly ahead of us, an occasional honking horn signaling an impatient driver.

  “What could it be out in the country?” Kaz asked. Off to our right, houses and barns with low, sloping roofs sat huddled together on a hillside. “A roadblock?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “There’s no traffic coming the other way. Maybe an accident.”

  The tra
ffic inched along, until it came to a dead stop. A train whistle sounded, long and mournful. I got out, walking up the curving road until I could see ahead around the line of vehicles. Other people were doing the same, chatting like strangers do when caught up in a delay. A guy went on in French, complaining to me about something. I shrugged, in the international language of frustrated motorists, which satisfied him.

  I got close enough to see what had happened. The locomotive was stationary, its engine releasing bursts of exhaust steam as it sat on the tracks. Snarled in the cowcatcher was the remains of a tractor. Some unlucky farmer had tried to beat the train at the crossing, or had gotten stuck. Either way, it would be a while. I headed back to the car, hoping the farmer’s luck hadn’t been all bad and that he’d jumped to safety in time.

  I filled Kaz and Lasho in, and it wasn’t long before the traffic moved along, lurching ahead in fits and stops. As we rounded the curve, I could see cops ahead, pointing to a side road and hollering orders in German and French. The turnoff came just before a stone bridge that arched over a swift-running mountain stream.

  “Detour,” Lasho said. As we drew closer, I could make out soldiers as well, their rifles slung, standing across the roadway. It seemed like a lot of manpower for a train-versus-tractor accident.

  “It may be a trap,” Kaz said, picking up on the oddity of this farmland crossing attracting such a crowd of uniforms. “But it does not make sense. They could have stopped us with a simple roadblock.”

  “Drive slowly,” I said to Lasho. We lumbered off onto the side road, letting the distance build between us and the truck ahead. I started to worry about soldiers jumping out and surrounding us, but that was only a case of nerves. Kaz was right. We weren’t worth all this trouble.

  The dirt road was not much more than a wide lane alongside a field planted with crops. The car behind us started to honk its horn, impatient with our pace. I tapped Lasho on the shoulder and pointed to the side of the road. He pulled over, the grassy verge wide enough to let the line of traffic pass us by.

  Dust settled as the vehicles passed, the sound of their engines fading. I looked back for any sign of soldiers taking position, but the road was empty.

  “We are not being followed,” Lasho said, his eyes fixed on the rearview mirror.

  “Perhaps it was a military train,” Kaz said. “That would explain the soldiers.”

  “Maybe,” I said, stepping out of the car and scanning the terrain. The field was to our right, woods to our left. I caught a sound, a strange murmur coming through the trees. “What’s that?”

  “There is a river beyond those trees,” Lasho said as he and Kaz joined me.

  “It does not sound like running water,” Kaz said, a hand cupped behind one ear. “Voices?”

  Curious, we made our way through the woods, which thinned out as we drew closer to the river. I caught glimpses of the stalled train through the leaves, the small cattle cars similar to the one we hitched a ride on not that many days ago.

  “It is voices,” Lasho said, stopping dead in his tracks. A low wailing sound lifted itself above the roiling waters, the noise of anguish, sorrow, and grief. We moved slowly, parting branches and skulking low, until we came to the river, where water splashed over rocks, the frothing current a roar that could not drown out hundreds of voices from the cattle cars.

  Or maybe thousands.

  Across the river, cries rose from the train. Hands appeared at open slats and ventilation holes, the openings covered by barbed wire. Gray-uniformed Swiss soldiers patrolled the tracks, ignoring the pleas from inside the boxcars. We moved back into the underbrush, hiding from the guards.

  Or maybe hiding from the people in the cars, ashamed of our freedom.

  “Can you understand anything?” I asked Kaz.

  “They are speaking in Italian, Yiddish, some Croatian,” Kaz said. “They are begging to be let out. They know this is Switzerland.”

  “Who are they?” Lasho asked, his voice catching in his throat.

  “Jews, from Italy, along with those destined for slave labor. Captured partisans are usually sent to be worked to death in Germany. Usually, the Nazis use the Brenner Pass in Austria, but that route has been heavily bombed,” Kaz said.

  “More Swiss neutrality,” I whispered. I felt my revolver pressing against my rib cage. Useless. There had to be twenty armed guards, or more.

  “There is a treaty that allows for nonmilitary goods to be transported across Switzerland,” Kaz said, as usual a walking encyclopedia. “Through the Gotthard tunnel, north to Germany and south to Italy. Prisoners being sent to their death can hardly be called nonmilitary.”

  “Someone’s looking the other way,” I said. “Which may be why they have so many soldiers out guarding the train. To keep people from getting too close.”

  “Which means they may use their rifles,” Lasho said. “We can do nothing here except be killed.”

  The alternative, running away, felt only marginally better.

  “Look,” Kaz said, pointing to a passenger car at the end of the train. A window opened, and a figure in a German uniform leaned out, waving his arms and looking angry. “He wants to know when they will be moving.” With that, the train whistle blasted two long notes, which back home was the signal that the engineer was releasing the brakes and heading forward. The Kraut retreated inside and the guards climbed aboard, some of them into the passenger car and others clambering atop the boxcars.

  The cries and wails from inside the cars rose one final time, a futile protest at the forward movement carrying them into the black heart of the Third Reich. Then, silence, except for the splash of water breaking over rocks, a cascade of tears flowing to the sea.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  We didn’t speak for thirty miles.

  We were free, doing what we—more or less—loved doing. We had pistols, cash, and half a tank of gas. Compared to the poor souls in those cattle cars, the world was at our feet. The air was fresh and the sun warm. I wished it would rain, wished that thunder would roll over the mountains and lightning crack the sky at the inhumanity of what we witnessed.

  But nothing happened. The beautiful Swiss scenery was vivid and the sky achingly blue. It seemed wrong how quickly normal, everyday life washed over the terrors and horrors of war, leaving only a memory to visit again and again in fitful dreams. But that was the kind of war we had here in Switzerland. It erupted occasionally from beneath the placid façade of neutrality, then retreated back behind the curtain.

  Nothing to see here, folks, just a stalled train. Move on. Go about your business.

  So we did.

  We found the signpost for Alpthal and followed a winding mountain road until it straightened out in a narrow valley, the afternoon sun already nearing the top of the peaks ahead of us. We paralleled railroad tracks, pacing a small train for a while, a few cars making the run from one mountain village to another. The kind of thing trains were supposed to do.

  A church steeple came into view, its gray slate spire towering over the squat, sloped roofs surrounding it. We crossed the railroad tracks near a train station and spotted the Haupweg turnoff, right where Doctor Moret said it would be. It was a rutted gravel lane, and the car bounced along until we came to the end, opposite the small pine-log chalet with red shutters. No other vehicle was in sight.

  “Victor could have taken the train and walked up from the village,” Kaz said, scanning the terrain as I had. “Or left his automobile there, if he didn’t want to attract attention.”

  “Let’s see if he’s home,” I said, as we exited the vehicle and began climbing the hill. The chalet was about a hundred yards up a grassy incline. If Victor was up there, he’d have a perfect view of anyone approaching. Over the sights of Moret’s rifle.

  We waved our arms and called out, wanting Victor to know we were friendly, in case he was in the mood to shoot first and not
give a damn about questions. No response. The faintest whiff of wood smoke swirled in the wind. We stopped short of the house, listening. Silence.

  We drew our pistols. Something wasn’t right. The smoke said he was at home. The silence meant otherwise.

  “Out for a hike up the mountain?” Lasho offered.

  “Check the back door,” I said. “We’ll go in the front.”

  The door wasn’t locked. It wasn’t even fully closed. I pushed it open with the barrel of my revolver, the creaking hinges startlingly loud. We stepped into a large room. A wood-burning stove was still warm. Comfortable chairs were arranged around it, one with a coffee cup still on a side table, half full. A book lay open on the floor, an old desk scattered with papers, a quilt folded on one chair. The place was lived in. And recently vacated.

  Kaz took the stairs up to a loft. I checked the dining room. Nothing.

  “In here,” Lasho called from the rear of the house. We entered the kitchen, where a long wooden table dominated the room. One of the chairs was pulled out and strands of cut rope were scattered on the floor, covering red splashes. Blood splatter.

  “He was tortured,” Lasho said, pointing to two carving knives on the table, caked with blood.

  “My god,” Kaz said, entering the kitchen. “What happened here?”

  “Victor was tied to the chair,” I said, moving the pieces of rope aside. “And worked on with those knives.”

  “At least he is not dead,” Lasho said. “Or else he would still be in the chair.”

  “There’s not a lot of blood,” I said. Of course, if it had been mine, I would’ve thought it was a river of the stuff. But it was mostly splatter from dripping blood. It was on the arm of the chair and along the legs. Cuts on the hands and arms, maybe a jab in the thigh. Pain, not death, had been the objective.

  “There are no other blood stains,” Kaz said, checking the kitchen floor. “Why, if he was let go?”

 

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