“Steh auf, Du Spion!”
Before Cartwright knew it he had been hauled upright and thrust back against the cabinet. A particularly disagreeable hinge poked into his left shoulder blade.
The barrels of four rifles were now pointed straight at him, daring him to make a wrong move and making it exceedingly difficult to maintain his balance without inviting a bullet. A fifth soldier, an officer, stood to the side and studied Cartwright with an indiscernible expression on his face. He had a very deep tan and looked curiously at this new prisoner with weathered eyes.
“Wie heissen Sie, Spion? Was tuen Sie hier?”
“I-I’m sorry, I don’t speak German.”
A puzzled look filled the officer’s face at the sound of hearing English.
Cartwright quickly found himself thinking that he had made a mistake. The German’s lips twisted into a snarl before he roughly grabbed Cartwright by the lapels and hauled him up to the tips of his toes. “English? Sie sprechen English? Du bist ein englischer Spion! Sie verstecken sich hier nach Ihnen töteten unseren Kameraden. Was tuen Sie hier, eh? Was, eh?”
Cartwright stammered out the only words he could think of for a reply to the German jibber-jabber. “Stephen Cartwright. Royal Air Force. W-7-8-2-4.”
The German looked like he was ready to tear him apart. Clearly that was not the right answer.
Cartwright was thrown to the ground. The Kraut delivered a savage kick to his stomach, expelling any breath that he had managed to suck in while he had been frozen solid in fear. Another kick followed and the Briton felt like he was going to vomit.
“Halt, bitte.”
There was silence for a moment before Cartwright dared to open his eyes. When he did, there was a pair of highly-polished jackboots standing right in front of his face. Christ, these blokes came in from a muddy rainstorm and this one had time to clean his boots? Turning his head slowly upward introduced him to a very tall man also wearing the uniform of an officer. The soldiers around him hauled Cartwright to his feet and held him while the new German inspected his prisoner.
Cartwright gave the German an equal amount of attention. His height, in combination with jet black hair and piercing blue eyes, made for a striking figure that held the air of a patrician upbringing, something that Cartwright could spot easily after a long career in the class-conscious RAF. It was also difficult to miss the skull’s head and SS insignias on the officer’s collar—or the pistol strapped to his waist.
Chills ran down the back of Cartwright’s spine, chills that weren’t caused by the sweat clinging to his clothes.
“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” the Kraut commander asked. His voice was calm, patient.
A tiny response was able to work its way up from beaten lungs to Cartwright’s cracked lips. “No.”
The first officer, the one with the deep tan, stepped up to the elbow of his commander and quietly whispered in his ear. While the words were foreign it was pretty clear what his vote was as to what should be done with this British interloper. The fear in Cartwright’s stomach once again fought for attention against the rapidly churning thoughts in his mind that desperately wanted to avoid being executed on the spot.
Raising a hand, the SS commander silenced his deputy. Icy eyes slid over Cartwright’s rumpled uniform to the flight insignia on his lapels. The German nodded slowly to himself as he worked out what was going on.
“Luftwaffe?”
That was a word Cartwright did know. Yes, he was a member of the air force. He nodded to make sure the commander knew he was correct.
An errant thought made Cartwright shudder. Only a day before, he had almost accepted Robert’s offer of clean clothes to replace his dank and torn uniform. Had he done so, he would have lost his flight pins—and the only proof that he was something other than a spy.
If he had changed clothes he surely now would have been dead.
The German officer barked orders at his men and Cartwright found himself being dragged out of the room. Where they were taking him was anyone’s guess, but at least it seemed like there might be at least some sort of temporary reprieve from a nasty end.
7
They went right to the spiral staircase at the back of the kitchen. Two soldiers held each of Cartwright’s arms until they began to descend single-file, where the subsequent manhandling caused the airman’s feet to miss at least every other step. At the bottom the entourage turned right and stumbled its way past the pantry, through a corridor of exposed brick, and to the ancient archway of the wine cellar. The next thing he knew, Cartwright was flying through the air and landed headfirst into something metallic and unyielding.
The German officer strode into the room behind him. He issued a stream of orders that Cartwright couldn’t understand, but the two soldiers grabbed him yet again and forced him up into a sitting position. Then they stepped back and raised their rifles. A deathly quiet filled the cellar as everyone stared at him. A wave of panic hit Cartwright. This had to be some kind of firing squad. Was this to be the end of it all, underground in a cold, dank hole?
But they didn’t shoot. Seconds dragged into minutes. Cartwright’s mind raced through all the things that might be about to happen. Were they going to interrogate him? How? He didn’t speak German. Was he to be tortured? To what end? Why had they taken him to the wine cellar of all places? His head was throbbing from where it had struck the edge of one of the wine racks, and it felt like there was a trickle of something—blood, sweat—running down his scalp. The pack of Nazis was watching him closely. The captain in particular was disturbing. Studying every move Cartwright made like a night owl ready to swoop down on a field mouse, the German stood motionlessly and simply observed.
Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside. A small man entered wearing round glasses and carrying a black leather notebook against the gray of his uniform. Cartwright thought he looked like a rat, with a sharp, pointed nose and thin moustache that could have doubled as whiskers. He mentally dubbed him The Rat.
The Rat and the captain conversed briefly in German before refocusing their attention back on Cartwright. Where was all this going? Were they going to kill him, or lock him up as a prisoner of war?
“What is your name?” the Rat asked in accented English. He flipped open his little notebook and prepared a pencil to write.
I’ll be damned, Cartwright thought. A bilingual rat. Well, the little animal deserved a treat, then. “Stephen Cartwright. Royal Air Force. W-7-8-2-4.”
The Rat recorded the information. “Herr Cartwright, what are you doing here in France?”
Cartwright’s training on how to act if captured behind enemy lines took hold. He remained defiantly quiet.
“Did you not understand me? I’ll ask again. What are you, a member of the Royal Air Force, doing here on the ground in France?”
Silence.
The Rat looked tight-lipped to his commander. All it took was a single head nod from the captain and another German, a solider with a soft cap and a thin, silvery scar on his face, strode over to Cartwright and slugged him right in his sternum.
Oxygen fled. Constricting pain. Cartwright tried to breathe, to gulp air like a fish out of water and prevent his insides from collapsing, but the thug who had landed the first blow added a second, then a third. His misery became something indescribably greater as little flecks of light danced around his vision.
Then, the beating stopped. It took Cartwright half a minute to force a breath, which he did with little grace and much spittle. A spasm of violent coughing doubled him over with a finishing touch.
“Now, Herr Cartwright,” the Rat began again. “You have a choice. You may either answer my questions or we let Herr Gohler try to convince you otherwise. Am I clear?”
A cough and a nod.
“Good. I want to know what you are doing in France. Tell us how you came to be here at Domaine des Contis?”
Cartwright struggled to draw in enough oxygen to speak, all the while damning himself for being too weak to
withstand a little physical punishment. If anything, he worried that he would not be able to regain his breath fast enough to talk. Cartwright felt a sudden pang of shame. He knew his lack of breeding was showing through. An RAF officer would never have allowed his dignity to be assaulted so, even if captured behind enemy lines, but an enlisted man such as himself had little recourse other than to take what was given to him. And what was being offered—the promise of a long, thorough beating—left Cartwright little choice in the matter.
“We were shot down,” Cartwright gasped. “I was the tail gunner flying a night raid and we were shot down on the way to our target. I managed to bail out. I don’t know about the others.”
“What was your bombing target?”
Cartwright eyed the Rat nervously. He didn’t like the idea of answering specifics. More often than not, doing so tended to get one into deeper trouble.
“Herr Cartwright? I asked you a question. You don’t want Herr Gohler to persuade you to loosen your tongue again, do you? What was your bombing target?”
“Stuttgart.”
“I see. Did you have a large number of planes in your formation?”
“Sure, but I couldn’t tell you how many. Like I said, I was the tail gunner.”
The Rat slowly wrote in his notebook. “Your accent is… different. Where are you from?”
“Birmingham.”
“Where again?”
“Bur-ming-um.”
“Ah.” The Rat scribbled the new information in his little notebook, although Cartwright could tell by looking at him that the goon had no idea where Birmingham was. “Where did your plane crash? Surely it must be near here.”
“I don’t know, exactly. Like I said, it was at night, and God only knows which direction. When I hit the ground I stayed hidden until morning. Then I scouted around a bit until I found a dirt road. I followed the road and it led me here. End of story.”
“How many days ago was this?”
Cartwright took a deep breath. His lungs were aching, a reminder for him to not seem too evasive. “Not sure, really. Time’s been a bit of a blur since it happened. Three days, maybe four? Could have been a week ago for all I know.”
“All right. Then when did you arrive here at the mansion?” the Rat asked.
“Day before yesterday.”
“And what have you done here since then?”
Cartwright crinkled his forehead. What?
“Herr Cartwright, I asked you a question.”
“I know you did, I just didn’t understand it.”
“I was quite specific. What have you done here at the mansion since you arrived?”
Cartwright considered the query for a moment. “I don’t know. Haven’t paid that much attention. Ate. Slept. Thought about how to get back home. Hid from you lot. That’s everything.”
“And what about last night? Which of those things were you doing when we arrived?”
“Well, let me see. That would be hiding, then.”
The pencil stopped moving behind the little notebook. “No, you weren’t. Why would you be hiding upon our arrival? You didn’t know who we were. The Contis were certainly taken by surprise. I want to know exactly what you were doing just before we walked in the front door.”
“The few seconds before you barged in I was in the kitchen. Eating. When your comrade started barking out orders in the front foyer, I dove into one of the cabinets to get out of sight as soon as possible. That’s where I stayed until morning.”
“You stayed cramped up in that cabinet from our arrival until we found you less than half an hour ago?”
“That’s what I’m saying,” Cartwright replied.
The Rat wrote in his notebook, though the little man’s demeanor made it clear he didn’t believe him.
“I should tell you,” the Rat replied, “that our interrogation will not be confined to your answers alone. We will be asking all of the Contis similar questions. If your story does not corroborate with what they tell us, the result will be very… painful to you. Fatal, perhaps.
“So I’ll ask you again, one last time. Are you sure that the entire time our party has been present at the manor, you have remained in the kitchen?”
“Yes.”
“You’re lying.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You are, and we’ll see if Sturmscharführer Gohler needs some exercise. Tell the truth now and save yourself a lot of pain. Save the Contis a lot of pain.”
“I’m not lying,” Cartwright insisted. His voice broke. He desperately hoped that his fear would not be interpreted as dishonesty.
“Why are you all marked up? The scrapes on your knuckles there, and your face. What is that from?”
Cartwright looked down at his hands and realized that they were shaking. He did his best to lay them flat against his legs and steady them. “Must have been from that tree that I parachuted into. Branches and twigs will do a number on you when you can’t see where you’re trying to land in the middle of the night.”
“You’re lying!” the Rat shouted.
“Why do you think I’m lying?” Cartwright shouted back.
The Rat started pacing back and forth across the cellar. His round glasses were slipping down his nose as his hands flailed about, though his elbows may as well have been bolted to his hips given the zero motion they produced. The whole thing would have been comical if not for the armed men standing all around.
“Because I know the truth!” the man screamed in a squeaky, breaking voice. “You have no idea how much evidence we have. You were prowling around last night, weren’t you? You were sneaking around and came down here to the cellar last night!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Cartwright fought to speak steadily.
“Damn you, man, confess!”
“Herr Krauss.” The calm, patrician voice of the German captain fell over the wine cellar.
The Rat rapidly composed himself, looking slightly embarrassed at his outburst. What had made him so emotional, Cartwright wondered?
The RAF sergeant glanced about the other members of his audience while the two Germans talked. The soldiers with the rifles seemed edgy, frustrated, and that was a dangerous thing when fingers were on triggers. Gohler, the thug with the scar, had a cold expression that seemed borderline psychotic. It made Cartwright’s chest ache just thinking of the beating mere minutes before.
Cartwright glanced over at the captain. The tall German returned his gaze as he listened to his subordinate. Even now he was being studied. How much did they know? How much did they think they knew? He wasn’t sure what facts the Nazis had been able to put together in this short amount of time, but the Rat’s questions certainly indicated some manner of deliberate probing. That in and of itself did not bode well for a captured prisoner of war.
After a long pause, the captain gave several sentences of orders to the assembled crowd. There was a chorus of jawohls and then he, the Rat, and all the other Germans filtered out of the cellar. Only Gohler and one other soldier remained. Gohler began to walk toward him.
A brief wave of panic struck. Cartwright cringed, but the fear changed into apprehension when the stout German walked past him. Gohler went to a corner and seemed to be studying one of the wine racks that extended out from the wall. After a moment he called over to his comrade.
The other soldier, presumably a private, jabbed his rifle muzzle at Cartwright and motioned over to Gohler. Time to move, apparently. Cartwright started to stand up.
He barely got off the ground when the first sucker punch came. A set up. Lightning-fast boot kicks landed in his ribs, crumpling him to the ground. Cartwright pulled into a little ball, desperately trying to shield his head and torso, but the blows still came. Then rough hands dragged him along the earthen floor over to the corner.
Gohler delivered another fist across Cartwright’s jaw, making him see stars. Then the German stopped. The thuggish sergeant hovered malevolently over him like Death itself, breathing
heavy, contemplating whether to dispense more pain. But instead, mercifully, he took a step back and abruptly marched out of the cellar.
The remaining German soldier, lowering his rifle on the far side of the cellar, leaned against the wall as he settled in for guard duty.
Cartwright lay in the fetal position and bled. When he finally tried to move, waves of pain flooded his body and he lost his bearings more than once. His arms felt like they were filled with lead. It hurt to breathe. It took a few minutes for him to will himself into upright position against a nearby wine rack. Once sitting, Cartwright rubbed his chin and checked to see if all of his teeth were still there.
Eventually he moved on from his immediate physical condition to survey the overall situation. He was now a prisoner. The Germans had placed him in a corner of the cellar where the wine racks made a sort of holding pen, with obstructions on three sides and a direct line of sight to the guard. He was cold and uncomfortable in this awful place, clearly a deliberate move on his captors’ part to stress him even more. And the abrupt exit of the captain could only mean one thing. They were going to interrogate the French and see what they might know about their English house guest.
Cartwright sat in pain, afraid to move. God alone knew how he was going to get out of this getup.
If he stayed alive.
8
Tiedemann barked out orders as he led the entourage of soldiers back upstairs. He stopped in the kitchen to consider what he had heard. Thoughts muddled through his aching, hung-over mind and he needed to get them straight.
He was sure Cartwright was lying.
His reaction was all wrong. Tiedemann had purposely let the Englishman sit on the ground unmolested while they were waiting for Krauss. He would have expected the prisoner’s eyes to wander all over the unfamiliar room: Where am I? What’s going to happen to me? Is there a way to escape? But instead, Cartwright hadn’t shown any disorientation at all, instead pretty much locking his gaze on the Germans. The lack of interest was so pronounced that it was almost as if Cartwright was avoiding looking at anything.
The Hazards of War Page 5