by Bill Jones
Rosterg tugged at Hartmann’s arm, reading doubt in his face. ‘I’m not telling you because you’re a friend. I don’t have friends. I’m telling you because he asked me to.’
‘He asked you to?’
‘You’re one of his gang now. He’s expecting you to be a big part of all this.’
Hartmann reached for another cigarette. ‘I could stay in here. I could refuse to come out.’
‘That won’t happen.’
‘It’s strange, but I’ve been here all this time and the British still haven’t questioned me.’
‘Oh, I expect they will, Max. Just a matter of timing, I’m sure.’
The air in the cell had grown bitter with fumes. Sealed off from the outside world, the only sounds were their own voices.
‘Time for me to go, Max, I’m afraid. Next time – if there is one – I’ll try to find you a copy of Bleak House.’
32
There were no more visits. For whatever reason, Rosterg’s credit with the jailers had run out.
Deprived of the stimulation, Hartmann’s morale sagged. Without company, time slowed and his imagination prospered in the vacuum.
Back at the beginning of his confinement, he’d welcomed the isolation. Now he merely fretted about how much longer they would hold him. At least on the outside he’d be able to gain some control over events, and according to his wall calendar there was just one week left to go.
So far, however, no one had told him when he would leave, or if he would leave. Every morning, the light clicked on. Every night, it clicked back off again. Three times a day, when the hatch slid open, he got food. Twice a day, if he shoved out a fag with his empty plate, it got lit. Beyond that there was nothing.
Six days left. Five days. Four. Three. Beyond his walls the weather had changed, and his nights were now broken by a desperate battle to stay warm.
As much as he could, he sought sleep by reliving his time with Alize. But when sleep came now, it was Goltz, not his wife, who was usually waiting.
And when that happened, he tried Dickens.
On the twenty-eighth day – early December by his own reckoning – Hartmann awoke in good spirits. Few things in prison were ever assured, but the officer had said four weeks, and the British were nothing if not punctilious. During his confinement, he’d been well behaved, and there seemed no reason to expect an extension.
When the overhead bulb sprang on, he was already sitting expectantly on his bed swaddled in his blankets. In front of him, scraped into the masonry, was the record of his days.
Just to be sure, he counted them again. Twenty-eight. Without question.
All over the wall, there were similar markings left by previous inmates. Almost every one of them stopped at twenty-eight. Somewhere along the same corridor, he imagined that Koenig, and maybe others, would be similarly poised.
For the past few days – with no hard evidence – he’d detected an infinitesimal shift in the air, like the physical tightening that always accompanied fear. The disembodied hands at the hatch now belonged to strangers; there was a feeling of urgency in the faceless footfall; and when it came, his food was jammed angrily through the hatch.
When the door was finally opened, it was dark outside, probably late afternoon. Along the corridor, the windows were black and the lights had been left off. Sandwiched by two guards, Hartmann was marched towards the sealed door into the reception area. Like all the doors, it could be bolted and locked from either side. When the leading guard knocked it was pulled open, and Hartmann was bundled through into the warmth. There’d been changes since his arrival. An old oil stove was pumping out heat in a corner, and there was a small artificial Christmas tree on the desk.
There wasn’t time to enjoy either. Papers were being quickly checked. Unfamiliar faces were flicking glances in his direction. It was different. He was right. More soldiers. More guns. Not so much jumpy as watchful. Overhead, he could hear rain drumming on the concrete roof, and from the streaks on the glass it looked like sleet.
‘This way, Hartmann. You’re going to need this.’
The voice was refined. It wasn’t a soldier’s. The speaker was wearing a long brown woollen coat, and his features were obscured by the shadowed brim of a trilby hat. In one hand he had a waterproof army cape, which he proffered to Hartmann. In the other, he held a cane-handled umbrella.
‘Where am I going?’
The door on to the parade square had been opened. Wet snow was swirling under the lights which surrounded it.
‘Someone wants a chat. No need to worry. An old acquaintance.’
They walked quickly – with no escort – back towards the main brick-built barracks. In a first-floor window, Hartmann saw the silhouette of a figure watching them approach. When it turned away, he saw the curves of a woman. He wiped his eyes and looked back. Nothing, a phantom. He was being ridiculous.
Freezing rain was pouring over his face from the peak of his oilskin. He checked again; still nothing, but now they were right up against the barracks, and the man was steering him in and up a set of narrow stone stairs. Aware only of their soggy clip-clop, Hartmann followed blindly, turning left along a gloomy passageway towards a single yellow trapezium of light falling from a wide open door.
On the edge of it, he stopped. The water running down from his cape formed a black circle around his feet.
‘This is where I leave you. Enjoy your little reunion.’
Hartmann didn’t watch him go. Just so long as he stood still, he could sustain the insane possibility that his wife was inside that room. But since that was madness – and he knew it – he stepped forward until he could see a slim figure waiting patiently for him in one of two leather armchairs.
‘Hello, Max,’ she said, rising from her seat with an outstretched hand. ‘Take that thing off and hang it up over there.’
The green eyes, the ruby brooch, the diplomat’s daughter. He remembered everything except her name.
‘It’s Helen. Don’t worry. I’ll forgive you. Please, let me help.’
‘I thought you were someone else. Sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘Prison sends you slightly mad.’
‘I’m sorry too,’ she said. ‘But that’s a common reaction.’
As she drew close to take his cape, Hartmann reeled. Nothing was quite so gloriously intoxicating as the smell of a woman. After months of squalor, her fragrance seemed so sweet he could scarcely breathe, and whenever she moved it stirred invisibly around her like a night garden in summer.
Just for a few drunken seconds, he was lost. But when their fingers briefly touched he stepped quickly aside and sank into the soft, cold leather of the second armchair. Mentally, he surveyed himself before looking again at her. His nails were ragged and rimed with filth and a ripe, unpleasant smell seemed to be rising off his clothing.
‘I’m a wretch. I’m sorry. If I’d known it was you I’d have changed.’ He crossed his legs and shielded his eyes with his hands. ‘Is this a social occasion? Or is there something particular you’d like to talk to me about? Helen . . . Waters, isn’t it?’
Helen sat down close to him. On a wide desk behind her was an Anglepoise lamp – the only illumination in the room – which she twisted slightly until the light was no longer directly in Hartmann’s eyes.
‘Better?’
He nodded distractedly. As she’d taken her seat, her skirt had risen, exposing a smooth expanse of silk.
‘You remember me?’ She spoke the same seamless German laced with English public school.
‘You accused me of killing the boy on the boat and then you tortured me. I’m hardly likely to have forgotten.’
‘You had a few sleepless nights. I don’t think we can class that as torture. Not by Gestapo standards. No one forced you to talk. We had some good conversations. Didn’t we?’
Hartmann didn’t know the answer. Whenever he’d thought back to London, there’d been worrying blanks. After the sleep deprivation, his interrogation had left nothing but fuzzy pict
ures; a set of feelings, rather than distinct memories, laced with the nagging insinuation of disloyalty.
‘I was hallucinating. Did I tell you anything useful?’
‘Of course. Everything is useful. You were very cooperative.’ While she spoke, she was searching the contents of a slim, cardboard file. ‘Do you know how many Germans have died since our last conversation, Max?’
Hartmann shrugged.
She pulled an official document from the file.
‘Not just in France. Not just military personnel. I mean German citizens. Women, children, helpless old people? Would two hundred thousand sound like an acceptable guess? Is that a price worthy of your silence?’
‘I told you what I knew then. I’m a soldier.’ His voice was barely audible.
‘Not forgetting all the other people you’ve butchered since last time. Homosexuals, Jews, cripples. Tens of thousands. Millions maybe. Want me to go on?’
‘I’ve butchered no one.’ Hartmann’s face was pale with distress. ‘Soldiers only know what they’re told and make up the rest. Just like you.’
‘Yes, but I’ve not seen you for a while, Max.’ She looked down again at her notes. ‘And I gather you’ve been on your travels. So maybe you know things now that you didn’t know then.’
‘I got bored. I went for a drive in the country.’
‘We know it was more than that.’
‘I’m a very dull prisoner of war. Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Tell me about your lovely friends. Tell me about Joachim Goltz.’
She looked at him then, her red lips lifting mischievously at one corner. In that moment, it felt as if the temperature in the room was falling, and that he was falling too, down into a room full of giant roulette wheels. Red or black, ace or king, Hitler or Churchill. Soldiers were gamblers, whichever side they were on. Eventually, all it came down to was the odds.
He felt her eyes on him, waiting.
‘You told me I was a good man once. Remember?’
‘I really believed that. I still do.’ She pulled two envelopes from among her papers and passed them across. ‘However, this might prove a rather good test.’
Hartmann knew what they were without looking. Deep down, he’d known they would never be sent. On the outside, each one had been scarred by the red ink of officialdom. Inside, he found his own writing, rain-streaked and barely legible across two delicate pieces of wartime paper.
At the top of each page, Alize’s name was still clearly visible. No guilt, no shame and no secrets. He’d written that for her, not for these people.
‘You lied. You promised.’ Hartmann tossed the letters into the darkness of the room.
‘Calm down and listen. You wrote twelve words on that first letter which we deemed not to be serious, and since the second letter was not sent through normal channels, it constituted a breach of security. I’m truly sorry. But if you’d approached it like every other prisoner, there wouldn’t have been a problem. Maybe if you help us now, we could do better.’
‘I’m supposed to trust you now? I don’t think so.’ Hartmann rocked forwards with his arms folded tightly across his waist. ‘The girl at the farm? Jesus. Did she give you this?’
‘No one gave it to us, Max. It was posted somewhere near here and picked up by the censor.’ She smiled. A small mystery had been solved. ‘A girl on a farm? She shouldn’t be too difficult to find. You were wrong, you see. I knew you’d be able to help us.’
Hartmann squirmed. He’d said too much. ‘There is no girl. No one helps people like us voluntarily. Not unless they’re scared. There is no girl. Just talk to me. Don’t go looking for anyone else.’
The young woman patted her hands on her thighs. Both of them had felt the decisive shift of power.
‘We drank tea together in London last time. Shall we do that again?’
Behind her on the table was a small handbell. When she rang it, an orderly entered the room and took her request for tea. ‘With biscuits if you can find any,’ she added as he left.
Through the window, Hartmann could see a white tube of light moving towards them across the mossy slates of the rooftops. As he watched, it grew wider, revealing the rain slicing steadily through its beam.
‘I could draw the curtains,’ she said. ‘Would you prefer that?’
‘It doesn’t really matter. No one can see us.’
When the tea came, it was served in delicate leaf-pattered cups on matching saucers, with a jug of full-cream milk.
‘You know, if Alize is still alive, she can easily find out if you’re safe.’
Hartmann was listening. The tea was sweet, even better than a cigarette.
‘We send lists of captured Germans back to Berlin through the Red Cross every day. Those lists are widely distributed. If she’s looking for you, she’ll know.’
‘That’s a lot of ifs.’
The tea was hot, too, and the roof of his mouth felt scorched. Conscious again of his grime-stained hands, he placed the saucer down on his lap.
‘You told me before you had a boyfriend in France.’
‘I’m like you. No news. Lots of people here are waiting for news.’
Hartmann thought again of the doctor’s son, and Sieber’s parents. The woman had drawn her knees together and light was strafing back over the tops of the buildings.
‘You see, we’re not so very different.’
The spotlight was returning. This time he noticed the loose strands of her hair, backlit like burning filaments of phosphorus.
‘We both need this war to end as quickly and painlessly as possible.’ Leaning forward, she took Hartmann’s empty cup and placed it with hers on the table behind. ‘Only it seems to us – to me – that some of you just don’t want to admit defeat. Take this place, for instance. Devizes. Far too many coordinated escapes, Max. Far too many strange rumours.’
‘Is that why you’re here? Or is this merely a social visit? Obviously, I’m deeply flattered if it’s the latter.’
‘When you broke out why did you make no effort whatsoever to get home?’
‘Who says I didn’t?’
‘People saw you. The car was noticed. Did you really think your doctor friend would keep quiet? We know exactly where you went. We know exactly where the other prisoners went. We’ve also got a pretty shrewd idea why.’ She drew her palms together as if in prayer, and pressed them against her lips. ‘Please. You can help me, Max. I’m sure you want to. I’m sure you can. Absolutely sure.’
‘We got lost. I don’t know about anyone else.’ As he spoke, he wondered who else might be listening. ‘I keep telling you, we’re prisoners of war. Our fight’s over.’
‘Oh dear, Max, that’s so very disappointing. I’m really not that stupid.’
For the first time, Hartmann studied the woman properly. Without her even moving, the smell of her perfume had remained strong. No, she wasn’t stupid. She was a British intelligence officer groomed at Roedean.
She was calm, clean and cunning in ways he didn’t have the energy to fathom. She was civilisation and order: he was chaos, an insignificant junior SS officer schooled by Nazi brownshirts for a war that had been lost. Looking at her now, it was her absolute stillness that he admired; the feeling that her calm grew from roots in a landscape he’d been programmed to destroy.
Downstairs, there’d be others just like him waiting their turn. Not one of them would tell her a damned thing.
‘Is there any way you could find out about Alize? Even if it’s just to say she’s alive?’
‘It’s hard now, even harder than it was before. I’m sorry. Your fault, but Germany’s in a mess.’
‘There’s no reason I could trust you anyway.’
‘Sometimes you have to do the right thing. You can’t always get something back.’
This time, when the spotlight returned, he noticed a clock on the wall between a framed picture of the British king and a large engraving of some Napoleonic battle scene. The hands were pointing to twen
ty past nine. Somehow, the knowledge felt stolen, his own enjoyably innocent secret.
‘Will you be talking to my friend? Erich Koenig?’
At that moment, it was all he could think of to say.
‘I’m afraid Koenig has gone. You really should choose your socalled friends with more care. He’s what we call a bad egg, a deeply unpleasant and unstable youth.’
‘Gone where? I was told he was in the same cell block as me.’
‘Come on, Max. You’re stalling. You need to help me here. Something bad is brewing in this place which is going to get people killed, people on both our sides. Forget Koenig. You’re better than him.’
‘Actually, I’m not sure what he is.’
Hartmann wanted to explain, to justify their association. But she was right, and that hurt.
‘I promise you he’s fine – feeling a little cold maybe – but then who isn’t? We’ve sent him north to a new camp in Scotland.’ She gave him a look which he took as a warning. ‘I’d try to steer clear of it if I were you.’
‘Because?’
‘We’re filtering people out. Bit by bit, we’re isolating the wheat from the chaff.’
‘I’m afraid some of your English expressions mean nothing to me.’
‘Try this one. It’s where we’re sending all the shits. We’re calling it Black Camp Twenty-One.’
Soon after that, Hartmann yielded.
There was more tea and there were biscuits. There was even some dry and crumbling cake.
When he was eventually taken away, he noticed the clock on the wall for a second time.
It was just two minutes short of midnight.
They had been talking for a very long time.
33
They didn’t return him to his cell block.
When they took him outside, the sky was alive with stars and a hard frost was digging in. All across the parade square, dull patches of ice were already forming. They’d need salt on those before roll call, he thought, or someone would get hurt. He was accompanied by two immense soldiers on either side, and apart from their boots there wasn’t another noise in the camp. At the back of his throat, the air felt like fire. Forget the British. The cold would be their biggest enemy tonight.