by Bill Jones
From somewhere far ahead, he heard stones cascading on wood. Either Koenig was still in there too, or it wasn’t as well built as he’d hoped.
He put a hand up against his nose – perplexed by the sensation of total blindness – and then wriggled forward into the draught.
After a minute, he was breathing heavily, and his back was coated with sweat. To make progress required him to crawl on his knees and elbows, while twisting his head to avoid collisions with the ceiling. Since there was nowhere to turn round, he had to keep going. And the further he went, the more concerned he became.
In some places, invisible streams of icy water seemed to have sprung from the roof. In others, he could feel splintered wood where the earth had bulged against the shoring. Fearing that he would be crushed if he rested, Hartmann pressed on until his eyes burned with dirt and salt, and his tongue tasted the blood running down from his battered scalp. Above him he imagined a field full of cold, clean snow, and the thought drove him harder.
Time and space had disintegrated. All that remained was blackness and scraping and the hollow wheeze of his lungs.
What if there was no end? What if the end was sealed, or unfinished – a coffin? Pressure was building behind his forehead. He could feel a deep pounding between his ears. Panic. He had to keep going. He had to keep going. But the draught had suddenly stopped and the air smelled rank. He licked the back of his hand, spat out the grit, and held his arm forward. No. The air current was still there. He felt the wet patch cool and then dry, and shuffled forward. Then he stopped sharply. A noise. Not his own hard breathing but something else – or someone else – a little further ahead.
Again, a clatter of rocks; and then, definitely, the low background trill of water. Now he didn’t care. Now he followed the smell of damp ferns to the ragged tear of pale light which grew bigger with every agonising contortion of his body. In front of him, he could see the shapes of his arms again, and the spot where the tunnel turned sharply up towards the sky.
He was almost through. Sitting back against the passage wall, he studied the square of night framed by the exit above his head. Torn fragments of night-cloud were moving over the gap and a few stars were showing. Now that he was no longer moving, he felt a sudden piercing of cold. With a shudder, he stood up cautiously until his head was clear of the hole.
A rusty lid of metal had been dragged to one side, and there were fresh footprints in the snow. He’d guessed right.
Looking back across the field, he could see the lights of the camp. They’d be searching for two people now. Hopefully, he’d get to the other one first.
With an awkward hop, he was out, running low towards the curved bank of the river. At the edge, he slid on to a dry bed of shingle, and crouched down in the shadow of the trees. In a few months’ time, the water would be unfordable, but tonight it was winter-low, and a silver wafer of ice had formed wherever the current was slack. In the weak moonlight, he could see a way across using the large smooth rocks which broke up the flow. As his eyes picked out the route, he saw a figure move up and out on to the far bank.
‘Erich. Koenig. Is that you?’
Hartman’s question was lost under the hissing of the water. Any louder, and he risked being heard elsewhere. He picked up a stone and threw it, hearing the splash as it fell short of the far bank. He tried again, striking the mossy trunk of a tree, and the figure opposite tensed under the thick overhead canopy of pine.
‘I know it’s you. Listen. It’s me, Max. We have to talk. I want to explain.’ He had stepped into the river. An icy whirlpool of water was dragging at his legs. ‘There’s nowhere to go out here. Nothing. We should go back – together.’
Koenig stepped from under the tree. His hands were thrust deep into his pockets. Out in the middle of the flow, Hartmann was struggling to keep his feet. From the edge, it hadn’t looked so deep – or so swift – and the cold was rapidly sapping the power from his arms and legs.
‘Look at yourself, Max. Pathetic. You’re no soldier. You never were.’
Somehow, he had to get across, but every step put him at risk of falling and he had seen what exposure could do. If he got a soaking in these temperatures, he’d be a jabbering imbecile in minutes. Shuffling from rock to rock was slow, but there was no other way. By the time he staggered out on to the opposite bank all the feeling in his fingers had gone. And so had Koenig.
Panting into his cupped hands, Hartmann took in his new surroundings. Under the trees, where he stood, the snow was thin. A few yards back from the river, he could see the narrow band of a track, and beyond it, the forest which sheltered the cultivated fields from the mountains.
Under the night’s peculiar lunar glow the landscape seemed grey, not white, and everywhere he looked, the snow had been perforated by the meandering toes of wild animals. To his left, the track wound back towards the camp. To the right, he saw another set of prints: human ones, deep and crisp and even.
He set off, half jogging to beat away the cold, stopping only where the snow was too thin to make out Koenig’s tracks. It was much easier than he’d expected. Whenever the moon broke clear, visibility was perfect, and in the windless night he could hear Koenig up ahead, panting hard and moving quickly away from the camp.
For around an hour, Hartmann maintained his pursuit.
At times, he could make Koenig out, a black outline, easily followed. Mostly, however, he relied on the boot prints. Or the distant crunch of snow. But the gap never closed, and, although their pace was slow, neither man showed any sign of stopping.
After a mile, Koenig veered left along the northern edge of a young plantation, and now – whenever there was a choice – he took the path that gained the most elevation. Looking back across the valley, Hartmann could make out the squat grid of the town, and the looping reflection of the river threading through it.
Down on the road from the camp there was a line of vehicles moving – military trucks, probably – but apart from a single farm they’d seen no buildings, and, as the treeline approached, the tracks were narrowing, no longer wide enough for vehicles and peppered with frozen sheep droppings.
Both men were exhausted.
Ahead of them was a broad mountain spur broken by a series of low crags. Koenig was already traversing its lower edge, making towards a cleft which ran steeply back up towards a rolling line of summits. Now they were wading through deep drifts of snow, and the effort had slowed Koenig to a heavy trudge. Behind him, walking in the broken trail, Hartmann was making better progress, and the gap between the two had narrowed to shouting distance.
‘Wait. Stop. There’s no point in any of this.’ He had pulled up for breath, leaning back on a stone wall which marked the boundary between the trees and the unwooded shoulder of the hill. In the stillness of the night, Koenig’s labours were the only sound, rolling back to him clearly across the glassy sheen of the snowfield.
‘For fuck’s sake, let’s just talk.’
There was no reaction from Koenig, just the same mechanical upward plod.
From somewhere below, Hartmann thought he heard the chug of a petrol engine, but when he turned to locate it, it was gone. ‘We’re both going to die up here. Is that what you want?’
The words seemed to hang and echo, but still no response. Hartmann was suddenly aware of his own heart, and the shocking deadness in his feet.
‘Fuck you. Fuck you,’ he cursed, stepping back into the trail.
Above Hartmann, Koenig had entered a narrow ravine along the bank of a frozen stream. At last, he was clear of the drifts, but where the bone-hard plate of older ice had been exposed, the going was treacherous.
After a few hundred yards, he turned hard right, following the easier line of a steep, rocky gulley running directly down from the summit. Here, he could use his hands, heaving himself up by the rocky outcrops, wedging his feet against the trunks of the few plucky rowan trees which had driven roots into the scree.
When he finally looked down, he could sense Ha
rtmann drawing closer – a human shape, edged in silver. For the first time, he felt scared. Not of his friend, but of where he was. Incrementally, the gulley had given way to a steep wall of hard-packed snow broken by wide patches of pale blue ice. Without extra grip, he was finished.
Kicking around on his stance he loosened two hand-sized rocks. When he felt ready to resume, he drove each one into the snow like an axe before digging his boots in for whatever grip he could find.
Every step was an ordeal and his legs were quivering, but his progress was good. From what he could tell, he was nearly at the top. The gradient was easing and a bitter summit wind was blowing down his neck off the ridge, showering him with hard pellets of old snow. Another few nightmare steps and he’d be out of danger. Sensing an end, he dropped his weight on to his left leg and stretched forward.
He was falling before he knew it, a tangled ball of limbs tumbling at sickening speed across the rocks and the snow.
Hartmann had heard nothing. As Koenig rocked backwards, the impact had driven the air from his lungs. The only sounds were the skittering of disturbed powder, and the dull thump of his body as it crashed off the mountain.
When he struck Hartmann, neither man knew what had happened.
Somehow, they were sliding together, locked in a twisted embrace, but where the snow deepened again the pair bounced apart, spinning horribly until their bodies came to a halt close to the silent remnant of a frozen stream.
Hartmann surfaced first, uninjured but floundering for balance and spitting the snow from his mouth. A few yards away, he could see Koenig lying face down and motionless where his fall had been broken by a huge slab of rock.
‘Erich. What happened? Are you all right?’
Two clumsy steps and he was at his side. Gently, he rotated his friend’s head until he could see the damage. There was a low gurgle of disquiet, and blood was bubbling out between ashen lips, but Koenig’s eyes were open and his breathing was steady.
‘It’s my leg.’ It was a pained whisper, no more.
Hartmann carefully brushed away the snow.
‘Jesus. Go easy.’
Hartmann winced. So did Koenig. His right leg had snapped at the shin, driving the bone out through the fabric of his trousers. There was bleeding, but not much, and the cold seemed to have momentarily frozen the pain.
‘It’s a mess. Do you think you can sit up?’ Wrapping his arm around Koenig’s shoulder, Hartmann eased him over and back until both men were able to lean against the rock.
‘I couldn’t hang on up there. It was like glass.’
‘You’re going to need help to get down. I’ll wait with you till dawn and then fetch someone.’
‘I don’t want to go down.’
Somewhere nearby, water could be heard threading its way downhill under the ice covering the stream. After the tumult of the fall, the noise was soothing and the men were in no hurry to talk. It was Koenig who broke the silence.
‘Why did you come after me, Max?’
‘You shouldn’t have killed Rosterg.’
‘He had it coming. You heard what he said.’
‘What you did to him. That wasn’t you. I don’t believe it was you.’
‘It was me. Accept it. You always had a soft spot for him.’ Koenig had scooped up a fistful of snow and was drinking the liquid as it melted through his fingers.
‘I did. But listen: it wasn’t just that.’
‘What then? He was a fucking rat. What else is there?’
‘It wasn’t Rosterg.’
‘I don’t understand what you’re saying.’
‘It wasn’t Bultmann either.’ Hartmann looked down at his hands. ‘You killed the wrong man, Erich.’
‘No.’
‘It was me at Devizes. It was me here. I told them about the plot. I did. I told them who murdered Rosterg. Everything.’
With a pained scream, Koenig wrenched himself sideways, catching Hartmann’s head in a weak armlock.
‘I’ll fucking kill you now. Why did you do that? Why?’
Hartmann rolled forward to break the grip. Too weak to resist, Koenig’s hands slipped down until they were feebly clutching his friend’s ankles. With a sigh, he threw himself back against the rock, just as Hartmann twisted, driving his left fist hard into Koenig’s jaw.
‘Go on then. You want to. So do it. Do it.’
There were two more horrible blows, spraying dark spots of blood across the ice.
Hartmann let go, straightened himself and took a breath. He was panting hard and felt dizzy. Koenig had slid sideways across the large rock and was spitting something out on to the snow.
‘Why?’ he mumbled.
There was blood on Hartmann’s fists. Something in his right hand felt broken. He kneeled down at Koenig’s side and eased the boy up until his back was straight and then sat down beside him.
‘I’m sorry. You all right?’
‘Never better. Did you enjoy it?’
‘Yes. I did.’
There was a pause.
‘Why, Max?’
‘Lots of reasons. Different reasons. The reasons kept changing.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘In the beginning it was Alize, or mainly Alize.’
‘This started before her. You know it.’
‘Maybe. I’m not sure. But they promised me they’d find her if I helped, when we were in London. And so I helped.’
‘And that’s it?’
‘I wasn’t even sure I’d told them anything to begin with. I was so fucked up, so fucking tired, but then that woman – Helen – came back to see me again.’
‘Helen? Fucking hell.’
‘By that time, you and I had been on our travels in the doctor’s car, and the breakout had gone from being a lunatic fantasy to something that might happen.’
‘You thought it was a fantasy. No one else did.’
‘It was make-believe. We’d have been massacred.’
‘We found the lorries. We found the planes. We saw them.’
‘There were no tanks though, no guns. It was all lies.’
‘And then you watched Bultmann kill himself before we beat the living crap out of your pal. You’re really some kind of hero, Max.’
‘You’d have killed Rosterg anyway.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘He knew that. He was different. You people don’t like different.’
‘You’re dead, Max. They’ll tear you apart.’
‘I used to think that if I could make myself more like you, all this would be piss easy. But what you did back there, that’s not me.’
‘Fuck you, Max.’
They were quiet then, and the night’s cold burrowed deep into their bruised limbs. Koenig was the first to speak again.
‘Cigarette?’
‘Very funny. I always wanted your sense of humour, too.’
‘I mean it.’ Koenig tunnelled into his pockets, pulling out four battered Gauloises.
‘I kept them from Rosterg’s. Matches from Christmas, too. British matches. Much better than ours.’
‘They’ll never light.’
‘You’re probably right.’ Koenig grated a match hard against the granite. ‘Magic. Works every time.’
He lit the two longest tabs quickly and slid one across to Hartmann who placed it thankfully between his lips.
‘Why did you run, Erich?’ he asked. ‘You stopped me escaping once. Remember?’
‘Maybe we should have gone together. I’d go now.’
In unison, the two men drew deeply and held onto the breath. For almost a minute, Hartmann locked the smoke in his lungs before spewing out the fumes in a single, calming gasp. Seconds later, Koenig followed suit.
‘Like old times. I was always better at this than you.’
‘You were better at most things. Why did you run?’
‘They’ll hang me, Max. Like that kid.’
‘That isn’t going to happen.’
‘I don�
��t want to hang.’
‘I don’t suppose Rosterg was terribly keen either.’
There was one last, long silence.
‘We’ll get back home eventually,’ whispered Koenig. ‘Don’t you think?’
A half-mile or so below them, there were loud voices and a line of torches bobbing across the snow.
As they watched, a yellow flare rose and fell in a glorious arc, followed by two more, and then the sound of frantic dogs closing in on where they sat.
April 1945
On the occasion of the 56th birthday of our Führer we send you with our birthday regards a donation of RM 327,230 in the name of all the German soldiers of Camp 21 in Scotland as a sign of our unbroken loyalty to our Führer and our nation and as a birthday present for our beloved leader.
We think about our brave German homeland, and we are sure that we shall gain a heroic victory in spite of a very great misfortune.
Although our hands are bound, our hearts believe in you, our Führer.
Long live the Führer.
Long live Greater Germany.
Heil Hitler.
Afterword
17 October 1945
Camp 83, Malton, North Yorkshire
He loved the new place.
Through the spring into glorious summer, he’d watched the green shoots reaching up out of the clay until the valley floor creaked under the weight of its dusty grain.
There was a wire fence – and there were guards – but as the winter receded, almost every prisoner had been summoned to help on the land: strolling to work between neatly trimmed hedgerows; turning the wet earth until their hands bled while checking the sky for the first swallows.
Slowly, it seemed, the land became their own. By night, they rubbed lamp oil into their calluses and fashioned scarecrows out of old rags and sticks. By day, they worked with shovel and scythe, proudly watching as the barley and the corn took hold.
Even when the war was over, no one ever tried to escape.