Black Camp 21 Read online

  After a few minutes more, accompanied by a single strident squeal of the whistle, they stopped again. Every face in every compartment – including Mertens’ – pressed itself to the glass.

  ‘Where are we?’ Hartmann had slid open their door. Outside, along the corridor, the guards were gathering their own kit.

  ‘Outskirts of London. Kempton Park. It’s a racecourse, or was.’ One of the soldiers had stepped into their compartment. A lifeless cigarette was tucked behind his left ear. ‘Now renamed Number Nine Reception Camp. From here, you’re only about twenty miles from Buckingham Palace.’

  ‘Number Nine?’ asked Hartmann. ‘Jesus. How many are there?’

  ‘Don’t get too excited. You won’t be getting off.’

  Now they could see it. Just a brief glimpse of the curved white rails, and the grandstand beyond. But nothing green; not a blade of grass was showing. Instead, a vast city of tents puckered in the breeze where horses normally ran. And behind the now-familiar walls of wire, Hartmann could see German soldiers – thousands of soldiers – milling under the sunshine.

  Along the entire length of his train, doors were being slammed open. Low-risk prisoners were streaming out on to the platform. For a chilling moment, Hartmann was certain he’d seen Zuhlsdorff but the crowd was thick and streaming away too quickly to be certain. Somewhere close by, a sledgehammer was pounding at an iron coupling and fresh guards were lining up along the side of their carriage.

  ‘You were right, Mertens. How did you know?’

  The submariner shrugged. Without warning, the engine lurched backwards and then forwards again, dislodging an iron chain which crashed loose into the stony ballast. Outside, the phalanx of guards was stepping back from the edge, and the sweltering cough of the locomotive’s boiler had resumed.

  When the new guards were on board they moved forward, and for the first time that day the train felt light-footed. With only their own carriage to be pulled, they were travelling faster than before.

  This time, there were no fields. This time, they were boxed in by dark factories; and then, for mile after mile, they ran on between back yards and gardens, broken by random snapshots of sleeping dogs and red buses and scruffy-looking children playing cricket in parks.

  Although he couldn’t be sure, Hartmann thought it was a Saturday. Not that it mattered. Like everything else, it was a matter of guesswork; something to occupy his mind. He was also certain that they were still heading straight towards the heart of London. But that, too, was wild conjecture.

  Back at the racecourse, he pictured the ‘whites’ being deloused and searched yet again, checked off a list and sent on their happy way to a holiday camp. Somewhere among them would be his perpetual shadow, clasping a scabby hand, and seething in the silent shame of his subterfuge. If this were a normal world, Hartmann reflected, they would never see each other again.

  But it was anything but that. Even the weather was mystifying. On one side of the train, a fierce sun sliced through the city’s dust. On the other, bullets of rain carved streaky lines through the dirt on their window. No one in their compartment passed any comment. Since Kempton Park, they had been travelling in absolute silence. Each man, alone, had realised they were in London and was silently preparing himself for an interrogation in which some sort of pain was sure to play a part.

  In every direction, they could see industrial buildings and the distant creamy spires of churches. Once, when the tracks rose slightly on an overpass, they had even glimpsed the grey dome of St Paul’s, rising cleanly above the unbroken façade of the riverside.

  ‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ said Hartmann, turning to the others. ‘I thought we’d flattened this place four years ago. I thought they were practically begging us to come and put them out of their misery.’

  He looked back. He could see a man with an umbrella hailing a cab, and a blinkered pony pulling a wagon creaking with scrap metal. He could see a girl sliding a letter into a scarlet box.

  ‘Perhaps they built it all back up again,’ said Mertens.

  Another train was rattling alongside theirs. Every seat inside it was taken and the aisles were jammed with standing travellers. Maybe it wasn’t a Saturday. Hartmann rested his fingers on the hot glass. Condensation misted around the tips.

  As the two lines drew closer, a ponytailed child stared over into the compartment where Hartmann was sitting. When their eyes connected, she too put her fingers on her window. After a moment, she turned to whisper to the woman sitting beside her. Her mother? Her sister? The girl by the postbox, perhaps? Soon, everyone in the entire carriage seemed to be peering at him. At them.

  If I could swap places with that girl, he wondered, what would I see?

  Hartmann turned sharply away from the thought, catching his own ragged reflection in the grime on the glass. That wasn’t him. She wasn’t seeing him.

  But when he swivelled sideways for a second time, the other train was gone.

  9

  Waterloo Station, a clatter of footsteps and voices.

  From the platforms, out of the roiling steam, came a constant stream of travellers. Beneath the giant clock – Hartmann now knew it was 4.17 p.m. – couples kissed their farewells and kitbag-laden soldiers strolled everywhere, dipping down into the gloom of the Underground, or out towards the sun-bright river embankment.

  Suddenly to be there, at the heart of London, seemed so extraordinary that Hartmann’s vacillating spirits soared; almost alone out of the hell-bent millions, he had made it. At that moment, beneath the bomb-bruised station’s magnificent canopy, he and his fellow-crocks were the only German soldiers who mattered; doughty warriors who’d battled to within a spit of Churchill’s bedchamber without the energy or the wherewithal to do a damned thing about it.

  And who, even now, had not one single clue about where they were going.

  ‘You’re smiling.’ Goltz had been the last off their carriage. ‘What’s so funny?’ Alongside him, Rosterg met Hartmann’s eyes.

  Their train was already nosing out of the station. In a day or so it would be back with more prisoners. And after them, yet more, until Europe was stripped bare of German fighting men.

  ‘Not funny exactly, just interesting. I was thinking that very soon there’ll be more of us than them on this side of the Channel, more young ones, anyway.’

  Goltz looked puzzled. Hartmann pressed on.

  ‘Take a proper look.’ He gestured towards an elderly man in a uniform walking his dog. ‘Most of the soldiers left in Britain look pretty ancient to me. Like him. He’s probably a pensioner or a bank manager.’

  ‘And that’s interesting because?’

  ‘Just ask Rosterg to tell you the story of the Trojan Horse. You never know. There might be a medal in it for you somewhere.’

  At that moment, however, it seemed very unlikely.

  From a distance, they looked like a string of vagrants. Only up close, as they marched across the dazzling concourse, could people see and smell what they were. Even after their long journey the silvered threads of their lightning insignia still sparkled, and from the packed station buffet woozy men emerged clutching pints of ale to watch them pass. None of the locals seemed sure how to react, and when a drunk staggered forward to hurl abuse a clergyman carrying pink flowers held him back.

  ‘Which one of you is Hitler then?’ yelled a lad selling newspapers.

  ‘That’ll be me,’ said Rosterg, in his best cultured English accent. ‘But you can call me Adolf.’

  At the station steps, two army trucks were already ticking over. As they clambered on board, Hartmann caught his first smell of blackened buildings. Through a crack in the rear canvas, he saw a demolition ball swing, and then, fleetingly, the bold sweep of the Thames across a weed-choked sea of rubble and gutted homes.

  Everything seemed so random, so haphazard in its distribution of luck. Along one side of a street, every building had gone. Along the other, geraniums still glowed in neat window boxes. And yet, clearly, nothin
g – absolutely nothing – had been stopped. The red blood of London’s double deckers still flowed along every artery and the city’s pavements were a defiant crush of determination.

  As they moved through the honking traffic, Hartmann pressed his mouth to Rosterg’s ear. The other man, too, had found a peephole in the oilcloth.

  ‘Hitler must have known all this for years,’ Hartmann whispered.

  ‘I wouldn’t let anyone else hear you say that.’

  ‘His seedy third columnists would have told him long ago.’

  ‘Or they painted only the picture that he wanted to see; the one full of Londoners down on their knees, desperate to embrace the swastika.’

  Peering out across the busy streets, Hartmann could see little sign of that. London was just as he had dreamed it as a boy. Big Ben was still standing. The Thames thronged with barges. Crowds were flocking into Westminster Abbey and Kensington Gardens appeared to be sagging under the weight of its flowers.

  In his childhood head, he’d ridden these streets before. Carefully, he peeled back more canvas and looked back down the route they were travelling. Soon, surely, their endless journey would end. Over to the right he recognised the Albert Memorial, followed smartly, on his left, by the Royal Albert Hall.

  ‘Mondays used to be Wagner night,’ offered Rosterg. ‘I’ll wager it isn’t now.’

  They were heading west. There was no doubt about it. Somehow, they’d avoided Buckingham Palace and were skirting the green heart of the royal park. He could see uniformed nannies pushing black prams; a wounded barrage balloon detumescing above the treeline; and daubed across a terraced gable-end, the health benefits of nightly bile beans proclaimed in a huge painted hoarding.

  Unless he ate properly soon, he doubted he’d ever need any.

  As the park ended, the properties swelled. Immense marble mansions with elaborate balconies rose out of high-hedged gardens, and around every one stood a curtain of spear-topped railings. Finally, the truck was decelerating. With a squeal of its heavy tyres, it swung sharp right.

  ‘We’re going upmarket. Kensington Palace Gardens.’ Rosterg had caught a glimpse of the street sign. ‘This looks promising.’

  From a gallop, their progress had slowed to a crawl. Everyone was craning to look down a straight, broad avenue peppered with palaces and punctuated by elegant Victorian streetlights. No other human beings could be seen.

  ‘We must be lost,’ said Goltz. ‘It doesn’t make any sense.’

  For once, Hartmann agreed. Since the previous afternoon, they’d travelled from a French beach to the epicentre of the British aristocracy. Goltz was absolutely right. It made no sense whatsoever.

  ‘Just so long as the wine is served at room temperature,’ said Rosterg.

  Both trucks had stopped. Armed soldiers were slamming down the barge boards, and pinning back the canvas flaps. Two huge iron gates, flanked by sandbagged sentry boxes, were being dragged open. Beyond them, across a golden-gravelled forecourt, was an oak door peppered with iron studs. As they approached, it swung open and the prisoners stepped forward into an oval hallway showered with light from a dozen stained glass windows. Huge oil paintings rose to meet finely tiered cornice work tumbling from a ceiling dotted with plaster rosebuds. A wide staircase cascaded from the upper floors to a broad oaky landing from where a line of five officers stared down at them with statuesque disregard.

  The man in the middle was the oldest, and the shortest, with a round, weather-tanned face, and uniform that looked borrowed.

  ‘Good afternoon. Or rather good evening. We often lose track of time in here.’ It was the voice of a man in his sixties; cold, but not a trace of accent, like a BBC radio announcer. ‘My name is Scotland, Colonel Scotland, and I’m in charge of everything that happens inside this rather splendid building.’

  With his arms, he beseeched his audience to absorb the grandeur of their surroundings.

  ‘It’s my job to make your stay here as pleasant – and short – as it can possibly be. Whether it meets either, or both, of those expectations will be entirely up to you.’

  Hartmann’s eyes walked quickly along the faces of Scotland’s colleagues. There were three men and a woman: an attractive dark-haired woman in a red suit and skirt. Another two dozen pairs of German eyes were looking in the same direction.

  ‘We call this place the London Cage, and whatever sick private fantasies you harbour, your war is over.’ The colonel had taken two steps down the stairs towards them. ‘Officially, unofficially, it’s finished. Here. Now. Done.’

  He paused. An ancient memory seemed to flash across his face.

  ‘Before the last war, I actually worked for Germany, out in Africa. We were all friends then. Now many of my dearest people are German.’ Outside, the daylight was fading and turning the coloured glass in the windows to black.

  ‘One day I’d really like to see those friends again, rather like your wanting to see your parents or your girlfriends.’

  Hartmann thought about Goltz. The colonel couldn’t be more wrong.

  ‘I know most of you are SS, but you each know things that might help end the war sooner. By a month, a week, an hour. By a minute. It doesn’t matter. One bomb less. One bullet less. Little things that might save the lives of the people you love.’ His eyes seemed to lock on Hartmann. ‘Details: names and places, regiments, even bits of idle gossip. Things it really won’t hurt you to share.’

  Scotland turned, and walked slowly back up to his colleagues. ‘My friends here will be assisting you in those conversations.’

  ‘And the Geneva Convention?’ Rosterg had stepped forward to speak, and was looking up the staircase.

  ‘We’re British. Just help us to help you, and it won’t hurt a bit.’

  At the side of the atrium, a large door swung open and a dozen immense guardsmen entered the space.

  ‘These gentlemen will escort you to your rooms.’

  Later, Hartmann would try, and fail, to remember the route they’d followed next. The building was a maze; a burrow of vast interconnected chambers and vaulted corridors. Not just one mansion but three, rendered with such architectural precision that their own vagabond presence felt like an affront. Through one open door, he’d seen a ballroom lined with gilt-framed mirrors reflecting the shabby line of grey serge as it passed. Through another, he’d looked across to twilight hedges of box laid around bushes pruned in the shapes of mythical beasts. Finally, in a windowless basement room, they’d been ordered to strip and shower in ice-cold water.

  While their clothes were searched and bagged, a man in a white coat ordered each of them to bend. Hartmann gasped as rough fingers pushed into his rectum. Alongside him, Goltz stood bolt upright with his back against the shower wall. Naked, his body was the colour of watery milk.

  ‘No fucking way. No fucking way.’

  A black boot walloped into his groin. Rough hands were on his neck, twisting his head down into the wet-tiled floor. Another kick swung in and Goltz stumbled forward, locked by two pairs of uniformed arms. One furious gurgled scream later, and the search was over. When Goltz straightened, he smelled of bleach and there was fresh blood running down the inside of his thighs.

  ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy it,’ said Hartmann.

  A hand clamped over Goltz’s face before he could reply, steering him through into an adjoining room. Hartmann and the rest followed shivering behind. It was strange, he thought, how men covered their genitals in situations such as this. As if anyone cared, or was looking.

  At the door, a red-haired guardsman yelled out their names and handed back their bags of clothes. From each one rose the sour whiff of disinfectant, but there were clean underpants and socks, and although their boots no longer had laces, the smell of battle had gone.

  Stumbling against each other, the men dressed quickly. For the first time that day, Hartmann heard laughter. It felt good to be scrubbed; and to smell fresh. The men were relaxing.

  When they were lined up again
st a curtain for their mugshots, no one resisted. One by one, Hartmann watched them wince as the powder flashed. It was comical to see how fierce each prisoner tried to appear. It was tragic how lost and how young they all looked under the clean white spark of the magnesium. As he sat down and looked into the lens, he counted how many of them he knew by name. There weren’t many.

  Somehow he doubted whether the photographer would know the German for cheese. But he said it anyway.

  ‘Käse,’ he said, thinking of the other picture that had been lost.

  After that, they were fed; eating with the silent intensity of men returned from the dead. Twelve men crammed either side of a huge pine-topped table confronted by piles of fresh-baked bread and hot soup bobbing with vegetables. There was no meat or butter. Instead, there was endless tea and plain biscuits and a packet of Senior Service for every prisoner.

  Under a fug of smoke, they leaned back, unsure whether to feel fear or contentment. Through the arched dining-room window, they could see across the gardens to a high wall topped by razor wire and floodlights. Escape wouldn’t be an option here.

  ‘We don’t actually look very dangerous any more, do we?’

  For an hour, until now, Mertens had sat beside him without speaking. Although his bowl had been licked clean he was still clutching his spoon.

  ‘Will you talk, do you think?’ asked Hartmann. ‘I mean, if they hurt us?’

  ‘Honestly? I don’t know. But listen, this is how it will go. They will tell us the war is over, and I don’t believe it is. They will tell us they already know all our secrets, and I won’t believe that either. They will lie to us and we will lie to them, and then they will let us go.’ Carefully, Mertens placed his spoon on the table in front of him. ‘Like the old man said. They are British, remember. They’ll play by the rules, and that is why they’ll lose this war.’