Black Camp 21 Page 13

  ‘You. Down. You, fucking wake up.’

  Four of them, big men, shoving, shouting, prodding Koenig’s curled back with machine guns.

  ‘Now, not to-fucking-morrow. Wake up and stand up. Both of you. Now. Now.’

  As Hartmann lowered himself to the floor, Koenig spun furiously, fists clenched, to face his captors. A tangle of hair was stuck across his brow.

  ‘Don’t. Please don’t,’ Hartmann whispered as their faces met.

  Koenig’s mouth opened and shut silently on his own words.

  ‘Finally,’ said Hartmann. ‘A little common sense.’

  All along their corridor, the same scene was being repeated. Unhappy prisoners were being pushed from their cells and out through the network of passages towards the gardens. As they retraced their steps – stone flags yielding to polished oak floorboards – Hartmann glimpsed sunlight spilling down through a dense perimeter of trees. It was later than he’d thought, mid-morning, maybe, and from somewhere hidden within the maze, there was the smell of bacon frying.

  ‘My God, that smells good.’

  Koenig ignored him.

  Hartmann tried again. ‘Sausage. Sauerkraut. Fried potatoes. Don’t tell me you’re not interested.’

  ‘Bollocks to that,’ hissed Koenig. ‘They were listening to us. Everything we said. All of us.’

  ‘Yes. I know.’

  ‘Did you talk? Did you tell them anything?’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Of course I fucking didn’t.’

  Hartmann clasped his friend round the shoulder. ‘Trust me. I told them nothing they didn’t seem to know already.’

  ‘Good man,’ said Koenig. He looked sheepish. ‘They even knew we’d got pissed together on the cliffs.’

  ‘Embarrassing, I know. But it’s not likely to win them the war.’

  There was no bacon for them in the dining room, just cindered bread and porridge on a line of trestle tables. As the men surged forward, Hartmann watched their reflections in a wall panelled with huge mirrors. Kings had probably feasted in this place, he thought. Now look at us, tearing at morsels like wild dogs.

  In a few seconds, everything was gone apart from their appetites, and as the men fell quiet he glanced around. There was something distractingly familiar about the scene. Across the table, either side of the pale face of Joachim Goltz, a line of bowed heads was being washed by the sunlight from four vaulted windows. It was like a painting of the Last Supper he’d seen somewhere; Munich, probably. How peculiar that this should feel so similar, and how utterly inappropriate.

  ‘Are you a grass, Hartmann?’

  The silence around them thickened. Goltz was turning a piece of burnt toast in his fingers while he spoke and a clock was chiming awkwardly in a distant room.

  ‘Only if telling them my middle name will win them the war.’

  ‘But are you really one of us, Max? Can I call you Max? You don’t seem like one of us. Or was your best friend Zuhlsdorff wrong?’

  From close behind, Hartmann sensed a guard stepping forward, but he had moved too fast, wrenching up his shirt to turn his skeletal white torso in Goltz’s direction. From a welt on his ribcage, purple bruising pulsed out across his chest like spilled wine. Beneath it, just a few inches from his navel, the botched surgery around his Russian bullet wound was still horribly visible. ‘Full name, rank, number. Fuck all else. OK?’

  By the time he was pushed back down, Goltz was grinning. ‘I was joking, Max.’ He didn’t look as though he’d been joking.

  Like a supplicant, he reached both hands across the table; that painting again. ‘You’re a clever man. What’s your theory on the noises in the night?’

  There wasn’t time to answer. All around them orders were suddenly tumbling through the room. ‘Get up. Get up. Get up.’

  As they scrambled to their feet, chairs tumbled backwards, spilling puddles of half-drunk tea out across the tops of the uprooted tables. Finally, with unexpected clarity, Hartmann could remember the way; along past the golden ballroom and into the hall of paintings. This time there was no reception committee, just more soldiers with guns and sticks, shepherding them out to the leafy driveway from where Hartmann looked back. In his life, he’d rarely seen such a dignified building. And yet nothing he’d seen had ever looked less suited to its current purpose.

  Two lorries had already gone. The main door on to the marble stairway was closed. Across by the sandbagged sentry posts, the last dingy-looking truck stood rumbling under the broad green canopy of the avenue. No one had asked where they were going. No one would have told them if they had.

  When the canvas flap was rolled back down, the men were plunged into darkness. Sitting opposite each other in silence by the tailgate were Hartmann and Goltz.

  ‘Buck up, you two. We’re going on another mystery tour.’

  Rosterg. Unmistakable, even in the lorry’s murk. Hartmann hadn’t seen or heard of him for over a week.

  ‘What do you know, Rosterg?’ asked Goltz. ‘Or rather, what don’t you know?’

  ‘A great deal to please you, my friend.’ The engine had been turned on. Black exhaust fumes were rising up through the floor. ‘Those two explosions we heard last night were rockets.’ Rosterg was bellowing now. ‘Big new beautiful German rockets.’

  ‘That’s why everyone is so scared?’

  ‘Exactly. I think we heard them go through the sound barrier.’

  ‘And they’re moving us because?’

  ‘Because the British don’t know what might hit them next.’

  None of the prisoners asked him how he knew. They were too busy cheering to care. Five minutes later, when the truck jerked back towards the city in a bilious cloud of diesel, the war felt as though it was theirs to win.

  As they bounced away, Hartmann felt the sweaty clamp of a hand on his thigh.

  ‘You see. We’re still in this.’ Goltz grinned. ‘Everything to play for.’

  Hartmann appeared to nod, but said nothing. From somewhere close by, he was certain he’d caught the reedy refrain of a fairground waltz.

  ‘That’s better, Max. You look happy. You should be. We all should be.’

  Yes, he was smiling. But Goltz would have killed him if he’d known why.

  Max and Hartmann was all there was. There wasn’t, and never had been, any middle name to give.

  Private and Confidential

  From:

  Helen Waters

  To:

  Colonel A. Scotland

  Once again, I cannot overstate my appreciation for your allowing me to take that two-day break from the interrogations. I don’t know why, but dealing with this last batch left me exhausted and it was lovely to be out of the city, especially in this glorious and cheering weather. Everyone is talking about the rockets, however, and everyone is very worried what will come next.

  No doubt you’ve done this already, but it would be wise of the War Office to keep an eye on SS-Scharführer Joachim Goltz. An hour in his company left me chilled to the bone. He has a faintly messianic air about him, and nothing short of a handwritten instruction from Hitler will ever persuade him to yield.

  Among the others, I found Erich Koenig to be the most mystifying, alternating between long periods of silence and incoherent rants about Russian partisans. From what I could see, he was only anything like normal in the company of his cellmate. As you rightly remarked, there’s a whole other story there, methinks. But no time for that, I’m afraid. Maybe in another life!

  However, on the plus side – and it’s a huge plus – I feel confident we may have ‘turned’ a couple of those men in our direction. We shall see, but I have high hopes.

  Thanks again.

  P.S. Sadly, still no news of Jim’s fate.

  14

  September 1944

  London to Devizes

  (Camp 23)

  On the train they behaved like children on a school trip; every playground song, every bawdy ballad from the barracks, bellowed out until their
voices cracked and the obscenities fizzled out in jubilant laughter.

  Rosterg had been well informed. In Paddington Station, as they were hurried across a ghostly midday concourse, they’d heard the incomprehensible shouts of newspaper boys and craned their necks to interpret the headlines.

  ‘What are they saying, Hartmann? You’re the clever fucker.’

  The British were calling it a V2, and in a charmless London suburb three innocents had been vaporised. It was hardly a glorious new front, but after two dispiriting months the development felt like a conquest.

  Rockets – even the British couldn’t stand up to rockets.

  ‘There’s got to be more. We need to know more. What else is there?’ insisted Goltz.

  ‘Nothing. Unless I buy a copy. And that might be problematic.’

  All morning, they’d felt the sour loathing of their guards, of the entire city. As they boarded the train, an elderly porter had put down two suitcases, cleared his throat, and emptied its contents over Koenig’s back. ‘I’ll give you first class,’ he’d muttered.

  Now, stretched out inside one of Great Western Railway’s carriages, the mood of the prisoners had soared. Something in the air was shifting. Even Hartmann could feel it. More than the others, he had grown attuned to the mood of his captors, and for the first time since France he could feel doubt.

  If there was one rocket, there’d be more. Maybe the three dead pensioners in Chiswick were just a start. Maybe the sky would soon be dark with rockets. A hundred rockets. A thousand rockets. It seemed unlikely, but the thought drew him to the window. Under a broad umbrella, a man holding a briefcase was kissing a woman in a dark green suit. A shower of rain was pricking holes in the grime on the glass. Once again, no one had told them where they were going. He relaxed back. Somebody, somewhere, would have a plan.

  There were eight compartments in the carriage, and each one was absurdly comfortable. If they were full, that meant around sixty prisoners. At best, he knew where around half of them had come from. It wasn’t a mystery he’d dwell on. Living in ignorance was a prerequisite for any sane soldier. Being a prisoner wasn’t so different.

  This much he knew: Britain was over-endowed with unused first class carriages and unwanted Germans. When they got there, he’d know where it was. Before then, he’d ride the drunken mood of victory until it sagged.

  ‘I know you’re happy, Koenig, but please don’t sing,’ he muttered, closing his eyes. ‘Or you’ll get us all arrested.’

  After that, they stopped just twice. Once, alongside an orchard, where a red-faced boy shovelled apples through their window. Then again, for two hours, in the dripping black of a tunnel where, finally, the men had fallen silent. From the cracks between the sodden brickwork, pale fingers of calcite pointed down to the track, and when the locomotive eventually pulled out into the light they were in yet another station. Everyone looked at Hartmann, who shrugged. ‘I haven’t a bloody clue.’

  ‘Camp Number Twenty-three, Devizes,’ said a voice from the corridor. ‘If you’re lucky, they’ll have put the roofs on.’

  Since London, their train had slid under darkening skies alongside stubbly fields. Now, as the prisoners massed on the platform, grumbles of thunder prowled overhead and rain began coughing from the jaws of rusty drainpipes. Nearby, big band music was seeping between the misted double doors of a station buffet out of which two girls had tottered to stare insolently across at the Germans. One was holding her nose. The other was patching up her lipstick in the mirror of a compact. Behind them, a half-empty passenger train was being flagged clear to leave. Hartmann glanced up at the giant station clock. If it was right, it was 5.27 p.m. For a moment he thought about leaping aboard. No one would have stopped him. No one seemed bothered that they were there.

  ‘I get the feeling we’ve lost our novelty value.’

  Hartmann swivelled round to see Mertens looming over his shoulder. For a huge man, the submariner moved like feathers. He was right, though. The town seemed utterly unmoved by their arrival. Around its stone cross, in the redbrick market square, the bank clerks and grocers had long since totted up and scurried home. Rain spun noisily down black grids and from the doorway of a pub – the White Bear – two solitary drinkers hooted crudely in Hartmann’s direction. From somewhere behind him, the girls from the buffet whistled back. Apart from a few swishing cars, and a jeep loaded with American soldiers, nothing else on the street was moving.

  The good people of Devizes, it appeared, were not stirring from their wireless sets for the arrival of the SS.

  Out of habit, the prisoners had drifted into their marching formation, watched by a handful of distracted GIs and a dozen middle-aged men wearing ill-fitting British army cast-offs. Most of their escort carried guns fixed with bayonets, but none with any conviction; and only a clutch of sodden policemen on bicycles seemed in any way focused upon their task. As the group began to move, two of them pedalled upfront, periodically blowing their whistles, while their caped colleagues scouted the flanks, clutching truncheons. Head down against the horizontal rain, Hartmann slouched on.

  Within a few minutes, houses had given way to harvested fields and bramble-thick hedgerows. A few strides ahead, Goltz appeared to be goose-stepping alone through the deepening puddles in just his socks. In the evening light, his skin looked grey.

  ‘It’s a punishment. Apparently he tried insisting on a lift from the station.’

  Hartmann glanced to his left. The lean figure of Rosterg had fallen in alongside, where he was calmly wiping the rain from his spectacles with a monogrammed handkerchief. When they were dry he hooked the arms back over his ears and beamed. His uniform, although saturated, looked fresh. His whiskers, unlike everyone else’s, appeared miraculously trimmed.

  ‘You read it well, Max. We’ve been left in the hands of bank managers and grocers. All the young ones are probably in Germany drinking my claret.’

  Ahead of them, carried on a flurry of wind, a bell came clanging. A few seconds later, a military ambulance rounded a bend, spitting muddy grit over the men.

  ‘We must be close,’ said Rosterg, removing his glasses again. ‘There’ll be trouble if they haven’t run my hot bath.’

  ‘To be closely followed by a round of golf and à la carte with the camp commandant?’

  ‘Indeed.’ Rosterg smirked. ‘But not golf, Max, please. Billiards.’

  A few steps ahead, one of the British guards had stumbled on the steep wet verge. As they passed him, in softening light, Hartmann offered an arm. The soldier declined. ‘I’ll be fine. Not far to go now. Better move along unless you want a whack from a copper.’

  ‘You really have got a soft spot for losers, haven’t you?’ whispered Rosterg.

  Even at dusk, it looked enormous. On both sides of the road, brand-new huts stretched back in seemingly endless rows. Fieldsful of giant tents crouched around parade squares fluttering with Union Jacks and in every direction – under generator-powered spotlights – more buildings were being wrestled into place. Rippled sheets of corrugated iron stood in huge silver piles, and dumper trucks loaded with bricks heaved themselves across a churning lake of mud. As the rain eased, steam began to rise along a line of shiny-backed Nissen huts.

  There were sturdier barracks too – immense turreted veterans of older wars – and all of it, this whole swarming campus, appeared swaddled in billowing curtains of vicious barbed wire beyond which Hartmann could see thousands of men, heads down, streaming towards the canteens for their suppers, followed by the eyes in the towers where the big guns were primed.

  From the road, Hartmann could make little sense of it. It would be days before he did. Only then, fully armed with hearsay and his own observations, did the epic scale of Camp 23 sink in.

  Several thousand prisoners had got there before him, and the total was rising constantly. Every day – in the early evening – a few hundred more would march in from the station. Every morning, before it was light, a smaller number were clandestinely shipped
out. No one seemed to know where or why. Troublemakers, some said. The wounded, said others. No one really cared. Food and fags were what mattered, closely followed by information.

  And with every new arrival came yet more fuel for the rumour machine. Camps were being thrown up everywhere, it was said; hundreds of them; camps like small cities; camps in Scotland; black camps for killers; all of them leaking like sieves and the British countryside supposedly alive with armed fugitive Nazis.

  At the entrance to the camp, a lone sentry box guarded each gatepost, and a small wooden office block provided shelter for a handful of uniformed men. From inside, a kettle could be heard whistling. No one seemed in a rush to come out into the rain.

  When a brisk-looking sergeant finally emerged clutching a mug of tea, there was a swift head count, an exchange of damp pieces of paper, and the wooden gates were dragged open. Beyond them, through a single line of twelve-foot wire fencing, Hartmann could see soldiers waving their arms.

  ‘This way. Look sharp. Schnell. Schnell.’ Down a gravelled path, under orange sodium lights, they were pushed towards a shower block. ‘Strip, wash, and then through there. Leave your clothes where they are.’

  As the men tiptoed into the water, guards rifled through the stinking pile slicing off metal buttons and Nazi insignia. Souvenirs. Items to trade.

  ‘That’s my fucking uniform. You’ve no right. You’ve no fucking right.’

  It was Koenig, snarling naked under an icy cascade. Two military policemen were dragging him out by the arms towards Hartmann.

  ‘You speak English, right? Tell us what this Kraut fucker is saying.’

  Koenig’s eyes were wild. Shorn of his uniform, he looked helpless, weak.

  ‘He says he’s never been so clean. He thanks you . . . and can he keep his cap?’