Assignment Gestapo (29 page)

As the Lieutenant remained in his impassive trance, Stahlschmidt took a pace backwards and tried a new tack.

‘Still, maybe I’m wrong at that. Maybe it won’t be Glatz and it won’t be Torgau. Who knows, eh? It might be the old chopping block . . . I seen ’em do that to a bloke. Just once, I seen ’em do it and I couldn’t bear to watch no more . . . Bloodthirsty, it was. Very. They don’t always come off clean at the neck with the first blow . . .’

A slight, involuntary ghost of a smile flickered across Ohlsen’s lips. It seemed to Stahlschmidt as if he were laughing at him: laughing kindly and trying not to show it, as at a child’s naive exaggeration.

Stahlschmidt stiffened.

‘All right, that’s enough of the talking! Get your clothes back on, and at the double before I lose patience! I’m a busy man, I’ve got things to do. It’s all right for you, you’re a nothing, you’re a nobody, you got no responsibilities, but I got a position to keep up, I can’t hang around all day telling fairy stories to the likes of you.’

Lt. Ohlsen quickly dressed himself again. He was obliged to keep one hand on his trousers, now that his braces had been confiscated. He was about to put his tie round his neck, when Stahlschmidt suddenly yanked it violently away from him.

‘No ties allowed! What do you think this is, a fashion house? And do your jacket up properly, I won’t have slipshod ways in my prison!’

The Lieutenant silently folded the wide lapels of his jacket across his chest and buttoned them down. Stahlschmidt nodded approvingly.

‘Good. That’s better. I can see you’re quick to pick up new ideas . . . We’ll make a man out of you yet. You’d be surprised the number of officers who’ve come in here like you and been sent out again as real soldiers . . . Right! A little gentle exercise before you go to the cells. Arms above your head, jumping on the spot . . . starting – now!’

The Lieutenant put his arms above his head and began jumping on the spot. As he did so, his trousers fell about his ankles and threatened to trip him up.

Stahlschmidt and Stever threw back their heads and roared with coarse laughter. Lt. Ohlsen went on jumping. He seemed almost unaware, and certainly uncaring, that his trousers were round his ankles and that he looked ridiculous.

Stahlschmidt stopped laughing, dug Stever in the ribs and glared at him. Stever also stopped laughing. Lt. Ohlsen had ruined the joke: it simply wasn’t funny any more.

Together they stood watching him, bewilderment and rage writ large on Stahlschmidt’s face. He found himself wondering whether in fact the prisoner’s mind had given way completely. Certainly there had been others whose spirit had broken and who no longer cared what became of them, but this idiot Lieutenant was holding out far longer than most. It was conceivable that a man could be left unmoved by thoughts of his ultimate fate, the chance of imprisonment or execution, but sooner or later Stahlschmidt had never failed to produce a spark of reaction by subjecting them to the smaller humiliations of life, the handing over of their possessions, the stripping, the searching, the jumping on the spot . . . Was this stubborn fool of a prisoner completely insensitive? Had he no proper pride or sense of shame?

Stahlschmidt moved on to his next charade.

‘Right! Down on the ground, flat on your stomach! Five turns to the right, five turns to the left, and don’t take that belly off the floor or there’ll be trouble!’

Lt. Ohlsen obediently fell flat upon his stomach. Obediently he began pulling himself round in a circle.

Stahlschmidt moved across towards him and deliberately stood on his fingers. Lt. Ohlsen winced. He bit his lips until they bled. Stahlschmidt renewed his efforts, walking back and forth over the prisoner’s hands. Ohlsen saw a red mist of pain before his eyes, but no more than a low groan of protest was wrung from him.

After that, they gave him a rifle, a heavy Belgian rifle of antiquated design, and led him out in the corridor, where they called up Greinert the Vulture and had him assist them in putting the Lieutenant through his paces.

‘Rifle drill!’ bawled Stever. ‘Down on your knees, prepare to fire!’

Greinert walked round with a critical eye, ready to jump on the smallest of faults, but he lacked the imagination to invent any and unfortunately for him Lieutenant Ohlsen appeared not to have any faults. He knew what he was doing when it came to handling rifles.

‘On your feet ready to fire!’ yelled Steven.

Lt. Ohlsen was on his feet in an instant, the rifle in regulation position. Stever at once began shouting out a new string of orders.

‘Down on your stomach! On your knees! On your feet! Present arms! Stand at ease! Fix bayonet! Down on the ground! Stand to attention! Stand at ease! Ready to fire! Half-turn to the right! Face front! Running on the spot, start now!’

Lt. Ohlsen took it all in grim silence. They kept him at it until he was almost, but not quite, at dropping point.

‘Stand to attention!’ roared Stever, whose voice was growing hoarse.

The Lieutenant stopped running on the spot. He pulled himself upright and stood stiffly to attention. For a second the building swayed before his eyes and he thought he was going to pitch forward, but the sensation passed and he retained his stance. Not, however, before the lynx eyes of Greinert had noted the slight movement He stepped forward in a lather of excitement.

‘He moved! He’s supposed to be standing to attention, and he moved!’

Stever and Stahlschmidt, who had not noticed anything, handed over the field of battle to Greinert.

‘Look at him!’ screamed Greinert. ‘Shaking all over like a wet dog! And him an officer! Supposed to train new. recruits, and doesn’t even know how to stand to attention! Doesn’t even know how to obey an order!’ He moved closer to the Lieutenant ‘I said stand to attention, not dance an Irish jig! When I say stand to attention, you stand to attention. That means you freeze to the spot, you grow like a statue, wild horses couldn’t drag you away and earthquakes couldn’t shake you . . .’

Lt. Ohlsen spoiled this fine burst of poetry by involuntarily swaying forward again. The Vulture stepped back a pace, pulled down his jacket, pushed back his helmet. His breath came snorting indignantly down his nostrils.

‘Things have come to a pretty pass,’ he said, bitterly, ‘when a simple sergeant has to take an officer in hand and start training him in basic discipline.’

Suddenly, and with no warning, his right fist shot out and crashed into the Lieutenant’s face. Ohlsen staggered backwards, knocked off balance by the blow. He took a few uncertain steps, then regained his equilibrium and came once more to attention, standing stiff and straight and staring ahead, despite the blood that was pouring from his nose and dripping on to his tunic.

The Vulture at once launched into a fine display of histrionics. He raved and he roared, he mocked, he jeered and he intimidated, and he accompanied the whole tirade with a nonstop string of vitriolic obscenities. He raced off into a positive frenzy of fresh instructions, spitting them out one after another until the Lieutenant was several moves behind him and would have had no hope of keeping up even under the best of conditions.

When Ohlsen was finally standing to attention once again, his face streaked in blood, his nose swollen, his chest heaving and his ears ringing, Greinert embarked upon a new set of tactics. He began by standing a few paces away and studying the Lieutenant intently from head to foot, now and again giving a small scornful laugh. When he had finished with this amusement, he walked closer and stared direct into his face, trying to make him lower his gaze or blink. When Lt. Ohlsen did neither, Greinert set off on a circular tour, walking very silently round and round, and round and round, in never-ending circles . . .

It was a well-known trick. Most people broke after the first five minutes. Some, the toughest and most experienced, held out for ten. Very very rarely did a man last quarter of an hour.

Lt. Ohlsen survived for thirteen minutes. His head was beginning to swim and his arms to grow lead weights. His knees were trembling and he had cramp in his fingers. Greinert had been watching and waiting for this moment. He took up his position behind the Lieutenant and waited a while longer; and the, very gently, he stretched out a hand and gave a sharp push at Ohlsen’s rifle. The rifle slipped from his numbed fingers and fell to the floor with a crash that rang startling loud in the silence.

‘So now we come to it!’ screamed Greinert. ‘An officer who can’t even hold on to his rifle! Drops it to the ground like a toy he’s got tired of!’ He walked round to face the Lieutenant. ‘Get down on your stomach and grovel!’

Ohlsen fell thankfully to the ground. Greinert gave him a kick.

‘Pick that rifle up and crawl forward! At the double, we don’t want to be here all bleeding day! And lick the rifle while you’re doing it . . . I said lick it, damn you, lick it! Crawl and lick, crawl and lick, one – two, one – two . . . keep it up, no flagging, I didn’t tell you to stop!’

And so the Lieutenant crawled up and down the passage, licking his rifle till his tongue was sore. Each time he passed in front of Stahlschmidt and Stever they trod on his fingers and abused him. Each time he passed in front of Greinert he received a kick in the face, in the head, in the groin. He was bleeding from both nose and mouth. His hands were almost raw. His eyes were clouding over.

Someone dragged him to his feet and began using him as a punch ball. They pushed him to and fro between them, battering him until he fell limply from one to another and finally slid unconscious to the floor. Greinert aimed one last vicious kick into his crutch, but fortunately the Lieutenant was no longer capable of feeling pain. He lay on his back with his head to one side, a thin trickle of blood coming from his mouth and dripping to the floor.

‘Hm.’ Stahlschmidt grunted and stood looking down at the inert form. He had been unable to break the man’s mind, but at least he had had the satisfaction of breaking his body. ‘All right,’ he said, turning back down the corridor. ‘Throw him into number nine and forget about him.’

Happily he returned to his office. It had, on the whole, been a good day. This stubborn fool of a lieutenant was the fourth prisoner he had passed through the initiation ceremony. Stahlschmidt rubbed his hands together and trod with jaunty step to the window. If only, one day, a certain Lt. Hans Graf von Breckendorf could be passed through the initiation ceremony! If he could only have von Breckendorf crawling naked and shivering before him, jumping with his trousers round his ankles, lying in a heap with blood trickling from his mouth . . . his joy would be complete.

Stahlschmidt swallowed and forced himself to sit down, before the excitement of the prospect should overcome him. He prayed nightly to a god he didn’t believe in for von Breckendorf to be delivered to him. He hated von Breckendorf with a hatred that could only partially be appeased by the constant humiliation and brutality that he practised on all the other officers who came his way. Never, as long as he lived, would he forget the way that he had been made to suffer at von Breckendorf’s hands.

It was a Saturday afternoon, a hot, bright day in the middle of July. The Stabsfeldwebel had just come off duty and had gone straight to the canteen for a beer. He had undone his collar and pushed his cap to the back of his head, and he remembered even now the anticipatory saliva suddenly flooding his mouth as he walked towards the steps.

At the foot of the steps, barring his entrance to the canteen, was Lt. Graft von Breckendorf. He had been made a lieutenant on the eve of his nineteenth birthday and he was arrogant and insufferable on account of it. He was sitting astride a magnificent dapple horse when Stahlschmidt came up, and as Stahlschmidt drew near he extended a langorous arm and poked the tip of his riding crop into his throat.

‘What’s the meaning of that, Stabsfeldwebel? Do your collar up immediately, I will not tolerate men wandering about half undressed for all to see . . .’ And as Stahlschmidt did up his top button, von Breckendorf’s eyes had narrowed and he had lowered the crop and pushed Stahlschmidt in the abdomen with it. ‘How disgustingly fat you’re becoming! Locked away in that prison of yours, it’s not good for you, I don’t believe you have nearly enough exercise. It’s not healthy for a man to sit hunched over a desk all day. Come along with me and I’ll put you through your paces.’

Stahlschmidt had had no alternative but to obey. The horse set off at a trot, and he had to run along behind to keep up, breathing in the sweet, suffocating smell of hot horse and saddle leather and human sweat.

Von Breckendorf had sent him through every obstacle on the obstacle course. Stahlschmidt had emerged from the barbed wire with his uniform in shreds and his face torn to ribbons, but von Breckendorf had appeared not to notice. He had immediately dragged him off to the stables, sent him into the ring and made him run round it several times while he rode behind him cracking his whip and saying ‘Hup!’ each time they came to a jump. Even then von Breckendorf had not wearied of the entertainment. He had given Stahlschmidt ten minutes to go away and change and to come back dressed in full combat uniform, including his gas mask, and he had then run him round the ring thirty-six times, von Breckendorf on horseback. Stahlschmidt on a leading reign. Any time Stahlschmidt staggered he felt the cut of the riding crop across his shoulders. He had been on the point of passing out when finally von Breckendorf had let him go.

‘I think you’ll find that’s got some of the loose flab off you,’ he had said, smiling benignly. ‘Good day, Stabsfeldwebel. I feel sure we shall meet again some time.’

Stahlschmidt hoped so. With all his heart, he hoped so. Each morning he woke to a new day full of new expectations. Each morning he hurried to his office and ran a febrile eye through the sheaf of papers that had been left on his desk. One day, please God, he would see the name of Hans Graf von Breckendorf amongst them . . .

Nobody had ever seen fit to tell Stahlschmidt that Lt. Graf von Breckendorf had been killed over a year earlier at Sebasto-pol. Had he ever found out, it would almost certainly have broken his heart.