Authors: Robert Ryan
A
PRIL
1945
A
S MUCH AS
anything was registering on nerves anaesthetised by sorrow, Williams was aware of Lock standing at the metal trellis work that formed the front of the cell. He didn’t look up. Robert had been through so much, fought in the skies above France, raced at a time when the attrition rate was horrendous, resisted to the best of his ability. To die like that …
He mustn’t dwell on it, on the airless chamber, its walls and floors stained with excrement and blood, marks that could never be rubbed clean. The smell of sweat and fear, the stoicism mingling with the panic. Those last few minutes when the air shaft opened and in came the pellets and the poison fumes ripped into the throat of the first man.
‘Williams,’ Lock said, and waited for a reply. ‘Williams.’
It came through the cloud of grief like a dim, distant voice at the end of a tunnel. His own voice sounded metallic, inhuman. ‘Fuck off.’
Not to see him again. Not to feel the power of that stare, not to hear him tell some fool he would knock him down and piss in his ear, not to watch him take a car into a bend at a speed that was far too fast and bring it round like a lamb. Not to share a glass of wine and a joke. It was corrosive, the very idea of a permanent separation, and it was burning through his insides.
‘I couldn’t save him, Williams.’
Neither could I, he wanted to shout. Neither could I. Why not? Why couldn’t I save Robert? He kept asking himself.
‘I said fuck off.’
‘Keppler—’
That made his head snap up. ‘Keppler?’
Lock was glad to have his attention and he spoke quickly before that bitter, tear-stained face went down again, back into catatonia. ‘Keppler was here, yes. Not now. I think he’s gone to the Americans.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘Americans or Russians? Which would you choose? The Russkies are due within forty-eight hours. We have to go.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘No, wait. Look, he made me put you both back on the list. Both. I couldn’t take the pair of you off. Too suspicious. I told the sergeant you were needed for further questioning. Williams, the guards are going. There are three thousand people busy dying in the huts out there. Don’t make it three thousand and one.’
‘If it’s three thousand and two I’ll be happy,’ and he looked up at Lock from under heavy lids.
‘I say the word and someone will come and shoot you where you sit.’
‘No they wouldn’t. Not for you. You’d have to do it yourself.’ Again those brimming eyes, brimming with hate and tears. ‘Could you do that?’
‘It won’t come to that, man. Look, we go west. You say nice things about me. You can get Keppler. We both win.’ He tried to keep the desperation out of his voice. They’d abandoned him now. After all those years of service, he was just another Englishman they couldn’t be bothered to waste a bullet on. ‘What do you say?’
Slowly and stiffly Williams got to his feet, the inertia of many hours having almost fused his joints, and brushed himself down. ‘I’ll say nice things about you, Lock.’
‘I have your word?’
Williams said evenly, the madness gone from his voice now: ‘You have my word.’
Lock banged the bars in delight. ‘Wonderful. I’ll get the key.’
The vast barns at the edge of the camp held an astonishing assortment of booty. Williams estimated they were over a kilometre long, piled high with furniture, purloined art, clothes, jewellery, carpets, great mounds stacked indiscriminately, waiting for the day when they could be sorted. Which would never happen now.
He and Lock walked the length of the treasure trove, and Williams stopped to select a herringbone coat from a pile and slipped it on. Warmth. Real warmth. For the first time in a long time. He grabbed a scarf and wrapped that round his neck, relishing the feel of rough wool against his skin.
Lock had civilian gear over his arm, a smart tweed suit, plaid shirt and knitted tie and trenchcoat. But for the moment he kept on his uniform, his passport through the wreck of Germany until they reached the Allies. His manner was cheery, upbeat, as if he wanted to keep Williams on song too, keep him focused, make him realise that it was all about concentrating on getting out of this hell hole.
The half-track was at the very end of the warehouse, a scabby, neglected-looking thing, with empty gun mounts like missing teeth sprouting across the strange framework erected over the rear of it. Williams indicated Lock should get in and he lifted the bonnet. ‘You tried it?’
‘Yeah,’ said Lock. ‘Turns over. Won’t fire.’
Williams quickly went through everything just in case, sucking fuel up the line, cleaning the carb, the points and checking the distributor. When he gave a thumbs-up, the motor lazily did a couple of revolutions, stuttered and then burst into noisy, clacking life. Timing was shot, one cylinder was misfiring, and blue oil was pumping out of somewhere, but it’d do.
‘Excellent. I knew you were the man for the job.’
Williams slammed the bonnet down and moved to the door. ‘Move over,’ said Williams. ‘I always drive.’
It gave Williams great pleasure to steer the half-track straight through the wooden gates of the entrance and feel them tear from their mountings and twist and buckle under the weight of the troop transport. It was the closest he had come to a happy feeling since he first walked through the same joyless portal. Apart from the moment he saw Robert.
He spun the lumpen beast through ninety degrees and headed west, trying to comprehend that this was the outside world. Except it looked like a continuation of the camp, desolate and foreboding, as hellish without as within. The road was lined with those executed on the death march, bodies carelessly tossed on the verge. A couple of miles down the road carrion-pecked bodies swung from the lampposts, illegible signs hung round their neck. Williams looked at Lock.
‘It’s what the SS do to deserters, mate,’ he explained. There was other traffic on the road—carts, horses, the odd civilian car—but nobody paid any attention to them, except to move out of the way, unsure who was inside. Each was in their own cocoon, on a mission, trying to save their neck. They had no desire to find themselves dangling from a lamppost.
Occasionally they heard shots, or the whumpf of an artillery shell landing, sending up a thin plume of black smoke. At one village Williams stopped the half-track and ran into a still-smoking house, emerging with a white sheet which he tied to one of the heavy duty aerials that sprouted from the cab. And on they went, thankful that the all-terrain machine could take to the fields when the road was blocked by refugees or burnt-out military hardware.
The landscape grew increasingly blasted and bombed, trees carelessly strewn across meadows and roads and houses, more bodies, some of them half chewed by scavenging dogs and rats. In the corners and shadows of the building shapes scurried. Children, he thought.
‘What will you do now?’ asked Lock as they hit an empty stretch of road at last. ‘Williams? What will you do now?’ He carried on regardless of the silence. ‘You know I always wanted to be a writer. Funny, eh? Me? Hoxton lad writing books. Murder mysteries, I fancied. Your Agatha Christies. Shit, couldn’t do that now. A body in the library? Big deal. We got three thousand behind the wire over there.’ And he laughed until Williams silenced him with a hard glance. ‘At least we know whodunnit, eh? No mystery there.’
On a long, steep hill Williams ground a gear, felt it jam and punched it irritably. The knob and the top of the shaft sheared off and he cursed as the remaining spike slashed open his palm. He looked at the stream of crimson blood, checked the wound wasn’t too deep, wrapped his scarf around the stem and carried on.
‘You all right, mate?’
Williams nodded.
The Mustang came out of nowhere, right down the road, head on, its belly bulge almost skimming the tree tops, the Packard Merlin engine screaming. The half-track rocked in the prop wash and Lock ducked as the machine thundered overhead.
‘Jesus. I thought we were dead.’
‘He’ll be back.’
They trundled on, weaving across the stumps of villages, and clusters of red-eyed inhabitants. There were the occasional Volksturm units, the home guard, but nothing threatening, mostly boys rattling around in men’s helmets, clutching ancient Mausers. A cluster of Hitler Youth eyed them suspiciously, but did nothing. Lock made the bent-arm Heil Hitler, and several returned it, some with wild-eyed enthusiasm. Williams was glad to see the back of them. Their luck was holding out.
The Mustang returned, running at right angles this time, low and sleek and beautiful, its silvery skin aglitter as the low winter sun caught the thousands of rivet heads stitching it together. Williams shoved his hand out of the window and raised it in salute. The pilot stared impassively for the fraction of a second he was level with them, then gained height, banked and headed off.
Williams rewrapped the scarf around the jagged gear lever and pushed forward as fast as the terrain would allow, wincing as the potholes and shell craters threw them about, the vibrations passing straight from seat to spine, thanks to the scant muscle cushioning still clinging to his frame.
With the road clear of civilians and troops, Lock began to strip off his uniform, transforming himself from SS to escaped British agent. Williams wondered if he thought anyone would fall for such an idiotic cover story. Well, maybe. No crazier than the idea that racing drivers would become SOE agents.
The first indication that there were no American lines as such, just a fluid, mobile bridgehead, came with the still-smoking ruin of a carbonised Eager Beaver, the US workhorse truck, which was twisted and shattered at the roadside. Maybe a mine, thought Williams, and instinctively slowed. The Yanks must be near, though. As if in answer two rounds zinged against the bodywork.
‘Put both hands out in surrender,’ said Williams, looking down at Lock, who had slid off the seat.
‘And get my head shot off?’
More rounds, and a heavier thunk, maybe a BAR. Williams could see a muzzle flash from a stand of trees in the centre of a field off to their right. Just lazy potshots perhaps. A splattering of detonations hammered against the body work and he felt the door buckle inwards. Light machine gun, a Johnson or the like. Maybe they were serious. ‘Sooner or later they’re going to find a bazooka or something.’
Lock reluctantly pulled down the flimsy side pane and stuck the top of his body out, yelling, ‘Don’t shoot, don’t shoot! English. English prisoners.’ A bullet smacked into the corner of the windshield and he slithered back in but Williams pushed him back out. He yelled more desperately this time, and the firing stopped.
They rounded the bend and Williams could see two Shermans parked nose to nose across the road, a ragged pile of sandbags stacked up their sides. The sun flashed back from the lenses of binoculars being trained on them. One of the Sherman turrets slowly cranked and elevated its gun, drawing a bead on the half-track. Williams stopped, exhausted, letting the engine idle, feeling it pop and splutter roughly under his feet.
‘That’s it,’ said Lock exultantly. ‘You did it. You did it. We did it. Just remember the deal. You say nice things, we’re both in clover.’
Williams turned off the ignition and the half-track engine ran on for a second before juddering to a grateful halt.
‘What? What are you doing, man? Look. Four hundred yards. Home. Free. Drive on.’
Williams took a breath and willed strength into the poor abused strings of muscle he had left as he yanked the protective scarf away from the gear lever. In a movement as fast as a snake strike he reached up and grabbed the back of Lock’s head, taking a handful of hair and forcing his face downwards in one smooth, fast arc. Lock screamed as he saw the bloody spike rearing up at him, but it was too late, there was a horrible squelching sound as it pierced his eye and the momentum took it on deep into his skull. He began to thrash, but that only mixed things up more, and the razor-edged shard sliced its way through nerves and capillaries and brain matter until the thrashing became a mad twitching and then he was still, a last groan as the air leaked from his lungs marking the passing of Arthur Vincent Lock.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Williams quietly, patting the head, ‘I’ll say nice things about you.’
Williams opened the driver’s door and slid out on to the road, his legs wobbling as they hit the ground. He steadied, pulled the coat around him and began to walk, raising his arms as he did so. He could see a flurry of activity ahead, observers, stepping from behind the tanks, a few with carbines levelled, and among them a woman.
His legs went and he hit the asphalt, the roughened surface gashing the skin from his chin. Strange. After all this time. That he should fall now, he thought. Up. Get up. He pulled himself to his feet, swaying, stepping backwards when he wanted to go forward. Almost two years since his capture. Now free. All those things he had done. And seen. Robert. He fell again, on to his hands and knees, almost not noticing the searing pain in his cut hand.
Robert. Couldn’t save him. Could save himself, but not his friend.
On his feet again, but the world was spinning, the sky and ground switching places with dizzying rapidity. His vision was imploding, as if someone were closing the world’s aperture down, shrinking it to a tunnel of light, and the only thing coming up the tunnel was a woman’s voice. Funny, he thought, as the ground rushed up once more, it sounded just like Rose Miller.
A
PRIL
-M
AY
1945
T
HE WIND SNAPPED
at the thin canvas that formed one side of the bathroom wall, making it sing a mournful, icy song. The first signs of spring had retreated, winter was having a last rally before handing over the reins. Williams turned on the spigot and let more hot water run over his body as he sat in the tub, inspecting the damage of two years’ incarceration. He was a horrible yellowy, parchment colour, with a mottling of bruises covering him. His ribs looked like a xylophone, and his knees and elbows seemed swollen to twice their normal size, but he was eight or ten meals down the road to recovery and already he could feel tissues rebuilding. Lucky. Lucky man.