Pursuit (6 page)

The colonel sat quietly in one corner of the large rear seat of the official military limousine, smoking a cigarette, looking out at the neat farmhouses and the grazing cattle with vast disinterest, his mind on other things. In the other corner Dr. Schlossberg sat, his eyes half closed, the faint lascivious smile on his face clearly indicating he was reliving the pleasures of the night before. The girl had been everything the colonel had promised, nor for a moment did he believe she was Jewish, since intercourse between Aryan and Jew was forbidden. But why the colonel had presented him with that extraordinary delicacy was something the doctor did not understand. In fact, the sudden friendliness of the previously cold colonel was as mysterious as the offer of the girl's services.

It was very odd. In the year since Franz Schlossberg had been transferred from repairing shattered bodies and faces at the Laukhammer Military Hospital to Maidanek camp at Lublin, Poland, he had seen the colonel various times. He had, of course, seen him at the officers' mess, evenings in the canteen, at meetings, and occasionally on the camp grounds, but his only personal contact had been when he had examined the girl Sarah for venereal disease. He recalled that examination very well, with the girl on the table, her marvelous breasts straining the hospital gown, the gown up around her waist, her feet in the stirrups, those lovely legs spread wide to open that fabulous slit to view, and that mask of dead indifference on her face that did nothing to hide her hatred for a moment. Who would ever have thought he would have a chance to delve those sweet depths with anything but a rubber-gloved finger?

The smile faded from his lips as he suddenly remembered something else. In the year since he had been at Maidanek, Colonel von Schraeder must have taken at least ten girls to bed according to canteen rumors, few of them lasting much more than a month, and each had previously been checked for disease—but this was the first time the colonel had specifically asked that Dr. Schlossberg handle the assignment. Actually, it wasn't really in his field. Very odd. As odd, for example, as this sudden transfer back to Germany—

“Colonel—”

“Helmut,” von Schraeder said as if by rote, not taking his eyes from the pastoral scenery outside the speeding car.

“Helmut.” The name seemed difficult for the doctor to say. “We were going to speak of my transfer.”

“If you insist.” Von Schraeder finally brought his attention back to the interior of the car, his thoughts from far away. He crushed out his cigarette in the ashtray, followed his usual ritual with the holder, and then leaned forward, sliding the glass partition shut between the chauffeur and themselves. He then leaned back negligently, crossing one leg over the other, one hand stroking the smooth polished leather of the boot sensuously, almost as if it were Sarah's belly or haunch. “Well? What about it?”

“I mean—did you arrange for my transfer from Maidanek? The commandant seemed to think you did.”

“And for once our genius of a commandant was correct,” von Schraeder said calmly.

“But—why?”

“Quite simple,” von Schraeder said evenly. He had been studying exactly how to answer this question and had come to the conclusion that the truth would be as confusing to the doctor as anything. “It's possible that I may need your help.”

“My help?” The doctor was truly surprised. Von Schraeder looked in the peak of health, although there was, of course, the stories he had heard of the colonel's poorly set arm. “Is it your arm?”

“It was never my arm, it was my shoulder,” the colonel said shortly. “But that's not it.”

“Then what help—”

“You might help me survive.” Von Schraeder looked at the doctor across the width of the car. “It is not certain yet that I will need your help, but I don't believe in leaving things to chance.”

“Survive? I don't understand—”

“What don't you understand? The meaning of survival?” Von Schraeder tented his fingers and stared at them. He looked quite professorial. “Survival, my dear Franz, is living longer—or continuing longer—than another person or thing. In my case survival is living longer than I would if I didn't take the necessary steps to stay that way. To me it's rather important.” Having made that understatement, he glanced at the doctor from the corners of his eyes. “If, after our experience at Maidanek we haven't learned that, we've learned nothing.”

“What has Maidanek got to do with it—?”

“My dear Franz, have you ever looked through the peephole into the gas pens when the crystals are dropped?” The doctor stared at him dumbly and shook his head. Von Schraeder shrugged. “A pity. You would know what I was talking about. You would have seen the prisoners fighting like animals, trying to get to the door, even though they know it is useless. Some of them have heard stories—there were a few escapes from Auschwitz and stories got around—but they couldn't bring themselves to believe them. And when they go into the showers and there really is water coming from the shower heads, they are relieved. But when they get into the pens and the door is locked behind them, and then the crystals start coming down like blue snowflakes, then they finally know. They
know
, do you understand?” Von Schraeder was leaning toward the doctor now, more intent than he had planned to be. “They climb all over each other, scratching, punching, pulling, screaming, begging, crying, shitting and pissing all over each other and sliding in it trying to reach that door that means nothing. Why?” He leaned back, relaxing a bit. “Trying to survive, my friend. Trying to survive.”

The doctor was staring at him, his eyes wide. He had never seen the usually imperturbable colonel like this, nor had he ever imagined to see him like this. Von Schraeder went on in a calmer tone.

“If you haven't looked through the peephole, at least you must have seen the
Sonderkommandos
with their gas masks and their high boots opening the doors afterward and hosing down the corpses to wash the shit and piss and vomit off them before they lift them with their hooks into the carts and roll them off to the ovens. They hook their own wives, their own children; they shovel their relatives and their dearest friends onto the grates and turn up the fires. Why? To survive, my friend. To survive!”

The doctor seemed dazed by the conversation.

“But how can arranging for my transfer possibly help you survive?”

“It's the first step,” von Schraeder said calmly. His past emotion seemed to have evaporated completely. “I had a professor once when I was in the Technical Institute, a professor in mechanical engineering; as I recall, his name was Werner. If you gave him the correct answer to a problem but omitted any step in the solution, he would fail you. ‘From one step to the next!' he would scream. ‘First things first, then second things second, all in order, all in order, until the answer comes! No jumps! No skips!' I thought at the time that he was crazy, a hysterical old man, but he was absolutely right. It's the secret of engineering; basically it's the secret of all science. No skips, no jumps. I have a feeling it's also the secret of survival.”

He looked at the doctor with that cold smile on his lips.

“So the first step was to get out of Maidanek, since being there when the Russians come marching through the gate is certainly no way to survive. With an idiot like Mittendorf in charge, I expect that when the Russians get there they'll find, not only some of the prisoners, but some of the SS as well. Not Mittendorf himself you may be sure, the pig also has a strong sense of survival, but there will be others. Men the commandant dislikes, men he envies for qualities he lacks. And the commandant would have liked nothing better than to have Colonel von Schraeder numbered among them. It was a chance I did not choose to take.”

“But, me—?”

“You? I did not want to take the chance of losing you. You could have been transferred to some other camp, out of my sight. That was also a chance I did not choose to take.”

The doctor removed his military cap and rubbed his head furiously.

“But the Russians may be stopped before they reach the camp—”

Von Schraeder contemplated the doctor as he would a specimen under glass, foreign and difficult to understand. The doctor's response had truly surprised the colonel.

“Franz, my friend, if you believe that, you'll believe anything. The Russians won't be stopped before they get to Maidanek. They won't be stopped before they get to Berlin. It's all over. The war is lost, my friend.”

Schlossberg was truly shocked. His eyes fled to the impassive profile of the driver outside the glass partition. “That's—that's treason!”

“He can't hear us, if that's what bothers you,” von Schraeder said dryly.

“It's not a question of whether he can hear us,” Schlossberg said heatedly, his Nazi background compelling him to protest. “Saying the war is lost is nothing but treason!”

Colonel von Schraeder seemed faintly disappointed, as if a favored pupil had failed an easy question on an exam.

“Franz, listen to me. To me, treason is using boxcars wastefully when the army is in desperate need of them. There was a time when we could afford the luxury of using ammunition to shoot Jews, women, children, what have you, but that time is past. Today it is treasonable to waste this ammunition. To me it has been becoming more and more treasonable to kill men who can work in factories and manufacture things we need. My God! We're like two separate countries working against each other, the country of the Wehrmacht, and the country of the Mittendorfs! We seem to have forgotten the Russians and the British and the French and the Americans! So now we have to pay. The war is lost. That is the payment.”

He stared into the doctor's eyes.

“Be logical, Franz. You've had scientific training. You're a graduate of Heidelberg with honors; you received your medical training at the Berlin Institute of Surgery; you practiced under the great Dr. Feddermann before the war—” Schlossberg stared in surprise at this knowledge of his background. “Well, then,” von Schraeder went on, his voice friendly, “use that scientific training, or if not, at least use common sense. What can be treasonable—or patriotic, for that matter—in stating a simple fact? You heard Mittendorf announce that our Middle Army Group in Russia had been destroyed, and he cited Guderian as his source. Well, I can tell you we lost twenty-five divisions in that fiasco, more than we lost at Stalingrad. It was a worse loss than Stalingrad, much worse, in every sense. And my source in Berlin is fully as reliable as Guderian!”

“Your source—?”

“Obviously,” von Schraeder said almost wearily, “I have connections in Berlin or I should not have been able to arrange our transfers. The name von Schraeder still means something to some people.”

“But even if we lost twenty-five divisions—”

“
Even
if we lost twenty-five divisions? Where are the replacements to come from?” The colonel almost sounded savage. “The war is lost! Reconcile yourself to that fact. To fight on when there is no hope of winning—that, to me, is treason. It is treason to a country and a people who have supported our efforts in every way. It is treason to the soldiers who will be killed needlessly and the civilians who will starve, if they aren't wiped out in the increased bombings. The war was lost long ago, with the Allied invasion in Normandy; and now with the present Russian advance, I should think the blindest optimist could see it!”

There were several minutes of silence as the doctor sat in stunned consideration of the colonel's words. The truth was that the war itself had never really interested him; as a good German and a good Nazi he supported it fully, but his own work was of such paramount interest that the war was only the background against which his art was played, first at the Laukhammer Hospital with war wounds, and then at Maidanek with prisoners. Now he was being told his background was to be taken away from him. He looked up, his slightly horse-like face almost pitiable, a child deprived of a favorite toy.

“Do you think we will surrender, then?”

“As long as Hitler is alive, no.”

“As long as Hitler is
alive
?” Now the doctor was really shocked.

“That's right. As long as Hitler is alive, we will not surrender. We will fight to the last living thing in Germany, to the last brick in the last factory, to the last shingle on the last shed, to the last tree and the last blade of grass. We will waste everything. But,” von Schraeder added grimly, “they will not waste me!”

“I see.”

The doctor didn't see at all, nor did he sound as if he did. His mind was whirling. He only knew that the man who had just spoken was a far different person than the stiff colonel he had known in the camp. A chameleon, this Colonel von Schraeder! But the doctor somehow knew instinctively that regardless of the spurious logic with which von Schraeder was attempting to disguise the fact, what he spoke was arrant treason. And to even suggest that the Fuehrer's death could alleviate Germany's problems—that was total treason! What of their oaths as Germans? What of their pledges as officers of the Schutzstaffel, personally, to Adolf Hitler? And even if the war
was
lost—which was far from a demonstrable truth—anyone who would refuse to fight for the Fuehrer and the Fatherland,
especially
under those conditions, was the most despicable of traitors!

On the other hand, it could well be that the colonel was merely testing his own loyalty, waiting for him to agree to his monstrous propositions in order to denounce him to the authorities. But why would the colonel do that? Why, in that case, would he have offered his friendship? Offered? Almost forced it, first with the girl the night before, then with the transfer, which, if the Russians were really all that close, might well have been a lifesaver. And even Mittendorf had acknowledged that the enemy was closing in.