Corridor of Darkness is not his story, but it could have been. This is a work of fiction by a storyteller, not an historian. All names and characters are fictional, and any resemblance to real persons living or dead is purely coincidental. The words and actions of all the characters, including known historical personages, are the products of my imagination. But in writing this novel I have tried to present the reader with a realistic sense of life in those turbulent years, and I apologize in advance if an occasional inaccuracy has crept into the story.
Creative license was taken where the facts are still in dispute. For example, there appears to be no consensus on when and where the plan for genocide first arose amongst the Nazi hierarchy, so I have taken the liberty of ascribing this burgeoning horror to Heydrich and his team late in 1938. It was not implemented until 1942. Similarly, some historians now believe that Reichskristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass” pogrom across the Reich, was instigated by Goebbels and undoubtedly with Hitler’s approval, but to the initial surprise of the Gestapo leadership.
Geographically, I have tried to stay true to reality. The tunnels beneath Marburg exist, but I was never able to investigate what lay behind the wooden doors fronting the Lahn back in 1969 when I studied at the university. I did take liberties with the latch mechanism for the sake of the story. Wherever possible, I used contemporary train schedules to carry my characters across the Reich in an accurate manner. (As an aside, I once narrowly avoided losing my own head to a German catenary post while leaning out a moving train as I photographed a steam locomotive on a parallel track.) The hamlet of Weidenbach in the Westerwald is wholly imagined, and the Gesslinger Rhein-Fracht dockyard is, as the German would say, frei erfunden, a figment of my imagination.
With regard to Horst’s damaged facial nerve, this trigeminal neuropathic pain is very real. I appreciate the specific anatomical information provided by dental surgeon Dr. John Orsi, who clarified how a misguided saber blade might lead to just such a medical affliction. Any factual errors regarding the affliction are mine alone. And interestingly, it is surmised that Himmler may have been addicted to morphine. Nadia’s fatal disease reflects an hereditary ailment afflicting some Lithuanian Jews.
Finally, academic dueling was indeed an established tradition at the time, and is still practiced today at some German universities. A computer search will show the interested reader exactly how a Mensur is fought. My father did inadvertently insult a Nazified Marburg fraternity by not saluting its flag, and a duel was fought and won on his behalf.
I thank my brother James E. O’Bryon for challenging me to quit talking about and finally start writing this story. I am very grateful to Roy Leighton Malone III, whose thoughtful suggestions regarding plotting and character development inspired a richer story. My sincere thanks go also to Alexander Mackey and Olivia O’Bryon Mackey for their constructive and enthusiastic comments as readers, and to Gerda Tüchsen Brown, whose recollections of her childhood under Nazi rule added special insight to the portrayal of these troubled times.
I dedicate this book to my wife Dani, whose patience, loving encouragement and insightful critique have helped craft a far better story, and to my late father, who led such an adventurous life, and whose spirit hovers about me as I continue to record the saga he inspired.
Patrick W. O’Bryon
Cameron Park, CA
For a preview of Beacon of Vengeance, the second volume of the Ryan Lemmon Journals, please turn the page. For updates on this series of historical novels, please visit www.corridorofdarkness.com.
BEACON OF vENGEANCE
A Novel of Nazi Germany
CHAPTER ONE
Kehl, Germany
11 November 1938
4:33 a.m.
The fury of the blast left René no time to react. An incoming Mauser round pierced the fuel tank of their launch and his comrade took the brunt of the explosion. Uwe’s body struck René with mind-numbing force and both men flew out over the lagoon. René felt the searing heat and was momentarily blinded by a flash which shredded the fog, and then came impact with the water. Once he regained the surface the shattered hull was in flames, burning fuel and oil slicked the surface, and Uwe’s mutilated body bobbed face down in the choppy wash.
His fellow fighter had paid the price for shielding his friend and leader. A brief check confirmed what René instinctively knew—Uwe was a raw mass of blood and seared skin, and dead. One arm was missing. The signature thatch of coarse blond hair hung loosely from his head, and the curve of the flayed skull glowed dully in the flames from the wreckage. Large wooden splinters protruded from the flesh of his neck and back, forcing René to think fleetingly of mariners’ deaths in the days when cannon balls wreaked havoc on the tall sailing ships.
There was no sound. Or rather, only an incessant humming which filled his head, blocking all ambient noise. René could not tell if the firefight ashore was still ongoing. He treaded water and looked toward the docks, but the fog had gathered again, leaving only diffuse pinpoints of light along the row of warehouses and a brighter glow from the Water Police patrol boat which had been their undoing. René was sapped of energy, resting on a floating hatch cover and cursing the loss of his comrade as the current drew the mangled body away from his raft. He wondered if he had permanently lost his hearing, the constant buzz in his ears a distraction as he calculated his odds and those of his friends ashore. He wondered if he had been concussed again, if he would spend months recovering as he had after the brutal beating by von Kredow that had changed his life. His thoughts came so slowly. He was unaware of the cold.
Time passed, leaving his mind to drift. Then he sensed a subtle variation, a rhythmic thrumming approaching across the water, and he abruptly remembered they might search the wreckage. He forced his dulled mind alert. The inverted hull, no longer aflame, bobbed several meters away as it drifted to-ward the Rhine. He left his hatch cover to breast-stroke over to the shattered wreck and dropped below the water to resurface under the capsized keel. A two-handed grip on the ragged framing above his head gave his weak right leg a rest, and there he waited. The backwash slapped against the hull as a passing craft slowed nearby, although the ringing in his ears and the dampening shield of the hull allowed little sound to penetrate. And then the vessel accelerated at open throttle, leaving his shelter bobbing violently in its wake.
He would swim to rejoin his comrades, with luck still res-cue his friends. He thought of Erika and that little boy he had carried on his arm, and of Ryan. If I still have comrades to save, he thought. He left the hull with a determined stroke toward the distant lights dimming and flaring in the shifting mist. His hearing had barely improved, but once again he sensed the throb of a vessel approaching and rapidly gaining speed. He knew it must be the police gunboat, and in a hurry. He submerged to let it pass.
She knew she had lost. Erika cradled Leo, his face buried at her chest, and fought against the numbness, both mental and physical. She imagined springing from the bench, Leo still in her arms, and plunging overboard to join Ryan in death. She knew the future held no promise for her or her son. She would sink beneath the waters and not fight the pull of life, and this brutal ordeal would be over. But then she thought of Leo struggling to live, and she let the thought go. As long as she was still sound of mind and body, she could fight. As long as Leo was with her, she would not surrender, would fight. She hugged her three-year-old closer and rocked him gently. But we will both still die, she thought.
The SS policemen out on the deck tended to the wreckage of Horst’s face. It no longer mattered now what happened to him. She had seen his jaw shatter as the bullet struck home, the spray of blood and bone and flesh backlit in the glare of the searchlight. It had felt good. He had paid the price for destroying the future of the boy in her arms, for the death of her parents, for her torture and rape. Should he live, his face would be a horrific mask exposing him to the world, his mutilated features an indelible mirror of the monster within. Should he die, the world
would be a better place.
Ryan had been so strong at the end, so certain of their success and escape to France. Only two hours earlier they had relaxed in the shack, sensing an end to the terrifying flight from Berlin, letting down their guard, and she had seen the happiness in his eyes when she revealed that he was likely Leo’s natural father. He had been a good man, a decent man, and she fought back tears, picturing his drop into the dark waters, the loathsome Pabst dragging them both beneath the roiling surface. Ryan won’t be back to save us this time, despite his promise. The tears finally broke loose, and she sobbed, pulling silent Leo ever more tightly to her. She wished she had the toy bear to offer her son as comfort, but Bruno lay abandoned on the deck of the motorboat which followed in their wake.
Horst lay unmoving on the stretcher, his head a swath of bandages. His moaning had ceased, and the medic remarked on the inordinate amount of morphine it had taken to calm his agony. Little did he know that Horst had routinely injected the pain killer.
The young policeman hovered over the captives, his machine pistol alert. He no longer tried to comfort her with assurances that the Reich would look after her son once she paid the price for assaulting a high-ranking Gestapo official. She had read Horst’s protocol, knew what the state planned for all Jews like her. If her husband did not manage their deaths beforehand for having “tricked” him into marrying a Jewess, they would certainly still disappear into a concentration camp to ultimately perish there. But Erika would never go willingly.
René found the Gesslinger docks in shambles as he climbed to the loading platform and limped ashore. Downed SS soldiers lay on the gravel near the gate where his men had dragged the bodies. He dispatched the sole survivor—badly injured with a gut wound and unconscious—with a quick slip of his pocket knife. The attack had commenced as planned, but the loss of Uwe and the failure to achieve their principal goal meant a devastating defeat. The police launch was away, and with it Ryan, Erika and the boy. His other fighters were unscathed, a miracle in itself. He found them consoling one another over René’s own presumed death.
The dockside shack had its own story to tell. The table dis-played tools of torture. Ryan’s overcoat and Erika’s handbag still hung on the hooks. René noted where his friend had suffered, the burned ropes and scorched wood of the chair arm, the cut ties which earlier had bound Ryan’s feet. Blood splatters streaked the floorboards, and the stench of burned flesh still permeated the shack. He doubted his friend could have withheld his secrets—few men could in the face of such cruelty—so the Lone Ranger network was likely exposed to the Gestapo. There was no sign of Hugo Gerson, but René sadly guessed his fate, as well.
He sent his men home, warning that they were compromised and suggesting they too escape to France. His remaining boats were at their disposal. He burned with fury, but knew his job had just begun and fought the blinding rage which would render him ineffective.
René gave his mother no choice. Jeanne was in tears and resisted, but he helped her into her coat, grabbed her handbag and some family documents, and had his man escort her to the waiting Opel. She insisted on taking an album of photographs of her early married years. He quickly changed to dry clothing and gathered a few basics. Long ago he had stashed French francs at the Kehl home, for he had known this day would surely come. Within half an hour the family estate would sit abandoned, and he and his mother would be across the river before the new day fully dawned. They would head for her ancestral home south of Colmar in Alsace, take a few days to recover, then assess their situation and decide the future fight.
Erika expected that soon now some official would step in and seal their fate. Her mind raced as the gunboat headed upriver toward the police docks in Kehl. The long railroad bridge passed overhead in the fog, carrying others to the safety they had sought in France. The muted lights of the town beckoned as the launch made a sweeping curve toward shore.
The Water Protection Police station was understaffed—Horst’s welcoming party at Gesslinger Shipping must surely have depleted their resources, she thought—so some confusion reigned. The ambulance awaiting their arrival quickly whisked Horst away, its siren pointless in that pre-dawn hour when no one braved the streets without official permission. Horst von Kredow, her sadist husband, the man she once believed she loved, the man who was destined to make her future in the new Germany, was out of her life at last.
Her guard placed handcuffs on her wrists, the cold metal raw against the welts left from Horst’s rape barely twenty-four hours earlier. It now seemed an age, an epic series of events which had taken all from her but Leo, clutching at her arm. They were placed in an interrogation room and told to expect the Gestapo shortly, and she knew she would soon lose Leo. He would go to an orphanage, at least until word got out of her Jewish heritage or until Horst tracked them down. She would face interrogation far more brutal than anything she had yet endured. There is no future in this new Germany, she thought.
The sleepy-eyed sergeant behind the desk—obviously re-sentful of the interruption in a swing shift normally devoted to dozing—insisted the woman give an official statement. He called for the key to her cuffs and placed it in his breast pocket. Despite her damp clothing, disheveled hair and makeup long missing, he still ran his eyes the length of her body and managed a lecherous smile, appreciating both her looks and her discomfort. Leo clung to her bound hands.
“Now here’s a nice piece of ass to grace our station,” he said. “Don’t worry—we’ll get you out of that damp clothing as soon as possible, for your own good, of course. But first, I need a name.” Erika eyed the desk, the pen holder, the brass fire extinguisher affixed to the wall to her right, barely visible past the man’s head. She quickly returned her gaze to the sergeant. His stubble and mustache carried remnants of something white and powdery and recently eaten—confectioner’s sugar, perhaps. The fatigued eyes revealed nothing beyond the obvious leer, but his words made her decision easy. She remained silent.
“Mutti, ich muss Pipi machen.” Leo, pressing against her leg, looked up imploringly. He hadn’t uttered a word since the shooting on the river, but now the immediacy of his need brought him back.
“A toilet for my child,” she said, a mother’s demand, not a request.
“It can wait. He won’t be coddled where you’re headed.” The sergeant chuckled.
“Mutti, I need to go, I need to go now!”
“Remove these cuffs and I’ll take him to a toilet, or you’ll have a real mess to deal with. Your man there can stand guard.”
“The cuffs go nowhere, and you’ll stay right here even if you piss yourself, my dear. As for your brat—” he gestured to the guard, “—Corporal Mannheimer, get this kid to the shitter and make sure he does his business.”
The young policeman nodded and put a hand on Leo’s shoulder. “Let’s go, kid.”
“Mutti?”
“It’s fine, Leo, go with the man. I’ll be here when you come back, don’t worry.” Leo saw the truth in his mother’s eyes. Though hesitant to leave her, nature called too strongly and he allowed himself to be shepherded into the hallway.
The sergeant returned to the typewriter. “Again, what’s your name?” Erika stayed mute, staring at the desk. “Listen closely, madam, we’ll get it out of you eventually. Would you prefer the Gestapo way, or our way?” She said nothing. “Very well, you fired upon and grievously wounded a high-ranking SS officer before witnesses. The reason for your action?”
She finally spoke: “He deserved to die.”
He looked at her with impatience and began to type, a finger of each hand tapping at the keys. He only got as far as “deserved.” The heavy bronze eagle in her bound hands met his skull. Erika heard the crunch and felt the give and knew she had aimed true. The sergeant loosed a grunt and a fart and his head fell over the rank of type bars as blood poured from the head wound. She returned the eagle to its roost at the center of the desk, the talons gripping the swastika now glistening red. The sergeant’s two
fountain pens lay scattered across the surface, the spilled ink forming sinuous patterns as it mingled with blood from his crushed temple. The scroll of paper in the typewriter was now saturated; no name or mention of her relationship to Horst would ever be noted. The machine itself sat half hidden by his drooping head, as if he were searching within for his missing consciousness. Erika withdrew the key from his pocket and freed herself of the restraints, then pulled the fire extinguisher from its wall bracket and positioned herself behind the hallway door to wait.
She glanced over at the fallen sergeant and realized her error. Though the young policeman would not see her empty chair as he came through the door, he would immediately spot the slumped body of his sergeant. She forced the unconscious man upright, positioning his elbows on the desk, his forearms over the machine. She wiped the blood from her hands on his uniform jacket, then concealed herself again behind the door, the bulky brass canister at the ready. She heard Leo’s voice in the hall and then they were outside, just beyond the door.
Leo entered first, the guard on his heels. “Mutti, I’m done. This man is nice.” A few steps beyond the threshold and the corporal would see her empty chair. She brought the extinguisher down on the back of his head and he slumped to the ground.
The boy turned in amazement: “But Mutti, I said this one is nice!”
The ringing jarred René as he shut the house door, perhaps all the more so because his hearing now slowly returned despite the persistent dull buzz in his head. He knew the Gestapo never phoned first, just arrived at the doorstep unannounced and in force. It had to be one of his crew, so he picked up the receiver and recognized the voice of Erika. “It’s me, René. Please hurry!”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Corridor of Darkness Page 35
