The Girl in the Baker’s Van
Richard Savin
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
© Richard Savin 2017
ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR
Vakil Abad: Iran, a Survivor’s Story; non- fiction. An account of life inside one of Iran’s most notorious political prisons.
***
A Right to Bear Arms; fiction: story of love and betrayal against the backdrop of war.
Set in London and Upstate New York during the opening years of WW2; the disappearance of Churchill and a British peace treaty with Hitler have profound consequences for America.
FOR MY GOOD FRIEND
LINDA AMSTUTZ
CONTENTS
1 Gestapo HQ, Berlin, October 1941
2 Turckheim, Alsace
3 London
4 Southern England
5 Natzweiler Struthoff
6 Abbeville, northern France
7 The Priest of Saint-Sacrement
8 Paris
9 The 16th arrondissement
10 The Prison at Fresnes
11 Dangerous refuge
12 The road to Lyon
13 Find the lady – win the prize
14 Discoveries and revelations
15 Roads south
16 Evasion
17 Avignon
18 Groucho Marx and the Pythias
19 Betrayal
20 Catch-as-catch-can
21 Over the mountains
22 Cold pursuit
23 Last goodbyes
CHAPTER 1
Gestapo Headquarters, Berlin, October 1941
You would not call Helmut Kandler a reckless man. He did not give himself up to rash decisions. He was neither imprudent nor precipitate in his actions; quite the contrary, he gave thought to everything he did. He was precise in his methods and regular in his habits; he was predictable. But Helmut Kandler was not all that he seemed, even to those who knew him closely – and there were few enough of them. He had a secret and while we all carry secrets and there is nothing unusual in this, his was a secret totally out of character with the Helmut Kandler everyone knew – or thought they knew.
‘Good night, Herr Kandler!’
‘Good night, Peter Becker.’
Kandler listened to the sound of the footsteps echoing down the corridor – receding, receding – then the noise of a door closing, a hollow resonant thud. The rest of his colleagues had gone. He sat there alone in the office wrapped around by the silence, the only sound a faint sizzling high-pitched whistle deep inside his ear drum – residual tinnitus, a legacy from the First World War when a mortar shell had exploded in his trench, deafening him for weeks. On one wall a cheap printed picture of Hitler, arms folded, stared sternly ahead, his gaze looking resolutely into the distance. The room was not large but it was commensurate with his position as a middle-grade clerk in the records department of the Geheime Staatspolizei – the Gestapo as it was more generally known.
He sat there a little longer, staring up at the picture of his Führer. There were more footsteps and again the sound of voices, disembodied; other clerks in other offices dotted along the corridor, taking their leave, saying their goodnights; then more doors closing. After a short while the corridor once again fell silent. Still he would, he decided, wait a little longer, just to be sure – why take chances when he didn’t have to? He waited, he had to be sure it was safe; the consequences of discovery would be fatal. The clock under Hitler’s picture ticked away the seconds. The last sound of movement had long passed when finally he got up from his desk; he would put it off no longer. He went out into the now hauntingly empty corridor, looking up and down, half expecting to see someone. It was clear. Quickly he walked its length to where, at one end, a flight of steps dropped down to the basement. He methodically descended, trying not to let his footfall betray his presence. At the bottom he entered a narrow passage that ran underground for the length of the building. It was a corridor with which he had become increasingly familiar, ever since the British had begun bombing the city. The raids had started earlier that year and at first people had been shocked by them; after all, were they not winning the war? They had beaten the British soundly in France. How could this now happen? But familiarity, had now bred the inevitable contempt and the monotony with which these raids were now happening led them to be thought of as commonplace – an inconvenience. The Führer knew what he was doing; these things would pass in time. So when the sirens wailed and moaned their tortured warning he came down with those from other departments and there took shelter, opening up the store rooms and sitting inside the cramped space in among the histories of the investigated – the suspects, the condemned and the executed; lives in boxes and files. Not everyone would go down there though: there were the claustrophobes, those who preferred the risk of being blown to bits rather than the prospect of being buried alive. It was down there, sitting among the files that first gave him the idea.
He looked into the depths of the corridor and the gloom of its infinity. The walls smelled of new paint but under the dull yellow lights that punctuated the ceiling they looked grey and dingy. He walked fast as he made his way along the passage until he came to the steel door that was his destination. Here he inserted a large key and turned it noisily in the lock, then let himself in. Inside, the room was piled high with files in boxes, neatly racked alphabetically, their contents the intimate details of the private lives of those under surveillance. Some of them bore the ominous imprint of a red rubber stamp – Beendet (‘Terminated’). Pulling down a box from a shelf he opened it and took out a brown paper bag. He turned it upside down and shook it. A key dropped from the bag and into the palm of his hand. It had a small numbered tag attached to it by a piece of green ribbon that noted it was an exhibit. He dropped the key into a brown paper bag and, moistening the gummed flap on the tip of his tongue, he sealed it, afterwards slipping it into his coat pocket. He pushed the box back into its slot on the shelf and departed, being careful to lock the door as he left. Moments later he walked through the main entrance of the building and onto the street.
Outside it was cold and misty with a damp fog that seemed to penetrate even the thick Bavarian Trachten coat he was wearing. Stepping into Prinz Albrecht Strasse he looked right and left. Satisfied there was nobody he recognised he walked rapidly in the direction of the river and Potsdamer Platz, merging into the anonymity of homebound pedestrians. Crossing the Spree he loitered casually on the bridge, looking down into the river. There was nothing to see; most of the street lighting had been blacked out since the start of the air raids. He snatched furtive glances at the trickle of pedestrians crossing the bridge, noting those who passed him, looking back along the pavement for signs of anyone suspicious, anyone who might be following him. He was sure he was undetected but he was a careful, cautious man, which was why he had got away with it for nearly a year now. He put his hand into his coat pocket and felt something cold and metal – the key to
the storage room door. ‘Scheisse!’ In his haste he had forgotten to replace it on the rack; he would go in early tomorrow morning.
At Potsdamer Platz he crossed the square, dodging his way through the traffic until he reached the new railway building. As he started his descent to the concourse below he could feel the rush of warm air coming up from the quais; halfway down he had to stop as the rising air met the cold lenses on his spectacles and they fogged over, for a moment leaving him blind. He took a silk handkerchief from his waistcoat and carefully wiped away the condensed water from each lens. As he replaced them he was aware of a man who had paused on the step next to him. The man nodded and carried on down to the platform. The station below Potsdamer Platz was bright, clean and modern – well lit; it had only been completed two years before and still had the unblemished feel of something very new. Standing on the quai mingled with the home-going commuters he again saw the man who had paused next to him on the stairs. ‘This must be him,’ he thought. The man was tall and well-built with a blonde moustache; he was holding a pipe which he tapped on the heel of his shoe. This was the man; this was the rendezvous. Kandler moved over and stood close to him.
‘Have you got it?’ the man asked under his breath.
Kandler nodded, ‘Is that my money?’ He looked directly at the envelope in the man’s hand.
‘Show me.’
The tall man with the blonde moustache opened the envelope just enough for Kandle to see the bills inside: Swiss francs. Nobody trusted Reich marks anymore; the war was going badly in the east. Kandler put out a hand but the man retracted the envelope and slipped it back into his inside pocket.
‘Wait till the train is nearly here – people will be watching for it; no one will see the exchange.’ The air along the quai started to move, an imperceptible breeze to begin with, then it strengthened to a rush as a light appeared in the depths of the tunnel and the rails began to sing, squealing and twitching. Peoples’ heads turned to concentrate on the approaching train.
‘Now! Give it now!’ the man said urgently. Kandler passed over the brown packet containing the key and with the other hand took the envelope. As he slid it into the pocket of his coat he felt a push in the back from anxious commuters who were now crowding forward in anticipation of the scrum that would mark the scramble to get into what they knew would be an already crowded carriage. Kandler was caught off-balance as eager commuters jostled for position. He tottered, then, with a cry of surprise that was hardly audible over the hubbub, Helmut Kandler fell off the edge of the quai into the path of the still moving train, which hit him with a dull thump. At first no one seemed to notice, then those nearest to where he had been standing started to shout; a woman screamed loudly, then fainted. The tall man with the blonde moustache left the scene without waiting. He was sure Kandler must be dead.
*
The building on Prinz Albrecht Strasse was as ugly as the business transacted within its walls. This had not always been so. It had, in its time, once been a palace of some elegance but all traces of its former glories were long gone and with it any aristocratic pretensions of gentility. The grand reception rooms had been broken up to make offices for minor bureaucrats, weaselly officials, torturers and executioners – men and women with the power to intimidate at will. Outside, the facade was mired with the grime of nearly a century; a hundred years of domestic soot, industrial pollution and now the exhaust of motor vehicles. It was not an attractive place, either outside or in.
By the door of the office, where the night before Kandler had sat listening to the fizz of his tinnitus, there was the sound of voices. The door opened; a man in a black leather coat entered the room. He looked round briefly, then addressed the single occupant who was sitting in one corner reading a file. The man in the black leather coat looked at him.
‘I am Kriminalinspector Schreiber. Nothing has been touched I hope?’
The seated man stood up. ‘No Kriminalinspector,’ he assured him. ‘Everything is as it was left.’
‘Good,’ he said curtly and taking off his coat he carefully hung it on the wooden tree in the corner of the office, smoothing out the pleats in the back. Satisfied it hung straight he removed his hat with its boar’s bristle brush in the band around the brim and hung it on the hook provided. The hat was new and he lingered for a moment letting his gaze appreciate it. Finally he removed his scarf and hung that, too, neatly and carefully on another hook next to the hat. He pulled back the chair then sat, positioning himself precisely at Kandler’s desk. He was now ready to work on the case.
‘What is your name?’
‘Becker, mein Herr. Peter Becker.’
‘Well, Peter Becker, what can you tell me about Herr Kandler?’
Becker was young, a junior clerk in the records department. He had been Kandler’s assistant since 1939 but he did not know him well. Kandler had been a quiet, unassuming man in his early middle-age; he had kept himself to himself. Now it seemed he had committed suicide.
Becker sat back down again but stayed smartly to attention in his seat. He thought for a moment. ‘I didn’t really know him,’ he said diffidently. ‘He never talked about his private life.’
Schreiber held up a key. ‘Do you recognise this? We found it in his coat pocket.’
Becker looked at it for a second. ‘It looks like a key to one of the storage vaults. May I see it please?’ Schreiber handed it over.
‘Yes, it is. It’s the key to vault 37 East. You see, it is stamped here on the side. He must have forgotten to put it back.’
Again the door to the office opened and now another man entered. He stared at the other two for a moment. He had a hard, sour face and his mouth was crooked, disfigured by an old scar. His dark hair was cropped short and covered by a large soft-peaked cap, which he took off and casually dumped down on the desk where Schreiber sat. He loosened the belt of his brown woollen overcoat. ‘Kraus, Sicherheitsdienst,’ he said. ‘You must be Schreiber?’
Schreiber looked at him suspiciously. ‘What is the SD’s interest in this? This is a criminal investigation, not a security matter; since when has the home security service been interested in criminals?’
Kraus shrugged. ‘We don’t know that is certain. We think your man was in contact with a Polish agent working for the Americans. He has a codename – Kasha.’
‘My Polish is limited but is that not a woman’s name?’
‘Spies are irregular people. That is why they are spies.’
Schreiber glanced at the key, then at Becker. ‘I think we should look at 37 East. Who knows, it may tell us something. Can you show me, please?’ He turned to Kraus, ‘You may as well follow.’
They unlocked vault 37. Becker stood outside while the other two walked between the rows of boxed files. ‘What are these?’ Schreiber called out.
‘Criminal cases,’ Becker called back. ‘Mostly black marketeers, some hoarders as well.’
‘Food thieves,’ Schreiber said under his breath, ‘not any spies here, I think.’
Kraus ignored him. He threw off the remark and carried on pacing along the row of boxes.
‘Ah, I think we have something.’ Kraus tapped on a box that was sticking out a little. ‘You see how the rest of these boxes are in a perfect line – but this one …,’ he pulled the box out of the rack where it had been sitting, ‘… this one has been taken out quite recently.’ He opened the box and a brown paper packet dropped out and fluttered to the floor. Schreiber, who was now standing next to him, reached down. ‘Empty,’ he said, picking it up. ‘Becker, would you be so good as to come in, please?’
Becker examined the packet. ‘If you will allow me, Kriminalinspector,’ he said, taking the file from Schreiber. ‘There is an index of the contents here on the inside of the lid.’ He ran a finger down the list. ‘This packet had a key in it.’ He ran his finger along the entry in the handwritten index. ‘A key to an apartment …,’ he continued reading, ‘… in Kreuzberg.’
‘So, shall we go and see what
it tells us?’ Schreiber looked at Kraus, half hoping the other would decline. There was not a lot of love to lose between his department and the SD. Schreiber was a career policeman, a member of the old civil Kriminalpolizei KriPo; he had been there before the Nazis came to power. The Nazification of the police service a few years before had changed the flavour of the organisation. Now the SS ran things and he put up with it, though deep down he did not like it. It had become too political for an old dog but he kept it to himself; better that way, no one was safe – army generals, party members, even the top Nazi elite; anyone could fall at any time. So he put up with interference from the SD. They were political police, undercover agents who saw spies everywhere and found dissidents in every garbage can they raked through; but Schreiber knew – mostly there were no spies – just criminals committing unremarkable domestic crimes.
*
‘How has your day been?’ his wife asked. Dear Gudrun, Schreiber thought to himself, she always asked him the same thing every evening when he got home and every evening he gave the same reply. ‘Nothing special. What is for dinner?’
‘Bratwurst sausage with potato salad then goulash with dumplings, and I found some good pumpernickel bread, the sort you like.’ She took his coat from him and hung it on the hall stand. ‘We have a letter from Aksel,’ she called to him from the kitchen.
‘And how is our son?’ he asked, with a hint of disdain. It was bad enough working with the SS but when Aksel joined an SS regiment, by choice, it had disappointed him. A young man with a good university education – but for reasons he could not understand many of the young and the educated were being attracted to the Party. Their daughter Friedle too had joined the Party, and had married a Party official in the Reichskommissariate.
They sat down to eat at a table in the kitchen. Now that the children had left home they always ate there. The house seemed big and empty and they only used the dining room for formal occasions or when their friends came to visit, which was not often because the food shortages and the rationing made it difficult to entertain; and there was the bombing – always the chance of an air raid.
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