by Sven Hassel
‘I couldn’t agree with you more.’ The Legionnaire leaned across the table and spoke confidentially. ‘How about Bielert, Dora? You know things about Bielert, don’t you? Enough to help Ohlsen keep his neck on his shoulders?’
Dora shook her head.
‘I doubt that, love . . . I might be able to manage a pass for you, so’s you could go and see him, but anything else and I’d be risking my own neck. I know a thing or two about Paul all right, but even a lap dog’ll bite if you kick it hard enough. And you know Paul . . . He’s unreliable. Like a wild beast. So long as you’ve got the upper hand he’ll behave himself and do what you want. But you try pushing him too far and he just loses control of everything. Goes mad and hits out in all directions . . . Besides, I can’t help feeling this lieutenant of yours has gone and stuck his neck out. It’s asking for trouble, carrying on like a mad thing like he did, shooting his mouth off to every Tom, Dick and Harry . . . Anyway, I don’t know him from Adam. If it were someone like you, I might consider taking the risk, but not for some unknown idiot that can’t keep his mouth shut. And ifs playing with fire, interfering with Paul’s prisoners.’
‘Yes, I know.’ The Legionnaire pursed his lips and looked down into his glass. ‘That man collects prisoners like other people collect butterflies.’
‘He’s a dangerous bastard, that one.’ Dora picked out another chestnut and thoughtfully dipped it into the melted butter at the bottom of the dish. ‘I’ve half a mind to lie low for a bit myself, as a matter of fact. Just disappear, like. Give the keys to Britta and go into retirement until the Tommies arrive . . .’
The Legionnaire laughed.
‘Never tell me they’re on to you, Dora? Not you, of all people!’
‘I don’t know.’ Dora scratched in her tangled hair with a dirty fork. ‘But there’s a voice at the back of my head keeps saying, “Pull your knickers up, Dora, and do a bunk” . . . I’ve noticed, just recently, we’ve had rather too many visits from a certain type of person . . . Know the ones I mean?’
‘I believe I do,’ murmured the Legionnaire. ‘The sort of chap who comes in for a Pernod and nearly chokes himself to death over it?’
‘Exactly,’ said Dora. ‘Beer types. Spot them a mile off, Hats pulled down over their eyes like something out of a bleeding spy film.’
‘Pernod has its uses.’ The Legionnaire picked up his glass and smiled. ‘It sorts out the wheat from the chaff . . . the man in the street from the man in the Gestapo. . . Hey, Dora, you remember that one whose throat we cut?’
Dora shuddered and began scratching compulsively between her hanging breasts.
‘For God’s sake don’t remind me of it! It brings me out in goose flesh even now . . . I still remember the mess my garage was in. Blood all over the bleeding floor . . .’
At that moment, the ghostly wail of the air raid sirens started up.
‘Shit!’ said Aunt Dora. ‘That means the cellars.’
‘With a couple of bottles?’ suggested the Legionnaire.’You never know how long we’re going to be there . . .’
A table was pushed back and a trap door opened. Clients and staff arrived at a run, jostling each other down the narrow steps into the cellar. A supply of bottles was passed down from hand to hand, the trap closed, and the assembled company stretched themselves out and prepared to enjoy the enforced intimacy. Only Gilbert, the porter, remained upstairs. It was necessary to have someone on guard to watch for looters.
The raid lasted an hour. Dora staggered up the steps and tottered back to her table in the corner. Her glass of Pernod was still where she had left it. She picked it up and stared at it with slightly glazed eyes.
‘Tell you what,’ she said, as the Legionnaire rejoined her. I’ll give Paul a ring and see what I can do for you. Come round here tomorrow morning, if you’re able to get out of the barracks. About eleven o’clock. If I can dig a pass out of the old sod, then I will. If not—’ She shrugged. ‘If not, it means I’m losing my grip and I’ll probably be joining your lieutenant on the scaffold.’
The Legionnaire laughed.
‘The day will never come, Dora! I’ll be round at eleven, and you’ll have the pass, don’t you worry.’
He went out into the street and was immediately approached by a girl on the look-out for trade.
‘Got a cigarette, darling?’
The Legionnaire brushed her out of his way and walked on. She hurried after him, panting endearments down his neck. The Legionnaire suddenly stopped. He swung round on her, his face contorted and his eyes blazing.
‘Piss off out of it and leave me alone! I’m not interested!’
He took one step towards her, but that was enough: the girl fled, and for the next two days she hardly dared set foot outside the front door.
A couple of hours later, Dora kept an appointment with Standartenführer Bielert on the corner of the Neuer Pferdemarkt and Neuerkamp Feldstrasse, along by the side of the abattoirs. Bielert enjoyed the abattoirs. He often passed an afternoon there, watching the slaughter.
He and Dora walked together across the Pferdemarkt and entered the restaurant of the Hotel Jöhnke, taking their places at a table set somewhat apart from the rest. Dora went straight to the point.
‘I had to see you, Paul. I need a pass, a visiting pass or whatever you call them, and I need it in a hurry.’ She ran her fingers through her hair and looked at him distractedly. ‘I’m always in a hurry these days, it’s dreadful. Honestly, you’ve no idea the trouble I’m having with staff. Rush here, rush there, do this, do that . . . you can’t get them for love or money, I’m having to do half the cooking and housework myself now.’
Bielert smiled.
‘That’s nonsense, Dora. I’ve told you often enough, I can supply as many people as you need.’
‘Foreigners!’ scoffed Dora. ‘Thank you, no. I’d rather go down on my knees and scrub my own floors than have Gestapo agents running loose about the place. But I must have my visiting pass!’
‘Whom do you want to visit? And where?’
‘Someone in prison. A lieutenant.’
’I see.’ Bielert pulled out his cigarette case and thoughtfully inserted a cigarette into his long silver holder. ‘You know, my dear, you’re really becoming very demanding just lately. A pass is a valuable commodity these days. Greatly in demand.’
‘Don’t come that crap with me!’ said Dora, scornfully. ‘You can get me a pass just by snapping your fingers, if you feel like it.’
‘In that case,’ he murmured, ‘I suppose it all depends upon whether or not I do feel like it . . .’
‘You’d better,’ said Dora. ‘And buy me a rum, will you? A nice hot one.’
They sat in silence until the drinks arrived. Bielert looked consideringly at Dora.
‘Suppose you begin by telling me who it is that really wants this pass? And just who it is they want to visit?’
‘Here you are. It’s all written down there.’
She handed him a piece of paper. Bielert studied it a moment and raised one almost non-existent eyebrow.
‘Lt. Bernt Ohlsen?’ he said, slowly. ‘Imprisoned for crimes against the State . . . and you want me to allow him to receive visitors?’
Dora shrugged.
‘Why not?’
‘Why not? Why not, you say? I’il tell you why not!’ Bielert screwed the paper into a ball and threw it angrily to the floor. ‘Because the man is a criminal and a traitor and a danger to his country! I have nothing but scorn and hatred for men of his type! If I had my way, they’d be exterminated wholesale. Them and their families. Their wives and their children and their mothers and their fathers! All of them!’
His face had twisted itself into an abrupt mask of white, trembling hatred. Dora watched him, dispassionately. She had heard it all before. At the far end of the room, several people quietly stood up, called for their bills and disappeared. Bielert ranted on regardless.
‘I have a list of names so long,’ he boasted, ‘that even Gru
ppenführer Müller was taken by surprise . . . It’s not only that we’re at war. It’s more than that. We’re living through a revolution, and I count myself as one of its chief engineers. I have a loathsome job, I know. A filthy, degrading job. But a very necessary job and one that I believe in. The end will justify the means, and without men such as myself to carry the thing through to its conclusion the revolution would suffocate on its own vomit tomorrow.’
‘Yes, you’re so right,’ murmured Dora, vaguely; and then, her eyes lighting up: ‘Talking of Müller, I saw him only the other day! He came into my place, quite unexpectedly, just out of the blue, like that! We got as pissed as newts together, I can tell you . . . it was quite a reunion, after all these years!’
‘Müller?’ said Bielert, his nose twitching anxiously as he stared at Dora. ‘Which Müller are you referring to?’
‘Why, Gruppenführer Müller, of course . . . the one you’ve just been telling me about . . . My God, I hadn’t seen him since the day he got his promotion to Untersturmführer! We did have a laugh together!’
‘I wasn’t aware that you knew Heinrich Müller,’ said Bielert, frowning at her. ‘How did you meet him? You’ve never been to Berlin in your life, that I know for a fact.’
Dora looked at him and laughed.
‘Oh, Paul, don’t tell me you even keep tags on ME? On your old friend Dora?’
‘Who said anything about tags?’ demanded Bielert, irritably. ‘I just have your safety in mind, that’s all. One never knows what unlikely turn events may take these days.’
‘You’re so sweet to me!’ Dora smiled and raised her glass to him. ‘But surely you mean YOUR safety, rather than mine? After all, if anything should ever happen to me – if events ever should take an unlikely turn – it would rather put you on the spot as well, wouldn’t it?’
‘We live in troubled times,’ replied Bielert. He took a small sip of cognac and knocked some ash off his cigarette. ‘Tell me, Dora, what did you and Müller talk about?’
‘Oh, this and that and old times,’ she said, airily. ‘And strangely enough, at one point, people who had committed crimes against the State . . . like this Lt. Ohlsen, only far worse. Müller was asking me about some Communists I used to know once. He was specially interested in any that had left the Party and gone into the Gestapo.’
Bielert’s eyelids flickered just slightly.
‘I see. And were you able to help him?’
‘Well, I was and I wasn’t,’ said Dora, frankly. ‘I gave him one or two little titbits to be going on with, but it wasn’t till after he’d left that I remembered this.’
‘What is “this”?’ asked Bielert, a shade too smoothly.
Dora pulled up her dress, plunged a hand up the leg of her thick wool knickers and brought out a letter.
‘Here you are,’ she said. ‘Funny thing, I was turning out my cupboards a while back and I came across a whole heap of old junk. And in the junk I found this letter. All about some cell or other—’ She unfolded the letter and frowningly read it. ‘Cell 3 I – a Communist cell, you know the sort of thing . . . It talks about a Paul Bielert, who was head of this cell. It’s quite a coincidence, isn’t it? Someone having your name, I mean.’
‘Quite,’ said Bielert. He took the letter from her and glanced through it. ‘Very interesting. Do you mind if I hang on to it?’
Dora smiled at him.
‘Do what you like with it. Matter of fact, I’ve got one or two others that might interest you . . . All on the same subject, of course.’
Bielert coloured slightly.
‘How is it you’ve managed to lay hands on correspondence that dates from 1933 and earlier? Who did you get it from?’
Dora looked down into her glass and shrugged a shoulder.
‘You’ve still got a lot to learn, haven’t you, Paul? You’ve still got a good way to go before you catch up with me. You’ve done well for yourself, but you always were inclined to be backward . . .’ She put out a hand and patted his arm, consolingly. ‘Poor old Paul! When you were learning how to milk cows in the reform school, with all the old monks doddering about and driving you mad and you just muttering under your breath about revenge, I was already taking steps to make sure of my future. I picked up everything I could lay hands on and stored it away for a rainy day. By the time you started playing little kids’ games with your pals in Cell 3 I, I’d already acquired the magpie habit. It was a piece of cake, getting hold of your letters. Of course, I didn’t know then if they’d ever be any use, but I thought I might as well keep them. Just in case . . .’ She squeezed his arm a moment, then sat back in her chair. ‘Why do we have to rake all this up? I don’t want to get you into trouble. All I want is one simple little pass with your signature on it.’
‘Come round to the office tomorrow. I’ll have it ready for you.’
Dora laughed.
‘You must be joking! Me set foot in your office? I’d never be allowed out again! No, thank you, I’d rather you sent one of your men round to my place with it.’
Bielert looked coldly at her. His fist clenched and unclenched on the table and his eyes narrowed, but his voice remained soft and low.
‘You know, Dora, I’m beginning to wonder if it might not be a good idea for me to send several men round to your place . . . They could bring you back with them in the car and you could pay us a little visit. I’m sure it would be quite enlightening for both of us.’
‘I’m sure it would,’ said Dora, matching his tone. ‘And I’m quite sure it’s not the first time the idea has occurred to you.’
‘Well, no, but now and again it does come upon me more forcibly than usual . . .’
‘The only trouble is, Paul, that you couldn’t possibly have me shut away in a cell without having yourself shut away in another one only a few hours later. There’s an awful lot I could tell . . .’
They smiled at each other in mutual hatred and understanding.
‘Well, well,’ said Bielert, carefully extracting his cigarette stub from the holder. ‘You shall have your pass. I’ll send Grei round with it at three o’clock.’
‘All right, that suits me fine. Grei and I get on with each other very well. Did you ever know him before the war, I wonder? I can still remember the time when he used to sing nothing but the Internationale. Of course, he’s changed it to the Horst Wessel now, but who can blame him? Only a fool tries to swim against the tide.’
Bielert stood up.
‘One word of warning, Dora: watch your step. You have many enemies.’
‘You too, Paul. I hope you follow your own good advice . . .’
12 Feldgefangenenabteilung – disciplinary camp
13 Frederick the Great
14 Iron Cross 2nd Class
Stever had been in the Army for five years, and he was a good soldier. Stahlschmidt, on the other hand, had been in the Army almost thirty years, and he was a very bad soldier. And as for Rotenhausen, who was an officer and the Governor of the prison, it was arguable whether he could be called a soldier at all. It was not, in any case, thought Stever, the length of service that counted so much as whether a person had the aptitude,
‘And I have the aptitude,’ said Stever to himself.
He looked at his reflection in the glass and smiled and saluted. He enjoyed being a soldier. Both Stahlschmidt and Rotenhausen were too busy lusting after power. Neither of them realized that they were but tools in the hands of the Nazis.
‘I realize it,’ thought Stever, prancing and posturing before the long mirror. ‘That’s why I shall survive.’
Stever had no particular desire for power. Power brought not only increased prestige but increased personal risk, and Stever could well be doing without it. He was happy with his present position and his present way of life. He was paid regularly, was nowhere near the front line, and had a regular supply of women and clothes.
The clothes were supplied free by a tailor who lived in the Grosser Burstah and whose son had once been a prisoner in
one of Stever’s cells. All Stever’s suits and uniforms were hand-made and the envy of his comrades.
As for his women, he chose them carefully and had a semipermanent entourage. In Stever’s mind, human beings fell into four categories: men who were soldiers and men who were civilians; women who were married and women who were single. Stever despised civilians and found single women more trouble than they were worth. He always went for the married ones. At the age of fifteen he had made the discovery that most married women were sexually undernourished, and he had taken upon himself the task of easing their lot.
There was something very satisfying about married women. For a start, they never wanted to become emotionally involved, they never made any demands other than the purely physical, and this suited Stever down to the ground: he found it impossible to imagine existing for anyone but himself and for anything but his own gratification. The idea of being expected to consider another person’s wishes was terrifying and alien to his nature.
Secondly, he found that married women were always very anxious to be pleased. In nearly all the marriages he had en-countered the batteries had seemed to run dry after two or three years, and then Don Juans such as Stever were able to step into the breach and make good the deficiencies.
He found young girls too much of a responsibility, too much of a trial, while virgins were a positive menace.
‘Shove a hand up their clout before they’re ready for it and they’ll scream the place down and have you arrested,’ he gravely explained to Obergefreiter Braun, who found it difficult to get hold of a woman, though he was far better looking than Stever. ‘Have to spend bleeding hours touching ’em up and whispering at ’em and telling ’em how bleeding lovely it’s going to be and how much you want them, and all that kind of balls . . . and half the time,’ he added, ‘you’re in such a hell of a state when they finally drop their drawers that you bugger the whole thing up anyway. And half the time they don’t like it and keep complaining you’re taking advantage of ’em and go on bleeding moaning all the time you’re on the pissing job . . . game’s not worth the flaming candle,’ said Stever, in disgust. ‘You stick to the married ones, chum. They know what ifs about and there’s no bleeding rigmarole to be gone through before they let you have it.’
