by Ian Andrew
“I want to tell you that you’re no longer alone. I want to tell you what Donald told me when I Turned.”
Leigh’s head snapped up when he used her father’s name. She studied Heinrich’s face and he looked at her with a mix of compassion and tenderness. There was silence between them for a long while.
Eventually she said, “Heinrich, you have me wrong. And you know that I have to report you for what you said. You know that don’t you?” she moved her chair back and began to stand. Her mind screamed to keep her well-crafted mask in place.
Heinrich ignored her movement and continued, “He said that I was never to force any of my career. He said that I would eventually end up where I was going to do the most good. He said I would, if God was willing, end up meeting his daughter and maybe we could help each other to achieve the goal.”
Leigh was now turning away from the table and walking toward the door.
Heinrich raised his voice slightly so she could still hear him clearly, “Donald told me to trust no one, no one except God and you.”
Leigh stopped.
Heinrich continued, speaking to her back, “Donald told me that he had made you promise to trust no one except your parents and God. Even then keep your council with God alone. He told me that he would talk to you and advise you that one day I would be in touch and you could trust me.”
Leigh turned, “Really, that’s all terribly interesting,” she said sarcastically but with venom in her voice that she couldn’t hide. “And when did this miraculous conversation take place with my father Heinrich, when?”
“The morning after I Turned to God and believed. The morning after I said the Creed in the study of your parent’s house. The morning of the Thirteenth of May, 2014.”
Leigh felt a physical pain in her chest. She felt tears welling up in her eyes. She managed to control her voice. Her delivery was disdainful and dismissive, “So Standartenführer Steinmann, member of the Gestapo, let’s not call your organisation anything other than what it is. Your story is that my father was a Turner and he converted you. That he told you to work with me for some unknown cause or reason. That he had a conversation with you about me and his only advice to you was trust no one.” Her voice grew stronger.
“Trust no one; pretty good advice when your charlatan religion gets you a summary execution. But no, you have this conversion and he, my beautiful, supportive father was obviously going to tell me all about you. Except this happened on the day that my parents flew out to visit me in Paderborn,” Leigh paused. She could feel the tears streaming down her face, but she realised that in the dull half-light of the cafeteria he would not be able to see them. She breathed and her voice carried nothing but coldness. She knew she was delivering a speech that would save her life or condemn her to death.
“And you know, because you are a thorough investigator, that when I picked them up from the airport, on our way back to my digs we had an accident. It’s unlikely my father, a significant contributor to the Reich, a senior lecturer in leadership at your own SS staff schools, an independently wealthy man, it is unlikely he was going to tell me this great revelation about you as we walked through the airport or drove in a Reich Security Directorate vehicle,” her voice had raised and her tone had turned bitter.
“So they died. They died and my father wasn’t likely to have informed me that my great hero was coming to help me, but you know that and this pathetic attempt to try and entrap me with a fucking sham of a story is beneath even your type. I shall see to it that you are removed from your post. You are not the only one with friends in high places. You fucking scum!” she delivered the final words with a passion that betrayed her real emotions. She was scared. She turned to the door and started walking in measured steps, trying to maintain some control. She was almost into the corridor when he spoke.
“The years leave a mark, Lee-Lee.”
Chapter 7
Mary Reid sat very still. She eyed the men standing rigidly to attention in front of her desk. As her gaze moved from face to face each man concentrated on staring at a fixed point on the wall, above and behind her. She finally looked away from them and picked her own fixed spot on the desk to contemplate as she spoke softly, “Oberschütze Williams, what is your role here at Harrow?”
“Security Protectorate Ma’am.”
“No Williams. Your specific role?”
“Camp guard Ma’am.”
“And part of those duties requires you to occasionally control and take part in firing details, yes?”
“Yes Ma’am.”
“Do you have to do much administration?”
“No Ma’am.”
“Much in the way of cooking?”
“Ma’am?” Williams looked down at her with a slightly confused look on his face.
Without raising her eyes from her desk Mary quietly rephrased her question, “Do you have to cook for yourself?”
“Um, no Ma’am,” Williams said hesitantly.
“What about painting walls, maintaining prison facilities, fixing broken locks, preparing the disposal pits, washing down the courtyards. Do you have to do any of those jobs?”
“No Ma’am,” Williams said it a little more forcibly. Mary considered he had finally worked out where the conversation was going.
“No Ma’am,” she echoed his tone. “In fact you have really only one task as a senior rifleman in the SS. Your one guiding light in life. To be an expert in the use of a rifle. That would be it. Lock, stock and barrel if you will pardon the pun. Is that, more or less, correct Oberschütze Williams?”
“Yes Ma’am,” he said half sullenly, half apologetically. Like a child who had to admit their wrong doing.
Mary paused.
In the forefront of her mind she knew what should happen next. She knew she should look up and hold him in her glare. She should build a gathering momentum. A rising, yet controlled, tone. An increasing volume and a cacophony of scorn poured into the Senior Rifleman and his squad Riflemen. Leaving each in no doubt at her disgust at their failure during this evening’s proceedings. Making them feel guilt and shame at the waste of the Reich’s resources that their training obviously was. Finally, rising from her seat to stand before them, she should remind them that weak and pathetic was not tolerated. Weak soldiers were not soldiers. They might have been able to scrape a living in the ranks of the Wehrmacht but not in the SS. She would see to it personally that he was reduced back to SS-Schütze rank and all of them would be reassigned for remedial training and...
...and she did none of it. She calmed her thoughts. She saw and heard Thomas Dunhill and she smelt the aroma of her sister Kasey. She drew a quiet breath, looked up from her desk and said flatly, “Just go home.”
All the men looked down at her with surprised expressions. Then they looked at one another before Williams spoke up for them, “Pardon Ma’am?”
“Just go back to your billets. You know what you did wrong. You know you won’t do it again. You know what happens if you do,” she sighed. “I don’t need to tear you all a new arsehole. Just get out.”
They mumbled variously, “Thank you Ma’am” and “Yes Ma’am,” saluted and left her office as quickly as they could.
Mary stayed sitting alone, illuminated in the small pool of light coming from her angled desk lamp. She had a planned rendezvous in the city but she didn’t need to leave for another hour or so. She felt numb and the words played in a loop in her head. ‘I love you for who you are’. Such a peculiar phrase.
She had never heard it since Kasey said it to her the night she had left. Now she had heard it again. A sudden deep pain hit her in the stomach. What if Thomas Dunhill had heard it from Kasey? What if he had known Kasey? What if he knew where she was? A possible link to her remaining family and she had crushed it. Stood on it, turned her boot into the agony of the man and finally dismissed his life as an irrelevance. He might have known where her sister was.
“For fuck’s sake you pathetic man,” she said it aloud to the e
mpty office. “Why could you not stand up for yourself, why does your fucking religion have to be so fucking weak?”
The touch screen linked to the central administration database beeped and came slowly out of its hibernation mode. A new email message lit the screen. The records of the evening’s processing had been entered by Harold prior to his going home and the final confirmations had traversed their way through the systems and protocols so beloved of an orderly Reich. The text on screen was a receipt.
Attention:
Chef Oberaufseherin Reid,
Franz Six Memorial Centre,
PCC, Northwick Park
Confirmed OP43.99821/17052020
Processing complete
#Thomas Dunhill #Liza Carpelli #Ben Stevens
#Christine Kelly #Terrance Baxter #Amanda Baxter
Designated TR
RxDis SS_Amt_D_GB03/14/249956
She glanced at it, not really reading it. She had seen countless receipts before. The light from the screen was not bright but was quite penetrating. She reached out to mute the screen display but stopped short.
It wasn’t countless receipts. That was the point. Nothing in the Reich was countless. She focussed on the last line.
RxDis SS_Amt_D_GB03/14/249956
The Inspectorate of Camps, Amt D, designated the Harrow Centre as the third of the five facilities in the Großbritannien Division. It had been in operation for fourteen years, having replaced an older centre on the same site. The last figure was the total number of collated process events that had occurred either within the walls or as part of an arrest operation within the jurisdiction. Process events. Deaths.
Mary looked at the number. Nearly a quarter of a million in fourteen years. Albeit the numbers had slowed recently. But this was only one of five GB centres and they were only five out of hundreds throughout the Empire.
“Why could your Jesus not let you stand up for yourselves? A fucking quarter of a million, here alone. You could have swept us away in a day. You weak bastards.”
She held her head in her hands and massaged her temples with her fingers and felt the tear roll down her cheek. She knew why they hadn’t stood up for themselves. For the same reason she hadn’t. Her sisters hadn’t. Her mother hadn’t. It was weakness but a weakness born of the worst fears. They had been four in a house with one man and yet they had been cowed by him. Scared of him. Paralysed by fear and picked off one by one. Until she had broken free. Grown strong. Fearless. Angry. She had stood up for her sisters, her dead mother. She had beaten down and killed the bully, the tyrant.
She thought of Thomas Dunhill. Wasn’t she the bully, the tyrant? She had never thought of it as that before. She had just been doing her job. One of the compartments in her mind that protected her and kept her safe, even from herself, slowly opened.
No one had asked her to defend the weak. No one had asked her to be their strength. But, Thomas said he loved her. You protect those that you love or that love you. Her head hurt with the memories and the searing emotions. She saw her sister’s faces, Janey and Kasey, laughing and smiling at her as she played. She tried desperately to see her mother’s face but it was lost in the folds of her own pain.
Her tears dropped steadily onto her desk. She cried for the memory of her sisters, her mother, her own innocence. And she cried for Thomas and all the others that she had killed. She cried until she had nothing left inside but hollow, racking sobs. As they slowly subsided and she became still she heard again, ‘You are His creation. Sent to do His will.’
“Oh Thomas, you choose the wrong God.”
She rose to her feet, wiped her face, switched out the light and left the office.
Chapter 8
She was sitting back down opposite him. He had retrieved some serviettes from the counter and had handed them over. Her eyes were red rimmed and she was sniffing quietly. He waited. When the tears had stopped she looked up.
“More coffee?” Heinrich asked.
“Please,” said Leigh.
By the time he returned to the table she was as composed as she thought she was likely to get. He put the coffee in front of her and resumed his seat opposite.
“You have questions?” he asked quietly.
She laughed and said sarcastically, “Questions, oh nooo, none that I can think of.” She stirred the saccharin into her coffee as she continued, “Let’s see, what questions could I possibly have, that if I asked wouldn’t get me immediately arrested and shot?”
“Okay, that was dumb.”
“You think?”
“No, I know. I’ve had a lot longer to deal with this. I knew when I was coming here that I would have this conversation, but you’ve had it all sprung on you. I realise it’s a shock and that your emotions are probably feeling battered. I know and I’m sorry, but there was no other way.”
“Heinrich, let’s play a game, okay?” she asked.
“What?”
“A game, indulge me.”
“Um, okay?”
“Suppose, for arguments sake that I am one of the leading physicists in the Greater Germanic Reich?”
“You are Leigh.”
“Yes but let’s just suppose, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Suppose, that in my position I have briefed the Reich Chiefs and the Führer himself.”
“Okay,” he agreed, knowing she had.
“Do you honestly think that I wouldn’t have been checked so thoroughly that someone would have found out about my supposed Turner affiliation and my duplicitous mother and father.”
“Well,” he countered, “let’s suppose that your mother and father were incredibly clever people, schooled and trained by incredibly clever and devoted parents themselves. Let’s suppose that your grandfather knew from the earliest days of the Reich that the only way to break this tyranny was to play a long game and wait for the right moment, whenever or whatever that would be. Let’s suppose your mother’s family were stubborn Celtic Irish who genuinely believed in the way of our Lord and even more tenaciously believed in freedom. Given that suppose, then yes I could believe it.” He looked back at her and smiled, almost cheekily, at her.
Leigh was confused by her own reactions and emotions. She was sitting at a table with a man who might just be a very clever interrogator, but dear Lord his smile and eyes were sexy. She looked away and took a breath.
“Okay, Heinrich, you asked for questions. I want the truth. Why did you say that years would leave a mark?”
“I didn’t. I said the years leave a mark. There’s a difference. You know what the difference is.”
The first time he had said it his words had physically shaken her. This time they dug into her skull. She felt a hollow weight in the pit of her stomach. She saw the face of her mother saying the same phrase to her all those years ago. No one had said anything remotely like it to her since.
“How do you feel Leigh?”
“Honestly, I feel tired.” She looked into the coffee cup and realised that that was the truth. She felt tired of it all. Thirty-five years old and most of it spent living a completely false persona.
She sat quietly, thinking. Unbidden into her head came the words that she said each night before she slept. ‘I call upon the Messengers of God to hear me. My life is a wheel. Please help me to turn it to your purpose. Light my way, guard my being, rule my mind and guide my decisions.’
She decided to trust her God as she had done her whole life. If she was wrong then so be it. “Heinrich, if this is true, if you are genuine, tell me why did my father trust you?”
Heinrich looked at her and shook his head slowly, “I wish it could be a simple answer. Unfortunately, there isn’t a thing or a place that’s the key to why. Just my story.”
“Great, you haven’t started and I’m confused. Just answer me, why did he trust you?” Leigh asked.
“At first I didn’t know. I’d joined up as a soldier when I was eighteen but was selected for commission from the ranks in 2002 and was sent to
SS-Junkerschulen at Bad Tölz. He met me, or I met him rather, when he came to Bad Tölz in September 2003 as one of the guest lecturers in my final month of Waffen-SS Officer Training.”
She looked hard at him, “You’re kidding?”
“Leigh, why would I kid about that, it’s a fact you could check.”
“I don’t need to, I know he lectured at Bad Tölz on the 22nd of September 2003,” she said.
“What, are you some sort of date freak with a photographic memory?” now Heinrich looked a little startled.
“No, but I started at Cambridge on the 21st September ‘03. He’d dropped me off with all my stuff on the Sunday night. He was on his way to the airport to fly out. It was a big day in my life, so I remember it.” She smiled a sad smile and added, “Sorry, I interrupted you, go on.”
“Well he lectured about leadership and he was a really excellent speaker. It was interesting and that was that. We met at the reception event in the Officers’ Mess afterwards and I remember that when he spoke to me he had the knack of making me feel like I was the only person in the room. I couldn’t even shake his hand properly as I had a sling on my arm from a broken collar bone. I was desperate for it to be better in time for the Graduation ceremony in October. He shook my left hand and told me that he was sure I would make it. If jockeys could recover in a matter of weeks he reckoned a Waffen-SS Officer would bounce back. As it turned out he was right. But that night we spoke about my village and unlike anyone else I had ever met he knew where it was.”
“I guessed you were from Lower Saxony based on your accent,” Leigh said.
“My accent? I thought my English was accent ‘less.” Heinrich sounded almost offended.
“Heinrich, focus,” she said exasperated. “Where are you from?”
“Well, you’re quite close. I’m from Deuna.”
“Where?”
“Deuna, it’s a small village in the Eichsfeld district of Thüringen.”
Leigh looked at him blankly.
