Mr. Calder & Mr. Behrens

by Michael Gilbert

  “Wasn’t there some sort of road from the village to the camp?”

  ‘’I thought of that,” said Corrie. “But a lot of marram grass and heather grows in nearly forty years. When I tried to trace it, I was reminded of that poem of Kipling’s. Do you remember it? The one about the old lost road through the woods, ‘It is underneath the coppice and heath and the thin anemones.’ Only in this case it isn’t thin anemones. It’s a particularly vicious sort of dwarf thorn bush. Discouraging to exploration on hands and knees.”

  Captain Bruckner and Lieutenant Brunz arrived at Plattling punctually at nine o’clock on the following morning, each in his own car, with a police driver. They set out in convoy, with Bruckner leading. The mist of early morning had cleared away, and there was promise of a fine day.

  Ten miles out of Plattling, the road they were on deteriorated into something not much better than a farm track. It crossed the open heath in a series of small dips and rises. Ahead of them the line of the Bohmerwald rose, blue and grey under the morning sun.

  When they arrived at their destination Mr. Calder was surprised to see that a sizeable encampment was already springing up. There was a large transporter, from which its crew was unstripping two big Portacabins, ready-made wooden one-room buildings. The work was in charge of a police sergeant. Other men were setting up tents, and unloading posts and barbed wire. There were two caravans, and an old-fashioned field cooker. A modern gypsy encampment, thought Mr. Behrens.

  The sergeant approached Captain Bruckner, saluted, and said, “Has any decision been made as to where the huts shall be placed?”

  Bruckner said, “Find the best hard standing you can, and dump them there for the moment.”

  Mr. Calder had been making a calculation. The huts would each, he guessed, house at least ten men. The tents and caravans would take twice as many. Yet, counting the drivers of the vehicles and the unloading team, who were all policemen, he made the total no more than fifteen.

  “We seem to be allowing ourselves plenty of elbow room,” he said.

  Captain Bruckner smiled at John Corrie, who pointed back the way they had come.

  “Reinforcements,” he said.

  Two large army trucks were approaching them up the track from Plattling. They, also, had police drivers, beside each of which a civilian was sitting. As the trucks came to a halt the civilian jumped down, went round to the back, and said, “All out, chaps.”

  “Thank God for that,” said a voice from the back. “It’s nearly forty years since I’ve travelled in the back of one of these bastards, and I’d forgotten how bloody uncomfortable it was.”

  “Not like your air-conditioned Cadillac, Philip,” said a second voice.

  “You can keep your Cadillacs. Give me a good old English Humber every time.”

  In front of Mr. Calder’s astonished eyes, there emerged from the back of the lorries a dozen civilians, all of late middle-age, and all dressed in the sort of clothes that a business man likes to wear on holiday. One had evidently been a fisherman. There was an assortment of flies in his tweed hat. Another might have been a yachtsman. A third had simply put on the clothes he would have worn for a little light gardening.

  Corrie evidently knew the fisherman.

  He said, “Come along, Sam. Meet two friends of mine.”

  Introductions were effected all round. Mr. Behrens recognised the fisherman. He had been, until his retirement, the managing director of a company which ran a famous chain of food stores.

  Corrie said, “We advertised for ex-inmates of SL Seven who had a little time on their hands and might enjoy an open-air holiday, at the joint expense of the German and British Governments. I thought we might have some difficulty in finding anyone. I was never more surprised in my life. Applications flowed in. We had to close the list.”

  “We’re a picked bunch,” said the man called Sam with a grin.

  “You’ve got a lot of ground to cover,” said Corrie. “You’d better spend the rest of the day getting organised. I’ve got to get back to Bonn.” And to Mr. Calder, before he left, he said, “Don’t forget. This is really a German show. We’re helping them. Bruckner’s in charge. He’s a decent fellow. I’m sure you’ll all get along splendidly. There’ll be a daily shuttle to Plattling, so you can keep me in the picture.”

  For the next three days the weather remained fine, which was a blessing because they made no progress at all. One of the difficulties was that the prisoners had not been allowed into the village, which was out of sight of the camp, and their estimates of its distance and exact direction from the camp varied widely. It was agreed that it had been to the east, and more than a mile away, but that was all they could agree about. For long hours each day, they prodded with poles in the thick heather and undergrowth and found nothing but a few nose-caps from Russian shells and an unexploded mortar bomb which they buried cautiously.

  There were excitements of another kind. On the second day, a Russian helicopter had floated across and looked at them. A herd of wild-haired bullocks watched their efforts with equal, or even greater suspicion. Finally, deciding that the time had come to assert themselves, they had charged. One of the policemen drew his police carbine, and shot the leading animal dead at point blank range. The herd withdrew. That evening the diggers had enjoyed an excellent meal of steak and chips.

  Not that they were short of food. The German commissariat had produced sound if unimaginative supplies. As soon as he had examined them Sam sent a message back, through Plattling, to the German associates of his old firm. They must have moved fast, because on the next afternoon a truck arrived loaded with delicacies. One of the policemen turned out to have been a cook before he joined the police force.

  “I haven’t eaten like this for years,” said Lester.

  “That’s because you haven’t taken so much exercise for years,” said Sam.

  Philip said, “He showed a nice turn of speed when that bullock came after him.”

  During those long days in the sun and cheerful evenings in Hut A (into which they had moved after their personal tent had been trampled on by a wild horse), Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens came to know and appreciate the ex-inmates of Straffelager Seven. All of them were men who had made their very different ways in the world since 1945.

  Chester was a Member of Parliament for a northern constituency. Albert, who had ended the war as one of the youngest sergeant-majors in the Brigade of Guards, had become a policeman in Kenya and then headed his own security firm in London. Philip had worked his way up in a publishing firm from reader to managing director. Ronald had made a name for himself in horror films. He gave them a memorable impression one evening of Dracula at large in a nunnery.

  It was on the fourth day that Alan, the yachtsman, made an observation.

  He said, “We’ve been looking in the wrong place.”

  This had been said so often that nobody took much notice. But Alan seemed to have something definite in mind.

  He said, “None of you chaps are sailors, so none of you notice the really important things, like the sun and the moon and the stars. Now I’ve remembered one thing quite clearly. In the last few weeks before the Russians came and let us out, I used to watch the sun going down exactly behind the top of the Grosse Arber.”

  He pointed to the jagged top of the peak, nearly five thousand feet up and the highest point in the Bohmerwald.

  “I took a bearing at the time. You remember those little pocket button compasses we had in our escape kits. Ninety-three, twelve magnetic. I remember that because I had a great aunt of ninety- three and she had twelve Persian cats.”

  “All dead, I suppose, now,” said Lester.

  “Pipe down, Lester,” said Sam. “I believe Alan’s got something.”

  “I’ve had to make a few adjustments,” said Alan ignoring the interruption, and producing a compass from his pocket. “Never travel without a compass by the way. We’re nearly five weeks later now. And magnetic north doesn’t stand still either. But
I can give you a back-bearing from that peak – I took it at sundown last night when you chaps were soaking up the gin – and I’ll guarantee it’s correct to thirty minutes either way.”

  “So what do we do with it?” said Philip.

  “We peg it out. You take one pole, Albert, and walk towards the peak. I’ll give you ‘move right’ ‘move left’ signals. Then we do the same thing in the other direction. That gives us the line. Then we move along it, searching not more than twenty yards either side of it.”

  Under the sailor’s directions, a line was laid out. It was nearly a quarter of a mile south of anything they had searched so far.

  “I always told you we were looking in the wrong place,” said Chester.

  “What you actually told us was that we were too far south,” said Philip.

  “Have a heart,” said Ronald. “He’s a politician. You must allow him to change his mind once every twenty-four hours.”

  It was Ronald who struck pay dirt. He let out a scream which would have done credit to a maiden attacked by a werewolf. The others crowded round to see what he had found.

  It was a slab of concrete, roughly eighteen inches square. When the moss had been scraped away they could see that there was a square hole in the centre of the slab, and a few rotting fragments of wood in the hole.

  “There you are,” said Alan complacently. “Trust the British Navy. That was one of the four supports of a corner tower.”

  The others were already scraping in the earth.

  In a few minutes they had located and cleared a neat square, composed of four concrete blocks. The excitement had attracted everyone to the spot.

  “We can’t tell which corner tower it was,” said Alan. “But it won’t take long to find out now.”

  By dusk that evening the perimeter of the camp had been established and staked out. Two lines of barbed wire had been run round, and the huts, tents and caravans all moved inside. This was a sensible precaution, as the bullocks were getting aggressive again.

  “What I suggest we do,” said Mr. Calder, “is reconstitute, as closely as we can, what the camp looked like. I’m told there were six huts for the prisoners. Right? So let’s put our two huts down in the places occupied by two of them. If someone will be kind enough to indicate exactly where that was.”

  This led to a complicated argument, which was finally settled by Philip. He said, “I was in the hut nearest the wire, and I know exactly how far it was from the wire because two of us worked it out – by trigonometry, we daren’t pace it – when we were planning a break. It was thirty-six feet six inches from the south-west corner of the hut.”

  “Which you remember,” said Ronald, “because you had an aunt aged thirty-six who had six budgerigars.”

  One of the huts was transported by the carrier and positioned thirty-six feet six inches from the wire, with the other hut parallel to it, and fifteen feet closer to the entrance. The presumed position of the other four huts and of the administrative block and the commandant’s office was then worked out with reasonable accuracy. The large double marquee was pitched over the latter. Smaller tents and caravans represented the guard huts and camp kitchens.

  By the time this had been done it was dark, and they knocked off for supper. A crate of Bollinger was opened and they celebrated their progress.

  Later that night, the inmates of Hut A discussed the excitements of the day.

  “It’s uncanny,” said Chester. “As we were walking to the hut I looked round, and suddenly, I seemed to be back. The barbed wire, the guard tent, the huts, and then—that.”

  One of the policemen had brought a record player. On the other nights they had gone to sleep to the sound of mixed pop and classical music. Now he had produced – possibly saved up for the occasion – the record of German songs sung in the lovely husky contralto of Marlene Dietrich.

  “Underneath the lamplight, on the barrack square—”

  The words and the tune of “Lili Marlene” floated out into the night, carrying with it, to a handful of middle-aged and elderly gentlemen on the brink of sleep, a reminder of a time when they were young, and life was not a dusty path to look back on, but a long bright road stretching ahead of them.

  “Do you wish you could put the clock back?” said Philip.

  “Yes,” said Sam and Alan simultaneously.

  “Certainly not,” said Albert.

  “Not on your life,” said Ronald.

  “That gives me a casting vote,” said Chester, sleepily. “But I can’t tell you, because I’m damned if I know.”

  Back in their own tent Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens were thinking about the present, not the past.

  “I don’t want to alarm our nostalgic friends,” said Mr. Behrens, “but I fancy we’ve reached a point where we may have to take a few sensible precautions.”

  “Were you thinking of the Russians?”

  “You mean that helicopter? No, I wasn’t particularly worried about the Russians. I’ve no doubt that everything we’ve been doing has been photographed by them and examined and debated, but I don’t see that they have any reason to interfere.”

  “So?”

  “So I’ve remembered something which I find a little alarming. That manuscript that Fortescue gave us to read. You wouldn’t have noticed it, of course, because you only had a photocopy. I had the so-called original. Only it wasn’t the original. It was a carbon copy.”

  Mr. Calder thought about this for a minute in silence. Then he said, “And you think that the top copy might have got into other hands.”

  “I can think of one set of people,” said Mr. Behrens, “who’d give their front teeth or their back teeth – and since a lot of them are getting on in years – their false teeth, too – to get their hands on what’s in those canisters.”

  Mr. Calder thought about it. He said, “Did you bring a gun with you?”

  “I didn’t, because it didn’t seem to be that sort of party.”

  “Nor did I,” said Mr. Calder sadly.

  Next morning they found that the search was by no means over. Rudolf Sperrle’s story had been specific, up to a point. With the whole night to work in the three men had dug a hole in the earth under the commandant’s private room, had put the canisters into it, and covered them with liquid cement. Then they had piled back the earth on top, and restored the surface.

  “It would have been more helpful,” said Captain Bruckner, “if he had told us the depth of the hole.”

  “And even more helpful,” said Lester, “if we hadn’t all been such good boys. I mean, if old Barney was here he’d have given us the lay-out of the block. He spent more time in cells than out of them. I don’t think any of us ever set foot inside the place.”

  The possible area was not enormous, but when the only method of search was to drive a series of spikes into the packed earth, going at least five foot down on each occasion, it was bound to be laborious.

  At the end of a hard day’s work, as they were sitting down, a bit dispirited, to their evening meal, Sam suddenly said, “What you’re all forgetting is that you’re looking for the commandant’s office.”

  When the insults which this remark provoked had died down, Sam went on. “I was a sort of commandant myself. When we moved the organisation out of London, and opened a new complex at Slough, I was consulted about where my own office was to be. I said, put it as far away from other people as possible, and give it as much sun as you can. OK? Apply that here. He’d want to be at the far side of the block, which also happens to be the south side. Maximum peace. Maximum light. So I say, stop messing about here. Start on the south, and work inwards.”

  Captain Bruckner had listened seriously to the argument. He said, “I agree, that would be logical. The first rooms inside the entrance would be the offices. Then the stores and the armoury, and the cells for offenders. The commandant’s private quarters would be at the far end. We will start there tomorrow.”

  “Why not this evening?” said Philip. “I wouldn’t
mind putting in a little overtime to find out whether Sam’s talking nonsense or not.”

  This seemed to meet with general approval.

  “We’ll make it a mass assault,” said Lester. “Let’s all line up along the southern edge, and work our way inwards.”

  The tables were cleared, everyone was armed with some sort of implement, and they set to work. Even the policemen, who seemed infected by the prevailing excitement, joined in.

  Half an hour later, just at the moment when enthusiasm was beginning to flag, Philip said, “Hold it chaps, I think this miner- forty-niner has struck pay dirt.”

  He was prodding with the iron bar which he held. He said, “It feels quite different. Not nearly so packed. Quite loose.”

  He drove the point in again.

  “And there is something there. I just hit it. See that? Fetch a spade.”

  The others crowded round him, and the earth flew out. Soon they could hear the edge of the spade scraping a rough surface.

  At this exciting moment, Mr. Calder happened to be outside. He had walked across to look for extra spades in the guard tent. The moon was full and was bathing the camp and the heath in a theatrical wash of yellow limelight. As he strolled towards the entrance, he met Hans, one of the youngest and solidest of the policemen, coming back.

  Hans said, “I did not know, Herr Calder, that we were expecting visitors.”

  Mr. Calder said, “What visitors?”

  “In cars. I heard them just now. They stopped a little distance away down the track. I wondered—”

  He had no time to say any more. Mr. Calder had grabbed him by the arm, jerked him to one side, and pulled him down onto his face in the shadow of the guard tent.

  Men were advancing, spread out in line, across the open space between the entrance of the camp and the marquee. Mr. Calder counted fifteen of them as they went past, the nearest almost treading on his fingers. He could see that they were all carrying automatic weapons.