The Price of Silence

by Dolores Gordon-Smith

  ‘Step where I step,’ he whispered. ‘There are mines.’

  Then, with a swift glance round and keeping hunched over, he ran for the trees about twenty yards away, Anthony at his heels.

  Once in the shelter of the copse, Anthony sat with his back against a tree and breathed properly for what seemed to be the first time in hours. Voltèche looked up, grinned, then walked a few yards into the woods and hid the bag in the stump of a hollow tree, covering it with leaves.

  Anthony understood. This was obviously something Voltèche had done many times before. If he’d been caught with those gloves and socks in his pack, a firing squad was the only outcome. He idly wondered how many caches of rubber gloves and socks Voltèche had hidden along the frontier. When he had first been introduced to Voltèche, he had been wary of an acknowledged smuggler who arranged a border crossing for the payment of a hundred francs. At the time, a hundred francs paid in advance seemed a lot of money. It wasn’t.

  Beckoning him to follow, Voltèche shouldered his knapsack and led the way forward. Although there was a crescent moon, it was dark under the trees and they had to pick their way over ground twisty with tree roots. Despite himself, Anthony felt ridiculously light-hearted. Even though the going was arduous, it felt safe under the rustling trees with the hideous obstacle of the Dead Wire behind them.

  However, even with the wire behind him, he couldn’t simply stroll across Belgium. Louvain was only a matter of thirty odd miles away but the river Muese lay across his path. The Muese was wide, its banks patrolled and its bridges heavily guarded, but the Muese was where they were headed.

  It was nearly an hour later when Anthony saw the trees thinning in front of him. He’d felt the ground sloping down for some time. As the trees got more and more widely spaced, he saw the glint of the moon upon water in the distance and heard the faint sound of voices.

  ‘Wait here,’ Voltèche muttered quietly. ‘If you hear an uil three times, come.’ He spoke in Flemish. Anthony puzzled for a moment over the word uil, then it clicked.

  ‘Terwitt-too-whoo?’ he suggested with a smile.

  Voltèche nodded. ‘Uil,’ he agreed seriously. He cast a glance at Anthony’s uniform. ‘You look good, Herr Doktor,’ he added. ‘If you’re spotted the Boche will think you’re one of their own.’

  He slid off into the darkness, leaving Anthony alone.

  Anthony wasn’t sorry of the rest. He itched to light his pipe, but that would be stupid. It had been hard going amongst the trees, although Voltèche always seemed to know exactly where he was. So the Boche would think he was one of their own, would they? What then? He’d probably get shot for desertion unless he could think of a good story. An owl hooted close by and he stiffened.

  No, that was just one hoot. However, he could be a doctor with a passion for ornithology. That could be a convincing story, if he knew anything about birds. His identity disk gave his name as Erich Lieben and his identity papers confirmed him to be Oberstabsarzt II Klasse or Dr Lieutenant Colonel. On his shoulders were two golden stars in golden oak leaves and the familiar medical symbol of Asclepius’ staff with a snake. Snakes could shed and regrow their skins. The ancient Greeks saw this as a sign of magical rebirth, of life renewed through healing.

  Enough of snakes, he thought with mild irritation. Birds. Oberstabsarzt Lieben had a passion for birds, which was why he was wandering in the woods. Anthony fell to constructing the character of Dr Lieben in such detail that he nearly missed the hoot of an owl.

  He stood up, poised and listening. No ornithologist could have paid keener attention. There it was again. And again.

  Quietly Anthony made his way towards the gleam of water. There wasn’t much high ground in this part of Belgium, but from a hummocky bit of ground he could see the Muese spread out before him. It was a big river, easily as wide as the Thames, he thought. The faint sound of voices grew more distinct.

  Then the ground dipped again and he made his way cautiously forward, anxious not to slip and make a noise. He inched his way down, guided by the sound of lapping water.

  He didn’t see Voltèche at first. He was waiting for him, crouched in the shadow of a stone wall that banked up the earth and separated the trees from the river.

  The voices were louder now. Anthony could pick out the occasional word and clink of crockery.

  Voltèche put a finger to his lips and motioned for Anthony to get down. ‘You will pay a hundred marks to get to Louvain, yes?’ he whispered.

  Anthony nodded. That had been the arrangement. A hundred to get through the wire and another hundred to get to Louvain.

  ‘There is a barge train, one of the many river barge trains on the Muese. The captain and crew of the tug boat are Boche, but the bargees are Belgian.’

  He jerked his thumb to indicate the other side of the wall. ‘We have to watch for patrols. The barge trains don’t travel at night but they are guarded. The barges are moored on the other side of the wall. There is a woman, Mevrouw Halleux, who will take you to Louvain. She is my mother’s sister. She has taken my passengers before. You will go with her?’

  ‘Yes,’ Anthony agreed. He could hear footsteps on the other side of the wall and kept his voice very low. It wasn’t just people on the other side of the wall. A dog whined and he froze. He knew the river bank was patrolled. If the sentries had dogs, that spelled trouble. He couldn’t rely on a frightened hare a second time.

  ‘It’s all right,’ whispered Voltèche, sensing, rather than seeing, his anxiety. ‘The dog belongs on the barge. When you’re over the wall, keep to the shadows.’

  ‘How will I know which is the right barge?’

  ‘Mevrouw Halleux will be on the towpath outside her barge with her dog. When the time seems right, get on board as fast as you can and hide straight away.’

  He dropped his hand onto Anthony’s shoulder to indicate he should stay put, then cautiously climbed up the rough stones of the wall and peered over the top. The footsteps – it sounded like two men – stopped a little distance away on the other side of the wall.

  Voltèche dropped back down again. ‘Get ready. You can go in a moment.’

  ‘Wait.’ Anthony took out fifty marks and pressed into Voltèche’s hand. ‘For you.’

  Voltèche looked at the money for a moment, hesitated, then gave it back. ‘No, Mijnheer.’ There was a catch in his voice. ‘I do this for Belgium.’ There was fierce pride in the smuggler’s voice.

  Oddly moved, Anthony took back the money. You couldn’t buy patriotism. ‘For Belgium,’ he repeated.

  Voltèche squeezed his shoulder once more, then climbed the wall, turned and beckoned Anthony to join him.

  Keeping his cap pulled low so as to hide his face, Anthony took in the scene on the other side of the wall.

  The Muese spread out before him, the dark water hemmed in, on this side at least, by a broad canal bank with a towpath. A long line of barges lay moored alongside the bank, the water slapping against their hulls as they pulled against the mooring ropes attaching them to bollards fore and aft. They looked for all the world like overgrown versions of Noah’s ark, with the hatches of the hold forming a triangular sloping roof.

  At the front of the line of barges was a river steamer, the tug boat. It was a substantial craft, at least five or six hundred tons. That was where the sound of voices came from but his immediate concern was the two sentries.

  They were about twenty yards away, looking out at the river. In their field grey uniforms, they might have been difficult to spot in the shadows of the trees in the fleeting moonlight of the river bank. However, both men had taken the advantage of not being under the eye of a superior officer and, lounging against the wall, were passing a cigarette between them. Its glowing orange tip shone bright in the darkness.

  Anthony grimaced. Even though the two sentries were obviously not battle-hardened front-line troops, they’d certainly see him if he tried to cross the towpath. And where was Mevrouw Halleux?

  Then came his chan
ce. A dog, a little terrier, jumped over the side of a barge and, yapping ferociously, ran at the two guards.

  ‘Now!’ hissed Voltèche behind him.

  Anthony swung himself over the wall, dropped to the ground and flattened himself into the shadows by the wall as the two sentries kicked out in alarm, swearing at the barking terrier.

  Mevrouw Halleux, a stately presence, rose up from the deck of the barge. ‘Leave that dog alone!’ she called in furious and barely understandable Flemish.

  ‘Call it off,’ shouted a sentry, taking a swing at the dog with the butt of his rifle. The little dog missed the blow and, jumping up, managed a nip on the man’s leg.

  Amid the shouts from the guards, the frantic yipping of the terrier, and the shrill protests of Mevrouw Halleux, a platoon of men could have crossed the towpath undetected.

  Anthony shot across the path, jumped down into the barge and crouched low on the deck. The door into the cabin stood open in front of him.

  Down the steps into the cabin, he could see a boy, about eleven years old, sitting at the table. The cabin was illuminated by a single dim oil lamp above the table.

  The boy stood up, looked at him with round eyes, and put a finger to his lips. Beckoning, he indicated Anthony should follow him to the back of the cabin to where two narrow wooden beds stood in opposite alcoves, shielded by curtains. The boy quickly drew back the curtains and lifted up one of the beds. The floor beneath it was hinged and the bed and floor swung up, leaving a narrow gap.

  The boy pointed and Anthony scrambled into the hole. The boy closed the bed down and Anthony, lying on the unexpectedly soft floor, heard him walk away.

  Although the space was cramped, he wasn’t in total darkness. There were gaps in the floorboards above him which let in chinks of light. The softness of the floor was explained by a straw mattress, which covered most of the space and, Anthony was pleased to find, a couple of blankets.

  Obviously Mevrouw Halleux had used this method before for transporting guests. That was a very well-trained dog she had. There was nothing quite like being attacked by a small, determined terrier to take a man’s full attention. As a way of distracting the sentries, it was hard to beat.

  It must have been half an hour or so later when he heard a creak above him and the bed was lifted up.

  Mevrouw Halleux, oil lamp in hand, looked down approvingly at him. ‘All is quiet,’ she said softly. Her accent was so thick it was difficult to understand. ‘You eat? Yes?’ She passed him a sizable hunk of bread and, much to Anthony’s delight, a bottle of beer. ‘Stay there, Mijnheer. Till tomorrow.’

  Anthony understood. Once they were underway, he could come out, as there was no danger of anyone coming on board. If they were moored up, he had to stay undercover. ‘All right.’

  She lowered the bed again and Anthony sat back with his bread and beer. The bread was tough and, although he couldn’t see the colour, he was willing to bet it was grey. The bread, war bread, a mixture eked out with straw, took some chewing. If he hadn’t been so hungry the coarse stuff would have revolted him, but the beer was good. Hunger abated, he drew the rough blankets round him. He spared a thought for Lucien Voltèche, alone in the woods, then, lulled by the lapping of the water on the hull, drifted into sleep.

  His last conscious thought was that there were worse ways to travel to Louvain.

  NINETEEN

  Anthony had a cramped but enlightening few days on the barge.

  When Mevrouw Halleux had lifted the hatch to his hiding place on the first morning, she had been so shocked by her first look in daylight at his uniform, she had promptly slammed the hatch down.

  Anthony raised his hands above his head and heaved, emerging to the sight of Mevrouw Halleux, her son hiding nervously behind her and the dog prepared to spring. She, hefty spanner in hand, was quite clearly prepared to brain this wandering Hun.

  It took all of Anthony’s powers of persuasion to convince her that he wasn’t German but, once convinced, she told him quite a lot about life in Belgium.

  Her husband had been taken to Germany, one of the many deportees. She had no idea if he was alive or dead. He had been foraging in the fields for food and caught without his identity card. That was enough.

  Every Belgian had to carry an identity card and if a man was of military age, between seventeen and fifty-five, he had to carry a military pass to show he’d been present at the weekly muster conducted by the German authorities. Internal passports were required to travel within Belgium and were very rarely granted.

  Food was desperately scarce as the Germans took virtually everything. Potatoes, for instance, were three shillings a pound and who could afford such sums? The Germans took not only food, but coal, wood, oil, wool and all the necessities of life. Many hundreds – perhaps more – had either starved or literally frozen to death last winter. Machinery had been broken up and taken wholesale to Germany, forests had been levelled – the barges were carrying a load of pine from the Campine – and everything of any value, be it cotton, metal or leather, was impounded. Without the Americans and their food relief, many more thousands would be dead.

  As Anthony listened to the catalogue of thefts and deprivations, he began to see why the sight of his uniform had such an effect on his hostess.

  He had lived in Germany and, despite his experiences on the Western Front, liked and respected the country and its people. After all, war was war and brutality occurred on both sides. Along with the rest of the Allied world, he’d read reports of the savagery meted out to the occupied countries, but he’d assumed that the reports were hugely exaggerated. Maybe they were exaggerated, but the truth was very close to the reality.

  Mevrouw Halleux considered herself fortunate. By helping her nephew, Lucien, she was able to make enough money to feed herself and Henk, her son.

  It was the evening of the third day that the barge train arrived in Louvain. Anthony stayed that night on the barge, slipping away in the grey dawn of early morning.

  The canal docks were at the edge of Louvain. Anthony, as neat and as shaved as he could contrive in the cramped conditions of the barge, walked along the towpath, out onto the Boulevard de Diest, and into the town.

  The Boulevard de Diest ran as part of a rough circle round the town. Or what had been the town. It was now a man-made desert of desolation.

  He had seen villages that had suffered from shelling, with one rickety wall still upright amongst a rubble of brick, timber and stone, but he had never seen anything on this scale.

  The smell, the smell of stale, damp, burned things, was one he recognized immediately. It was one of the smells of the Front, and it was incredible that only a few short months ago, Louvain had been a place of elegant, ancient architecture, little shops, neat houses and grassy lawns. It was almost unbelievable to think that this devastation had been caused not by artillery shells, but by arson.

  The streets had been only sketchily cleared of fallen masonry and debris. The wind had got up and every step filled his eyes with the dust from the heaps of dirt and ashes. He was heading for the train station, but the map, which he had brought from London and memorized on board the barge, seemed like a cartographer’s fantasy in this desolation. The map was now in Mevrouw Halleux’s stove. The fact it had been reduced to ashes seemed oddly fitting.

  He briefly toyed with the idea of asking directions, but the very few Belgians he saw scurried away at the sight of him and he didn’t relish the thought of asking the occasional groups of soldiers for directions. After all, the soldiers’ natural assumption would be that he, like them, had arrived by train and it might arouse suspicion if he didn’t know where the station was.

  Guided by his pocket compass, he emerged from the ruins onto the Boulevard Tirlemont across from the railway station with real relief. The flames hadn’t reached this far. The Germans needed the train station and had taken care to contain the fires.

  Here, in front of the station, was an ordinary street with entire buildings, with enough pe
ople to be described as a crowd. He had seen very few people in what had been the town. Anthony felt so grimy after his voyage through the blasted rubble, that he felt as if all eyes must be on him, but very few passers-by, soldiers or civilians, glanced twice at the tall doctor in his army greatcoat.

  His destination was a cafe on the platform, reserved for Germans. He pushed open the door marked Officers Only and for a moment felt completely disconcerted.

  The bar, which ran the length of the room, was of dark wood with polished brass-ringed beer taps. A muted hum of conversation rose from the fifteen or so men sitting at the tables, drinking beer, coffee and small glasses of spirits. Some were reading newspapers and a couple were playing cards.

  Anthony had lived in Germany. Before the war he had studied in Berlin and had, along with his German friends, visited many a German bierkeller. In the first few nervy months of the war, living in Germany, no longer as a friend but a spy, bierkellers had been prime sources of information. A bierkeller was a familiar place.

  That was the trouble. He’d been subconsciously expecting a bierkeller but this was a Belgian cafe, first cousin to an English pub.

  For a couple of seconds, so recognizable was the atmosphere, so homely the scene, that Anthony felt a sudden, blistering, fury. This could be England. An England that had been invaded, where the conversation was in German and the conquerors wore field grey.

  What’s more, that ravaged wilderness outside could be the remains of an English town. He had a ridiculous urge to slam his fist into the face of the fat German Hauptmann swilling beer and, single-handed, fight everyone in the bar.

  He hung up his cap and greatcoat on the hat-stand, forcing himself to pick out the details of the bar to prove to himself that this was Belgium, not Britain. For a start, a good few of his fellow officers – Anthony made himself use the term fellow – were drinking coffee. That wouldn’t happen in Britain. Nor would the barman have such an elaborate moustache or be wearing a white apron.

  He was in Belgium and he was Erich Lieben, Oberstabsarzt II Klasse, a doctor, a lieutenant colonel and a loyal German. When he turned round, he saw the German captain as not fat, but a solid, well-built fellow, doubtless a good officer, who thoroughly deserved his well-earned beer.