by Mal Peet
They sat on what was left of the living-room furniture in the bungalow nearest the track. The windows were blacked out with blankets taken from the abandoned bedrooms; one had a pattern of merry rabbits dressed in pyjamas. Koop had taken the candle into the decaying kitchen and come back with a bottle of schnapps, which he passed round. It had circulated twice before Eddy Dekker ended the silence.
“Well, my brave boys, what are we going to do now?”
The obvious question, and the hardest. But it broke the dam; now everybody had something to say.
“Rejoice.”
“Koop, are you sure it was him? Absolutely sure?”
“Don’t be so stupid. This is a disaster.”
“I said, Christ, I said, I told you it wasn’t a bloody truck!”
“Yeah, it was him.”
“You know what? I’m glad. One of the most evil bastards to walk the earth —”
“God forgive me, but I just didn’t want to stop firing.”
“Koop, don’t hog that bottle.”
“How many did we kill tonight?”
“Three. The driver —”
“No! Let me ask this again!” It was Willy Vekemans.
Silence. Then Koop said, “Willy, don’t start. We all know —”
“Yes,” Willy said. “We all know. There will be reprisals. That’s the word nobody has used yet. But there, I’ve said it. So come on. How many people have we killed tonight?”
Koop stood up, holding the schnapps. He pointed the neck of the bottle at Willy’s nose.
“Listen. Do you think I haven’t thought about that? Don’t you think it was the first bloody thing that went through my mind when I saw it was Rauter? So don’t you get all self-righteous, Willy Vekemans. It’s not us who line innocent people up against the wall and shoot them. If I remember correctly, it’s the bloody Nazis who do that.”
“I’m not being self-righteous, Koop. I went into this tonight with my eyes open, like everybody else. We all know what Tamar told us, and we —”
“Tamar!” Koop spat the word out. “Yes, we all know what that bloody errand boy told us. Do nothing is what he told us. He runs off to England, has a nice break, comes back and tells us to do nothing. Well, thank you very much, Commandant. Wish you’d told us sooner. Could have saved us a lot of trouble. I could have saved us a lot of trouble if I’d shot the soft sod when he stood there in the marshes with his hands in the air.”
Koop thrust the bottle into Willy’s hands and threw his own arms up. “I surrender! I surrender! That’s Tamar’s message to the gallant Dutch resistance. Great, bloody great.”
“Koop . . .”
“Hey, Koop, come on . . .”
Oskar raised his voice against the angry babble. “I think we should stop this right now. Right now. Okay. We know what we have done tonight. And what the Germans will do as a result. Personally, I think there is very little we can do to stop them. Except for one thing, of course.”
Silence, then the cry of a nocturnal bird.
“We can give ourselves up. It might be enough for them.”
“Don’t talk so bloody daft, man.” Koop’s voice was harsh. “What do you want? To be a saint? A martyr? You spent too much time in Sunday school, my friend. What, we give ourselves up, the Gestapo have their fun with us, and all’s square? Don’t be stupid. We’ve just killed the top Nazi in Holland. You seriously think that our five dead bodies would make up for that? I don’t think so. They’d do whatever they fancied with us, then shoot God knows how many people anyway. It’d make no difference.”
Oskar said, surprisingly, “I agree with you. But I tell you this: I’m not prepared to hole up here not knowing what’s going on. Someone ought to get back to Apeldoorn and find out what’s happening. And since it’s my suggestion, I’ll go.”
“No one leaves here tonight,” Koop said flatly.
“Fair enough. I’ll go at first light. The curfew will have ended by the time I get there. In the meantime, I think we should try to get some sleep instead of sitting around here arguing and bullshitting.”
“Amen,” Eddy Dekker said. “Because in the morning we’re going to have to decide what to do with the car.”
And that started another argument.
As dawn was breaking on 7th March, a German patrol scouting ahead of the delayed troop movement to Apeldoorn spotted a stationary car on the road ahead. The captain in command was understandably nervous, suspecting that the apparently empty and shot-up machine was a trap. He brought his armoured car to a halt two hundred metres away and studied the BMW through his field glasses. There appeared to be at least one body in it. He radioed the convoy south of him and was ordered to investigate at once and report back. The captain took two men with him, and they approached the car with extreme caution.
There were an amazing number — a ridiculous number — of bullet holes in it. He recognized Rauter at once, despite the wrecked face, because the lieutenant general had pinned a medal on his chest at a parade only a week ago. Steeling himself, he pressed his hand to the left side of Rauter’s neck. The flesh was very cold, but below the ear there was a beat, faint as a hatching butterfly. He dashed to the armoured car and seized the mouthpiece of the radiophone from his startled driver.
Rauter was taken to the military hospital in Apeldoorn. He had several flesh wounds and a shattered jaw, but the major problem was the bullets that had penetrated his lung. All the same, they pumped blood into him and kept him alive.
In the afternoon, Rauter’s deputy, Eberhardt Schongarth, went to visit his boss. As was usual by this time of day, Schongarth was fairly drunk, and he slumped into the chair beside the general’s bed. He was not expecting, nor was he ready for, a conversation. So he was dreadfully surprised when Rauter spoke. Schongarth struggled to look upright and alert. Even if he had been sober, he would have found it difficult to understand what Rauter was saying. The general had lost some of the right side of his face, which was swathed in dressings, and could only speak in small groups of words punctuated by gasps.
“How many . . .”
Leaning closer — but not so close that Rauter would smell the booze on his breath — Schongarth said, “How many what, General?”
Rauter, heroically, managed to say, “How. Many bullet holes. In the car?”
Schongarth said, “How many? I don’t know.”
Rauter faded, then rallied slightly. “Count them,” he mumbled. “Understand? Count them. And come. Back and tell me.”
Schongarth returned two hours later. He sat beside the unconscious Rauter’s bed impatiently, needing a drink, for almost an hour.
The general’s eyes flickered and then focused. “How many?”
Schongarth said, “Two hundred and forty-three.”
Rauter made a movement of his face that in other circumstances might have been a smile. “Good,” he gasped. “Execute that number. Of people.”
“Any particular people?”
Rauter, struggling to draw breath, said, “No. Anyone you’ve got.”
By late evening, Eberhardt Schongarth was very drunk and extremely edgy. Obviously the best people to shoot would be death candidates, the terrorists and saboteurs taking up space in various prisons. It would be a nice clear-out. But — and he found this hard to believe — there didn’t seem to be enough of them. He’d issued orders that all Todeskandidaten in the district were to be brought to the prison in Apeldoorn. But the total, including those already there, came to only a hundred and sixteen. Not even half — half! — the number required. He’d decided it wouldn’t matter to Rauter if he went over the target. But to fail to reach it . . . well, he’d be in the shit and no mistake.
The answer to his problem was clear but unsatisfactory. Some of the executions would have to take place in other parts of the country. It was not a pleasing thought. He’d had the vision — it was poetic, really — of exactly two hundred and forty-three dead resisters laid out on the Arnhem to Apeldoorn road, ideally alongside the ge
neral’s bullet-riddled car, and he was reluctant to abandon this elegant concept. But the logistics were daunting. Find the transport, find the escorts, to bring in extra death candidates from Amsterdam, from The Hague, from all over the place? It was impossible. To hell with it. The total was the main thing. He shouted for another bottle of wine and reached for the phone.
Lages, the chief of security in Amsterdam, was embarrassed to admit that he had only fifty-three death candidates to offer, rather than the seventy-five Schongarth wanted. But there were another six in Utrecht that he could throw in. Schongarth settled for that, and added fifty-nine to the numbers on his paper.
“And what do you want me to do with them, sir?”
“Bloody shoot them, of course,” Schongarth yelled.
“Tonight, sir?”
“Whenever you damn well like,” Schongarth told him, and hung up.
Almost immediately he rang back. “Lages? Ignore that last order. Wait until the morning. After the curfew ends. Eight o’clock. I want people watching, you understand? As many as possible. Make a spectacle of it.”
Yes, of course, Schongarth thought. If we can’t execute all the bastards in the same place, we can at least do them all at the same time.
Wolk, in Rotterdam, explained (with some difficulty) that because of attempts by the resistance to liberate his prisoners, he had transferred his death candidates to The Hague.
Schongarth called The Hague and sent a frightened security service officer to get his boss, Munt, out of bed. It was eleven o’clock by now, and Schongarth, very befuddled by drink and arithmetic, was very unpleasant to listen to. When he told Munt that he wanted eighty death candidates shot at eight o’clock the following morning, Munt got jittery. He would of course like to oblige, he said, but he had transferred most of his prisoners to the concentration camp at Amersfoort. Just the day before, in fact. Then he had to hold the telephone away from his ear while Schongarth screamed at him.
“Lissen, shithead! Your share, your quota, is eighty. Eighty, okay? I don’t give a damn where you get them from. This order comes from the top, you unnerstan? The top. So just do it!”
Then the line went dead, with a bang that made Munt flinch.
Munt sat in his pyjamas and smoked two cigarettes. He’d sent forty-nine prisoners to Amersfoort, so, strictly speaking, he was thirty-one short. He phoned several of his staff officers and got them on the case. “Basically, anyone we’ve got locked up anywhere in the city,” he told them. “Get me a list.” Then, reluctantly, he dressed and called for a car to take him to the prison at Scheveningen, north of the city. He got there at midnight. He didn’t have much luck. The best he could manage was eleven men (actually, some of them were boys) who had been banged up for looting. They’d have to do.
On his way back, he stopped off at the SS barracks to sort out a firing squad. He entrusted the command of it to an officer he suspected of flirting with his wife. At his headquarters he used the phone to chase up his staff. By two thirty in the morning they had, miraculously, provided him with another twenty-seven names. He wrote the word TODESKANDIDATEN at the top of the list and arranged for them to be shot along with the looters at eight o’clock sharp. He called Schongarth’s office and left a message. Then he went back to bed, a relieved man. He had beaten his quota. He’d got eighty-seven.
All through that day, and well into the night, other phone lines — secret, illegal ones — had also been busy. At the asylum, Tamar made a dangerously long call to Bobby on Albert Veening’s antique telephone. Later in the day, twice, Bobby called him back with news that chilled his blood.
Earlier, when a cold and pearl-grey light was filtering into the hidden room, Tamar had written a message for Dart’s morning transmission to London. He made a number of mistakes in the encoding, which Dart corrected, coldly and without comment. This message, when added to the ones Dart had already prepared, took the transmission time beyond the limit. When Dart protested, Tamar forcefully overruled him. Dart made a drama out of checking that his pistol was fully loaded before slamming it down on the table close to the transceiver and cramming on the headphones.
Dart was still stabbing the Morse key when Albert tapped quietly on the concealed door. Trixie was here, waiting in the conservatory. Tamar touched Dart on the shoulder without getting any acknowledgment, then followed Veening downstairs.
“My God,” Trixie said. “You look terrible. Is something the matter? What’s happened?”
He didn’t answer but took her by the arm and led her over to the summer house. Inside, it smelled richly of wood rot. Fingers of ivy were intruding through the broken panes. He tried to close the door, but it jammed halfway.
“Trixie, would you do me a favour? Would you mind putting your arms around me and holding me very tight?”
“I thought you’d never ask.” Her smile made no difference; when she held him she felt how tense he was. “Are you going to tell me?”
When he didn’t answer, she pushed him away slightly in order to see his face. “It’s not Marijke, is it? Oh, my God, something has happened at the farm. That’s why you’re here.”
“No,” he said. “No. Marijke’s fine. But listen. I want you to go there now, please. As fast as you can. Get the guns out of the house. The shed next to the dairy would be a good place for them. It’s closest to the road. Anyone could have put them there. Do you understand? And Marijke needs to tidy up so there’s no sign of me having been there. And I want her to check that Dart has packed everything away in the radio room. I’m sure he has, but she needs to double check. Cigarette ends, everything. Okay?”
She hadn’t taken her eyes from his face. “You’re expecting a raid on the farm.”
“No, but it’s possible. Right now, anything’s possible.”
She said, “Tell me what’s happened. I’ve a right to know.”
“Rauter was shot last night. Near De Woeste Hoeve, on the Arnhem road.”
“Rauter? I don’t believe it!” His face told her it was true. “But I thought . . . My God. Who did it?”
He turned the corners of his mouth down, a grimace that could have meant anything. She understood, though.
“You’re right. I don’t want to know.”
She moved away from him, pulling her shabby raincoat tighter around herself. She went to the door and stared out at the wet grass, the naked trees.
“Rauter,” she murmured. “God help us now.” Then she turned quickly to face him. “Christiaan, they’re not looking for you, are they?”
“I’ve no reason to think so. But the Germans will turn the whole area inside out. We’re all going to have to keep our heads down.” He rubbed the back of his thumb across his unshaven chin, thinking. “Where’s Rosa? Isn’t she with you?”
“Agatha’s looking after her. Why?”
“I think it would be a good idea for you to stay at the farm tonight. You and Rosa. Would you mind? I’d feel happier knowing Marijke’s not alone.”
“Okay.”
“Thanks.” He kissed her forehead. Then he sighed and said, “Right. I need to get back.” He struggled to pull the door fully open. For just a second he looked like an old man. “Tell her I might not be able to get home for a while and not to worry.”
And he thought, Home. I’m not meant to call it that.
Trixie said, “I can’t tell her not to worry. But I can tell her you love her, if you like.”
When she’d gone, Tamar went back to the room behind the dispensary. The stale air now carried the acrid smell of burnt silk as well as cigarette smoke. Dart didn’t look up when he entered. He busied himself checking and folding the silks, fiddling with the transceiver controls, closing things down.
When the silence became absurd and he could no longer bear it, Tamar said, “Mind if I open the window?”
Dart shrugged. “Sure. Be my guest.” He lit another cigarette with tremulous fingers.
Tamar opened the small window halfway. He inhaled some cleaner air and turned to loo
k at Dart. The brown bottle of Benzedrine had appeared beside the revolver on the bureau.
He said, “I realize that it’s not the ideal time to tell you this, but I’ve decided to close down transmissions from the farm. In the circumstances I —”
He stopped because Dart held his hand up, rigid in a halt gesture, and shook his head slowly and deliberately.
“No.”
Tamar closed his eyes and found that he had an immense desire not to open them again. To sleep just where he stood. Not to have this conversation . . .
“Dart, you can’t just say no like that. I’ve thought carefully about it, and —”
“No,” Dart said again. He sat staring at his fingers where they rested on the small black suitcase. He kept his voice more or less level. “You can’t do that; you don’t have the authority. I’ve got procedures, timetables, frequencies. Only London can change those.”
“I’m sorry, but that’s not the case. In the field I am authorized to make those changes. And I’ve made my decision.”
Dart looked up now, and Tamar flinched when he saw what was in the other man’s eyes.
“Oh, right. You’ve made your decision, have you? Well, that’s just fine and dandy, isn’t it? It’s all right for you, for Chrissake, never in one place more than a day or two. I’ve got the Germans tracking me every time I send and nowhere to go to. Do you understand?”
He got to his feet and advanced on Tamar, who folded his arms but held his ground.
“Do you really understand? Last week the bloody detector vans were in the town when I left. They must have been this close — this close — to locating me.”
He held his thumb and forefinger a centimetre apart and jabbed them at Tamar’s face. And although it was irrelevant, Tamar realized then that Dart had lost a lot of weight. His clothes were looser on him. The dark hair was long and oily. The unnaturally bright eyes were deeper in their sockets.
