Bär’s face pales with anger. ‘You forget who you are talking to, Meissner. I won’t have defeatist talk here. You are an officer in the SS. You should be ashamed of yourself.’
Bär’s words break the thread that has been holding Meissner’s temper in check. Before he knows it, he is shouting: ‘I won’t take that from you, sir, or from anyone else who’s spent their war lording it over women and children, herding them from cattle trucks into gas chambers at the point of a rifle. Only someone who’s seen the enemy close enough to smell them knows the truth of this war. The Waffen-SS know the truth of it, and we’ll carry on fighting until our last breath; but, by God, we know the truth of it.’
When Meissner stops, he realizes the Kommandant is staring coldly at him. ‘Finished? Good. Do you still want that transfer? If you can find a unit desperate enough to take you, then you can have it. Now get out.’
Meissner was shaking as he walked down the administrative building steps. Walking stick or not, going back to Monowitz on foot would help him to calm down.
He had not gone as far as the main gate when he found Eidenmüller waiting for him.
‘What are you doing here?’ Meissner asked, sharply.
‘Sorry, sir, but you need to get back quickly.’
‘Why?’
‘Hustek’s after the Watchmaker, sir. His men are in the camp now.’
Hustek had sent two agents to the Buna factory. Neither of them had been there before. It was vast: pipes ran everywhere in a seemingly inextricable tangle; some were suspended from overhead gantries, others ran at ground level. In the distance, the agents could see a large, square building with a row of tall, black chimneys pushing into the sky.
The bomb damage was extensive. At various points they could see men in civilian clothes carrying clip-boards, assessing the destruction; around them gangs of men in striped uniforms were clearing away rubble or removing damaged piping or machinery. Others scurried backwards and forwards, some heavily laden, still more pushing trucks along narrow-gauge rails or pulling hand-carts; others were digging. Everywhere, the furious activity was being driven by the clubs or thick, knotted ropes wielded by the Kapos.
‘This is hopeless,’ one said. ‘We’ll never find him here. It’s chaos.’
‘We should ask someone,’ replied the other. ‘The Rapportführer might know where he is.’
‘Forget it. I know the Rapportführer here. Gessner. No point asking him. Him and Hustek don’t get on.’
‘Does anyone get on with Hustek?’
The first one rolled his eyes. ‘Let’s go to the camp. Bound to have better luck there.’
In the records office they found Unterscharführer Hoven.
‘We’re looking for the prisoner called the Watchmaker.’
Hoven looked up from the file on his desk that he was studying. ‘Really? And who exactly is “we”?’
‘Gestapo.’
The word alone was sufficient to generate a spasm of anxiety in Hoven’s bowels.
‘What exactly is it you want?’
The two men exchanged a knowing glance. They had the measure of Hoven. ‘Just tell us where to find him.’
Hoven turned back to his file. ‘Block 27,’ he said, without looking up.
As soon as they were gone Hoven closed the file and left his office. Eidenmüller was in the next building along. He would want to know that the Gestapo was after the Watchmaker.
*
The two Gestapo men threw open the door to Block 27 and, unannounced, entered the day room. Two men were sprawled on wooden benches along the wall, asleep. Both had green triangles on their jackets. Without ceremony, the first Gestapo man pulled their legs up, tipping them onto the floor. With a rush of expletives the prisoners picked themselves up, rubbing gingerly at flesh that would soon bear bruises.
‘Who the fucking hell are you?’ one of them demanded angrily.
‘Gestapo.’
Sullenly, the prisoners glared at their tormentors.
‘We’re looking for the Watchmaker. We were told he is in this block. Where is he?’
Neither prisoner spoke.
The Gestapo man pulled a cosh from his pocket and slammed it onto a table. ‘We don’t want to make life difficult for you. Just tell us where he is.’
The prisoners maintained their silence.
This time the cosh was waved beneath the chin of one of them. ‘Only we haven’t got too much time, see?’
‘He’s in the Buna Werke,’ one of the prisoners said. ‘They’re all in the Buna Werke. They’ll be back tonight.’
There were chairs around the table. The Gestapo men settled themselves down to wait. ‘What have you got to eat?’ one asked.
The prisoners shook their heads. ‘Nothing. We had the soup ration at noon. There’s nothing now until after roll call.’
‘Shit,’ the Gestapo man said. ‘I’m fucking starving.’
Eidenmüller took the road from the Stammlager towards Oświęcim. Meissner was deep in thought. At length he said, ‘This friend of yours, Hoven – do you trust him?’
‘I don’t really know him that well, sir. He doesn’t like Hustek, I know that much. He’s frightened of him.’ Meissner went back to his thoughts. ‘What are we going to do, sir? If Hustek gets hold of the Watchmaker, we’ll never see him again.’
‘Yes, I know that,’ Meissner said irritably, ‘but I don’t know what we’re going to do. I’m trying to think of something.’
By the time they got to Monowitz, a plan was starting to form. The problem was one of organization. There was no way a prisoner could be hidden for more than a few hours: the twice-daily roll call would immediately reveal he was missing. No, if Hustek wanted the Watchmaker he would find a way to get him.
Hustek had to be distracted by something bigger.
When they arrived they went straight to Hoven’s office. ‘Shut the door,’ Meissner ordered. The Unterscharführer looked alarmed.
‘What can I do for you, sir?’
‘Where do you stand regarding the Watchmaker?’ Meissner asked.
‘The Watchmaker? I don’t know what you mean, sir.’
‘Hustek’s men have come for him. You know what that means.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Do you want to let Hustek get him? Or do you want to stop him?’
‘Yes, sir. I mean, no, I don’t want that bastard to get his hands on him. But what can I do?’
‘It’s very simple. Forget you ever saw Hustek’s men. They were never here. Understood?’
Understanding registered on the Unterscharführer’s face.
‘But—’
‘No buts, Unterscharführer. Just stick to your story. You never saw them. If you keep to that you’ll be safe. If you waver, you’re a dead man.’
The opportunity to get back at Hustek beckoned. It was now or never. ‘Yes, sir. I never saw anyone, sir.’
‘What next, sir?’ Eidenmüller asked, when they were outside again.
‘Into the camp. We need to find Brack.’
Brack was near the kitchens, watching a couple of prisoners tending the vegetable plot. The harvest looked bountiful: beans, tomatoes and cucumbers – luxuries the prisoners could only dream of.
Brack pulled himself to attention when he saw Meissner.
‘Don’t bother,’ Meissner said, ‘this isn’t a formal visit, and you haven’t seen us. Is there anywhere we can talk privately?’
Brack smiled and pointed to a nearby block. ‘In there. I’ll see you in five minutes.’
Brack had sent them to the camp brothel. It was empty. Meissner explained the situation, adding, ‘For all we know, Hustek’s men are in your block right now.’
Brack’s dream of a fortune amassed in a Swiss bank started to dissolve. His face creased into an angry frown. ‘Hustek is a pig. He won’t get away with this. Not if I can help it.’
‘I didn’t know you knew Hustek,’ Eidenmüller said.
‘Oh, yeah, I know him all right. I’ve
got a score or two to settle with Hustek.’
Block 27 was on the northern perimeter of the camp, next to the wire.2 It took little time for Brack to gather a few cronies, though Widmann was nowhere to be found. In ones and twos they met behind the block, hidden from the guard towers.
‘Right,’ Brack said. ‘Everybody ready?’ He waited for everyone to show a weapon. ‘No knives, remember. And no messing about. Straight in. Right,’ he said again. He was feeling nervous. This was new territory. ‘Let’s get in there and do this.’
The Gestapo men were surprised when four men in prisoner garb came from the dormitory into the day room and took up positions barring the main door. More men followed. They were all carrying heavy wooden clubs.
A glance was all it took for the Gestapo men to work out what was going to happen to them. One of them, his face a mask of shocked disbelief, tried to bluster: ‘If you know what’s good for you, you’ll leave now,’ he said loudly.
‘Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it?’ Brack said menacingly, as he pushed the door closed. ‘I’ve never known what’s good for me.’
The other Gestapo man pulled out a pistol. With an angry yell Brack brought his club down on the Gestapo man’s wrist. There was a momentary howl of pain before a blow to the head silenced him.
The first Gestapo man held his hands up in a gesture of supplication. ‘No!’ he begged. ‘No, please—’
It was over quickly.
‘Jesus,’ one of Brack’s men said, licking lips that had suddenly become parched. ‘You realize what we’ve done, don’t you?’
‘Stop whining,’ Brack said. ‘There’s no going back now. I know Hustek. He’s an evil bastard. If he gets wind of this he’ll have us thrown into the ovens while we’re still alive.’ He pointed at the bodies with his bloody club. ‘These two were never here. None of us knows anything about them.’ He glared at the two who had been caught in the block by the Gestapo men. ‘That includes you. Unless you want to join them—?’
For an hour they worked harder than they had worked in all their time at Auschwitz. The room was scrubbed and the corpses were stripped and swung into a handcart outside.
One of Brack’s men looked longingly at the pile of discarded clothing. ‘Pity,’ he said. ‘Specially the boots – almost new.’
‘Into the stove with them,’ Brack ordered. ‘I want no traces left.’ The pistol could not be disposed of so easily. He would have to think about what to do with that.
‘What about the bodies?’
‘Don’t worry, it’s taken care of.’
Every day prisoners died in the Buna factory. They were hauled back by their fellow inmates to be counted in the roll call. Afterwards, their remains were thrown onto a lorry and taken to Birkenau for cremation. They were not counted again. Today would be no different, except that there would be two more. If anyone had bothered to look, they might have noticed two freshly cropped heads and physiques that were not skeletal. That might have aroused suspicions, and a closer examination would have revealed hands that were not calloused from hard labour, and feet that had not been rubbed raw by the wooden clogs that the inmates wore. But who would look? Two more among thousands were neither here nor there. Besides, the only people who would handle them were the Birkenau Sonderkommando, prisoners whose job it was to empty the gas chambers and put the carcasses into the crematoria.
They would have rejoiced to know they were putting the bodies of Gestapo men into the furnace.
*
Two days later, Meissner had a visitor.
He was announced by Eidenmüller. ‘Oberscharführer Hustek to see you, sir.’
Meissner looked up from the papers that were spread across his desk. ‘Take a seat, Oberscharführer,’ he said. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Two of my men have gone missing,’ Hustek said, as he sat down. ‘I was wondering whether you might know where they are.’
‘Me? Why would I know where they are?’
‘They were here, in Monowitz. They were here on my instructions. They were here to pick up the Watchmaker.’
Meissner leaned back and steepled his fingers. ‘I still don’t understand why you might think I would know where they are. I’m not in charge here: Obersturmführer Schottl is the Lagerführer. You should speak to him.’
‘I already have. Nobody saw either of my men. Nobody. Don’t you think that’s strange? You would have thought somebody would have seen them.’
‘I don’t know.’ Meissner concentrated hard on keeping his expression deadpan. ‘There are always people coming and going, in and out of the camp. Someone might have seen them, but taken no notice of them. That wouldn’t be so strange, would it?’
‘Look, Herr Hauptsturmführer.’ The Gestapo man tried giving a friendly smile, as if he were taking Meissner into his confidence. ‘I know we got off on the wrong foot, and I know you see yourself as the Watchmaker’s protector, but I do have a genuine reason for wanting to question him.’
‘Really? What about?’
‘About the bombing raids on the Buna Werke.’
Meissner laughed. ‘You think the Watchmaker is working for the Americans? Oh, that’s priceless.’
Hustek compressed his lips into a sneer. ‘It’s only recently that Buna has become a target. We’re convinced the Polish underground have passed information about it to the Allies. But they must have had someone on the inside to tell them about the factory in the first place. The Watchmaker works in one of the instrument shops. He speaks to Polish workers every day. He’s an obvious suspect.’
‘For God’s sake, man! Buna is full of Polish workers. Thousands of them pass through the factory gates every day. They don’t need the Watchmaker to tell them what’s going on inside. Besides, if you knew him as I do, you’d know it couldn’t be him.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because the only thing that interests him is chess. Nothing else matters to him any more.’
‘But I still have two men missing.’
‘They’re bound to turn up eventually. Men go absent without leave all the time, even in the SS.’
‘Not in the Gestapo.’
‘I take it you’ve checked with their families?’
Hustek responded with a disdainful look.
‘I’m afraid I really can’t help you.’
‘Can’t or won’t?’
Meissner ignored the question. ‘If there’s nothing more, I have work to do.’
Hustek stood and strode to the door. Putting his hand on the handle, he turned back. ‘Do I have to play against the Kike?’
‘If you don’t, you lose by default.’
Hustek nodded, with a look that said he had known that this was how it would be. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘far be it from me to be the one who saves a Yid from the gas chamber.’ A sinister smile formed on his face. ‘You know, Herr Hauptsturmführer, you should pay a visit to Birkenau yourself sometime, see what it’s like. It’s quite something to see the gassing – hundreds of people so alive one minute and so still, like a tableau in a waxworks, the next. And the screams, you should hear the screams. Gives you a real sense of a job well done.’
The mask of impassivity that Meissner had been wearing fell away. ‘I wouldn’t know,’ he replied, his voice tight with suppressed rage. ‘The only death I’ve ever seen is the kind where men get blown to pieces or roast to death in a burning tank. And the more I think of it, the more I realize what a fitting end that would be for you.’
Hustek was determined to have the last word: ‘A word to the wise, Herr Hauptsturmführer. That journal of yours . . . I would keep it in a safe place if I were you. You wouldn’t want the wrong people to know what was written in it.’
‘How do you—?’
But Hustek had gone, leaving Meissner with the answer to a question that had been eating at him for months.
1962
Kerk de Krijtberg, Amsterdam
‘I realized then,’ Meissner said, ‘that I could not put off apply
ing for my transfer any longer. I immediately wrote to my comrade, Peter Sommer, in my old regiment. By then they were back on the Eastern front, so it took nearly a month before I got his reply.’
‘What did he say?’ Willi wanted to know.
‘That the fighting was as brutal as ever, that he had been promoted again, and that yes, if I wanted it, there was a place for me as an adjutant in the staff HQ.’
‘When would that have been?’ Emil asked.
‘Early October, perhaps a week before your game with Hustek. I had thought he would have been back for you, but he never came near. And then there was the uprising in Birkenau.’
‘An uprising? By the prisoners?’
‘Yes. The Sonderkommando at one of the crematoria rebelled. There was a small battle. They killed several guards and NCOs, and blew up the crematorium. Then they broke through the wire and ran off.’
‘What happened to them?’
‘I don’t think many of them escaped. Those who were caught were brought back and executed. But the question on everyone’s lips was how could Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz have managed to get hold of weapons and explosives? It was inconceivable. Bär was apoplectic with rage, and Hustek bore the brunt of it. He’d been so distracted by his determination to neutralize Emil that he’d completely missed what had been going on under his very nose. He was told in no uncertain terms to get to the bottom of it. I think he even forgot about his missing men.’
‘So everything went quiet in the run-up to the game?’
‘Not quite. Oberscharführer Hustek still had one roll of the dice left.’
1 Sankt Georgen an der Gusen was very close to the Mauthusen concentration camp.
2 The Monowitz camp was divided into two sections, north and south. Between them, a service road ran east to west, bordered by a double fence of barbed wire, with the inner fence electrified for good measure, and a gate at each end. The service road did not extend all the way to the eastern perimeter, so at this point it was possible to walk between the sections.
34.
THE GRÜNFELD DEFENCE
October 1944
The Death's Head Chess Club Page 28
