by Peter Watt
‘Hands up!’ a female voice called in German and Herff obeyed, rising unsteadily to his feet.
Three Russian soldiers, one of them a woman, approached with their weapons levelled at him. He had enough knowledge to know she wore the insignia of a political officer; she looked to be in her mid-twenties and was in fact very pretty, with startling blue eyes and high cheekbones.
‘I am a German soldier who has lost his unit. I was attempting to find a unit to surrender to,’ he said to the young woman, who watched him with hostile eyes.
‘Papers,’ she demanded, holding out her hand. Herff reached inside his briefcase, and produced the papers and photo identifying him as a German soldier from an infantry regiment. The woman scanned the papers and looked up at him.
‘You are not dressed in the uniform of a soldier,’ she said in a cold, flat voice. ‘We have been instructed to locate any SS who might be attempting to elude capture.’
Herff felt a cold chill of fear. ‘I . . . my uniform was in such bad shape that I changed into civilian clothes.’
The girl continued to stare at Herff, oblivious to the roar of shells passing overhead. ‘Take off your shirt,’ she ordered.
Herff hesitated.
The young woman rammed the short barrel of her machine gun into Herff’s stomach with such force that it knocked him to the ground. He knew he must obey or be shot. He sat up, and struggled to remove his heavy coat and then his shirt.
‘Up,’ the woman commanded and Herff rose to his feet to stand half-naked before her. The woman glanced over his body, her eyes settling on his right arm below the shoulder. Herff had gone through a lot of pain to have the incriminating SS tattoo removed from his arm.
‘You are SS,’ the woman said with hate in her voice. ‘Your attempt to conceal your identity has not worked. We have found others with the same wound.’
‘It was a wound I received a few days ago,’ Herff protested but he could see by her demeanour that the Russian woman was not fooled – or simply did not care. ‘I am a soldier in the army – not SS.’
The woman raised her submachine gun level with Herff’s head. ‘You have been found guilty of being a member of the SS and sentenced to death by this people’s court.’
Herff raised his hands as a plea to the Russian and, for some strange reason, had a fleeting thought that halfway across the world Ilsa Stahl would be facing death too – he had sent the order through to Saigon only a few days ago. He had known that her death was a useless gesture but he had ordered it anyway.
The submachine gun bucked in the Russian woman’s hands, and the bullets tore into Herff’s head, neck and chest. As Herff felt the life go quickly from him, he had a picture in his head of Ilsa Stahl’s body jerking in the last moments of her slow death at the end of a piano wire.
FIFTEEN
The Gestapo officer was a fit-looking man in his late thirties, with blue eyes and oiled raven-black hair.
‘I am Captain Kurt Wessel,’ he said to Ilsa after she had ascended the ladder to the wharf. ‘You are my prisoner and I welcome you to hell.’
His words chilled Ilsa to the core.
‘I am an American war correspondent and must be accorded the rights of the Geneva Convention,’ she countered, with as much defiance as she could muster. The Gestapo officer only smiled coldly.
‘As far as your American friends are concerned, you are probably dead,’ he said, pushing Ilsa towards a black French sedan car with a Japanese driver behind the wheel. She was ushered into the back seat and Captain Wessel slid in beside her, while the two Japanese soldiers stood aside to allow the vehicle to drive away.
Ilsa sat in silence throughout the trip, taking in the wide boulevards of a Far East city reminiscent of Paris. Eventually they pulled up in front of an imposing colonial building and Wessel ordered her to get out. Ilsa knew that she had nowhere to run in a city occupied by the Japanese, and where she could not speak the language of the local people, as well as not being able to speak French.
‘I must apologise for your reception, Miss Stahl,’ Wessel said unexpectedly. ‘But one of those monkeys on the wharf understood German.’
Confused, Ilsa stared blankly at the German officer.
Without another word, he directed Ilsa inside the building. Vietnamese clerks sat at desks shuffling papers; they hardly looked up as Wessel escorted his prisoner in. He snapped something at one of the clerks, who disappeared for a moment before returning with a squat, vicious-looking Japanese officer. The man had severe pockmarks on his face and his dark eyes were cold as death.
‘This is Colonel Hitachi,’ Wessel said quietly, saluting. ‘He is my superior in Saigon and I think he plans to have me killed if Germany is defeated. But he does not understand German.’
‘Do you think Germany will fall to the Allies?’ Ilsa asked, glancing with fear at the Japanese officer watching her as a snake watches its prey.
‘It is inevitable,’ Wessel replied. ‘I only pray that the Americans and British get to Berlin before the Russians. The Russkies will not be so generous in their treatment of us after what we have done to their people and country.’
Wessel said something to the Japanese officer, who nodded and walked away. The German officer returned his attention to Ilsa.
‘I know who you are, and it was my role to execute you. However, if you wish to live, you will have to trust me and also provide me with the assistance I need to escape this foreign hell. The French can have the place back, for all I care. When Germany falls, the Gestapo will be at the top of the list of wanted. In your position as a journalist, I think, you will be able to pull strings to help me and my family escape to America.’
Ilsa understood that if she cooperated with this German secret policeman, she had a chance of surviving. ‘I will not be able to help you whilst I am a prisoner of war,’ she said.
‘Let me work things out and we both might survive the war,’ Wessel said, taking her elbow and guiding her through a door into a dimly lit passage. It housed a row of cells that stank of human excrement and vomit. Ilsa gagged and put her hand over her mouth.
‘I am sorry I must bring you here but I will endeavour to keep you out of Colonel Hitachi’s hands for as long as I can,’ he said.
A short Vietnamese gaoler wearing a pair of oversized dark trousers and a white shirt stood at the end of the corridor. Wessel gestured to him, and the man came forward with a set of keys on an iron ring. He led them past empty cells with their doors wide open, until they came to the last cell in the row. It was a windowless room made of concrete, with nothing more than a filthy straw mattress and bucket inside. The solid timber door had a small observation opening, which was the prisoner’s only link to the world outside the prison cell.
‘This is the best I can offer for the moment,’ Wessel said as Ilsa stepped inside the small cell. ‘On a whim, the colonel has emptied the gaol by having all the prisoners of the Imperial Japanese Empire executed yesterday. He is completely insane, but that does not prevent him from being the chief of the Kempeitai here.’
The Gestapo officer stepped back and the door was closed, leaving Ilsa alone in the darkened cell, until a light was switched on and filled the cell with a bilious brightness. When she was once again alone, Ilsa experienced a despair deeper than she had ever known before. At least when she had been a prisoner in the jungle, she had had the stimulation of life going on around her. In this desolate place she felt as if she had truly entered the reception area for hell.
That night it became obvious that prisoners were being brought in to occupy the empty cells. She could hear shouting, cries of misery and the clanging of doors shut, until an eerie silence fell on the building, broken only by moans of anguish.
Ilsa finally fell into an exhausted sleep and was woken a few hours later by the high-pitched screams of a woman in agony. Ilsa huddled in the corner of her cell, hugging her knees to her chin and praying that God would protect her from whatever evil was causing so much pain to this poor woman
.
The next morning, peering through the opening in her cell door, she saw a European woman, battered and bleeding, being thrown into the cell opposite her own. She wondered whether this was the woman who had been screaming last night. The door clanked shut and Ilsa waited until she was sure the corridor was empty.
‘Can you hear me?’ she called softly in English through the aperture in her door. ‘Who are you?’
Ilsa did not receive a reply and was disappointed. In the brief glimpse she had caught of the woman she had recognised her as once a beautiful woman, and in a small way it comforted her that she was not alone in this hell.
She returned to a corner of her cell and slumped against the wall. A few minutes later she could hear the other woman sobbing. ‘If you can hear me, please let me know,’ Ilsa called quietly.
Eventually the sobbing ceased and a thin, strained voice replied, ‘Who is calling to me?’ Ilsa was startled to hear the woman speak in German.
‘I am Ilsa Stahl, an American war correspondent,’ she replied in German. ‘I was born in Germany.’
After a pause the other woman’s voice trailed to her. ‘My name is Herlinde Kroth and I am a German citizen. My father is a high-ranking intelligence officer.’
Ilsa felt her hopes shatter completely. If this were what the Japanese were doing to their allies – including the daughter of a high-ranking German officer – what real hope did she have?
*
The stench of death had been everywhere. Bodies of men, women and children had lain in the village streets, only recently dead but already resembling skeletons. Karl and Pham had moved cautiously. There had been no sign of Japanese soldiers so close to Saigon – nor any evidence of the French administration.
Karl and Pham had landed on the western side of the Indochinese peninsula in the region known as Cochin China. There they had been met by a relative of Pham, an old man with a wispy grey beard and stooped by age. He was practically toothless, and tears ran down his wizened cheeks when he met his nephew.
That night, Karl, dressed in a white shirt and dark trousers similar to the disguise worn by Pham, had sat around a fireplace eating spiced fish with the old man’s family. Karl had not been able to understand the conversation going on around him, but he had sensed that all was not well.
‘A couple of weeks before we arrived here,’ Pham had told him afterwards, ‘the Japanese forced the French army to surrender and interned the government administrators. The Japanese have forced the peasants to grow jute and peanuts instead of rice, and have seized any supplies of rice they can find. The people are starting to starve.’
For the next few weeks the two men had moved from village to village on foot, avoiding Japanese patrols. Moving through the countryside of rubber plantations and thick scrub, they had seen the result of the desperate Japanese policy of forcing an enslaved nation to supply its war needs. People everywhere were starving. The gold coinage the men carried ensured that they were usually able to buy what little food there was available for sale, but sometimes they went hungry too. Karl’s European appearance did not raise much suspicion and he did not have to try to pass as a German engineer. It seemed he was perceived as just another Frenchman on the run to avoid internment or as one of the French nationals the Japanese trusted as collaborators.
With the fall of the French administration in Indochina, the original plan to enter Saigon and make contact with French officials secretly working for the Free French forces was disrupted. Now they would have to make their way to the town of Tây Ninh, north of Saigon, to make contact with members of the Cao Dai cult. The Cao Dai had sprung up after the First World War, espousing a spiritual movement that included a mix of secular and religious ideals. Amongst its saints were Buddha, Joan of Arc, Jesus Christ, Sun Yat-sen and Victor Hugo. The cult had suffered persecution under the French administration and members had appealed to the Japanese occupiers for protection. Pham knew that their best chance to make contact with the German woman being held by the dreaded Kempeitai was through a member of the cult who was related to his uncle.
When they reached the hamlet town of Tây Ninh, Pham took them to a well-tended brick home built in the French style, with white stone walls surrounding a well-kept garden and fishponds; an oasis from the death and misery of the streets. They were met by the servants of the owner, a Vietnamese medical doctor trained in Paris, who enjoyed Japanese patronage.
Pham and Karl were requested to wait inside a spacious room adorned with pictures of the Japanese Emperor. They sat on a comfortable divan, while a pretty young servant girl wearing a long white dress served them coffee.
In a matter of minutes a man around Karl’s age and wearing a white suit and tie appeared. He had gold-rimmed spectacles and was prematurely balding. Pham rose and spoke softly in Vietnamese as the man looked Karl up and down.
‘I speak English, Major Mann,’ the white-suited host said. ‘I am Doctor van Nuyen and I believe that you have the authority to speak for the British government.’
Karl stood to address the Vietnamese doctor, surprised to hear that Pham had so elevated his status.
‘I have been sent here to make contact with a German national,’ Karl said and the doctor raised his hand.
‘I know of this,’ he said. ‘But you must not know that Germany is on the verge of surrendering to the Allies. The war in Europe is almost over. Berlin is in its death throes at the hands of the Russians.’
Stunned, Karl allowed a few moments for the news to sink in. If what he was told were true, then his mission really had no meaning. He and Pham had been isolated from any outside news for so long that a war had ended on the other side of the world and they were only just learning of it now.
‘You are sure of that?’ Karl countered.
An expression of annoyance darkened the Vietnamese doctor’s face. ‘We are not all ignorant chinks, Major Mann,’ he calmly replied. ‘I am certain the Germans have been defeated, and it will only be a matter of time before the Japanese leave our lands to retreat back to their own.’
‘Won’t that be, as we would say, inconvenient for you?’ Karl questioned.
‘Please, sit down and I will have food prepared for you,’ the doctor said politely. ‘My cook is the best in town.’
Karl sat back down on the divan.
‘I am useful to the Japanese, as I am a man skilled in medicine,’ Nuyen explained. ‘But I am also a loyal subject of our Emperor Báo Dai and know that we need the French to return, to establish stability. If they do not return and take power, Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Minh will enforce their communist state on us, and it is not in the nature of us freedom-loving Indochinese to accept dictatorship. This is a complex society of competing groups. Your comrade, Pham, is a Catholic. I am a follower of our great founder, of Ngo Van Chieu’s ideals of Cao Dai. We are also living in a devoutly Buddhist country. Yet we all agree that communism is not the answer. The Japanese have kept stability – until now. When their defeat comes we will still need them to resist the Viet Minh in the vacuum that will be created before the French return. That is why I retain a relationship with our enemy.’
Karl understood that the Vietnamese doctor was on the side of the French, and this reassured him a little. He was playing a dangerous game, though. If Ho Chi Minh gained power after the war he would almost certainly be executed as a collaborator.
‘I am still under orders to make contact with the German woman,’ Karl said. ‘Can you help me?’
‘I will try,’ the doctor replied. ‘I have contacts in the Kempeitai who may help. But in the meantime I will arrange to hide you both. I have a room in the building where you will be safe from prying eyes.’
Pham said something in Vietnamese and the doctor replied in English for Karl’s sake.
‘My servants can be trusted,’ he said. ‘They do not wish to join the many around us starving to death.’
For the next few days Karl and Pham enjoyed the excellent food, hospitality and protection of the doct
or. It felt strange to be living in such comfort after weeks of hardship, and Karl felt guilty that they were being so well fed when so many were starving outside these walls.
After a week, Doctor van Nuyen returned from Saigon with the news Karl had been waiting for. ‘There is a German woman being held in the Kempeitai prison in Saigon,’ he told Pham and Karl. ‘But I do not know who she is. I have also been informed that the police are holding an American woman.’
Karl frowned. If this were the woman he had been sent to make contact with, her circumstances had changed dramatically. To be suddenly imprisoned did not speak well of the current unstable situation in the country.
‘It does not seem that you will be able to complete your mission,’ Pham said to Karl.
Karl reflected on this. He was isolated in a country very alien to him; he had only a rudimentary grasp of French and no Vietnamese at all. If the Germans were on the verge of defeat, his false identity papers as a German engineer would be of no use to him. He was faced with the dilemma of continuing with his mission or simply attempting to get out of the country, both of which would require Pham’s assistance.
‘I have to verify that the German woman being held by the Japanese is the one I seek,’ Karl said.
‘It is better that you return to Malaya,’ Pham said. ‘Making contact with the Kempeitai is suicidal. The doctor has told me the Japanese are rounding up anyone they suspect of holding defeatist ideas. Even members of the Cao Dai are being interrogated. The commander of the secret police in Saigon is a brutal and sadistic man, who needs little excuse to have those in his custody tortured and executed.’
