Pursuit

by Robert L. Fish

  He dined alone, read for a brief period, and then went up to bed. But sleep would not come; it was too close to the time he had to make his decision. At last he sat up, took out a book, and put the radio on, tuning it to some martial music being played, and prepared to read himself into sleepiness. And then, suddenly, he sat up, every nerve tingling. The music had been abruptly cut off, in mid-note it seemed, and in the silence that fell a hysterical voice suddenly broke.

  Von Schraeder permitted himself a broad smile. They had done it. They had actually done it. It didn’t automatically mean amnesty, or that he would not need his own plan, but at least now there was a chancel He bent closer to the radio, not wishing to raise the volume, and listened for the first time to the actual words. And then he felt the blood drain from his face. The voice was too, too familiar.

  “… if I speak to you today it is in order that you should hear my voice and should know that I am unhurt and well, and secondly you should know of a crime unparalleled in German history.

  “A very small clique of ambitious, irresponsible, and, at the same time, senseless and stupid officers have concocted a plot to eliminate me, and with me, the staff of the High Command of the Wehrmacht.

  “The bomb planted by Colonel Count Stauffenberg exploded two meters to the right of me. It seriously wounded a number of my true and loyal collaborators, one of whom has died. I, myself, am entirely unhurt, aside from some very minor scratches, bruises, and burns. I regard this as a confirmation of the task imposed upon me by Providence …”

  Von Schraeder stared at the floor, barely hearing the strident voice. So the plot to assassinate Hitler had failed, but then he had never had any great hopes for its success. Besides, even had the plan been successful, he doubted the Allies would have agreed to amnesty. It was the reason he had developed his own plan. The voice on the radio was continuing.

  “… the circle of these usurpers is very small and has nothing in common with the spirit of the German Wehrmacht and, above all, none with the German people. It is a gang of criminal elements which will be destroyed without mercy …”

  Von Schraeder leaned over and switched the radio off. For a long time he stared at the floor; then he came to his feet and padded over to his dispatch case. He unlocked it and took out a sealed envelope that had been prepared over a month before. He opened it, checked the contents carefully, and then reached for the telephone. It took several minutes before the operator at the camp switchboard answered; von Schraeder could only assume they were listening to the radio. He cleared his throat.

  “Dr. Schlossberg in Ward Forty-six,” he said into the telephone, and waited. When the ringing was finally answered, he said to the orderly at the other end, “This is Colonel von Schraeder. Tell Dr. Schlossberg I’m sorry to wake him, but I’m afraid I’m coming down with something.”

  They sat in the small, sterile office of Dr. Schlossberg in Ward Forty-six, the colonel neat as always in his dapper uniform, the doctor with a laboratory coat over his pajamas.”

  “… headache, vomiting. It’s typhus, without a doubt,” von Schraeder said, looking the picture of health. He waited for the doctor to speak, but the thin baldheaded man sat silent, watching the colonel with no expression at all on his face. Von Schraeder smiled; the shock he had felt on hearing Hitler’s voice when he was supposedly dead was now completely gone. Valkyrie had always been problematical at best; now it was time to put his own plan into effect. It was why he had perfected it, gone to such troubles with it, made such complicated arrangements over it. He watched the doctor’s face. “I expect this attack will be fatal.”

  “I’m sure,” said the doctor, again with no expression. “And after you are dead?”

  “I expect to be cremated together with my uniform and any effects I brought with me to the ward. I expect to be put into a burial sack and placed into the crematorium without any autopsy, since they seldom do autopsies on typhus victims—”

  “Not seldom,” Schlossberg said. “Never. It’s the one disease we all respect around here.”

  “I meant never,” von Schraeder said. “You may be sure I was quite informed on that point.”

  “I’m sure.” The doctor closed his eyes a moment, as if resting them against the bright glare of the lights reflected from the tile walls, and then reopened them. “Of course, after Colonel von Schraeder is dead and cremated, someone will be born in his place.”

  “Exactly. It’s the law of life.”

  “And who, exactly, will be born in the place of Colonel von Schraeder?”

  Von Schraeder leaned forward, his eyes intent on the doctor’s face.

  “His name will be Benjamin Grossman. His papers are all here.” He tapped the envelope he had brought with him. “Grossman is in Ward Forty-six for experimental work, under your jurisdiction. When your experiments on him are complete—that is, when your plastic surgery is completely healed—then Benjamin Grossman is to be transferred to Natzweiler Camp in the Vosges. And your part in the matter will be forgotten.”

  “Grossman?” The doctor stared. “You intend to take the identity of a Jew?”

  “That is correct.” Von Schraeder smiled.

  “And be transferred to a camp as an inmate?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Do you know what you are doing? You’ve seen how—” The doctor seemed to realize he had been on the verge of criticizing the SS treatment of prisoners. He changed his argument. “It will mean being circumcised, which can be extremely painful for an adult. And most of the prisoners—the Jews—speak Yiddish, and you don’t. And—”

  “I know everything it will mean,” Von Schraeder said calmly. “Believe me, I’ve studied this plan for many months. I know it will mean being circumcised, and I know it is painful. It also means extensive work on my face, and I’m not looking forward to that. Or having my head shaved, or any of the rest of it. Although,” he added, smiling, “after some of the barbers I’ve encountered in the camps, having my head shaved should be no great sacrifice—”

  “Anyone who comes into Ward Forty-six as a patient has his head shaved in any event. It’s a precaution against typhus.”

  “I suppose so.” Von Schraeder shrugged. “And I shall have to starve myself, which is a pity, although I never allowed myself to get fat as a pig, like Mittendorf. And I shall either have to stop smoking, or discover how prisoners manage to get cigarettes, which I know they do, even without money.”

  “And what of your not speaking Yiddish? Have you considered that?”

  “I believe,” von Schraeder said evenly, “that I have considered every possible problem. In the part of Germany where I come from, the Jews never spoke Yiddish. They considered it—one of the few things they considered rightly—to be a bastard language fit for the Russians and the Poles, but far beneath the dignity of a German. And that’s the kind of Jew Benjamin Grossman is. An upper-class German Jew.” He swung his chair around to face the doctor squarely. “Well? What do you think?”

  “Of the scheme?”

  “No, Of my face.”

  Dr. Schlossberg nodded. Contrary to the colonel’s idea, the doctor was really not surprised at all. He had long since come to the conclusion that it was his ability as a plastic surgeon that had accounted for his transfer to Buchenwald under von Schraeder’s sponsorship.

  “Yes,” he said slowly. “It is very possible. With no intent to insult you, Colonel, but merely speaking as a professional man, I may say that your face is remarkably without distinction. The features are small and quite regular. A slight change to the nose, the raising of an eyebrow, a small scar—nothing disturbing,” he added quickly before von Schraeder could object, “merely character-indicating.”

  “What about the cheekbones?” von Schraeder asked curiously. They might have been discussing the proper selection of a uniform for a formal party.

  “I do not believe it vital. Starvation alters a man’s face in a remarkable fashion. Before you leave here, your cheekbones will naturally be far mor
e prominent.”

  “Except, Doctor, I do not expect to continue starving forever,” von Schraeder said dryly, “but I do expect to remain disguised forever.”

  “True. Odd that I should have overlooked that,” the doctor said apologetically. “Still, I haven’t done any serious plastic work for some time. However, it should be no problem.” In an equally apologetic tone of voice he went on. “And what if, under the anesthetic, my knife should happen to slip? I mention this because I’m sure you’ve considered the possibility. You seem to have considered everything else,” he added bitterly.

  “Of course I considered it. Either Benjamin Grossman leaves Ward Forty-six to be transferred to Natzweiler, or sealed papers being held somewhere, by someone, will automatically be opened. Tell me,” he went on in the same amused tone, “have you listened to your radio this evening?”

  “No.” The doctor was mystified by the question.

  “Ah, well, you’ll hear of it in the morning, if not sooner. There was a serious attempt on Hitler’s life this afternoon; a bomb exploded at a conference. He wasn’t scratched—can you imagine?—but all those involved will be rounded up. The purge of ’34 will be a tea party in comparison. They will strangle colonels with picture wire; they will drown generals in their own excrement. You should never have gotten involved …”

  The doctor’s face had gone white. Von Schraeder smiled and reached over, patting Schlossberg on the shoulder.

  “But there is no need to discuss unpleasant alternatives, especially those that need never arise. What other questions do you have?”

  The doctor stared down at the hands in his lap a few moments and spoke without looking up. “What of the nurses I will need to work with me in the surgery?”

  “You will use orderlies and they will be prisoners. Who, I’m afraid, will not survive. That will also be your responsibility.”

  “I see.” Now the doctor looked up. His expression was more curious than anything else. “And what assurance do I have, when the surgery is complete and the stitches have finally been taken out, that I, myself, will survive?”

  Von Schraeder looked honestly surprised at the question.

  “The best. My word. Besides, I will need you to arrange my transfer to Natzweiler, to the experimental work there. The papers are all complete; as an ex-Sonderkommando and as a volunteer—in quotes—at Ward Forty-six at Buchenwald, I shall go there as an orderly, and the papers will be signed by you. And at that stage, being a prisoner, I would scarcely be in any position to harm you.” He sounded slightly hurt by the question. “Besides, what kind of a man do you think I am? If you help save my life, do you think I am so lacking in gratitude that I would allow you to be killed? That’s a monstrous accusation.”

  The sheer inconsistency of the man almost took the doctor’s breath away; he mentally shook his head. He means it, he thought; how very odd, but von Schraeder actually means it!

  “As a matter of fact,” the colonel went on, “among those papers are an introduction to a Major Gehrmann, who will introduce you to a group dedicated to saving people like you, if the necessity should arise. There is also a check made out to cash on a special Swiss account, a bank in Zurich, and signed with a signature they will recognize electronically. You will be well paid for your work, Doctor.” And if Gehrmann is picked up and executed for his part in Valkyrie, can I help that? Although the check is honest enough.

  Dr. Schlossberg shook his head. “You’re a strange man, Colonel.”

  “Benjamin,” von Schraeder said gently with a smile. “Benjamin Grossman. A product of our times, is all, Doctor. Shall we get started?”

  The death of Colonel Helmut von Schraeder caused small stir in the camp; he had not been there long enough to make friends, nor had he appeared to be the sort to make many friends in any event. In Berlin the news was also received with small concern, even by people who, like Willi Gehrmann, had known him for some time. There was too much to worry about at the moment, with the thorough investigation being conducted into the bombing plot, to be greatly concerned about a colonel who died of typhus in a camp hospital. Too many others of equal name and higher rank were being taken prisoner by the Gestapo and the SS and died in far more terrible fashion.

  And five days later, when a bandaged Benjamin Grossman lay in pain in his moldy bed in Ward Forty-six, slowly starving on a liquid diet that consisted of a thin tasteless soup and nothing else, desperately wanting a cigarette and wondering, for the first time, if possibly his plan had been unnecessary and that he might have done better taking his chances with the Strasbourg Group, Dr. Schlossberg came by and sat down beside his bed.

  “Maidanek fell to the Russians yesterday,” he said softly. “You were right; the camp was captured almost intact.” He wondered even as he spoke whatever had happened to the girl Sarah; had he known, he may or may not have been concerned. She had been stoned to death by the inmates of Field V the day she appeared there after von Schraeder’s leaving. “The gas chambers and the ovens hadn’t been touched; the burial pits were as they were. Oh, someone tried to burn the ovens and managed to destroy the wooden shed over them, but that was about all. Most of the prisoners were still there, and even six SS guards, and they were hung by the Russians on the spot. Mittendorf got away, of course, but six of the lesser men were caught.”

  There was a strange sound from the bandaged face on the stained pillow. Benjamin Grossman was chuckling.

  Chapter 5

  The boxcar stank with the combined smells of manure, human excrement, vomit, urine, and the sweat of the eighty-four men packed into it. By dint of his greater energy and strength, Grossman had managed a spot on the floor near the door, so that he could press his nose against the crack and get an occasional breath of the hot September air, although more often it was a choking blast of smoke from the engine ahead. How the others managed to survive in the depths of the car he neither knew nor cared; he had long felt that any concentration camp inmate truly dedicated to survival would survive; only the weak, he was convinced, actually perished.

  He swayed with the jostling of the car, scarcely aware of the pressure of knees on his back, slightly lightheaded from hunger and the heat, and thought back on the moment he had first seen his new face in a mirror. Schlossberg had unwrapped the bandages carefully and then stood back, unable to hide his pleasure in his work. The shaven-headed man in the striped prisoner’s pajama uniform that stared back at Grossman from the glass looked fearful, as if dreading the sight, and then slowly relaxed. It seemed unbelievable that he was looking at himself; Schlossberg had produced a miracle! True, he had always been fond of his old face; it had pleased women and that was important, still, his present face was not ugly except in the sense that all Jews were ugly. Schlossberg had given him a rather interesting nose, nothing at all like the huge hooked nose so characteristic of the cartoon Jew in the national press. And it was amazing the difference created by the changed eyebrow alignment, and the small insertion in his cheeks. And the scar was truly a work of genius, covering as it did most of the tiny stitches along the jaw. The only worry was his penis; he had heard that circumcision greatly reduced the pleasures of sex. He could only hope this was merely a rumor.

  He shoved his head closer to the crack of the door, trying to get more air, scratching automatically at the bed sores he had developed in Ward Forty-six, and calculated they should be nearly halfway to the Natzweiler camp by now. And that was another brilliant part of his plan, the selection of Natzweiler. To begin with, it was neither a labor camp nor an extermination camp; it was a detention camp where a good deal of experimental work went on under Professor Hirt; and with his papers he was assured a safe and soft job as an orderly. For in addition to the strong letter in his folder signed with the authority of none other than the late Colonel Helmut von Schraeder, Dr. Schlossberg had spoken to Hirt on the phone, hinting at monetary reward from the prisoner Grossman, once the unpleasantness of the war was concluded.

  But equally important with his t
reatment at the hands of Natzweiler personnel was the fact that he calculated the Allies should liberate Natzweiler in a month at the most, if not in mere weeks. And there he would be, with his new identity, an object of pity to the Allied troops, and with almost assured co-operation for a rapid visit to Switzerland and his money there. One thing was sure; now that Hitler had escaped the assassination plot, the war would go on for a long, long time. But Natzweiler—and Benjamin Grossman—would be out of it in short order.

  There was a sudden jolt as the train began slowing down; then it crept awhile, its engine heaving, and finally braked to a stop. There was a rattle as the door was being opened, but after being released for a mere several inches, a bar was jammed behind it, limiting its aperture. But at least air could flow in a bit, and those inside who had been silent began to revive.

  “Where are we?”

  Grossman tried to get his bearings. “Frankfurt, I think.”

  A head pressed into the welcome air above him.

  “Yes, it’s Frankfurt. I used to live in Keisterbach; it’s a suburb. We’re in the freight yard.” The man tried to twist his head to see better. “They’re unhooking the engine.”

  “What! Why, for God’s sake!”

  “We’ll worry about that later,” another voice said, a deep voice, and with it a large, knotted hand gripped Ben’s shoulder tightly, dragging him away from the opening with small effort. “Here! Let someone else get some air.”

  The man who had spoken, rather than taking the place he had cleared, pushed a small boy into the opening, holding him firmly by the arm to prevent his collapsing. In the shaft of early-morning daylight that slotted into the car, growing in intensity, Ben took one look at the face of the man who had pulled him from the door, and decided against objecting. This one, definitely, was a survivor! How had a man like this ever permitted the door crack to be usurped the night before when they had left Weimar? He looked at the pale face of the boy, breathing deeply, and then up to the face above him.