The two men rushed out of the office and down the stark, artificially lit corridor, their shoes clipping on the white tiles. As they approached the labouring room the noise grew louder and more anguished: a combination of crying and moaning, interspersed with the occasional scream of pain and distress.
Inside the room they were met by the sight of a labouring woman with her feet strapped in wide abduction, the lithotomy position, her exposed protuberant belly and extruded navel glistening with sweat. Her contorted face emitted a howl like a wounded animal as she arched her back and turned her head to bury it in the pillow beside her.
“A quick update, please,” Oskar said, rolling up his sleeves and striding confidently towards the foot end of the patient.
Two midwives were gathered around the lower end of the bed, their sleeves up around their elbows, their hands smeared with blood and mucus. The room smelled of surgical spirits, of perspiration and of amniotic fluid and meconium – a salty-sweet, ripe smell that pervaded the delivery suite from floor to ceiling.
“This is Magda, Doctor, sixteen years old, first pregnancy now at full term. Her cervix is fully dilated but the head is high and will not engage the pelvic inlet. It is typical of a contracted pelvis and I have the forceps on standby for you, Doctor.”
Huber glanced across at a stainless steel trolley covered in thick, snow-white drapes and adorned with a variety of fearsome-looking steel surgical instruments: long delivery forceps, short delivery forceps, a few hooks and assorted items that more closely resembled tools of torture than obstetric saviours.
“Magda,” Oskar said to the young girl writhing on the bed, “I need to examine you again. I am sorry but this will be uncomfortable, my dear.”
He turned to Huber with a pained expression on his face and an attempt at a discreet whisper which failed.
“Why are they so young, Rolph?”
Huber knew the answer but could not bring himself to admit it: fertility.
Magda moaned loudly as Oskar inserted his examining fingers and probed her pelvis from within, assessing the birth canal and the position of the baby’s head. With his free left hand he palpated her gravid belly roughly, causing even more distress to the poor girl.
“What does the foetal heart sound like?” Oskar asked a midwife.
“It has been strong, doctor, 150 beats per minute and no decelerations,” said a stocky midwife, producing a cone-shaped, metal foetal stethoscope and pressing the wide end against Magda’s belly and her ear to the other. She listened and then met Oskar’s eyes and nodded.
“I will try and deliver the baby with forceps,” Oskar announced, licking his lips nervously as he took a deep breath. “The baby’s head is very high, Rolph, very high.”
Huber nodded.
“What can I do?”
“Encourage Magda, perhaps administer some nitrous oxide if you have it.”
“Oh yes, Doctor, we have everything you could need here,” a midwife replied, scurrying off and returning quickly, pushing a tall metal cylinder with a blue collar and black elephant-hose tubing connected to a rubber mask.
Huber positioned himself beside Magda and smiled. He recognised her, for he had personally supervised the final three months of her course of antenatal therapy. He was used to the fear that he saw in her inexperienced eyes.
“Will I be all right, Doctor?” she said to Huber, staring at him intently and gripping his hand tightly in hers.
Huber nodded and smiled.
“What about the baby?”
“Doctor Pahmeyer is an expert obstetrician, Magda, and he will do what is required to deliver your baby. Now you just lie back and breathe some of this gas. It will help.”
Oskar assembled the long-handled, hinged Kielland forceps, the clink of steel the only sound audible above Magda’s terrified hunger for the nitrous oxide. Then he dipped them in antiseptic followed by a coating of white obstetric cream to lubricate them.
“Take a deep breath now,” Oskar warned her as he began to insert the unnatural objects deep into Magda’s untried pelvis.
She screamed and contorted her sweaty body on the delivery table, her legs twisting and blanching under the brown leather restraining straps in the lithotomy poles.
Huber looked down, for it was like witnessing torture, or vivisection, and it turned his stomach. Obstetrics was such a brutal field of medicine compared to his genteel and cerebral neuroscience.
“No! No! No more, please!” Magda screamed as Huber tried to hold the nitrous oxide over her face, partly to administer the analgesic and soporific effects of the gas and partly to smother her ear-splitting screams.
Oskar sweated and struggled, his hands deep inside Magda’s pelvis with only the handles of the forceps visible.
“She will need an episiotomy, sister,” he said.
The midwife stepped forward with a pair of large surgical scissors and handed them to Oskar. Huber swallowed and looked down, perspiration building on his own lip and brow.
“No, don’t cut me, please don’t cut me!” Magda screamed, sobbing uncontrollably.
“We have Neocaine, Doctor,” the stocky midwife said.
“You do? The new French drug?” Oskar seemed surprised.
“Yes, Doctor.”
The midwife handed a steel and glass syringe to Oskar who injected some of the numbing Neocaine into Magda’s battered and bruised pelvic skin.
“You people are well equipped here at Heim Hochland, Rolph,” Oskar remarked.
“Only the best, Oskar,” Huber returned without looking up, drained by the suffering of his young patient.
Oskar made a deep cut in Magda’s perineum with the surgical scissors. Blood flowed from the gaping V-shaped gash, dripping into his lap and on to the tiled floor. Magda whimpered but not as distressingly as she had earlier.
“Magda, try and bear down, try and push this baby out when I say,” Oskar said, struggling with the forceps.
Magda writhed again, the deep pains within her lower abdomen, caused by the grating and jarring metal forceps against her pelvic bones and soft organs all but draining the colour from her glistening face.
“Right, I have the head in the forceps now. At the next contraction, you must push, Magda, push for all it is worth!” Oskar encouraged her, as he grasped the protruding handles of the forceps in both hands and braced himself.
A midwife stepped forward and placed her hand on Magda’s belly, feeling for the next contraction. She looked up and nodded.
“Push, Magda, push, dear!” the midwife said.
“Push, hard!” Oskar shouted.
Magda screamed. Oskar pulled, red in the face. Huber fumbled with the nitrous oxide, trying to keep it on Magda’s face but her writhing head and flailing arms kept knocking it out of his hands.
“No! No! Please, you are killing me! Stop! Please stop!”
Oskar relaxed and wiped his brow.
“We’ll try again with the next contraction.”
Everyone sighed, but Magda began to cry, a young girl trapped in a life and death situation not of her making and well beyond her control.
“Please no! Make it go away, make it go away!”
Oskar tried again for the next several contractions without any success. Blood poured from Magda’s pelvis. The midwives scurried about, mopping her brow, listening to the foetal heart beat, giving her a drink of water. Huber sat in a pool of sweat hunched over the nitrous oxide cylinder feeling nearly as drained as his patient.
“A word, Rolph,” Oskar said eventually, stepping away from the patient with a slight nod towards the stocky midwife as well.
Huber and Oskar conferred in the corner of the room, together with the midwife, in a tight huddle.
“The head will not come down. If we carry on the baby will die and so will the mother,” Oskar whispered.
The midwife nodded in agreement.
“What do you propose?” Huber asked, mopping his brow.
Oskar sighed and looked away, placing his han
ds squarely on his hips, before turning back to face Huber.
“The only thing I can do safely is to perforate the baby’s head, reduce it in size which will allow it to pass through the pelvis,” Oskar hissed.
Huber straightened as a look of horror crossed his face. This was not just any baby that Oskar was referring to in such dismissive terms, but a baby whose careful neurogenic development Huber had personally supervised through the latter stages of Magda’s pregnancy. This was a baby with the neurological potential to serve the aims of the Reich as a super intelligent Aryan in years to come.
“But that will kill the baby,” he protested.
Oskar nodded. He was a mess: blood-soaked white coat, arms and hands, his shoes and his trouser legs spattered with clumps of clotted blood. “Better the baby than the mother as well.”
“There must be something you can do,” Huber protested.
Oskar shook his head.
“What about a Caesarean section?”
“Do you know how high the mortality from a Caesarean is, Rolph? One in every two patients will die. She’ll probably develop puerperal fever and you know there is no effective cure.” Oskar shook his head.
Huber knew this all too well, having watched his darling Liesel fade away to the advancing and relentless ravages of Scarlet Fever. Once rampant bacterial infections had a grip on a patient, the prospects of recovery were remote.
“She is already at risk of puerperal fever after those attempts at forceps delivery, is she not?” Huber challenged him defiantly.
The midwife’s eyes flicked nervously from Huber to Oskar, and back. Oskar conceded a nod.
“Yes, but why take even more risk?”
“For the baby, Oskar. We cannot keep losing babies,” Huber implored. “Himmler is watching our progress,” he added in a terse but audible whisper. “He has expectations.”
Oskar walked away, turned back and walked towards them again, deep in thought. Perhaps the mention of Reichsführer Himmler had acted as a catalyst to focus his mind.
“What anaesthetics do you have here?” Oskar asked, turning to the midwife beside him.
“We have ether, of course. We have Avertin, Doctor, and… er… ethyl chloride.”
“No cyclopropane?” Oskar asked sharply.
“No, Doctor. I have not seen that used yet,” the midwife replied in a defeated tone, as though she had failed him.
“It is quite new, I suppose. Well then, who here can administer ether? It is probably the safest option. Can you, Rolph?”
Huber nodded.
“I did a few ether anaesthetics at Hadamar for sterilizations and I’m sure one of the midwives can assist me.” He glanced anxiously at the stocky midwife.
Oskar rubbed his blood stained hands together.
“Well, come on then, we have not got any time to waste. Let’s take Magda to the operating theatre.”
Magda lifted her head off the pillow with a look of sheer terror on her face.
“What are you doing?”
“Don’t worry, Magda, we are going to put you to sleep and deliver your baby by an operation,” Oskar explained with a reassuring smile.
Magda began to wail and sob.
“Will you have to cut me again?” she shrieked.
“You will be asleep, Magda, you’ll know nothing about it,” Oskar reassured her with a little pat on her shoulder.
“I’m going to die, I just know, I am going to die!”
Forty-One
“How long do you think you’ll be here this time?” Henry asked as he sliced leeks in the kitchen, holding them down with a wooden spatula, ensuring that he never touched the vegetables.
George sat in an armchair in the living room, her left leg elevated on the brown suede pouffe as she watched the television with the sound turned low. The news was on and images from Cairo in turmoil filled the screen.
“Am I cramping your style?” George replied without turning to look at Henry.
The short skirt she was wearing revealed a tightly applied white bandage around her left thigh. Henry glanced up, his eyes flitting momentarily to the bandages, then back to the leeks and sharp blade in his hand.
“When do you go back to see the Doctor?” he asked.
“Thursday. If all’s well, I can go back to Cairo.”
Henry hesitated. His scalp was itching where the skin had healed and he was desperate to scratch, his fingers aching to disobey his resolute will not to.
“Will you go back?” he asked.
George’s head spun around.
“Of course, why ever not? Just look at the telly, look at what’s happening there!” George gesticulated with both arms outstretched at the flickering scenes of civil disharmony on the streets of Cairo.
Henry sighed. He was beginning to feel lonely in his own apartment; unimportant in his six-year relationship. He swept the chopped leeks into a hot saucepan with the spatula, stirring the sizzling green discs ponderously, and looked up at the back of George’s head again.
“You haven’t asked me once about the tattoo.”
George began to twiddle her fingers.
“I’m afraid of where that conversation will take us,” she replied.
“In what way – my past, or Natasha?” Henry was surprised by his own candour, even though he recognised George’s displeasure over the way in which the tattoo was discovered.
“You never want to tell me anything anyway, always saying that everything is confidential and restricted,” George said, flicking her head around to face him.
“My past is not restricted. I have simply never known anything about it.”
“And that has changed?”
Henry nodded cautiously.
“Slowly, it is unfolding.”
George studied Henry closely, though he felt that she was looking at him like a journalist does, not a lover. Was he credible? Was there a story worth pursuing? How much time and energy should she devote to it?
“What about Vera?” George said.
A wry grin creased Henry’s mouth.
“As it turns out, I may have more in common with Vera than just you.” He regretted the attempt at humour the instant it flew off his lips.
George rolled her eyes and shook her head disapprovingly, like a mother admonishing a child for a blatantly stupid deed.
“Like what, exactly?” she asked.
“All of the victims have a number of startling, though almost inexplicable, similarities. It’s beginning to look as though I may well share many of them with… the victims.”
George frowned.
“What? Are you saying you may be in danger?”
Henry shrugged. It wasn’t that he wanted to play this down, nor that he felt invincible and untouchable; it was simply all too surreal for him to formulate a personal reaction.
“The leeks, Henry!” George said sharply as acrid smoke began to rise from the saucepan.
Henry reacted, stirring the sizzling leeks and then turning the gas down.
“Why doesn’t Bruce pull you off the investigation?” George asked, adjusting her position to see him better.
“I don’t want him to. I want this investigation to take me where I believe I am destined to go.”
“Where is that?”
“Where all the victims were born.”
George stared at him. He could see the anxiety growing in her eyes.
“And you too?”
Henry did not reply. George did not know what was printed in his passport.
“Where is that?” she asked.
Henry turned the gas off and walked into the lounge, sitting on the edge of the coffee table facing George. He placed a hand on her leg and she jumped involuntarily.
“Careful!”
“Sorry. George, I have never been this close to figuring out who I am, where I came from, why I am here. I cannot let this opportunity escape me now. I must see it through.”
She studied him closely. It felt like old times to Henry.
/> “So you haven’t told Bruce, have you?” she said.
Henry dropped his gaze momentarily, wringing his hands.
“Is it worth risking your life?” George asked in a warmer tone than she had used ever since arriving back from Cairo.
Henry looked up into her eyes as he took her hand between his. What was he looking for, he wondered? Was it that sparkle that used to excite him and make his legs weak, that sparkle that he increasingly found staring at him from his sergeant’s keen eyes?
“It is about my life, George, discovering who I am. Being a man without a past is… hollow…” He looked about the room as he searched for the words. “Specious… it’s hard to describe.”
The fine skin beneath George’s eyes wrinkled and he felt her stony resolve suddenly give way. She squeezed his hands and pulled herself closer to him, bowing her head and resting her forehead against his.
“Oh Henry, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be such a bitch. I don’t know why, but she just makes me feel… insecure. I’m jealous of the time she spends with you. She’s gorgeous and… she clearly likes you.”
Henry’s mind flashed back to the hotel in Carsac. They had been over this a hundred times before and George would not have her life any way other than to cover the big stories in remote countries. What more was there to say?
“When do you think you’ll know everything?” George asked, her forehead still pressed against his, her eyes closed, her arms around his neck, pulling him down.
“Soon, I hope. Once we’ve solved the case I should have uncovered what I need to know about my past, about who I am.”
“Prophetic words,” she mumbled.
George suddenly kissed him and he felt surprise, his body surging with electricity.
“How painful is your leg?” Henry asked.
George snorted.
“Not that painful. Just be careful.”
Henry melted into her arms, thoughts of his leek, peppered mackerel and crème fraîche linguine evaporating from his mind. He was about to lift her up in his arms when his phone rang on the coffee table behind him. George stiffened. Henry hesitated. It continued to ring.
“Ignore it,” George whispered huskily into his ear.
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