by Ben Stevens
Then, in the space of a second, Heinemann threw something in the direction of the lecturer. The missile flew past Rath, who feared that it was lost as he crawled despairingly around. Then something white caught his attention amidst the darkness of the earth and the green and brown pine needles.
As he opened the scrunched and filthy piece of paper, he remembered tearing it from the pad in his living room; the pad normally reserved for his compositional ideas.
Quickly reading the reply, he raised his thumb as instructed to signify that he understood – he knew exactly where this concrete pipe was, having seen it when he’d first walked into the pine forest. And the day after tomorrow: that was good. The imminent date of the escape refused him much time to consider the great danger of what he was doing.
With a quick wave he crawled away, unwilling to linger.
29
Outside the barred window of the cell the sky was dark velvet and the moon as sharp as glass. As he stared at this celestial body Heinemann thought over the preceding years, wondering how his aunt was faring and what life was like in Hegensdorf now.
Did the village’s station master still have his allotment; were his vegetables still his main concern in life? Did the farm labourers now wear uniforms with the death-head flashes of the SS, and raise flagons to the bleeding sky and toast the health of the Fuhrer while Germany lay screaming?
The moon seemed almost to taunt Heinemann: it was so aloof, so removed from mundane human emotion. It had shone its cold light during the millions of years before his birth, and would presumably do so for the millions of years following his death – whenever this was. His concerns were negligible in comparison to such an immortal force: his was one life amongst billions of others.
Kasek moaned in his sleep; a few words in Polish. Heinemann wondered what this man’s dreams were: women, beer – the freedom to lead the best life to which a man of simple means could aspire? And to die knowing that they lived on in their children, who would in turn continue the life pattern of work and recreation long after they themselves had turned to dust.
His own life, Heinemann realised, would have a definite purpose and further more a purpose of which many, many people would be aware. This, he realised, was what kept him going.
The hours passed with remorseless exactitude, the time the two men had left in the camp steadily decreasing.
30
During the past fortnight Enrich Rath had slept badly, having spent a great deal of each night studying the maps spread out over a table in his living room, working out possible routes to the border which avoided main roads while sacrificing as little driving time as was possible.
Only now, on the night before the planned escape, did he finally decide to attempt to cross at a place called Basle, due to its hilly and thus concealing terrain. He, Heinemann and the other man would leave the car five kilometres from the border and slip into Switzerland in the dark and on foot.
Rath had no dependants, and no family other than a brother whom he’d not seen for years but knew to be a pilot in the Luftwaffe. Being relatively young and perfectly healthy, he would certainly weather the total destitution that would be the result of him fleeing Germany. The Nazis would of course impound his property and his savings, but his liberty was worth more than anything.
Yawning, Rath folded the maps and prepared for bed. It was very late. In a few hours he would be getting up and going into Humboldt University to give his last ever lesson.
Once this was done, he would be off to the prison camp within the pine forest to cut the fence and wait for Heinemann and his friend.
31
‘Guard!’ whispered Kasek to Heinemann on Monday afternoon, neither man having previously exchanged a word that day as they prepared themselves for the escape in the evening.
Although they’d hardly been slacking before, with the Pole’s warning they immediately began to work harder, both men panting as they wielded their tools.
Reaching them, the guard said, ‘Kasek, stop working and come with me.’
Sticking the pickaxe hard into the ground, the Pole glanced at Heinemann before nodding.
‘Okay.’
As the two men walked away, Heinemann swore. Was Kasek going to be beaten up again – would he even be returned this time? Would he have to leave without Kasek? Could he leave without Kasek? Their shared imprisonment had made them as close as brothers; they were required to go to the toilet in front of each other, and on the colder nights they even shared the same bunk in order to try and stay warm.
But he could not afford to wait: it seemed a miracle that he’d been left in this camp for as long as he had – he’d considered that his stay would be just for a few days or weeks until his trial for the crime of racial pollution.
And what then – for he’d certainly be found guilty: transferral to one of these Lagers the Pole had spoken about, or a punishment of a more capital nature?
Kasek was in fact returned within the hour, the Mischling relieved to see that he’d not been mistreated in anyway that was obvious. The Pole resumed his work without a word, and after several minutes Heinemann could contain his curiosity no longer.
‘Well? What happened – what did they want with you?’
As the older prisoner looked at him, Heinemann was alarmed to see the incredible sadness in his eyes – a tear trickled out as Kasek whispered,
‘They break me… They know I…’
Having no idea what he was talking about, Heinemann sought only to comfort his friend, moved by the man’s obvious heartache.
‘Kasek, it’s all right. We’ve just a few more hours to go, that’s all. Soon we’ll be in Switzerland and everything will be all right.’
Wiping his sleeve across his snotty nose, the Pole nodded but said nothing. He continued working, knocking clods of earth down into the trench with blows from his pick.
The rest of the day passed in silence, until finally work finished and the prisoners were marched back to camp. Soup and bread were doled out to them as they sat in their cells, and Heinemann’s fists knotted with anticipation as a short while later the door to his and Kasek’s cell was opened by Eckhart.
The fat little guard was carrying a pistol in one hand, and smelt strongly of drink.
‘It’s shit-time!’ he roared. ‘Come on, let’s get a move on. Perhaps tonight you’ll fall down the drain.’
It took several trips to carry all the buckets from the cells to the concrete pipe, Eckhart stumbling along beside them, clearly the worst for wear. Snatching a glance at the guard’s watch, Heinemann saw that it was a whisker before half past eight. Everything was running exactly to plan.
‘I’ll leave you two girls in peace,’ cackled Eckhart as the two prisoners began to empty the waste, and he lurched away in the direction of the two buildings in the centre of the camp.
Realising that it was time, Heinemann put down the bucket he’d been holding and looked at Kasek, who continued emptying the waste into the pipe.
‘Kasek!’ he said, the Pole turning to look at him, his broad face obscured by the dark. ‘Come on, let’s go! Every second is vital.’
But the older prisoner continued only to stare at him, and with an exasperated hiss Heinemann moved towards the pine trees, hoping that Kasek would follow his example.
As he entered the forest he was pleased to see that this was so, and in a marginally more relaxed frame of mind he considered that tonight he had to be the leader – the stronger man. As Kasek had helped him on the first day he’d come to this camp and for many days after, now he had to repay the favour.
Inside the forest it was pitch-black. Heinemann was compelled to rely on instinct in an attempt to travel in a straight line – it would be so very easy to veer off, to approach the fence perhaps a hundred yards away from where Rath had hopefully cut a hole. There was simply not the time for such a mistake – he could not even assume that they’d the full half hour before Eckhart returned.
Branches snagged his jack
et and scratched his face, as if imploring him to give himself up. The deadwood on which he trod snapped with a noise like a gunshot, as though trying to reveal the fact that he was escaping to his captors.
Was even nature against him? he thought desperately.
Suddenly his foot twisted, caught in a hole or a burrow. Pain scorched up his leg as he fell down. He felt like screaming with frustration: everything was going wrong. There was not the time for this – he could not afford an injury... It was too dark, he didn’t know where he was, his sense of direction had gone…
A sudden, ethereal sense of peace choked his turmoil. The forest breathed in the dark, all within its kingdom safe from harm. He felt the good earth with his hands and he was somehow reassured.
He stood up, tentatively trying his weight on the injured angle. It hurt but he was still able to walk. Within a minute he was at the fence, searching for a gap and refusing to succumb to his panic at not being able to find one.
‘Erich, Erich,’ whispered Enrich Rath, his voice coming some way to Heinemann’s left.
Using this as a guide, feeling the fence as he walked slowly along, Heinemann could have wept when a hand suddenly grabbed his wrist, pulling him down. The snipped ends of the wire gouged strips from his cheek as he scrambled through the gap.
Allowing Rath to guide him through the trees, his ankle burning with pain as he hobbled along, Heinemann breathed a sigh of relief as they emerged out into the road. Although dark it was nowhere near as black as it had been in the forest.
‘Where is he? Where’s the other one?’ asked the music tutor fiercely.
Both men strained to hear some evidence of Kasek’s approach, but there was nothing: the night was absolutely still.
‘I’ll have to go back in, find him and get him out,’ said Heinemann.
‘We haven’t got time, Erich, we’ll have to leave him – ‘
A snapping of branches broke the inky tranquillity as Kasek stumbled out from among the trees, falling over to lie panting in the road.
Rath was instantly upon him, dragging him to his feet.
‘Come on, come on,’ he pleaded, only just keeping his voice under control.
‘You should leave me – could find gap not for ages. Loss you time,’ Kasek babbled, Heinemann realising that he was weeping.
‘Never mind that now: let’s go,’ he said, pulling at the Pole’s rough jacket to get him moving.
As the three men began jogging along the road, he asked Rath, ‘Where did you park the car?’
‘Just past the track that leads to that clearing you’ve been working in, in a spot beside the road that almost hides it from anyone passing. I’ve been here an hour – I didn’t dare risk parking it anywhere else.’
With Heinemann compelled almost to drag Kasek along it took the men five precious minutes to reach the powerful black Daimler, and the two fleeing prisoners bundled into the back as Rath started the engine.
Pulling out of the lay-by, he initially kept his headlights switched off for safety’s sake. Then, after a minute or so had passed, he turned them on.
They illuminated perfectly what lay ahead.
The road was blocked by a barrier made from large tyres. And behind this barrier were a number of shadowy figures, who now shouldered their weapons.
With a wild yell, Rath tugged at the steering wheel and the car skidded in a one hundred and eighty degree turn and stalled. Rath began to sob as he repeatedly attempted to get the flooded engine to restart.
They knew: the words were a statement of fact in Heinemann’s mind. This was an improvised barrier, not a permanent fixture of the road – that much was obvious.
Heinemann stared at the man sat beside him: the man whom he’d regarded as his closest friend, the man with whom he’d even shared a bed for the purpose of obtaining warmth. The man who had, when he’d first entered the prison camp, saved him from the depths of suicidal despair.
Heinemann suddenly realised what had taken place during the two times the Pole had been taken away, returning on one occasion having so fortuitously found a pencil.
As he reluctantly met Heinemann’s eyes, tears streamed from Kasek’s own. It was obvious what the young Mischling suspected and his tears confirmed this – for he’d been made the camp’s resident stool pigeon a long time ago, in return for extra rations and even tobacco on the occasions when the other prisoners wouldn’t notice. Of the two men who’d escaped from the camp before, it had been his treachery that had caused one of them to be captured and killed.
After the decision to escape had been made between him, Heinemann and Rath, Kasek had slipped a guard the agreed sign. During the first of the two interviews the cadaverous commandant and two guards had laughed while hitting and kicking the imprisoned Polish officer, explaining that this was because the Jew was the most distrustful creature on Earth and so they had to distract Heinemann’s attention.
But it had been for their own amusement, really, and they’d mocked Kasek’s treachery while giving him the pencil, calling him ‘Judas’. The Pole spoke better German then he’d let on to Heinemann.
As the engine succeeded in starting Rath laughed hysterically, but almost in slow motion Heinemann saw the men who were walking towards them stop and raise their guns.
‘We’re buggered,’ he said simply, and then everything was drowned out by the noise of machinegun fire. The back window blew inwards, spraying Heinemann and Kasek with glass. The car slumped as the tyres exploded.
The firing ceased and someone shouted in a voice as harsh as the machineguns’ deadly chuckle:
‘Step out of the vehicle with your hands held up! You have ten seconds before we use grenades!’
‘What do I do, what do I do?’ cried Rath pitifully, rocking backwards and forwards in shock.
‘I should have thought that was obvious,’ said Heinemann tonelessly, as he opened the door and stepped out.
On the other side Kasek did the same, hoping against hope that the camp’s commandant would make good his promises. As he saw the troops he groaned aloud: he was a dead man. They were a division of the Schutzstaffel – the SS – like those who’d had his men burnt alive upon capturing them.
He looked across the ruined car at Heinemann and the Mischling stared coldly back, his arms raised in surrender.
‘Why, Kasek?’ he asked.
The Pole swallowed and shook his head, unable to give an immediate answer. In his desperation to be finally freed from the camp, to be allowed to return to Poland, he’d believed the promise that he’d be released after the fugitives were apprehended: for reasons that had not been revealed to him the escape was to be allowed to go ahead.
But the men who now approached the car made him realise that he would share the same fate as the other two: a bullet, perhaps, or imprisonment in a Lager. He realised just how foolish he’d been: the escape attempt might well have been successful, had he only kept his mouth shut.
‘I sorry, Erich, but I…’
His explanation faltered as he saw the young man’s sallow face contort with utter hatred.
‘You bastard,’ said Heinemann as he turned to face the approaching troops, who knocked him and the Pole to the floor and dragged the gibbering wretch that had once been Enrich Rath from out of the car.
Having been searched, the three men were told to lay side-by-side and face down in the road.
Hearing footsteps, Heinemann raised his eyes in an attempt to see who it was approaching. A pair of boots with a fur trim stopped by his head, and then a familiarly nasal voice said:
‘Stupid, stupid Jew. Do you know the amount of effort and time that you’ve cost me, the men I’ve had to use in order to check your hare-brained scheme? You even trusted a Pole! You stupid, stupid Jew.’
So here was Commissioner Sasse, come along for the kill. Heinemann screwed his eyes shut, waiting for the end.
‘Okay,’ said Sasse.
There was the violent crack! of a pistol, and Heinemann waited before reali
sing that this was taking far too long; this was an inordinate amount of time for a bullet to take to reach his head.
And then when a warm stickiness touched his cheek he realised what had actually happened: Kasek had been shot dead as he lay beside him.
‘Never let a Pole live, I say,’ said the Commissioner cheerfully, before repeating: ‘Okay.’
Hearing the sudden, sickening crunch of wood on bone, Heinemann struggled to think what this noise signified: only Rath and he remained alive, so they must be clubbing Rath with rifle butts and –
His head exploded: there was a moment of blinding pain and then Sasse’s fur-trimmed boots were no more. Everything became black.
‘Congratulations, Lieutenant. An excellent show,’ said Sasse. ‘Get this road block down, remove the corpse and put these two men with the others for transportation to the east tomorrow. Make sure they’re not on the same shipment together. In the morning make a report on the security of the camp prior to immediate improvements.’
‘Yes, Herr Commissioner.’
The Lieutenant then shouted orders to his men, which they carried out at the double and with the efficiency that was their deadly hallmark. This SS unit had just finished clearing a nearby area of its Jewish population, when they’d been instructed to seal off this road to stop an escape attempt.
Due to such things being irritatingly his department, Sasse had originally been informed of the planned escape an hour after Kasek had blabbed. And for the purpose of highlighting security lapses in this type of small camp, which he’d complained about in the past, he’d decided to let the escape go ahead.
Thus he’d been prepared for the urgent communiqué he’d received earlier that afternoon, after Kasek had revealed what time the escape would be taking place, and had consequently instructed this unit of the Schutzstaffel to do what he’d already so meticulously planned.
Now Sasse slowly walked towards his car and a waiting chauffeur, pausing to light a cigar and to look at the starry sky. Beautiful, it really was beautiful. It was a brief distraction from the never-ending paperwork which as usual lay ahead of him tonight: a report that would place both him and this particular unit of the SS in a particularly glowing light. The informant called Kasek had been killed for security reasons and the other two…
