‘I was merely – ’ Willi began.
‘Yes, Willi, I know.’ Ernst grinned and stepped past him to glance into the bedroom. The old couple were indeed packing their two suitcases, both with tears on their pale cheeks. ‘Hey, old man!’ Ernst said. ‘Does the owner of this building actually live in it?’
‘Yes, sir,’ the old man said, his voice trembling. ‘Mrs Kosilewski, who lives in the attic.’
‘Thank you. Auf Wiedersehen.’ Ernst grinned and turned away. ‘Keep your eye on them,’ he said to Brandt, ‘and make sure they get into one of the trucks. It’s either them or you, Willi.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Brandt replied.
Reminded, as he left the room, of the striking difference between Brandt’s kindness and Ritter’s growing cruelty, convinced that the latter would profit more than the former in the Third Reich, Ernst started up the stairs, to ensure that everything was proceeding properly on the floors above. When he heard the bawling of his soldiers and saw those respectable, middle-class Polish citizens shuffling sobbing from their apartments, each carrying a single suitcase and otherwise leaving behind not only their possessions but their homes, he realized just how far from home he was... far from Germany, far from Projekt Saucer, far from what he had been. Now, once more, he was a policeman instead of an engineer.
He was a party to genocide.
Someone on the second floor was slow to leave his apartment and Ernst saw a submachine gun, speedily reversed, its butt swinging, as Ritter struck the unfortunate man between his shoulder blades and made him lurch forward. The man cried out as he started falling, but his wife quickly jerked him upright, then both of them hurried down the stairs, even as Ernst went up the next flight. When on the third floor he saw more adults and children leaving their homes forever in the belief that they would at least be rehoused somewhere decent, he thought again of the spread of Himmler’s underground research factories, of the medical experiments that Wilson wanted, of their ultimate destination, Neuschwabenland, and felt bitter at the recollection of just how brief his return to Kummersdorf had been. He had no sooner settled back into the supervision of Projekt Saucer than the blitzkreig against Poland had commenced, the Polish air force had been destroyed, and Poland's ground forces routed. Then Himmler, having deprived him of his rightful place in that historic event, had sent him here to organize the rounding up of the human labour force required for the underground factories and the colonization of the Antarctic.
He tried to think of it as a great honour, his guarantee of a place in history; but sometimes, as right now, surrounded by sobbing women and shocked children and beaten men, he could only yearn to be back in Berlin, overseeing Wilson and the German engineers.
Sometimes, it had to be admitted, this work made him feel dirty.
Pushing his way through the harassed Poles milling about on the third-floor landing, he glanced through the window and saw his armed troops forming a pathway from the front door of the building to the trucks, their shadows elongated in the yellow lighting of the streetlamps and falling over the bowed heads and shoulders of the Poles who shuffled dispiritedly between them. Now viewing the Poles as mere numbers, his allotment for this evening, he climbed the last flight of stairs to the closed door of the attic. Because he knew that the cow of a landlady would be hiding inside, he hammered his clenched fist repeatedly on the wooden door.
‘I know you’re in there, Frau Kosilewski!’ he shouted. ‘So please open the door!’
‘The door’s not locked,’ a surprisingly sensual voice replied. ‘You have only to enter.’
Feeling foolish but also amused, Ernst opened the door and looked in. The attic was enormous and beautifully furnished. When he stepped inside, he saw the landlady seated in an armchair, calmly smoking a cigarette. She was wearing a black silk dress, which clung closely to her luscious body, and her feet were in high-heeled shoes that emphasized the curves of her legs, one of which was crossed over the other, exposed from the knee down.
No cow at all, Ernst thought.
‘I have packed, as you can see,’ the woman said, indicating the suitcase nearby with a lazy wave of the hand holding the cigarette, ‘but thought I would wait until I was called.’
Ernst advanced farther into the attic and stopped close enough to the woman to observe that she had pitch-black hair falling to her shoulders, as well as eyes as dark and deep as the ocean.
‘You thought we’d forget you?’ Ernst asked, aware that he was becoming aroused by the sight of those elegantly crossed legs, the artfully arched foot, the high, full breasts under the tight black silk, that steady, measuring gaze.
Mrs Kosilewski smiled and shook her head. ‘No, Kapitän,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think that for a moment. We all know how efficient the Germans are. I merely decided to wait until the last moment – to avoid the crush and chaos.’
She pursed her brightly painted lips, sucked on her cigarette, pursed her lips again to blow some smoke rings. She knew just what she was doing.
‘You live here alone?’ Ernst asked, feeling hot and somnolent with desire, his thoughts slipping and sliding.
‘Yes, Kapitän. I’m not married. I was married, but my husband died four years ago, which is why I now run this place on my own.’
‘Ran it,’ Ernst corrected her. ‘You run it no longer.’
She nodded, her gaze steady upon him. 'Yes, Kapitän, I know. May I ask whom you intend moving in here instead?’
‘Germans from the Baltic and outlying regions of the country. No Jews. No Poles.’
‘I am not a Jew, Kapitän.’
‘But you are a Pole,’ he reminded her.
She just smiled more knowingly. ‘And will you be in charge of those Germans, Kapitän?’
‘In a nominal sense, yes. I’ll be visiting the building occasionally, if that’s what you mean.’
Mrs Kosilewski uncrossed her long legs, crossed them the other way, rubbed her hand along her thigh to wipe ash off the tight dress, then pouted her painted lips to exhale more smoke rings. Ernst, now almost dizzy with desire, could hardly take his eyes off her.
‘Then why send me away?’ she asked, her voice shivering through him. ‘Surely I would be of better use to you here – to attend to the house, which I’ve done so well so far, and look after the Germans when they arrive.’
‘And why should I be concerned with that, Frau Kosilewski?’
‘Because if I was here to look after the house, my dear Kapitän, then I could also look after you.’
Her dark gaze was steady, if obscured by the cigarette smoke, and he saw the painted pout of her lips turning into a broader smile. He hadn’t possessed a woman for months and was reminded of that bitter fact as she leaned across her raised knee, drawing his gaze to her firm breasts. He felt breathless, almost choked by his rising lust, and knew he could not resist her.
‘Your soldiers have cleared out the top floor,’ she said, almost whispering. ‘They’ll soon be leaving, mein Kapitän.’
‘We have at least five minutes,’ Ernst replied. ‘I think that should suffice for now.’
He walked across the attic, closed and bolted the door, and by the time he had turned back to Frau Kosilewski, she was already undressing.
The spoils of war, Ernst thought grimly.
He went back there a lot. When not on duty, he practically lived there. He had married Ingrid for love, then cheated on her and been cheated by her. Since then, having also betrayed the values he held most dear, he found that he could temporarily regain his lost pride in the bodies of hardened women. He assumed that Kryzystina was one of those, a woman seasoned by bad experiences, and he was thrilled by the knowledge that she was buying her freedom with her body, selling herself for salvation. She certainly knew how to do it well – she had the sexual repertoire of a whore – and it helped him pass the distress of those nights that his frustrations made restless.
‘No,’ she told him, ‘I’m not a whore, but I want to survive, and for a woman living alon
e in a city ruled by a conquering army, that isn’t easy. I was born on a farm near Dabrova, to barbarously ignorant peasants, and my father treated me like a beast of burden for all of my days there. I was beaten regularly, often starved as punishment, and eventually abused sexually by him, roughly and often. One day I stabbed him with a bread knife – not fatally, but in the stomach – then I fled for good. I was sixteen years old and soon taken in by a gang of gypsies. The man who picked me, who naturally took his pleasure with me, soon started selling me to other men – he was as primitive as my father – so, a year later, when we were camped in a village near Cracow, I fled to the city, obtained work in a garment factory, attracted the eye of my boss, a decent man, and became his wife when I was twenty. We had a good life for eight years, but he died four years ago. His family inherited all his wealth and I got this house. As I couldn’t afford its upkeep, I moved into the attic, let out the rest of the rooms, and was just getting back on my feet when Germany invaded Poland and you, my handsome Kapitän, came to requisition it for your fellow countrymen. Don’t call me a whore because I offered myself to you. You know what the alternative was.’
They were naked in bed, which was still in the grand attic, both sweat-slicked from the ardours of a love that had little love in it. Ernst was stirred by the sight of her heavy breasts, bruised lips, and dishevelled hair, and so slid his hand back between her thighs to find her still wet. ‘Not all women would sell themselves for a house,’ he said. ‘Some have more sturdy principles.’
She glanced sceptically at him, then shook her head on the soaked pillow and chuckled deeply, sardonically. ‘Just for my house?’ she said. ‘I think you know better than that, Ernst. I didn’t just want to remain in this house: I also wanted to stay alive. And I think we both know, my pretty, that most of the people moved out of here were not destined for a very lengthy future.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘I think you do, Ernst. You know as well as I do that Hitler is already transforming Poland into a massive killing ground and that the planned extermination of the Jews is an open secret among your highranking officers.’
Ernst grinned and slipped his fingers inside her, making her sigh. ‘What a bright girl you are, Kryzystina,’ he said. ‘And how did you know all that?’
‘I know because some of the high-ranking officers who shared my bed before you came here told me so. I also know because it’s hard to keep secret the fact that at least once a week the Central Station is packed with Jews being moved out to an unknown destination, but one widely believed to be unpleasant.’
Ernst was arousing himself by playing with her. ‘Very clever, my Polish pet.’
Kryzystina sighed and turned into him, to throw one long, smooth leg over him and let him have more of her. ‘And don’t we all live in terror,’ she whispered into his ear, ‘of the so-called house-cleaning, or murder, of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Polish intellectuals and those of a similar class? Could I risk that, my pretty one?’ Her tongue slipped into his ear, her teeth nibbled his earlobe, and her hand slid down his sweating body to take hold of him and guide him into her. ‘So why did you clear out this house?’ she whispered. ‘And all the other Polish houses? Not just to rehouse us, my saviour, as you slyly suggest, but to move us to Majdanek or Auschwitz, from where we would not return. Can you call me a whore because I choose you instead of a camp? I think not, my sweet one.’
They made love like two animals – that day and many others – and Ernst dwelt on what she had said, thought of Himmler and Wilson, and realized that what they were doing had the grandeur of evil. In accepting this fact, he lost his shame and replaced it with pride, plunging himself into his work for Projekt Saucer with renewed vigour. He planned the roundups of Poles and Jews, led the raids on their streets and ghettoes, and divided them into groups on the platforms of Central Station, right or left, life or death. Those chosen for death would not die easily – first they would be used as experimental fodder – and those blessed with the gift of life would work as slaves for the Third Reich in the multiplying underground factories where Himmler, with the aid of the icy American, Wilson, was creating the weapons that would ensure that the New Order would eventually conquer the world.
Projekt Saucer was at the heart of this great endeavour – and, he, the once-rejected Ernst Stoll, was an important part of it.
Yet he still felt frustrated.
‘I missed the blitzkreig,’ he explained to Kryzystina. ‘It was my life’s great disappointment. When our army smashed through this damned country, when we destroyed your air force, when the Battle for the Corridor ended and your whole army was routed, I was still an administrator at Kummersdorf, south of Berlin. Now our troops are preparing to follow the Panzer divisions into Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg, then on to France and Paris itself. But instead of going with them, I’m stuck here, in this Polish cesspit, a shepherd of Jews and other subhumans, a man cleaning out vermin.’
‘You’re still a soldier,’ Kryzystina reminded him.
‘No, I’m not. I’m a policeman.’
‘You take it all too seriously,’ she told him. ‘Come and take me instead!’
Ernst needed little encouragement.
Because he did not like his work and detested Cracow and its inhabitants, he performed his duties mechanically, efficiently, not thinking too deeply about it, and otherwise vented his frustrations by confiding in Kryzystina. As there were few places to go in Cracow, he never saw her outside the attic, but he fed her hunger for expensive presents, brought her unauthorized food, wine and cigarettes, and when not trading sardonic putdowns with her, unburdened himself of his angst.
‘I’m not a soldier,’ he insisted, repeating his most common complaint. ‘I should be on the road to Paris with the fighting troops, but instead I am here, in this miserable Polish city, arresting people by the hundreds and moving them on to the camps. It’s my duty to do this and I do it well, but I was cut out for other things.’
‘Engineering?’
‘Rocket engineering. That’s what I was going to do. Instead, I became a supervisor at the research centre at Kummersdorf, spying on my fellow Germans, an old Italian and an illegal American, whose genius put me to shame, though his ruthlessness shocked me. My God, what a monster!’
‘An American?’ Kryzystina asked him, surprised, as her nimble fingers played in his pubic hair. ‘An American is working for the Third Reich?’
‘Yes,’ Ernst replied. ‘In secret. He has a false German passport. He cares for nothing but his work – the construction of a saucer-shaped aircraft – and since that project is also close to Himmler’s heart, he was allowed to work for us. It’s an unusual, maybe dangerous, situation, but Wilson is worth the risk. He’s the coldest man I know, obsessed, slightly inhuman, but the advances he’s made are extraordinary and fill me with envy. If not allowed to join the great advance on Paris, I should at least be back there, working with Wilson. But I’m not. I’m stuck here. Still taking part in Projekt Saucer, but not in the way I want.’
‘And what way is that?’
‘To take part in the actual design, as an engineer, which I should have been, and not just collecting Jews and Poles for our labour force.’
Kryzystina stretched out beside him, now knowing him, fitting to him, and asked, breathing warmly in his ear: ‘A labour force only for Projekt Saucer? Is that why you’re rounding up those people? To work for Projekt Saucer in the camps?’
Ernst felt impatient, his thoughts scattered by his erection. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. There are no research plants in the camps. Those I select don’t go to the camps; they’re sent to our growing number of advanced weapons factories, scattered over Germany and Bavaria and hidden underground or inside mountains. There they’ll perform the heavy labour required. They’ll certainly be worked very hard, but at least they might live.’
He said it with confidence as he rolled between her spreading thighs and inserted himself into the
velvet glove that could make his thoughts reel; but he knew, when he had finished, when his thoughts had scattered and returned intact, that he had not told the truth, as even those being used by Projekt Saucer would not necessarily live long. Recalling the tour that Himmler had given him through the immense tunnel being hacked out of the densely forested hills of Thuringia to contain the planned underground factories at Nordhausen and nearby Bleicherode, he remembered the armed SS guards and the cracking of their bullwhips, which then, as now, were an indication that the welfare of the labour force would not be considered. And that labour force was being sent out by train from most of the major cities of Poland, to the increasing number of factories hidden underground, from the Harz Mountains to Thuringia, south of Prague and across to Mahren... a vast network of secret factories devoted to the design and construction of advanced weaponry and aircraft, including the rockets of Wernher von Braun and the flying saucer of the obsessed American, Wilson... factories in which the work force would, if necessary, be worked to death. A brutal truth that appeared to have given Wilson no qualms at all.
‘He has one other obsession,’ Ernst confided to Kryzystina as they rested after their sexual exertions. ‘An obsession with longevity – though that also is treated as part of his work. Wilson is old – in his mid-sixties, I think - but he looks and acts fifteen years younger than that. This, he insists, is due to a lifelong strict diet – no cigarettes or alcohol, no fatty foods; only fruit juice, cereals, fruit, and nuts – and, oddly, no exercise other than lots of walking. He also ascribed it to a lack of emotional entanglements, which he said were, apart from their well-known psychological effects, an inducement to quicker physical deterioration.’
‘What about sex?’ Kryzystina asked.
‘I gather that it’s fine,’ Ernst replied, amused, ‘so long as it’s performed unemotionally – for the reasons I’ve already stated. Sex as pure exercise is healthy, but romantic love or sex used for emotional release are both damaging to physical as well as mental health.’
INCEPTION (Projekt Saucer, Book 1) Page 22
