There was no answer, and no sound from inside. He banged again, and this time they could hear someone running downstairs. Another door slammed, there was a shout from somewhere at the back, and a few moments later an unsmiling MP opened the door for them.
Rafferty and McCaigh walked in. The German had been taken into the back room and was now sitting on the only piece of furniture, a badly worn sofa. Rafferty removed the man’s cap. ‘Wolfgang Kuntz, I presume,’ he said.
The German said nothing.
‘Look after him, lads,’ Rafferty told the MPs. ‘We’re going to take a look around.’
He and McCaigh went through the house, starting at the bottom and working their way up. The rooms were virtually empty – in some there was nothing more than a frayed carpet and a few bare nails in the walls – and their search proved as simple as it was fruitless. There were no valuable paintings here.
The two men walked slowly back down the stairs, wondering if their informant had made up the whole story. According to him, Kuntz had seven paintings in his possession, all of which had previously been on display in the Berlin home of a prominent SS general. The latter, who had stolen the paintings from an unknown European gallery, had since been killed, but the steps he had taken to get the paintings out of the country had supposedly involved, in one capacity or another, the man on the sofa downstairs.
Kuntz was picking at the few days’ growth of beard which clung to his chin, and looking none too happy.
‘Where are they?’ Rafferty asked him in German.
The man grimaced, as if the news that he shared a language with his persecutors was decidedly unwelcome. Which somehow made the endless language lessons they’d suffered since the return from France worthwhile, McCaigh thought.
‘Where are what?’ Kuntz asked hopefully.
Rafferty looked at the papers which the MPs had removed from the man’s pocket. ‘You are from Stettin,’ he said. ‘Would you like to be sent home?’
Kuntz looked at him. ‘If I tell you where they are, will you let me stay here?’
‘I expect that can be arranged.’
The two SAS men’s German wasn’t that good, so it took about fifteen minutes to extract the full story. Kuntz had thought himself part of a brave plot to foil the Russians and save the seven paintings for Western civilization, but his partners had blackmailed him into accepting a different plan. The paintings were to be smuggled across the Baltic into Sweden, where they would be hidden until such time as the postwar dust settled, and private buyers could be found. At this moment they were on board a boat in Travemünde harbour, about ten miles to the north-east.
‘How many people are there on this boat?’ Rafferty asked.
‘Two.’
‘And why are they still there?’ McCaigh asked.
The German just looked at him.
‘What are they waiting for?’ Rafferty asked.
Kuntz smiled for the first time. ‘No one is allowed to leave. And even if they were, there is no fuel for the engines.’
Rafferty looked at McCaigh. ‘It shouldn’t take more than the four of us,’ he said, and turned back to Kuntz. ‘OK, up you get. Point out the boat for us and we’ll see you get your papers.’
The German looked less than eager for the trip. ‘They have guns,’ he said.
‘So do we,’ McCaigh assured him.
The SAS men recovered their jeep from behind the flats on the other side of the street, rendezvoused with the MPs in theirs, and drove out of the city down mostly empty streets. Kuntz, sitting in the front next to McCaigh, held the threadbare jacket tight across his chest to keep out the wind. It was much too small for him, Rafferty thought – it had probably been all that was available when the time came to throw away his uniform.
They left the suburbs behind, arrowing across the flat farm country which lay north of the Trave estuary. There was an air of peace about the people working in the fields, but in the broad river behind them a small cargo boat was limping slowly upstream, its decks packed solid with refugees from the east. Too many sad stories, McCaigh thought, as he swerved the jeep to avoid a mangy-looking ginger cat.
It took them about twenty minutes to reach the outskirts of the village, where they abandoned the jeeps, and another five to reach the harbour office on foot. It was empty. Someone had obviously decided the fuel drought was enough to keep the boats in port, because there was no sign of a police or military presence.
‘I suppose Sweden’s too far to row,’ McCaigh murmured.
There were about forty boats in the harbour, and from the window of the office Kuntz pointed out a sad-looking motor launch tied to one of the wooden jetties. A thin plume of smoke was issuing from a pipe on the roof.
‘I bet they’re cosy,’ McCaigh said.
‘Let’s hope they’re not burning the paintings,’ Rafferty replied.
Neither man felt like waiting several hours for darkness to cloak their approach, and neither felt any enthusiasm for a dip in the Baltic, so they simply ambled out into the late-afternoon sunshine and casually strolled down the jetty in question, looking for all the world as if the only thing on their minds was to contemplate the beauty of sea and sky.
They did step softly, though, and there was no twitch of the curtains on the suspect launch. Rafferty stepped across the gap, gently rocking the boat as he did so, but there was still no sign of activity on board. McCaigh also stepped across, and, Webley in hand, Rafferty slipped down the steps and eased open the door to the cabin quarters. A loud snore emerged from within.
Fifteen minutes later the two Germans were being escorted away by the MPs, and McCaigh had returned with their jeep to load up the paintings. According to the scrawled writing on the newspaper-swathed rectangles, there were two by Klee, two by Nolde, and one each by Rouault, Heckel and Kirchner. Catching the rueful expression on Kuntz’s face, McCaigh felt obliged to congratulate the German on saving them for the West.
While Rafferty and McCaigh were driving back into Lübeck with several hundred thousand pounds’ worth of art in the back of their jeep, Farnham was standing in a meadow some four hundred miles to the south-west, staring at a grassy mound and a newly erected plaque. ‘We thought it would be better to bury your men here with ours, and with those who died in the village,’ Yves was telling him.
‘You were right,’ Farnham said. If any of Ian Tobin’s or Pogo Young’s loved ones ever came to this meadow above Le Chipal they would be pleased with what they found.
‘I’ll leave you to your thoughts,’ Yves said awkwardly. ‘I’ll wait for you in the car.’
Farnham watched the Frenchman walk away down the hill, and turned his eyes upward to the forests which had once hidden their respective camps. Only eight months had passed since the Germans had overrun them, eight months since the fifty-six bodies in the ground behind him had breathed their last. The war had brought him and Madeleine together; the war had pulled them apart. Like God, Farnham thought. Like a playful, heartless God.
There were no thoughts to think, only the abiding emptiness. He took one last look at the grassy mound and followed Yves back down the hill to the waiting Renault. The Frenchman was sitting on the running board, smoking a cigarette, and for a moment Farnham was reminded of all those evenings they had spent talking together in the dark forest. There were few times he had enjoyed more.
Yves got to his feet and stubbed out the cigarette with his foot. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any news of Ziegler,’ he said once they were both in the car.
‘Not yet,’ Farnham said. There had been no reported sighting of the St Dié Gestapo chief since the Germans’ eviction from France, and Farnham was beginning to fear that the man had somehow slipped through the Allied net. ‘If someone finds him, I’ll let you know,’ he promised.
‘But what if no one tells you?’ Yves asked with his usual directness.
‘I keep checking the lists,’ Farnham told him.
They drove north along the road which the Maquis had follo
wed on the night of the great uniform robbery in Ste Marguerite. It looked different in the daylight, but then so did everything else. He was used to living by night here, to looking down from the safety of the forest at the vulnerability of the open countryside, and here he was, blithely driving down an open road, looking up at forests which seemed remote and impenetrable. Meeting Yves at his house in St Dié had been another such experience – he had never seen the Maquis leader under a roof before.
‘How are things in Germany?’ Yves asked.
‘Pretty dire for the Germans in our half, and much worse than that in the Russian half. Life in the cities is more difficult – they’re mostly in ruins and food’s hard to come by. Of course, not a single German admits to ever liking the Nazis, let alone being one.’
Yves snorted. ‘It’s like that here – now that it’s over it seems everyone but Pétain was in the Resistance. It’s amazing the war lasted so long.’
Farnham smiled.
‘But they are going to try these bastards, aren’t they? None of this “now it’s over let’s all shake hands and go home” nonsense.’
‘Looks like it. Churchill was apparently in favour of shooting all the bastards they could catch in the first six weeks and then calling it a day – the British legal establishment didn’t like the idea of making up retrospective laws – but the Russians refused to go along. The story is that Stalin told Churchill that in Russia they never shoot anyone without a trial.’
Yves laughed. ‘And the Americans?’
‘Most of them are only interested in going home.’
‘What are you going to do when you finally go home?’ Yves asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Farnham said lightly, but his companion must have heard something else in his voice.
‘You must go on,’ Yves said quietly.
Farnham felt his muscles tense, and he wanted to yell at the man in the seat next to him: ‘What fucking business is it of yours? How the fuck would you know what I ought to do with my life?’ But he didn’t. He just closed his eyes for a moment, and willed the rage in his body to die down. ‘I know,’ he said eventually.
‘Sometimes it takes a long time,’ Yves said.
‘How about you?’ Farnham countered. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Ah, I’m back at work already. My school was bombed by your people or the Americans – on a Sunday, I’m glad to say – but the rebuilding has already been completed. I have been regaling students with the sins of Louis XIV for several weeks now.’
They were turning left at the junction where he had waited for the bus to Schirmeck, and for a moment he could see her looking up at him from her seat by the window, smell the lily of the valley as he sat down beside her. As they accelerated down the road towards St Dié a train passed by in the opposite direction on the nearby railway line. ‘How many of the Jews escaped?’ he asked.
‘From the train you attacked? A hundred and thirty-seven. About four hundred and fifty were recaptured – only the Germans know the exact figure – and they were all gassed in Schirmeck. But the hundred and thirty-seven were sheltered right through the winter in about twenty different villages.’ He sighed. ‘I think I’m beyond being surprised by how badly people can treat each other, but I can still be shocked by how well they can behave. Twenty villages,’ he repeated, ‘and not a word to the Germans from any of them.’ He smiled suddenly. ‘And François is going to marry one of the girls from the train,’ he added.
They drove through Ste Marguerite and into St Dié. Farnham’s jeep was still standing outside Yves’ house, but there were now four young boys sitting in it, all armed with make-believe weapons. As Yves shooed them away, Farnham could see the hero-worship in their eyes, and he doubted whether the Maquis leader would ever have much trouble enforcing discipline in his classroom.
‘Are you sure you won’t stay the night?’ Yves asked him.
‘Thanks, but no. I’m supposed to be back first thing on Friday, and I’ve no idea how easy it’s going to be to get a flight from Luxemburg.’
‘I’d have thought Strasbourg would be a better bet.’
Farnham shrugged. ‘I have to get the jeep back to the people I borrowed it from,’ he explained, not bothering to add that he’d ended up in Luxemburg in the first place because he hadn’t wanted to drive the road from Strasbourg to St Dié, the road of their bus journey together.
But Yves wasn’t stupid. ‘If Ziegler is caught I want to know,’ he said.
‘You will,’ Farnham told him, and the two men embraced. ‘I’ll be back,’ he said, climbing aboard the jeep. ‘And say hello to the others for me. Especially François.’
In the temporary Field Security HQ at Lüneburg, some forty-five miles south of Lübeck, Sergeant Stuart Willoughby rose stiffly from his chair and carried his cup of tea across to the single office window. The darkening sky above the flat flood plain of the Elbe perfectly mirrored his mood. He had interviewed another thirty men since breakfast, listened to another thirty stories of misfortune and cruelty, and felt emotionally drained by the cumulative wretchedness of it all.
He walked back to the table for the second biscuit, broke it neatly in two, and popped one half in his mouth. He had been interrogating people for over eighteen months, ever since his transfer to Port Security late in 1943. There had been four months in Scotland questioning arrivals on neutral boats, a short period of waiting for the Allied advance in France to gather speed, and then another four months in Ostend doing similar work. Early in 1945 he had been transferred to Field Security, whose main brief was to interview captured German security policemen and local Nazi politicians. He had ended up here in Lüneburg, interrogating the flotsam of the war, people found in camps, people picked up on city streets or simply wandering the countryside, people who had no means of identifying themselves, who could be victims or victimizers in disguise.
Corporal Bunn stuck his head round the door. ‘Ready for more?’ he asked with a grin.
‘How many more are there?’
‘Only seven.’
Willoughby thought about asking them all to come back tomorrow, or maybe next year, but he didn’t. ‘Send the next one in,’ he said, and bit down on the other half of his biscuit. It tasted stale, but then he doubted whether any of the men he was questioning had seen anything as exotic as a digestive for quite a while.
Both the next two interviewees claimed to be Slovaks, and their partial grip on the German language was either wonderfully judged or that of genuine foreigners. They claimed they had been brought from Bratislava in 1942 to work in a Hamburg munitions factory, and that during one of the huge night raids they had escaped into the countryside, where a German farmer had fed them in exchange for working his fields. He had been killed by some British soldiers – they didn’t know why – and now they wanted to return home.
Willoughby questioned the two men separately, and judged that their story was true. It wasn’t so much the tallying of the facts each told him – they’d had plenty of time to rehearse – as the look of utter weariness which he saw in their eyes. It was always possible that they had killed the German farmer themselves, but if so the whys and wherefores would be impossible to establish. He bestowed official approval on the identities they had claimed, and handed over the special ration cards which went with such approval.
The next man had been found wandering near the Esterwegen concentration camp, which he claimed had been his home for the past three years. A tall German with dark hair, blue eyes and prominent cheek-bones, he said that his name was Josef Balck, and that he had been imprisoned when someone overheard him call the Nazi regime unchristian.
Willoughby didn’t believe him – the man didn’t look like he’d been in a concentration camp for three weeks, let alone three years. But proving as much was something else again. He listened to Balck’s story, asking the occasional question, but there were no obvious inconsistencies, just a growing conviction on Willoughby’s part that he was listening to a well-concocted piece
of fiction.
It was fully dark outside now, and he couldn’t face an hour and more of futile verbal sparring. Just take one shot, he told himself recklessly, and if it misses then the bastard gets away scot-free. He certainly wouldn’t be the first, and it seemed extremely unlikely that he’d be the last.
‘That’s a very well thought-out story,’ he said suddenly, stopping Balck in mid-flow. ‘But I’m afraid I know who you really are.’
The German’s face turned suddenly white, and Willoughby felt a surge of elation. ‘All right,’ Balck said. ‘But I was only the administrator – I didn’t decide policy.’
Willoughby risked a guess. ‘But you held the rank of commandant.’
‘Yes,’ Balck admitted reluctantly, and for a long time neither man spoke. Then the German leaned forward in his chair. ‘I will give you names, tell you where others are hiding, if you promise not to hand me over to the Russians.’
‘I think I can promise that,’ Willoughby said. He always handed prisoners over to the British Army HQ, and what they did with them was none of his business. ‘So give me some names,’ he said calmly, pen poised above a clean sheet of paper.
McCaigh woke up feeling happy. Today was Friday and tomorrow he would be driving down to Neuengamme to see Rachel. He supposed it would have been better if she could come north to see him – a concentration camp, even a liberated one, wasn’t the most romantic of venues – but the new administrators couldn’t spare her, even for a couple of days. McCaigh had found out why in his first hour there – as far as the emaciated men and women who crowded the huts were concerned she was the camp’s resident angel.
He remembered his first sight of her in the makeshift nurse’s uniform, the beautiful eyes burning in her haggard face. He even remembered the first words she’d ever spoken to him – ‘Please, you’re in my way.’
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