Earlier he’d watched them leaving, an endless file of grey ghosts stumbling into the dawn outside, but when he’d tried to join them he’d been sent back to his bunk. No explanation. Nothing. Now, alone, he started scratching himself. He’d been scratching all night. The mattress was thin hessian. Straw poked through. The bunk reeked of piss and there were bugs in the straw of the mattress and every time Billy moved they found more flesh to feast on. He thought they were bed bugs. Tiny black things. He caught one but then lost it again.
Last night, in the reception centre, a prisoner who seemed to be an orderly had stripped him naked and shaved his head before dusting him with powder. No one spoke English. He’d asked for water, begged for something to drink, but no one took any notice. The orderly had thrown him a bundle of old rags and gestured for him to get dressed. A pair of baggy striped trousers with caked shit in the seams around the crutch. A garment that looked like a pyjama top, also striped. And a pair of ancient boots. There was only one button on the pyjama top and no laces for the boots. Already, he could smell himself.
The orderly had taken him outside. He’d shuffled across some kind of parade ground, asking for water again. The orderly had ignored him. There was a strange smell in the air, sour, sweet. When the second of the huts loomed out of the darkness the orderly had pushed a door open. The invitation was wordless. Sleep where you can.
A truly terrible night. Men snoring. Whimpering. Talking to themselves. And then, with the first glimmer of dawn at the windows, came a sudden bark of laughter. Billy tried to close his ears. Madness.
Alone in the emptiness of the hut, Billy’s eyes were closed. He was trying to wish this place away. He wanted to wake up somewhere else, somewhere safe, somewhere he could smell fresh air, wash himself clean, talk to people who might speak his language. Then came the sound of the door opening and a shouted order.
‘Raus!’
The guard wore the uniform of the SS. Billy was still dressed. He stumbled towards the door, scratching again, and followed the guard out. The brightness of the sunshine hurt his eyes. He gazed round. An infinity of barrack huts stretched away towards a distant fence, each one perfectly placed. Someone must have sat down at a drawing board and planned all this, he thought. Someone must have drawn a set of straight lines and worked out how many bodies each carefully pencilled oblong could hold. Layer after layer of prisoners for whom the regime had no place. The geometry of hell, Billy thought, for a community of ghosts.
The camp appeared to be empty. Maybe the prisoners worked elsewhere. Or maybe they just evaporated in the hot sunshine. Then, in the distance, Billy made out a flicker of movement. Two men were pushing a trolley loaded with what looked like firewood. Beyond the wire was a building bigger than anything else in sight. Smoke curled from the tall brick chimney and Billy caught the smell again. Greasy. Sweet. Pungent.
He and the guard were making for a cluster of buildings at the entrance to the camp. Beyond lay some kind of factory. The guard paused at a door and knocked three times before letting himself in. The room was small. The woman sitting behind the desk was wearing an SS uniform. She was running to fat. She had a squint and her hair, iron-grey, had been flattened by the cap which lay on the desk. Billy was staring at her hands. They were the hands of a much smaller woman and she obviously took care of her nails. On the little finger of her left hand she wore a silver ring bearing the death’s head insignia.
The guard was explaining something in German and at once Billy had the feeling that his very presence offended this woman’s sense of order. He’d arrived in the dead of night, stolen in under the wire, and she knew nothing about him. Not a single detail.
‘Your name?’ She was consulting a list. She spoke a little English.
‘Angell. Billy Angell.’
‘Engel?’ She couldn’t find him.
‘Angell.’
‘Ja.’ She looked up. ‘Englisch?’
‘Yes.’ He asked for water. Said he was very thirsty.
‘Wasser?’ She made the request sound bizarre.
Billy mimed a drinking motion. She didn’t appear to understand.
The guard departed with a smirk. The woman pulled a drawer open and produced a handful of cloth badges. Billy found himself looking at a neat line of them laid out across the desk. They were triangular, in different colours.
‘Every prisoner has to wear one,’ she touched the front of her uniform. ‘Just here. So you must help me, Herr Engell. You must choose. Maybe this one?’ A perfectly manicured fingernail found the red badge. ‘That means you’re a political prisoner.’
‘But I’m not.’
‘Ach, so… this one?’ This time it was black. ‘That’s when you don’t like work.’
‘I love work.’
‘Maybe you fuck other men? You want the pink one?’
Billy hesitated, then shook his head. He asked about the violet badge.
‘For crazy religious people, Herr Engell. Witnesses for Jehovah. Ja?’
‘Not me.’
Billy was still staring at the desk. There were two badges left, a blue one and a brown one, but he’d always hated being labelled. Beside the line of badges was a white armband. Printed across it was the word Blöd.
‘What’s this?’ he nodded at it.
‘You don’t know? You don’t know what Blöd is?’
‘No.’
‘It means idiot. Fool. A simple person. We have many Polish here. Many Blöd.’ She threw her head back and laughed. Terrible teeth.
Billy was putting the armband on. She stopped laughing.
‘You’re a Blöd?’
‘Yes.’
‘You want to wear that?’
‘Yes.’
She couldn’t believe it. She shook her head. Then she began to laugh again, her huge chest heaving, her little hand slapping down on the desk. The Engländer. A self-confessed Blöd. Priceless.
Billy asked again for water. She was drying her eyes. Then she returned the badges to the drawer, pushed back the chair and hauled herself to her feet.
‘Komm,’ she said.
She nodded at the door. There was a path outside. She motioned for him to follow. At last, he thought. At last someone who understands me. At the back of the building was another door. Peeling grey paint. She opened it and stepped back. It was a primitive lavatory. No tap. No basin. Just the toilet bowl. The stench was overwhelming.
‘Wasser, Herr Blöd,’ she gave him a playful punch on the arm. ‘Drink as much as you like.’
35
Klimt was driven to London, sharing the back of the car with the Director. It was a bigger car this time, befitting the Director’s status, and Ursula – once again – was behind the wheel. She drove fast, eating up the miles, barely slowing for the interminable military convoys heading south.
‘Our American cousins, Herr Klimt,’ the Director announced softly. ‘Once you wake these people up, life can become difficult.’
‘You’re telling me they’re hard to control?’
‘I’m telling you they’re like children. Impossible to get to sleep again.’
They drove to an address in the maze of streets east of Marble Arch. Klimt had been to London on a couple of occasions before, back in the thirties when Admiral Canaris was keen to alert his contacts in Whitehall about the growing Russian threat in the east, and he recognised some of the bigger stores in Oxford Street. Beyond Selfridges, Ursula took a left turn. Minutes later, Klimt was following the Director into a tall red-brick house with a uniformed sentry at the door.
A jowly fifty-something was waiting for them in a reception room on the first floor. He looked like a senior civil servant a little past his best. His eyes were tired behind the rimless glasses and the baggy grey suit badly needed a press. His handshake was soft. The Director introduced him as Passmore. Time, it seemed, was precious.
The Director busied himself with a decanter of sherry while the two men sat down. Passmore spoke fluent German without a trace of an
English accent. He said he was on his way to an airfield on the edges of London. This evening he would be joining a party of principals en route to Washington and he’d be happy to deliver any message Klimt might like to impart. Principals was an interesting word.
‘These people hate surprises, Herr Klimt. You should assume I know a little about you already. What exactly do you have for us?’
Klimt was familiar with British understatement. ‘A little’ meant a great deal. He began to outline an unease in certain quarters of the Reich about the future course of the war. No one liked negotiating from a position of weakness but anyone who lived in the real world couldn’t fail to conclude that a great deal of blood was still to be shed. Perhaps in vain.
‘Whose blood, Herr Klimt?’
‘Ours. And yours.’
‘And the Soviets? Our allies?’
‘Of course.’
‘You appreciate they’d have no truck with a conversation like this?’
‘Yes.’
Passmore nodded. He hadn’t touched his sherry. He wanted to know whom he might expect to be representing German interests in any negotiation.
‘Possibly Reichsführer Himmler.’
‘With Hitler’s blessing?’
‘I suspect not.’
‘We’re assuming Hitler’s dead?’
‘We’re assuming the negotiations are conducted without his participation.’
‘Or knowledge?’
‘That too.’
‘So where’s the guarantee that Himmler can deliver on any kind of agreement? Assuming that these negotiations ever take place?’
‘There’d be ways and means.’
‘Is that an assumption, Herr Klimt? Are you making it up? Or have you something a little weightier to put on the table?’
Klimt had already gone beyond the limits of his brief and he suspected that Passmore knew it. At last Passmore put the glass to his lips and took a tiny sip of sherry. Then he checked his watch.
‘Ten minutes, Herr Klimt.’
Klimt looked at him quizzically. ‘Ten minutes for what?’
‘Ten minutes for you to come up with something new. I’m not entirely sure how much you know about Herr Schellenberg’s previous efforts in this respect but it might be helpful to remind you of conversations he had with some of our people in Zurich. This is recent history, Herr Klimt. January to be precise. I was rereading the transcripts only this morning. Nothing you’ve just said has added anything new. Not one jot. Not one tiny particle.’
Passmore chose not to disguise his irritation. It showed on his face, in his voice. He put the sherry to one side and leaned forward. The situation, in his view, couldn’t be clearer. If Schellenberg, or Himmler, or even the Führer himself were prepared to settle for unconditional surrender then so be it. Otherwise there was still a war on. Best to see it through to the end.
‘No matter how messy?’
‘Your people started it, Herr Klimt. Ask the Czechs. Ask the Poles. You reap what you sow. But you’re right. Messy doesn’t do justice to what we’re all about to face.’
‘You don’t think there’s a better way?’
‘Of course I do. I’ve just mentioned it. It’s called unconditional surrender. Is this some kind of surprise, Herr Klimt?’
Klimt accepted the rebuke with a shrug. The Director had been taking discreet notes, sitting on an upright chair in the shadows. Now he got to his feet. The conversation was obviously at an end.
Klimt was still looking at Passmore.
‘Do you think I’m here under false pretences? Be honest.’
‘I’ve no idea why you’re here, Herr Klimt.’ Passmore offered a thin smile. ‘Perhaps that’s a question you should be asking yourself.’
*
One of the orderlies took Billy Angell to the library block. No one had explained why but he seemed to have been chosen for special duties. Shelves of books and a rack of party newspapers and magazines sat uneasily with everything else he’d seen in this terrifying place but he assumed the library was for the use of the camp’s staff.
Another woman appeared to be in charge. She was young and sullen and reminded Billy of a thinner version of Agnès. Her English, to his surprise, was good.
‘You speak no German?’ She was eyeing the Blöd armband.
‘No.’
‘A pity. Maybe we should teach you. Either German or Polish. You sleep with the Poles. You work with the Germans. How lucky to have a choice. A moment, please.’
She left her desk and disappeared through a door in the corner. Billy caught a brief conversation but he didn’t understand a word. Then she was back at the open door.
‘In here please, Herr Angell. As a place of work this has its advantages. You will assist with material refurbishment. Most of the prisoners do factory jobs. Some go to quarries to break stones. Others dig all day. In summer, we keep the windows open for the breeze. In winter we have a stove. I suggest you keep that in mind.’
Material refurbishment? Billy stepped across. The room was small and dominated by a table. An old man was bent over a pool of light from a lamp at his elbow. He was thin, frail. Striped shirt. Striped trousers. Not a hair on his shaven head. He didn’t look round.
The door closed. The old man didn’t move.
‘Sit down,’ he indicated the chair beside him. Billy froze. He recognised the voice. It triggered a thousand memories, all of them bad.
‘Malin? Malin, is that you?’
The old man nodded, then looked round. Something had happened to his face. It seemed to have caved in. Then he saw the armband and attempted a smile of welcome. No teeth.
Billy didn’t know what to do.
‘Sit down,’ Malin said again, this time patting the seat.
Billy did as he was told. The old man had a collection of watches in a cardboard box at his feet. He was working on them one by one, easing off the casing, exposing the movement inside, making tiny adjustments with a collection of specialist tools.
Billy had a thousand questions to ask. It seemed an age since they’d been dragged into the field by the SS, a thousand years since they’d been forced to watch the slaughter of the Spanish couple and of Agnès, but the moment Billy began to talk Malin put a finger to his lips and gestured upwards. Mikros. Even here.
‘Tell me about the watches,’ Billy said hopelessly.
‘They come from prisoners. The ones that work are sold. The ones that don’t I mend. Use a man as best you can. Efficient, don’t you think?’
He spat the word out. The same old Malin. He had two magnifying glasses, one of which he gave to Billy. It was scratched and smeared but the innards of the exposed watch began to make sense as Malin talked him through it. Material refurbishment, thought Billy. That’s what the woman had meant. He followed the explanation as best he could but something told him that there was going to be more to this conversation than the beginnings of an apprenticeship in watchmaking. He was right.
‘I had a brother, too,’ Malin said. Billy felt the lightest pressure of the old man’s boot on his. Play along. Pretend.
‘You did?’
‘Karyl. He was older, as well. Just like yours. I was frightened of him to begin with but it turned out he was a real softie. He used to take me sledging when the first snows came. And when we were older he taught me how to drink. That was a brave thing to do with my parents around but Karyl never cared. He led his own life, that boy. He wrote his own script.’
Billy had the magnifying glass to his eye, watching the old man coaxing the movement to life. He had the skills of a surgeon. After everything he’d been through, there was barely a tremor as he eased the tension on the mainspring.
‘My brother was the same,’ Billy said. ‘We fought like cats and dogs when we were young. He knew I was scared of spiders and he used to collect them in a matchbox and put them in my bed. We shared a room upstairs. My mum would come up when she heard me screaming but I never told on him. Not once. I think he respected me for that.�
�
‘The screaming?’
‘The not telling. He was a tough guy, my brother, and he knew from the start that I was a weakling but in the end it didn’t make any difference at all. He went his way and I went mine. He even came to see some of the plays I was in. I knew he didn’t much like the theatre and all that showing off but I loved him being there.’
‘You must miss him.’
‘I do. Especially now he’s gone.’
‘Gone?’
‘He died.’
‘You never told me that.’
‘You never asked.’
‘So what happened?’
Billy went through the whole story. The Navy. The diving course. The long, unexplained absences overseas. The fact that his brother’s fiancée didn’t even know what he was up to. Then the moment arrived when she answered a knock at her door and found herself looking at a naval officer with the worst news in the world.
‘He just disappeared,’ Billy said. ‘And no one thought to tell us.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it was supposed to be secret. Because no one was supposed to know what really happened.’
‘And?’ The old man was looking at him now, his work put to one side.
Billy smiled at him. In some small way, this felt like redemption. Do your duty. See it through. No matter what.
‘He was looking for a beach for the invasion,’ he said. ‘And he found it.’
‘Where?’ Billy felt another tiny tap, this time on his ankle.
‘Dunkirk,’ he said.
‘And he really did die?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I’m sorry, my friend,’ his eyes were misty. ‘It’s a terrible price to pay.’
36
After Passmore left, the Director approached Klimt with the decanter. Moncrieff, he said, was about to arrive from the office. They knew a decent restaurant down the road. Reliable grub even in this time of austerity. Nice people. Klimt nodded. He felt he owed this man an apology. Not least because he’d so obviously let him down.
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