by Pirate Irwin
That was the last Sebastian saw of him as he was executed soon afterwards. He felt a huge hole open up at his loss for von der Schulenburg had for him been the soul of the plot and a mentor to him and he felt pangs of guilt that he had not shared his fate. He didn’t really know any of the conspirators who had been sent to Flossenburg and for him that was a relief. He wanted to distance himself from the whole affair and in that way fight the demons swelling up inside of him. The knowledge that his meanderings with Victoria had driven his best friend to his death gave him enough to be guilty about. “You’ve had quite a war, Sebastian, from battle to camp, back to battle and return to camp, nobody will believe you and you will end your days in a funny farm. Terrific!”
“Talking to yourself again, Murat?” broke in a voice from the cell next door to his and Sebastian sprang up, shocked at the interruption and concerned that he was descending into madness already by conversing out loud with himself and in the third person. He didn’t reply but instead turned over onto his other side and tried to go back to sleep and shut himself off from the dreadful dreams he was having, but they just kept on coming and coming and some nights he yearned for the next day to bring him the salvation of a bullet to the head to end it all and to allow himself the opportunity to make peace with Eric. There was another good reason why he didn’t want too much to do with the other plotters and that was there were over a hundred or so Allied prisoners of war imprisoned there. The last thing he needed was to be associated with the Germans as that could lead to unnecessary complications and as far as he was concerned his war was over or at least his part with the Nazis was. From now on, provided of course he came out alive, he was building towards rehabilitating himself and exiting the camp an Englishman, who had been sent there for the botched attempt to escape from his previous camp. Sebastian Stuart was to be reborn and his shadowy past, albeit one he wasn’t unjustly proud of, shelved, hopefully never to be unearthed. He felt reasonably confident that he could get away with it as so many of those he had known were dead or compromised to such an extent they wouldn’t cause him any trouble. That is why he found the sudden utterance of his German name so disturbing. He would seek to discourage whoever it was from repeating it the following morning when they made their weary way to the granite quarry to perform some fruitless work for the Reich.
His neighbour was a frail looking man, of about, he surmised, 70 years of age, and clearly not fit for the gruelling work in the pit, but under this regime there were no excuses made for avoiding work; failure to turn up for roll call or seeking a medical excuse often resulted in being dispatched by a bullet and judging by the rough way he was dealt with by the guards, this man was not going to get any special treatment.
Sebastian ensured he fell into line alongside him on their march down to the quarry, and while conversation was forbidden he was going to make sure that the old man stayed upright and didn’t fall over in his cumbersome clogs, which looked incongruous alongside his smart double-breasted suit he wore. Not the most appropriate attire, Sebastian felt, for excavating granite, more the clothing for a banking job, but this man looked as if he didn’t really belong in the real world any more. As they proceeded out of the elegant gatehouse entrance, his neighbour took advantage of the shouting of the guards and growled, “My name is Canaris, Admiral Canaris.” Sebastian almost fell over in surprise and it was the elderly man who held out his hand and steadied his younger partner. He was indeed in honoured company, for Canaris was, or had been, the eminence grise of German military intelligence, a complex figure from what he had learnt from von Tresckow and von Helldorf, who while like so many senior figures not committing himself to the plot, had allowed several of his subordinates to openly carry on subversive activity within his organization, the Abwehr. Like von Kluge, his obfuscation evidently hadn’t done him much good for here he was trooping out to chip away at some ridiculous stone in a quarry under the command of the regime he had served and was now deemed an enemy of. Sebastian was nevertheless amazed he hadn’t already followed the others to their death and he could only think that some in the hierarchy believed he was more valuable alive than dead with the war coming to an end. Canaris seemed to think so to as he later admitted to Sebastian, declaring confidently that he would be used as an intermediary to make peace and his incarceration was an unfortunate misunderstanding and a warning to him to never again allow such treachery to fester under his command. Sebastian, though, thought he was deluding himself, for such a distinguished servant of the state to be sent to Flossenburg meant he was seriously out of favour and if he was being saved for a peace mission it seemed like a most perverse preparation for such a task.
Sebastian did allude to this one evening after they were returned to their part of the camp and were allowed to stand around smoking before being encased in their respective cells. Canaris simply smiled and shook his head when Sebastian opined that the flip side of the coin was that he was more of a danger to the regime alive should they be rescued before they were executed. “You are naïve, Major. They have nothing definitive against me. I, like you, have been judged guilty by association and that is not even under this regime a hanging offence.”
Sebastian laughed bitterly and replied: “I don’t believe the law such as it was exists here any more. A snake like this will take anyone with it as it withers and dies and you, Admiral, are the sort of person that would be a threat should certain members of the snake wish to shed their skin before the animal dies and reinvent themselves.”
Canaris refused to accept this line of argument, though his former deputy Colonel Hans Oster and others associated with him tacitly acknowledged that their former chief was living in denial. The more realistic members of the group such as Oster simply lived in hope that the allies would reach the camp before they were executed and from time to time they could hear the thud of artillery and other munitions in the distance, but on a clear day that could mean anything up to a 100 kilometres away. They had enough to be worried with in any case in just getting through day after day of working in the quarry where even the slightest indiscretion could lead to a savage beating by the brutish guards, who though young enough for armed service were patently not deemed fit to serve in the front line not even when the situation was so desperate. Canaris was treated especially roughly, and it was painful enough not being able to intervene but so cowed had become even the former soldiers imprisoned there that no one dared spring to the old man’s defence. One such day he was forced to remove his clogs and by the end of the day his feet were cut to ribbons and he was in danger of not even making it back to the camp.
However, they formed up into such a tight phalanx that they were able to keep him moving but it was questionable whether he would be able to withstand much more of the treatment being meted out on him and it left many wondering why they didn’t simply kill him and get it over with. Sebastian found the hard labour excruciating enough but he managed to get his way through it by shutting his mind off and becoming a robotic figure, a non person lost amidst the mass of humanity scratching away at the surface of some grey stone that nobody had the faintest idea of what purpose it would serve. Some of the English prisoners called the quarry in their dry humour “Aberdeen” in honour of the bland Scottish city, which had acquired the moniker of the “granite city”. These same prisoners, though, Sebastian noticed had begun to give him some searching looks as if they knew who he was.
He rarely spoke in their presence and tried as little as possible to be seen conversing with Canaris or Oster, though he pleaded with his German companions to stop calling him by his German name and rank. After a little while they acquiesced but occasionally they would slipup and it came to cost Sebastian dear.
It came as they were receiving their daily slops – for to call their food anything but that was a lie – and as Sebastian wandered off to sit down and eat the watery soup and try and chew the hard bread, one of the English prisoners approached him and stood over him menacingly. Sebastian tried to ignore him
and carried on slurping the gut rot from his bowl with his eyes firmly fixed on the rutted grassless ground. The Englishman didn’t budge and simply stared down at Sebastian. “You’re Stuart, aren’t you?” he asked quietly.
Sebastian was stunned and looked up but with the sun encircling his interlocutor’s face he couldn’t make his features out. “So what if I am, friend,” replied Sebastian nonchalantly.
“It means a lot, and I am certainly not your friend,” retorted the Englishman. Sebastian didn’t like the manner of the stranger’s tone and certainly couldn’t understand why he had been targeted and how he knew who he was.
“I would be much obliged if you were to leave me in peace as I don’t care for your company, whoever you may be,” said Sebastian irritatedly.
“I’m not moving. I let you out of my sight once before and that proved a massive misjudgement,” the stranger said. Sebastian rose from his sitting position intrigued and not a little scared at the last comment and found himself staring into the eyes of a thinner and ill-looking Grosvenor.
“Jesus, Grosvenor! You’re alive! What the hell happened that you ended up here?” stammered Sebastian. Grosvenor frowned and replied: “Ah, I see you find it a surprise I am still alive and able to bear witness to your treachery, you little prick.” Sebastian recoiled at this assault and held out his arm in a friendly gesture to try and calm him down, but Grosvenor shook him off and much to Sebastian’s consternation he observed that several of the other English prisoners were taking an interest in the exchange. “I don’t understand what you are going on about. Johns was the mole, not the other two you summarily had killed, and he had me shipped off somewhere else before he returned to the camp,” protested Sebastian. It was all in vain for Grosvenor had carried with him in the intervening years the burning memory of the German woman uttering Sebastian’s name as the traitor and that was evidence enough to convict him. How fortunate he felt now after years of torment at leading his fellow escapees into the trap that just as he was giving up hope of ridding himself of the guilt he should be transferred to this awful place and discover that for all the pain there was an upside. Before him now he had the man responsible for their murders. Sebastian was at a loss as to what to do because he could not tell Grosvenor the whole story, as it would only make him look even guiltier than he already was in his eyes, but at the same time he could not afford to have him relating to his fellow Englishmen that he had betrayed him and his group. He didn’t even know what had happened to them, whether the rest were alive or dead but he could guess that Grosvenor’s presence here was no accident, it was another sleight of hand by Johns in his inexorable desire to have Sebastian destroyed. He had to credit him with his masterful puppeteering and his ability to track down Grosvenor and have him transferred so he could set up a dramatic Shakespearean finale. Sebastian almost expected Johns to pop up out of the blue and stand watching the scene develop. Grosvenor was clearly not a well man, he was sweating but it wasn’t because of the hot spring sun; he was yellow in the face, he was all but skin and bone and the once fine head of hair was now reduced to strands of what resembled the dry weeds that blew over the deserts of Nevada. His discovery of his nemesis had also provoked him into fitful shaking, as if he was on the verge of having a fit, and while Sebastian wished he could just go away, he didn’t regard him as an enemy and certainly didn’t wish him ill. But he knew that he could not let the matter drop now and had to do something about it, which meant either trying to convince Grosvenor, though that looked a long shot or ensuring he didn’t leave the camp alive.
“What’s the matter, Rupert?” came a voice from behind him. Oh shit, thought Sebastian, as if things couldn’t get any worse. It was Oster, and he hoped Grosvenor hadn’t noticed the name. However, ill and all, Grosvenor’s mind was still alert and he looked first at the balding Oster and then to Sebastian before wrinkling his nose in disgust. “You are not only a fucking traitor, you are a fucking German anyway,” he hissed. Sebastian cursed Oster and indicated he shove off before turning back to Grosvenor and raising his arms in supplication. “You don’t understand, Grosvenor, you really don’t,” he pleaded.
Grosvenor stepped back to avoid Sebastian’s attempt at conciliation and drew a finger along his throat. “You’re a dead man, Stuart, or whatever your name is,” he sneered and in one extraordinary movement launched himself forward hurling his measly body on top of Sebastian, who squirmed out of his grasp as they both hit the ground. Sebastian was slightly winded by the impact but rose unsteadily to his feet and reached for his bowl as a sort of protective device. Grosvenor clambered to his feet, his breathing none too regular and prepared to attack his prey again. By this time, the guards had intervened to stop any of the other prisoners joining in the fray and perhaps provoking a full-scale riot. They surrounded the two “gladiators”, machine guns trained on the spectators and allowed the combat to continue. It didn’t last long as Grosvenor’s despairing lunge at Sebastian ended with his opponent swinging the bowl so it connected with the assailant’s head, laying him out flat on the ground.
He kneeled down to ensure that he was still alive and could hear a faint heart beat and rose once again, flinging his bowl to the ground and brushed his way through the guards and the bemused prisoners. Grosvenor was carried off to the pitiful sick bay, concussed and so weakened by his illness that there was little hope of him coming out alive. He wasn’t to either, dying that night mumbling incoherently about betrayal and a camp near Cottbus and a Colonel Johns that none of the prisoners who were orderlies in the ward knew anything about or had ever heard of. Sebastian had got away once again, but this had been a close scrape and not one he had wanted. He was fortunate that the rest of the English prisoners did not know Grosvenor and had not had the time to get to know him. They simply thought it one of those arguments that sadly became part and parcel of daily life when one has been incarcerated for too long and treated like animals. Indeed, the rumours sweeping their quarter was that the dead man had once been involved in the German army and had in fact been a part of the plot against Hitler, sent crazy by torture and sickness he had assumed the role of an English officer as if to purge his soul of any residual guilt in his treachery. It was a rumour successfully started by Oster, who despite being a marked man in the regime’s eyes still had the capacity of a good intelligence officer to cloud the real truth and he felt he owed that to Sebastian after his error.
Sebastian was saddened by the whole episode but even more alarmed that he would be held to account for his role in the escape attempt by whosoever of that group may still be alive and with Grosvenor’s death he had no idea who had survived. He found himself in the unattractive position of lolling himself off to sleep wishing that no one had escaped the trap set by Johns – which made him feel even more uncomfortable at the thought he shared something in common with the intelligence agent.
He never really had time to thank Oster for his cleaning up role in the matter. Two days later, he was woken up by shouts and the yapping of guard dogs. He could hear cell doors being opened and the guards shouting at the top of their voices at the particular prisoner to strip naked and leave his cell. He could not discern any protest, but he was too scared himself that his would be the next door opened, for this was clearly the final wake-up call for Canaris that his secret mission to make peace with the world was a solo effort and it was going to be at the end of a rope, hopefully making peace with himself. He could hear Oster’s voice saying something defiant and receiving a thwack from a rifle butt, while Canaris appeared not to have been taken out yet. Sebastian didn’t know whether to go to the cell grille and try to see what was going on or to hide in the corner and pray they didn’t see him. He opted to go to the grille, reasoning that no dark corner of his dingy cell was going to save him from his fate. He watched as the naked figure of Oster was led away, followed by two other members of the resistance and finally came Canaris’s turn as the stooped figure waddled away to meet his maker, still no doubt protesting his
innocence and his usefulness to the regime. Suddenly all was silent and Sebastian, bemused at his being ignored, returned to his bunk. He could not sleep, he tossed and he turned, and allowed all the black thoughts to swirl around his brain, and questioned again and again why had he survived once more. He was at a loss to provide the answer, only that someone somewhere was looking over him but it barely made the guilt inside him subside as he thought of all those who had deserved to live yet had gone to their deaths, and he still there breathing. A certain part of him regretted in perverse fashion that he had not been considered important enough to share their fate, but in the main he was overcome by the guilt of the survivor. He heard himself say over and over again, “Why me, why me?” but lacking any great faith in the Lord he found little respite to his questions, and he dissolved into feeling like Sisyphus, who was condemned to rolling a huge boulder up a hill only to lose his grip every time he was on the verge of reaching the top of it and having to start all over again. The only thing he could content himself with was that for some reason he had been kept alive with a purpose. He would make full use of it once he was returned to the normal civilized world in the post-war period because for the first time since he landed in France back in 1940 he was sure he would come out alive. Whether it was so he could enjoy the rest of his life, or whether it was so he could reflect on his misjudgements and betrayals, he had no idea, but one thing was for sure, he was going to make the most of his opportunity. It had been quite a war, enough for 10 people, let alone one, and Sebastian Stuart was going to ensure peacetime was as exciting as the previous six years had been. He had become an addict to danger and more dangerously he truly believed he was untouchable, which was to prove his downfall. For all his command of the German language, he forgot one particularly important word – Schadenfreude.
