War Cry Page 9

  I have to watch this, he told himself. I have to bear witness. I have to carry my share of the guilt for the evil my country is doing.

  The staff cars, watched over by the Hanomag, set off across the bare, featureless countryside. In a few months, this would be a golden sea of wheat, but for now it was dark, barren soil, stretching as far as the eye could see. A little more than an hour had passed, when the cars turned off the main track and drove down into a village, small houses built with logs, then roofed with thatch, which were the traditional dwelling places of the Russian peasantry.

  The convoy came to a halt in front of another building, windowless and larger than the rest. Two canvas-topped trucks were parked beside it, and a dozen or so men, in Waffen-SS camouflage smocks, were talking and smoking. Gerhard could see a junior officer scurrying to get them into order before the important passengers emerged from the staff cars.

  The SS soldiers formed up in two neat rows, standing at ease until Gauleiter Koch emerged from his car, then snapping to attention. Jeckeln went over to the junior officer, a lieutenant by the look of him, exchanged Hitler salutes, and conferred briefly.

  Jeckeln returned to the group of observers and addressed Koch. “Herr Gauleiter, I have the honor to inform you that we are ready to proceed.”

  “In that case, carry on,” Koch replied.

  The sun was shining and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, but the north wind was freezing and the ground beneath Gerhard’s feet was hard with frost. The sub-zero air wasn’t the only reason Gerhard pulled his gray overcoat a little tighter around him as he waited for the day’s events to unfold. He felt a chill gripping him from within, a dread that only deepened as the doors of the barn opened.

  A harsh command of, “Move! Move! Quickly!” could be heard and the first of the Jews emerged, blinking and shivering into the light.

  Schmidt had maneuvered the gas van into position, with its rear end facing the barn. He got out of the driver’s cab, walked around his vehicle, opened the double doors at the back of the cargo bay and pulled down a set of metal steps, so that it was possible to walk straight into the bay. He fetched his hose from the truck, pushed one end over the van’s exhaust pipe and disappeared under the van, taking the other end with him.

  The SS men herded the Jews, forcing them to move at a run by means of shouts, slaps and blows with whips and clubs, like snarling dogs around a pack of sheep. The stream of naked humanity passed Gerhard, close enough for him to smell their sweat, their excrement and their fear. He caught sudden glimpses of individual people, like single frames in a fast-rolling reel of film: a woman holding her terrified, crying son close against her, trying to calm him, though she must have known that they were both on the way to their deaths; an old man clutching at his bleeding mouth (Gerhard thought at first that he had been hit and then realized, My God, they have ripped the gold teeth from his jaws); women placing arms across their breasts or hands over their pudenda as they sought to retain some modesty; middle-aged men, who might once have been doctors or lawyers (an instant realization: This could have been Izzy Solomons). A young man in his early twenties stopped and turned to face one of the SS soldiers, who must have been about the same age as him. He waved a fist, shouted out an insult and spat on the ground. The SS man smashed the butt of his rifle into the Jew’s face, knocking him to the ground. A second SS man ran to the scene and helped his comrade pick the young man up under his arms, drag him to the gas van and throw him in.

  The cargo bay of the van filled up.

  “Will they all fit in?” Hartmann inquired, for there were still a dozen or more Jews making their way from the barn.

  Jeckeln nodded. “Seventy is the standard load for a vehicle of this size.”

  Schmidt had emerged from beneath the van. He stated with authority: “Smaller vans, like the Opels and Renaults, can only hold fifty. But a big Saurer like this, or a Magirus, they’ll take seventy comfortably, if they’re all packed in tight.”

  Gerhard kept his face impassive, though it was all he could do to keep himself screaming out, “In the name of God, stop!” He longed to punch the stupid grin off Schmidt’s face. How could that buffoon talk of the Jews fitting “comfortably” when he could hear desperate cries for help coming from inside the cargo bay as people were crushed and trampled?

  Gerhard forced himself to look unconcerned, to keep playing the part of the hard-bitten Luftwaffe ace, the committed Nazi for whom the Final Solution was the ultimate achievement of the Führer he worshipped.

  If I cannot do anything to stop this, can I not at least look away?

  How he longed to be a coward and close his eyes and ears to the truth.

  No . . . look. Listen. Remember everything, every last detail of this abomination and then, when the time comes, be ready to testify to it all, and to accept whatever punishment you receive for having allowed it to happen.

  It took four SS men to force the doors of the van shut and then bar them so that they could not be pushed open from within.

  “Are you gentlemen ready to begin?” Schmidt asked.

  “Should we stand back?” Koch asked.

  “Oh no, sir. The van’s completely airtight. No fumes come out, no fresh air goes in. That’s the beauty of it: proper German workmanship.”

  “Then proceed.”

  Schmidt marched around to the driver’s cab, got in and fired up the engine.

  For a short while, nothing happened. The hose around the exhaust muffled the noise that might normally have emerged from it, as well as the smoke.

  “Is it working properly?” Hermann asked.

  “Wait,” Jeckeln replied.

  Then they heard, faintly through the metal sides of the van, the sounds of people coughing. The coughs turned to curses, cries of panic, pleas to be let out. Next came hands, fists and feet battering against the sides of the van as the people fought to smash their way out. The sound rose to a crescendo of human anguish and desperation, the noise like a beating, howling, cacophonous emanation from the furthest depths of hell.

  The sound ebbed away until there was only the faint impact of a human hand on metal, one last moan and then a silence fell that was worse than the ghastly clamor that had preceded it, for it was the soundlessness of lives erased, breath turned to stone.

  “I suppose we’d better open up the doors and see what’s happened,” said Hartmann, with an attempt at a casual tone that was betrayed by his ashen skin.

  Now you know what death sounds like, when you stand right by it, Gerhard thought, with that contempt that fighting men felt for the false bravado of those who had never been near a flying bullet.

  “Wait,” Jeckeln repeated. Then he looked toward Koch and added, deferentially, “I am reliably informed that at this stage the subjects are unconscious, but death does not come for a minute or two more. Our men always allow five minutes before they turn off the engine and another five before opening the doors. To be on the safe side.”

  “I see,” said Koch. “Tell the men that they may have a cigarette while we wait. I believe that coffee and biscuits have been provided for our refreshment, gentlemen. Now is as good a time as any to consume them. It ensures that we do not spend more time here than is necessary.”

  One of Koch’s staff opened the rear of a car and produced a folding table, a large vacuum flask of coffee, milk, sugar, biscuits and a few polished steel picnic cups. Gerhard took the coffee that was offered to him, drank it in one, the scalding liquid failing to melt the chill in his bones, and lit a cigarette. His hand was shaking as he flicked his lighter and put the flame to the tobacco.

  “Please, Squadron Captain, do have one of these delicious biscuits. Our baker is a man of remarkable gifts. Sadly, however, he is a Jew, so we must make the best of his talents while we can.”

  Koch and Jeckeln were the only members of the inspection party to touch the biscuits. “Perhaps the men might be allowed to share the rest,” Jeckeln suggested. “Good for their morale.”

 
Koch thought for a second. Gerhard knew he was the type who would never see the need to pay consideration to an underling. But since the suggestion had been mooted, even Koch could perceive that an air of regal generosity would profit him more than meanness. He gave a curt nod. “Yes . . . but tell them to be quick about eating them.”

  The Gauleiter need not have worried. The SS men ate with relish. The plate was cleared in seconds.

  Jeckeln checked his watch. Ten minutes had passed. He looked toward the junior SS officer. “Proceed!”

  Orders were given. Two of the men put on gas masks, walked toward the back of the van, removed the bar across the doors and opened them. They looked in and then recoiled, as if hit in the face at the sight that greeted them. One of them staggered unsteadily away from the van, then ripped the mask from his face and vomited onto the frozen earth.

  Gerhard waited for the breeze to blow the fumes away then glanced at Hartmann, Jeckeln and Koch. He knew that none of them wanted to look into the truck. But they have to. They have to see what they have done.

  He threw his cigarette to the earth and ground it under his heel. He drew himself up tall, and said, “Well, gentlemen, shall we inspect the damage?”

  Gerhard was junior to the three other men. But he was a war hero, with the Iron Cross at his throat; he had deliberately worn it and left the collar buttons of his coat undone to show it off, and none of the others could let themselves be unmanned by him, not in front of the watching SS soldiers.

  “If you insist,” said Jeckeln. Gerhard knew that this was just another day’s work for him. It was Koch and Hartmann’s reactions that he wanted to observe.

  Gerhard led them toward the gas van. He felt confident about his own ability to withstand whatever vileness was about to meet his eyes. He had been at war for the best part of three years. He had seen the scorched and mangled remains of what had once been his comrades, even his friends, roasted within their crashed aircraft. He had watched the women who flew the Sturmoviks trying and failing to escape the confines of their cockpits as they plummeted to their doom, their hands clawing at the glass, like the Jews hammering on the side of the van. During the savage Russian winter from which they were only now emerging, he saw men frozen solid in the snow and ice. Gerhard had seen the tortured remnants of German soldiers after the Russian partisans had dealt with them, and smelled the human flesh that had roasted in villages obliterated in reprisal.

  But none of that had prepared him for the inside of the gas van. It was the stench that hit him first, the overpowering odor of the blood and urine and vomit and human feces that swilled around the floor of the van, surrounding the corpses like rancid gravy spilling from meat in a stew. Here and there he could see shanks of hair and sets of false teeth amidst the fetid slurry, ripped from the people to which they had once belonged in the frenzy that had gripped the captive Jews in their last moments of earthly existence.

  When he had heard that gas was the means by which the Final Solution would remove the intimacy and expense of shooting millions of human beings individually, there had been a part of him that had clung to the hope—entirely absurd, he now realized—that this would be a less terrible death for the victims. He could not have been more wrong. At least a bullet to the back of the head was quick. But the Grim Reaper took his time in the gas vans. He toyed with his victims. He gave them license to punch and claw and scream at their confines, at each other, at the bottomless well of futility as they struggled to find a way out, to end their agonies.

  Many of the naked bodies bore deep scratches down their flanks and limbs. Some were so flayed they looked as if the wounds had been inflicted by wild animals rather than their fellow men and women. Gerhard saw an old woman whose eyeballs had been torn loose from their sockets; a little girl whose head had flopped at an unnatural angle, for her neck had been broken; two men who had died with their hands still around one another’s throats; a man and woman who were holding one another tight; and face after contorted face, whose rictus mouths and staring, sightless eyes would, Gerhard knew, haunt his nightmares forever.

  Gerhard saw Koch swallowing hard, struggling not to react like the SS man had done. Hartmann went glassy-eyed, then dropped in a dead faint to the ground. A couple of Koch’s junior staff had to revive him and lead him away to one of the cars. Gerhard held himself, forcing himself to look and record, as if there were a camera rolling in his mind’s eye, documenting everything he saw.

  As he followed Jeckeln back to their staff car, another thought struck him: I have lost Saffron forever.

  He was tainted, guilty by association with this bestial crime, which was but one tiny part of an infinitely greater offense against all humanity. No matter what he did to atone for his own sin, and that of his people, he could not be redeemed. Nor could he possibly ask, let alone expect her to love him. She would destroy herself in trying to redeem him.

  Like most Bavarians, Gerhard had been raised a Catholic. He was unable to believe in God, but the rituals of the church held a powerful grip on his imagination and his conscience. Part of him had a shred of faith in the concept of confession and forgiveness . . . but not for this.

  This was a sin that was, in the most literal sense, unforgivable. Nor could he ask anyone to share it or be tainted by it.

  As he sat in the staff car, driving across the endless, featureless terrain, he returned to his first thought. He could never again be with Saffron Courtney, no matter how much he loved her, or she loved him. That hope was gone for good.

  It no longer mattered to Gerhard whether he lived or died, for what value could there be to a life that had been stripped of love?

  The fact of his death was no longer important. Only the manner of it mattered.

  I have to do something, however small, to try to put this right. If I am to die, then may I at least die doing something good, something worthwhile.

  I must die doing something that matters.

  Konrad von Meerbach drew a silk handkerchief across his forehead to wipe away a sheen of sweat. It was a warm spring late afternoon in Lisbon and the hills on which the city was built were proving unexpectedly taxing. From his earliest boyhood, he had been a thickset, powerfully built individual, but he had spent most of his war behind a desk. Now his muscle was turning to fat, his waistband and collar were tighter and physical exercise was more of a strain than a pleasure.

  Officially, von Meerbach had come to neutral Portugal to discuss wolframite: the ore from which the metal tungsten was extracted. Tungsten was hard and heat-resistant. This made it useful for several applications, including the one for which both the German and Allied governments most valued: as the tip of penetrating projectiles, such as tank and artillery shells. A compromise had been reached in which Portugal supplied both sides with tungsten, in return for an understanding that they would respect its neutrality and neither would invade.

  Adolf Hitler, however, was not given to compromise. He wanted all the tungsten that the Portuguese could produce. As a senior SS officer who was also a major industrialist, Konrad von Meerbach was considered the ideal man to deal with Salazar, Portugal’s Prime Minister, and his senior ministers. Von Meerbach had taken a number of meetings with Salazar in which he made the point, with characteristic force, that it was in Portugal’s best interests to keep all-conquering Germany happy and abandon its allegiance to the failed, defeated British. Salazar had stubbornly refused. Now von Meerbach was attending to his own, private interests.

  Heinrich Himmler had told von Meerbach to take a few days leave while he was abroad. “Relax, feel the sun on your back, recharge your batteries. You’ve earned it,” the SS-Reichsführer had told him, adding, “Perhaps you might try some fishing. I hear it’s very good in Portugal.”

  Von Meerbach was indeed hoping to land a catch, but it would be in a casino or a brothel, where he might go some way to sating his constant, nagging craving for power and debasement.

  Von Meerbach relished his rare time alone, in a neutral foreign city
, away from the tumult of war and the disappointments of a wife whose indifference to his needs twisted him into a fury. That afternoon, he had lost heavily gambling in the casinos, but found a whore, for the right price, who was willing enough to indulge his darkest urgings.

  Von Meerbach stopped close to the summit of the steep cobbled street, gathered his breath and gave his face another wipe. He entered the large, old apartment building where he was staying, whose air of faded grandeur suggested it might once have been an aristocrat’s townhouse, and he climbed the creaking wooden staircase to the top floor.

  •••

  In the kitchen, von Meerbach made a pot of strong black coffee and took it outside to the balcony. The view was magnificent. He could look out across the Sea of Straw, the sheltered expanse of water into which the River Tagus flowed before it reached the sea. Von Meerbach closed his eyes for a moment, just to feel the sun on his face, as his leader had commanded. He opened them again and took in the sight of the city, marveling in the absence of the barrage balloons, gun emplacements and burned-out buildings that disfigured every major German city. Out on the water, ferries were plying across the river, taking passengers from one side to the other, as freighters steamed to and from the docks under the watchful eyes of a Portuguese naval frigate.

  His sunny reverie started to cloud over as his thoughts probed old wounds that festered in his mind like deep craters pockmarking an idyllic landscape. The Courtneys. He took his hatred of that family very seriously. Without willing it, he zoomed in on the particulars of those he despised.

  Centaine Courtney—age: forty-two; date of birth: New Year’s Day, 1900. Principal residence: the Weltevreden Estate, Cape Town, South Africa. Owner of the H’ani diamond mine. Only child, Shasa Courtney, age twenty-four, lost an eye last year while serving as a fighter pilot on the South African Air Force in Somaliland.