‘Two thousand, seven hundred and sixty-six tonnes of picric acid, gun cotton and TNT destined for the European conflict to be made into munitions, detonated in the Mont Blanc’s hold. Granted flaming benzol draining into the hold was a major factor, and granted that the shock of the collision by itself did not set off the cargo, but picric acid is still nothing to fool with.’
A dyestuff.
‘Which both you and the firm’s test weaver could well have discovered overlooked in some storeroom.’
Kohler was only too aware that the forced march from the Xanthate Shed had been just that but voices hadn’t been raised, not yet. Cap tucked under the left arm of a still snow-dusted greatcoat, Dorsche stood rigidly to attention inside the open door of the chairman’s office, while Karl Rudel confided to Lowe Schrijen what Prisoner 220374 had revealed.
‘A sentence in absentia, Kohler,’ sighed Schrijen as if savouring the matter, his dark blue eyes flicking briefly over this Kripo to settle beyond him. ‘Lagerfeldwebel Dorsche, the highest commendation will be in my monthly report to Colonel Rasche. A citation at least. If our Kommandant didn’t have such a one to look after his Arbeitslager, Kohler, where would a man in my position be? Always in the past I’ve trusted implicitly the judgement of our Lagerfeldwebel, as has Colonel Rasche and with good reason. A Grossfahdung was thought necessary when you arrived this morning. You asked me to stop it and out of misguided courtesy I reluctantly agreed. Now surely you must see its need.
‘Lagerfeldwebel, I’m certain Lageroffizier Rudel will concur with what I have to say. Please proceed with your search.’
‘Now just a minute,’ objected Kohler. ‘The death of Eugene Thomas could well have been murder. Until our investigation is-’
‘Murder, Kohler? A man’s comrades sentence him to death and he learns of it? His wife in Paris is letting our boys have her repeatedly? There’s a brand-new bicycle few can afford?’
‘He killed himself, Kohler,’ said Rudel stiffly. ‘Don’t push it any further.’
‘A fait accompli, is that it, meine Lieben? Gestapo … I’m one of them, remember? If we’re stopped, Gestapo Muller hears of it, not just Gestapo Boemelburg.’
‘Kohler, Kohler, what is this you’re saying?’ exclaimed Schrijen. ‘That what the Gruppenfuhrer Muller most wishes to hear from you has finally come to pass? That once again you consider yourself one of us?’
‘And loyal,’ said Rudel. ‘Please don’t forget that even in Berlin they’ve heard of you.’
Raymond Maillotte would be sent to Natzweiler-Struthof to be interrogated, no questions asked here, no interview taken down by either Louis or himself. ‘What can a few minutes matter? Allow my partner and I to have a go at their quarters before Maillotte gets his things. If we find anything, we’ll be sure to let you know.’
Kohler wasn’t going to learn how to behave but why, suddenly, was he so agitated? wondered Schrijen. Concern for the prisoner or had something else been uncovered that he was holding back, something even Dorsche, as yet, knew nothing of? ‘Pick through the rubbish afterward. Let Lagerfeldwebel Dorsche know if you find anything he and his Greifer have missed. Make a little contest of it. Your eyes against theirs.’
Only the Russian watched from his window. Even the guards up in the nearest tower hadn’t yet taken notice, felt St-Cyr. If he could scoot round the corner of the kitchen, could he make it down that side of the administrative block unaccompanied? It was worth a try but first the root cellar doors would have to be closed. The guards on the gate would have to continue thinking he was still with the victim.
Certainly he couldn’t search through the laboratory under guard. There would still be Thomas’s assistants to deal with. He would have to go carefully, couldn’t have anyone finding out what he was after.
At a signal from the Russian, he realized that the man could see the gate quite clearly and that the guards there were momentarily preoccupied. Running, he darted round the corner of the kitchen, kept on going through the ankle-deep snow, cursed his broken shoes, found stacks of old machinery, broken grindstones, boxes of rusty bolts … Was nothing ever thrown out?
Found that even so, a cleared space of ten metres lay between him and the perimeter wire, its single warning strand no more than two-thirds of a metre above ground, with short lengths of dirty white rayon cord tied every ten metres to mark it, beyond this, the no-man’s-land, beyond that, the first of the three-metre-high fences with their inwardly leaning overhangs, the barbed wire complete with continuous nests of concertina wire atop the overhangs and between the inner and outer fences.
The boot prints of the Hundefuhrerin and the dogs on their nightly patrols were clear enough. When a voice, given over a megaphone, called out, ‘Halt! Was wollen Sie?’-Who goes there?-he was right back in that other war and cried out, ‘Nicht Schiessen!’ Don’t shoot! ‘Ich bin der Oberdetektiv Jean-Louis St-Cyr der Surete Nationale, meine Herren. I am merely trying to find the entrance to the laboratory and administrative offices.’
‘Ach, the other side. Kommen Sie her. Beeilen Sie sich!’ Come here. Hurry!
They would have him in their sights. Others in further towers would be notified if they hadn’t already seen him. With a wave, he shouted, ‘Danke! I’ll go this way as ordered,’ and kept on, the wire always there, the guns too. No prisoners ventured here unless they had to. All were either at work or in their compound.
A black Mercedes four-door sedan was in the garage he entered just beyond the far end of the administrative block, having felt it best to duck out of sight where possible.
Beside the sedan, its bonnet up, was the tourer. Two lorries were also being worked on but there were no guards and it looked as if no one here had yet seen him.
Hobnailed boots rained on rough-timbered stairs that were shoulder-narrow and too gottverdammt steep, thought Kohler. Doors burst open ahead of him, wire-meshed dividers were thrown aside as, caught up in the rush of Dorsche and his Greifer, he was carried along.
Floor by floor the bastards went, the sleeping tumbling from their bunks to blink myopically in the pitiful light, a bucket of piss pouring over a bare, plank floor as the men, their stubbled faces lined, confused, terrified or empty, fought to stand upright beside bunks that were tiered four to the ceiling timbers.
The Russians, but this was only the third storey of the brick monolith that had, in 1870 or ’80, been the original works. On and on Dorsche went. Everywhere the muscle was applied. He seemed to thrive on it, for he’d a lead-weighted, black leather truncheon in hand.
The French POWs were on the fifth floor and directly under an attic that must be huge. Here there was a little more headroom allowed and bunks that were only layered three high. Stiff, closely woven, timber-held wire mesh ran from floor to ceiling, dividing up the space and separating them from the four-tiered bunks of the Poles as though the two peoples must treat each other as untouchables. But even here, those who had been asleep after a twelve-hour shift, poured from their bunks to stand rigidly to attention, though the Grossfahdung was to be conducted in one ‘room’ only.