Rinehart paused from applying a fresh set of dressings to Nelson’s shattered cranium. ‘I reckon that’s just wishful thinking. Whatever the major is doing now, he ain’t within a hundred yards of a nice slice of tail.’
Her name was Andrea; that and what she had told him earlier about her reasons for being there was all he knew about her. There had been no further opportunity to ask question. The camp was now wide awake and every path was sprinkled with its quota of scruffy hollow-cheeked people. Some slithered slowly through the dust on seemingly aimless journeys, others sat or squabbled or loitered. Each had the half furtive, half apathetic expression that only life, or rather existence, in the camps could induce.
They passed through the little graveyard behind the church. In every corner there were heaps of mouldering bones. The press for living space was so great, the need to find shelter so urgent, that the vaults and tombs had been opened and their long dead occupants replaced by a mass of the half living.
A few paces more and they stepped into the main and only street of the village about which the camp sprawled.
The ground floors of the houses were hidden behind the numberless lean-tos that slumped against their walls. Some brave or desperate souls had even risked adding a second storey to those extensions. The glass had gone from every window, and all of the lower, and some of the upper windows were being used as secondary entrances.
‘Over one hundred in that one.’ Andrea indicated a small cottage that couldn’t possibly have boasted more than six rooms, including the kitchen extension. ‘There are others, detached, not much bigger, that hold twice that number. Many can live in a garage, a whole family in a tool shed.’
There was bitterness in her voice. Her whispered words conveyed it clearly and it wasn’t lost on Revell. Kurt and the other Grepos took no interest in what went on around them, save anything that had a bearing on their safety. The girl saw everything, and felt it. It was as though she was storing images, locking each into her memory for a future time.
Revell found himself deliberately falling a couple of paces behind her, to get another look at her denim-wrapped backside. She was lovely. What could be her relationship with the loutish Kurt and the others? Not for a moment could he believe that she stayed with them for any reason other than pure convenience. They stank, and their crudely chopped hair and beards added to their uncouth appearance.
A sudden halt was called. Ahead of them an Oxfam Leyland truck was parked in the centre of the street, and from its open back a pair of harassed young men were trying to distribute packets of food to the seething fast-growing crowd surrounding it. Two Russian soldiers wearing the insignia of the Commandant’s Service stood nearby, but made no move to instil order. The mass of people about the Leyland surged back and forth.
An elderly man wriggled clear of the press, hugging a tattered prize, only to be knocked down and robbed of it by two heavily built women who began to fight between themselves for possession, even as they waddled away between the buildings. The Russians smirked, and one grunted an ugly laugh. Neither made any move to assist the oldster who had fallen almost at their feet, and was now struggling to get up, blood pouring from his nose and mouth.
Only a gruff warning from Kurt prevented Andrea from using the submachine gun she carried inside the roll of sacking. A colour had risen in her cheeks and when Kurt put out his hand as a further restraint, she shrugged it violently aside.
It was clear to Revell that her distaste for Kurt was almost as intense as her hatred of the Russians. As they took a side turning to avoid the blockage and were once more forced into single file by the narrowness of the route, he found himself behind her again.
She really was something special. He enjoyed looking at women, could find something to appreciate in almost any who weren’t too old or dirty, or too gawkily young. The smoothness of the plump ones, the bodies of the plain, the faces of the thin. Every woman had something, but this one, Andrea, harshly beautiful and beautifully built, what a combination! It was a hell of a time to come across a woman with those sort of qualities. Another time, another place, he’d have made a play for her right away. Maybe there’d be a chance to get to know her later on, maybe. So many ‘maybes’, and that was one too many.
Hyde was taking careful note of every inch of their journey. Despite the continuous twists and turns they were holding a generally easterly course: he’d been expecting that. None of the refugees would ever go foraging in that direction, that way led further into Communist held territory. If the Reds were using a part of the camp as cover for their tank repair shops then the eastern sector would be an obvious choice, easier to keep private.
It was also obvious why the East Germans knew about what was, on the surface, an abortive piece of civil engineering. Like Mother Knoke they had a vested interest in knowing everything that went on, in particular where Russians were to be found at any given time. You can’t hide until you know where the seeker might be.
The midday sun drew the last wisps of stench from every latrine and pile of refuse. Dust hung in the still air for minutes after it had been raised, and added to the discomforts Libby was already experiencing under his several layers of clothing. Sweat poured from him and combined with the penetrating particles of grit to irritate him to the point of madness. God, he loathed these places. Bitter cold, stifling heat; they never seemed to enjoy a happy medium, and the huts gave little comfort or protection; He looked up at the sound of a jet aircraft approaching, but though it was low enough for the thunder of its passing to bring falls of accumulated dust from the tattered eaves of the huts it was invisible against the sun, and he had to seek and look at shadow for a while before he could blink his eyes clear of the tears brought on by the glare.
It was a relief when Kurt stopped before a shack fashioned from innumerable cardboard boxes bearing assorted brand names, all of them faded and many on the verge of disintegration, and ushered them in.
There was a man and a woman inside, and they scuttled into a corner to hide the object they’d been bent over. But they weren’t fast enough to prevent Revell from identifying the partially skinned carcase of a mongrel dog. A pan full of fly blown entrails, a pile of imperfectly cured skins in a corner and dark sinewy strips of meat hanging to smoke over a slow fire gave further proof of the frightened couple’s line of business.
Kurt ignored them and their trade, save to snatch a still red-raw strip from the rack, and with his knife opened a thin and fragile wall to make a way into the adjoining hut. He led them in a similar manner through two more, both empty of inhabitants, before making a smaller slit in the patched canvas outer wall of the fourth. That done, he tore off a chunk of the dog meat with his blackened teeth and stood aside with a gesture that invited Revell to look out.
A clearing fifty yards wide stretched away to left and right, separating a cluster of several hundred shelters, that lay in a hollow between a crescent of low hills, from the main body of the camp.
‘What the hell have they done that for?’ Libby had found a vantage point of his own and like the officer and NCO was making a survey. ‘Could be a fire break.’ Using his bayonet Hyde made another hole in the canvas at a more convenient height than the one he’d found ready-made. ‘Possibly, but look.’ To either side Revell could see no evidence of the debris of the flattened shelters having been removed or disturbed.