Two more towns followed, each darker than the last. A few minutes after leaving the second, the lorries drew to a halt in a passing place above the noisy river. It felt like the middle of nowhere, but was, as Lidovsky told Russell, just three kilometres from the Italian frontier. ‘We used to get nearer, but the British started moving their checkpoints towards us. So now we have a longer walk.’
Once everyone was off the lorries, Lidovsky’s partner Kempner gathered them in a circle and stressed the need for silence, before leading them across the road and up the bank beyond. Soon a long column was winding its way up through the trees, grateful for what little illumination the quarter-moon could offer. Behind and below them, the sound of the returning lorries slowly faded into silence.
About fifty metres above the road a parallel path wound through the pines. They followed this for what seemed a long way, with only an occasional whisper disturbing the silence. The valley below was lost in shadow, but they could hear the river rushing over the stones, and the moon still hung above the opposite ridge, threading the forest with a wash of pale light. It was bitterly cold, and despite the risk of stumbling Russell had both hands buried in his sleeves.
They’d been walking about half an hour when Lidovsky appeared, working his way down the column. He was warning everyone to be extra careful — they would soon be passing above a British checkpoint.
Russell heard it before he saw it, the sounds of laughter rising above the ferment of the river. And then he could see the glow of the brazier, and the jeep it illuminated. Four of them stood round the fire, evenly spaced like points of the compass, holding their hands out to warm them, first the palms, then the backs.
The column trekked on in silence, the light of the fire disappearing from view. It was another half an hour before they stopped, and then for no apparent reason. Russell’s curiosity got the better of him, and he worked his way up the stationary column to where the trees abruptly ended. About seventy metres in front of him, across a wide stretch of snow-dusted meadow, smoke was drifting from the chimney of a small building. This, he presumed, was the Italian guardhouse that Lidovsky had told him about, one of many built in the mid-1930s, when the Duce still had doubts about Hitler.
And someone had got there before them, someone who soon would get a surprise. As Russell watched, two shadowy figures — presumably Lidovsky and Kempner — arrived beside the door, where they paused for a second before entering in quick succession. There were no sudden shots, which had to be good, but a long couple of minutes elapsed before one man emerged and waved the rest of them forward.
It was Kempner. ‘It’s a man and his son,’ he said. ‘They have papers from the Rothschild.’
‘But what are they doing out here alone?’ one woman asked.
Russell didn’t hear the answer. He was staring at the man who’d followed Kempner out. The last time he’d seen that face it had been a good deal chubbier, and the body had been encased in the black cloth and leather of Heydrich’s Sicherheitsdienst — the SS foreign intelligence service. Hauptsturmfuhrer Hirth had been his handler in the summer of 1939, when the SS had employed him as a double against the Soviets. It had been either that or see Effi dispatched to a concentration camp.
The son had now emerged, a boy of about ten. He held his father’s hand and stared at the assembled Jews.
Then Hirth saw Russell. The eyes blinked in disbelief, the lips opened and closed, then mouthed the word bitte. Please. And as if to strengthen the plea, he glanced down at the boy beside him.
Hirth’s other hand, Russell noticed, was thrust deep in his pocket. Did he have a gun?
Russell hesitated. If he exposed the man now, people might get shot. And there seemed no urgency — Hirth had nowhere to run.
People were squeezing into the guardhouse, drawn by the warmth of the fire. Russell left Hirth hanging, and went in search of Lidovsky. They’d be there for several hours, the Haganah man told him. Until dawn. Then an hour’s walk back to the road, where their transport would be waiting.
Russell asked him where the man in the hut was from.
‘Danzig originally. His wife was Polish, a shiksa. They spent the war on a Polish farm, but she died in the summer. Why do you ask?’
‘Just a journalist’s curiosity. I thought I’d seen him somewhere before.’ He watched Lidovsky disappear inside, and felt Hirth arrive at his shoulder.
‘Please,’ the former Hauptsturmfuhrer pleaded in a whisper, ‘don’t give me away. For my son’s sake. He’s already lost his mother. Don’t…’
‘The shiksa,’ Russell said sarcastically.
‘No, his real mother. She was killed last year in the bombing.’
Which was probably the truth, Russell thought. He asked Hirth where he was going.
‘Rome. Then, well, there are people there who will help me. South America, I expect. A new life. Look, if you give us away, they’ll turn us over to the authorities. They’ll shoot me, and then they’ll have to shoot the boy. And he’s done nothing to deserve that.’
He probably hadn’t. Neither had the millions that Hirth and his kind had sent to their deaths, but Russell had to admit that wreaking vengeance unto the last generation seemed a touch medieval for 1945.
Could he really let Hirth walk away?
What did he actually know that the man had done? Hirth had worked for Heydrich when the death camps were being planned, but Russell had no idea how implicated the Sicherheitsdienst had been in the actual slaughter. They hadn’t run the camps, driven the trains or fed the ovens. Had Hirth used a Jewish head for a paperweight? He had to have blood on his hands, but how much? Enough to justify killing his son?
The son couldn’t have been much more than five when the orders went out — he had nothing to answer for. But Hirth was right — if the Jews didn’t kill the boy they would probably leave him to die. At best he’d be an orphan.
There was no justice in letting Hirth go free, and none for the boy in killing his father.
‘All right,’ Russell agreed reluctantly.
‘Thank you,’ Hirth said quietly as Lidovsky walked towards them.
‘You and your son must come with us,’ the Haganah officer insisted.
‘We’d be most obliged,’ Hirth said, after a quick glance at Russell. ‘I must find my son,’ he said, after Lidovsky had gone.
There was no need. They were entering the guardhouse by one door when one of the Jews burst in through the other, holding Hirth’s son by the scruff of the neck. The boy was screaming, his trousers round his knees. ‘See what I saw,’ the man said, pushing the boy to the ground. He tried to cover himself, but there was the tell-tale foreskin.
Hirth tried to help his son, but Lidovsky had a gun to his head. He pushed the SS man onto the ground and held him down with a foot on his chest. ‘Pull off his trousers,’ he told two of the men.
Hirth squirmed and kicked, but all to no avail. First the trousers and then the underpants, and another uncircumcised penis was shrivelling in the cold.
It was the way the Gestapo had checked for Jews, but Russell doubted whether Hirth was relishing the irony.
Kempner was going through the coat and trouser pockets. They had already seen the fake papers, but not the gun. It was a Sauer 38H, with SS lightning rods engraved in the grip.
Russell imagined Hirth taking it from his desk, realising the risk it represented, but bringing it along regardless, because any gun was better than none.
Now Lidovsky and Kempner were discussing his fate — short sentences batted to and fro across the few inches that separated their faces. Russell considered intervening, but to say what? He glanced at the boy, who was firmly held by one of the Jews, trousers still flopping around his ankles. The fear in his face was almost too much to bear.