There were older people who could not keep up with the pace of the white horse, so those who were younger and stronger carried them or supported them, but the bags of the infirm and weak were left beside the track. I helped my father’s parents, and my younger brothers helped my mother’s father, while my elder sister — it was hard for her because she had had polio and walked with difficulty herself — helped my two aunts. If the speed of our march dropped, we were shouted at by the Germans, and a few of our men were hit with whips.
A train came past, and our guards waved to the crew. The engine pulled many closed cars. I thought they were for animals and had not been cleaned because the smell was disgusting, like a place for pigs. It stayed in the forest after the train had gone on towards Wlodawa. I said to my father that I hoped we would have a different train when we went to the east: it was intended to be funny, but my father did not laugh. Usually it was easy to make him laugh, even when we were kept in the synagogue.
And we were there.
I think we had been walking for two hours on the forest track when we came to the place. The officer on the white horse was shouting orders, the Ukrainians were pushing us together, close, using their rifles. I thought we had arrived at the transit camp. It was huge, but so quiet. As far as I could see there was fencing, but it was strange because the branches of fir trees had been woven into the wire strands, and I couldn’t see what was on the far side, except the roofs of some buildings and a great high watchtower. At the corners of the fencing and by a gate there were more towers on stilts with guards in them and machine-guns, and I saw that the barrel of one of those guns followed us. What threat were we — old men and old women, girls and children? How could we hurt soldiers?
I was so innocent. Perhaps I should thank God for my innocence.
We were lined up outside a gate. We were in twenty ranks, five in each rank. Women to the front, with the children, men at the back. I saw my mother leave my father’s side and she tried to kiss his cheek, but a Ukrainian put his rifle between them and forced her back. I saw my father shrug, and his lips moved as if to mouth a word, but I did not hear it … and it happened very suddenly.
The officer on the white horse surveyed us, as if he was a kaiser or an emperor, and he pointed to me with his whip. A guard moved forward, grabbed my shoulder and dragged me out. Why? Why me? I was eighteen and my elder sister had said enviously that I was beautiful, that my hair had the sheen of a raven’s feathers. I had heard men in the synagogue speak of me and praise the shape of my body — but my mother had not spoken to me of such things. I, I alone, was taken out of the group.
I was led to another gate. I thought then it was a more important gate, the main gate, and I stopped, twisted and tried to look back, tried to see my parents, my younger brothers, my elder sister, my father’s parents, my mother’s father, my aunts and uncles. But I was kicked hard in the back of my legs, a boot against the skin. I never saw them.
I was brought through a maze of paths and on either side of them were the fences with the fir branches slotted on them. Then I became aware of sounds — the shuffling movement of men at the end of their strength, low, muttering voices, hacking coughs and sharply issued orders. More gates opened ahead of me, and I was escorted through. Then they closed behind me. There was the smell, and the men who shuffled, the women who coughed, the Germans who strutted with whips or guns did not seem to notice the overwhelming stench around them, of decay and burning … did not seem aware of it.
Inside a compound, I was met by a Jewess. She led me towards a long, low, wooden hut. She told me she was a capo, that I should obey her at all times. I heard then a new sound. Shots were fired, individual shots and many together. I asked the capo who was shooting and why, but she did not answer.
Later, at the end of the afternoon, I learned that I was in Camp 1, that in the morning I would be given work. The sinking sunlight was then obscured and the compound darkened by a black cloud of smoke that was carried from beyond the woven fences. The pall hung over me, and fine ash coated my hair and face.
I did not understand and was blessed briefly with ignorance The innocent do not know evil. But innocence cannot last, cannot continue to protect against evil.
‘You going to be all right tonight, Corp?’
‘Not a problem, Sarge.’
‘Don’t want me to hold your hand?’
‘Can manage without.’
It was their banter, to use the old ranks of their army service. Simon Rawlings had been a Parachute Regiment sergeant when he had come out to try his hand in the civilian workplace, with a Military Medal on his record, and Carrick had been a corporal. Each would have said that any man, at his peril, ignored the value of an old, proven friendship. Their friendship had been combat-tested on the streets of Iraq: when the bomb had detonated, catapulting the Land Rover off the banked-up roadway, when Corporal Carrick had been wounded, bad, in the leg and bleeding, close to unconscious, Sergeant Rawlings had been two vehicles behind in the patrol. He had taken the decisive actions, had staunched the casualty’s injuries and organized the defence of the ambush site, had sanitized a perimeter big enough to accept an evacuation helicopter, had seen his corporal lifted off to the trauma theatre of the hospital at the base out in the desert from Basra. Sergeant Rawlings had come to visit him while he had waited for shipment out and treatment back in UK. ‘I tell you what, Corp, I don’t think you’ll be doing too many more jumps, or wearing that pretty beret much longer … Nor me. I’m thinking it’s time to ease into the slow lane. Had an offer last leave of bodyguard work — plenty of holes to be filled by Special Forces, marines and Paras, and you don’t get your butt shot off or your leg mashed. Keep in touch, and I hope it mends.’ He’d been given a scrap of paper with Rawlings’s number on it, and he’d been flown home. The leg had looked worse in the devastated Land Rover than after it had been cleaned. Skill from surgeons and physios had put him back on his feet, crutches and shaky at first, but then he’d walked, the torn muscles had knitted and the bones had fused, leaving him with only a slight limp.
Paratroopers weren’t permitted to limp, but policemen were. He’d come out of the army four years back, and within three months a West of England force had accepted him. Then he had been thirty-two, and had a leg that was a mass of blotched, grafted skin but serviceable. Time had moved on. Change of workplace and change of specialization, a target in his new unit that was being evaluated for a crack or weakness in its defences. A surveillance photograph showed Josef Goldmann, Russian national and launderer of dirty money, on the steps of his London home, two Russian hoods escorting him, and a springy, slightly built guy holding open the door of an armour-plated, 8-series Audi saloon. ‘I know him — God, saved my life in Iraq. That’s Rawlings, my sergeant in recce platoon, Zulu Company, of 2 Para …’ An engineered meeting had led to an interview with Josef Goldmann. Rawlings must have spoken up for him, and the Bossman must have felt the threat level around him and his family rising — could be rivals after his cake slices or could be government agents from back home. Anyway, Carrick had been offered employment. His controller had said that after three months ‘on the plot’, the operation would be reassessed. His cover officer had said that three months would give them an idea whether the investment was good, indifferent, or cash down the drain.