“Wake up, man,” he snapped. “Take Sergeant Herzog to his quarters and confine him there.” The private swallowed hard and nodded. Herzog pushed past him leaving a last hateful glance with his superior.
The candle was dying, burnt low, with a final acrid weeping of black smoke, it went out. Herzog sat up and rubbed his eyes, glancing about the darkened room. The tarnished silver beam of a watery moon trickled through the door of the dugout, prodding the forms of the sleeping men. Herzog heard guttural breathing and realised that it was his own. He swung his legs off the bed and sat there for a moment, listening to the silence. The low rumble of thunder mingled with the faraway pounding of artillery. Herzog stood up and crossed to the doorway. It was then that he saw the car.
Something at the back of his mind told him he had seen the car before. A huge black Mercedes, a tiny pennant fluttering on the bonnet. The vehicle looked even more menacing in the moonlight. Herzog squinted into the darkness and saw two men standing beside the car, almost invisible because of their black uniforms. S.S. He whispered the words to himself and rubbed his forehead leaning against the wall until the dizziness passed, then he went and sat down, wondering how long they would be.
The hands of his watch had crawled on less than ten minutes when he heard the men approaching. There were two of them. Big men, clad from head to foot in black, the silver death’s-heads on their caps winking through the darkness. Herzog rose to greet them, recognising one of the men as Colonel Axon. The S.S. man sneered and crossed to the sergeant.
“Herzog,” he said quietly, looking as though he were enjoying the situation.
The sergeant saluted and stared straight back at Axon, who motioned to the guard. The big man advanced and levelled his MP 40 at Herzog. The sergeant needed no prompting. He scrambled through the door of the dugout, followed by the two S.S. men. They crossed to the car, the mud clinging to their boots. As they approached it, a third man stepped out and opened one of the rear doors. Herzog hesitated, looking round at the guard. The man prodded him in the ribs with the barrel of the sub-gun and the sergeant climbed in. The big guard slid across beside him. Axon got in beside the driver and the engine purred into life. The black wheels spun, sending gouts of mud and water spurting into the air. Slowly the Merc. moved off and Herzog glanced out of the back window across the horizon to where the sky was bleeding to death, lit by the fire of a thousand cannon.
As the car picked up speed, the war began to seem just that, something which lay just over the next horizon, never quite getting there.
Herzog looked up at the guard and smiled.
He was preparing himself for war of another kind.
Chapter Twelve
The short journey to the railway station in Renard was completed in silence. Herzog didn’t want to speak, Axon couldn’t be bothered and the guard had been ordered not to. The big man regarded Herzog contemptuously. He had performed similar duties countless times but, in his mind, he knew he was serving his Führer as surely as if he had been fighting the British or Russians. To him, the sergeant was a traitor and, in the reasoning of Klaus Rass, traitors didn’t even deserve a trial. They should be shot on the spot.
The amount of activity which bubbled around the station seemed quite disproportionate to its size. Troop-trains and ammunition-carriers stood by the platforms discharging their various cargos and, at the far end of one platform, in the goods-yard, three new Tiger tanks were being unloaded, each one being manoeuvred carefully from the flat car which had carried it from Germany. The trains carrying troops looked like cattle-trains and the conditions inside often weren’t much better. Inside carriages of twelve feet in length might be crammed fifty men. Those that stepped out onto the platforms at Renard seemed, to Herzog, to be half dead even before they reached the combat area. Some might have been better off dead. The sergeant stood still, flanked by Rass and Axon, and watched the pandemonium grow around them. Further up the line, apparently, a train carrying medical supplies had been derailed. Suggestions ranging from the resistance to Hitler’s need to employ untrained drivers fluttered back and forth up the platform. Axon took off his gloves and banged them against his thigh. He marched off to find the station-master. An officious-looking old codger well into his eighties, he nodded affably at the S.S. man and, ignoring the verbal assault which was launched against him, just kept muttering something about it not being his fault that there was a war on and the line would be cleared as soon as possible. On his way back up the platform, Axon waylaid an officer of Engineers and told him to take his men up the line to aid the clearing operation. Under threat of court-martial, the officer sloped off complaining that there was no justice in the world. Axon walked back to where Rass and Herzog were waiting, watching a group of men unload several crates of phosphorus bombs from an ammunition wagon. The men were sweating profusely, from fear as much as exertion. One slip and the entire platform would become a sea of flame. The officer in charge was standing inside the carriage, making sure that he was well out of the way should anything go wrong.
Axon watched the proceedings for a while then glanced at his watch and began pacing furiously back and forth. Herzog watched him strutting backwards and forwards like some black-clad, mechanical peacock. The sergeant took a bar of chocolate from his pocket and broke off a square. Chewing, he looked up at Rass and the guard met his stare. The two men regarded each other coldly for a second until they were distracted by a crash as one of the men unloading the train dropped a box of egg grenades. The supervising officer dived to the floor of the wagon and covered his head but, luckily, no explosion came. He scrambled angrily to his feet and returned to the job of yelling at his men as they continued loading the deadly cargo. A Krupp had reversed into position and they were pushing the crates into it, the driver sitting contentedly smoking a pipe.
Axon considered his watch again and was delighted to see a locomotive crawling slowly from the tunnel at the far end of the platform. It was carrying about fifteen carriages with it, the last equipped with an anti-aircraft gun. There was a hissing cloud of steam as it came to a halt at the platform. Herzog felt a rough hand on his shoulder, pushing him towards the door of a carriage beside which Axon was standing. The three men climbed in. Axon looked out onto the platform, watching men trying to find places. He knew that none would dare share a carriage with an S.S. colonel.
“Where are we going?” asked Herzog, as he felt the train begin to move.
“Hanover,” Axon told him. Herzog nodded and sat back, watching as the train picked up speed, leaving the station far behind.
The darkness was total apart from the rays of the moon. Herzog could only see the outlines of his captors, the colour of their uniforms making them invisible. He felt the consciousness slipping away from him, the gentle rocking of the train and the rhythmic bumping as it passed over sleepers lulling him into a kind of half sleep. A sleep devoid of nightmares. He had lived through to many to dream them. He lay back and began massaging the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, exhaling deeply. The countryside sped past but he couldn’t see it, he had his eyes shut.