Like all the other students, she had been required to take that notebook with her to Munich but had felt he would be unaware of this, thereby avoiding any mention of later searches! ‘And now you do, Fraulein. Page by page.’
Steel wedges, one face flat, the other curved to fit against the wall of the drill hole, and perhaps fifteen centimetres long, were being slipped into each hole. An iron wedge was then jammed between them and each wedge hammered into the rock in succession until, with a muted cracking, a pop, or bang, the rock split.
‘It’s much the same process,’ said Louis, ‘as the Egyptians would have used to quarry stone for their magnificent obelisks and the rose-coloured lid of Tutankhamen’s quartzite sarcophagus at Karnak.’
The boy-king’s tomb had been all the rage of Paris in the last half of the ’20s and early ’30s. Louis, like most Parisians, had been fascinated, but unlike most he still remained wrapped up in it.
The quarries here had been opened in the summer of 1941 and inspected by Himmler, head of the SS, the securing of ‘a much-needed’ source of pink granite hailed as a ‘triumph.’
Men from all of the occupied territories were at work. Several languages were being spoken, their hurried, harried shouts a biblical Tower of Babel of its own while shoulder patches gave red for the politicals and a deep, inverted equilateral triangle with the black letter F for French, a lighter red and a B for Belgian, and in between these, shades and letters denoting Czechs and Italians, while yellow was for the Hungarians, green for the Germans, and an S on the latter’s patch denoting that the man was a ‘security risk.’ And in addition to the inverted triangles, there were the large red crosses on the backs of the N und Ns.
As each short drill rod was hit and hit hard, it was then given a quarter turn by the man who held it. No goggles were worn, no protection whatsoever and, with each blow, there was that terrible shock to rag-wrapped hands, for the drill rod would vibrate. ‘And at subzero temperatures like this,’ muttered Louis, ‘the iron is work-hardened by the constant hammering.’
‘Becoming more brittle, mein Lieber, it burrs and tears more easily at the top, the rod being turned to rotate the fucking tungsten-carbide bit!’
Still no one had come to question their presence. Was it that the rule of silence had been invoked, a shunning as was done in some religious sects, the smell that of what? wondered St-Cyr. Of long-unwashed clothing and bodies, of sweat, pus and old blood, but … but to these was added a sulphurous taint.
‘The mineral pyrite, Hermann. A disulphide of iron. There must be grains of it in some of Herr Himmler’s rock. A variety of fool’s gold, it will weather, rust and stain the monuments that are to record for all time the glories of the Third Reich unless those sections containing it are removed.’
Splinters-the ‘shrapnel’ Hermann had experienced at Vieil- shy;Armand-were a constant hazard attested to by rag patches over an eye here and there, the expressions of the men universally gaunt and empty, even more so than at the Textilfabrikschrijen. One man paused to snatch and hastily down a handful of snow, and for a brief second there was the thought that he would be severely beaten, and then the thought that such a punishment was merely being delayed due to the presence of visitors.
Perhaps one hundred guards were on duty, perhaps a few less but under these were the Kapos, the block leaders, prisoners themselves and armed with pick handles. But at any moment, all of the prisoners could have rebelled were it not for the machine guns that were trained on them from the heights, and of course there were also the everlasting hunger, the extreme weather and lack of any form of suitable clothing or transport to consider.
‘The remoteness, Louis. God Himself couldn’t escape from here. Kramer must be in the next quarry.’
Fortunately they hadn’t attempted to bring Victoria Bodicker shy; with them.
It was freezing in the communal shower bath across the road from the guesthouse. Caught, seized, dragged up and propelled from the restaurant without coat, scarf or handbag, Victoria held herself by the elbows and tried not to shake. ‘I know nothing, Herr Obersturmfuhrer. Nothing!’
‘THE FRAULEIN EKKEHARD TOLD YOU OF THE EXPERIMENTS THAT ARE BEING CONDUCTED HERE FOR THE LUFTWAFFE AND OTHERS.’
‘SHE DIDN’T!’
‘And yet she leaves a note: “I can’t go on. Please forgive me”? Come, come, Fraulein, you can do better than that.’
He wasn’t going to listen. ‘Why not ask Alain? Surely if everything was so secret, he’d not have boasted of it to Renee?’
She hit the wall, hit it hard, was momentarily blinded and felt herself sliding to the floor. Blood wet her hand when she wiped her broken lips. ‘Am I also to have a skiing accident?’
He smiled. He said nothing. Through the buzzing in her ears she heard him laugh. Perhaps two metres now separated them, perhaps a little more. The room was simply large and bare, but with gooseneck nozzles and taps, and a drain in the concrete floor. He had closed and locked the door. They were all alone and no one would hear her cries, not St-Cyr and not Herr Kohler.
‘ “Boasted,” Fraulein? Would it interest you to know that the Untersturmfuhrer Schrijen brought his fiancee here during that party?’
‘But why? Whatever for?’
Punched hard, blood burst from her nose and lips. Her head hit the wall again, his fist, her left eye. There was now no hope. None at all. The pain was excruciating.
‘Experiments, Fraulein. You will tell me what that lesbian whore told you of them.’
Seized by the hair-dragged up and propelled into an adjacent room-she was thrown to her knees. ‘OPEN IT!’ he shrieked.
The small, circular well, one of three that had recently been sunk into the floor, was lined with the green and white tiles of a Kachelofen, the smell revolting. ‘Please. I know nothing of this, Herr Obersturmfuhrer.’
When he shrieked again, Victoria cringed and did as asked. The well was brimful and stank of formaldehyde, and on its surface, a mat of blonde hair had floated up and out.
Crouching, Meyer wrapped the fingers of his left hand through the hair and pulled the corpse up until the head and torso were free and staring at her, the formalin draining from the breasts, the blue eyes wide open.
Slowly it sank back down and she watched it disappear. ‘This one will soon be on her back in the cutting room at the University of Strassburg, Fraulein. Be thankful it’s not yourself. Now come. We will go up to the hospital at the camp. Perhaps we can do something for you there. That eye … I don’t like the look of it.’
Although the main quarries were now behind, there still hadn’t been a sign of Kramer and Alain Schrijen, nor challenge from any of the guards. ‘Do they intend to kill us, Louis?’ managed Kohler.
There could be no way of their knowing ahead of time. They passed among firs, the haulage road well trodden and cutting through deep snow, the sound from the quarries carrying. At a pause, Louis tried to roll a cigarette from the contents of his little tin but had to give it up. ‘The wind,’ he said. ‘My fingers are too numb.’
But did he have to look at his partner in such a soulful way? ‘It’s not my fault,’ said Kohler. ‘You know how much I hate these bastards and damn them all to hell.’
The urge to say, This is hell, was there, but … ‘Paris, mon vieux. Paris.’
‘Giselle and Oona, Louis.’
‘Gabrielle too, and the boys and their families on my street.’
The rue Laurence-Savart and his precious Belleville, the little friends who endlessly discussed the ins and outs and private life of this Surete with whom they kicked a soccer ball as often as possible.