In time they came to a quarry where no men worked but where five stood out on a ledge against the rock and the snow. Dressed in rags, their camp coats, with painted crosses faceup, were neatly folded on the ground in front of them, their hands tied tightly behind their backs, their heads shaven.
On their haunches, two splendid Alsatians waited obediently, one on either side of what must be Alain Schrijen.
Josef Kramer was with him.
The surgery was overly warm and reeked of disinfectant. Left to herself while Meyer went to find a doctor-what sort of doctor?-Victoria forced herself to look into the mirror of one of the medicine cabinets. Blood had spattered the front of her pullover. Shaking, she shut her good eye and tried not to cry. They were going to kill her. She’d be submerged in formaldehyde and cut open … They would kill St-Cyr and Kohler. They couldn’t let any of them live.
Everything was exactly as on that Sunday morning, 6 December last, when Alain had brought Renee here. Syringes still lay on their glass shelf behind the window doors of their cabinet. Ten cubic centimetre ampoules of Evipan were in flat, thin grey cardboard cartons. All it had taken Renee had been two steps, and three of those had gone into a pocket. Alain hadn’t seen her. She’d been positive of that.
The dark brown, glass-stoppered, 250 cc bottle of phenol was here too. ‘Phenol,’ wept Victoria softly. ‘Twenty cc’s. The girl in that well?’ she had to ask.
When dead, that girl had been stripped, her clothing taken away and donated by Alain to Sophie’s Volksopfer.
There were bandages and rolls of gauze, tins of antiseptic powder, splints-everything needed should any of the SS guards require them, for this was not the camp hospital behind the wire. This was for its personnel and Kramer’s family.
Steps sounded in the corridor. The ampoules of Evipan were not cold but warm, their glass paper-thin and smooth, and yes, it would shatter easily when in her pocket but would the cuts be deep enough, would sufficient of the drug get into her bloodstream? Would its reaction be fast enough?
The steps had ceased just outside the door, the one whispering urgently to the other, ‘But no Vollzugszettel has been received from the RSHA in Berlin, Obersturmfuhrer?’
No execution order from the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, the Reich Security Office.
Alain had enjoyed telling Renee about the experiments. Sometimes men were inflicted with typhus, their arms cut open to be swabbed with the disease, they to die in agony as its progress was studied, but not here, of course, in that other ‘surgery’ behind the wire. In other experiments some had been forced to inhale or swallow Lost gas-mustard gas-to then die of bleeding lungs and other organs that had often burst. The Herr Doktor Professors Hirt, Bickenbach and Haagan regularly came from the University of Strassburg to conduct their research. In turn, cadavers were sent to them for autopsy. Sometimes only the heads were hermetically sealed in tin boxes of formalin for delivery. Girls too. Girls like that one she’d been shown. All selected as test specimens by that former bookseller, the Standartenfuhrer Sievers, who would follow the professors’ requests and make certain they were filled.
Renee had been drugged on the night of that party. Dizzy, in panic and confusion, she had tried to fight Alain off, but had he known beforehand that she and Sophie were lovers? Had Lowe Schrijen told him to take care of the matter but keep it within the family? Hence the invitation to that first party. The skiing, the dancing and the good times, then the threat of the experiments, the rape and Renee crying out what she should never have cried out.
From the window, the camouflaged, grey-green Citroen Herr Kohler had parked some distance from the gate still appeared unoccupied. Across from the hospital, there was the building that housed the officer’s barracks and the mess hall, beyond this, the Alsatian-style villa the Schutzhaftlagerfuhrer Kramer had had built for his family in the autumn of 1941. Kramer had been here right from the start, had served as one of the interim Kommandants. From the chimneys of the villa’s gabled roof, smoke was plucked away by the wind to drift quickly over the camp, while below the railed, first-storey balcony that was still decorated with fir bows and gilded ornaments, children played.
Beyond the house, beyond the kennels, lay the camp and, right next to the outermost wire, the large square of ground over which the grey dust Renee had spoken of was again being spread. Under guard, two of the N und Ns used coal shovels to empty a wheelbarrow, the wind playing havoc with the distribution.
In season, that plot was the Kramer family’s vegetable garden.
‘Fraulein, this is the Herr Doktor Professor Haagan.’
‘I’m really quite all right, Obersturmfuhrer. I’ll just wait here if I might for the Hauptmann Detektiv Aufsichtsbeamter Kohler and the Oberdetektiv Franzosisch der Surete Nationale Jean-Louis St-Cyr that Gestapo Boemelburg sent from Paris on orders from the Gestapo Chief, Herr Muller, in Berlin. They should be along soon. I’ve had a bad fall. A patch of ice that was hidden under the snow. Nothing more. Colonel Rasche, the Kommandant of the Ober-Rhein, will be certain to ask when we get back to Kolmar, and that is what I will tell him, since he and those two Detektivs are responsible for me and must report everything to the Reichsfuhrer Himmler.’
‘Fraulein, sit, please. It’s best that way.’
‘And if I refuse?’
‘Suit yourself.’
Already the shadows were spreading. Already one-half of the quarry had acquired the bluish tinge snow gradually gets as daylight recedes.
‘Schutzhaftlagerfuhrer Kramer at your service, mein Herren. Apologies for not having welcomed you at the gate. Always these days there are things that must be done, always orders from Berlin. Those five are to go up the chimney this evening.’ Kramer indicated the condemned. ‘Untersturmfuhrer Schrijen,’ he called out sharply, for that one had moved away from them.
‘Jawohl, Schutzhaftlagerfuhrer?’ came the immediate response amid the clash of heels.
‘Take the Oberdetektiv St-Cyr along on your final review. Be so good as to accompany him, mein Herr. Make sure each man accurately gives you his full name and former place of residence. The Untersturmfuhrer, who does not speak their language, will then check these off against the clipboard’s list.’
‘And the dogs?’ asked Louis.
‘Those will accompany the Untersturmfuhrer as always,’ said Kramer. ‘It’s best that way. Perhaps you will soon see why.’
This former guard at Dachau, Buchenwald or Sachenhausen, thought St-Cyr, this ‘family man’ in shiny black jackboots, grey whipcord breeches and a black, three-quarter-length leather coat, would have been an all but nondescript, quite ordinary-looking individual had he been dressed differently. Blocky in the face, below the peaked, black military cap with its white death’s-head, the brow was wide, the dark reddish-brown eyebrows hooded, the look in the greenish-brown eyes at once belligerent and cold.
He was not tall, but of medium height and with the build and stance of a barrel-maker or stonemason, the nose prominent, a vertical crease directly above it giving a perpetual frown. But what would Hermann say to him in the absence of his partner? Would Hermann turn his back on all that had happened to them since their first meeting in Paris on that Thursday, 13 September 1940? Would he weaken?
Feeling the end was close, would Louis be defiant? wondered Kohler as Kramer, cupping his hands about the lighted match, lit a cigarette for him. ‘Danke,’ he managed. A last smoke, was that it? The firing squad of ten hadn’t moved a muscle, and there was Louis striding toward the condemned. There would be two shots into each of those boys up there and no white cardboard patches to mark where they’d best go, just stern faces on the squad. Like steel-helmeted robots and yes, the memories of that other war were coming quickly, especially those of that other firing squad and Colonel Bloody Damn Otto Rasche with one Werner Lutze at his side.