Andy McDermott
Kingdom of Darkness
For Kat
Prologue
The military convoy ground through the darkness towards its next destination.
In the lead car, a Kübelwagen utility vehicle, SS-Sturmbannführer Erich Kroll used a torch to check a map of the farmland around the town of Pella. His Waffen-SS unit, soldiers of Hitler’s feared Schutzstaffel elite force, were on a mission direct from the Führer: to locate and round up any Jews remaining in the Nazi-occupied zone for deportation to the concentration camps of Treblinka and Auschwitz. The operation had by now been mostly completed to German satisfaction, but, Kroll mused, the Juden were as hard to eradicate as rats — and the task had been made harder by Jewish sympathisers amongst the local population.
The Nazis had their own sympathisers, though. Fascist collaborators had provided their new masters with lists of those suspected of harbouring fugitives, and now the SS was checking each one. On this night, they already had five prisoners in the truck behind: two Jewish women and a boy found in a farm’s loft, as well as the farmer and his wife. A good catch, but Kroll hoped to find more.
The blond man swapped the map for his list. The next target was the property belonging to the Patras family. According to his information, they liked their privacy, keeping to themselves. That alone made them worthy of a visit from the SS; even if they were not harbouring enemies of the Reich, they still needed reminding who was now in charge of their land.
The Kübelwagen’s headlights picked out a crossroads ahead. ‘Go right,’ Kroll ordered the driver, Jaekel. The young stormtrooper had already impressed the unit commander, shrugging off a vicious slash across his face from a knife-wielding Jew in order to bayonet him and the family he was protecting. The scar was still a raw red line, the stitches visible; in time, it would be a stirring reminder of his bravery and a magnet for women.
The car made the turn, the truck and half-track behind it following. The muddy road led up a hillside to an old house near its summit. Jaekel pulled up outside the front door. The truck jolted to a halt alongside, the half-track heading around the building to watch for anyone trying to run from its rear.
Kroll marched to the door and pounded on the wood with a gloved fist. ‘Open up!’ he barked in Greek. He had studied the ancient form of the language in his youth; learning its modern derivation had not been difficult. ‘This is the Waffen-SS — we are here to search your property for Jewish fugitives. You are ordered to let us in, immediately!’
He stepped back and waited impatiently. Behind him, his men readied their weapons as sounds of activity came from inside. ‘How long do we give them?’ asked SS-Obersturmführer Rasche.
‘Thirty seconds,’ Kroll told his senior lieutenant. ‘Then we kick the door down.’
Rasche smiled, manic eyes widening. ‘I hope they don’t rush.’ One hand went to a dagger in a sheath on his belt, the hilt bearing the Totenkopf death’s-head of the SS. ‘I always like to make an example of someone.’
‘Open the door at once!’ Kroll shouted. He heard voices behind it; that the occupiers had not immediately complied suggested they were trying to conceal something. ‘You have ten seconds! Nine! Eight! Seven!’
The clunk of a heavy bolt, then the door opened. An elderly man nervously peered out. ‘What do you want?’
‘You heard me,’ Kroll snapped. He shoved the door, sending the old man reeling back. ‘You are Alejo Patras?’
‘Yes, I am,’ Patras replied.
‘Who else is in the house?’
‘My wife Kaira, my two sons, and my elder son’s wife and daughter. But we have nothing to hide here, we are just farmers.’
‘Five others,’ Kroll told his men before turning back to Patras. ‘Bring them all here, now. Anyone who is not here in one minute will be shot when they are found.’ He made a show of raising his left arm to check his watch.
Patras called out urgently. Before long, others filed into the hallway: an old woman and a couple in their thirties, the wife fearfully holding a six-year-old child. The German regarded his watch again. ‘Where is your other son? He is running out of time!’
‘Dinos!’ cried Patras, with an exhortation for him to hurry. Seconds ticked by, Rasche’s malevolent smirk widening as he fingered his knife — then a door banged deeper inside the house. Running footsteps, and a man in his twenties hurried into the hall.
Kroll’s cold gaze turned upon him. ‘Why were you hiding from us?’ he demanded in Greek.
‘I–I wasn’t hiding,’ the young man insisted. ‘I was in the cellar, I didn’t hear you.’
‘Search the cellar,’ Kroll ordered, not taken in by the protestation of innocence. ‘Look for hatches, hidden doors — anywhere people might hide.’
Rasche addressed one of the troopers. ‘Rottenführer! With me.’ A squat, round-faced man named Schneider followed him out, putting a hand over his mouth to hold in a wet cough.
Kroll waited as his unit searched the house. One by one they returned, reporting no sign of fugitives. The elder Patras appeared relieved to be vindicated, but the Nazi commander detected a rising tension in his sons — particularly the younger.
Only Rasche and Schneider had not yet come back. ‘Obersturmführer!’ Kroll called. ‘Have you found anything?’
A pause, then: ‘I’m not sure. Is Walther there? We need him to move something.’
Kroll glanced at the huge stormtrooper, whose head reached to just centimetres beneath the ceiling beams. ‘Sturmmann, go and help him.’
Walther’s arm snapped into a rigid Hitler salute, his fingertips brushing the plaster overhead. ‘At once, Herr Sturmbannführer!’ Hunching down to fit through the doorway, he headed for the cellar.
There was now definite concern in the brothers’ expressions — no, Kroll realised, the whole family’s. ‘If you are hiding Jews down there, you will be treated just like them,’ he warned the group. ‘Give them up now, and I may be lenient.’
The elder Patras shook his head. ‘This is a very old house, it has many cubbyholes. But we are not hiding anyone, Ipromise.’
‘I would prefer to see for myself,’ Kroll replied with a sneer. He listened as thumping sounds echoed up from below. Then—
‘Sturmbannführer!’ Rasche shouted. ‘Come quickly!’
‘Bring them,’ Kroll snapped to his men. The prisoners were hustled along at gunpoint. The cellar entrance was a crooked door at the rear of a cramped pantry, stairs leading down a steep passage lined in whitewashed stone. A flickering lantern provided weak illumination below. The SS leader noticed the polished curve to each stone step; the passage was either regularly travelled or had been here for a very long time.
He reached the foot of the stairs. The lantern revealed a grotto-like space, sacks and boxes lining the walls. Grunts of exertion came from around a corner. Beyond it, Kroll found his three men at what appeared to be a dead end — except that Walther had managed to get his thick fingers into a gap that had been hidden behind some barrels and was pulling at it. Wood creaked with each tug.
‘There’s a mark from a hidden door,’ explained Rasche, pointing at a faint line arcing across the flagstones. ‘But we can’t get it open.’
Kroll drew his Luger and faced Patras as the family was pushed into the subterranean space. ‘How does it open? Tell me now, or I will shoot your wife!’ He pointed the gun at the old woman’s head. She gasped in fear.
A tense silence — then the younger son shoved his mother aside, lunging at Kroll—
The gunshot was deafening in the confined space.
Blood gouted across the cellar from a bullet wound in Dinos’s throat, almost black in the low light. Kroll stepped back as the young man collapsed at his feet. His mother screamed.