Assignment Gestapo (16 page)

One Sunday evening, five months later, their weekly meetings
were brought to an end by the sudden arrival of three men. Three men in leather coats, wearing shoulder holsters
.

They encountered a small core of stubborn resistance, but for the most part the proud youth of Germany were swiftly dealt with
.

The nervous youth, who greeted their appearance with shrill screams of hysteria, was silenced by one sharp slap across the face
.

The young girl who was not so young as she seemed, and who never had succeeded in seducing him, managed to spit out a couple of obscenities before she was kicked in the stomach and pushed to one side
.

The boy in the sink had moved to the bathroom and was making love on the floor with his girlfriend. They were separated by a few well placed prods with the butt end of a pistol and sent downstairs to join the others
.

The poet wet himself with fright the very moment the intruders arrived. He offered no resistance of any kind
.

In a long line, shuffling single file with their heads hanging, fifty-two boys and girls left the house and entered two green coaches that were waiting outside. The world was their oyster, but fear was an unknown quality and they were meeting it face to face for the first time
.

For three days they were retained at Stadthausbrücke No
. 8.
Their treatment was not particularly harsh, but it was enough simply to be there; it was enough to learn the meaning of fear and to understand that courage had no place in their lives. Courage was for those with power
.

After three days they were put into uniform and sent off for training. Several died during their preliminary courses of instruction; some through accidents, others because they chose to. And as for the rest, they battled on and tried to come to terms with their new situation and their new selves; tried to grow reconciled to the fact that when it came to the point they were no different from all the other poor idiots whom they so heartily despised
.

They didn’t want to fight. It wasn’t their war. They hadn’t started it and they didn’t believe in it. But they fought, just the same
.

CHAPTER FOUR

On Guard at the Gestapo

W
E
saw them coming up the steps, pushing an old woman between them. The two Untersdrarführer, Schultz and Paulus, Kriminalrat Paul Bielert’s most indefatigable head hunters.

We stood at the entrance to the building and watched them go in.

‘I wonder what that poor old cow’s supposed to have done?’ muttered Porta.

I shrugged my shoulders and made no reply. What could I have said? How did I know what one miserable old woman, wearing a coat that stank of mothballs, might have done to offend the Gestapo? It was a perennial wonder to me how your actual average non-influential citizen ever managed to avoid offending them.

As the old woman passed in front of us, she turned and smiled. She half opened her mouth, then Paulus gave her a shove forward and they passed through the doors. I wondered what she wanted to say to us, two strange soldiers standing in the rain with trickles of water dripping off our helmets and down the backs of our necks.

We turned and watched as they walked towards the lifts. The old woman could hardly keep up with the two men and their long-legged strides. Schultz gave her another push.

‘Come on, granny. We haven’t got all day. You’re not the only one that’s been invited to the party.’

They pressed the button and stood waiting for the lift to arrive. Paulus suddenly caught sight of Porta and me standing watching from the doorway and he waved an impatient hand.

‘Get out of here! You’re supposed to be on guard duty, and in any case this isn’t a pantomime . . . Go on, piss off!’

‘Watch it,’ growled Porta, warningly. ‘You don’t give orders to me, darling!’

‘That’s what you think!’ Paulus came striding towards us, his grey eyes contracting pinpoints. ‘You seem to have forgotten that I’m an Unterscharführer—’

‘Filthy shit, more like.’

‘You dare to talk to me like that?’ demanded Paulus, almost as taken aback as I was myself.

‘Why not?’ said Porta, with one of his evil grins. ‘You can’t do nothing to me . . . not without I spill the beans about that raid you carried out at No. 7 Herbertstrasse . . . You hadn’t forgotten that already, had you? Because I can assure you that I hadn’t. In fact, I been thinking, Paulus: we got room for someone like you in our regiment. How’d you like to leave the SD and come and join us, eh? Chaps have come to us for doing far less than what you’ve done.’

The man’s eyes widened, and then contracted again.

‘What do you know about Herbertstrasse?’ he asked.

‘I know you’re a thief, for a start—’

Paulus drew himself up very stiff and raised a cold eyebrow.

‘Are you presuming to call an Unterscharführer of the SD a thief?’

.’You heard,’ said Porta, cheerfully. ‘And I’ll say it again if I feel like . . . whenever and wherever I feel like it . . . Why, anyway? You got any objections, have you?’

Paulus heard the lift arriving. He pursed his lips to a thin line and strode away, not looking back in our direction. Porta watched him, a satisfied smirk on his lips.

‘That’ll give him a few sleepless nights, the bastard!’

‘Why?’ I said. ‘What went on at Herbertstrasse?’

We turned back again, into the rain.

‘To tell the truth,’ admitted Porta, ‘I don’t really know, except it’s where they picked up those two whores, a few days ago. The ones that had been hiding a couple of deserters. Apparently they done a raid on the place, and whatever went on there it was enough to make old Paulus think twice, wasn’t it? You see the way he changed colour?’

‘Yes, but surely to God,’ I said, ‘you know more about it than that?’

Porta shrugged.

‘Only by hearsay. One of the whores that lives at No. 7 – not the two they took away, another one. The place is lousy with ’em – well, she was telling me that Paulus and another bloke nicked the girls’ ration cards and walked off with their savings. I wasn’t sure it was true until just now.’

‘You mean, you tried it on without actually knowing?’ I said, aghast.

‘why not? Nothing venture, nothing gain, as some other geezer once said.’

‘So what happens? You going to shop him?’

‘Not before I’ve squeezed him dry,’ said Porta, callously. ‘When he ain’t no more use to me, I’ll make bloody sure he’s sent off to Fuhlsbüttel . . . and on the day he finds himself landed in a disciplinary unit, I’m going to go out and paint the town the brightest bleeding red you ever saw!’

I grunted.

‘Always assuming you’re still alive to do it. One of these days you’re going to bite off just a bit more than you can chew. One of these days you’re going to meet up with someone who turns round and tells you to get stuffed—’

‘Ah, bollocks!’ said Porta. ‘You think I don’t know what I’m doing? They’re all the same, these types, right from Himmler downwards. The minute you try a little bit of the old blackmail lark on them, they all get the wind up and start shitting blue bricks . . . they’ve all got something to hide, see? All you got to do is find out what it is.’

We stood in silence a few moments, contemplating the empty street. The rain blew into our faces and got into our eyes and down our necks.

‘I wonder what that little old girl had done?’ I said.

‘I dunno. Opened her mouth too wide, I expect.’

‘You reckon they’ll give her the full treatment?’

‘Why not? Only reason they bring ’em in, to see how loud they can make ’em shout . . .’

We tramped along by the side of the building, our heavy boots resounding on the pavements. The pale light of the streetlamps was reflected in our wet helmets and rifles.

‘I could fancy a cup of tea and Slibowitz right now,’ said Porta, longingly.

‘Make it Slibowitz and tea,’ I said, ‘and I’ll join you . . . three-quarters Slibowitz and the rest tea . . . and God in heaven!’ I added, irritably, as I felt my shirt flapping damply against my back. ‘I’m sick to death of this pissing awful rain! I’m sick to death of the whole bleeding war, and everything to do with it! We’re all sick to death of it! They’re sick of it, we’re sick of it, so why the hell don’t we all call it quits and go home again?’

‘Some hopes,’ said Porta, cynically. ‘It’s only the people what have to fight the bleeding thing what are sick of it . . . And they’re not the people what can call it off. Them as starts it and them as finishes it aren’t nothing to do with the likes of you and me. They don’t give a fuck what we feel about it, and they’re not going to get sick of it all the time they’re making so much bleeding money out of it, are they? They’ll just go on until we’re all dead and buried. Much they flaming well care . . . And them over there,’ he said, pointing wildly in the direction which I conceived to be England and the rest of Europe, ‘they’re just as bleeding bad as them over here. Revenge, that’s all they want. Revenge and money, that’s all any of ’em bleeding wants.’

‘It’s like the Legionnaire said the other day,’ I agreed. ‘They call this the Second World War, but really it’s just the same as the First World War and every other war that’s ever been fought. It’s all one great big war that never ends. We think it ends and then another one starts up, but he’s quite right, it’s all the same one, just fought on different fronts at different times with different weapons . . .’

I remembered very clearly the Legionnaire saying that.

‘It won’t ever end,’ he said, ‘because They don’t want it to . . . Why should they? As long as the war goes on, then capitalism can flourish. Stands to reason, doesn’t it? So of course they’re going to keep it alive. It might die down from time to time, but they’ll damn well make sure the fire never goes out altogether. There’ll always be someone there to fan the flames.’

‘That’s treason!’ shouted Heide. ‘I could denounce you for that! That’s Communist talk!’

‘Balls,’ said the Legionnaire, distastefully. ‘Communist, capitalist, Nazi, I hate the whole damned lot of them . . . I’m just a soldier, doing what I’m told to do.’

The Old Man looked at him a moment.

‘Do you enjoy being a soldier?’ he asked.

‘That’s irrelevant,’ said the Legionnaire, with a shrug. ‘It’s just a job, same as any other job. No one ever bothered to ask me what I’d ENJOY doing. I didn’t have any choice in the matter.’

‘So that’s why you do it?’

‘Well, look at it this way.’ The Legionnaire leaned forward towards him. ‘Do YOU like being a soldier? Did YOU have any choice in the matter? Does anyone? Why do people go on paying their taxes? Or not driving without a licence? Or paying for their food instead of stealing it? Because they ENJOY doing these things? Or because they don’t have any choice in the matter? Effectively, because they don’t have any choice in the matter. It’s either obeying the law or going to the nick. Or in my case, originally, being a soldier or starving. Or in our case, now – your case and my case and Sven’s and Porta’s and Tiny’s – being a soldier and doing what they say, or being stood against a wall and having our brains blown out.’ He sat back, shaking his head. ‘And if you call that any sort of choice, then I don’t’

I sighed and watched the rain falling steadily off my helmet.

‘Sodding guard duty,’ I said. ‘Seems like it goes on for weeks at a stretch.’

‘Let’s pray for a pussy cat,’ said Porta. ‘A nice fat black pussy we can shoot at . . . Anything to relieve the monotony . . .’

We had retraced our steps and were back near the entrance to the building, at a part where the wall was crenellated, with loopholes and small turrets.

‘Let’s slip behind there and have a fag,’ said Porta. ‘we can get out of the way of this God awful rain then. No one won’t come looking for us here.’

We slipped behind the wall, settled ourselves in a dry spot and removed our helmets. There was only a quarter of an hour to go before Heide and Tiny would turn up to relieve us. Doubtless they would bring something strong and warming to drink with them.

‘Who knows?’ said Porta, hopefully. ‘we stay here long enough, we might even give some poor sod just the opportunity he’s been waiting for to send the whole perishing lot of ’em up in flames . . . In fact, anyone come up to me with a bomb in his hand and asked me to look the other way for a bit, I’d do it like a shot. He wouldn’t even have to bribe me . . .’

‘Talking of money,’ I said, squatting on my haunches, ‘what about those steel helmets the Legionnaire nicked from Supplies? What’s happening to them?’

‘They’re with a Swedish concierge in the Bernhard Nachtstrasse at the moment. He says they’re safe as houses, but they can’t stay there for ever. There’s a locksmith in Thalstrasse who’s willing to buy ’em, but he wants us to dump ’em all in a depot in Ernst Strasse – just opposite Altona Station. Problem is, getting ’em there. We can’t use our own trucks, we’d never get away with it.’

‘How much is he willing to pay?’ I asked. And then added, ‘As a matter of fact, I know where we can lay hands on a quantity of howitzer shells, but again it’s a question of transport. We’d have to go early in the morning and we’d have to have an SS truck. Not only that, we’d need a special permit signed by the SS, or they wouldn’t let us collect the stuff. They’ve been a bit jumpy ever since some geezer managed to walk off with a couple of engines that didn’t belong to him . . . Still, if we could get the necessary transport it’d be worth a try . . . I was tipped off by a chap I know in the SS. He’s got a chip as big as Mount bleeding Everest on his shoulder on account he once tried to do a bunk and they caught up with him.’

‘This locksmith,’ said Porta. ‘He’s giving us 67 pfennig a kilo. We’d probably be able to screw him a bit more for the shells. Say 69 . . . Any rate, like you say, it’s worth a try. Tiny could manage a nice new set of number plates, and if we took the big Krupp I reckon we might get away with it. That’s a twin brother to an SS truck, near as damn it’

‘How about the permit?’