Authors: Robert Ryan
‘Won’t she try and make it home?’ asked Von Bork, dropping his cigarette on the floor and grinding his heel on it.
‘To Germany? Almost certainly.’
‘Then that will be the time to break out the Sekt, surely.’
Hersch jutted out his lower lip as if contemplating this. ‘The woman has spent many months in British captivity. There is no knowing what they have done to her.’
‘Meaning?’
‘If she does make it home, it might be safer to treat her as a hostile. Like a potentially rabid dog.’
‘Quarantine her?’
‘That,’ said Hersch, gently but firmly moving Von Bork towards his car. His streak of sentimentality meant that it pained him to utter the next option. But he knew his affection for
Ilse was a weakness he could ill afford. ‘Or put her down and have done with it.’
‘My name is Isle Brandt but it is so long since I used it I almost think of myself as Miss Pillbody now,’ she said to the young Dutchman. ‘The lonely, sweet,
naïve Miss Pillbody. But it is time to put her away. Ilse, you see, had a husband who was killed by the British. A Zeppelin man. So proud of that machine, he was. The new frontier, the way to
the future. But it didn’t turn out that way, did it? Giant bags of gas that can immolate men in a second. It doesn’t bear thinking about how they died. How they still die. Watching the
envelope split asunder and faced with the choice – let the fire consume you or jump to your death. But there you are. He died, and I decided to offer my services to the Kaiser, to the
Imperial She Wolves. Hersch might be a callous bastard but he knows how to train a unit of women. Fifty of us began. Thirty-two survived. That’s really what we are trained for. To survive.
And survive I will. By whatever means necessary. You seem like a nice young man. I am so glad you helped me. Money, very generous. Some schnapps, most welcome. And a hiking map from the local
Wanderclub, which has helped no end, and a compass. I’m not stupid, though. I can’t just stroll up to the border and announce my return, like a prodigal daughter. How suspicious would
that be? Hersch would suspect I had made a deal with the British. Hersch taught us to suspect everyone. I don’t even trust myself now. So, I have to prove myself, I suppose. Give them proof
of my credentials, that I am still loyal. But that’s not your concern. Not any longer.’
She took another gulp of the schnapps. The handsome young man opposite hadn’t said anything. He couldn’t. Not since she had walked up behind him, put a cushion over the top of his
head and fired two shots into the fabric, the muzzle of the pistol pushed firmly into the stuffing. It hadn’t been a clean kill, he had thrashed about, although she was certain that was just
a flurry of spinal reflexes. She had been able to place a third round into his heart to put a stop to that. There had been some noise from the discharges, despite the muffling, but nobody had come
banging on the door of the house where he had invited her to take coffee while she decided how best to find her lost companions. Poor Stijn. Where would she be without such kind men to help her on
her way?
After she had drained the schnapps, Ilse performed a fast but thorough search of the upstairs. She found an airing cupboard with clean sheets and towels she would use to stanch her little
feminine problem, the one that had horrified Buller so much when she had smeared her face with it, feigning a bloody coughing fit. In a locked cupboard, easily forced, she found a vintage
Beaumont-Vitali hunting rifle. It was a Dutch design, but with an Italian magazine system. Handsome, well-balanced, but with only open sights. She rummaged deeper in the cupboard and, among the
waders and oilskins, found a pair of binoculars, which she slung around her neck. It was a few more moments before she discovered a box of the rifle’s obsolete cartridges – the 11.35 x
52R – without which the gun was simply a rather elegant club.
She took the booty back down to the kitchen, laid it on the table and rummaged in the larder. The excitement of her escape had left her feeling peckish. She selected a carton of eggs. She set
about boiling three of them on the range, while singing a song she had heard at a prison concert: ‘“When I think about my dugout, Where I dare not stick my mug out, I’m glad
I’ve got a bit of a Blighty one!”’
She liked the jaunty tune but not the sentiment. It was about a soldier glad he was wounded badly enough to be shipped home. What sort of message was that for the troops? Not one a singer could
peddle in Germany, that was for certain. They would find themselves hanging like ripe fruit from a lamppost.
While the eggs boiled she checked Stijn’s other provisions in the larder. Fresh-ish bread, milk, cheese, bacon. More schnapps, a flagon of wine and a crate of beer.
Yes, she had all the supplies she needed while she decided her next move, certain that, one way or another, things had come full circle. Ilse – Miss Pillbody – had begun this part of
her life’s journey out on the mudflats of Essex, and made an uncharacteristic mistake in not executing Holmes and Watson, trusting instead for nature to take its course and drown them in the
incoming tide. But the pair had cheated death and had punished her for her slackness.
She removed the eggs from the water and placed them in the pretty china eggcups she had seen on the dresser. As she cracked the tops of the shells, she vowed to herself she wasn’t going to
make the same mistake twice. This time bullets, not the waves, would do the job.
Darkness had descended prematurely by the time the camp came into sight and snow was falling with increased vigour, the flakes the size of sovereigns. Thanks to the wet and
streaked windshield, the
Lager
fence lights were blurred starbursts ahead, guiding them in, but Watson tugged at the driver’s sleeve.
‘Don’t turn. Not here, carry on,’ he instructed, the gun indicating the direction. ‘
Nicht hier. Auf der Straße
.’
The driver looked at him, his expression apprehensive. ‘
Um dem russischen Lager?
’
‘
Nein.
’ They weren’t going to the Russian camp. In fact, Watson wasn’t sure where they were going. He would know it when he saw it.
Watson peered into the screen. The headlamps, such as they were, were mainly picking out the dancing walls of snow. ‘Keep to the right.
Halten Sie sich reichs
.’ It was
difficult to see where the road began and ended. He navigated them by the diffuse string of camp lights to his left until they were suddenly gone and said, ‘Left wherever you can.
Links!
’
‘
Es gibt keine Straße
.’
‘Not a road. A track.
Eine Fährte. Hier
.’
In truth it was more guesswork than anything else – he wished he had paid more attention to the local geography when Kügel had taken him out in the Argus – but two striped poles
splayed at drunken angles suggested the entrance to something and the truck swerved off the road, slowing as it hit deeper snow. Ahead, another two marker poles suggested the way. ‘
Ja,
ja,
’ Watson urged.
The lorry bounced and bucked its way forward, wheels, axles and engine all protesting as it was forced to head-butt its way through the drifts. The driver was a blur of activity, at one point
reminding Watson of a man playing a theatre organ as much as steering a truck. The road, if that was what it was, was leading them down a gentle slope behind the camp, which was soon looming above
them on its plateau.
Watson was just feeling pleased with himself when the lorry lurched and crashed to a standstill, sending him arcing forward and cracking his head on the windshield. The engine gave a huge
shudder and stalled. They had hit something buried under the snowfall.
Watson leaned back, groggy from the blow, and he felt hands on him, clawing for the gun. He managed to pull the pistol away, raise it and bring it down as hard as he could. It made contact and
the driver yelped in pain like a cowed dog. Watson pushed him away.
He waited until his vision stopped pulsing into darkness and back before he took stock. With his free hand he stroked his forehead. No blood. The driver, though, had broken skin above one eye,
which was leaking two thin rivulets onto his brow.
‘Do that again and I will kill you.
Töten Sie.
Understand me?
Verstehen?
’
‘
Ja,
’ he replied, his fingers probing his wound above.
‘You have a flashlight?
Sie haben eine . . .
’ he groped for the word, ‘
Taschenlampe?
’
The driver nodded and indicated a metal box attached to the dashboard in front of Watson. He opened it to find a squat torch, the sort that clipped onto bicycles. It would have to do.
Watson climbed out of the cab and, keeping the gun levelled at the driver as he walked around the front, opened the second door and ushered him out. They stumbled through the snow to the rear,
where Gunther was still bound with the prisoner transport shackles.
‘Where are we?’ the old man asked.
‘The camp. Or at least at the back end of it. You, up. Up.
Schnell
.’
The driver climbed into the rear. Watson indicated that the guard should manacle him too. He did so.
‘Both hands for him.
Zwe
i
.
’
He did as he was told. ‘Now the feet.’
‘Where is the young one?’ the guard asked as he snapped the cuffs on.
Watson took a moment to appreciate he meant the other guard, Fingerless.
‘The one who killed my friend Sayer?’
Gunther’s features sagged, like melting wax. ‘Orders.’
Watson nodded. He supposed it was. ‘I could gag both of you now. But I doubt anyone will hear you shouting through this snow. If I hear you, however, I’ll come back and shoot you
both. No matter who is doing the shouting. Stay quiet, stay calm, you’ll see tomorrow. Is that understood?’ His head was swimming as he spoke. Making the threats and keeping his face
looking as if he meant them was an exhausting business.
‘
Ja
,’ said Gunther.
‘Tell him.’
There was a burst of rapid German and the driver, apparently still dazed from being coshed with the handle of the Luger, nodded woozily.
Watson turned to face the night, and flakes that had grown to almost saucer-size, and set off into the darkness, the yellow, pencil beam of light guiding him towards the escarpment at the rear
of the camp. He examined the surface of the fallen snow as he went, but it was smooth and untrammelled. Nobody had walked this way recently. This was all a huge gamble. But he couldn’t leave
the camp without knowing the truth. Steigler had taunted him that he knew nothing. But he knew this – there was some way into the tunnels that linked the rec room with the isolation hut.
Peacock had told him that. He had said he had seen freedom, smelled it. You didn’t get the scent of liberty behind wire or underground. So there had to be some way out of the camp. And the
most likely way was through some old gold workings.
Gold was the answer, his inner voice had told him. But he had assumed that meant it was about the precious metal – the very embodiment of human greed. But somewhere deep in his unconscious
he had known that there were other elements to the extraction of gold. Cyanide, for one. An easy way to kill three men when you knew they drank the camp liquor in a ritual toast. Steigler had given
him the jar of alcohol to test, but he only had the doctor’s word for it being the self-same liquid the men had drunk. He was beginning to think the doctor’s word was worse than
worthless.
And the second was—
A firework went off in his cranium and his heart thumped in his chest in excitement at what was before him. The beam was shining not on rock, but on wood, albeit wood painted to look like rock
at a casual glance. This was it; this was the entrance to the tunnels. He looked back over his shoulder towards the lorry, but it was lost in the backdrop to the white speckled world that had
enveloped him.
Watson put the torch down on the snow and used chilled fingers to explore the wooden panel before him. It was not a door. There was no sign of hinges. It appeared to be simply placed against the
smooth face of rock. Yet no amount of pulling would shift it one way or another. The ends of his fingers, already raw from the skin loss, began to bleed after a few minutes of exploring every crack
and crevice around the periphery of the barrier. Despite the cold he was sweating and breathing was painful, the air sharp in his lungs and his bad knee ached – he had left his walking staff
pinned through the young German guard.
Energy drained from him like water from a punctured canister, pooling at his feet, so that he felt like an empty vessel. Which he was, an old hollow man, jousting at windmills, without even a
Sancho Panza for support.
You have me, Watson.
No, I don’t Holmes, you’re not you. You are a mere vocal simulacrum of you. I thank you for being there. You have helped keep me sane. Even offered decent advice. But you
aren’t flesh and blood. You aren’t real.
He turned, put his back to the wooden façade and allowed himself to slide down, so his buttocks were in the snow, his knees to his chest. He wasn’t strong enough to break down the
panel. Perhaps if he could get the lorry closer, he could pull the door off with ropes. But how could he manage that? It had thumped into a rock or a fallen log under the snow. It was stuck and
probably damaged.
Alarmingly, he knew now in his heart that the game was up. He was quite done in. It was remarkable he had kept going this long. He wanted to keel over and lie down, feel the crisp snow against
his cheek, let it wick the warmth out of him, surrender to the—
Shush!
—surrender to the embrace of cold earth and endless oblivion.
Will you be quiet! Listen.
Watson did, but all he could hear was the moan of a sly wind. There was nothing out there.
Watson, sometimes, you really do test my patience. Not out there. Behind you.
Watson turned his head, so that one red and raw ear pressed against the painted planks. Sure enough he could hear something – a man coughing and spluttering. Hawking in the throat. And
then, footsteps. Followed by a snatch of conversation, low enough to make the words a mere rumble, but human voices all the same. There was only one conclusion to draw.