Churchill's Triumph (15 page)

The priest reached the scaffold first, hugging the legs of the doctor, trying to take his weight as he collapsed into his arms. Soon there was a tentative smile. The doctor was still alive.

“Now we come to the interesting bit, where we see whether you’ve got more than thirty seconds left to live,” Nowak muttered. “You tell your men to lay down their arms.”

“What reason shall I give them?”

“You’re the shithead in charge. I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

And Kluge threw himself into the unknown. “Men,” he began, but his throat was parched. He forced spittle round his mouth. “Men! Soldiers of the Wehrmacht! Our war in Piorun has come to an end. It is time for us to leave. To return home. To defend our families and our Fatherland.” His voice carried clearly in the cold air to every corner of the square. “So I order you all”—more spittle—“to lay down your arms. There are weapons aimed at every one of us. Resistance is useless. But there is no need for anyone to die.”

Kluge’s soldiers were looking at each other uneasily, unconvinced. Slowly the muzzle of the carbine, which had been hidden behind Kluge’s back, was raised until it was pointing very publicly at the Kommandant’s temple. A young lieutenant stepped forward, his own weapon raised, ready to resist, only to find himself staring into the barrel of a Sten gun held by one of the underground fighters from the church. As those in the square looked on, the two men confronted each other and for a few seconds neither would give way.

The lieutenant saw in the eyes of the bedraggled Pole only hate and the willingness to die, yet he stood his ground, trying to mirror the other man’s emotions and struggling to hide a weakness that he had begun to feel around his knees.

The stirrings that had been rippling round the square now faded to an oppressive silence. Everyone watched, knowing that their own fate lay in the trembling hands of these two men.

Not even the low rumble of distant thunder distracted them, not at first. Yet it wasn’t thunder. It was as if the gods were playing skittles in the sky, a noise that swirled around and clung to them like fresh snow, a sound like a thousand hoofs on the stampede, and they were in the path. It came from the east. From the Russians. The front was almost here. Suddenly the young lieutenant’s senses were drowning in fear. It was all too much for him. His eyes flickered, his hand sagged, the elastic that had held his courage together stretched until it burst. His pistol clattered to the floor, and gradually the sound was repeated in all corners of the square as Mausers and Schmeissers and even a few obsolete French Lebel rifles were sometimes thrown, sometimes placed with tenderness, upon the cold dirt. Poles from within the crowd immediately snatched them up.

“Very good, Herr Kommandant,” Nowak whispered. “You see? They think you’re a great leader. Next thing you know, they’ll be making you the fucking Führer.”

More men were emerging from buildings on all sides — few in number, but all armed, the soldiers of the Home Army.

“You don’t have many men,” Kluge declared bitterly.

Nowak chewed his thumb. “No, not many. But, it seems, enough.”

Soon the men of the German garrison of Piorun, less than two hundred in number, were gathered in the centre of the square, morose, subdued, anxious, lined up as though for inspection. Some were so old they looked as though they should have walking-sticks, a few of the Hitler Youth were in tears. One or two of the women of Piorun threw things at them, pieces of bread, clumps of earth, but Nowak quickly brought that to a halt with a wave of his carbine. “No, my friends, the Germans haven’t time for your games. They’ve got to be going soon. Haven’t you heard?” He cupped an ear to the sound of the approaching battle. “Their Russian friends are only just down the road.” A pall fell across everyone, German and Pole.

“Anyway,” Nowak continued, “we still have a little bit of business to finish with them.”

“Business? What business?” Kluge demanded.

“Well, you could take your pick,” Nowak responded, and counted off on his fingers: “There’s the beating to death of a young boy. Another dragged from his mother’s arms and never seen again. We could deal with all the pilfering and the theft, or the rapes of the young women. So many things. None of them yet paid for—and you know me, Herr Kommandant. Goes against the grain of my trader’s instincts not to settle up on things.” He had now come to his thumb, a thick, dirt-encrusted digit with a crudely bitten fingernail. “But I think we’ll put all those to one side, and deal with the matter of the older woman your soldiers set about.”

“You said nothing of this!”

“Oh, forgive me. But didn’t I tell you?”

“What?” the German gasped in alarm.

“There’s one other reason I’ve got for hating you, Kluge.” The Pole smiled, all hard lips, bared gums, broken teeth, like a wolf. “That woman. She’s my wife.”

“You said I would live,” Kluge whispered hoarsely, clearly terrified.

And you will—if you hand over the three soldiers who did it.”

“Please . . . I don’t know who they are.”

Nowak eyed the German with suspicion, but the wild flickering in his eye suggested he was telling the truth. He turned to one of his men. “Bring Mama here.”

And soon Mama Nowak shuffled forward, wrapped in a simple peasant’s shawl. She had wooden clogs on her feet. Her husband helped her up the steps of the church to a point where she could look across the entire garrison. A murmur of anger spread through the crowd; several of the other women called out, trying to reassure her. Nowak pointed to the lines of the Wehrmacht soldiers. “Who were they, Mama?” he asked gently. “Which ones?”

But her eyes were full of tears and confusion, and shame. “I don’t know. It was dark and…” She shook her head. “Only one thing I remember.”

“What’s that, Mama?”

She beckoned him closer; he leaned down, his ear close to her withered lips. She whispered. Then he kissed her forehead. He turned once more to the soldiers. “Do any of you recognize this woman?”

Silence.

“Three of you vermin attacked her. Did the most terrible things to her. With your guns, your fists, your. . . ” For a moment he couldn’t go on. What he had learned of that night, of the sexual indignities they had forced upon his wife, had brought him to a point where he had thought he might lose his mind and, along with it, the sense of purpose that had got him through the long winters in the forest and the pain of watching so many friends die. He swallowed, very hard. “Anyone want to volunteer? To own up? German honor?”

Still silence.

“One of the men had a scar. Nasty thing. On his arse. That shake anyone’s memory?”

Nothing shook, apart from the celestial skittles away to the east.

“Then I guess we’re going to have to find out for ourselves.” His hands stiffened round his carbine. He walked slowly down the steps of the church to the first in the German lines, one of the oldest members of the battalion drafted in from the
Volkssturm.
Nowak stared at him. He said nothing, not a word was exchanged, but slowly the grizzled old German fumbled with the buckle of his belt. Fear is an infection. Soon, along the lines of German troops, trousers and underwear tumbled to the ground, accompanied by the mockery of the women, who jeered as the withered members of the Master Race were reduced to insignificance by the cold and their evident fright.

Nowak took his place once more at the top of the steps beside his wife and Kluge. “You, too, Herr Kommandant.”

Kluge’s eyes widened in disbelief. “But I am an officer.”

“Are you telling me you are responsible?”

Hesitation, confusion, nausea. Then, slowly, the trousers fell.

“Heil Hitler,”
Nowak mocked, as he inspected the shivering, half-naked German.

Now there was only one German left, a soldier in the middle of the square, who stood to exaggerated attention as his comrades shuffled in humiliation around him. With a crooked and much broken finger, Nowak pointed, and the man was dragged forward to the bottom of the steps. It took only moments before he was exposed and the entire square could see the vivid red scar that had been burned into his right buttock.

“Now the other two,” Nowak called to the troops. “Give up the other two, or you’ll all get what you gave to my wife.”

The rolling bass sound of approaching thunder seemed to grow, but another sound filled the square: the screeching of the women of Piorun, demanding retribution, not just for Nowak’s wife but for themselves. They hadn’t all been raped, not physically, but they felt as if they had. War has many ways of stripping a woman of her femaleness, and now they wanted revenge. Few of the Germans had any doubt as to what that would mean. They were disarmed, disgraced, laid bare, humiliated, and increasingly terrified, with the sense of order and discipline on which their world depended left lying in the dirt alongside their trousers. It wasn’t long before two other soldiers were being pushed and hustled forward, this time by their own comrades. One was little more than a boy.

“What are you going to do?” Kluge demanded, struggling to find his courage.

“You brought along three nooses. That’ll be enough.” The three fusiliers were led to the stools at the foot of the lamppost, struggling and cursing, the boy weeping pitifully, until the one with the scar fell on his knees and began begging forgiveness of the priest.

“God will forgive you, German, and soon enough.” And they were hoisted on to the shaky stools and the nooses placed round their necks. Their clothing was still at their ankles, the steel studs of their boots scrabbling to find purchase on the polished wood.

Once more, Nowak was whispering with his wife, but she shook her head. Slowly she began to descend the steps of the church, her clogs clicking on the stone like the pendulum of a clock, until she stood before the crowded scaffold. She clutched her tattered shawl around her and looked for a moment into the faces of the three men, saw the fear in their eyes, the snot dripping from their noses; the boy had already pissed himself. Then she remembered all the muck that had dripped down her own body that night, and what they had done with their fists, their pricks, the barrels of their rifles, and the rest of it, things she had never imagined could give pleasure to a man, and the nails that had been ripped from her fingers as she had scrabbled desperately to hold on to her own doorpost.

Beside her the priest, her brother-in-law, was praying for their souls. She allowed him to finish. Then, one by one, she kicked over the stools.

The bodies of the three men were still hanging there when the last of the German garrison stumbled out of Piorun.

❖ ❖ ❖

God, but he’s a magnificent beast, Cadogan acknowledged to himself, nodding quietly in reverence. What would I give to get him round a table at the Travellers’? He shows the other two up. Incisive, insightful—
and knows what he wants.
A breath of fresh air. That’s the trouble with the others, they give no impression of having thought the thing through. That’s why they ramble on so. But not Uncle Joe. He simply bides his time, then drops in a few words to let everyone know what he expects. I’ve always thought the art of diplomacy was about extracting teeth through the back of the victim’s head while giving the impression you were doing him a favor. And Uncle Joe is a master tooth-tugger.

Only trouble is, he’s still a trifle crass about things. That nonsense with the lemon tree, for instance. I want a scraping of lemon and he sends the entire tree. Why? To show us that he can do it. All-powerful—and all-knowing. We expect him to spy and snoop on us, just as we do on him, but I’m blessed if we’d ever admit to it quite so brashly. Still, he’s made a definite improvement to the cocktails. One up to Uncle Joe.

But what are we to make of Franklin? A cushion, perhaps? Something for the others to sit on, for he seems to be of little greater use. And a very small cushion at that. When he was wheeled in today to start the plenary he began by expressing the hope that it would be only a short session. Winston turned puce. But FDR’s grown more frail, he’s become almost mystical in his approach, always looking blindly on the bright side, trying to steer away from any touch of controversy, moving matters on as soon as Winston raises his head above the parapet. It’s as though he’s afraid a good old argument will break him.

It’s astonishing how often both he and Uncle Joe manage to tangle God up in their remarks. They say Stalin was a seminarian in his younger days, a bank robber, too, come to that, but even so it always makes you sit up short to hear the leader of the most godless state on the planet beseeching the Almighty to bless everyone. As though he wants to persuade Roosevelt that he’s really as sweet as pudding inside. An exquisite routine.

Meanwhile, Winston blows like a great white whale, full of blubber, backbone and grease—and there’s been plenty of grease today, most of it spread in Uncle Joe’s direction, even when they’ve been locked in disagreement. Going on about how his heart goes out to mighty Russia, bleeding from her wounds but beating down the tyrants in her path. . . What’s he up to?

And Franklin . . . well, if we’re talking animals, then Franklin’s been flapping around like a turkey at Thanksgiving, and to quite as little effect. Uncle Joe’s been demanding sixteen votes in the United Nations, one for each Soviet republic, but today he arrives, turns one of those little smiles on us and says he’s thought about it and accepts the American position. Sixteen votes are impractical, so all he’ll want is two or three. Just Russia, Belorussia and the Ukraine. It’s a magnificent concession and the president rushed in to welcome it, saying it’s a great step forward, but then you see the realization of what he’s done slowly creeping across his face. His eyes go all oystery and panic sets in. He’s still left with only one vote himself. So it’s Russia 3, USA 1—scarcely the result he wants to take back with him to the Senate, who’ll have his balls in a mangle for that. Suppose Averell and I will have to sweep up the droppings, as always. Breakfast tomorrow, I think, so long as we can find a decent omelet rather than more caviar and those blessed mince pies.