Devastation Road (32 page)

The Czech soldiers pushed people back with their rifles as the first truck became full, and soon the tailgate was hoisted and bolts pulled across, a dozen or more pale but excitable faces
cramped inside, and those who could extending an arm or hand to wave. At last they were going home.

Janek stood motionless in the parade ground, the crowd feeding forwards around him as he stared dumbly at the trucks. Owen pushed through and took his arm.

‘What the hell are you playing at?’ he said. ‘Go on. Get in!’

Janek shook his head. ‘No.’

‘Petr’s gone,’ said Owen. ‘Listen.’ He took the boy by his shoulders and forced Janek to look at him. ‘Look, listen to me, Janek. He’s gone. Left you.
Do you understand? You have to go home.’

The boy’s eyes were wide – hazel, he saw, in the sun – cheeks so pale and flecked with sparse stubble. He was so clearly still a boy.

‘You must have someone left,’ he said. ‘Some family.’

The boy shook his head. ‘Only Petr.’

Owen let out a heavy breath and looked up instead at the windows around them, some of them open where patients well enough to get out of their beds were leaning out. The tailgate of another
truck was lifted, bolts pulled in place, and then the third. The last stragglers crushed around the final truck.

‘Listen,’ he said to Janek. ‘You can’t stay here. You have to go.’

‘I find Petr.’

‘Petr’s gone!’

‘
Ne
!’

‘Yes! For fuck’s sake, Janek, will you get in the bloody truck.’

‘He can ride with me,’ came a deep voice.

Martha had emerged, bringing a large man with cropped silver hair with her. He was in a smart olive uniform, a single gold star on each shoulder, one arm held firmly behind his back. There was
something familiar about him that Owen could not place.

‘The major was just telling me how a certain young Czech saved him,’ Martha said.

‘Plucked from the rubble of a collapsed building,’ the major said. ‘A bomb blast,’ he then added. ‘And with barely a scratch.’

He took Owen in with a flash of recognition. ‘That is why I must absolutely insist that the boy travels in the jeep with me.’

Martha said, ‘Shall we go then? I’m sure Major Nemecek is keen to be on his way.’

The realization struck. Owen felt a cloud of heat quickly fill his head and prickling at his face.

Nemecek took a step closer to the boy. ‘It would be an honour,’ he said. His smile widened. ‘I’ve been looking for you, Janek Sokol.’ He turned to the crowd.
‘And what a relief I must say to have finally found him.’

He pulled out his arm from behind his back and held it out. ‘
Nepodáš mi ruku?
’ he said to Janek.

Owen, his pulse quickening, glanced at Hamilton and Haynes and then at Martha. The major seemed to want Janek to shake his hand, but there was no hand to shake, just the arm and the end of the
jacket sleeve, and within the dark hole the nub of something like the snout of a creature lurking in its burrow. He held it out, waiting for Janek. Martha gave a nervous laugh.

‘Go on.
Nepodáš mi ruku?
’ he slowly repeated.

‘It’s all right,’ Martha said to Janek. ‘He’s joking with you.’

But when Nemecek spoke again, it was without the smile. ‘
Podej mi ruku
,’ he told Janek. He pulled his sleeve back a little to show the wound, angry and pink, the threads of
stitches still in place where the hand had only recently been removed at the wrist.

Dropping into a bucket, Owen thought. Taken off like dead wood, and falling in such a way that it hooked its fingers on to the rim as if it was trying to crawl its way out.
Well, don’t
just stand there
. It was the voice of his father.
Shake it!

There was no more laughter, just a thick and awkward unease.

‘
Podej mi ruku
,’ Nemecek said again. Not an invitation but an order.

Janek stared at the offered stump. Martha glanced at Haynes and Hamilton. Owen felt all eyes turn, the camp revolving on its axis, all the faces in the trucks on them, and then Nemecek suddenly
laughed.

‘I am teasing,’ he said. ‘It is just an old war wound.’ He withdrew his arm and pulled the sleeve back down. ‘You must forgive me,’ he said, addressing the
crowd. ‘The war has done strange things to my humour.’ He looked at them for acknowledgement, smiling. ‘I must insist that he rides with me, though.’ He placed his remaining
hand on Janek’s shoulder. Owen saw him grip it, Janek’s face flushing.

The boy, Owen realized, had become strangely docile since Nemecek had arrived, as if he had been deflated by the realization that Petr was really gone. He watched Janek let the major steer him
by the shoulder around to the side of the jeep, and then the major opened the door and motioned him in.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, directing the comment squarely at Owen. ‘He is in good hands.’ He laughed.

He got in beside Janek and slammed the door, laying his arm over the back of the seat behind the boy as his driver took his place in front. Around them the trucks had started their engines, the
onlookers pulling back to give them space to reverse out and then edge forward through the gates. There was calling and waving as they threw flowers over the trucks, then a sudden swell of noise as
people started playing accordions and trumpets.

Across the yard, Owen spied Anneliese watching from the other side of the fence, her fingers at the wire. He felt his stomach turn. From inside the jeep Janek’s eyes were locked on
Owen’s. He looked terrified.

‘I don’t think he should go,’ said Owen.

‘Don’t be insane,’ said Martha. ‘He’ll be fine. He’s going home.’

‘Yes, he’ll be fine,’ said Hamilton.

‘No, you don’t understand. We need to stop them. Hey!’ he shouted, but his voice was lost in the surge of noise as the trucks pulled out through the gate, the crowd making way
to let them through and then starting to close again, shouting and waving and singing.

Owen tried to push through as Nemecek’s driver edged the jeep forward, hooting his horn to clear the path.

‘No, wait!’ Owen shouted. ‘Wait. Martha! Haynes! For God’s sake, stop them!’ His voice was lost in the cacophony of cheers and excitable flurry of flag-waving.

The jeep pulled out and Owen squeezed through, freeing himself from the crowds at the gate, and started to run after it. His eyes locked on the jeep as it accelerated away down the road, and on
the two figures seated in the back, the distance rapidly expanding between them.

The line of trucks grew smaller, the jeep kicking up clouds of dust from behind, and the sound of them became fainter and fainter. Owen slowed to a halt. He watched them go, disappearing, and
then his heart stopped as Nemecek’s jeep abruptly turned, swinging left away from the line of trucks, heading out instead across the field and towards the woods beyond.

Owen stared, bewildered. ‘Oh Christ.’

Before he knew it he was running.

The jeep had followed a narrow track until the trees had grown too dense around it and it could go no further. Owen followed Nemecek’s voice. He was irate and shouting at
Janek; he sounded half crazed. Crouching low, Owen pulled the pistol from his pocket; it was too late now to get help. He picked his way through the ferns that were lush and still wet from rain,
the sodden leaves quietly squelching under his feet and his shirt fast becoming damp on his back.

In the smallest of clearings, Nemecek was standing over the boy, who was kneeling at his feet, the mouth of Nemecek’s gun pressed at the back of Janek’s head.

Owen stepped forward.

‘I wouldn’t come any closer,’ the major said, not taking his eyes from Janek. ‘And put that thing away. We both know that I can put a bullet through his head before
you’ve even managed to cock it. There is only one person who has ever taken a shot at me and lived, and now I have him on his knees.’ He laughed. ‘We have an old score to settle.
Máme n
ě
jaké staré ú
č
ty k vy
ř
ízení
,’ he said to Janek. ‘Mm?’

‘Is that what all this is about?’ said Owen.

‘You have no idea.’

‘The war is over.’

‘Your war, perhaps. Not ours. When the Germans leave the Czech republic, who will control it then? Hm? The Soviets? The Poles? The Hungarians? You can’t leave it to the Czechs. They
let you sell them to the Germans. No, not even sell them.’ He laughed. ‘Give them away. A gift to Hitler from your Mr Chamberlain. And what do they do? Nothing. They give themselves to
the Führer. They welcome him in. They let him terrorize them. They sleep with the devil.’

Janek shouted: ‘
To není pravda!
’

Nemecek struck him hard with the butt of his pistol. ‘
Co ty o tom víš?
’ he said. He gave Owen a sideways glance. ‘His loyalty is touching –
don’t you think? But completely misinformed.’

Janek clutched the side of his head. Owen could see the blood beginning to seep between his fingers. The boy muttered something.

‘Petr?’ the major said, smiling. ‘Always Petr.
Petr ulet
ě
l, jako pták
.’ He made a whistling sound. ‘Flew away, hm? Like the coward he is. The
great Petr Sokol,’ he scoffed. ‘He was a big fish in a small bowl. All talk. The new Czech republic, he said. Czech for the Czechs. And what happened when the Germans came?
Hm?’

The boy said something and Nemecek laughed.

‘They did not take him prisoner,’ he told Owen. ‘I don’t know where this boy gets his crazy ideas from. He wasn’t a threat to the Germans. He wasn’t anything.
Nothing. He ran away. Like I keep telling you. He abandoned you. All of you. You,’ he said, poking Janek in the back of the head with his gun, ‘just don’t listen.’

‘Stop it,’ said Owen. ‘Just let him go.’

‘Let him go?’ He laughed. ‘I’ll do no such thing.’ He turned his attention to Owen, the gun still held against Janek’s head. ‘Let me tell you something:
I used to work with this boy’s father. I was loyal. I was hardworking. I was the voice between him and us Sudeten employees, his go-between, his lapdog. His factory would have been nothing
without us. We made his father rich. And when the economic crash happened, what did he do? He let us all go. He kept only the Czechs. Only them.

‘I lost my job. We all lost our jobs. He told us we all had to get another job. There were no other jobs. But he turfed us out anyway to save his own neck, feed his own family, but without
a care for us or our families. He made me hate him. I didn’t want to.

‘And then his son, this Petr.’ He spat the name into the back of Janek’s head. ‘The great Petr Sokol,’ he mocked. ‘He made us believe he was on our side. He
organized a demonstration outside the factory gates. He was going to demand his father give us our jobs back; stand with the workers, he said. But his father would never listen to him. It was just
Petr trying to placate us, disowning his father for his own ambitions. The demonstration got violent. He wanted them to riot. His father called the police. There was fighting, and a boy got shot.
My boy. A boy his father had employed and then, like us all, he had thrown him out on the street.’

Owen remembered the clippings. The rioting crowd. Petr’s fist in the air. The headlines that he had not been able to make out but the odd word as he’d scanned the page –
sabotá
ž
– and two names: Petr Sokol and Antonín Nemecek. A boy aged fifteen – perhaps the same age as Janek.

‘This boy’s family,’ Nemecek went on, ‘has taken my job, my livelihood, my son, and now this,’ he said, holding his handless arm up. ‘They have caused me
nothing but pain. But I am Sudeten. I fight for me. I play one side against the other but this is my war, not theirs or yours or anyone else’s, and I say it is not over!’

‘This boy,’ Owen said, ‘has lost his family too, you know. His parents.’

‘Do you think I don’t know that? You can’t trust anyone these days, not even family.’ He nudged Janek with the tip of his gun once more. ‘Hm? His sister let slip
where they were,’ he told Owen. ‘She was dating a Sudeten German. She had walked out on them for him, this man. She told me where they were.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Owen.

‘I mean the war was in pieces. The
Protektorát
, the so-called government. Martial law. I went to find them. Someone else would have done it if it was not me.’

Owen relived the sensation of a figure hauling him up into the field. And then, like a distant echo in the far recesses of his head, two shots and then a third before the figure crouching over
him in the dark had turned and run.

A house. Two graves. The boy standing over them. He had seen them from a bedroom window. Then, in his mind, he was stepping once again through the debris of a room, the chair with a penny-sized
hole puffed into it, the sunlight coming through another hole in the wall. He remembered the crackle of smashed china beneath his feet and the snap of broken photo frames, the photographs already
taken.

There, in the woods, his legs gave a little. He stepped out from under the trees, straightening his arm, feeling the tightening of anger within him. He pointed the gun at Nemecek, ready to fire
it.

‘Let him go,’ he said.

‘No.’

‘Haven’t you done enough? I said let him go.’

There was the sharp click of a safety catch. The major’s driver stepped out from the trees, his gun fixed on Owen, while Owen pointed his at Nemecek who still had Janek kneeling before
him, his own pistol pressed into the back of the boy’s head.

‘Do you think I drove all this way, orchestrated all of this, just to pat him on the back and wave him off? No. He has made me a joke. This,’ he said, holding up his handless arm,
‘is a joke. You’re right. I want to ruin him, not kill him. I want him never to forget. So, do I take his hand? Hm?’ He glanced at Owen. ‘When he took mine? What is the most
important thing to him right now, do you think? Not his parents.’ He laughed. ‘Not his traitorous sister or his cowardly brother. Not his two little siblings, gone. What’s the
most important thing to him now?’ He signalled for his comrade to keep his gun trained on Janek, and then he took a step closer to Owen, pointing the gun at Owen instead.