The Cathar Secret: A Lang Reilly Thriller (2 page)

     Happily, both the machines and their German supervisors required comfortable temperatures to operate, far warmer than the unheated barracks where Solomon returned at night. Those clapboard walls did little
to stop the wind. Prisoners had only a thin, lice-infested blanket for cover. But at least Solomon was warm fourteen hours a day here in the office. And he had ample opportunity to gather up lunch scraps left by the German workers: sausage made with real meat and bread made of flour rather than sawdust. The typical prisoner ration of watery soup with a rare potato slice once a day was hardly enough to sustain life. Nor was it intended to.

     That was the cruelest part: sustaining life. Solomon's job provided just enough heat and food to allow him to think beyond the camp, to remember his wife, Rebecca, whom he had not seen in two years. Was she still alive in the women's camp or dead, her memorial being a greasy black column of smoke emitted from the ovens? The cold, the hunger, the pain inflicted by beatings for little or no reason had reduced most prisoners to an atavistic state where survival, not lost love ones, occupied every waking minute.

     Survival or willing surrender.

     Mornings began with each barracks stacking up those who had succumbed to the cold, malnutrition, or disease during the night. That, of course, was another reason Solomon's skills with the machines were sorely needed: as soon as a prisoner died, perhaps even before, a scramble ensued between his bunkmates for his clothes and blanket, ensuring the corpses piled up outside were identifiable only by the tattooed number. Removing the deceased's card from the machine was as close to a funeral as the dead got.

     Solomon knew his turn would come, but he was not yet past caring. The beatings, the unprovoked cruelty, even the dehumanizing tattoo, had failed to diminish his desire to live. Joining the stacks of dead frozen bodies one morning would be surrender, abandoning the frail spark of life to the Germans. It was the only thing he had left, and he intended to keep it.

     This morning had started like any other: shouts from the guards and kicks and blows for any prisoner who did not move fast enough to suit them. Bring out the dead, roll call while breath froze on the cheeks, and work for assignments. Solomon had duly reported to the IG Farben building as he had every morning for . . .
how long
? He was unsure. The days, months, and years had a way of slipping by in anonymous similarity. Was this his second winter here or his third?

     No matter. He knew today was going to be different when he entered
the room where the card machines were housed. At the front was a desk usually occupied by
Herr
Steck, a pudgy, greasy-haired little Hessian who peered at his charges through glasses that magnified his eyes so much they appeared to make up over half of his face. Though small, Steck was given to fits of violent temper that frequently ended in a caning, some of which resulted in disability that inevitably meant a trip to the gas chambers and ovens.

     That temper had cost Solomon two teeth, but he bore no particular ill will. The incisors were already loosened by the poor diet and would have fallen out anyway, as a molar had the month before. Having them knocked out among blood and spit had saved a worse beating. Steck became nauseated at the sight of blood.

     This morning there was no sign of Steck nor his steel-tipped cane.

     Instead, a black-uniformed
Sturmbannführer
sat on Steck's desk, a riding crop slapping rhythmically against leather boots shiny enough to reflect the room's overhead lights. Solomon could not help but gape enviously at the fur-trimmed great coat thrown across a chair. With a coat like that, a man would never be cold.

     "You are the Jew Solomon Mustawitz?" he asked in German.

     The yellow Star of David sewn onto Solomon's blouse answered at least part of the question, but he nodded.

     
"Ja, Herr Sturmbannführer."

     The German wrinkled his nose as though smelling something unpleasant. And, indeed, he might. Prisoners' personal hygiene was not a camp priority.

     "You will come with me," the officer said, turning and walking out of the card machine room. Not once did he so much as look over a shoulder to make sure Solomon was following.

     At first, Solomon had to force himself to walk despite legs and feet that did not want to cooperate. When a prisoner was removed from his work post, he was taken directly to the gas chambers or a firing squad. He had worried that he might become indifferent to death like so many here. Now, faced with it, he was surprised to find he cared very much. But the others, the men hauled away to their deaths, had been taken by low-level guards, or by the kapos, other inmates who cooperated with the their captors for a few stale crusts of bread and perhaps an extra bowl of that watery soup.

     But a full SS
Sturmbannführer
?

     His curiosity grew even more when the German crossed the barracks yard and passed the warning wire just inside the main fence. Any prisoner who even touched the inner wire was summarily shot, the only real escape from Auschwitz and one occasionally voluntarily chosen by its inmates over the stark existence in the camp.

     The winter wind cut through Solomon's tattered cotton uniform like a knife. His joints ached. The snow seeped through the soles of his paper slippers, numbing his feet to a dull, pulsing pain. He thought of the prisoners he had seen with toes black as coal dust from frostbite. The brave cut off those toes with whatever sharp edge they could find, even their own teeth. The timid ones watched the blackness spread until their entire leg became gangrenous and they found final relief in the gas chambers.

     For a moment, his discomfort was replaced by recurring curiosity. If he was not being taken to his death, then where? And for what purpose?

     At the main gate, the guard, an elderly
Volkssturm
replacement for the younger men who had been siphoned off to staunch the hemorrhaging Eastern Front, drew himself up in an approximation of attention. Whatever was said was lost in the wind, but Solomon and the officer passed through onto ground Solomon never expected to feel under his feet again.

     The
Sturmbannführer
stopped in front of a row of wooden huts, guards' quarters, looked at Solomon, and motioned him forward.
"Kommen Sie."

     They entered the first building in the row. Inside, Solomon could not help but savor the lingering odors of food, burned wood, and tobacco, the latter something he had almost forgotten. Bunks were arranged against the walls much like the prisoners' barracks except these had
Federbetten
, feather-stuffed comforters. A porcelain stove stood in the corner surrounded by firewood. Before the war Solomon would have regarded these quarters as Spartan indeed. Today they were the height of luxury.

     The German pointed toward the far end of the single room. "There is a shower there. When you have cleansed yourself, put these on."

     He indicated a pile of clothing on one of the bunks.

     Solomon stared. The only clean clothes he had seen were prisoners' uniforms on the rare occasions in the summer when they were given an opportunity to wash them. And these clothes not only did not have the stripes of a prisoner or the Star of David; most important, he could see no lice.

     He had not had a hot bath since . . . he could not remember, a very long time. He enjoyed every moment of it, lathering up time after time as the delightfully hot water pounded his skin into a pinkish hue. He tried not to even guess at the reason for his being here. Perhaps someone had made a mistake, allowing a prisoner, a Jewish prisoner, to spend a few minutes living like a human being.

     But then, Germans did not make such mistakes.

     Reluctantly, he left the shower and got dressed.

     The
Sturmbannführer
tossed him a standard
Wehrmacht
greatcoat. It smelled of sweat and rancid food but it was welcome. Odor or not, no other prisoner had such a garment. Without speaking the German turned and motioned Solomon to follow him outside. Four other prisoners shivered in cotton uniforms as they stood in the snow under the gaze of a guard with a rifle. Two had red badges sewn onto their uniforms along with the letters "SU" under the numbers printed on their blouses. Russian prisoners. A third, a short, dark-skinned man, displayed a "Z" for
Zigeuner
, Gypsy. The fourth wore the same faded yellow Star of David as Solomon had.

     The
Sturmbannführer
waved to move on.

     A short march brought them to the railway tracks where a locomotive with a single car waited. Not a cattle car, like those that arrived almost daily with new inmates, but a third-class passenger coach, one with rows of hard bench seats and a stove glowing with heat at one end. At the other was a partition that concealed a rough wooden seat above an open hole onto the tracks, a toilet. It had the first toilet paper Solomon had seen in years.

     Certainly an improvement over his last train ride, Solomon thought. Before the war, before he and most of Warsaw's Jews had been deported, Solomon had never ridden on anything more mechanized than his bicycle or, on occasion, the city's trams. His first trip on a railroad had been to the camp. Hours standing shoulder to shoulder in a suffocating cattle car with other deportees, his nostrils filled with the stench of human excreta and, worse, terror. He had tried to comfort Rebecca, telling her what the Germans had said, that the Jews were only being transported to waiting villages and farms where they would lead lives away from the city. She would have none of it, weeping the whole trip. Two old men had died, remaining standing because there was no room to fall down. He doubted he would ever ride a train again without being reminded. In fact, he had doubted he would ever ride again, period.

     The engine groaned to life and picked up speed, the first train Solomon had seen leaving Auschwitz with living cargo. The train went a few miles before reaching a forest, an endless stand of snow-draped conifers so thick the ground was in perpetual twilight. There it stopped until real darkness fell before moving on. Solomon had learned that asking questions produced more beatings than answers, but his curiosity was partially satisfied when one of the Russians whispered an explanation. "The airplanes. They destroy everything that moves by day."

     That, of course, did little to tell Solomon why he had been chosen or where he was going. He only knew it had to be better than where he had been.

Three Days Later

Early Morning

S
OLOMON AWOKE AND STRETCHED. THE
wooden bench of the railcar was no harder than the bare slats of his bunk at the camp, and the greatcoat had kept him reasonably warm. The smell of coffee made his mouth water as did the thought of the boiled eggs and ham that had been his breakfast the previous two mornings. The Jewish prohibition against pork never entered his mind. Meat was food, whatever its source. A warm place to sleep, food. Wherever this train was taking him, he hoped the trip would never end.

     As though the gods were mocking him, the train's brakes squealed and it began to slow. Another stop in the woods to hide during the day? For the first time since leaving the camp, the train was moving in light. Outside the window, Solomon could see a landscape far different from that they had left. Instead of Poland's flat marshes and rolling hills there were mountains, some so high their snowcapped crests were swallowed by the morning mist. The trees shrunk as the locomotive groaned its way around one uphill curve then another. Soon, there were no trees at all, only jagged outcroppings of gray rock peeking out from under snowbanks.

     Solomon had only an idea where he was; somewhere in the Alps and west of Poland. Certainly not Italy; they had surrendered to the Allies over a year ago, according to camp gossip. Switzerland was unlikely unless the
Sturmbannführer
had planned on internment for the duration, in which case bringing five prisoners with him made no sense. The French Alps were
in the southern part of that country, perhaps too far to reach only traveling at night in such a short time. That left Bavaria or Austria.

     Solomon knew it really didn't matter where he was: he was a Jew under guard by Germans. In another sense, it mattered very much. Knowing his location on the globe gave him a sense of being something more than an insect to be crushed at will under a German boot. A man who knew his whereabouts at least was free from his masters' will to keep it a secret.

     The train was definitely slowing now, coming to a stop on the first bit of level ground Solomon had seen in the last half hour. On the other side of the window, the steeple and onion dome of a church reached for the sky. Several little houses stood in small clusters as though seeking warmth from each other. Then, a wooden building, a train station, blocked his view. But not before he caught a glimpse of a faded black sign painted on a white background that proclaimed
OBERKOENIGSBURG.

     A blast of frigid air rushed through the car as someone opened the door from outside. The all-too-familiar commands in German followed and the other four prisoners leapt from the train. Solomon would have followed had not the
Sturmbannführer
grasped his arm, shaking his head.

     "Wait," he said.

     In a few minutes, a black Mercedes pulled alongside the single railcar and Solomon was led from the train into it. As the car moved slowly away, he could see black dirt, and mud covered a great deal of the snow. To his right, up a steep incline, he could see a cog railway, tracks that were a series of holes where a spoked or cogged wheel would fit in much the same way watch gears turn each other. At the top of the peak, the tracks disappeared into a large opening, some sort of mine, Solomon guessed. Right below the mouth of the mine was a lone tree on the slope: some sort of pine that had grown out in double trunks like a giant "V." A "V," Solomon thought, like Churchill's two fingers extended in a victory sign. Perhaps the mountain was telling him he would ultimately prevail.