25

Josef felt the mountains call to him, offering escape, as he crept out the narrow window. Outside on the sill, he could see a light burning within one of the tower windows to his right and the twinkling constellation of a small town in the far distance; but everywhere else, the main part of the castle, the other dormer windows, the surrounding countryside, was pitch black.

The cold night air blew across his face as he sat there thinking about the dead childhood friend he was going to leave behind. Unsought, the face of little Ilsa suddenly replaced Gunter’s in his mind. Seeking to banish the ghosts from his head, Josef quickly climbed around the window frame, holding on to it tightly with both hands, his wounded index finger stabbing with pain from the tension of the holds. To relieve the strain on his hands, he tried to get some purchase with his feet on the steep tiled roof to the side of the window but the studded soles of his boots slipped and slid as if on black ice.

It wasn’t going to work.

With his upper body strength, finger howling in protest, Josef pulled himself back up onto the window frame and into the room.

“Kurt, the roof’s very steep and slippery,” he said when inside. “We will need to do this in bare feet to have any chance of getting some grip. Take your boots off and lace them together to hang over your neck. I think it’s too difficult to go straight up such a steep roof. We must get up onto the top of the dormer window and then move sideways across the fall of the roof using the others. In this way, we can reach a rain gully to the left where two parts of the roof join. It will give an easier line up to the ridge and from there we can see where to go next. Take a look out and see.”

Kurt hopped to the window and, using his arms, pulled himself up to lean out and see the route Josef had described.

When he moved back in, he looked at Josef with a grim expression but resolutely said, “We go. Help me get this boot off.”

“Okay, but you must watch exactly where I go. Keep your weight on your hands and your good leg,” Josef instructed, as he unlaced and removed his friend’s boots before climbing back out of the window.

Slowly and carefully, Josef stepped down onto the steep tiles once more. Chilled and damp to the touch, he pushed his toes against their thin edges to steady himself and moved one hand up, gripping the projection of the window. Tensing himself, he brought the other hand up, and below slowly began to edge his feet up the sloping tiles. Even as he was telling himself to move faster, that he must pull harder on the window structure to get his weight off his feet however much his hand hurt, they slipped away out from under him. His body instantly jerked downward from the side of the window to fall fully onto the steep roof.

Josef began to slide down the sharply angled roof toward the edge, an internal voice shouting, This is it!

The slide accelerated, his hands slapping uselessly against the slick tiles, feet scrabbling for purchase.

How long will I fall before I hit the ground?

Just as he anticipated answering his question, Josef’s right toes touched something: a vent pipe projecting up through the tiles.

It jarred Josef to a momentary halt. A stop just long enough for him to find another tiny edge with his other foot and smear his body hard against the roof to arrest the fall.

Spread-eagled on the tiles, feeling their stone freeze his burning cheek, Josef desperately tried to regain his composure.

When he looked up again he saw the outline of Kurt leaning out of the dormer window watching him.

“Stay where you are,” his friend said before vanishing from the window.

A few minutes later the end of the blanket that had covered Gunter was lowered to Josef’s outstretched hand and gradually it pulled him back up to the window.

Shaken by his near fall, Josef rested inside. When he had recovered his breath, he said to Kurt, “I’m not sure we can do this.”

“We must,” came the reply. “Out there if we die, we at least die free. In here, who knows? Go again.”

This time Josef was much quicker in his movements and he did make it up onto the top of the window’s dormer roof, pausing there before making a darting sideways pass on all fours across to the next one and resting again. In this fashion he reached the guttered valley he had noticed before. To his relief he found that its two roof edges did give good purchase for his hands, and his toes slipped less on the rough lead sheet set between them, enabling him to rapidly monkey-climb up to the very ridge of the roof as he had anticipated.

High above the castle, released from the concentration it took to get up there, he looked down to see Kurt’s dark form edging out of the window. However, almost the instant he was on the roof, his broken knee gave way beneath him and he vanished downward.

Josef heard the beginning of a shout and then only silence. Horrified, he recklessly slid back down the gully between the two roofs to get nearer. Reaching the edge, he looked across to be confronted with the silhouette of Kurt hanging from rain gutter that lined the bottom of the roof.

“Hold on. I’m coming,” he shouted as loudly as he dared.

“No. Go,” came the reply.

“You did it for me, I can do it for you,” Josef said as he extended a foot down into the gutter, gently pushing his weight down onto the narrow trough to test its strength. To his relief it felt strong. When he kicked into it a couple of times, it still didn’t move a fraction. It too seemed newly installed. It would hold them.

“Keep holding on!” he called across to Kurt again. Then, using the gutter to hold his toes, he turned inward, placed both hands flat on the roof tiles, and started to crab sideways across to his dangling friend as fast as he could. Desperate to get there, he was oblivious to the sharp edge of the roof tiles cutting into the fronts of his shins as he shuffled them from side to side.

Finally reaching his suspended friend, Josef leaned down, outstretching his left arm to reach him. His wounded finger stung viciously as he closed his hand around Kurt’s wrist.

Leaning down further to try and tug it upward, Josef’s heavy boots, still slung around his neck by their laces, suddenly slipped off and fell.

The boots hit Kurt’s upturned face hard in its center. The surprise caused him to lose his fingerhold on the gutter, spurring Josef to squeeze the wrist he was clutching as tightly as he could. His wounded finger exploded with pain but he didn’t let go, his grip holding Kurt who, after two attempts, managed to get his hands back onto the metal edge of the gutter. But however hard Kurt tried, he couldn’t pull his body up. He needed both feet to try to walk up the wall as he hung there; but his right leg was useless, leaving only his left foot to scratch hopelessly at the side of the smooth, newly repointed wall.

Kurt struggled in vain to raise himself up using only the strength of his arms. Josef, still gripping his right wrist, encouraged him to keep trying, tugging on the wrist he was holding each time as he did so. With each painful pull, more blood oozed from his finger; seeping from the dressing into the grip he had on Kurt.

Josef could feel the wrist beginning to slip through the bloody wetness of his fingers.

Then Kurt felt it too.

He looked up at Josef one last time, shook his head, and released his hold on the gutter.

Kurt’s full weight instantly wrenched his hand through Josef’s bloody grip, ripping the dressing with it as it went.

With a scream of pain, Josef watched Kurt’s body silently fall into the dark until, from somewhere deep below, there was a sudden crash through tree branches followed by a dull, heavy thump.

Stunned by what had happened, Josef just lay there, straddled across the bottom of the roof, awaiting the shouts of guards, the beams of spotlights from below, the rifle shots or machine-gun fire that must surely follow. He didn’t even care. When those lights came on, he decided that he would jump too.

Panting, shivering, he prepared himself for the inevitable. But no lights did come on. The silence, returning quickly after the sickening thud of Kurt hitting the ground, sustained, as if only a single stone had been dropped down a deep well.

Orphaned by his friend’s fall, Josef slowly twisted himself back up the roof and, using the gutter once again to hold his feet, worked his way back to the diagonal rain groove.

Still there were no noises, no lights, no shots, only the intense pain in his hand, so he climbed on back up to the central ridge of the main roof, where he stopped to rest. Straddling the crest as if on a horse, he sat there, taking in deep breaths of the cold night air while his desperate brain struggled to formulate his next move.

From up there the first thing that was apparent was that the castle was not square. It was a narrow triangle shaped like a spearhead. The bigger tower to the north was the tip of the spear point, and the two other corners each had a smaller tower. The three flanks of the castle were set under steeply pitched roofs, and within Josef could see an illuminated triangular courtyard. He found it strange that the courtyard was so well lit, yet the outer walls of the castle were so completely dark.

More pain from his ripped finger stopped him thinking about it. Tearing a strip of material from the bottom of his shirt, he bound his wounded, bleeding finger as tight to the next as he could. Josef then started moving along the ridge of the roof toward the first of the two smaller towers. When he reached its side, he felt the surface. The stone was smooth and well-fitted. It would have been difficult to insert a pocketknife blade between the blocks, let alone fingers. It offered no possibility of a descent so he edged around the upper wall of the tower and down the next section of roof as far as he dared to study that face of the castle.

It was as high and sheer as the one he had come from. His best option was beginning to look like climbing back into the castle through a window and trying his luck at getting out from the inside. But with the likelihood of a confusing maze of corridors and staircases all inhabited by SS soldiers, that didn’t appeal. Climbing quietly down the outside, if possible, had to be the better alternative. Josef moved back up onto the very ridge of the roof again and across to climb around the back of the next tower and on to the castle’s third side.

This time he found that he didn’t have so far to climb up to get onto the crest of the roof. The third side of the building was at least two stories lower. He also saw that halfway along, it was breached by a cobbled bridge that gave access into the castle’s internal courtyard. Where the bridge met the wall of the castle, a tall yet narrow enclosed structure with a small roof projected out. It must once have housed a portcullis or drawbridge mechanism. The structure was buttressed to the sides and decorated with filigrees of ornate stonework, its construction older, rougher than the other parts of the building. Upon seeing it, Josef felt his heart leap. He knew he could down-climb it.

Climbing along the ridge until he was directly above it, Josef slowly slipped down the roof to arrive directly above the entranceway. There, he hung from the gutter and dropped onto the top of the small parapet roof that projected out from the main wall. He crouched there for a while, studying the best way down. Then, considering each hand and foothold one at a time, Josef began to climb down the right side of it.

The cobbles of the road bridge started to come up to meet him. He could see no guard but told himself that when he reached the bridge he was going to have to move quickly and silently to get to the dark woods beyond. He cursed the loss of his boots, but there was nothing he could do about that for the moment. Foot down, hand down, foot down, hand down, he went, until, preparing himself for the dash he would have to make when he hit the bridge, Josef stretched his left foot down to make contact with the top of the wall that lined the side of the bridge.

His bare foot pawed the air.

“If you move your foot about five centimeters to the left and a little lower, you will find what you are looking for,” a crystal-clear voice said from the dark.

The sound made Josef start.

His immediate thought was to chance a jump to the side of the bridge, into the unknown below.

“If you jump, Gefreiter Becker, you will fall about ten meters. It probably won’t kill you, but it is somewhat rocky down there. It would likely shatter your legs, and I could ensure you quite some time without treatment so that it did end up killing you. I suggest you step onto the bridge and put your hands up instead,” the voice continued, as if reading Josef’s mind.

Josef followed the instructions, stepping onto the parapet wall and down into the middle of the cobbled roadway as a floodlight somewhere beyond the bridge flicked on to wash Josef in a blinding white light.

An SS officer clad in a peaked cap and a long, black leather overcoat calmly stepped out of the shadows at the end of the bridge and walked toward him.

“Time to stop now, I’m afraid. No more climbing for tonight,” the officer said, pointing a pistol directly at Josef.

The officer’s face slowly appeared beneath the peak of his black cap. It was the same blond SS-obersturmführer who had released Josef from the gestapo. Four more SS officers appeared behind him and began to walk across the bridge back toward the castle entrance. They were chatting and laughing amongst themselves. Josef also recognized one of them immediately.

“Most impressive, my dear Jurgen, even if only one of your candidates has successfully passed your audition. Gentlemen, it is late; we will speak further in the morning. Good evening to you all,” said the man that Josef knew from photographs in the newspapers to be the reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler. He left the group to stride quickly back into his castle. He stared into Josef’s eyes as he passed but without uttering another word.