THEY LEFT AT dawn to recover the dead from the ambush. The Order Police, it turned out, couldn’t send even a single man to fetch the bodies of their comrades. A civilian evacuation of the area had been ordered from midnight, and as for tracking down the terrorists that had murdered them . . . ?
‘There’s nothing I’d like more, Neumann,’ the Order Police Oberst had told him. ‘Nothing in the world. But I’ve my hands full keeping the roads open for the army and getting the civilians out before the Russians come. I need ten times as many men as I have as it is. If you can bury our fellows, I’d be grateful. If the situation changes, of course, it will be a different matter. Then we’ll come and hunt the terrorists down with a will.’
‘Where are the Russians now?’
The Oberst had sighed.
‘Their tanks are this side of Krakow. Warsaw is in their hands. Our men are everywhere in retreat.’
‘Warsaw?’
‘Yes.’
Neumann knew what the Soviets would find in Warsaw – a burnt-out husk of a city. Its inhabitants exiled or murdered. Another atrocity.
‘And Krakow?’
‘Yes,’ the Oberst said. ‘Krakow. That was yesterday. Who knows where they are by now.’
There was a short silence. ‘As I said,’ the Oberst continued eventually, ‘if the situation changes, I’ll send people straight away.’
The Oberst hung up without saying farewell.
Krakow wasn’t far away – not at all. Far enough though, he imagined. They would be gone from the hut tomorrow. The Russians couldn’t be here by then. Not even if they had passed Krakow.
Neumann and two of the Ukrainians joined the Volkssturm in the search for the bodies. In the forest, the going was slow. No one knew where the partisans were, after all. When they finally stumbled across the dead men in a small clearing, their bodies had been completely covered by the blizzard of the night before so that, at first, all they saw was a tumble of soft contours. It was only when they approached more closely that it became clear the shapes marked where dead men lay.
There was almost no conversation as they cleared each body and checked it for life – not that there was much doubt that the men were dead, given that the bodies were frozen.
No one slacked – not even the mayor. They brought the dead men out one by one to where the wagon waited. It was hard work. The boys and some of the older men struggled with the stretchers and it wasn’t long before any feeling of care they might have felt towards the bodies disappeared. They piled them onto the wagon like logs of wood, throwing them in one on top of the other. Neumann was reminded of other corpses and another time. Of a train’s freight wagon with bodies cascading out of its open door. The jumble of naked feet and legs was much the same.
Later, when they brought the dead back to the hut, Weber ordered the Volkssturm to dig a grave behind the hut. There were no longer as many Volkssturm as there had been. They had been slipping away all morning. By the time the mayor realized what was happening, nearly all the older men had gone.
‘Herr Obersturmführer?’
Adamik, the young blonde Ukrainian guard, came to stand beside Neumann as he stood looking down the dead men, wrapped in the white bloodstained sheets that Neumann had ordered the women prisoners to sew them into. The sheets wouldn’t be needed any more. Not by the officers from the camp, in any event. Neumann looked up, his fingers playing with the fistful of identity discs he’d placed in the pocket of his tunic.
‘Yes?’
‘We’d like to bury our comrades separately, Herr Obersturmführer. In the Catholic graveyard, down in the village.’
Neumann nodded his agreement. He didn’t care one way or another.
‘As you wish. You won’t find a priest down there now, I don’t think. The civilians are all leaving.’
‘A priest?’ the Ukrainian asked, shrugging. ‘A priest wouldn’t be much use to us, Herr Obersturmführer. It’s past the time for priests.’
Neumann watched him walk away – he hadn’t known the Ukrainians were Catholic. It surprised him.
Neumann walked around the hut to see what was happening down in the valley. Brandt had made his way across the frozen reservoir in the middle of a blizzard the night before. It wasn’t so strange – if it weren’t for the curve of the dam, you would hardly know it was there. Dark, low clouds leaned down on the valley below and a column of humanity was moving slowly along the road that ran alongside the reservoir’s frozen shore. No wonder the Volkssturm were leaving – everyone else was.
There was a cough behind him. Another interruption.
‘Yes?’ he said.
‘Herr Obersturmführer?’
He turned. It was Beck, the auxiliary. She looked pale – she had fainted when she’d seen the dead bodies in the cart. She would see much worse at the camp.
‘The grave is finished but the mayor has to take his men down to supervise the evacuation – he has received orders from the Party authorities. He said he can leave two here.’
‘Very good. The prisoners can fill it in. Are you and Fräulein Werth packed? Obersturmführer Schlosser will be here soon.’
‘Yes. We’re ready.’
‘The files?’
‘Everything is outside, waiting to be burned. Only the papers in your office still need attending to.’
It was time to cleanse the building of its past.
He met Brandt at the entrance, a bandage wrapped round his head. One of the prisoners must have washed his tunic, or done their best to, but it was still stained pink down one side.
‘Should you be up?’
Brandt looked down at his tunic, as if checking the damage.
‘I’m alive. My uncle was the Volkssturm man in the forest.’
Neumann remembered the older, portly fellow with the Volkssturm armband. He remembered the partisans had cut his throat so deeply his head was barely still attached to his body.
‘I remember now.’
‘My aunt will want to see to his burial. Mayor Weber has given his permission.’
‘Of course,’ Neumann agreed, nodding. ‘If you’re able to. Do you need help?’
‘I fetched a horse and cart from our farm.’
Neumann looked around and saw a cart stopped inside the front gate.
‘I’ll report back here when we’ve buried him, Herr Obersturmführer.’
Neumann examined him, wondering if he could possibly be sincere.
‘We can make do without you, Brandt. Most of your comrades have already left, why don’t you join them?’
‘I’ll stay till the end,’ Brandt said, his voice low. Neumann wondered why. God knew, Brandt had already given all that could be expected in the defence of the Fatherland.
‘That won’t be long as far as the hut is concerned – the auxiliaries will be gone before lunch. The Ukrainians leave with the prisoners tomorrow and I won’t be long behind them. If you think Weber will stay much longer, I suspect you’re wrong. He’s mayor of no one now – most of the village are already walking to the west.’
Brandt shrugged, as if other people’s actions were of no concern to him. Neumann watched him closely and wasn’t entirely convinced.
‘What time are the guards leaving tomorrow?’ Brandt asked. ‘I’ll make sure they have rations for the journey. And for you, of course. For your journey.’
Neumann smiled, bemused but prepared to go along with whatever Brandt was up to. For the moment, at least. What difference did it make, after all?
‘As you wish, then. They’ll leave at five in the evening.’
‘I will be as quick as I can, Herr Obersturmführer.’
‘Thank you, Brandt.’
Neumann watched him walk across to where two of the prisoners were lifting the body of his uncle into the cart. Grey smoke billowed from the brazier on which the hut’s papers were now burning, and for a moment it obscured Brandt. When it cleared, Neumann saw that he was in conversation with the Austrian prisoner who had tended to him the night before – thanking her, no doubt. As Brandt pushed up the buckboard to obscure the corpse from Neumann’s view, he saw that there was an old army rucksack sitting beside the body. Neumann wondered what the rucksack contained. Perhaps that was what he was up to – taking what he could from the hut’s stores.
He didn’t care – Brandt could have whatever the hut had and be welcome to it. Rather Brandt than the Russians.