Lying on his flea-infested pallet in a cell where the only amenity was a stinking bucket, Adam stared at the dried blood on the walls and alternated between self-recrimination over what had happened, and apprehension of what was to come.
Apart from the screams that shattered the night and made the hairs stand up on his arms, the only sound was the regular click of the judas window through which unseen eyes peered at him. Every morning, the turnkey came in, a dour, shifty fellow who never looked him in the eye or answered his questions as he emptied the bucket and banged down a dinted metal dish with a slice of dry bread. In the evenings he would return with a bowl of greasy liquid that turned Adam’s stomach.
The previous occupants had scribbled messages on the walls, which oozed black mould. Someone had scratched one wobbly line for each day of his incarceration and Adam wondered what had happened to him after day seventeen. Had he been released, transferred, or bashed to death? His eyes kept returning to the blood stains. Did they belong to the person who had recorded the passing time or to the prisoner who had scrawled a phrase in Czech into the black sludge?
The only word he could make out was honour, and each time he read it he recoiled as though it had lunged out of the wall and punched him. Honour was a sore point right now. So was his bad judgment.
If only he had listened to the guide’s advice, he wouldn’t be in this mess, and Jacek and the innkeeper would still be alive. Shame shot through his body. They had been right all along. The other guide must have been caught and had betrayed the route. Adam felt contempt for him, but most of all he felt disgust with himself. His hubris had caused the death of two men and wrecked the mission.
Time stretched ahead of him, and with every passing minute he felt more apprehensive as grim thoughts and frightening questions churned around his mind. How long would they keep him here? How much did they know? What would they do to him? Although he tried not to think about it, images of hideous torture through the ages flashed through his mind, making it impossible to sit still. He paced around the perimeter of the tiny cell until he was too dizzy to stand up, one thought drumming in his head. No matter what they did, they wouldn’t break him.
The hours dragged on until he heard the door of his cell clang open and two guards burst in. One grabbed his arms and hauled him to his feet, then the other gave him a kick that sent him sprawling. They picked him up by his collar and dragged him along an endless corridor where the occasional light bulb cast a dull greenish light.
At the top of a steep flight of stairs, they knocked on a door marked Lieutenant Otto Hausner, and pushed him inside.
From the light brown hair combed flat across his forehead like the Führer, whose photograph hung on the wall above his desk, to the grey-green uniform that seemed moulded to his body, and the buffed nails at the end of his soft white hands, the SS officer was such a model of polished cleanliness that Adam had to stifle an impulse to apologise for his unshaven face, unwashed body and crumpled clothes.
‘Sit down, sit down,’ said Lieutenant Hausner in the jovial tone of someone welcoming a friend. ‘I hope you’ve been treated well. I know our accommodation leaves a lot to be desired and the menu is rather limited, but I’m sure you won’t have to suffer this inconvenience much longer.’
Intrigued by this unexpected geniality, Adam waited.
The officer picked up a silver cigarette box and held it out to him. When Adam shook his head, Lieutenant Hausner lit a cigarette and, tilting his head back, exhaled a long column of smoke towards the ceiling. Opening the small cupboard beneath Hitler’s portrait, he pulled out a bottle and poured two generous glasses. ‘Schnapps?’ he asked.
‘I demand to know why you’ve detained me,’ Adam said.
The lieutenant drained his glass and uttered a contented grunt. ‘We know who you are and why you are in Slovakia.’ His smile reminded Adam of an alligator about to snap his jaws around an unsuspecting victim.
‘I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake,’ Adam said calmly. ‘I’m a school teacher hiking around the mountains on my holiday.’
The SS officer sat forward, his reptilian gaze on Adam’s face. ‘In that case, we need a little help from you, Herr Professor, and then you can go and hike to your heart’s content, ja? Although I wonder why a teacher would conceal microfilm in the lining of his jacket.’
Adam started to protest and the smile disappeared from Lieutenant Hausner’s face. ‘Don’t insult my intelligence by denying it. Your microfilm is in code and we don’t have the time or the facilities to decipher it. Therefore we require your assistance.’
Adam shook his head. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
The lieutenant sighed. ‘You are very tiresome,’ he said in the disappointed tone one might use on a wayward child. ‘We could have settled this like civilised men instead of which, I regret to say, things will become rather unpleasant. And in the end you will tell us what we want to know. So, for the last time, what’s on the microfilm?’
‘I’ve already told you,’ Adam said through clenched teeth. ‘I don’t know anything about it.’
Lieutenant Hausner picked up his black telephone and a moment later two men entered the room. In the past, Adam had sometimes wondered how he would react under torture, but speculation had failed to prepare him for the reality of seeing two grim-faced Gestapo agents opening a metal box and deliberating which of its instruments would inflict enough pain to make him talk. His imagination had failed to conjure up the terror he now felt as they tied him to a chair and selected their weapon. His heart thumped and he tried to comfort himself with the thought that the anticipation of pain was probably far worse than the reality. He soon discovered his mistake.
The interrogator picked up a rubber truncheon and asked him once more to tell them what was on the microfilm. Adam gritted his teeth. At least it wasn’t the rack or the bastinado.
As the truncheon struck him behind his left ear, he leapt up in his chair and heard an inhuman howl rip from his own throat. The world flashed with white light and every part of his body, from his toes to his skull, had become like one enormous tooth whose nerve had been pierced with a drill. The pain tore through him like lightning electrifying every tendon, joint and muscle. The scream was still reverberating through his head when the lieutenant asked him if he was ready to help them. Again he shook his head.
He lost count how many times the interrogator struck him before he fainted. When he woke in his cell, his entire body throbbed and he couldn’t hear through his left ear. As he lay doubled up on the pallet, one thought drummed through his head: how long could he hold out? And if he couldn’t, he thought grimly, there was always the cyanide capsule.
The following morning, they dragged him out again. He tried not to look at the hooks they fastened to the wall, tried not to envisage what would happen when they suspended him from them. Whenever he lost consciousness, they flung buckets of icy water over him so they could continue.
Anything to stop this. Anything. He had become a wild animal caught in a trap, maddened by pain, an animal ready to gnaw through its own leg to save itself from certain death. As he drifted in and out of consciousness, he could foresee how this ordeal would end. One more session and everything would tumble from his mouth like apples from a barrel. Like snippets of a disjointed movie fragmented by a faulty projector, images of his life flashed before his eyes. His dreams of being a pilot, of defending his country, of making his father proud. All shattered. He saw his life as a chain of bright hopes torn apart by his own defects. And it would end ignominiously, with him betraying everything he believed in and everyone he admired.
If only he could die before he disgraced himself.
Back in his cell, he knew he had to act fast, before they came back for him. Thank God for the cyanide capsule.
Despite the searing pain, he gritted his teeth and groped around for the piece of tape with which he’d fastened the capsule to his perineum. It wasn’t there. Covered in sweat, he strained every tendon to bursting point as he tried to locate it. Had the capsule swirled away in the current while he’d waded through the river, or had they removed it while he was unconscious? He cast his eyes around the cell in search of a shard of glass or fragment of razor blade with which he might cut his veins but there was nothing. He fell back onto his pallet in despair. Any minute now they would come for him, and it would start all over again.
The judas window slid back and he started. He’d lost consciousness again. A moment later the cell door opened and his heart lurched. This was it; they’d come for him. But the voice in his ear was whispering.
‘Can you stand up?’
He opened his swollen eyes. The shape standing beside his pallet wasn’t wearing a guard’s uniform. It was the turnkey, and he was speaking Polish.
‘Can you stand up and walk if I help you? If you can, I’ll get you out of here.’
Adam stared at him. Was this a trap? Who was this man? His head had turned to jelly and the slightest movement shot flashes of pain through his body.
‘How long have I been in here?’ he gasped.
‘Four days. But they’re going to start on you again tomorrow morning,’ the turnkey whispered. ‘Our people are waiting for you outside the gate but you’ll have to walk down the corridor, up one flight of stairs and then jump out of a window. Someone will be down there ready to catch you,’ he added quickly in response to Adam’s horrified expression.
It was too much to take in and Adam sank back on the pallet. Perhaps he was dreaming. But the man’s face was close to his and his voice was low and urgent.
‘We don’t have much time.’ He pulled out a grubby cloth from his pocket. ‘Bite on this if you have to but, for God’s sake, don’t make a sound.’
With each agonising step, Adam felt his bones grinding in their sockets. This must be how Christ had felt on the cross, he thought as he bit his swollen lips and groaned while he hobbled along, leaning against the turnkey’s shoulder. It seemed to take hours and they hadn’t even reached the stairs.
‘We have to hurry,’ the man urged. ‘The morning shift comes on in half an hour.’
Adam leaned against the wall, beads of sweat pouring down his face. ‘It’s no good, I can’t make it.’
The turnkey gave him a stern look. ‘Would you rather face another interrogation three hours from now?’
With a groan, Adam shuffled forward.
Soon he stood trembling on the window sill. In the faint pre-dawn light, he saw that two figures had crept out of the shadows and were holding out a blanket like firemen. It was a long way down. ‘Quick, jump!’ the turnkey hissed.
Adam closed his eyes and forced himself to fall. A moment later his stomach slammed against his spine and he felt the blanket stretch taut under him. Someone hauled him over their shoulders like a sack of potatoes and staggered to a truck outside the prison gate.
As the truck revved up and sped away, the man who had carried him gave a short laugh. ‘They’ve certainly rearranged your face, Eagle. Even your mother wouldn’t recognise you. Come to think of it, that’s not such a bad thing in our line of work!’
Adam opened his mouth to ask how they had known where he was, and how they’d managed to get him out, but his head lolled towards his chest and he fainted.