Fabian smiled and nodded to them as they arrived. Bill handed him a few marks and continued downstairs.
“I’ll catch you up,” said Jack, as he stopped to chat to Fabian in Polish.
“Look what the cat dragged in!” said Anna, uncharacteristically unsteady on her feet. “Get this handsome boy whatever he wants on the house!”
The barmaid smiled at Bill with her eyes and reached for the vodka bottle.
“I need to see Katya. Is she in?” Bill asked.
“You break my heart, Bill. So, you don’t want to spend some time with me first?”
“It’s all business, Anna. We’ll talk when I’m done. Look, I don’t want to frighten her. Do you mind if I stay here tonight? Do you have a spare room?”
“This is a business, Bill. I don’t have the money to keep rooms empty. You could pay for Katya for the night if she’ll have you, or one of the other girls if you’d prefer,” she said with a wink.
“Just put me down for an hour with Katya for now, thanks.”
“I’d like to head up and see Apolonia,” Jack added as he wandered in. “Could you send up a bottle of vodka and two glasses, too, please?”
Anna chuckled to herself as she scribbled something in the giant diary. The barmaid placed two glasses of vodka down on the bar and a cigar, with matches, for Bill. Bill sank the vodka like it was water. The sweetest, coolest water he’d tasted in weeks. He nodded for another, cut his cigar, and then put it in his inside pocket. The barmaid just looked quizzically at him.
“For later. I think I might need it.”
“You’re back so soon? I thought you’d been arrested, for sure.”
“It will take more than the Russian army and the Berlin Police to take me down,” Bill joked.
“You still owe me for last time. I paid it out of my own money. Otherwise, Anna would have had your balls.”
“I intend to settle up tonight with you. But, first, I need some answers.”
Bill pulled out the photograph they had found at the church and gently placed it on the bed. Katya turned to look at it and tilted her head.
“Where …” She picked up the photograph and stared at it. Tears started rolling down her cheek. She did not sob, just sat simply staring at the image.
“I found it in the possession of a fat Nazi masquerading as a priest. You’ll probably be pleased to know he is also dead.”
“Who was he?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“I have no idea. The tall, thin photographer will know. He …” She stopped to compose herself and swallowed, then stood and moved around the bed to get herself a tissue from the box on the little bedside table. She did nothing to hide her modesty, with her thin sheer robe half-open to the waist. “I tried to tell you when you were here last, before the murder outside. The tall man. I knew him from before.”
“Before he visited you here and took the photos of you?”
“Yes. And, before that, before all of this. Do you remember you asked me why business is down? Well, after the tall man visited, it kind of broke me. I can’t face this life anymore. Seeing him again, remembering the … I just don’t bother hiding it any longer.”
“Hide what?” Bill asked as tenderly as he could manage.
“Hide this,” Katya replied, pulling her sleeve up to reveal a tattooed number on her forearm. “This photo is from my time there.” She looked again at the photograph of the young girl with a shaved head on her back on top of a dirty mattress, her breasts on display, with her camp-issued, blue-and-white striped shirt held wide open. Her neck looked black from bruising, and her body was covered in scratches. “They weren’t always gentle with me.”
“Jesus. How did you end up there?”
“I was arrested outside my school by the Gestapo. We used to live in Alsace until the Nazis showed up. You see, my father was a well-known German communist, so we were living in the open under false papers. We ended up at the Dachau prison camp. After a few months of learning to survive, I was moved, without warning, along with some others a long train journey away. I never saw my parents again. It was Auschwitz. On arrival, the tall man picked me out. He was in an SS uniform and carrying a camera. He put me to work in the brothel. They would give prisoners from the men’s camp special passes to visit us as a reward. You could say I was born for this line of work.”
“Don’t even think like that, Katya. Those men were evil. You did not deserve any of it.”
“I don’t know how long I was there, as it seemed futile to bother to count the weeks, but when they heard the Russians were coming, the SS got us out and marched us back towards Germany. We had it easy compared to those poor Jews. At least we had shoes. I had been a political prisoner, so the red triangle on our shirts seemed to save us from the worst treatment, and we were reasonably well fed. Those with the yellow stars had clogs or no shoes at all, and they were all painfully thin like walking skeletons. The guards shot so many who could not continue and left them on the side of the road. Eventually, they put us on a train in open cars, like the kind they use to move coal. We wound up at Ravensbrück camp, just north of here.”
“What a terrible experience. I can’t imagine how you survived anything like that.”
“You have no choice,” she said as she finally let her emotions take over.
Bill sat down beside her and put his arm around her. She laid her head on his shoulder and sobbed. Then, after several minutes, she started to compose herself.
“You know, you are the second person to ask me about this recently. First, the tall man shows up. Then a French girl came in asking about him a few days later. She spoke no German, so we conversed in French.”
“French girl?”
“I speak French too. I don’t know how she knew that, but she asked many questions. I can’t recall it all, but the tall man, Ravensbrück, and some girl came up. She was kind, like you. Beautiful too, like a movie star. She said her name was …”
“Irene,” Bill interrupted.
“That’s right. Do you know her?”
“I did. She was murdered.”
“My God. Sometimes it feels like the war is not over, doesn’t it?”
“I’m not sure it will ever be over.” Bill stared out of the window, which was still open, Katya having never replaced the blackout panel that Bill had torn off. “I have a favour to ask you, Katya. Would I be able to sleep here tonight?”
“Erm … I don’t …”
“Alone, of course. I have nowhere else to go. You have your own bed in your apartment, don’t you?”
“Well, yes. I understand. That will be fine. But, Anna …”
“I will pay, don’t worry.” Bill reached into his jacket and pulled out a large stack of bills in various currencies. He carefully separated the stack into two and put half back in his pocket. “There is a lot of money here, Katya. Enough to get you out of Germany and start a new life somewhere. Anna is talking about letting you go. You need to take this and leave for the American sector in the morning. Don’t stop off anywhere. Get the first train out of Wannsee station and get yourself to France or somewhere. Don’t tell anyone you have this money.”
“Bill, you can’t be serious. Are you sure?”
“I have never been more sure of anything in my life. This money got my friend killed. I want to use it to do something good. It’s yours.”
She started to cry again, grabbing Bill in a tight embrace and kissing him.
“You are my hero, Bill. Sent by angels.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“Are you hungry? I can heat up some soup, and I have fresh bread.”
“That sounds great. I’ll pop down and get us some wine.”
“Sounds lovely. This week isn’t turning out so bad after all,” she said through a smile.
“I wish I could say the same,” he replied as he lit his cigar.