Off the coast of Indonesia
December 1949
The infirmary was on the lowest deck of the ship, easily identified by the large red cross on the door. It was a narrow, windowless room, stark and cheerless, with a metal examination table next to the dispensary and five low cots along the far wall, each partitioned off by a curtain which could be pulled across for privacy. Karl stepped inside cautiously and eased the door closed behind him. A pervasive smell of antiseptic made his throat close over, the air thick and stale, the heat oppressive. There was no sign of the doctor.
Hans lay in one of the beds at the far end of the room. His face was deathly pale, eyes closed, his body still, hands folded across his belly. A white bandage encircled his torso, pricks of bright red blood seeping through the gauze. For a moment Karl thought he was too late, that Hans was already dead, laid out for mourning. Then Hans’s face contorted in a grimace and he opened his eyes.
‘After all this time, you still haven’t learned to walk quietly,’ he said, his voice little more than a whisper. ‘I wonder that the Russian snipers never got you.’
Karl smiled, although the sight of his friend, so weak and fragile, sent a shiver of dread into his innards. ‘Always the joker,’ he said, easing himself onto the wooden chair beside the bed. ‘How are you feeling?’
Hans coughed, then closed his eyes and drew a shuddering breath. ‘You come to see a dying man and ask him how he’s feeling?’
‘You’re not dying,’ said Karl.
Hans’s eyes opened and his gaze bore into Karl’s, sober, implacable. ‘I’ve been on death’s door once before, remember? When you stand on the threshold of hell, staring into the fires, it’s not an easy feeling to forget.’
Karl placed his hand on Hans’s arm. ‘Don’t talk nonsense. We’re going to start a new life in Australia together, you and me.’
Hans gave an imperceptible shake of his head. ‘Mein Freund, you cannot save me this time. I’ve had a second chance at life, and this is what it’s come to. An ignominious death in the bowels of a ship and none to mourn me.’ He fell into a fit of coughing and Karl gripped his arm tightly until it had passed.
‘I would mourn you,’ said Karl.
Another shake of the head. ‘You shouldn’t, for I haven’t led an honourable life.’
‘What are you talking about?’ said Karl. ‘You worked hard, you honoured your parents and you had a beautiful family whom you loved. I know this. You talked to me of them many times. And you fought bravely for your country. You have the scars to prove that.’
A pause. ‘This is true,’ said Hans. ‘And if I thought I would join my wonderful Annaliese on the other side, I would be a happy man. To see her and little Jürgen again . . . It would be heaven indeed.’ He smiled, a flicker of true pleasure crossing his face and disappearing as quickly as it had come. ‘But I fear that will never happen.’
He shifted uncomfortably, grimacing in pain. Karl moved to adjust the pillow but he waved him away.
‘I’ve done something terrible, Karl. An atrocious sin, and if I don’t make amends, I fear it will push me over the threshold into the fires of hell.’
Karl’s gut clenched as he remembered the photos the Americans had shown them in the POW camp; skeletal prisoners abandoned in concentration camps at the end of the war, stacks of corpses piled next to crematoriums, or lying in mass open graves, the chamber of death that could only have been designed for mass murder. It had been difficult to believe that any of it was real, that his own countrymen had perpetrated such atrocities on others. The images had haunted Karl, followed him all across Europe. And here, on the Fairsea, he’d seen the living proof. He’d heard the stories of the survivors and been woken by their nightmares. He’d seen Aron Borkowski’s scars. Could Hans have been a part of that? Had Ernst been right? Was he not only a Nazi but a war criminal as well?
‘We all did terrible things,’ he said hesitantly. ‘It was war. You will be forgiven.’
Hans shook his head. ‘I’m not talking about the war.’
Confused, Karl waited for him to elaborate.
Hans lifted his head and glanced towards the end of the row of beds where one of the curtains was closed tight, then let his head fall back to the pillow. He lowered his voice, so that Karl was forced to lean closer to hear him.
‘I told you I worked as an administrative aide in Berlin. It was in the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, the official art procurement organisation for the Reich. I worked in Major Walter Kubel’s office, although I was only a lowly clerk.’ He smiled, seeming to gain strength in his memories. ‘Let me tell you about Major Kubel. He was a great man, Karl. A man worthy of admiration. Loyal, committed, passionate. A wonderful man to work for. His dedication to the party was unsurpassed, and I’m sure that was the reason for his rapid rise within the ERR. That and his extensive knowledge of art. He was close to Herr Hitler, did you know?’
Karl shook his head, no.
‘The Führer had great respect for his expertise, and sought his opinion at every opportunity. He even showed him the Amber Room in Königsberg.’
‘He must truly have been in Hitler’s favour then,’ Karl said, with a modicum of disquiet.
Hans nodded, caught his breath. ‘Yes, he was a great man. Worthy of my respect. Worthy of my loyalty.’ He paused. ‘It is to my shame that I betrayed him.’
Karl was silent, but nodded for Hans to go on.
‘Let me tell you how it was,’ said Hans. ‘When Berlin was taken, the city became a madhouse. As the Russians closed in there was panic, everyone was trying to get out, and in the ERR we sought, of course, to save our collections. To leave them in the hands of the Russians and the Americans would have been criminal. Major Kubel had been working on it for weeks, dictating memo after memo, ordering everything to be crated and shipped to safe locations. Even as we heard the gunfire approaching, he stopped only long enough to order us to evacuate.’ His voice broke, and he paused to clear his throat, swallowed noisily before continuing. ‘It was every man for himself and I ran, as did everyone. Except the major. The last I saw of him, he was sitting at his desk, still writing orders for shipment, documenting transfers.’
‘That is no betrayal,’ said Karl. ‘He told you to go. Everyone was fleeing Berlin. You did the only thing you could.’
‘No, you’re right. Leaving was not a betrayal,’ said Hans with a smile. ‘I did as I was ordered and thought I would never see him again. I wished him well, hoped, as we all hoped, that we would somehow get through it alive.’
Karl nodded. The words brought back memories of his own hasty retreat from the Russians, hoping only to make it into American-occupied territory before being taken prisoner, for the Russians had a reputation for particularly harsh and brutal treatment of their POWs. He and his comrades had lived in fear of falling into their hands when surrender became inevitable.
‘When Germany surrendered, I was taken prisoner by the British and I didn’t think of Major Kubel again until many months later,’ Hans continued. ‘I encountered him near a DP camp outside Munich. It was January 1947. You remember that winter? How cold it was?’
Karl nodded. It was the winter he, himself, had resorted to theft, stealing not only bits of food and firewood, but also the coat that now lay on his bunk in the men’s dormitory.
‘I almost didn’t recognise him,’ said Hans. ‘He was dressed in a sergeant’s uniform, huddled around a fire, fraternising with a group of men, all speaking Polish. Did you know, he was fluent in five languages?’
Of course, Karl did not. He hadn’t known the man at all.
‘Neither did I, until that moment. He tried to ignore me when I called out, but I was sure it was him and started to approach. I was so happy to see him. It had been a hard couple of years. I’d lost friends, and my family was . . . Well, after being discharged from the POW camp, there was no one waiting for me to return. I had nowhere to go and he’d been kind to me once . . .’ Hans’s mouth twisted bitterly. ‘I don’t know a lot of Polish, but I know when I’m being called an idiot.’ He grunted. ‘A half-wit I think was the exact translation.
‘He pulled me aside and dragged me away from the DP camp into an abandoned building. I had visions of him shooting me on the spot. Me, the errant private, found at large without my marching orders. You know the penalty, we all did.’ Hans took another laboured breath. ‘Instead he told me he was wanted for war crimes, and I’d almost blown his cover. He was posing as a Latvian refugee and was on his way to Bremerhaven to board a ship for America.’ He shook his head. ‘He didn’t even remember my name.’
‘What did you do?’ asked Karl.
Hans started to shrug and then stopped, wincing in pain. ‘I was desperate. I hadn’t eaten more than a chunk of stale cornbread in days and was half frozen to death. I blackmailed him.’
He glanced at Karl, unremorseful.
‘I said if he didn’t take me with him, I would expose him as the fraud he was, tell his Polish friends, the authorities, anyone who would listen, and he would be arrested and made to stand trial for whatever crimes they thought he’d committed. It was impossible, of course. He couldn’t take me with him. What would a Latvian ex-sergeant be doing travelling with a German companion? But he looked well. He wasn’t starving like the rest of us. His coat, while torn and dirty, was thick and warm. I knew he could do something for me.’
Karl nodded. They were hard times. He, himself, had done things he wasn’t particularly proud of, in the name of survival.
‘Most of all, though,’ said Hans grimly, ‘I wanted him to pay.’
‘You think he really was guilty of these crimes?’
Hans shook his head. ‘I don’t even know what crimes he was accused of. I saw nothing untoward in his behaviour. No, it’s his betrayal of the Führer I am talking about, his betrayal of Germany. To see him sitting there, laughing and joking with the enemy. In their own language, pretending to be one of them . . . I never would have expected that from him. It was . . . disappointing, shall we say.’
‘But they weren’t the enemy,’ said Karl. ‘Not then, almost two years after Germany’s surrender. They were homeless, refugees, like so many in Europe, victims of the war.’ Victims of Hitler’s war, he could have said, but didn’t want to provoke Hans when he was so weak.
‘I see that now. It’s taken this journey, with you, Karl, to show me that sometimes it’s better to keep the peace and let bygones be bygones. Still, I have few regrets in the blackmail. I would not have survived without his help.’
‘Then what?’ said Karl.
Hans turned his head away, pressed his lips together before continuing. ‘He couldn’t take me with him. As I said, that was impossible. What he did do was entrust me with a mission. A personal matter, he said, that he was unable to complete himself, as his contacts had arranged for passage to America instead of Australia as he’d initially intended.’ Hans lifted his gaze to Karl’s. ‘I agreed. I took his money. And then I betrayed him.’
Karl waited as Hans fought to control his emotions.
‘I left Major Kubel and walked for hours. I was angry. All I could see was the uniform. The disguise. The renouncement of his German heritage.’ He shook his head. ‘When the sun rose, I went to the authorities. I turned him in.’
He closed his eyes for a moment, and Karl anxiously watched his chest rise and fall in ragged breaths. He shouldn’t be talking with Hans like this. He was draining what strength he had.
‘I told them who he was, Karl, and where to find him.’
‘He was a wanted man,’ said Karl. ‘You only did what anyone would have done.’
Hans didn’t react and the silence stretched so long Karl thought he had fallen into a doze. Until his eyes opened once more and his gaze met Karl’s.
‘Aron Borkowski—’
‘He’s been taken into custody,’ said Karl.
Hans shook his head. ‘No, they mustn’t charge him. He’s an angry, bitter man, as I am. He’s not responsible. I did wrong by him.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Leave him be,’ said Hans. ‘This isn’t his doing. I will not have his life on my conscience as I have Major Kubel’s.’
Karl hesitated, and then nodded. ‘I’ll see to it.’
Hans relaxed. ‘There’s something I must ask of you, Karl.’
‘Anything,’ said Karl, leaning forward again to catch his words.
‘It’s in regards to Major Kubel. His request.’
‘What is it?’
‘Open my satchel.’
Karl reached beneath the bed and pulled out the battered brown leather satchel Hans had worn slung over his shoulder since the day they’d encountered one another in the train station in Stuttgart. Inside was a thick manila envelope. He started to withdraw it from the bag when Hans stopped him.
‘No. It is not for our eyes. Major Kubel entrusted it to me, and now I entrust it to you. It must be delivered safely when the ship docks in Sydney. The address is there, in the satchel.’ He fumbled around until he grasped Karl’s hand. ‘Karl, you must do this for me. I misjudged Major Kubel badly. I see now that he was only trying to survive, and I betrayed him. It’s the only way I can make amends.’
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know exactly. The envelope is sealed, and after betraying him once, I would not do so again by opening it.’
‘But if Major Kubel was wanted for war crimes—’
‘He was an art curator. A scholar and an administrator. He had no blood on his hands.’ Hans’s soft voice was strident with passion. ‘You must trust me in this. Have I ever steered you wrong?’
‘No, of course not,’ said Karl.
‘You’ll be paid. Handsomely.’
‘I don’t want any money.’
‘Nevertheless, it’ll be given to you on delivery of the package. And whatever I have now, of course, is yours. Promise me, Karl.’
When Karl hesitated, Hans squeezed his hand, a pitifully weak gesture. ‘Please. You must do this for me, or I won’t rest.’
‘All right. I’ll do it,’ said Karl.
Hans let his hand drop. ‘Then I am content.’ Slipping the signet ring from the fourth finger of his right hand, he pressed it into Karl’s palm. ‘Wear this, mein Freund, and remember me.’ He closed his eyes and appeared to sleep almost instantly.
Karl closed his fist around the ring and watched him sleep, listening to his shallow, laboured breathing, watching the gaunt chest rise and fall, hesitate, and then rise again. He feared it wouldn’t be long before the war claimed yet one more victim. For Hans was right about one thing. Aron Borkowski wasn’t responsible. The war had turned each man against the other, and that wasn’t easily forgotten or forgiven. After a short while he gathered up the satchel, rose and crept out of the room, so quietly no snipers would ever have heard him.