Schreiber's Secret (29 page)

dropped
down to the stony path.

It is paved with the horrors and misery

where rivers of tears have shed

by
children crying and women weeping

in
utter helplessness and dread.

Here old men stumbled with empty looks

and followed meekly the flock.

So many of them will never go back

in the hope of a merciful grave.

This, too, is the road on which hurriedly rolled

the unceasing trucks that carried away

the
aching loads of those destined to die.

This is the road to Theresienstadt,

plastered with suffering and pain.

And he who has seen it once in his life

will never forget it again.

Danielle read and
re-read the haunting lines of Ilse Weber’s poem. They may have lost something in translation, but the words were still strong enough to convey the utter hopelessness of those who had travelled the road to Theresienstadt.

She closed the guidebook and gripped Mark’s arm tightly as they continued their tour of the main fortress. It was all so different from the capital city in which they had spent an idyllic weekend. Herschel Soferman had been right. Prague was indeed a magic city, a jewel in the crown of Europe. The Jewish Quarter, especially, had been fascinating, with its synagogues and the overcrowded cemetery where the gravestones leaned higgledy-piggledy in all directions. Hitler had spared the Quarter in order that it could serve as a memorial to the extinction of the Jews. Well, she thought, here was one Jew who was alive to testify to his failure. She and Edwards had alighted from their bus from Prague at the Florenc terminal
, which was directly outside the Small Fortress, the primary purpose of their visit. But she had insisted they save the venue of Hans Schreiber’s nefarious deeds until last.

They listened intently to an English-speaking guide as he described the history of Terezin and how, shortly after Heydrich came to power in Prague in September 1941, the old fortified town had been turned into a transit ghetto, primarily for Jews from Bohemia and Moravia.

“About seventy-six thousand Czech Jews were penned together in accommodation fit only for seven thousand,” the guide continued. “In the course of time, forty-two thousand prisoners from Germany, more than fifteen thousand from Austria, a thousand from Hungary, nearly five thousand from Holland and five hundred from Denmark were added. Even though Terezin was only a transit station on the way to the terrible extermination camps of the East, more than thirty-three thousand prisoners died here from maltreatment and disease, nearly a quarter of all people sent here. Out of that number, more than fifteen thousand died from exhaustion and starvation.”

“Come on, Mark, I’ve had enough.” The sheer numbers were depressing. She led him out of the Ghetto Museum and back across the river Ohre. Fortunately, it had turned into a fine spring day. It had been raining when they had left Prague two hours earlier. The sixty-kilometre journey north had taken an hour, and during that time the heavy clouds had begun to disperse.  They approached the ochre walls of the Small Fortress. With each step Danielle felt she was retracing the path of Herschel Soferman. She could not handle the guide’s statistics of Jews dying in
their thousands. It was much easier to comprehend the agony of one man. The agony of a man she had met. The agony that that man would shortly relive in an English court of law.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Edwards asked.

“Probably,” she sighed. “It’s hard not to think of Herschel Soferman in this place.”

“Look!” he exclaimed, pointing to the words daubed across the entrance to their left.
“
Arbeit Macht Fre
i
.”

“The great calumny,” she said. “There aren’t many Jews who don’t shudder at those words. It’s on all the gates to the death camps. ‘Work Makes You Free.’”

“People believed it when they went in.”

“Yes,” she sighed. “The Germans were such masters of deception, although I suppose there was an element of self-deception on the part of my people. I mean, who would believe that human beings could be capable of such atrocities?”

They walked through the main arch and turned into a building that housed the washrooms. They were in exemplary condition, just as they were when they were built for the Red Cross inspectors invited to witness the model village the Nazis had constructed for the Jews.

They also visited the main exhibition
, which was housed in the smart eighteenth-century mansion set in the prison gardens. The building was used to house the camp kommandant, his family and fellow SS officers. One of them would have been Hans Schreiber.

“I want to be outside, Mark,” she pleaded. “I want to breathe fresh air.” Edwards led her back into the main courtyard, and it was there that she noticed the far wall of the compound.

“Look,” she said. “That wall looks a bit odd.”

As they neared it, the couple could see that the wall was full of holes of varying sizes. It was clear that this was where men had been lined up and shot. She moved her fingers in and around the crevices. How different this wall was to the one they would soon be visiting. One was a monument to man’s perfidy and the other to his piety. Danielle shivered as she removed her fingers from the bullet holes.

“Hug me, Mark,” she gasped. “Hug me.”

Four hundred miles due northwest from Prague, as the crow flies, Bill Brown was gunning his hired red Porsche 911 towards the sleepy North Rhine town of Straelen. He counselled himself that his benefactor had urged repeatedly that money was no obstacle, and there were few cars more expensive to hire than this German mean machine. He had hired it for a month, but was now thinking, with some regret, that he might not need to see out the full term.

He had always wanted to thrash a Porsche along the best motorways in the world with their unrestricted speed limits. That was the reason why he had forgone plane or train and settled for the hundreds of miles o
f
Autobahne
n
from Berlin. He had decided to travel at night to take advantage of the light traffic, stopping a few times to take well-earned refreshment. Driving at a steady one hundred and fifty miles an hour for long stretches was more exhausting than he would have believed. He thought he knew now what the drivers at Le Mans went through. God, but it was so exhilarating.

The private investigator also had the feeling that he was on to something after two weeks of concerted effort. The Berlin Centre, run by the United States government, had provided some useful information. According to its director, others had also been showing great interest in the SS man. The director had not elaborated, but Brown guessed it must have been Scotland Yard’s War Crimes Unit. Nevertheless, the private eye had good reason to believe that they had simply requested files on all the Hans Schreibers in the SS. There were only three officers listed and only one had tallied with what he knew about the case. He was sure, however, that the police had certainly not trodden the same path as himself. No one had done that. He had a gut feeling that he was on the verge of a breakthrough.

The only minus so far had been an abortive interview with a man purporting to have been a member of Odessa. Refusing to part with any money, Brown had been warned by the man that he was playing with fire. Before walking out in a huff, the man had intimated that something “serious” might happen should the investigator take matters further. Brown had originally dismissed the man as a crank. Now he was not so sure.

The cold light of dawn was just beginning to dispel the darkness as Brown neared the outskirts of his destination. A light drizzle had begun to fall. He opened his window a little to let in the fresh country air. It reeked o
f
Heima
t
. How he wished his father could have savoured this moment. The private detective dropped a gear as he neared a crossroads. His attention was caught suddenly by a flash of yellow by the roadside. He looked behind him. It was just what he needed. He drew to a halt. He should have posted the stuff in Berlin but had never got round to it. He looked down at the white sized envelope on the passenger seat. Lying on top of it was his favourite bowtie, the crimson one with white spots. He might as well make himself look respectable even this early in the morning. He got out of the Porsche and walked back along the road, inhaling deeply the sweet nectar of the dawn. He crossed the road and shoved the envelope into the postbox. By tomorrow he hoped to have more to satisfy those who wished to know more about Obersturmführer Hans Schreiber.

In the distance another car was travelling at high speed. If the vehicle had been using headlights, then Bill Brown might have spotted it while checking in his internal mirror that his bowtie was in place. However, he was not to know that the car had been stolen, that its lights had been extinguished deliberately, or that its gathering momentum was primed to ensure his demise.

As Bill Brown crossed the road to return to his vehicle, the only thing not broken by the force of the impact was the Velcro strap securing his favourite bowtie. The detective was also spared the indignity of knowing that his killer had then removed all means of identification from his broken and bloody person and had even had the audacity to drive away from the scene in the hired red Porsche.

In another land, a people whose very nationhood had been gained as a direct result of the shame of Germany went about their business unaware of the hit-and-run death there of one William Franz Brown.

Should the German police have had the slightest inkling that the victim was a British private detective involved in the Sonntag case, the news would have naturally made headlines in Israel, headlines that might have alerted two of the many tourists enjoying its indisputable attractions.

But for Mark Edwards and Danielle Green, the tribulations of the case had become but a distant memory as they frolicked in the waters of the Mediterranean, relaxed in the spas of ancient Tiberias, and enjoyed the myriad antiquities of Galilee.

For Danielle, Israel was everything she had dreamed it would be. An old-new land and an old-new people so vibrant that every waking minute was filled with an unsurpassed kaleidoscope of experiences. Edwards, too, had expressed his awe at the achievements of a state that had not yet celebrated its fiftieth birthday.

“They’re a brash lot,” he told Danielle as they boarded the bus to Jerusalem at Tel Aviv’s bustling central bus station, “but who can blame them? After five wars, it’s a bloody miracle they’re here at all.”

“We’re supposed to be a stiff-necked people, darling.”

“Don’t I know it.
”

The air-conditioned bus was full with the usual collection of faces from every conceivable part of the world. Fine-featured blacks from Ethiopia, red-bearded Hassidim, olive-skinned Yemenites, and the ubiquitous soldiers, accompanied by their M16 Armalite and Galil rifles. Like all tourists, Mark and Danielle had been alarmed at first by the weapons, but then grew accustomed to the sight. In fact, it gave them a sense of security.

“Well, here we go,” said Edwards as the bus pulled away, “we’re off to the Holy of Holies.”

“I feel a bit strange,” said Danielle. “I’m thrilled but apprehensive.”

“Why?”

“I’m worried about how I’ll react at Yad Vashem.”

“We can just visit the Wall, if you like.”

Danielle sighed. Both were shrines to Jewish suffering, but she knew that the Holocaust Memorial was more of a magnet to her than the Western Wall. It might have been different if she had not become so embroiled in the Sonntag case.

The couple did not converse much as the bus wound its way up the foothills, leaving behind the drab and sandy central plain and entering another world, a world of pine trees and piety, of amity and light. Above all, it was the light that impressed them. Brilliant in its intensity, it reflected off the rocky landscape and the famous Jerusalem stone of the capital’s buildings.

The extraordinary scenery and the groan of the vehicle as it laboured towards the pinnacle of the City of Peace conspired to prevent them from revealing the thoughts that were dominating their minds. Both realized inwardly that there could be but one logical conclusion to their partnership, and yet they had fought shy of raising the issue of marriage. Their path had been smoothed by the fact that Danielle’s parents had accepted Edwards fully and unconditionally. And yet the gentile knew that there would always be a barrier, even if it
was only gossamer-thin. Danielle, for her part, believed wholly that each person should be accepted on his or her merits, and yet the gremlin that was religion, tradition and culture created a nagging doubt.

“A shekel for your thoughts,” he said suddenly.

Before she had time to answer, the bus swerved into the bustling central bus station. An extraordinary thing happened as they alighted. Air-raid sirens began wailing, not to warn of impending attack but as a lamentation for the millions who had perished. Traffic ground to a halt, the drivers leaving their vehicles to stand to attention alongside pedestrians. To Edwards and Danielle it seemed the whole world had come to a halt. They were to experience the same thing on Remembrance Day for Israel’s war dead, the day before pent-up emotions exploded in the riotous Independence Day celebrations.