An open Mercedes touring car of the type the Gestapo was so fond of drew up outside the house at three-thirty that afternoon, just as dusk was closing in. The rear door was opened by the driver, and a figure emerged clutching a small bag. The driver pointed at the house and, without waiting, got back into the car and drove away. The failing light was uncertain, and the gathering fog obscured detail. Puzzled, Bethwig waited on the porch as the bent figure limped up the path. It was a woman, he saw, and as she looked at him through her heavy black veil Bethwig realised it was Inge. For an instant he could not believe it; he stood as if frozen while the woman stared at him with no sign of recognition. She lifted the veil, and a stray lock of hair escaped from beneath her hat; it was no longer the lovely amber he remembered so well but a coarse grey. The dull light served to emphasise her lined, wasted skin, and when she gave him a tentative smile, he saw that her teeth were badly discoloured and broken. As if in a dream, Bethwig helped her into the house and sat her down before the fireplace. The cruel drive in the open car had left her cold and shivering, and he poured tea from the kettle resting on the hob. Inge held the cup in both hands and, staring about her at the comfortable furniture, the clean rugs, the firewood neatly stacked on the stoop, began to weep. When Bethwig helped her remove her coat, he saw that she was wearing only a short-sleeved dress of coarse sacking. Inge coughed, a deep racking cough that doubled her frail body, and when he helped her into a chair, he saw the eight-digit number tattooed on her left arm.
Himmler’s mocking assurances flooded back: ‘Nothing has been spared in her continuing treatment…. does not lack for attention… recreational activities supervised day and night…’ In his fury he could think of no curse, no defilement sufficient for the Reichsführer. All the time that he was being reassured, she must have been in a concentration camp, a plaything for the guards.
He looked at the wasted, dying woman, and a mixture of sadness and anger surged through him at the knowledge that he lacked the power to sentence Himmler to eternal damnation.
When Brigadier Oliver Simon-Benet found Major Jan Memling at the small training camp deep in the hills above the Firth of Forth, he was seated on an upturned jerry can studying a map. The brigadier noted as he slithered down the slope that exercise and sun had agreed with Memling. He was tanned and had filled out his uniform again. The brigadier recalled what Memling had looked like four months before when released from hospital: all skin and bones, and with a pallor that would have shocked an undertaker.
An enlisted man called Memling’s attention to the brigadier’s approach, and Jan stood slowly. Simon-Benet tapped his cap with his swagger stick. ‘Morning, Major. You’re looking quite fit.’
‘Good morning, sir.’ Memling’s manner was polite and icily formal, and he expressed no surprise at seeing him here in the north of Scotland. Obviously, the brigadier thought, he still blames me for that nonsense with the Crossbow committee last winter.
He looked around. Two non-commissioned officers were seated nearby. Both men had noted the red shoulder tabs denoting staff assignment and lost interest. The other man, a lance corporal, was busy repairing some type of electrical gear. The midsummer sun burned in an absolutely cloudless sky, and the temperature was in the mid-eighties. There was no breeze at all. Brownish heather covered hills that rolled away in every direction. Dark-green stands of trees filled the valley below. Simon-Benet wiped the sweatband of his service cap with a handkerchief, then his perspiring face.
‘Can you be spared for a few moments, Major? I must speak with you.’
Memling gave him a resentful stare, then nodded and called to one of the sergeants to take over. They went on down the slope to the valley floor where a small stream trickled and chuckled over mossy stones, and Simon-Benet lowered himself to the ground in the shade of a twisted oak.
‘I should get away from London more often,’ he commented in an attempt to break through Memling’s reserve. ‘Too many fine restaurants. ‘I’m getting fat and sadly out of shape.’
Memling, who had squatted down nearby, now and again glanced up the slope. ‘What can I do for you, Brigadier?’ he asked finally.
‘Stop acting like a silly schoolgirl, for one thing,’ Simon-Benet snorted.
Memling glared but said nothing.
