Alphabet House (22 page)

The next morning Laureen was already in full swing.

Ecstatic about having got out of the trip, she rushed around the house, taking measurements for new curtains for their silver wedding anniversary in the autumn. Bryan had already slipped away to the office. A couple of hours later they contacted him again. He gesticulated towards Mrs Shuster, who immediately got up and silently shut his office door. It was unusual for the committee to enquire more than once.

‘I’m sorry, but at the moment we are in the midst of a Europe-wide launch of a new fast-acting painkiller for gastric ulcers. I have to help draw up our sales strategy and select who we’ll be working with.’

That was how the conversation ended. Basically what he said was correct. He was in fact busy planning a new sales drive and needed new agents. But Bryan had never had anything to do with the interviewing of new salesmen or distributors.

In this case, however, he felt obliged to make an exception, simply to convert the white lie into truth.

Ken Fowles, who was responsible for logistics, had selected only ten out of fifty potential distributors for an interview. This would be boiled down to four, each covering a specific geographical area.

In Bryan’s eyes all the prospective distributors were equally good, and only rarely did he say anything during the interviews.

Even though courtesy demanded Fowles ask his boss for his comments, there was no doubt it was he who would make the final decisions.

On the second day an applicant by the name of Keith Welles turned up. A cheerful, slightly morbid man who, despite the seriousness of the situation, allowed himself to take the interview with a sense of humour. He’d waited most of the day and was the very last interviewee. It was clear that the ruddy-faced
man would not be Ken Fowles’ choice. His prospective territory – Scandinavia, Germany, Austria and Holland – was far too important a market to be placed in the hands of anyone on a different wavelength to Fowles.

‘And what went so wrong with your previous sales district?’ Bryan asked, before his assistant could.

Welles looked Bryan straight in the face. He seemed to have expected the question, though not from that quarter. ‘There were many reasons. When you’re a foreigner residing in Hamburg, your products need to be better than anyone else’s. If not, the Germans prefer to deal with a foreigner living in Bonn, or better still, with a German residing abroad. That’s just how the system works.’

‘And your products were no better than all the others?’

‘Better?’ He shrugged and looked away. ‘They were like most products. My field has been too limited the last couple of years to accommodate great new discoveries and miracles.’

‘Psychotropic drugs?’

‘Yes. Neuroleptic.’ Welles’ wry smile made Ken Fowles shift impatiently in his chair. ‘And fashions change. Those types of chlorpromazine drugs are not exactly alpha and omega in the treatment of psychoses any more. I was caught napping. In the end my stock was too large, my outstanding accounts even bigger and chances of selling the product extremely slim.’

Bryan remembered the drug when Welles named it. He knew many names for it, like Largactil and Prozil. But their common ingredient was in fact chlorpromazine. Several of the guinea-pig patients in the Alphabet House had faded away before his eyes under the influence of a medication that was very similar. Even though he’d managed to avoid taking it during most of the ten months he spent at the SS hospital, the after-effects of this drug’s precursor had nevertheless become part of Bryan’s everyday self for many years afterward. The very thought of it could still make him sweat, become dry in the mouth and feel restless.

‘You’re Canadian, Mr Welles?’ He finally managed to ask.

‘Fraserville, beside the St. Lawrence River. German mother, English father, French-speaking population.’

‘A good starting point for a career in Europe. And yet you don’t cover France. Why not?’

‘Too difficult! My wife would like to see me from time to time, Mr Scott. She’s wiser than I am.’

‘And she’s the reason you landed in Hamburg rather than Bonn?’

Fowles kept glancing at his watch. He tried to smile. Welles’ story was completely irrelevant to the case at hand.

‘I took part in the 1943 Salerno Bay landings in Italy under McCreery’s 10th British Army. As a trained pharmacist I was an obvious choice for the medical corps. I was with them the whole way and wound up in Germany.’

‘And there she stood, waiting at the border.’ Fowles smiled until Bryan stopped him with a glance.

‘Certainly not. We met for the first time a year after the capitulation. I was attached to the reconstruction programme.’ Bryan let him speak. With this account, a number of previously unconsidered angles had presented themselves.

Welles had been enlisted in Dempsey’s 2nd British Army when they liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. He had been promoted twice and at the hearings preceding the Nuremberg trials had occasionally testified about the Nazis’ concentration camp medical experiments. Finally he had been assigned the task of inspecting the Nazi hospitals as part of a team of experts set up by British Intelligence.

There had been hundreds of field hospitals spread all over the country. The great majority were deserted, their purpose no longer relevant. A few had been converted into local hospitals and private clinics. And then there were places like the mental hospital in Hadamar where they’d found patients in mass graves. The disfigured, the crippled, the hideous and insane.

It had been a harrowing time for the inspection team, even in the case of ordinary patients with body wounds. The
consequences of the Nazi view of human nature also applied to their own ranks. During the last months of the war it was not unusual for the food to be so lacking in fat that the patients suffered irreparable damage to their nervous systems. Of the hospitals they visited, only a few in southern Germany and Berlin itself were what could be described as acceptable. Otherwise conditions had been completely miserable.

After some months on the job Welles felt emotionally drained. In the end he no longer cared where he was, whom he was with or what he drank. He stopped thinking of going home.

The notion of a mother country no longer held any meaning for him.

Welles’ final stationing was in connection with the hospital at Bad Kreuznach, where he met a young nurse with an incredible zest for life and a wonderful laugh that made him wake up. Bryan could remember having had a similar experience.

They’d fallen in love and after a couple of years had moved to Hamburg where his wife’s family lived, and where people didn’t give her quite as strange looks because she’d married someone attached to the occupation forces.

Welles built up a firm in Hamburg that prospered for a number of years. They now had three children. All in all he was satisfied.

His account made a great impression on Bryan.

Later in the evening Fowles gave Bryan a list of the agents he had selected. Welles’ name was not among them. He had been assessed and found wanting. Too old, too jovial, too Canadian, and he snuffled when he spoke.

Bryan was simply supposed to sign Fowles’ rejection.

The letter lay on Bryan’s desk all evening and all night. It was also the first thing he saw the following morning.

Nobody could have detected the slightest disappointment or surprise in Welles’ voice when Bryan phoned him. ‘It’ll all work out, don’t you think, Mr Scott?’ he said. ‘But I’m thankful you found time to tell me yourself.’

‘Naturally we’ll refund your travel expenses, Mr Welles, but I may be able to help you just the same. How much longer will you be at your hotel?’

‘I’m leaving for the airport in two hours’ time.’

‘Can we meet before you leave?’

The standard of the boarding house in Bayswater was far lower than what Bryan considered suitable for his own employees. Although the fashionable avenue had more hotels than the City had banks, Keith Welles had succeeded in finding the crummiest of them all. The stairs themselves left no doubt that this humble dwelling’s days of glory were ancient history.

Welles had already poured himself a drink when Bryan arrived. Feeling himself unobserved, disappointment was written all over his face. Not until Bryan spoke did he assume his cheerful mask. Much too relaxed, much too harmonious.

He was clumsy and unshaven, but Bryan liked him and needed him.

‘I’ve found you a job, Mr Welles. In so far as you and your family are still able to move to Bonn, the job is yours from the middle of next month. You are to function as an English-speaking pharmacist in the management of one of our subcontractors’ sub-suppliers. You are precisely the man the company has been looking for. The job includes a staff house near the Rhine, a couple of miles out of town. Suitable salary and pension. Doesn’t that sound tempting?’

Welles knew the company. He was clearly confused and astonished, without realising he’d dropped his mask. He wasn’t used to coming by things so easily.

‘You can do something for me in return, Mr Welles.’

‘As long as it isn’t illegal or involve my having to sing,’ he said, attempting to sound cheerful as he knitted his brow.

‘When you were talking about your inspection of the German hospitals after the war you mentioned you’d been
visiting mental hospitals, and that you’d also been on a tour of inspection in southern Germany. Isn’t that so?’

‘Yes, on several occasions.’

‘Also in the vicinity of Freiburg?’

‘Freiburg im Breisgau? Yes, I was all over Baden Württemberg.’

‘I am especially interested in knowing something about a sanatorium – a hospital, rather – near a small town called Herbolzheim, north of Freiburg on the outskirts of Schwarzwald. The hospital was solely for SS soldiers. There was also a psychiatric ward. Does that say anything to you?’

‘There are many sanatoriums in Freiburg. There were then, too.’

‘Yes, but north of Freiburg. It was a big one. Up in the mountains. A whole hospital with at least ten large buildings.’

‘You don’t know what it was called?’

‘Some called it the Alphabet House, that’s all I know. Only SS soldiers were admitted.’

‘I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint you, Mr Scott. Scores of reserve hospitals were built during the war. It’s also many years ago. Sometimes I inspected several hospitals and clinics during the course of one day. It’s probably too long ago. I just can’t remember much from that time any more.’

‘But you could try just the same, couldn’t you?’ Bryan leaned forward, looking him straight in the eyes. The look that met him was alert and intelligent. ‘You go back to Germany, talk to your family and spend a couple of days sorting out your affairs. Then you go to Freiburg and investigate some things for me for a couple of weeks, if it proves necessary. You’ll have time before you begin your new job. In the meantime I’ll pay all your expenses generously.’ Bryan nodded. ‘That’s how you can repay me.’

‘What am I supposed to be looking for? Am I simply to find that hospital you just mentioned?’

‘No, the hospital was destroyed in the beginning of 1945. I’m looking for a man I met there.’

‘At the hospital?’

‘That’s right. The same hospital as I was in, though I managed to escape on 23rd November 1944. I’ll explain the circumstances later. But this man remained at the hospital and I lost track of him. I’d like to know what happened. He was admitted under the name of Gerhart Peuckert. During the next couple of days I’ll supply you with all the information you’ll need, such as rank, appearance and other particulars.’

‘Do you know if he’s still alive?’

‘I assume he’s dead. He was probably at the hospital when we bombed it.’

‘And the usual intelligence sources and archives? Have all the possibilities been investigated?’

‘You can be damn sure they have! No stone unturned.’

Even though Bryan didn’t tell him more than necessary on this occasion, a somewhat puzzled Keith Welles agreed to take on the job. He had the time and could hardly refuse. But despite Bryan’s minute description of the place and the other patients and staff, including names and physical characteristics, Welles’ first report didn’t succeeded in uncovering any clues about Gerhart Peuckert’s fate. Nearly thirty years had elapsed. He complained that the task was almost impossible. The hospital and the man they were looking for had disappeared without a trace. Moreover, any patient lying in a mental hospital during the last days of the Third Reich would in all probability have been liquidated. Mercy killing was the state’s safest form of treatment for that type of patient.

Bryan was possessed by disappointment. The coincidence during recent weeks of the meetings with Welles and Wilkens and the invitation to the Olympic Games had instilled in him the hope of resolving the case and finally gaining peace of mind.

‘Couldn’t you come over for a couple of days, Mr Scott?’ Welles appealed. ‘I’m sure it would be a great help.’

On the third day Bryan phoned the National Olympic Committee and explained he had some business to do in southern Germany. If they would place a flat in the Olympic City at his disposal, they could consult him if there were any acute problems. The committee agreed. This time England was going to do better than the five golds, five silvers and three bronzes taken in Mexico.

Cost what it may.

Laureen was displeased. Not because Bryan was going to travel, but because she only got to know about it on the eve of his departure.

‘Couldn’t you at least have told me yesterday? You realise I can’t possibly go with you now, Bryan. If you’re expecting me to tell my sister-in-law that she can just stay at home in Penarth, I can assure you it’s too late now! Bridget is waiting on the platform in Cardiff at this very moment.’

Laureen looked at her watch in despair and sighed deeply as her shoulders slumped. Bryan avoided her gaze. He knew what she was thinking. It had been difficult enough arranging her sister-in-law’s visit. To cancel it would be the end of the world.