Tamar (31 page)

“How many . . .”

Leaning closer — but not so close that Rauter would smell the booze on his breath — Schongarth said, “How many what, General?”

Rauter, heroically, managed to say, “How. Many bullet holes. In the car?”

Schongarth said, “How many? I don’t know.”

Rauter faded, then rallied slightly. “Count them,” he mumbled. “Understand? Count them. And come. Back and tell me.”

Schongarth returned two hours later. He sat beside the unconscious Rauter’s bed impatiently, needing a drink, for almost an hour.

The general’s eyes flickered and then focused. “How many?”

Schongarth said, “Two hundred and forty-three.”

Rauter made a movement of his face that in other circumstances might have been a smile. “Good,” he gasped. “Execute that number. Of people.”

“Any particular people?”

Rauter, struggling to draw breath, said, “No. Anyone you’ve got.”

By late evening, Eberhardt Schongarth was very drunk and extremely edgy. Obviously the best people to shoot would be death candidates, the terrorists and saboteurs taking up space in various prisons. It would be a nice clear-out. But — and he found this hard to believe — there didn’t seem to be enough of them. He’d issued orders that all
Todeskandidaten
in the district were to be brought to the prison in Apeldoorn. But the total, including those already there, came to only a hundred and sixteen. Not even half — half! — the number required. He’d decided it wouldn’t matter to Rauter if he went over the target. But to fail to reach it . . . well, he’d be in the shit and no mistake.

The answer to his problem was clear but unsatisfactory. Some of the executions would have to take place in other parts of the country. It was not a pleasing thought. He’d had the vision — it was poetic, really — of exactly two hundred and forty-three dead resisters laid out on the Arnhem to Apeldoorn road, ideally alongside the general’s bullet-riddled car, and he was reluctant to abandon this elegant concept. But the logistics were daunting. Find the transport, find the escorts, to bring in extra death candidates from Amsterdam, from The Hague, from all over the place? It was impossible. To hell with it. The total was the main thing. He shouted for another bottle of wine and reached for the phone.

Lages, the chief of security in Amsterdam, was embarrassed to admit that he had only fifty-three death candidates to offer, rather than the seventy-five Schongarth wanted. But there were another six in Utrecht that he could throw in. Schongarth settled for that, and added fifty-nine to the numbers on his paper.

“And what do you want me to do with them, sir?”

“Bloody shoot them, of course,” Schongarth yelled.

“Tonight, sir?”

“Whenever you damn well like,” Schongarth told him, and hung up.

Almost immediately he rang back. “Lages? Ignore that last order. Wait until the morning. After the curfew ends. Eight o’clock. I want people watching, you understand? As many as possible. Make a spectacle of it.”

Yes, of course, Schongarth thought. If we can’t execute all the bastards in the same place, we can at least do them all at the same time.

Wolk, in Rotterdam, explained (with some difficulty) that because of attempts by the resistance to liberate his prisoners, he had transferred his death candidates to The Hague.

Schongarth called The Hague and sent a frightened security service officer to get his boss, Munt, out of bed. It was eleven o’clock by now, and Schongarth, very befuddled by drink and arithmetic, was very unpleasant to listen to. When he told Munt that he wanted eighty death candidates shot at eight o’clock the following morning, Munt got jittery. He would of course like to oblige, he said, but he had transferred most of his prisoners to the concentration camp at Amersfoort. Just the day before, in fact. Then he had to hold the telephone away from his ear while Schongarth screamed at him.

“Lissen, shithead! Your share, your quota, is eighty. Eighty, okay? I don’t give a damn where you get them from. This order comes from the top, you unnerstan? The top. So just do it!”

Then the line went dead, with a bang that made Munt flinch.

Munt sat in his pyjamas and smoked two cigarettes. He’d sent forty-nine prisoners to Amersfoort, so, strictly speaking, he was thirty-one short. He phoned several of his staff officers and got them on the case. “Basically, anyone we’ve got locked up anywhere in the city,” he told them. “Get me a list.” Then, reluctantly, he dressed and called for a car to take him to the prison at Scheveningen, north of the city. He got there at midnight. He didn’t have much luck. The best he could manage was eleven men (actually, some of them were boys) who had been banged up for looting. They’d have to do.

On his way back, he stopped off at the SS barracks to sort out a firing squad. He entrusted the command of it to an officer he suspected of flirting with his wife. At his headquarters he used the phone to chase up his staff. By two thirty in the morning they had, miraculously, provided him with another twenty-seven names. He wrote the word
TODESKANDIDATEN
at the top of the list and arranged for them to be shot along with the looters at eight o’clock sharp. He called Schongarth’s office and left a message. Then he went back to bed, a relieved man. He had beaten his quota. He’d got eighty-seven.

All through that day, and well into the night, other phone lines — secret, illegal ones — had also been busy. At the asylum, Tamar made a dangerously long call to Bobby on Albert Veening’s antique telephone. Later in the day, twice, Bobby called him back with news that chilled his blood.

Earlier, when a cold and pearl-grey light was filtering into the hidden room, Tamar had written a message for Dart’s morning transmission to London. He made a number of mistakes in the encoding, which Dart corrected, coldly and without comment. This message, when added to the ones Dart had already prepared, took the transmission time beyond the limit. When Dart protested, Tamar forcefully overruled him. Dart made a drama out of checking that his pistol was fully loaded before slamming it down on the table close to the transceiver and cramming on the headphones.

Dart was still stabbing the Morse key when Albert tapped quietly on the concealed door. Trixie was here, waiting in the conservatory. Tamar touched Dart on the shoulder without getting any acknowledgment, then followed Veening downstairs.

“My God,” Trixie said. “You look terrible. Is something the matter? What’s happened?”

He didn’t answer but took her by the arm and led her over to the summer house. Inside, it smelled richly of wood rot. Fingers of ivy were intruding through the broken panes. He tried to close the door, but it jammed halfway.

“Trixie, would you do me a favour? Would you mind putting your arms around me and holding me very tight?”

“I thought you’d never ask.” Her smile made no difference; when she held him she felt how tense he was. “Are you going to tell me?”

When he didn’t answer, she pushed him away slightly in order to see his face. “It’s not Marijke, is it? Oh, my God, something has happened at the farm. That’s why you’re here.”

“No,” he said. “No. Marijke’s fine. But listen. I want you to go there now, please. As fast as you can. Get the guns out of the house. The shed next to the dairy would be a good place for them. It’s closest to the road. Anyone could have put them there. Do you understand? And Marijke needs to tidy up so there’s no sign of me having been there. And I want her to check that Dart has packed everything away in the radio room. I’m sure he has, but she needs to double check. Cigarette ends, everything. Okay?”

She hadn’t taken her eyes from his face. “You’re expecting a raid on the farm.”

“No, but it’s possible. Right now, anything’s possible.”

She said, “Tell me what’s happened. I’ve a right to know.”

“Rauter was shot last night. Near De Woeste Hoeve, on the Arnhem road.”

“Rauter? I don’t believe it!” His face told her it was true. “But I thought . . . My God. Who did it?”

He turned the corners of his mouth down, a grimace that could have meant anything. She understood, though.

“You’re right. I don’t want to know.”

She moved away from him, pulling her shabby raincoat tighter around herself. She went to the door and stared out at the wet grass, the naked trees.

“Rauter,” she murmured. “God help us now.” Then she turned quickly to face him. “Christiaan, they’re not looking for you, are they?”

“I’ve no reason to think so. But the Germans will turn the whole area inside out. We’re all going to have to keep our heads down.” He rubbed the back of his thumb across his unshaven chin, thinking. “Where’s Rosa? Isn’t she with you?”

“Agatha’s looking after her. Why?”

“I think it would be a good idea for you to stay at the farm tonight. You and Rosa. Would you mind? I’d feel happier knowing Marijke’s not alone.”

“Okay.”

“Thanks.” He kissed her forehead. Then he sighed and said, “Right. I need to get back.” He struggled to pull the door fully open. For just a second he looked like an old man. “Tell her I might not be able to get home for a while and not to worry.”

And he thought, Home. I’m not meant to call it that.

Trixie said, “I can’t tell her not to worry. But I can tell her you love her, if you like.”

When she’d gone, Tamar went back to the room behind the dispensary. The stale air now carried the acrid smell of burnt silk as well as cigarette smoke. Dart didn’t look up when he entered. He busied himself checking and folding the silks, fiddling with the transceiver controls, closing things down.

When the silence became absurd and he could no longer bear it, Tamar said, “Mind if I open the window?”

Dart shrugged. “Sure. Be my guest.” He lit another cigarette with tremulous fingers.

Tamar opened the small window halfway. He inhaled some cleaner air and turned to look at Dart. The brown bottle of Benzedrine had appeared beside the revolver on the bureau.

He said, “I realize that it’s not the ideal time to tell you this, but I’ve decided to close down transmissions from the farm. In the circumstances I —”

He stopped because Dart held his hand up, rigid in a halt gesture, and shook his head slowly and deliberately.

“No.”

Tamar closed his eyes and found that he had an immense desire not to open them again. To sleep just where he stood. Not to have this conversation . . .

“Dart, you can’t just say no like that. I’ve thought carefully about it, and —”

“No,” Dart said again. He sat staring at his fingers where they rested on the small black suitcase. He kept his voice more or less level. “You can’t do that; you don’t have the authority. I’ve got procedures, timetables, frequencies. Only London can change those.”

“I’m sorry, but that’s not the case. In the field I am authorized to make those changes. And I’ve made my decision.”

Dart looked up now, and Tamar flinched when he saw what was in the other man’s eyes.

“Oh, right. You’ve made your decision, have you? Well, that’s just fine and dandy, isn’t it? It’s all right for you, for Chrissake, never in one place more than a day or two. I’ve got the Germans tracking me every time I send and nowhere to go to. Do you understand?”

He got to his feet and advanced on Tamar, who folded his arms but held his ground.

“Do you
really
understand? Last week the bloody detector vans were in the town when I left. They must have been this close —
this close
— to locating me.”

He held his thumb and forefinger a centimetre apart and jabbed them at Tamar’s face. And although it was irrelevant, Tamar realized then that Dart had lost a lot of weight. His clothes were looser on him. The dark hair was long and oily. The unnaturally bright eyes were deeper in their sockets.

Dart’s voice edged a shade closer to hysteria. “You let this shitstorm happen, and now you’re telling me I can’t use the farm anymore? You’re telling me I can’t use the only safe bloody station I’ve got? No,
no
! You can’t do that. Who the hell do you think you are?”

“Dart! Calm down, for God’s sake. I know the risks you run. I do everything I can to protect you.”

“Everything except let me use the only place I feel safe!”

Tamar wanted to reach out and hold him, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. “Look,” he said, “you and me, we always knew the risks we were running. You said last night that you felt you were living on borrowed time. I feel the same way. But . . . but I have to think about Marijke. I can’t keep putting her at risk. It’s not . . . fair.”

It was a feeble word. Childish. It brought an ugly smile to Dart’s face.

“Fair, huh? All right, Commandant. Let’s talk about what’s fair. Let’s talk about me stuck here all winter in this freezing shithole full of nutcases. Except for when I get to take a little stroll into town in order to play cat and mouse with the bloody Gestapo. Let’s talk about me in this . . . this tomb, sending your long-winded so-called reports when my fingers are so stiff with cold that I can’t even feel the bloody key.”

“Dart, I —”

“And now let’s talk about you, shall we? Where are you all this time? You’re tucked up in Marijke’s nice warm bed with a belly full of food and your hand on her —”

“Shut up. Shut up! This conversation stops, right now.”

But it didn’t.

“And you know what? She deserves better.”

“Dart, I’m warning you . . .” Tamar couldn’t finish the sentence. He was dismayed to see that Dart’s eyes were filling with tears.

“She deserves better. That’s what’s so damn well unfair. You’re a death candidate, and you know it. So am I. And she deserves something better than either of us.”

Tamar stared, finally speechless. Dart’s last three words hung in the air like smoke.

My God, Tamar thought. Oh, my God.

Oskar didn’t return from Apeldoorn until well after dark. He dismounted stiffly from the bike when he was in sight of the bungalows and flashed his torch four times, then went in.

“It looks bad,” he told them. “Seems they’ve brought men to the Apeldoorn jail from all over. Definitely from Deventer and Zwolle. A woman says she saw a truck with prisoners in the back, and one of them was her brother-in-law, and she’s sure he’s been held in Groningen for the last six months.”