The Prisoner

  ‘There’s no need to get tetchy, Marc,’ Laurent said. ‘We respect your plan, but we’ve got a right to ask questions before putting our heads in the noose.’

  ‘Fine,’ Marc said, understanding Laurent’s point but still irritated by how negative everyone sounded. ‘Ask away.’

  ‘What happens when we don’t arrive in Cologne?’ Marcel asked.

  ‘Normally the alarm would go up,’ Marc explained. ‘Headquarters posts cards when workers transfer to another district. Cards arrive at the local RLA Headquarters a day or two after the prisoners. But in our case, our cards will simply vanish into thin air. Or more accurately, I’ll bring them back here and destroy them before we leave.’

  ‘So you’re saying we get back to France, free men?’ Laurent asked. ‘All our paperwork is in order and nobody will even be looking for us?’

  Marc nodded. ‘Take your release documents to the local identification office and you’ll be issued with an up-to-date French identity card and ration book under whatever name you choose to give me for your paperwork.’

  ‘Sounds too good to be true,’ Vincent said. ‘If your system is so perfect, how come nobody else has figured this out?’

  Marc laughed. ‘Maybe someone has. How would you know unless they were dumb enough to brag about it when they got back to France?’

  ‘Speaking of France,’ Richard said, ‘In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not French.’

  ‘I looked into that,’ Marc replied. ‘Problem is, prisoner returns to Belgium and Vichy France3 run on a different system. Release requests get assessed in Brussels or Vichy. So it’s France or nothing, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Count me out,’ Vincent said, shaking his head knowingly. ‘Schemes like this always go wrong.’

  Marc shrugged. ‘I’m not forcing anyone, but I have to know who’s in before I leave in the morning.’

  ‘I’ve got no family or anything in France,’ Richard said. ‘It’s not so bad here on the docks. If we’re caught, we’ll end up down some Polish coal mine.’

  Marc looked anxiously towards Laurent, keen for someone to say yes.

  ‘In our situation you’ve got to balance risks,’ Laurent said. ‘It sounds like Marc has thought things through and I’d rather chance this than waste away here.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Marcel added. ‘I’m in.’

  Louis nodded thoughtfully. ‘Last January I got so hungry I thought we’d all die. I’d rather throw the dice now than risk another winter.’

  ‘So that’s four of us,’ Marc said, not displeased with that result. Vincent was gutless and he’d never expected him to say yes, though Richard’s decision was disappointing.

  ‘So when does it all happen?’ Marcel asked. ‘I’ve gotta say goodbye to all my lady friends.’

  Laurent burst out laughing. ‘Only lady friends you’ve got will come with you inside your diseased brain.’

  Espionage training had taught Marc that the longer a plan gestates, the more chance there is of someone blabbing.

  ‘I need to type the dates and add this week’s RLA authorisation stamp on all the paperwork,’ Marc said. ‘I’ll get that done tomorrow, and put in a transport request for an escort to the station. If that works, an RLA truck will arrive at the gate the day after tomorrow and take us to the station for the seven-eighteen train to Cologne.’

  ‘Paris by the weekend,’ Laurent said cheerfully. ‘Hell yeah!’

  Note

  3 Vichy France – a southern, mainly rural, area of France that was not occupied by German troops. Although it was officially an independent nation, Vichy France was run by the pro-Nazi puppet government.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Although Marc had been planning the escape for two months, it only felt real now that he’d told his cabin mates about it.

  He dated and stamped all the cards and travel warrants before any of the secretaries arrived. Then he checked and rechecked: Had he used the right stamps on the travel warrants? Were all his German spellings correct? Had he properly submitted the request form to the transit office on the third floor?

  It was a quiet day at the office. Commandant Vogel received a reply to the telegram he’d sent to Berlin and seemed unusually subdued. Marc was usually happy with a slow pace, but today it gave him too much time to think of what might go wrong.

  Marc felt a twinge of fondness when Vogel dismissed him for the day, just after six o’clock.

  ‘I like the new suit,’ Vogel said. ‘See you bright and early tomorrow.’

  ‘Have a good night, sir,’ Marc said, knowing that he’d never see him again if all went well.

  After putting on his prisoner jacket, Marc snuck up to the filing area on the sixth floor. There were a couple of secretaries doing their end-of-day filing, but he had no bother slipping his hand between two cabinets and retrieving a big envelope stuffed with the papers he needed for the escape.

  There was always a chance of being searched on the gate when you arrived back at the Oper. Marc hoped to see Osterhagen sitting in the guard hut, but it was the Dane, Sivertsen.

  The always-keen Sivertsen would search you if you arrived alone, so Marc lurked in a doorway for twenty minutes until two trucks arrived, carrying mud-encrusted prisoners who’d spent the day digging foundations on a construction project outside of the city.

  Marc merged into the crowd at the gate, successfully shielding himself behind a big man, while Sivertsen patted down a moustachioed Belgian with his shaky hand.

  Marc’s head was full of things that could go wrong between now and morning: an unscheduled prisoner count, delousing, random search, one of the other lads coming back from work with an injury.

  Marc braved the evil-smelling toilet, which was actually just sloping boards mounted over a shit-spattered hole cut into the Oper’s hull. Two vast rats glared as he ran water into his mess tin.

  Back in his cabin, Marc lay on his bunk and began destroying four green prisoner cards, tearing them into centimetre squares, dropping them in the tin and squeezing them until they’d turned to mushy green pulp.

  The evening was routine, except there was more to talk about than usual. Laurent said Richard could have his mattress after he’d gone. It was the only one filled with cotton rather than straw. They took turns guessing their chances of getting away: Louis guessed sixty-five per cent, Laurent eighty, Marcel was the most pessimistic with fifty-fifty. Marc refused to put a figure on it.

  The optimism level improved when Marc gave his three fellow escapers their documents. Richard couldn’t fail to be impressed, seeing it all typed in German on official stationery, with proper stamps and Marc’s nifty forgeries of Commandant Vogel’s signature.

  ‘Kind of wish I’d said yes now,’ Richard said ruefully, as he inspected Laurent’s Bonn-to-Paris travel warrant. ‘We’ve been a good crew.’

  Marc got his few possessions together and tied them in a bundle using a piece of rag, and the string from the package Fischer had brought down the day before. He hugged the small bundle to his chest when everyone settled in for the night, but he was way too tense for sleep.

  Marc was paranoid that he’d put a tick where a cross should be, or missed a security question, or forgotten some document entirely. He’d grown fond of his bunk mates and wanted to help them escape, but their lives depended on him getting every detail right, and part of Marc wished that he’d just used the scheme to vanish on his own.

  *

  Osterhagen came below just after 5 a.m., waking half the boat by shouting out four prisoner numbers, followed by, ‘Transfer orders. Feet! On your feet!’

  Prisoners were never notified of transfers, in case it encouraged them to hide, escape, or switch identities, so Marc acted mystified when Osterhagen stepped into the room.

  ‘What do you mean, transfer?’ Laurent asked.

  ‘Is it local?’ Marc asked.

  ‘Why us four?’ Laurent added.

  ‘You think they tell me anything?’ Osterhagen scoffed. ‘Get moving.’

>   Marc pushed his feet into his new shoes, threw his cloth bundle over his back and quickly hugged Vincent and Richard, before leading the quartet outside.

  It was sunrise as they walked down Oper’s gangplank under orange-tinted smog. Their ride to the station was by open-backed horse-drawn cart, staffed by an armed Reich Labour Administration transport officer, with a woman at the reins.

  Before they passed through the gate, Osterhagen had a procedure to follow, checking that the prisoner identity discs matched the information requested on the transfer documents and crossing their names off the Oper’s register so that the boys wouldn’t be missed at the next head count.

  It had been dark below deck and Osterhagen’s face twisted awkwardly when he recognised Marc.

  ‘Fischer got bollocked over you,’ Osterhagen told him. ‘Says nothing happens to you without him or Vogel saying so.’

  Marc and Laurent exchanged a wary glance, as the transport officer stepped up to the gateway.

  ‘Do you know where they’re going?’ Osterhagen asked.

  ‘Orders to take them to Central Station came through from the office late last night,’ the transport officer explained. ‘Quite weird actually: transfer requests always come through a few days ahead of time.’

  Marc gulped. A minor mistake before he was even out of the gate. Was it the only one?

  ‘Sorry to hold you up, but I’ve got to call my boss,’ Osterhagen told the transport official, as he pointed to Marc. ‘This kid works for Commandant Vogel. We’ve got special orders not to let him out for manual work. It might apply to transfers too.’

  Marc’s heart bounded as Osterhagen flipped open a metal box mounted by the gate and pulled out a telephone handset. With his fate dangling, Marc gleaned all he could from Osterhagen’s end of the conversation: Fischer was off duty and whoever Osterhagen was talking to seemed to be pushing the decision back on to the cautious young guard.

  ‘Can’t stand about here,’ the transport officer told Osterhagen, as he tapped the face of his pocket watch. ‘I’ve got to collect transfer prisoners from two other barracks, then take new arrivals out to Florstadt.’

  Osterhagen shuffled his feet and wrung his hands, clearly unused to making decisions.

  ‘Take the other three,’ he said finally. ‘I might get bollocked if a transfer is delayed, but that’s nothing to what Fischer might do to me if I let the boy leave when I shouldn’t have.’

  Marc felt sick as he said a quick goodbye, before Laurent, Marcel and Louis walked through the gate and climbed up on the cart. They understood the escape plan and he’d given them their own documents in case they got split up on a crowded train, but seeing his three friends’ shocked faces as the cart rode off without him was crushing.

  ‘So what now?’ Marc asked, locking his fingers together to stop his hands trembling.

  ‘They’re going to try and find Fischer,’ Osterhagen said. ‘Failing that, they’ll wait until the commandant comes on duty.’

  As Marc peered back towards the Oper, the lump in his throat made it hard to breathe. He thought about overpowering Osterhagen and making a run for the station. He might manage, but even if he made it on to the train the alarm would be raised before he got to Bonn and he’d blow the other three’s covers in the process.

  ‘Have a sit inside the hut,’ Osterhagen suggested. ‘There’s a flask of coffee if you’re thirsty. The phone could ring any minute. Someone must know about this transfer.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  Predictably, Vogel quashed the transfer order and Marc walked to the RLA office in time to start his regular shift. Prisoners got picked for random transfers all the time, so there was no investigation and Vogel joked that he’d saved his young messenger and translator from having to do real work in Cologne.

  ‘When your card is returned, I’ll make sure it’s marked, No transfers,’ Vogel said, when he called Marc in to collect a batch of telegrams.

  ‘Good idea, sir,’ Marc said, faking enthusiasm.

  Marc briefly considered what would happen when the card that he’d pulped and dropped out of the Oper’s porthole didn’t show up. But cards were lost or misfiled all the time and they just wrote out new ones.

  He got more worried when Vogel stood up from his desk and circled behind, like an interrogator.

  ‘Blond hair, blue eyes, strong body, upright posture,’ Vogel said mysteriously, as his hand rested on Marc’s shoulder. ‘You have what my boss, Reichsfuhrer Himmler4, would call desirable racial characteristics. There’s even a program where boys like you get Germanised.’

  Marc looked baffled, which made Vogel laugh.

  ‘Germanised: it’s all part of our racial policies. Jews get booted off to some mud patch in Poland. Foreign boys and girls who fit the image of tough, blond-haired Germans get rebadged and adopted by German families, or sent for training in Hitler Youth Camps.’

  Marc thought the idea that kids could become German based solely on the way they looked was barking, but was too diplomatic to say so.

  ‘I can look into it if you’d like me to,’ Vogel said. ‘No bugs and I’m sure the food’s better.’

  As one door closes, another opens, Marc thought. But an obvious downside was that healthy German boys not much older than himself got handed uniforms, guns and one-way tickets to the Russian Front.

  ‘Well?’ Vogel asked. ‘It’s not like you to stand there gawping.’

  ‘I’m …’ Marc said, before tailing off. ‘It’s just the last thing I expected you to say, sir. I thought you were keen to keep me here, working for you.’

  ‘I’m sure I can find another messenger boy,’ Vogel said, as he handed Marc the telegrams. ‘Promise me you’ll have a serious think about it and let me know within the next couple of days.’

  ‘Yes,’ Marc said. ‘I will … Of course I will.’

  Marc’s head was all over the place as he put on his prisoner coat and jogged across town. The Germanisation idea was weird, but better food and a lice-free existence had undeniable appeal, even if he couldn’t exactly see himself in dinky little Hitler Youth shorts and a swastika armband.

  The post office queue was huge and Marc watched the clock as the line crept forward. All being well, Laurent, Marcel and Louis would be at Bonn Station by now, with half an hour until their connecting train to Paris.

  Either that or they were in a cell, looking at a whole heap of trouble that would lead back to him.

  *

  Marc had to work late with one of the secretaries, translating German instructions to a new piece of machinery for French workers. His appearance in his cabin on the Oper just after eight gave Richard and Vincent a jolt.

  ‘That explains why I got served three portions in the food line,’ Richard said.

  ‘There’s bread left, but we ate your share of the soup,’ Vincent added. ‘How far’d you get? Are the others coming back?’

  ‘I got to the end of the gangplank,’ Marc said peevishly, as he peered into the empty soup bowl. ‘I’ve not heard anything about the other three, but if it’s gone to plan, they’ll be on home turf by now.’

  Marc pushed a ball of bread into his mouth, but as he stepped up to his bunk he noticed his mattress had been switched for a ripped one with a strong whiff of urine.

  ‘Who took it?’ Marc gasped. ‘Why’d you let them in here?’

  ‘Alain heard you guys got transferred,’ Richard said. ‘Some of his boys came in.’

  ‘Can’t fight thirteen of ’em,’ Vincent said. ‘And you’d better watch your back now Laurent’s not covering it.’

  ‘Tell me something I don’t know already,’ Marc said, then flew back in shock, making a gagging noise.

  As Marc straightened the mattress, he’d revealed a hole. Inside hundreds of maggots wriggled within the rotting corpse of a mouse.

  ‘Christ,’ Marc said, as he threw the straw mattress on to the floor. ‘I’d rather sleep on bare slats.’

  ‘Alain’s gonna talk to Fischer,’ Vincent said. ??
?Their cabin’s crowded, some of his boys want to move in here.’

  ‘Us six made a good set-up,’ Richard said forlornly. ‘Laurent kept us safe. Now …’

  Vincent gave Marc an accusing look and finished Richard’s thought. ‘Now it’s all screwed, thanks to you.’

  Marc felt guilty, but also pissed off because real mates don’t kick you when you’re down. The swastika and shorts looked more attractive by the minute.

  As Marc tried to work out whether it was better to sleep on bare boards, or if he had to find some way to clean the worst filth and stink off his new mattress, two boys from Alain’s cabin swaggered in with their stuff.

  ‘Fischer gave us the all clear,’ the bigger of the two announced as he threw his mattress up on to Laurent’s old bunk. ‘Hope that’s OK. Tough if it’s not, ’cos it’s happening.’

  The other lad got all excited when he saw Marc. ‘Thought you were transferred?’

  Before Marc could answer, the bigger lad shoved Marc back against the porthole and shouted. ‘Alain, get in here!’

  Marc caught his captor with a palm to the face and broke free, but ran straight into Alain as he ducked through the doorway.

  ‘Hello, old pal!’ Alain said cheerfully, as he grabbed Marc by his collar and bashed his head against the side of a bunk. ‘I thought I’d missed you.’

  Marc broke Alain’s grip and landed a good punch in his kidney, but the space between bunks was barely a metre wide. With three older lads boxing Marc in, he was quickly overwhelmed with the one lad twisting his arm up behind his back and Alain doubling him up with a brutal kick in the stomach.

  ‘Remember kicking me in the face?’ Alain shouted, as he kneed Marc again.

  Marc groaned as Alain grabbed his legs, leaving him suspended agonisingly by his twisted arm. His head got thrown against both sides of the passageway as more of Alain’s crew poured out of their cabin.

  ‘Mess that little punk up!’ someone shouted eagerly.

  Marc ended up thrown against the wall under the stairs, with the taste of blood in his mouth and boots flying in from all sides.