Alphabet House (34 page)

The waiter served the tea in a coffee cup with no apologies. Laureen let it steam for ages before tasting it disapprovingly. Neither of them said anything. The woman across from Laureen seemed about to explode. She glanced at her watch several times, and each time she seemed about to speak, but didn’t.

Finally she raised her cup and took a sip. ‘For me it’s a jigsaw puzzle,’ she said. ‘Can you understand?’

Laureen nodded.

‘And I have a feeling that more than one person may be badly hurt today. Maybe it’s already happened and we can’t do anything about it. So therefore we must try and fit the pieces together right now. Do you follow me?’

‘I think so.’ Laureen tried to look obliging. ‘But who’s in danger? My husband can’t be in any danger, can he?’

‘Yes, he can. But you must forgive me if that’s of lesser importance to me just now. You see, I trust neither you nor him.’

‘You don’t? Now listen. I don’t know a thing about you! I’ve never seen you before. You could be anybody. You’ve known him for thirty years under a different name. And I’ve got a feeling that you might be in possession of information that may have been affecting our marriage for years. Do you think
I
trust
you
?’ Laureen dissolved yet another lump of sugar in the semi-brown liquid the waiter called tea and sent Petra a broad, caustic smile. ‘But on the other hand, do I have a choice?’

‘Nope, I’m afraid not.’ The woman’s burst of laughter hardly corresponded to her diminutive stature. It was deep and resounding and sounded convincing, but it stopped as soon as it began. ‘My name is Petra. You may call me that. Petra Wagner.’ She nodded in emphasis. ‘I met your husband here in Freiburg during the Second World War. He’d been admitted to a big reserve hospital a bit north of town where I was a nurse. I haven’t seen him since – not before he turned up today. You
witnessed our first meeting in nearly thirty years. Your husband said it was by accident. Was it?’

‘I have no idea. I haven’t spoken to my husband for days. He doesn’t even know I’m here. I know absolutely nothing and I’ve never heard anything about his being in a German hospital during World War II. On the other hand, I know he was hospitalized for a time when he came home from the war. He’d been missing for nearly a year.’

‘That must have been the year he was in the hospital here in Freiburg.’

The revelation of this part of Bryan’s past caught Laureen unawares. It sounded incredible. Still she felt convinced that the woman wasn’t lying. ‘Anxiety and truth go hand in hand, just like lies and arrogance,’ her father had always used to say. Behind Petra Wagner’s calm exterior she seemed fearful.

They would have to win each other’s confidence as quickly as possible.

‘Good! I believe you, even though it sounds very weird to me.’ Laureen took another sip of the bitter liquid before continuing. ‘My name is Laureen Underwood Scott. You may call me Laureen, if you like,’ she said. ‘My husband and I have been married since 1947. We have our silver wedding in less than two months. We live in Canterbury, where my husband was born. He was educated as a doctor and now works in the pharmaceutical industry. We have a daughter. Until two weeks ago my husband hadn’t been back to Germany during all the time we’ve been married. And please forgive me, but until a couple of days ago I’d never even heard of this town.’ Then, as the two women were looking straight at each other, Laureen pleaded, ‘Won’t you please tell me where my husband is, Petra Wagner?’

As far as Petra Wagner was concerned this Englishwoman could have been speaking Hebrew. She wasn’t listening. Instead, she
concentrated all her senses on trying to discern weak points in the woman’s facade. As a rule, words served as a veil to conceal what was essential. In this case it was a matter of vital importance whether Petra could trust this awkward-looking female or not.

First and foremost she had to think of Gerhart. If she did nothing she wouldn’t be exposing him to any new risk. He would be just as safe as he’d always been.

Naturally she hoped that, when it came down to it, Stich, Kröner and Lankau would reach an understanding with Arno von der Leyen up there on the mountain. Nevertheless she felt ill at ease, impotent and far from secure. What if things didn’t go as they should, and what if this woman before her had evil intentions no matter what happened on Schlossberg? Then where would she stand? And how would it affect Gerhart?

The woman was no professional, she couldn’t possibly be. Presumably she wasn’t lying when she said Arno von der Leyen was her husband.

‘May I ask you some questions?’ she asked, strangely short of breath. Laureen looked surprised, but nodded. ‘Then answer me quickly. You can regard it as a kind of test. What’s the name of your daughter?’

‘Ann Lesley Underwood Scott.’

‘A-n-n-e?’ Petra spelled.

‘No, without the “e”.’

‘When was she born?’

‘On 16th June 1948.’

‘What day of the week was it?’

‘It was a Monday.’

‘How do you remember that?’

‘It just was!’

‘What happened on that day?’

‘My husband wept.’

‘And what else?’

‘I ate some muffins with jam.’

‘That’s a strange thing to remember, isn’t it?’

Laureen shook her head. ‘Have you got any children?’

‘No.’ Apart from the sleazy questions Petra on rare occasion had to put up with when she sat alone in Palmera’s Café after having gone shopping, this was the one she hated most.

‘If you had, you’d know it wasn’t such a strange thing to do. Is that good enough now?’

‘No. First tell me what your husband wants with Gerhart Peuckert.’

‘Quite honestly, I don’t know. You must know better than I do.’ Laureen pressed her lips together, creating lines in the corner of her mouth that caused fissures in her make-up.

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Listen here, Petra Wagner…!’ The waiter passed their table with a tray poised above him. The look he sent Laureen as she took the other woman’s hand expressed, if not disapproval, then regret. ‘Tell me what you know. You can trust me.’

Laureen was dazed by astonishment and skepticism. The past she was learning about sunk in very slowly. This past her husband had lived was that of a stranger. She had known nothing, absolutely nothing, about it. Petra Wagner was a good guide.

Gradually, the hospital, the life there and the wards in which Bryan lay, all became alive and real for Laureen. ‘How awful,’ she exclaimed from time to time. ‘Is that true?’ she whispered just as frequently, without expecting an answer.

The account of the months in the reserve hospital in the mountains revealed a yoke of fear. A clinical world of systematic wrong treatment and loneliness, where three men silently terrorized and controlled an entire hospital ward.

And then one day Arno von der Leyen disappeared, and two of the men with him.

‘And you’re saying my husband and this Gerhart Peuckert had absolutely nothing to do with each other at the hospital?’

‘Nothing whatsoever.’ Petra looked dejected. ‘On the contrary. Gerhart always used to turn his head away when Arno von der Leyen was in the vicinity.’

‘And what happened to this Gerhart Peuckert, then?’

The instant the question was put forward, Petra pulled her hand away. She felt unwell. Then she turned around and pulled her scarf from the back of the chair. As she was putting it on, she froze. Almost imperceptibly the colour drained from her cheeks.

She took Laureen’s handkerchief without hesitation as the tears began to flow.

That afternoon there were minutes that seemed to Petra like hours, and hours that seemed like fractions of a second. These few minutes opened up and screamed of a loneliness and lack of trust that needed to flow unimpeded and be articulated. Finally Petra attempted a smile. Blowing her nose, she laughed in small bursts, shyly and relieved.

‘I can trust you, can’t I?’

‘Yes, you can,’ said Laureen, taking her hand again. ‘Apart from the fact that I have no idea whether my daughter was born on a Monday, you can.’ She laughed apologetically. ‘Just tell me your story. I think it will be good for both of us.’

Petra was in love with Gerhart Peuckert. She had heard terrible things about him, but she loved him just the same. After he and a couple of the other patients had been transferred to Ensen bei Porz near Cologne, Gerhart’s health had shown little sign of improvement. It had taken both persuasion and bribery for her to be allowed to accompany him.

When Germany’s capitulation was announced, Gerhart was still weak – very weak. He could lie semi-conscious for days without knowing where he was. Despite good treatment during the latter days of the war, the shock therapy and hard-handed treatment by the security officers and his fellow patients in Freiburg had nearly done him in. On top of that, he acted as if he were in a kind of chronic allergic shock that no one had time to investigate or enough sense to take seriously. What was worse,
after the war ended Gerhart was suddenly a patient whom the doctors no longer cared about. His status changed from one day to the next. In their eyes he now belonged to the part of the past best left unspoken. There were other patients who didn’t have the curse of the swastika hanging over them and they came first. It was only Petra who worried seriously about Gerhart Peuckert’s situation. But she hadn’t the insight, training or intellect to know what should be done in his case. He received the pills he’d always received and was otherwise allowed to sleep all day long.

And so it remained, right until two of the men from the Alphabet House turned up.

At this point in Petra’s account Laureen realised why the woman had good reason to be afraid. These two men had come expressly to kill the man she loved. One of them, a big powerfully built man by the name of Lankau, was one of the two who had escaped from the hospital together with Laureen’s husband.

The two men walked straight in from the street wearing hospital coats. No one took notice of them, now that so many so-called observers from the occupation forces kept running in and out. They produced no form of identification and yet the hospital staff did exactly as they demanded.

When Petra went down to the ward to dispense the day’s second round of medicine, Gerhart’s space was empty. The bed was gone. One of the orderlies pointed towards a linen storeroom, and here she found Kröner and Lankau bent over Gerhart’s bed. The instant she saw them she retreated to the doorway so that the activity in the corridor behind her could become her defence. She was shocked. Gerhart was trembling and fighting for breath.

A few minutes later she would have been too late.

The two men were forced to leave Gerhart Peuckert in peace because she came. She recognised them, and they recognised her with loathing in their eyes. Then they disappeared up the ward’s
middle gangway. During the following days they turned up one at a time at regular intervals, always smiling and seemingly conciliatory. So long as they came singly Petra couldn’t touch them. There would always be the other one to take revenge. And Gerhart was a defenceless target.

Now they were both in the danger zone.

Thus it carried on for five days, during which Petra kept herself surrounded by colleagues, but never left Gerhart Peuckert out of her sight for more than a few minutes at a time. She noted that he grew weaker every day. Since the arrival of the two men he had seemed frightened and numbed and had neither eaten nor drunk to any appreciable extent.

On the sixth day she met the third man from the hospital in Freiburg.

They had waited for her outside. The girlfriend with whom Petra was walking arm in arm began flirting instantly and unsolicited with the pockmarked man named Kröner. This was something she did with all well-dressed men.

It was a grotesque situation.

It was this third patient from Freiburg who spoke to her. A small, friendly man by the name of Peter Stich whom she’d always regarded as incurably ill, right until the doctors discharged him for active service. Meanwhile Lankau stood with legs akimbo, looking around uneasily. It was a dangerous situation, the outcome of which both women risked paying dearly for. Petra listened carefully.

Peter Stich began with a quiet smile, ‘Gerhart Peuckert should be taken to a safer place, shouldn’t he? During times like these, I mean. After all, he’s a war criminal, isn’t he? And for people like him there’s not much sympathy, is there?’

Then he patted her elbow and nodded briefly at Lankau, who promptly disappeared. ‘Perhaps you’d like to talk to me about it,’ he continued. ‘When and where it would suit you.’

Petra didn’t find it hard to be co-operative. The seriousness of the situation was not lost on her. Ill or not, Gerhart Peuckert
could easily come to pay for his past. Of this there was already daily proof. The search for the most prominent figures of the Nazi regime was in full swing. Several of Cologne’s leading citizens had been interned and it was open season for hunting down members of the Gestapo and the special branch of the SS. There was no mercy, let alone help, to be expected from either friends or enemies.

It was a bizarre day at the hospital. A parade of representatives from the Allied forces kept coming and going. In the general confusion several of Petra’s colleagues refused to carry out even the most trivial tasks, while uniformed men hauled yet another of Cologne’s finer inhabitants out of his hiding place in the basement. It made Petra sick to her stomach.

They arranged that later on in the day she would meet the patients from Freiburg in the railway station’s makeshift waiting room. Outside it was almost deserted. Not one of the buses that normally picked up passengers from the station had arrived. Many people were lying asleep or dozing on the waiting-room floor. Strewn around were all sorts of packages, tied-up cardboard boxes, blankets packed with essentials, suitcases, bags and sacks. The place was well chosen. Petra had insisted that all the malingerers be present, but she would only speak to one of them. And she had insisted that the meeting take place where there were plenty of people around.