The Doomsday Decree Read online

  Paul left the hospital and passed the neighbouring collection of buildings which housed the Luftwaffe headquarters for the Gau-Westfalen-Nord district. Paul had always felt apprehensive about the Luftwaffe centre of communications and control for Westphalia being located directly next to the hospital. One misplaced bomb could destroy the entire hospital. Perhaps that was why the Luftwaffe installation had been placed there originally, as if to defy the Allies to bomb it. He turned along the perimeter fence and crossed the old cobbled streets which led up to the Dortmund-Ems Canal, where Gottfried’s apartment overlooked the canal complex.

  There was a cold wind and small icy snowflakes were beginning to pelt against his face as he turned into the street where Gottfried lived. Several of the houses stood like gaunt, blackened skeletons, the victims of incendiary bombs which had been meant for the military barracks which lay to the south of the canal.

  Paul lowered his head to keep the snow off his face, but as he rounded the corner he glanced up momentarily. It was lucky that he did so. The sight that met his eyes caused him to halt abruptly and then move quickly into the empty doorway of a nearby ruined building.

  Directly outside the house where the Klaus family lived were two vehicles: a black Opel saloon with an SS pennant on its offside mudguard, and parked behind it a grey Mercedes truck with a similar SS logo — the grinning death’s head of the notorious Todtenkopf Division.

  Heart pounding, Paul stared in disbelief as he saw black-uniformed soldiers loading furniture into the back of the truck. What had caused his initial surprise was seeing an officer, standing by the truck, who seemed to be carrying a microphone in one hand which was connected to a small box hung around his neck. He was adjusting controls on the box with his free hand while waving the microphone toward the items of furniture as they were loaded. It was surely a microphone, but what could it be recording?

  Then two men in civilian clothes came out of the house. One was dragging the Klauses’ two five-year-old daughters by the hands. They were screaming and sobbing. The second man was leading Anna Klaus by the arm. There was no sign of Gottfried.

  Pressing back into the shadows, Paul watched the scene in bewildered anxiety.

  Anna Klaus and her two children were bundled into the back of the Opel saloon. It seemed to Paul that the entire contents of the Klaus apartment had been packed into the back of the military lorry. The vehicles pulled swiftly away.

  Paul waited until they had disappeared before emerging into the street. He hesitated and then, bracing his shoulders, went to the apartment building. In the basement lived the Klauses’ landlady, old Frau Stelhe. He knocked at the door. The old lady opened it with more alacrity than usual. Her frightened eyes recognized Paul and she grew agitated.

  ‘Go away!’ she hissed.

  ‘Where is Doctor Klaus?’ Paul demanded. ‘And where have his wife and children been taken?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Paul grew angry. ‘You must know where they have been taken.’

  The old woman swallowed nervously, glancing fearfully around her as if someone might be listening before she replied.

  ‘They have been taken. That is all. If you don’t want to get into trouble as well, you had better forget you knew them.’

  ‘But why have they been taken?’ he demanded.

  ‘Why? Who knows why? All I know is that they were taken by one of the Death’s Head squads and you know what that means. It means the camps … or worse.’

  Old Frau Stelhe slammed the door in his face.

  Paul slowly retraced his steps in the direction of the hospital.

  Such things happened, he knew that. But why to Gottfried, to Anna and their two children? The very reason why he had never talked to Gottfried and Anna about the Widerstand was that they were not the sort of people to challenge authority. They were innocent of political ideology. They accepted the status quo and held no radical or dangerous opinions. They were sincere, honest and pleasant people. They were so endearing that Paul had always found himself relaxed and fascinated, but sometimes frustrated, by their friendship.

  Why had Gottfried been picked up? And by the notorious Todtenkopf Division! Could it be something to do with the mysterious disappearing patient? That seemed ridiculous. What was dangerous about a sick SS corporal? It was beyond Paul. The only knowledge Gottfried could have picked up was a knowledge of the identity of the corporal and his illness. Was that enough to land a doctor in the hands of the Gestapo and their Death’s Head lackeys?

  Paul returned to the hospital utterly perplexed and dismayed.

  Chapter Six

  Paul left the hospital at six o’clock. It was dark, but the snowfall which had begun at lunchtime had just ceased and a moderate carpet of snow lay across the city, giving it a curious white glow in spite of the darkness. As usual, Paul walked along the Gutenbergstrasse, going past the ominous portals of the Gestapo headquarters, across the iron railway bridge and into Adolf Hitler Strasse. It was while he was crossing the bridge that he first became conscious of a feeling that he was being followed.

  Once beyond the bridge he hesitated, glanced behind him and caught a momentary glimpse of a shadow flitting into a doorway. He pretended to glance at the dark storm clouds in the sky, then pulled his collar up and walked on. He crossed the road and turned down a side street, taking further turns at random. The shadow kept behind him.

  Gestapo? Paul felt a cold sensation at the back of his neck. Yet if it was the Gestapo why didn’t they come into the open? And why send a single person to follow him? That wasn’t Gestapo style. They usually moved in twos or threes.

  He moved swiftly into the first darkened doorway he came to, a plan forming in his mind. A few moments later he was aware of the dark shadow at the top of the street. It halted and then hurried forward.

  Paul stepped out suddenly into its path.

  ‘Why are you following me?’ he demanded harshly.

  The snow reflected on the pale face of the pretty nurse from the Records Department. Her eyes were wide and frightened.

  ‘Doctor Horder … ’

  Paul drew back in surprise, feeling a moment of embarrassment.

  ‘You! You were following me, weren’t you?’ he said, less aggressively.

  The girl pressed her lips together and nodded slightly, glancing round as if to make sure they were alone in the street.

  ‘Why?’ Paul pressed.

  The girl hesitated as if making up her mind on an important decision.

  ‘I had to speak to you,’ she said finally. She looked bewildered; a lost, helpless sort of expression. Paul smiled encouragement at her and then pointed down the street to a cafe sign.

  ‘They sell the most revolting ersatz coffee in there,’ he said, ‘but at least it is wet and warm. Let’s go and have a cup while you tell me what this is all about.’

  Silently, the girl allowed herself to be led to the cafe. It was almost empty. There were a couple of boys clad in the coveralls of a Luftwaffe flak unit; air defence helpers, they were called. Even at twelve years of age, some of these boys were actually manning the 2cm and 8.8cm guns. Paul guided the girl to a corner table, then went to the counter and picked up two not-very-clean cups which the proprietor filled with an evil-smelling black sludge.

  ‘So?’ Paul smiled as he seated himself and pushed one of the cups towards the girl. ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Magda Kelter.’

  ‘And you work in the Records Department.’

  ‘Only temporarily. I am a surgical nurse but they needed someone to help out with the records. I was asked to fill in for a few shifts.’

  ‘And why were you following me like some sleuth?’

  The girl frowned, lowered her voice and leant towards him across the table. ‘I wanted to tell you something about your friend.’

  Paul’s eyes narrowed. ‘Do you mean Gottfried Klaus?’

  The girl glanced around from under lowered brows and nodded quickly.

  ‘Go on,
’ Paul encouraged her.

  ‘Yesterday afternoon Doctor Klaus came to the Records Department. It was my first time on duty there. I was alone. The doctor asked for the record of a Sturmann Stenzel. There was a folder under his name marked ‘isolation unit’. Doctor Klaus glanced through it, added a few notes and gave it back to me.’

  Paul pursed his lips. ‘You put it back in the Records?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me this morning?’

  The girl gestured helplessness with a slight shrug of her shapely shoulders.

  ‘In front of the Gestapo man? I could not even admit that I knew of the existence of that record. I pretended to them that I had not even seen Doctor Klaus yesterday, let alone knew of the existence of such a record.’

  ‘They questioned you? The Gestapo?’

  She nodded.

  ‘And so far as they are concerned, you do not know about Klaus or his patient?’

  She nodded again.

  ‘Why did you think it was necessary to hide your knowledge?’

  The girl raised her soft blue-grey eyes to his and frowned. ‘It is obvious that the Gestapo want to hide all reference to this patient.’

  Paul sighed. ‘Yes, you are right. It seems they are going to great pains to expunge all trace of this SS Corporal … what was the name? Stenzel? They have even gone to the point of arresting Doctor Klaus and his wife and children. I saw the Todtenkopf Division taking Anna Klaus and the two children away at lunchtime. It was obvious that they were being forcibly removed … probably to the camps. Gottfried has already disappeared.’

  The girl’s eyes were wide with fright.

  ‘The director told me that Gottfried has been transferred to another job. I think he was lying,’ Paul went on.

  ‘What does it all mean?’

  ‘Perhaps you can tell me,’ Paul said. ‘Did you read any of the file on this patient?’

  Magda shook her head.

  Paul had not really expected anything else. He sighed deeply again. ‘The Gestapo seem to have made a clean sweep of everything. The SS corporal, his medical records, Gottfried and even Gottfried’s family. Yes,’ he suddenly remembered, ‘even the furniture from Gottfried’s apartment. Someone seems to be going to a lot of trouble … but why?’

  The girl bit her lip, screwing her eyes up as if trying to remember something.

  ‘Doctor Klaus did make two telephone calls from the Records Office which I was not supposed to hear.’

  Paul was interested. ‘Telephone calls? To whom?’

  ‘One call was to the equipment department of the hospital. He was asking about the availability of some instrument. I’m not sure what.’ She frowned momentarily and then her face brightened. ‘Oh yes, it was a counter of some type.’

  ‘Counter?’

  ‘Yes … a Miller Counter, I think.’

  Paul sat back, turning over combinations in his mind. Then he suddenly leaned forward.

  ‘Do you mean a Geiger-Müller Counter?’

  Magda nodded eagerly. ‘That’s exactly it. That’s what Doctor Klaus asked for.’

  Paul shook his head in bewilderment. He recalled the scene in front of the Klaus’ apartment. The SS Todtenkopf man in his black coveralls with the small box and ‘microphone’, running that ‘microphone’ over the Klaus family’s furniture as it was being loaded onto the truck. The scene was suddenly vivid in his mind.

  ‘What’s a Geiger-Müller Counter?’ the girl was asking.

  ‘Something which doesn’t make sense … yet,’ Paul replied. ‘It’s an instrument invented by a couple of our physicists some time back for detecting radioactivity by means of the ionizing effects of charged particles and counting these particles mechanically.’

  Magda looked blank. Paul did not try to enlighten her further. ‘You said,’ he went on, ‘that Gottfried Klaus made a second telephone call?’

  ‘Yes. This time it was an outside call. I don’t know who he called, but I heard him asking someone if they knew what Project Wotan was.’

  ‘Project Wotan?’

  ‘Does it mean anything?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Paul replied with a shake of his head. ‘Not to me, anyway.’ He sat in silence for a few moments and then gazed thoughtfully up at the girl.

  ‘You did right, telling me this. But don’t tell anyone else. Say nothing to anyone.’

  ‘You think this is something important?’

  ‘Important enough for the Gestapo to be worried about anyone knowing about SS Sturmann Stenzel. Look —’ he reached a hand forward and laid it on the girl’s arm — ‘let’s keep in touch about this. You might hear something around the hospital that I might miss.’

  Magda Kelter smiled. ‘I have a room off the Adolf Hitler Strasse nearby.’ She took a pencil and notepad out of her handbag and scribbled the address.

  They left the cafe together and parted outside.

  ‘I really do appreciate this,’ Paul said as he shook her hand in casual farewell.

  The girl smiled, turned and walked quickly away along the street.

  *

  It was midday when Paul met Ulrich on the steps of the Arbeitsamt, the Labour Exchange, behind the ruins of the Telephone Exchange and Post Office off the Dom Platz. A throng of people were queueing for ration cards and work permits. Even in the midst of death and chaos on an immeasurable scale, the bureaucrats continued to work, forms had to be filled, papers had to be issued. The talk that day was the news that the Americans were within three miles of the West Wall, the Siegfried Line defences along the border of the Reich. Ulrich fell in step beside Paul and they strolled across the Dom Platz while Paul recounted his problem.

  ‘It’s out of my province,’ Ulrich said.

  Paul frowned. ‘But surely there must be someone we can contact who might know what this Project Wotan is all about? And there must be some trace of where the Klaus family have been taken, even if it is to a camp?’

  Ulrich shrugged. ‘All I can do is pass you on to someone else in the Widerstand who might be able to help.’

  ‘Well, that’s something,’ Paul said.

  ‘It will mean you making a trip to Dortmund.’

  Paul hesitated. The city of Dortmund lay fifty kilometres to the south, which was a long journey these days. Paul reasoned that he could probably do it if he changed his working shifts, taking a day to get to Dortmund and back and then going straight onto a night shift.

  ‘All right,’ he said.

  Ulrich glanced round quickly.

  ‘Very well, your contact in Dortmund will be “The General”.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘That will be up to him to explain, if he feels that you ought to know. Let’s see, today is Monday. If you can get to Dortmund on Wednesday, go to the Weltreisender Gastube, the Globetrotter Restaurant. You’ll find it in the Bahnhofstrasse. As you enter the restaurant, which must be between two and three o’clock in the afternoon, you will find an elderly man in the uniform of a Generaloberst of the Wehrmacht. He will be seated on the left-hand side, third table. Sit down at his table and say, “A pity the old restaurant is not as it was in the days when Otto was head waiter.” Repeat that.’

  Paul did so.

  ‘Good. The General is your contact. But remember, he will only be in the restaurant between two and three o’clock on Wednesday. If you can’t get there by then, you will have to contact me again. We change our contact points regularly.’

  ‘I understand. I’ll be able to get there on Wednesday.’

  Ulrich nodded. ‘Have you heard the news from the east?’ he asked after a moment.

  Paul shook his head.

  ‘It seems the Soviets are advancing very quickly. They are just 43 miles from Berlin according to our sources on the Eastern Front.’

  Paul whistled. ‘They’ve advanced over fifty miles in three days? That’s impossible!’

  Ulrich bit his lip. ‘Unfortunately it isn’t. The Eastern Front is a catastrophe.’ He glanced at his wa
tch. ‘I must go now. If the General has any messages for me, leave them at the usual place.’

  With a quick wave of his hand, the sallow-looking civil servant turned and strode away across the Dom Platz.

  Chapter Seven

  The train to Dortmund, a long string of sardine-packed carriages, had been due to depart from the Münster Reichsbahndirektion at noon. However, it was nearer to two o’clock when its clanking cars, filled mainly with soldiers and their equipment, finally began to roll forward. Paul had crushed himself into a compartment with a dozen Wehrmacht men. Nobody spoke; most of the soldiers simply fell asleep immediately. The train moved slowly ahead, protesting at its heavy load.

  Red cross flags were painted on the carriages even though the train, officially a civilian one, was filled mostly with troops. The Allies were bombing and strafing most of the trains anyway these days, but sometimes the sight of the red cross worked and such trains were allowed to continue unmolested.

  It seemed an age before the train wheezed to a halt and a cry of ‘Dortmund! Dortmund! Alle aussteigen! Alle aussteigen! rang along the carriages. Red Cross nurses were walking up and down outside passing food and drink to the weary soldiers.

  Paul descended to the platform and stretched, easing his cramped and aching limbs before making his way, with the crowd, toward the exit. A couple of Sicherheitspolizei stopped him immediately. Paul was used to being stopped. After all, he was a young man in civilian clothes and his limp was not obvious.

  ‘Ausweis, bitte!’

  The security police were dispassionate and efficient. Paul handed them his papers, including his army discharge.

  ‘Alles in Ordnung, Herr Doktor,’ grunted one of the policemen as he returned the papers, his eyes already scanning the crowd for other suspicious-looking persons.

  Paul left the station and turned down the rubble-strewn Bahnhofstrasse. The Weltreisender Gastube had once been one of the most fashionable dining rooms in the city. Even in the early days of the war it had been frequented by the elite of society. Now its blackened shell was no more than a canteen for the mass of passing humanity. He entered its smoke-filled atmosphere and glanced round.