Action was needed, not words.
Thinking of her father brought her brother, Erik, to mind. He was somewhere in Russia. He had written a letter home, jubilantly celebrating the rapid progress of the invasion, and angrily refusing to believe that Walter had been murdered by the Gestapo. Their father had obviously been released unharmed by the Gestapo and then attacked in the street by criminals or Communists or Jews, he asserted. He was living in a fantasy, beyond the reach of reason.
Was the same true of Father Peter?
Peter mounted the pulpit. Carla had not known he was due to preach a sermon. She wondered what he would say. Would he be inspired by what he had heard this morning? Would he speak of something irrelevant, the virtue of modesty or the sin of envy? Or would he close his eyes and devoutly thank God for the German army’s continuing victories in Russia?
He stood tall in the pulpit and swept the church with a gaze that might have been arrogant, or proud, or defiant.
‘The fifth commandment says: “Thou shalt not kill”.’
Carla met Heinrich’s eye. What was Peter going to say?
His voice rang out between the echoing stones of the nave. ‘There is a place in Akelberg, Bavaria, where our government is breaking the commandment a hundred times a week!’
Carla gasped. He was doing it – he was preaching a sermon against the programme! This could change everything.
‘It makes no difference that the victims are handicapped, or mentally ill, or incapable of feeding themselves, or paralysed.’ Peter was letting his anger show. ‘Helpless babies and senile old people are all God’s children, and their lives are as sacred as yours and mine.’ His voice rose in volume. ‘To kill them is a mortal sin!’ He lifted his right arm and made a fist, and his voice shook with emotion. ‘I say to you that if we do nothing about it, we sin just as much as the doctors and nurses who administer the lethal injections. If we remain silent . . .’ He paused. ‘If we remain silent, we are murderers too!’
Inspector Thomas Macke was furious. He had been made to look a fool in the eyes of Superintendent Kringelein and the rest of his superiors. He had assured them he had plugged the leak. The secret of Akelberg – and hospitals of the same kind in other parts of the country – was safe, he had said. He had tracked down the three troublemakers, Werner Franck, Pastor Ochs and Walter von Ulrich, and in different ways he had silenced each of them.
And yet the secret had come out.
The man responsible was an arrogant young priest called Peter.
Father Peter was in front of Macke now, naked, strapped by wrists and ankles to a specially constructed chair. He was bleeding from the ears, nose, and mouth, and had vomit all down his chest. Electrodes were attached to his lips, his nipples and his penis. A strap around his forehead prevented him from breaking his neck while the convulsions shook him.
A doctor sitting beside the priest checked his heart with a stethoscope and looked dubious. ‘He can’t stand much more,’ he said in a matter-of-fact tone.
Father Peter’s seditious sermon had been taken up elsewhere. The Bishop of Munster, a much more important clergyman, had preached a similar sermon, denouncing the T4 programme. The bishop had called upon Hitler to save the people from the Gestapo, cleverly implying that the Fuhrer could not possibly know about the programme, thereby offering Hitler a ready-made alibi.
His sermon had been typed out and duplicated and passed from hand to hand all over Germany.
The Gestapo had arrested every person found in possession of a copy, but to no avail. It was the only time in the history of the Third Reich that there had been a public outcry against any government action.
The clampdown was savage, but it did no good: the duplicates of the sermon continued to proliferate, more clergymen prayed for the handicapped, and there was even a protest march in Akelberg. It was out of control.
And Macke was to blame.
He bent over Peter. The priest’s eyes were closed and his breathing was shallow, but he was conscious. Macke shouted in his ear: ‘Who told you about Akelberg?’
There was no reply.
Peter was Macke’s only lead. Investigations in the town of Akelberg had turned up nothing of significance. Reinhold Wagner had been told a story about two girl cyclists who had visited the hospital, but no one knew who they were; and another story about a nurse who had resigned suddenly, writing a letter saying she was getting married in haste, but not revealing who the husband was. Neither clue led anywhere. In any case, Macke felt sure this calamity could not be the work of a gaggle of girls.
Macke nodded to the technician operating the machine. He turned a knob.
Peter screamed in agony as the electrical current coursed through his body, torturing his nerves. He shook as if in a fit, and the hair on his head stood up.
The operator turned the current off.
Macke screamed: ‘Give me his name!’
At last Peter opened his mouth.
Macke leaned closer.
