It was an uncomfortable feeling for Stefan Gillespie, but it was true.
‘Why would you worry about me, Hugo? Like you said, you’ve got friends. No one’s waiting to arrest you. Whatever happened in Merrion Square no one even wants to talk to you.’
That seemed to please Keller. For a moment he smiled; but he couldn’t keep the present at bay.
‘There’s nothing to stay here for. Not just Danzig, Germany, Austria.’
He lowered his voice, shaking his head as he spoke.
‘If you want to know what’s coming, Mr Gillespie, you only have to listen. But nobody is. Nobody wants to hear. You’re close enough to it in Danzig though. Use your ears. Walk through the streets and fucking listen.’
He drained his glass of beer and stood up. ‘If Miss Rosen isn’t here, be grateful for it. Just forget what you know and what you think you know and fuck off.’ He walked out.
When Stefan left the bar, the street outside was quiet. The water of the New Mottlau lapped gently against the barges moored on the Speicherinsel side. He didn’t know how much faith to put in anything Hugo Keller had said. What he did know, because it was in every line of the Austrian’s now thin and sallow face, was that fear was driving everything he did. Hannah was a part of that fear; anything that threatened him was a part of that fear. If the Gestapo had arrested her, Keller would have known. It wasn’t much, but it was something. He took his bearings, trying to work out where he was as he walked towards the Mattenbuden Bridge. It would take him over the canal to the Granary Island. The island was a maze of old, crumbling warehouses, but if he kept to the lane called Munchengasse it would bring him across the island to the Cow Bridge and the Mottlau River itself. Hundegasse would lead him to the other end of the old town, and back to the Danziger Hof.
As he stepped off the bridge into Munchengasse the high, gabled fronts of its medieval granaries rose up on either side of the narrow lane. They were shuttered and barred; there were no lights anywhere. He could hear a rumbling sound from the other side of the city. It came and went. It was the Goebbels rally. He could make out the sound of people cheering and shouting; it was like a distant football match. He was conscious of footsteps behind him. He looked round. The footsteps stopped. He could see no one, but he was sure there had been movement in the dark street. And innocent footsteps didn’t stop that quickly. He walked on. There were lights ahead, along the Lange Brucke on the other side of the Mottlau; he could hear the traffic now. And still the ominous roar of voices rose and fell over the Free City. The footsteps were behind him again. He looked back, not stopping this time. There was a man following him. As he turned his head the man’s footsteps slowed. When he turned back towards the river there were headlights. A car had pulled into the narrow street in front of him. It was moving quite slowly. Then it stopped. The headlights went off. The doors opened and two men got out. They stood where they were, just waiting.
He had seconds to make a decision. The best bet seemed to be the man behind him. If he could get past him he had a chance. In the Granary Island’s maze of alleyways he didn’t have to know where he was going; he only had to get lost. He turned and ran. He could hear the two men from the car chasing him. Ahead he saw the third man waiting — a youth — barely out of his teens. The boy was terrified, but he stepped forward to block Stefan’s way. Stefan flung out his hand to push him off. The youth threw himself across the street, bringing Stefan crashing down on to the cobbles on top of him. As he pulled himself up the boy clung to his coat, then to his leg, holding him back. Stefan kicked him away, but stronger arms held him from behind. He tried to hit out. He felt another arm round his throat. A hand holding a white cloth clamped itself over his face. He could hear the roaring voices on the night air. ‘Back to Germany! Danzig, back to Germany!’ There was the sweet, sharp smell of chloroform. And then he blacked out.
17. The Forest Opera
As Stefan Gillespie came to he was in complete darkness and the darkness was in motion. He was dizzy. He tried to move but he could push his legs only a few inches before they came up against some kind of wall. There was a smell of oil and leather and something sweet. The disorientation was clearing; he recognised the sweetness. It was chloroform, quite faint now, but enough to bring what had just happened into focus. He was in the boot of a car, doubled up and barely able to move, but not tied. He could make no sense of why he was there. If the Gestapo wanted to teach him a lesson, surely a few broken ribs would have done. This was something else. He didn’t know the Nazis but he had grown up in a civil war. When they came for you, whichever side it was, they didn’t need to take you away for a thrashing; they only took you away when they intended to kill you.
Occasionally he heard faint voices over the sound of the engine. Nothing he could make out, but he thought there were two of them in the car. He couldn’t tell how long they’d been driving. The jolting was worse now. The car had to be off the road on some kind of track. His thoughts were all of Tom now. It couldn’t end here. He had to do something. He reached out with his left hand. He could feel something on the floor. He stretched his fingers along it. It was a wrench or a tyre lever. He gripped it. When the boot opened he might have his opportunity. If he feigned unconsciousness they’d pull him out. There would be a moment, maybe the only one, to take them off guard and run. The car stopped. He heard dogs barking. The doors opened. The sound of feet. They were at the back of the car now. As the boot lifted he saw darkness and trees. That was good. If he could get into the trees he would have some chance at least. Torchlight shone down on to his face. He closed his eyes.
‘He’s still out.’
Someone else was approaching. Stefan was gathering his strength. As soon as he was upright he would have to use every bit of that strength.
‘Wake him up.’
His hand tightened on the tyre lever. He was ready to hit out. But the touch on his face was unexpectedly gentle. There was a scent he recognised.
‘Come on then sleepy head!’
He opened his eyes. In the torchlight, Hannah was smiling at him.
They were somewhere above the Free City, in the forests that climbed the hills overlooking Langfuhr and Oliva. There was a small clearing here, and an old hunting lodge. It was a single-storey building with some kennels and an enclosure of cast-iron railings at one side. Tiles had fallen from the roof; windows were broken; ivy crawled up the crumbling brickwork. But inside the lodge a fire burned in the grate and there was a basket of cut timber. Animal traps hung from the walls. There was an oak table in front of the fire. And there was a bottle of Machandel vodka on it. Hannah Rosen and Stefan Gillespie sat on a bench opposite one of the men who had pulled her off the street outside the Danziger Hof. An hour ago the same man had clamped a chloroform-soaked handkerchief over Stefan’s face on the Speicherinsel. He was in his mid-twenties, thin, with fair, curling hair. He called himself Leon, here anyway. Two grey Weimaraner dogs stretched out in front of the fire.
The fact that Hugo Keller was in Danzig had surprised and shocked Hannah. She wanted explanations, but as Stefan gave them they only silenced her. She had achieved nothing. She had put her own life and the lives of others at risk, and she hadn’t even got the truth out of Francis Byrne. She heard the words of the old man in the library again. He was right. She had almost delivered herself to the Gestapo, walking blindly into a situation she didn’t understand, in a place she had no business to be. Stefan had been in a Gestapo cell because of her. He didn’t tell her he was lucky he wasn’t still there, but she knew it anyway. She thought about the boy he had brought with him to the synagogue in Adelaide Road, who talked about the tricycle in the window at Clery’s. She had felt a lot in the last few days, anger, frustration, loneliness, shock, fear; now as she sat beside Stefan she felt sick inside. She needed to touch him, but she couldn’t. She was glad he was there; she had wanted him there. But she was irritated by the number of people who had every right to make a list of her mistakes and throw it at her now.
Hugo Keller troubled Leon; the whole thing troubled him.
‘So you bump into this Keller, in the police station in Weidengasse, where you’ve just been interrogated by the Gestapo, about Hannah. He’s a man you arrested in Dublin last year, who was spirited out of Ireland by influential friends, including some Irish policemen and the Nazi Gauleiter, Adolf Mahr. You find out he’s working for the Gestapo in Danzig now, and he’s blackmailing this priest, Byrne, at the cathedral. Then the two of you go out for a drink together.’ He looked at Stefan hard. ‘Does that sound odd?’
‘It wasn’t easy to say no to a drink. He’d just lied about knowing me. If he’d told them who I was they’d have taken me straight back to the cell.’
