After a brief photo session, Karl disappeared into his workshop carrying his camera. “He has a darkroom in there, but you’d never find it if you didn’t know where to look,” confided Lottie.
He reappeared half an hour later, carrying a folded piece of paper. Opening it up, he showed me my photograph. It was perfect, a real professional standard.
“Have you any birthmarks or scars?” he asked.
“I have a scar on my left leg,” I said. “Crete, shrapnel grazed my leg, didn’t do any real damage but opened up a tear of about five centimetres. The first aid by the medics was a hell of a lot more painful than the actual wound.”
Karl smiled. “I can imagine. Let me have a look at it.”
Lottie looked away while I dropped my trousers. The scar is quite ugly with stitch marks all round it where the medics had very crudely sewn it up, poured some sort of disinfectant on the wound, then wrapped a field dressing around it and sent me back into action.
“Perfect!” announced Karl. “Couldn’t be better.”
Karl kissed his wife. “I’ll be back in time for dinner, Lottie. Horst, come with me to the workshop, you can stay in the darkroom tonight. Don’t worry about Gudrun, I’ll call in on my way.”
I thanked him and warned him about the security precautions. He chuckled. “She sounds like a very enterprising lady. I’ll pick you up at dinner time,” he said, “but best to lie low for now.”
In the workshop, he walked over to an incredibly old and decrepit wall unit, which had once graced someone’s living room. As he slipped his hand behind the right side, I heard a click; this was repeated on the other side. Karl then slid the wall unit along the floor.
“Lockable castors,” he said in explanation.
Once clear, the wall unit revealed a door which led into a concealed room, as wide as the workshop but very narrow. Without measuring the workshop inside and out, it would be impossible to know of the room’s existence. At one end was Karl’s darkroom equipment complete with workbench, overhead drying wires and a red lamp. At the other end was a single bed.
“The room doubles as a spare room for ‘special’ guests,” said Karl, emphasising ‘special’. “There’s plenty of ventilation, and there’s a low wattage light at the top of the bed. You can use that—it can’t be seen from outside. I’ll see you in a little while.”
The little while turned out to be a couple of hours, but eventually I heard the castor locks click and the wall unit roll across the floor before the door opened revealing Karl, smiling broadly.
“Dinner’s ready!” he said. “We can take a chance on an unexpected visit—there are places to hide you in the house if we’re caught out.”
The meal was quite astonishing! We sat down to eisbein with sauerkraut and pea puree and shared a Mosel Spätlese. I didn’t have the audacity to ask them how they had come by such fare, I just sat and enjoyed the best meal I’d eaten in a long, long time. After dinner, Karl produced a bottle of Asbach and filled three schnapps glasses, distributing them with a smile.
By this time, I was thinking about Gudrun and feeling very guilty. As if reading my mind, Karl said, “Don’t worry about Gudrun and Hellie, Horst. I saw her and told her where you were. She is okay, and I left her a couple of very nice cooked schnitzels. She’ll have to eat them cold though. I told her not to heat them at the communal cooker outside in Belforter Strasse. I don’t want people asking awkward questions.”
Breakfast the following morning was a delicious Strammer Max, after which I was led back to the secret room. “When I return at lunchtime, I expect to have everything fixed,” he said reassuringly.
Karl was as good as his word. He collected me from the darkroom at around midday.
“No need to hide anymore,” he said, “everything is sorted.”
Karl showed me my new documentation. I was Horst Manteufel of Belforter Strasse, medically discharged from some insignificant regiment of the Wehrmacht as a result of a very severe leg wound sustained in Poland in 1940. Everything was there: my civilian pass, my medical discharge certificate and my driving licence.
“In addition,” said Karl, “the records in the police station on Stahlheimer Strasse show that you registered there two days ago. Now we need to talk about a job. When I answered the door yesterday, I told you I was too busy to take on any work. That’s not strictly true. I could get plenty of work, but very few people have any money to pay, and nothing of value to barter. I’d like to help everyone, but I have very limited materials and difficulty in getting more, so I have to preserve my building supplies for those customers who can pay. Which means I need some other means to keep the wolf from the door.”
I knew what he was going to say before he said it.
“I have a little side-line which involves buying food from farmers on the outskirts of the city and selling it locally. Strictly illegal of course, so the farmers will only sell to a very few people they can trust. It’s become much more difficult now, since my old ‘Maggi’ gave up on me.” He flicked his head towards the old vehicle.
“I do have another side-line, which can be quite lucrative, and promises to become more so in the coming months,” he said with a whimsical smile.
I raised my eyebrows inquiringly.
“I move people!”
“You move people? From where to where?”
“From Berlin to Genoa, initially, and from there to Paraguay, Argentina, Peru, Brazil,” he said with a shrug that suggested it was the most natural thing in the world.
“As you’ve seen, I have the help of a master forger. You can literally become anyone and live anywhere. But I need help, and you need a job. What do you say?”
So, I became a ‘bricklayer’s
