Armageddon (12 page)

“Gone,” he lamented, “everything is gone. The villages, Castle Romstein, the Machine Works. Everything is gone.”

“Shut up,” Count Ludwig commanded. Even at this dreadful time his sharp voice stopped his brother’s babbling. “Louts,” Ludwig continued.

“What are they going to do with us?” Sigmund whined.

“For the time being, nothing. They will prod us for information and use us as fronts to do their dirty laundry.”

“We are clean! We have never been Nazi Party members!’’

“No, poor Kurt joined the party for us.”

“And now he is dead. You made him join the party. It was you, Ludwig!” he cried in a rare show of defiance.

The count slapped his brother and hovered above him in rage, his dueling scar darkening to an ugly purple. “Kurt joined the party for the Von Romstein family! Remember that! And you will control yourself, Sigmund. That is just what those people want ... for you to lose your composure before them.”

The baron gasped out that he understood.

“I have made the decision. We will remain here,” Ludwig continued.

“I am afraid of that American major. He hates us.”

“You need not be. He is an American obsessed by the stringent rules of fair play. What the devil do the Americans know about the game of war and conquest? What do they know about ruling a people? They are a mongrelized race protected by isolation from the realities of ashes and blood. Mark my words, when the last shot is fired the Americans will cry to go home. You can thank God the Russians didn’t get here first ... or even the French.”

“I don’t know. I saw something in this one’s eyes. I tell you, he means to ruin us.”

“Nonsense. As for the other two, it will be a pleasure for the young idiot with the Italian name to interrogate us. But ... be careful of the Frenchman.”

“Careful for what? They have already taken everything.”

“We shall get it all back. The Von Romstein family has lived through this crisis a hundred times. Let them make their accusations. Let them jail us. But we have time, Sigmund. We have time and we have heirs. One year, five, ten. It will all be restored to us eventually, with proper apology. The Americans will go and the French will go ... and there will still be Von Romstein.”

Chapter Seventeen

S
EAN’S PHONE RANG. “
M
AJOR
O’Sullivan.”

“This is Captain Armour, with Colonel Dundee’s outfit. We’ve broken into the concentration camp. Colonel Dundee says to get over here right away with your health officer.”

“What’s the picture, Captain?”

“It can’t be described. I’ll pick you up at Ludwigsdorf and lead you in.”

“We’ll be right over.”

They crossed over the pontoon bridge to the south bank of the Landau in two jeep loads. Downstream they passed the magnificent estates, the Kurhaus Casino, the spa hotels, then swung inland into the district countryside. In the excitement Sean had forgotten and let Maurice Duquesne follow him. He corrected the situation and let the Frenchman take the lead. There was Grimwood, mumbling about Sean locking up several German Blacklist doctors he needed, Blessing, and, of course, O’Toole.

In the other jeep Bolinski, the lawyer and displaced persons officer, and Dante Arosa prayed for their safety at Duquesne’s wheelsmanship.

Romstein District was lush and pastoral. The unscarred villages they passed seemed to have been at peace for a thousand years. Curious farmers and villagers, knowing now they would not be harmed, studied the speeding American jeeps in half friendliness and some of the children waved.

As they approached Ludwigsdorf, which directly served the Von Romstein estates, they could see Romstein Castle on a hill in the distance. Near the highway there was a small railroad station, used to transport Romstein products; in the center of the village stood a church with a tall tower and onion-shaped dome, a replica of the cathedral in Rombaden. Within its vaults lay centuries of the Von Romstein dynasty’s dead.

Captain Armour flagged them down in the square, jumped into his own jeep, and led them out. The rail line angled sharply and ran parallel with the road into the Schwabenwald Forest. They raced toward the mass of dark green with sunlight coming in flickers as the road snaked through the forest.

A large sign pocked with bullet holes blared out at them:
WARNING! CONCENTRATION CAMP GROUNDS! DO NOT PROCEED BEYOND THIS POINT! VIOLATORS SUBJECT TO SEVERE PENALTY!
There was a death’s head insignia below the words.

A few dozen battle-weary American soldiers sat along the roadside, backs propped against trees, dull-brained from the fight, digging half-heartedly at cans of ham and nibbling at the chocolate in their rations.

A pretty wooden bridge forded a stream. Nestled about the forest were about fifty lovely cottages with little gardens planted before them. These were the homes of the married SS officers.

A few hundred yards past the cottages they broke into an immense clearing in what must have been dead center of the forest. A high, solid gate blocked them. It was flanked by two empty guard boxes, an archway over the gate. This, too, had a sign. It read:
SCHWABENWALD CONCENTRATION CAMP.
Below it were words of wisdom in Gothic print declaring that all who came here and performed honest labor would redeem their sins.

Once inside this outer gate they were on a street of administrative buildings and barracks of the SS Death’s Head Units. Captain Armour halted before the commandant’s building.

From the moment they had entered Schwabenwald Forest Sean and the others had been aware of a bad odor. They had smelled it before in places where corpses were left to rot. As they drove through the forest it persisted and strengthened. Now it was overwhelming.

From the terrible silence there was little doubt but that they had come to a place of awesome catastrophe. Colonel Dundee stood in the middle of a dozen of his officers and men. With not a single word of greeting he got into his jeep and led Sean’s party down the street to a place where a ten-foot wall of barbed wire ran off in either direction for half a mile. Beyond this wall was a path six feet wide and an inner wall of barbed wire. Conductors on the poles indicated it was electrified. At precisely every thirty yards stood a wooden guard tower with searchlights and machine guns.

They drove into the heart of Schwabenwald.

When the inspection was done they sat about limp and drained and Sean felt himself in the same nightmare as after Tim’s death. How could the human race have come to this?

Colonel Dundee was a man who charted death. Dr. Grimwood had lived with the pained. Blessing had known blood. They were all stunned and silent.

Dante Arosa and Bolinski retched outside the office; young O’Toole cried.

Maurice Duquesne, who had mingled sweat with the Germans, who was arrogant about his sophistication, broke the agonizing silence. “How in the name of God could they have done this!”

“Let us just hope,” Dundee said unevenly, “that this Commandant Klaus Stoll was a maniac. Let’s just hope to God there are no more places like this.”

“There couldn’t be! God almighty, there couldn’t be!”

And then the horrible silence fell on them again.

My brothers died for this! What fools ever claimed they knew the Germans! Make the sick well, General Hansen? Sure! Come have a look.

Geoffrey Grimwood rediscovered life first. “We must get on with the job,” he said. “I’ll need all the help I can get. Can you assign me some of your doctors and medics?”

Dundee said he could.

“I’ll have to ask for supplies and advice. I don’t know if anyone knows much about this. Is there any idea how many there are alive in there?”

“Maybe three or four thousand,” Captain Armour said.

“We’ll need a very large place to hold them.”

“How about the castle?”

“No. I’d best have them moved into Rombaden. We’ve got to utilize the facilities of the hospital and Medical College ...”

Sean heard the conversation only in blurs.

“We’d best sort them out and get the dead buried at once. Sean, do you have any objection to putting those captured SS brutes to work on the burial detail? I say, Sean ... we’ve got to bury the dead.”

“The dead will not be buried!” Sean cried.

“Come now, old man. We are all shaken up over this thing. They must be buried at once.”

“No! They will not be buried. Not until every goddamned son of a bitch in Rombaden walks over every inch of this camp.”

“It will take a lot of doing to force them,” Dundee said.

“No one ...
no one
will be issued a food-ration card until he goes through this camp.”

“It’s six miles to Rombaden. They’ve got a lot of old people and kids. You’re not going to make the kids look at this,” Dundee said.

“Like hell I’m not. They’ll walk like they made the slaves walk every day and every night to the factories. And if they’re too old let them be carried on the backs of their fellow Germans.”

“The children?”

“Their mothers may cover their eyes, but they’ll take the stench of this place to their graves. As for the SS ... Blessing, lock them up in the gas chambers. Let them live in there awhile.”

Sean’s burst had been spent.

“I’m not going to let you do this, Major. We’re buying all kinds of trouble,” Dundee said.

“I take full responsibility.”

“But you’re irrational.”

Sean walked slowly to the colonel and stood nose to nose. “As military governor, my authority supersedes yours, Colonel. If you have a beef, register it with headquarters. If you try and stop me, I’ll have you locked up. Blessing! Find out the colonel’s pleasure!”

Colonel Dandy Dundee, a rough fighter from the ranks, was neither prepared for the ultimatum, the fury of the major, nor the consequences. Everyone about them hung frozen. Dundee broke, turned, and walked away.

“All right, Doc. You said something about needing room?”

“Yes. Although many of them are near the end. We must prepare for a dreadful fatality rate. It would be useless to move some of them out.”

“It is not useless. All of the living will be taken out of here. If they are to die at least they won’t die looking at this goddamned barbed wire. They’ve seen enough of it.” Tears of pain for those poor human animals fell down Sean’s cheeks. “Colonel Dundee. Could you please place your motor transport at my disposal?”

“Yes, Major.”

“Thank you, Colonel. Maurice. Have all German patients removed from the hospital in Rombaden. Commandeer the cathedral. Remove all the benches. Take beds and bedding out of as many German homes as we will need to accommodate these people. But for God’s sake, get them out of this place! Get them out of here!”

O’Toole was ill at ease at the presence of Father Gottfried from the cathedral. The priest wore slightly different garments than American priests, his voice was deep and booming, his face dark, and his eyebrows thick. In fact, he looked very much like a German soldier to O’Toole. In one way he was the enemy, O’Toole reckoned. On the other hand he was a priest and therefore could not be the enemy. It was perplexing and made him nervous. He ushered him into Sean’s office.

“I would have paid my respects earlier,” Father Gottfried said, “but I can understand the urgencies you have been under.”

“What’s on your mind, Father?” Sean asked.

“The requisition of Marienkirche.”

“What about it?”

“I understand it is going to be turned into a hospital.”

“That’s right.”

“Of course I am in great sympathy with those poor souls, but you must try to realize, my son, that the Marienkirche is not only a house of God but a tradition unbroken for centuries that is important to us here ...”

“Father Gottfried,” Sean interrupted, “let’s not horse around with each other. I don’t give a damn for your unbroken traditions or what the people think. As far as you are concerned, if we examine your hands closely we will find Nazi dirt under your fingernails. I am, however, a Catholic and I cannot in the conscience of my faith jail a priest.”

Father Gottfried was hardly prepared for the harsh words. Sean had cut from under him the common bond with which he hoped to appeal and he groped for words.

“Your congregation can pray with the Lutherans. The Lord will forgive them. It is about time a cathedral bearing the name of the Virgin Mother is returned to God’s work.”

“You are no doubt aware,” the priest blurted, “that there exists a concordat signed by the Pope with the German Government over ten years ago.”

“I do not believe that the Catholic Church and the Nazis are compatible. In this district I happen to be more powerful than the Pope.”

“Be careful of what you say!”

“Father Gottfried. I am prepared to answer for my acts in heaven, hell, or purgatory. The Holy Father will have to answer for his.”

“You are no Catholic!”

“And you, sir, are no priest of my church. The men of my church who served God properly have been locked up for five years in Compound A of the Schwabenwald Concentration Camp. You will be at the head of the line with Graf Von Romstein and lead the people of Rombaden to the camp ... and take a good look at the fruits of your fine traditions, Father.”

Chapter Eighteen

T
HE
M
ARCH MACABRE LASTED
for the entire day. The line of grumbling shufflers stretched from the pontoon bridge for six miles along the road to the forest. Graf Ludwig Von Romstein, Baron Sigmund, and Father Gottfried led them. In the opposite direction truckloads of half-dead inmates were raced out of Schwabenwald to the cathedral. The marchers turned their eyes away. At Ludwigsdorf the villagers of the district joined those from Rombaden, and together they walked, the stench growing stronger.

They saw it all. Most of them looked on in silence. Some fainted, some vomited, a few wept. The mothers, indeed, held their hands over the eyes of their children.

And when it was over they clutched their food-ration certificates in sweaty hands and stumbled back to Rombaden.

“I am old. I had nothing to do with it. Why did they make me see it?”