The Prisoner Read online

  Marc’s heart pounded and he slid the pistol out of the prisoner jacket just in case. The younger man was looking around, but fortunately with the torch extinguished it was much harder to see the sock or the damp footprints.

  ‘You could get up on to the roof easily enough from here,’ the younger cop noted.

  Marc pulled his clothes bundle tighter and got ready to run as the older officer looked around. The gun wouldn’t reload without its recoil spring, but with luck he could shoot one officer with the bullet in the chamber, jump down on to the market hall roof and run along the metal gantry until .. .

  Until what?

  ‘You’re more than welcome to go clambering over rooftops,’ the older officer laughed, as he lit a match for the cigarettes. ‘But I won’t be joining you. They say this kid is fifteen. Is he really gonna run to Gestapo headquarters to hide?’

  ‘You mark my words. He’ll be squatting in a garden, or lying under a car. He’ll move when he gets hungry and they’ll pick him up at the first checkpoint he comes to. If it wasn’t the Baron’s grandson, I’d probably still be in bed listening to my wife snoring her ugly head off.’

  ‘The Standartenfuhrer said he smelled sewage up here,’ the younger officer said.

  ‘That pompous arse either smelled his own bullshit, or that stuck-up bitch Eiffel chuffed one out of her drawers.’

  ‘I still think …’

  The older cop interrupted, sounding irritated. ‘We’d get bird shit all over our uniforms. Stop going on about it. Relax, smoke and watch the world go by. You’d better learn to take things easy if you’re gonna live to be an old man like me.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Marc huddled in the rooftop shelter, damp clothes spread out to dry, towel under his head and the grubby prisoner jacket as a blanket. If they found him up here there was no escape, so he kept the gun close: better to blow his own brains out than go through brutal interrogation and die a few days later.

  Hunger and nerves made sleep hard, but Marc clocked up a few ten-or twenty-minute bursts. It was one of the warmest days of the year so far and thirst began to torment him as morning broke.

  Occasionally he heard muffled conversations, or a cabinet drawer slamming in the archives below. A few times he thought he heard footsteps on the flat roof, but pigeons were the only company that existed outside his imagination.

  The day passed agonisingly. Marc started feeling light-headed as his body demanded food and water, but it would be insanely risky to venture down into the office before the Labour Administration staff clocked off at 6 p.m. In some ways the hunger was a relief: having an appetite made him hopeful that he’d fought off the stomach bug.

  With no watch it was hard to judge time, but when Marc finally saw the sun dropping behind smoking factory chimneys, he decided it was nearer to seven than six and made his move.

  His clothes were dry, if a little stiff. The chlorine had partly bleached his trousers, leaving them colour streaked and a few shades lighter. This was actually a lucky accident, because the Gestapo would have picked up the matching jacket that he’d left on his bunk when Fischer dragged him out of bed.

  The chair had been taken back inside, so Marc had to swing over the roof’s edge and drop on to the balcony. It would have been no problem when he was fit, but the landing buckled his weak knee and sent waves of pain through his chest and legs.

  The balcony door didn’t have a lock. Marc peered cautiously into the sixth-floor office and was pleased to see all lights off and nobody home. He trembled as he dashed the length of the office towards the toilet. The wall clock said 6:25, which was earlier than he’d have liked, but his only concern was sticking his head under the cold tap and gulping his first drink in fifteen hours.

  Food was Marc’s next thought. He ventured down to the fifth-floor offices after ten minutes carefully listening for signs of life. The open staircase gave a clear view over the market hall. There was a rush down below, with prisoners frantically loading a pair of trains in the sidings out back.

  Pallets, barrels, tank tracks, bags of horse feed and even huge artillery pieces had to be lifted on to open carriages by two-dozen prisoners using a manual hoist. German supervisors motivated their staff with angry shouts and riding crops.

  It was the kind of chaos Marc had hoped to run into the night before, but he now had no intention of leaving without money and a much clearer escape plan.

  He was pleased to find the fifth-floor office locked, which meant there was no late meeting, or last-minute letters being typed inside. It was the same type of lock that he’d popped on the sixth floor the night before, and the benefit of experience meant he cracked it with the bent recoil spring in seconds.

  Thinking of his stomach, Marc opened the secretaries’ desk drawers, hoping to find something. When that failed he rifled through bins. His quest for a crust or apple core was fruitless, but he scored a minor haul in Commandant Eiffel’s office.

  She must have had an important meeting earlier in the day, because a tray with plates and used coffee cups rested on her sideboard. It would have been Marc’s job to clean this up when Vogel was commandant, but Eiffel had left it for the cleaners.

  Sugar was in short supply, but a couple of spoonfuls remained in the bottom of a silver bowl, along with the dry edge of a pastry and a blob of jam stuck to the side of a plate. Marc dived in, tipping the sugar granules into his mouth, cramming down the pastry, dabbing up all the loose pastry crumbs and washing it all down with a splash of cold and revolting ersatz coffee5.

  It was less than a tenth of the daily calories a teenager like Marc needed to survive, but the sugar rush gave an instant energy boost. As his mind came into focus, Marc considered his main dilemma:

  Over time, the Gestapo would start to believe he’d already left the area and scale down their search. If he could wait another day or two, he’d be able to skip town more easily. But he was already feeling light-headed. There was no food here and if he didn’t eat properly soon, he wouldn’t have the strength to escape.

  *

  Marc spent the next hour working up a set of documents. Travel permits were only valid for a journey commencing on a specific day, but with an unlimited supply of blanks he typed himself permits for each of the next four days. He gave himself different names and destinations, then typed up prisoner release letters that he could use to get identity and ration cards from an administrative office when he arrived in France.

  When everything was stamped, signed and triple-checked for errors, he put the whole lot in an envelope, along with the two lookalike photographs he’d found the night before. He couldn’t stick the pictures down until he knew which set he’d end up using.

  The RLA regularly sent prisoners from one place to another, so the office had a railway map and timetables for most of the major routes.

  Marc had already studied German trains when he’d arranged to escape with his cabin mates aboard the Oper. The Frankfurt–Bonn–Paris route he’d selected then was fast and direct, but that plan had relied on having nobody missing them until after they’d reached France.

  Marc was now the most wanted fugitive in Frankfurt, so he needed to do something more sophisticated than simply going to the main station and booking tickets for the most obvious route home.

  He spent thirty minutes studying alternatives, including travelling from local stations where security was likely to be more relaxed, and the possibility of throwing the Gestapo off the scent by travelling deeper into Germany before boarding a train that crossed into France.

  He wrote down several routes and lists of train times, but no one route stood out. They all had their own set of risks and danger, and the longer he studied the railway map the more his thoughts turned back to his growling stomach.

  Marc had thought up two options for food. The first was to sneak down into the market hall, locate crates of canned food waiting to be loaded on to a train and steal some. But food pallets were always well guarded from theft by the hungry priso
ners, there would be an investigation when the damaged boxes were found and his diet would be restricted to a single type of food.

  The second option was to use the staff canteen. Marc had collected Commandant Vogel’s lunch on many occasions. Although the Reich Labour Administration was a civilian organisation, the commandant and senior staff who worked in Großmarkthalle were given a military ration ticket, allowing them to eat in the canteen.

  Vogel always kept his lunch tickets in his desk, but Marc had already searched the commandant’s office when he’d been looking for food and apparently Eiffel carried her card around. But Marc knew that unissued ration cards were kept in a locked metal cabinet.

  He could have picked the lock, but didn’t even need to do that because Vogel was a forgetful soul who kept spare keys taped behind the toilet cistern in his private bathroom. If he’d told Eiffel about them before he got sent east, she hadn’t bothered to move them.

  Lunch ticket books were stamped with the owner’s name when they were issued, but individual perforated tickets could be torn off and used separately, allowing staff to pick up food for colleagues.

  Marc swiped a brand-new book with fourteen tickets, along with a few coins from the petty cash tin, from which Vogel or one of the battleaxe sisters used to give him money when he was sent to the post office with telegrams. Taking a larger sum would be noticed, so Marc decided not to risk that until he was leaving for good.

  Wearing his prisoner jacket and trying his best to look confident and purposeful, Marc moved downstairs, shuddering involuntarily as he passed the fourth-floor landing in front of Gestapo headquarters.

  One of the trains was still being prepared for departure. He dodged prisoners pushing overloaded carts and made it down the hallway to a basement canteen, earning nothing more stressful than a curious glance from one of the German supervisors.

  Marc assumed the greatest risk would be getting recognised by one of the canteen staff, and he kept his hand on the gun in his pocket as he exited the main hall and walked down ten metres of corridor.

  Hunger made even the sulphurous smell of stewed greens appealing. What Marc hadn’t anticipated was stepping in and finding the serving counter shuttered and nothing in the seating area but condiments, crumbs and a few scrunched newspapers.

  He glanced at a couple of the papers. One was a Frankfurt evening paper and had the bottom third of the front page dedicated to his escape. The headline: Hunt for boy prisoner. Heir to Von Osterhagen fortune among dead.

  Osterhagen was a decent guard and his death saddened Marc, but he was pleased to find no picture of himself, just a vague description: young, 170 cm, fair hair, speaks good German.

  The counter was shuttered from the inside, but the door alongside it had the same simple lock as the ones he’d already picked to get into the offices. He listened at the door for a few seconds to make sure no one was behind it, then used the pistol spring and a good bang with his palm to open up.

  The lights were off inside. There were big ovens and gas hobs, and it was sweltering where they’d been running for most of the day.

  Marc was drawn to the larder at the back of the room. It would have been safest to grab as much as he could and leave quickly, but he was so hungry that he couldn’t resist grabbing a cook’s knife and slicing a chunk from a hanging bierschinken sausage.

  Marc’s taste buds erupted as his mouth filled with the mixture of pistachio nuts, ham and garlic. Next he went for a chunk of rich white sausage, made from veal, cream and eggs. The food he’d picked up here for Commandant Vogel had always been plentiful but basic, so Marc guessed this luxury fare was reserved for senior Nazi officials.

  After a few indulgent mouthfuls, Marc realised he needed to be sensible. He’d only eaten one small meal since his bout of illness and it was better to eat plain food than to gorge on rich stuff and end up spewing.

  He’d only have been able to get a couple of meals if the canteen had been open, so the closure was a bonus. Marc found a small cloth sack with a few grains of barley in the bottom and began stuffing it.

  He wanted high-energy foods that would stay edible for a few days, so he went for cheese, sausage, canned pork, a large tin of condensed milk, sugar, biscuits, tinned fruit and a jar of chopped nuts. Finally he went back into the kitchen and grabbed a spoon, a tin opener and a couple of cook’s knives which he thought would be good for throwing.

  ‘Anybody home?’ a German shouted.

  Marc jolted, spun around and ducked behind a metal preparation surface. He could have sworn he’d shut the kitchen door on the way in, but apparently he’d not fully pushed it up. It had drifted open and the bald head of a German supervisor now poked through it.

  Marc was furious with himself and scared by how easy it is to make mistakes when you’re weak with hunger. As the German stepped in, he crept backwards into a tight space between a bunch of flour sacks.

  ‘Hello, hello?’ the supervisor said, sounding more guilty than suspicious. ‘Somebody left the door unlocked.’

  Marc pulled his legs tight to his chest and moved one of the sacks so that you’d have to walk right up to the back of the kitchen to spot him. But the supervisor just assumed the door had been left unlocked by mistake, and only seemed interested in the contents of the larder.

  Marc heard but didn’t see as the supervisor picked up the knife he’d himself used to cut sausage. This was followed by chewing sounds and a big, mmm.

  With the cloth sack in one hand and the knife in the other, Marc crawled out of his hiding spot as he heard the supervisor moving deeper into the larder. As the delighted supervisor pocketed a can of pear halves, Marc peeked around the kitchen door to make sure it was all clear before dashing out and heading along the hallway towards the stairs.

  Note

  5 Ersatz coffee – the Germans had no access to coffee-growing areas and made this bitter-tasting fake coffee from acorns.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Food and drink brought Marc’s strength up and enabled his brain to focus on something other than a growling stomach. Better still, after months of powerlessness, being master of his own destiny felt good.

  He didn’t want to risk spending any longer in the offices than he had to, so he went straight back out to the roof with his booty. He ate and drank slowly and was greatly releived that the food seemed to be staying down. Then he got a feel for the two cook’s knives by repeatedly throwing them into the side of the wooden shelter.

  A maintenance crew cleaning skylights in the market hall roof took the wind out of his sails, but they disappeared after an hour and Marc watched the sunset, lying on his back while scoffing tinned peaches.

  He slept well – perhaps too well for someone in so much danger. When he woke it was light. There were already staff working in the offices below, though it was a Saturday so they’d only work until lunchtime.

  Marc suffered fewer aches and pains than the day before, though his ribs were badly bruised. Breathing deep was excruciating from where Fischer had punched him in the kidney, but the damage was healing, at least judging by the clear urine when he peed in the empty peach tin.

  He decided to make his move today: half-day in the office gave him an opportunity to leave while the streets were busy and catch an afternoon train, and as very few passenger trains ran on a Sunday he’d have to risk two more nights hiding out on the roof if he didn’t.

  When the staff left, Marc picked up everything from the roof and headed inside. He dumped his litter behind one of the file cabinets, where it wouldn’t be discovered until he was either home safe or dead. After a quick wash in the bathroom, he stole another of the commandant’s clean towels and headed down to the fifth.

  Commandant Eiffel had worked an extra hour and was just locking the door. Mercifully she didn’t look up as she waited for the lift. Once she was out of the way, Marc picked the lock then completed his final tasks: sticking the photos to the travel warrant, adding today’s date and stealing a larger sum from the petty ca
sh tin.

  As he headed out, Marc remembered that the guard on Großmarkthalle’s exit occasionally asked why he was leaving, so he grabbed a couple of Deutsche Post’s yellow telegram forms, folded them in three and kept them in his hand.

  It was heart-in-mouth time on the stairs as three Gestapo officers came by, but their minds were focused on a stunningly beautiful teenager being dragged up by her hair. She had a Star of David on her dress and when Marc neared the ground floor he saw that the big wooden pen was crammed to bursting with more than two hundred Jewish women.

  To reach the exit Marc had to walk alongside the pen under the gaze of half a dozen SS men guarding the Jews. A frail palm with a folded note inside shot into Marc’s path.

  ‘Post this for me,’ the woman begged.

  Her voice was weak. Marc made an instant decision and snatched the letter. At the same moment, he could hear women arguing on the other side of the pen. Their German was faster than he could follow easily, but the gist of it was that they believed that the pretty girl had been dragged upstairs to be raped rather than interrogated.

  ‘Do you like the Jews?’ a guard asked, stepping in front of Marc with a big Alsatian at his side. He had a few days’ growth of beard and his uniform was dirtier than any German Marc had seen until now.

  Marc acted dumb. ‘No speak German.’

  ‘Give,’ the guard said, before snatching the letter. ‘You wait. My colleague speaks French.’

  As the guard beckoned a colleague with his gloved hand, Marc frantically waggled the yellow telegram papers and made running motions with his arms.

  ‘Standartenfuhrer, urgent!’ he said.

  Marc’s experience with Germans had taught him that their harsh regime made everyone afraid of upsetting their bosses.

  ‘Urgent,’ he repeated. ‘Telegrams for the Standartenfuhrer.’

  This did the trick. When the French-speaking officer arrived, he glanced at the folded blank telegram forms and pointed Marc towards the open doors where the trucks delivered cargo.