Codeword Golden Fleece (44 page)

Feeling much restored after this, he made a determined effort to throw off his crushing sorrow about the Duke and his anxiety about Simon as he sallied forth into the town to learn what he could about the evacuation of the Polish Air Force.

He found Cernauti as unlike Bucharest as any town could be. The capital of the Bukovina had none of the spaciousness and splendour of the capital of the State. It was a congested, shabby place that yet had bright garish spots in its cinemas, theatres and dance halls. To his surprise he heard little Rumanian spoken in the streets, but quite a lot of German and considerably more of a language he guessed to be Yiddish from the appearance of its speakers.

It was the 23rd of September, a Saturday, and the Jewish Sabbath was obviously being observed by a high proportion of Cernauti’s inhabitants. The main street and principal square might in some respects have been a section of the Jewish quarter of New York or of Whitechapel. The more prosperous of the population, all of whom seemed to be Jews, were wearing the bright, flashy clothes that pass for smartness with the middle classes of their race wherever it is to be found. Nine tenths of the shops, all bearing Jewish names, were shut, and these children of Israel were taking their leisure, the older people strolling along here and there, greeting their friends with grave courtesy, the younger ones chi-iking each other and shouting rowdy witticisms as the groups intermingled in the roadway.

How these myriads of Jews had come to settle there he had no idea, but as he thought about it he remembered that Cernauti lay in the very heart of Middle Europe. It was almost equidistant from the Baltic and the Black Sea and occupied a position where four frontiers, those of Russia, Poland, Hungary and Rumania, very nearly met, and with that of a fifth, Czechoslovakia, only a little distance to the west. Perhaps the Jews had chosen it so that, whenever the Governments of any of those countries were affected by a wave of abit-Semitism, there were still others into which their surplus population could overflow without meeting such rigorous persecution.

The only Christians to be seen were a sprinkling of peasants, attending the Saturday cattle market in the square, and the Polish refugees, who, in the main, were easily distinguishable by their appearance. Somewhat to Rex’s surprise, however, nearly all the Poles were civilians, and he saw very few men in Polish uniforms.

Those that he did see were hurrying through the crowd, evidently intent on their own business; so, finding no groups of Polish officers idling and at a loose end, with some of whom he had hoped to get into conversation, he returned to the hotel and, sitting down in its small lounge, began to talk to some of the refugees who were its principal occupants.

All of them had tales to tell, varying in their excitement and hairbreadth escapes from death or capture, but all ended in the
same pathetic refrain—gnawing anxiety about the fate of loved ones left behind, destruction of homes and things held dear; the loss of businesses and the savings of a lifetime, the terrible uncertainties of the future.

Rex listened in sympathy to those who could tell him of their tragic flight in English, French or German, and gradually obtained the information he wanted, without appearing to enquire for it. The Rumanians had shown great humanity to their suffering neighbours, but naturally they had to abide by established international procedure. Under the laws of war any defeated force might seek sanctuary in a neutral country, instead of surrendering to the enemy, but a neutral was under an obligation to intern any such force for the duration of hostilities.

The Polish officers that Rex had seen in the streets were representatives of the Commandature of the interned Polish Forces, who had been released on parole for the purpose of making arrangements about quarters and supplies or their companions. A state of emergency still existed on the frontier, owing to the continued influx of Poles, and the Rumanian authorities were occupied in making encampments for them. These had not yet been completed, but the main body of Polish servicemen who had escaped over the frontier were already behind barbed wire some miles to the north of Cernauti near a little town called Grodek.

It was now well on in the afternoon, and, seeing that only three out of the thirty days for which the option was good had so far elapsed, Rex decided not to go out to Grodek until the next morning. His wound, the terrible shock he had sustained the previous day and his uneasy night in the train had all combined to take it out of him, so he got the Jewish owners of the hotel to fix him up a high tea at six o’clock and went upstairs immediately afterwards.

As he hung his jacket on the back of a chair he took the packet from his pocket for the first time since Simon had passed it on to him, and wondered where it would be best to put it for the night. After a moment he decided that until he could get it out of the country it would be safest in the money-belt that he always wore round his middle when travelling abroad. Opening the envelope, he refolded the sheets lengthwise and slid them into the longest pocket of the belt. To do so he removed the banker’s draft that he had been carrying there since Teleuescu had refused to accept it two nights before, and, as its purpose had now been
fulfilled by other means, burnt it. Within five minutes of his getting into bed he was sound asleep.

Next morning, although his wound was doing well and the clean punctures in his healthy flesh already beginning to heal, he thought he ought to have it dressed again, so he consulted Mr. Levinsky, who sent him to a Jewish doctor.

On his way there he saw that the town had now taken on a completely different appearance. Quite a number of true Bukovinians were strolling up and down resplendent in the peasant finery that they wore only on Sundays; but practically every shop in the place was open and the streets were packed with thousands of Jews shrilly driving their Sunday morning bargains.

The Jewish doctor impressed Rex as cleverer than the man he had seen in Bucharest, and warned him when he was leaving that, although neither of the punctures was any longer discharging, he ought to keep his arm in the sling for another ten days at least. As Rex hoped to be flying an aeroplane long before that he did not expect to follow this advice, but he had every intention of taking as much care of his arm as he could.

Anticipating that as Grodek was right on the frontier it would be even more crowded than Cernauti, he decided to leave his bag with Levinsky—at all events until he had made a preliminary investigation of the frontier town. The next problem was to get out there.

It was the best part of twenty-five miles away, and normally he would either have gone by train or hired a car; but, with the uneasy idea never far from his thoughts that the police might be on the look-out for him, he decided not to risk arriving right on the frontier by such conspicuous means, and set out to hitchhike again.

On leaving the city the road crossed a low range of hills and wound down again to the River Pruth, all the land beyond which had been Russian territory up to 1918. Just after Rex had crossed the river a lorry picked him up, and from his slightly higher elevation beside its driver he saw that the country both in front and to the right of him was one vast level plain. The lorry was going into Grodek, but he saw the huge internment camp that was still in process of being erected to house the Poles long before they came to it, and slipped off at one of its barbed-wire entrances, hoping that the lorry-driver would think that he was a Pole who was visiting the camp to look for a friend.

Indeed, that was the rôle he would have adopted had he been able to speak any Polish, but, as it was, he had to content himself for the time being by just looking up and down the road as though he did not know which way to go, then setting off at a fast walk parallel with the wire as if he had made up his mind that the entrance he wanted was further along.

It took him over an hour to circle the great camp, but by the time he had done so he had a pretty good idea of its lay-out. The Poles had not just been dumped down in the centre of the open plain, and, in view of the desolate country thereabouts, the site of the camp had been well chosen. Its main feature was a group of buildings about three-quarters of a mile from the road, which appeared to consist of an old manor house surrounded on three sides by stabling and farm buildings. At its back there was a wide stretch of almost treeless parkland, and it was here that the machines of the Polish Air Force had been parked. In front of the group of buildings there was an avenue of elm trees, and on each side of it a number of wooden hutments formed the nucleus of the camp, while many more were in process of erection.

Apparently the Poles had been given the task of guarding themselves, as only sentries in Polish uniforms were to be seen at the gates and loitering outside the wooden guard-house that stood near each of them. But on the side of the camp nearest to Grodek Rex saw that there was a Rumanian military airfield with permanent buildings and under canvas near by what he estimated to be a battalion of Rumanian Infantry.

He wondered if all the Polish planes had been rendered inoperative by the removal of some of their essential parts, but considered it unlikely, as, even while he watched, Rumanian aircraft in the sky above were shepherding new Polish arrivals down into the park that had been made a temporary aerodrome for them. He thought it probable that the Rumanians were quite content to have their Polish visitors behind the wire, as, once there, they were under the discipline of their own senior officers, and it was most unlikely that any of them would attempt to fly out again.

On a rough count he estimated the Polish aircraft to number at least two hundred, and practically any of them would serve his purpose provided it had enough petrol in its tanks. That and getting into the camp were, he foresaw, going to be his main difficulties. After their tragic defeat the Poles themselves would undoubtedly be depressed and slack. There was no reason why
they should even set a guard upon their aircraft now that they were no longer in a position to use them. Probably the most they bothered to do was to post a small picket as a formality, and that would be quite inadequate to prevent a trained big-game stalker, such as Rex, getting away with one of their machines at night.

He noted where the latest arrivals were being parked, as it was less likely that they would have had their petrol drained out of them by nightfall. If he could once get to the machines there was a good stretch of level ground facing the front row, so he did not think he would have any difficulty in taking off.

The question was, how to get into the camp? He noticed that all the men arriving at the gateways, whether on foot or by car, had to show passes before they were allowed inside. But quite a lot of them were civilians, as a considerable number of workmen was supervising and assisting in the erection of the new hutments.

Clearly his line was to try to get in as one of these workmen, perhaps the following morning, then hide somewhere in the camp when they left at night. It seemed, though, that he would have to show some sort of pass. Perhaps that evening in the town he would be able to contact some of the workmen and either buy or steal the pass he needed.

Having gathered all the information he could from outside the cage, Rex walked into Grodek. The sight of the place positively horrified him. It consisted of a single row of board shanties patched up with hammered-out petrol tims. Its poverty and filth beggared description. Beyond it lay the broad sluggish sweep of the Dniester and on the far bank a continuance of the seemingly endless windswept plain. During the snows and gales of winter it must have been sheer purgatory to live there, but at least the snow would have mercifully hidden some of its filth and decrepitude.

Its population consisted entirely of the poorer-class Jews that Rex had seen in Cernauti on the preceding day, yet these, if possible, looked still more dirty and destitute. The shacks that passed for houses and shops were even more tumbledown than those inhabited by the very poorest class of negro in the Southern States.

Outside the hovels, which displayed pathetic little assortments of shoddy goods for sale, swung painted signs showing that the population of the place was so backward that a good part of it
could not even read, and he doubted if any slum in Europe or the United States could show evidence of such dire and universal poverty. The people of the place, red-haired Jews without exception, apart from a handful of uniformed officials, crept rather than walked about, their greasy caftans hanging in tattered rags, their faces pinched, their dark eyes furtive, and stinking to high heaven.

In spite of its poverty this nightmare township boasted several rather larger hovels that did duty for inns. Rex visited them all in turn, and selecting the least repulsive, ordered himself a meal. Somewhat to his surprise, there did not appear to be any Polish refugees in Grodek, so he could only assume that, after crossing the frontier, they all gave the place one horrified look, shuddered, and hurried on to Cernauti. There was, however, one Polish officer, whom Rex assumed to be on pass from the camp. He was a thin-but muscular-looking fellow as tall as Rex himself, with china-blue eyes and fair smooth hair.

Rex got into conversation with him in the hope of picking up some information about the regulations governing permits to enter the camp. He found that the Pole spoke French and a little English, and said that he came from Radom.

While the shadows lengthened they ate the indifferent fare the place provided together, and, after a while, Rex learned to his annoyance that none of the men in the Rumanian working parties were local people. They had been imported from further south and both worked and slept in the camp.

Rex saw that he would have to bide his time until he could get in touch with some of them in their off-duty hours when they took a stroll outside the cage, or think of some other way of entering it. After his meal, with great reluctance he booked a bed at the inn, but it was still early yet and dusk had not long fallen; so he thought it would be a good idea to stroll up to the camp again to see if it were as well guarded at night as it was in the daytime.