Pilgrim Soul (41 page)

He shook his head. ‘You can’t stop us.’

‘Us? Are you really with this pair of killers? What the hell’s going on, Danny?’

‘You can’t stop me, Brodie,’ he repeated.

‘Sure I can, Danny. You know I can be as daft as you at times. This is one of those times. Tell me what’s going on? Were you coerced?
What the hell happened?
’

His expression twisted. ‘Why are you saving this woman? This – monster!’

‘I’m saving her for a trial. What were
you
planning?’

A hard grin came over his face. ‘Oh, we’ve got a trial in mind too.’

‘
We
? You and this pair of sadists? Was it going to be trial by torture? Application of pincers, cutting off bits until she talked? What’s she going to say? Sorry!’

‘We’ll see, won’t we?’

‘You’re a bloody Scot! A wee Protestant boy from Ayrshire. Like me. That’s who
you
are. That’s your “we”. What are you doing with these sods, for God’s sake?’

Behind Danny, the door began to open. A porter? The police? A woman’s head appeared. A mass of striking auburn hair under a beret. It was the ladies’ waiting room. I hoped she’d take one look and go and get the police. Instead she opened the door wider, slipped in and closed it behind her.

Danny’s face had lit up. She came up beside him and took him by the arm.

‘You came,’ he said, as though she might not have done.

‘I promised.’

Realisation dawned like a hammer striking a gong.

‘Ava Kaplan? Or do you prefer Eve Copeland?’ I asked. Danny’s Jewish paramour. The one who’d thrown him over. The girl in Berlin. Member of the Israeli negotiating team at the UN.

She turned her great dark eyes on me. ‘And you must be Douglas Brodie. Danny’s talked about you.’

I turned back to Danny and asked him softly, ‘
This
was the bargain? This is what it was all about? Since when, Danny? When did the treachery begin?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘You came at Sam’s request. Didn’t you?’

‘Sort of. I called her. I saw the Glasgow papers. So did Eve and her friends. They contacted me.’ He shrugged. ‘It was a conjunction of interests.’

‘A conjunction of interests? What bullshit is that? It was betrayal! You said you came to help me!’

He winced with every word. Eve put her hand on his shoulder and turned to me.

‘We’re taking Herta Kellerman to Israel. She’ll be tried there. By the people
she
tortured. It’s our right,
Colonel
Brodie. All you big boys – Americans, the British, Russians, even the snivelling French – are having their show trials. The Jewish nation has a bigger stake than anyone. We will show the world we can administer justice.’

‘How many hangings will
that
take?’

Her eyes blazed. ‘It will tell the ones that got away that we’re coming after them. There’s no hiding place.’

I lowered my gun and gently unhooked the fingers of the woman cowering behind me. I drew her to my side. She was shaking from top to toe.

‘Dr Kellerman.
Dr Kellerman
.’

She turned and spoke to me in soft German. ‘What’s going to happen to me? Are you going to give me to them? They will kill me.’

‘Frau Doktor Kellerman, if you did all that you’re accused of, it’s not a matter of whether you will be killed. It’s who will do it, and when.’

She held my gaze for a long moment, and then nodded. ‘Yes. I know that.’

‘Why didn’t you run? You knew we’d taken Langefeld and his woman.’

I saw her take a deep breath and steady herself. She brushed hair from her forehead. She spoke loud enough to be heard by Danny and Eve.

‘Martha Haake wasn’t his woman.’

I gazed down at her. ‘It was
you
living with Langefeld?’

‘Do you think Nazis can’t fall in love, Mr Brodie?’

‘So you stayed for Langefeld. The Americans didn’t want him. They wanted you. Why didn’t you bugger off after this pair killed your precious Klaus?’ I pointed at the Irgun agents. ‘The net was closing, yet you went back to the hospital?’

Her dark eyes filled. ‘I’m tired, Mr Brodie. Tired of it all. I did good work at Glasgow. I helped people. It was what I trained for. Do you understand? What I did in the camps was to help people.
My
people. I hope you never have to choose, Mr Brodie.’

I stared at her, trying to equate this little woman with her crimes. Then I thought of her latest atrocity. Anger bubbled up.

‘And you traded Isaac Feldmann for your lover. You killed my friend!’

She pointed at the Irgun agents. ‘
They
killed
Klaus
!’

Bleakness washed over me. Danny betrayed me for his woman. Kellerman murdered Isaac for her man.

‘An eye for an eye,
Doctor
? Is that your medical ethics?’

Her shoulders slumped. I grabbed her, shook her.

‘The Nazis who helped you kill Isaac – are they the same four who killed Malachi? Where are they?’

Her mouth lifted at the corners in a condescending smile. ‘Still in Glasgow, I imagine. Where they belong.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘We have like-minded supporters everywhere.’

The man with the music-hall German accent who phoned Rabbi Silver demanding we free Langefeld.

‘
Blackshirts?
Mosley’s boys?’

She shrugged. ‘Everyone takes sides.’

I pushed her away.

‘Heard enough, Brodie?’ asked Danny. ‘We need to get going.’

I looked down on Kellerman, weighing up her crimes against the good she was doing in Glasgow. Weighing up Israeli justice against our own. Asking myself was I really ready to have a shoot-out with my terrible twin.

‘Take her.’

Kellerman’s mouth opened and closed as if to make one last plea. She searched my face, seeing my answer. She just nodded. Then she turned and walked forward into the ambit of Danny and the Irgun agents.

‘Shall we go?’ she said.

Danny spoke briefly to the two men. They opened the door, shepherded her through and began walking her down the platform. Danny followed for a few steps, finishing his instructions. For a moment, I was left with Ava Kaplan. I spoke softly.

‘Do you love him?’

She made a maddening, noncommittal face and my anger at Danny dissolved.

‘The poor bastard. At least be kind to him.’

She held my gaze; finally she nodded. And the moment was gone. Danny returned and took her hand. His face was a mix of emotions. When he looked at her, it opened up. Would I have done this for Sam? Then he looked at me . . .

‘Brodie? Brodie, I’m—’

‘—an eejit. Bugger off, Danny.’

Absolution wasn’t within my gift.

The pair turned and walked away, hand in hand. I stood and watched until they got to the barrier. Danny glanced back. I thought he was going to wave. Then he was gone.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

There are many historical truths in this story.

Glasgow had a population of over 12,000 Jews in 1946, many living in the Gorbals, and some speaking Scots-Yiddish. If you thought Glaswegian was hard on the ears . . .

In 1923 the League of Nations handed Great Britain the poisoned chalice of administering the mandate for Palestine. It was a thankless task made miserable in the post-war, post-Holocaust era when the surviving ranks of European Jews sought refuge in their ‘Promised Land’. The poor British squaddie was piggy-in-the-middle between Arabs and Jews. Our soldiers were bombed, shot and assaulted right up to May 1948 when the United Nations permitted the creation of the state of Israel. And then things went downhill . . .

Rat lines were a system of escape routes for Nazis and other fascists fleeing Europe at the end of the Second World War. They ran from Germany through Italy, Austria and Franco’s Spain to safe havens in South America, the USA and Canada. Escapees included Dr Josef Mengele and Adolf Eichmann. The organisers of these rat lines included US intelligence agencies, fascist organisations such as the Croatian Ustashe, and senior churchmen such as Bishop Alois Hudal in Rome, Cardinal Eugène Tisserant of France, Cardinal Antonio Caggiano of Argentina, and Father Krunoslav Draganovi of Croatia.

The wartime Special Operations Executive was blessed with some extraordinarily courageous and daring young women. They were led by Vera Atkins and included Odette Sansom, GC. After her capture Odette survived Ravensbrück by keeping her head and maintaining the fiction that she was married to a relative of Winston Churchill. She avoided the wretched fate of her fellow SOE agents in Ravensbrück: Cicely Lefort, Violette Szabo, Denise Bloch and Lilian Rolfe.

Malcolm McCulloch was Chief Constable of Glasgow from 1943 to 1960. He succeeded Sir Percy Sillitoe (Chief Constable 1931–43), who went on to become head of MI5 (1946–53).

Donald Campbell was Archbishop of Glasgow from 1945 to 1963 and had nothing whatsoever to do with rat lines, Scottish or otherwise.

The winter of 1947 was the worst in the twentieth century. It was bloody cold.

Irn Bru was spelled Iron Brew until 1946. Its sales were suspended during the war because of rationing.

The rest of this story is fiction . . . more or less . . . but it all adds up to a greater truth.

Trials for War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity

From the end of the Second World War in 1945 until 1949 a number of war crimes trials took place across Europe. Among them were:

Belsen
trials: British Military Court, Lüneburg. First trial 17 September to 17 November 1945. Second trial June 1946.

Nuremberg
trials: trial of major war criminals before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 20 November 1945 to 1 October 1946. Subsequent trials took place up to April 1949.

Ravensbrück
trials: British Military Court, Curiohaus, Hamburg. Seven trials in total from December 1946 to July 1948. The first ran from 5 December 1946 to 3 February 1947.

Verdicts and Sentences

Pilgrim Soul
is peopled with fictional and real-life characters. Where I have invented a ‘baddie’ I’ve used an amalgam of names and vile deeds drawn from real life, e.g. Dr Herta Kellermann is a composite of Doctors Herta Oberheuser and Ruth Kellermann, both of whom conducted foul medical experiments at Ravensbrück. For her sins Oberheuser spent a mere seven years in prison before becoming a family doctor; Kellermann was never imprisoned. As for the other real Nazis I’ve deployed in my novel, these were their fates:

Suhren
: Sturmbannführer [Major] Fritz Suhren, Camp Commandant Ravensbrück 1942–5. Also served at Sachsenhausen 1941–2. Escaped from American custody in 1946, recaptured in France in 1949. Hanged in Fresnes Prison, Paris, in 1950.

Schwarzhuber
: Obersturmführer [Lieutenant] Johann Schwarzhuber, Deputy Camp Commandant Ravensbrück January–April 1945. Also served at Dachau, Sachsenhausen and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Convicted of war crimes, hanged May 1947.*

Hellinger
: Obersturmführer [Lieutenant] Dr Martin Hellinger, Camp Dentist Ravensbrück 1943–5. Also served at Sachsenhausen and Flossenbürg. Sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment, released 1955.

Ramdohr
: Ludwig Ramdohr, Gestapo Officer Ravensbrück 1942–5. Convicted of war crimes, hanged May 1947.*

Binz
: Oberaufseherin [Chief Warden] Dorothea Binz, Ravensbrück 1939–45. Convicted of war crimes, hanged May 1947.*

Bösel
: Aufseherin [Warden] Greta Bösel, Ravensbrück 1944?-5 . Convicted of war crimes, hanged May 1947.*

Haake
: Nurse Martha Haake, Ravensbrück 1943–5. Tried in the fourth Ravensbruck trial May–June 1948, sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment, released on health grounds 1951.

Grese
: Aufseherin [Warden] Irma Grese. Warden at Ravensbrück, Auschwitz and Belsen, convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Belsen trials, hanged 13 December 1945.*

* Hanged by the busy British executioner, Albert Pierrepoint, in Hamelin Prison, Germany. Pierrepoint’s final tally of Nazi executions was around two hundred.

Big thanks to:

Sarah Ferris, first reviewer, cheerleader and reality checker. Richenda Todd, editor and producer of silk purses from sow’s ears. Helen Ferris, CPsychol, for expert advice on post traumatic stress. Tina Betts, persevering literary agent and supporter. Tony Hanley for racing tips. The Rev John Bell of the Iona Community for his observations about Glasgow and human frailty. Sara O’Keefe and Team Corvus for unstinting enthusiasm for ‘Brodie’.

Turn the page to see Brodie in action in

BITTER
WATER

Summer in Glasgow. When the tarmac bubbles and tenement windows bounce back the light. When lust boils up and tempers fray.

When suddenly,
it’s bring out your dead...

Glasgow’s melting. The temperature is rising and so is the murder rate. Douglas Brodie, ex-policeman, ex-soldier and newest reporter on the
Glasgow Gazette
, has no shortage of material for his crime column: a councillor brutally silenced and a rapist tarred and feathered by a balaclavaclad group of vigilantes.

As violence spreads and the bodies pile up, Brodie and advocate Samantha Campbell are entangled in a web of deception and savagery. Brodie is swamped with stories for the
Gazette
. But how long before he and Sam become the headline?

ONE

Bubonic plague starts with one flea bite. Spanish flu with one sneeze. Glasgow’s outbreak of murder and mayhem began simply enough and, like a flea bite, hardly registered at the time. In a volatile city of hair-trigger egos one savage beating goes unnoticed, a single knife wound is nothing special. Fighting goes with the Celtic territory, runs with the Scottish grain, is indeed fuelled by the grain, distilled to 40 proof. These belligerent tendencies explain my countrymen’s disproportionate occupation of war graves across the Empire.