Rose Under Fire (Code Name Verity, #2)(89)

The whole week was a race against time – the medical examinations, the interviews, translating everything from Polish to English to German, working out the order for the Rabbits’ appearances and practising what they’d say, and then we had one day to present everything before the whole court shut down for its Christmas break. We were in the Palace of Justice every day, but we never went into the courtroom. We knew where it was; we got our ID checked and got ushered in and out of the building with the reporters and observers every morning, and ate with them in the canteen in the basement; we gaped wide-eyed at the armfuls of headphones and the miles and miles of telephone wire that trailed everywhere as the IBM technicians struggled to keep the translations going round the clock.

Ró?a and I were standing outside the entrance in the forecourt on Thursday evening with a few other people, on the side with the trees, waiting for the shuttle bus to take us back to the hotel. Suddenly Ró?a grabbed my arm and hissed in my ear, ‘Look, that’s Fischer. And that’s Gebhardt. They did it.’

She let go for one second to point. Soldiers were leading a group of the defendants somewhere – well-dressed, sober civilians under armed guard.

‘Did what?’ I asked.

‘Tied me down in a prison cell and cut chunks out of my bones.’

I stared.

Being on the winning team gave us no strength. Ró?a clutched my arm and there we were, standing in the dark in a flurry of German snow, and we might as well have been standing in the roll call square back in Ravensbrück.

‘That’s Oberheuser,’ Ró?a choked.

‘Shhh!’

There wasn’t any reason to hush her. There wasn’t any reason except I felt instinctively that we’d be walloped for talking and pointing.

‘Oberheuser’s the woman?’ I whispered.

‘Yes – she helped.’ They were being led to a different entrance. I knew that Oberheuser was the only woman of the two dozen accused doctors. Right in front of us were all three of the Ravensbrück doctors, Gebhardt, Fischer and Oberheuser – maybe going to a separate interview before the Ravensbrück witnesses gave their testimony the next day.

There was another woman who had come out with the others, but was now left guarded on her own. She stood hopping from foot to foot to keep warm, a little to the side of the tall, imposing entryway, chatting with one of the helmeted American guards. She wore a halo of cigarette smoke.

Ró?a and I recognised her at exactly the same time, for different reasons.

‘There’s Engel,’ Ró?a said. ‘She was one of the lab technicians, the creepiest thing on legs. She was always sneaking around injecting people with morphine. We called her the “Angel of Sleep”. Hah! She wasn’t working in the Revier any more when they did the Bunker operations. Bet she never dreamed the Americans would catch up with her.’

Our bus pulled up. I stared back over my shoulder as I climbed on, in shock. Ró?a had recognised another Nazi on her personal vendetta list – but I’d seen a ghost. Anna Engel had been the leader of my work crew at Ravensbrück, scheduled to be gassed at the same time as the Rabbits. I’d thought she was dead.

I admit to joy when I realised she was still alive.

People on the bus gave up seats for us. I leaned over Ró?a to rub a clear patch in the fogged-up window and stared at the girl standing there in her plume of smoke and condensed breath, hugging a thin raincoat around her and listening with a cynical expression to something the GI in the helmet was saying. She handed him her cigarette and it glowed as he put it to his lips, and then they both laughed. And then the bus pulled away.

Anna had been a prisoner herself by the time I knew her – a German prisoner. We’d got along all right. She’d told me she’d been an actual employee at Ravensbrück in 1942, quit her job and got sent back as a criminal in 1944.

‘That was Anna!’ I exclaimed. ‘My Kolonka! I thought they gassed her!’

‘I wish they had,’ Ró?a snarled. ‘That was the bitch who put me under for the first operation.’

We didn’t say anything to each other on the short bus ride back to the hotel, because I didn’t trust Ró?a with what I knew.

I knew that Herta Oberheuser was the only woman on trial. I’d done a lot of boning up on what was going on, and I’d talked with Dr Alexander. Ró?a, on the other hand, focused on vengeance, was not paying much attention to the mechanics of the trial.

If Oberheuser was the only woman on trial, any other women involved must be here as witnesses – possibly even as witnesses for the defence. So Anna must be a witness, like Ró?a herself.

I didn’t dare to tell her. I’d liked Anna.

Ró?a sat on the edge of her bed and slowly rolled down her hose the way she had on our first night in Nuremberg. I started to get undressed too. Ró?a said suddenly, ‘Your scars are nasty, Rose. Do they hurt?’

I craned my neck. I’d never actually seen much of my scars, which start on my lower back and go halfway down my thighs.

‘They don’t hurt, but I got a stupid infection last winter that had to be operated on. I couldn’t sit down again for a week. So embarrassing. I’m fine now.’ I pulled my nightgown on.

‘You never make a fuss about anything. You don’t even want revenge.’