Rose Under Fire (Code Name Verity, #2)(93)

I recovered myself and startled Anna back by throwing my arms round her. She held the cigarette away and stiffly returned my ridiculously enthusiastic embrace with her other arm.

‘Calm down, kid. Sorry! It slipped out – like being slapped in the face, isn’t it? Gives you power.’

She was still fluent enough in American slang to sound like a gangster. I guess she’d been chatting a lot with the soldiers. The attendant sat down and picked up her knitting again with a hmph, ignoring us now that we seemed to be friends.

‘Oh, Anna!’ I felt tearful. I’d really thought she was dead. She was playing her part in the trial with complete calm though, so I tried to keep my voice from shaking too. ‘What are you doing here, Anna?’

‘I’m a witness. You know what I did at Ravensbrück. I’m a good witness, because I’ve been on both sides of the fence. But I guess they won’t get to me till after Christmas now – it would spoil the show after those other girls.’

She held out a packet of cigarettes to offer me one – Lucky Strike. She’d definitely been making friends with the American soldiers.

‘How long are you here?’ she asked casually.

‘Just this week. I go home on Sunday.’

‘To Pennsylvania?’

‘No, I live in Scotland. I’m in my second year at the University of Edinburgh.’

‘Studying what?’

‘Medicine.’

Anna smiled, and sighed. ‘Well, good for you, Rose,’ she said. ‘Except for these trials I’m not really going anywhere with my life. I guess you noticed the guards.’ She nodded at the attendant. ‘I’m a witness here in Nuremberg, but at the Ravensbrück trial in Hamburg I’ll be one of the accused. The Americans are just borrowing me here. When they’re done with me, I get handed into the custody of the English.’

‘Anna!’ I exclaimed. ‘What are you accused of?’

‘Angel of Sleep, remember? Anaesthetising those kids before their terrible operations? And I knew what I was doing too. I knew. I didn’t have to do it. I made a lot of choices – good, bad, bad, good.’

She struck a match and held it out to me. I leaned in to light my cigarette, then stood up straight and took a deep breath.

‘What will happen to you?’ I asked.

She let out a puff of smoke before she answered. Finally she said slowly, ‘I’m not a murderer, but . . . you never know. This new “Crimes against Humanity” covers a lot of ground. And the British are running the Ravensbrück trial. Four of their special agents were murdered at Ravensbrück – you know, the spies, the ones everybody called the Parachutists. Some of the British prosecution team is here now, interviewing the Ravensbrück defendants.’ She gave me a curious look. ‘Aren’t you involved in the Ravensbrück trial too?’

I shook my head.

Anna shrugged. ‘Well, I’m expecting about ten years in prison. It’ll be interesting to see what Oberheuser gets. She was a witness at the International Military Tribunal before being put on trial here, so I feel like we have a lot in common.’

‘I guess it’d be good for you if she got acquitted.’

Anna laughed bitterly. ‘I damn well hope she doesn’t get acquitted! Evil bitch.’ She took a long drag on her cigarette. ‘Nice to share with you, Rose. Seems a little strange.’

Words cannot describe how strange it seemed. I just said, ‘I know. I have the same feeling eating dinner with Ró?a.’

‘She’s one of the Rabbits? Which one?’

‘The one who looks like a little china doll. The one who didn’t testify.’

‘You were pretty lucky to have the Rabbits taking care of you at Ravensbrück, you know.’

‘I know it,’ I said with my teeth clenched together, because I was in danger of bursting into tears if I tried to talk normally. ‘My whole transport was gassed. The Rabbits hid me.’

‘Oh –’ Anna closed her eyes for a moment. ‘What, all the French girls on our work crew?’ She was silent for a moment. ‘God. Those poor kids.’

When she opened her eyes again I tried to shrug offhandedly, the way she had about going to prison, and couldn’t do it. I looked away, blinking. The attendant was knitting peacefully, oblivious to the intense conversation we were having – I suddenly realised that we were speaking English so she probably couldn’t understand us anyway.

‘How’d you get out, Anna?’ I asked.

‘I swapped my number for a dead woman’s – a Jehovah’s Witness. Lavender triangle, nobody ever pesters them. And I just kept moving from block to block. No one tries to count you when they think you’re dead! I was still there when the Russians turned up. I walked back to Berlin.’ Anna let out a long, smoke-filled breath. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to picture her anywhere but leaning against a porcelain washbasin and smoking.

‘Must be nice to be back in school,’ she went on. ‘I spent a year struggling to feed my miserable mother and my grandmother in one room, with no heat, and then the Yanks arrested me. It was kind of a relief. Mama’s having to pull her own weight now, and it’s about time too. Poor Mama.’ Another long drag. ‘Everybody got raped when the Soviets took Germany. Everybody. I turned up in Berlin not long after they got there, and Mama had stopped going out. She was letting her mother forage for both of them – this seventy-three-year-old woman out on the streets in the rubble, selling herself to Russian soldiers in exchange for bread. Gott im Himmel.’ Anna took a deep, shaking breath. ‘Makes Ravensbrück look civilised. I put a stop to that. Found work for Mama too, a good office job, work I should have taken, keeping accounts for a small building company that’s been taken over by the Soviets. I guess she’s all right now because she sends me packages.’