Roots of Evil(96)

‘Well, some things are unavoidable, I fear,’ said Koch. ‘I think it is six months now since you were brought here, yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘So. I have been thinking that there could be a way to soften things for you, and I have a small proposition to make.’ He moved from behind the desk and came to stand nearer to her. Alice could smell the garlic on his breath and she remembered that he was believed to enjoy rich food and good-looking women.

She said warily, ‘A proposition?’

‘I want you to listen to the talk of the other inmates,’ said Koch. ‘I have watched you, and although you pose as an Englishwoman – Alice Wilson, yes? – still they are attracted to you. You are a very fascinating woman, baroness; even stripped of your rank, it is still so. And you have many admirers in Buchenwald, of both sexes.’

‘I have always had admirers,’ said Alice offhandedly. ‘That is beside the point. Herr Koch – I would have preferred my – my name and title to remain unknown in this place.’

‘It can do so. It can be just between us.’ Koch’s eyes were on her neck and her breasts. Repulsive. But don’t let him see you think that.

‘Because of this attraction you have for people,’ said Koch, ‘you will be welcomed into many discussions; people will talk to you. I want you to listen to these discussions very carefully, and then to bring to me any – ah – information you think might interest me. Anything that might be of value to the Third Reich.’

‘Spying,’ said Alice thoughtfully. ‘That’s what you mean, isn’t it? You want me to spy for you?’

He smiled, pleased at her understanding. ‘There are signs that an underground movement is starting up inside Buchenwald – an organization intending to arrange escapes, or rebellions. It is necessary that I identify the ringleaders and deal with them before they can cause any trouble.’

‘You think I might be able to find out about this organization?’

‘It would be a service that could be well rewarded. You understand me?’

‘Yes.’ Alice studied him for a moment, her expression deliberately blank. But her mind was working at top speed, thinking, considering, planning. She said, slowly, ‘You referred to advantages? To a reward?’

‘There are a number of things we could do to make your life more comfortable.’ He had visibly relaxed now. ‘You must miss such things as good food and hot water for washing. Clean bed-linen on a regular basis. I could arrange for you to have most of those things.’

‘But not my freedom? You couldn’t arrange my freedom?’

He hesitated, and then, as if thinking it over, said, ‘If you provide us with what we need, it might be possible. It could appear to be an escape; I could pretend to transfer you to another camp. Perhaps to Dachau, which is not so very far from here. An escape might occur on the journey. In that circumstance you would be given money and papers to aid you.’

Dachau. Money and papers. Dachau. Conrad. The ache that Alice had tried to suppress all these months returned a hundredfold. I don’t trust Karl Koch, though, thought Alice. I don’t think he entirely trusts me either, but that may be a good thing.

‘Very well,’ she said at last, looking him straight in the eyes. ‘I will do what you wish.’



‘I cheated him, of course,’ said Alice, her eyes full of memories that seemed to be spilling out into the warm safe room, like ghosts from old black and white newsreels.

‘How did you dare?’ said Michael, coming up out of this sinister world where tanks drove arrogantly through city streets, and people were shut away behind barbed wire and threatened by black-snouted machine-guns. But even as he said it, he knew that of course she had dared; she would have dared anything.

‘It was not as dangerous as it sounds,’ said Alice. ‘There was indeed an underground organization being formed in Buchenwald – the commandant had been right about that, although it was so new and so tentative it was as insubstantial as a spider-web. But it was a web that was being spun very determinedly indeed, and even a hint of its existence alerted the SS sufficiently to recruit spies on their own account.’

‘And they thought you would be one of the spies?’

‘Yes. They had assumed, you see, that I would do anything for food and warmth and all the other things. They thought they were dealing with Lucretia von Wolff, who was luxury-loving and pampered, and that was their mistake. They didn’t know that Lucretia was just a smokescreen, or that I was far better equipped to cope with the harsh regime than they could imagine. I had started life as a kitchenmaid in the big house in England – I had been used to getting up at half past five in the depths of a freezing winter and raking out fires and kitchen ranges, and pumping cold water from a well in the yard. And when I was promoted to be Nina Dreyer’s maid, there was still all the fetching and carrying, and sitting up until three or four in the morning to help her undress after a party or a ball.’ She paused, and then said, ‘Also there had been those months of living rough in Vienna’s back streets. I believed that if I could survive that, I could survive practically anything.’


‘But to deceive the Nazis. The Gestapo—’ The words had been coined long before Michael was born, but they still carried their own dread. Iron armies reaching out their iron talons to victims, inflicting such damage and such suffering on those victims that they would never forget, not for an instant…