A Thousand Suns

Chapter 28 On the Move

Schenkelmann found the diffuse glare of the thinly overcast morning almost unbearable after months of living by lamplight below ground. His eyes still hadn’t adjusted to the brightness even though he’d been toiling in the daylight for ten minutes now. The little back street he had seen fleetingly all those months ago when they had dragged him into the building under the railway bridge and down below into the cellar did not seem to have taken any bomb damage, it looked unchanged.

He could hear the thudding of artillery shells landing nearby, or perhaps it was bombardment from above, and the sporadic crack of gunfire echoing off the empty streets.

‘Hurry up, damn it!’ said Hauser, looking up and down the cobbled back street, fear flickering across his narrow face.

Schenkelmann and his two lab assistants had nearly finished loading the weapon components into the back of the truck, where half a dozen of the SS Leibstandarte that Hitler himself had assigned to protect Hauser and the bomb sat guarding the odd-looking collection of crated items.

The U-235 mass and the two U-235 bullets had been carefully transported to the truck separately, but the altimeter trigger was the part of the bomb that needed some degree of protection from the bumping and shaking that lay ahead. This frugile component was in for a turbulent ride as the truck picked its way over cratered roads to get out of the city. The altimeter was carefully padded in a wooden crate filled with coarse sawdust. The detonators for the two U-235 bullets were also packed away in two separate caskets, safely away from the rest of the bomb.

Schenkelmann slowly finished off sealing one of the caskets, taking his time under the bored gaze of the men in the truck. As he finished up and climbed back out of the truck, he looked around. There was no sign of Zsophia and his mother. Hauser had promised they would be brought along with him when the bomb was to be moved.

A crack of rifle fire sounded nearby, its echo rattled off the stone arches running down one side of the back street. It sounded like it had come from nearby, from behind the furniture workshop that faced the bridge and cast a long squat shadow over the cobbles. Or perhaps it was closer?

Schenkelmann smiled at the obvious discomfort Hauser was experiencing. He resumed the task of packing the second detonator, slowly.

‘Hurry up!’ Hauser shouted, his nerves beginning to fray.

How close are they? A hundred yards away? Fifty yards away?

Hauser gave an order to two of his SS men to torch the cellar. They had drums of gasoline and immediately jogged into the building and started sloshing the liquid down the stairs into the lab below.

Schenkelmann lifted the casket into the back of the truck, taking his time to place it securely on the floor. Hauser was becoming aware that he was stalling for time.

‘Right, that’ll do, now get out of the truck.’

Schenkelmann made his way cautiously past the components of the bomb to the open back of the truck and eased himself down. He looked around again, still no sign of them. ‘W-where are my sister and mother?’

Hauser smiled. ‘Don’t worry about them, Joseph, you’ll be together soon. You’ve worked hard for me, and I assure you they’re fine.’

‘I want to see them.’

‘And you will, but first things first.’

There was the sound of a dull ‘whump’, and they could immediately smell burning. The two SS guards who had been sent down to set the place on fire emerged with their hands over their mouths. They were followed by the first wisps of smoke curling up the steps and out of the corrugated metal doorway.

‘Why — ?’

‘Why are we destroying the lab? Because, Joseph, we’re certainly not going to let the Americans have it now, are we?’

Americans? It’s American guns I’m hearing, not Russian. Thank God.

Schenkelmann felt a desperate surge of hope that the nightmare was nearly over. In the next street, possibly only hailing distance away, lay his salvation. Perhaps they might just capture the bomb before it was moved… capture Hauser before he got away… find his mother and sister, and reunite them all. Today it could all be over.

If they were alive still. Hauser should have brought them along, they should be here.

‘Dr Hauser, w-where are they?’ he asked.

The German smirked like a child about to play a spiteful prank. ‘Where are they, eh? Well let me tell—’

Schenkelmann cut him off with a desperate outburst. ‘Please… I have given you everything, worked hard, please—’

‘Oh, do shut up,’ Hauser snapped, annoyed that he had been rudely interrupted.

Gunfire again. This time much closer. Schenkelmann cast a glance down the cobbled street.

I could call out, the Americans might hear me.

Hauser looked uneasily at his men.

‘We should go now, Doctor,’ called out one of the SS guards, leaning out of the back of the truck.

‘Yes… yes, you’re right,’ he replied, and turned towards the officer in charge of the platoon of regular Wehrmacht soldiers who were going to be left behind to watch that the laboratory was properly destroyed.

‘Bösch.’ Hauser nodded to the Feldwebel and his men. ‘You know what to do. Get on with it, then.’

‘Yes, sir,’ the soldier answered with a gravelly voice.

He grabbed both the lab assistants by the arms and pulled them towards the corrugated metal wall of the archway. He let go of their arms and walked back a few feet.

‘What is going on, Dr Hauser?’ Rüd asked in a voice that was breaking with a dawning sense of dread. The technician had realised all too late that they were to be purged along with the lab.

‘I’m sorry, gentlemen. I can’t allow either of you to fall into enemy hands. However, I want to thank you for your diligence over the past few months,’ Hauser said with an ill-placed smile. He nodded at Bösch.

The Feldwebel unshouldered his machine gun and, without a moment’s delay, fired the entire clip at both men.

Hauser’s face flickered with excitement at the sight of the two technicians as they collapsed to the ground; one of them drummed his feet noisily against the base of the corrugated metal door in a post-mortem spasm.

‘Give me your gun,’ he said. Bösch passed Hauser his weapon.

‘And now, about your family, Joseph,’ said Hauser, walking menacingly towards Schenkelmann, pointing the gun at him.

‘You wanted to be with them again, didn’t you?’ He placed a hand on Schenkelmann’s shoulder, squeezing it, caressing it.

‘You’ve been a good little Jew, your work has been excellent, and I’m very pleased with you. Now, I made you a promise, didn’t I, Joseph? What was it now? I’ve forgotten,’ he said, with an empty smile.

Schenkelmann nodded and smiled awkwardly back. ‘Yes, we agreed… didn’t we, my family and I—’

‘Oh yes… so we did. I’m sorry.’

Hauser shook his head with feigned sadness, pouting his bottom lip with cruel mock-sympathy. ‘I’m sorry, they’re dead, Joseph. I’m sure you’ll understand that we didn’t have time to mess around dragging them over here with us. It would’ve been a nuisance. They died this morning — what?’ He turned to the SS men in the truck. ‘Half an hour ago?’

Schenkelmann started hyperventilating and slumped to his knees. There he began to cry, his voice a weak, warbling high-pitched moan.

Hauser’s face curled in disgust at the broken man. He raised the gun and pointed it at his head. ‘Oh dear. Well, goodbye, you pathetic Je—’

A loud clatter of gunfire shattered the tableau and a stunned Hauser dropped the weapon as a fleck of stone stung his cheek.

A dozen or more US soldiers had emerged from an archway further down the back street. The American men had instinctively dropped to the ground and leaped for the cover of the doorways opposite them and now lay down a furious volley of gunfire up the street.

Two of Bösch’s men dropped, one of them dead instantly. Another four were wounded. One of them lay on the cobbles and shook uncontrollably as blood and air bubbled from a rip in his neck.

Hauser scrambled away from Schenkelmann, on all fours, back towards the truck as a storm of bullets zipped down the street at head height. He felt a bullet whistle past his ear with a low hum, and the rattle of a dozen more as they hit the cobbles on the ground around him.

The remaining men of the Wehrmacht platoon scrambled for cover on either side of the vehicle and began to return fire, while the SS men in the truck unslung their weapons and let off a volley from within.

A single bullet thudded into Schenkelmann’s back and pushed him over on to his face, where he curled into a foetal position as the gunfight progressed, bullets whizzing in both directions, inches above him.

Hauser managed to make his way back to the truck and opened the cabin door. He waited for a second’s lull to shriek an order to Bösch and his men. ‘You must hold this position at all costs, the truck must get away!’ Hauser’s thin, reedy voice reached Bösch, who reissued the order in a much louder parade-ground voice.

Hauser turned to the driver and screamed as he climbed in. ‘Drive, for God’s sake!’

Bösch heard the truck’s engine stutter to life and it immediately lurched forward as the tyres spun on the cobbles. From his precarious position behind a small sapling he watched the truck rumble down the street and turn a corner before calling out to his men.

‘Right, fuck that idiot’s order. We’ll hold for another minute, no more.’

His voice attracted a burst of gunfire and splinters of wood exploded from the sapling’s trunk. He cursed Hauser for dropping the gun he had handed him in the street like a startled old woman. The gunfire died off for a moment. He could hear one of the Americans shouting orders to his men. Bösch had enough street-fighting experience to know that they were trying for a flanking position. The American officer was sending some of his men into the furniture warehouse to find a way up to the windows that overlooked him and his men.

That’s what he’d do if the situation were reversed.

‘Shit,’ he muttered. He looked around and saw two of his men looking to him for instructions. Silently Bösch pointed at a window overlooking them and held up a fist, which he pulled down in a short tugging action and drew a finger across his mouth.

Grenades — through that window — on my command.

Both men nodded and each pulled out a stick grenade, they unscrewed the caps and made ready to tug on the fuse string. The gunfire had stopped. The Americans down the street were waiting for their colleagues to get into position before pressing home the attack.

Bösch studied the windows intently and soon caught a glimpse of the top of a helmet bobbing inside the building. They were making their way along the first floor to the window that looked down on to his position behind the splintered tree trunk. He nodded to his men and both threw their grenades up. One dropped through the window effortlessly whilst the other clattered uselessly against the window frame and dropped back down onto the stones below. He counted to seven before the first grenade went off inside the warehouse, producing a shower of dust from out of the windows and knocking a frame down on to the street. The other grenade exploded on the cobbles, shattering the few windows left intact on the ground floor of the furniture warehouse.

Bösch waited for the cloud of dust to clear. The grenades seemed to have done the trick, it looked like they had stunned, wounded or killed the men up there. Otherwise he’d have expected a retaliatory volley raining down on them by now.

He looked for the Jewish scientist; he was lying in the road, but still moving. A pool of blood had grown around his torso and a small river trickled across the street, meandering through the cracks between the stones.

He’s lost too much blood to survive the wound.

If he’d had his gun on him he could have made sure of that with a shot or two to the head. Bösch knew enough that the Americans couldn’t be allowed to capture the Jew alive. Hauser had made that quite clear.

Smoke was coming up from the lab below and billowing out through the arched door, thicker than it had been a minute ago, the fire must have caught and already be spreading.

He looked up the street.

The truck must be far enough away by now.

He nodded, assuring himself that they had done enough.

He signalled to his two men across the street that the fight was over, that they should put down their guns. He looked around for the others. It was time to get a quick tally on what had happened to his twelve men. Now that the truck, and the hard cover it afforded them, was gone, they had hastily spread out, seeking safe positions along the street. There were three sheltering in one of the warehouse’s doorways further back and another two taking turns to fire short bursts from an archway closer to the Americans. He saw the bodies of five of his men lying in the cobbled street, those that had been caught off guard by the opening exchange. He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled loudly. His men instinctively turned towards him.

‘That’s it, weapons down,’ he bellowed.

The German soldiers tentatively lowered their weapons but none of them moved from their covered positions. Bösch realised he’d have to go first. He loosened the strap of his helmet and then slid it off, he held it one hand by the rim and slowly, very slowly, he eased it out into the open.

Several shots splintered the slender tree trunk still further and it creaked alarmingly as if preparing to topple over. He heard an American call out a ceasefire and the gunfire stopped.

He eased himself out from behind what was left of the tree with both hands raised fully above his head. He called out the only English phrase he knew, one that he and most of his men had taken time to learn in recent months.

‘Geneva convention… Surrendering!’ he announced loudly and clearly. He walked cautiously into the middle of the cobbled street, beckoning with one raised hand for his men to do likewise. One by one the seven remaining men of his platoon emerged and joined him.

The American soldiers remained in their positions, guns aimed, ready at a moment’s notice to resume firing. One of them, Bösch recognised the stripes of a sergeant, pointed towards the Germans and shouted. ‘Levy! Round ’em up and shake ’em down!’

From one of the warehouse doorways a young man emerged, and he trotted at the double towards them, his kit rattling like so many pots and pans in a bag. As Levy passed the Jew’s body, the prone form moved and they heard a faint moaning.

‘Sir! We got a live one here!’

Amongst the Americans the call for a medic rippled down the street, and moments later a medic appeared through one of the arches and slid to a halt beside Schenkelmann. Levy continued towards the Germans with his rifle raised at them, while the medic began his work.

Bösch watched the medic; he was fumbling with a compress applied to the wound to slow down the blood loss.

The Jew mustn’t fall into enemy hands alive.

Hauser had muttered this a countless number of times to him over the last few days, every time he’d heard the sound of artillery, or been spooked by the crack of gunfire.

The young American soldier now stood only feet away from them. ‘Okay, you shitheads, get down on the road!’ he shouted at them, pointing to the ground.

Bösch and his men stared defiantly at the young man; their eyes drawn to the Star of David pinned prominently on his uniform. Levy jerked his rifle to the ground repeatedly and jabbed one of the prisoners in the ribs to make the point.

‘Yeah, that’s right, you Nazi shit-holes, I’m Jewish. Now get the fuck down!’ he yelled angrily.

Bösch looked anxiously towards Schenkelmann. The medic treating him seemed satisfied that the compress was working and was now applying a bandage to hold it in place. Bösch nodded to his men, and they began to kneel obediently, albeit slowly. Another futile gesture of angry defiance.

The Jew can’t fall into their hands alive.

He gritted his teeth and gave one of his men a hard push to the side. The man fell awkwardly to the ground. The young American swung his rifle towards the prone man and Bösch reached for it, yanking hard at the barrel and freeing the gun easily from his hands. He grabbed the waist of the rifle with his other hand and shoved the weapon backwards, the butt smashing into the young man’s face with a sickening thud.

Levy dropped to the ground unconscious as Bösch spun the rifle round, aiming it squarely at Schenkelmann.

He had only a fleeting half-second, as he racked the weapon, to register the look of surprise and alarm on the faces of his own men and realise his rash action had doomed them all.

The gunfire from the entire platoon of Americans lasted a little more than fifteen seconds, and many of the young men who emptied their weapons that morning would vividly recall in years to come the bloody mess that was left of the eight German soldiers.

As the smoke cleared, the medic raised himself up off Schenkelmann, whom he’d almost crushed with his own body weight.

‘You okay, fella?’ he asked.

Schenkelmann nodded in response. His mouth opened and he tried to speak.

‘Don’t… just relax. We’ll have you out of here shortly, buddy.’

Schenkelmann tried to speak again, but suddenly he felt light-headed and passed out.