The Invisible Victory

35

'Would you like a cup of coffee? It's real.'

'No thank you. As you suspected, I've come on business. I want to get it over as soon as possible.'

Rudi began to dissertate infuriatingly, 'What do you think of the furniture? It is in the baroque style created by Count von Berg, who was once a big noise in the district. The flat belongs to Hans, who let you in. I'm lucky these disturbed times to find a roof over my head.'

'I've come about penicillin. I want to buy some.'

'To buy? But you of the master race have penicillin enough.'

'It's for a German.'

'I see.' He offered a packet of Lucky Strike, then lit one himself. 'What are you prepared to pay?'

'What's your usual charge?'

'You can have five days' supply for fifty pounds.'

'I haven't got fifty pounds.'

'Then I cannot help you.'

'I could have you imprisoned for these activities, remember.'

'Isn't that an empty threat? You would not dare to implicate yourself. I'm sure you can raise sufficient pound notes or dollars.'

'You know we're not supposed to have any currency except occupation marks.'

'I know that is a regulation often broken.'

There was silence. Rudi continued smoking unconcernedly. 'Your penicillin's stolen, I suppose?' I asked.

'You do me an injustice. It comes from a most respectable source-the kidneys of the Americans. The precious fluid is collected from the big Army hospitals round Frankfurt, the penicillin reclaimed by a chemist from I G Farben here in Wupertal. At first I thought the process utterly revolting, then merely bizarre. It recalls our name for the weak beer during the war-"Hitler's bladder irrigation".'

'You steal the urine, then?'

'You really have a low opinion of me, Mr Elgar. A man who steels urine cannot stand very high even in the fraternity of criminals. The Americans are glad enough to give it to my friend the chemist for official distribution. Only a little of the fruits of his labours comes my way.'

The story rang true. Florey had used the same method with his first cases in Oxford. And the re-extraction of penicillin needed apparatus no more elaborate than the Heath Robinson equipment in the animal house.

'You see, we Nazis can't be as black as you paint us. You still turn to us if you're in sufficient trouble.'

'My God, you're conceited,' I told him.

Rudi was unmoved. 'You British are great preachers, and so lay yourselves open to the suspicion of being great hypocrites. Such indignation in your newspapers! But to paraphrase Clausewitz, genocide is the continuation of racial policy by other means.'

'You were well taught in the 'Goebbels kindergarten, I see.'

'Goebbels, Himmler, Hitler-they've all been exalted, far too flatteringly, in your demonology. Herr Hitler was just another German statesman like Bismarck, or even Bismarck's completely unmemorable successors, Caprivi and Hohenlohe. Hitler was more unscrupulous than Bismarck, but no less opportunistic. Perhaps he was more skilful, more adept at bluff. That was Hitler's game, you know. He did not want war. I see that I bring the colour to your cheeks, Mr Elgar. But Herr Hitler got almost all he wanted by only threatening war. And you must admit that a war won without fighting is better for both sides than victory and defeat.'

'He bluffed, we called his bluff, and the result lies all round you,' I told Rudi shortly.

'Herr Hitler miscalculated. He believed that you would rat on the Poles in 1939. After all, he had reason enough. You ratted on the Czechs at Munich in 1938. You are looking at me angrily, Mr Elgar, not because I am telling the truth, but because I am the only German in a position to tell it to an Englishman.' Rudi reached for a black leather briefcase on the dresser with the pewter dishes. He drew from it a sheet of paper. 'We are yoked in the harness of an illegal conspiracy, Mr Elgar. So you shall see how much I trust you.' He said this without irony.

It was a letter from the Wolfsschanze, the Wolf's Lair, Hitler's Russian Front Headquarters at Rastenburg in East Prussia. It was dated July 14, 1944-less than a week before the bomb plot misfired. The brief typewritten text commended Herr Recklinghausen for his work at Nordhausen in Thuringia. I knew that Nordhausen had a factory for flying bombs, that it was manned by slave labour and that the Americans found so many of them dead their rows of bodies floored the huge barbed-wire compound. Hitler's spiky signature at the bottom gave an icy feeling in my heart. The man had actually touched the paper I was holding.

'This wasn't anything to do with propaganda,' I told Rudi.

'In wartime you have to take many jobs and do as you are told.' He took the letter back. 'That piece of paper could land me in Nьrnberg. But I know that you must keep the secret as well as I. You British and Americans cannot blame Herr Hitler for all that has happened in Germany, you know. Nor can we Germans, though naturally we make him our scapegoat. Hitler gave the German masses what they wanted-uniforms, processions, marching soldiers, order, discipline and revenge for our shame in 1938. You may raise the Jewish question, but antisemitism in Germany was not mobilized by Adolf Hitler. It was another Adolf, Stцcker, a protestant clergyman, Wilhelm the First's court chaplain. He founded the Christian Social Party in 1878, when the politics of the masses first began in Germany. The German Conservatives soon joined in the game. An enemy is necessary for any political party, otherwise it starts looking responsible for its own mistakes. What enemy more convenient than the Jew, who is everywhere and mixed up with everything? Besides, there is malice in every human heart, a cudgel for every human fist.'

Now it was Rudi who had coloured, as though speaking to a room of brownshirted cronies. 'Ignoble emotions are more easily exploited than noble ones. Your British cynicism must tell you so, Mr Elgar? And Herr Hitler had a knack for exactly that. He assumed mock fury in dramatic speeches, and flattered Germany with spectacular leadership. Though in fact he thought the German people just as stupid as the masses of any other nation.'

'I know,' I told him coldly. 'I've read _Mein Kampf.'_

'It is pleasant to think we share a common taste in literature,' Rudi said calmly.

I wanted to escape from the room. 'If I raise the money, will you have the penicillin? It's urgent. And anyway I'm leaving Wuppertal for good the day after tomorrow.'

'Come back at noon.'

Hans with the dyed hair was waiting in the hall. I hurried back to the mess. I had ten pounds in sterling notes hidden in my room. The rest I borrowed from Greenparish, who I had suspected of hoarding currency from selling his cigarette ration. I climbed the cascade of stairs to Rudi's flat again the following morning. By then I was full of doubts over the unsavoury transaction. The penicillin might be understrength, or unsterile, so worse than useless by augmenting the infection.

Hans answered the door. He told me that Count von Recklinghausen was out. I waited until Hans returned with a foolscap envelope, which I tore open on the spot. It contained a squat bottle with a screw top, the sort used in laboratories the world over. Gummed across the stopper was a reassuring printed label saying unfruchtbar, sterile. It was half full of brownish crystals, like the early penicillin I had seen at Oxford. I handed over the money, which Hans counted carefully. He said 'Danke' curtly and shut the door.

In the hospital, the nurse with the flowing hat was not at her post. I walked up and down impatiently. After some minutes the old doctor appeared, still in his mended white coat.

'How is Frдulein Dieffenbach?'

He shook his head gloomily. 'The news is bad. She has suffered a spread of the infection to her blood. I had hoped that it might have remained localized, but in her present physical condition it was just too much for her. We must hope that she has enough reserve of strength to overcome it.'

I held up the bottle proudly. 'I have some penicillin.'

He took it silently, turning it in his thin, white fingers. 'It's not American penicillin?'

'American penicillin is impossible to obtain. You know that.'

'There are ways. I've had a few ampoules here, stolen from the military hospitals. Might I ask where you got it?'

'That's out of the question,' I told him shortly. It did not seem the moment to inspect the teeth of gift horses. Then I added, 'It was extracted from urine.'

'Yes, I know of that technique. But the source may still be of importance,' the doctor said musingly. He held the bottle towards the light. 'Sometimes it is not penicillin at all, but any sort of crystals, perhaps brown sugar, or water coloured yellow.' He abruptly broke the sterile seal, tipping some of the powder into his palm. 'No, that's not penicillin.' He sniffed it. 'It has a distinct scent. It is bath salts, ground up in the kitchen.'

I had gone a couple of streets towards Rudi's flat before realizing the pointlessness of again climbing the flight of stairs. Hans would certainly not open the door to me. I could do nothing against Rudi without landing myself in the same jail. He knew that I was leaving Germany for good the next day. He would just laugh at me. Which would be intolerable.

I hurried back to the mess. I told the orderly sergeant that I wanted a jeep and driver at once. It was not until mid-afternoon that transport could be produced. It was dark when I arrived in Bad Godesberg.

It was a modern Luftwaffe hospital, serving the airfields scattered thickly across north-western Germany. Like everything else provided for Hitler's Forces, down to their boots and braces, it was of better quality than afforded German civilians. A corporal on duty told me that Colonel Mellors was in the wards. I sent my name, with a message that my visit was urgent. Within a few minutes David appeared, in battledress and carrying a stethoscope, bubbling as usual.

'Can I have a private word with you?' I asked tensely.

'You've chosen a fine moment, boy, We've just got a couple of cases of typhus, which is putting the DDMS into a fine flap, typhus having been officially eradicated in this part of the world. I expect they're sitting up there saying I'm a bloody fool who's made the wrong diagnosis.'

He led me down a long low-ceilinged corridor into a room with his name on the door, containing a desk, a pair of metal and canvas chairs, some filing cabinets and a refrigerator.

'Got the clap?' he asked amiably.

'Certainly not!'

'I imagined that to be the case, from the secretiveness of your approach.'

'You remember, I worked out here in Wuppertal before the war? I stayed a year with a German family, the father was a doctor.' I told him quickly the story of Gerda, and of her present suffering.

'You say she's got puerperal? Just like your wife?' I nodded. David began to look uneasy. 'What do you want me to do about it, boy? Is she being treated properly? I know a squadron-leader who's a gynae man looking after the WAAFS at Celle, up near Hanover. I could get him on the phone.'

'I want some penicillin.'

I wondered if David would be angry, but he just said resignedly, 'Look, boy-'

'I'm sorry. I've put you on a spot.'

'I'm continually getting these pleas, you know. From the men, who've been fratting with girls. It's always the old father or mother who are dying. To tell the truth, I don't believe one of these heart-rending stories is true. The girls want to sell it on the black market. I can't get enough for my own patients.' He jerked his thumb towards the refrigerator. 'That's half full of penicillin, but I could use twice as much if I had it.'

Feeling deflated, embarrassed, and foolish, I asked, 'You can't spare an ampoule, even for me?'

He shook his head slowly. 'I just can't break the rules, can I?'

'I didn't really expect that you would.'

'That's flattering, I suppose.'

'I shouldn't have come here. It was all on an impulse.'

'This woman's pretty sick?'

'The doctor said she'd developed septicaemia.'

'She's likely to be a goner, then?'

'You'd know better than me.'

David sighed. 'It's her bad luck to be born a German, isn't it? But we didn't start the war. And we didn't lose it, either. No, I'm sorry, Jim. I'm sorry.' He got to his feet. 'I must get back to those typhus cases.'

'And I'm sorry to make a nuisance of myself.'

'Not a bit. You'd every right to bring me your problem. It's the Army which doesn't allow me to help.'

We exchanged a few commonplaces. At the door, David jerked his head and said, 'I've got to go in this direction. Can you find your own way out?'

I nodded. 'Shall I see you in London over Christmas?'

'Yes, let's make a night of it.'

David hurried round the corner. I waited ten seconds or so. I went back to the office and switched on the light. Inside the refrigerator were cardboard packs like cartons of American cigarettes. Each was labelled, 'Penicillin-50 Doses'. For the second time in my life, I stole.