Philip Kerr - Field Grey

'And if you find him? What then?'

Oltramare smiled. 'I will arrest him, Captain Gunther.'

I wasn't so sure about that. In fact I wasn't sure about anything as we left Navarrenx and headed south to Gurs. The SS troops in the truck now leading the way were singing 'Sieg Heil Viktoria'. I was starting to have misgivings about everything.

My driver and the corporal in the bucket's front passenger seat were more interested in the woman seated beside

Oltramare and me than in singing. Her name was Eva Kemmerich and she was extremely thin, which seemed to make her mouth too wide and her ears too big. Under her eyes were shadows like bat wings and she wore a pink handkerchief around her head to keep her hair tidy. It looked like the rubber on top of a pencil. In Gurs, she and the other women had suffered a tough time at the hands of the French.

'Conditions were barbaric,' she explained. 'They treated us like dogs. Worse than dogs. People talk about German anti- Semitism. Well, it's my considered opinion that the French just hate everyone who isn't French. Germans, Jews, Spanish, Poles, Italians – they were all treated equally badly. Gurs is a concentration camp, that's what it is, and the guards are absolute bastards. They worked us like slaves. Just look at my hands. My nails. They're ruined.'

She looked at Oltramare with ill-concealed contempt. 'Go on,' she told him. 'Look at them.'

'I am looking at them, mademoiselle.'

'Well? What's the idea of treating human beings like that? You're French. What's the big idea, Franzi?'

'I have no explanation, mademoiselle. And I have no excuse. All I can say is that before the war there were almost four million refugees living in France from countries all over Europe. That's ten per cent of our population. What were we to do with so many people, mademoiselle?'

'Actually it's madame,' she said. 'I had a wedding ring but it was stolen by one of your French guards. Not that it ever stayed on my finger after the diet I've endured. My husband is in another camp. Le Vernet. I hope things are better there. My God it could hardly be any worse. You know something? I'm sorry the war is over. I just wish our boys could have killed a lot more Frenchmen before they were obliged to throw in the towel.' She leaned forward and tapped the corporal and the driver on their shoulders. 'Christ, I'm proud of you, boys. You really gave the Franzis a well-deserved kicking. But if you want to put the cherry on my cake you'll arrest the criminal who's in charge of the camp at Gurs and shoot him down like the pig he is. Here, I tell you what, I'll sleep with whichever one of you puts a bullet in that bastard's head.'

The corporal looked at the driver and grinned. I could tell that the idea was not without appeal for him, so I said:

'And I will shoot whoever takes this lady up on her generous offer.' I took her bony hand in mine. 'Please don't do that again, Frau Kemmerich. I appreciate that you've had a rough time of it but I can't allow you to make things worse.'

'Worse?' she sneered. 'There isn't anything that's worse than Gurs.'

The camp, situated in the foothills of the Pyrenees, was much larger than I had supposed, covering an area of about a square kilometre, and was split into two halves. A makeshift street ran the length of the site and on each side there were three or four hundred wooden huts. There seemed to be no sanitation or running water and the smell was indescribable. I had been to Dachau. The only differences between Gurs and Dachau were that the barbed-wire fence at Gurs was smaller and not obviously electrified; and there were no executions, otherwise conditions seemed to be much the same; and it was only after a parade was called in the men's half of the camp and we went in among the prisoners that it was possible to see how things were actually much worse than at Dachau.

The guards were all French gendarmes, each of whom carried a thick leather riding whip, although none of them seemed to own a horse. There were three 'islets': A, B and C. The islet C adjutant was a Gabin type with an effeminate mouth and narrow, expressionless eyes. He knew exactly where the German communists were held and, without offering any resistance to our requests, he took us to a dilapidated barrack containing fifty men who, paraded before us outside, exhibited signs of emaciation or illness, but more often both. It was clear they'd been expecting us, or something like us, and refusing to submit to a roll-call they started to sing the Internationale. Meanwhile the French adjutant glanced over Bomelburg's list and helpfully picked out some of our wanted men. Erich Mielke wasn't one of these.

While this selection was proceeding I could hear Eva Kemmerich. She was standing in our bucket, which was parked on the 'street', and shouting abuse at some of the prisoners who were still held in the camp. These and a few of the gendarmes on the women's side of the wire responded by laughing at her and making obscene remarks and gestures. For me, the sense of being involved in some nameless insanity was compounded when the inmates of another hut – the adjutant said they were French anarchists – began to sing the Marseillaise in competition with those who were singing the Internationale.

We marched seven men out of the camp and into the buckets. All of them raised clenched fists in the communist salute and shouted slogans in German or Spanish to their fellow prisoners.

Kestner caught my eye. 'Did you ever see anything like this place?'

'Only Dachau.'

'Well, I never saw anything like it. To treat people this way, even if they are communists, seems disgusting.'

'Don't tell me.' I pointed at Chief Inspector Oltramare, who was marching a handcuffed prisoner towards the buckets at gunpoint. 'Tell him.'

'Looks like he got his man anyway.'

'I wonder if I'll get mine,' I said. 'Mielke.'

'Not here?'

I shook my head. 'I mean this fellow I'm after almost ruined my career, the Bolshie bastard. As far as I'm concerned he's really got it coming.'

'I'm sure he has. They all have. Communist swine.'

'But you were a communist weren't you, Paul? Before you joined the Nazi Party?'

'Me? No. Whatever gave you that idea?'

'Only I seem to recall you campaigning for Ernst Thalmann in – when was that? 1925?'

'Don't be fucking ridiculous, Bernie. Is this a joke?' He glanced nervously in Bomelburg's direction. 'I think that phosgene gas has addled your brains. Really. Have you gone mad?'

'No. And actually it's my impression that I'm probably the only sane one here.'

As the day wore on this was an impression that did not alter. Indeed there was even greater madness to come.

It was late afternoon when our convoy took to the road again. We were headed to Toulouse, about one hundred and fifty kilometres to the north-east, and thought that we could probably make it before dark. We took Eva Kemmerich with us so that she might look for her husband when we visited the camp at Le Vernet the following day. And of course our eight prisoners. I hadn't really looked at them. They were a miserable, malnourished, smelly lot, and little or no threat to anyone, let alone the Third Reich. According to Karl Bomelburg, one of them was a famous German writer and another a well-known newspaperman, only I hadn't heard of either of them.

Outside Lourdes, in sight of the river Gave de Pau, we stopped in a forest clearing to stretch our legs. I was pleased to see Bomelburg extend the same facility to our prisoners. He even handed out some cigarettes. I was feeling tired but better. At least my chest was no longer hurting. But I still wasn't smoking. I took another bite off Bomelburg's flask and decided that maybe he wasn't such a bad fellow after all.