Scott Turow - Ordinary Heroes

Several times I noticed that the uppermost bodies in these mounds were marked with bloody gashes in their abdomens.

"Why?" I asked Grove. "What was in their stomachs that anyone wanted?"

The Lieutenant looked at me. "Food," he said.

My war without tears ended at Balingen. A moment after entering the only but I visited, I rushed behind the building and vomited. Afterward, I found I was weeping. I tried for several minutes to gain control and eventually gave up and continued walking beside the Lieutenant, crying silently, which made my eyes ache in the strong sun. "Cried like a babe myself," he said at one point. "And I don't know if it's worse that I've stopped."

But it was not simply the suffering that had brought me to tears, or the staggering magnitude of the cruelty. It was a single thought that came to me after my first few minutes in the camp, another of those phrases that cycled maddeningly in my brain. The words were "There was no choice."

I had been on the Continent now for six months, half a year, not much longer than a semester in school, but it was impossible to recall the person I had been before. I had fought in terror, and I had learned to despise war. There was no glory in the savagery I saw. No reason. And surely no law. It was only brutality, scientifically perfected on both sides, in which great ingenuity had been deployed in the creation of giant killing machines. There was nothing to be loyal to in any of this and surely no cause for pride. But there in Balingen I cried for mankind. Because there had been no choice. Because knowing everything now, I saw this terrible war had to happen, with all its gore and witless destruction, and might well happen again. If human beings could do this, it seemed unfathomable how we could ever save ourselves. In Balingen, it was incontestable that cruelty was the law of the universe.

Amid all of this, I had lost any recollection of why I was there. When Grove walked into one of the yellow buildings near the gate, I expected him to expose another horror. Instead he led me down a cool stone stairway, into a rock cellar where an MP guarded an iron door. I could not imagine what the Germans had needed with a jail in a place like this, until I remembered that the camp had originally been a military post. This, apparently, was the stockade. There were eight cells here, each with stone walls and a barred front. Josef Kandel, the former camp commandant, today known as the Beast of Balingen, sat in one, erect in a spotless uniform but wearing no shoes, his legs chained. There were two SS officers in adjoining cells who'd been through rough questioning. One was in a heap on the floor; the other was largely toothless, with fresh blood still running down his chin. And in the farthermost cell, on a small stool sat United States Army Major Robert Martin of the Office of Strategic Services. The lousy clothes which he'd stripped from one of the corpses as a disguise had been burned following his capture and replaced with a fresh officer's uniform, a russet shirt, under a sleeveless wool sweater, his oak leaves still on the right point of his collar.

Confronting him, I knew my features were swollen by weeping, but he was surely more changed than I. On the left side of his face, the skin shone, pink as sunrise, and his ear was a gnarly remnant melted to the side of his head, above which no hair grew for several inches. The end of his left sleeve was empty.

"Major," I said, "by the order of General Roland Teedle, you are arrested and will appear before a general court-martial as soon as it may be convened."

He smiled in response and waved the one good hand he had.

"Oh, come off it, Dubin. Get in here and talk to me.''

His power of attraction was durable enough that I nearly did it before thinking. Even with one hand, Martin probably could subdue me and engineer yet another escape.

"I think not."

He laughed, shaking his head at length. "Then pull up a chair out there, if you must. But we should have a word."

I looked at Lieutenant Grove, who asked to brief me. As we walked down the dim hall, he whispered about what had transpired with the detail that had locked up Martin yesterday. While they were escorting him to the cell, he had informed his jailers about a mountain two hundred miles from here, where he claimed the Germans had stored all the stolen treasures of Europe. Thousands of gold bars and jewels were hoarded in the caverns, including American ten-and twenty-dollar gold pieces. A U. S. Army detachment, he said, could fake its way in and out just by saying they had come to take custody of the American tender and head home with every man a millionaire. Martin had offered to lead the way. Informed of this story, Grove had regarded it as preposterous. Instead, when he'd contacted OSS, Winters had confirmed that only a few days ago the 358th Infantry Regiment had taken a salt mine at Kaiseroda in the Harz Mountains, where they discovered a vast booty stored in the underground channels. Paintings, gems, rooms full of currency and coins. Billions' worth. Grove's theory was that Kaiseroda had been Martin's objective all along.

"What does OSS think?"

"Those fellows never say what they think."

I weighed the possibility. It remained appealing to believe that Martin hadn't ever been intent on spying. Rather, he would resign from war and make himself rich forever. Perhaps. But I'd become reconciled to the fact that I'd never really understand Martin's motives. Only he could explain them, and no one could accept a word he said.

A few minutes later, at Grove's order, an MP lugged a heavy oak chair down the stone hail for me. I sat outside Martin's cell, and he brought his small stool close to the bars. He still appeared chipper, even though his steps were mincing in his leg irons.

"So," said Martin. "As you've long wanted. You have me in chains. I knew that was poppycock about house arrest."

"You are far better off than any other prisoner here, Major."

He accepted my rebuke with a buttoned-up smile. "Even down here, there's the smell." He was right, although it was remote enough that I could also detect the familiar rot bred by cellar moisture. "I had no idea what I was headed to. But your dogs were on my heels, Dubin. And with the camp about to be surrendered, I thought I'd mingle and depart. Once I was here, of course, it was plain that I'd have trouble passing as an inmate, even with my injuries. But I couldn't stand to leave. In three nights, Dubin, I killed four SS. They were easy pickings, trying to skulk out the back gate in the middle of the night. I just laid a trip wire." He gave a kind of disbelieving snort. "There won't be any killings that lie easier on my conscience."

As ever, I had no idea whether to believe him. "And what about your plan to make yourself the new Croesus?" I asked. "Were you going to abandon that?"

"You don't believe that, do you, Dubin? It was a ploy, I admit. I was happy to make those boys think I could make them each into a Rockefeller. But we're two hundred miles away. If I was heading for Kaiseroda, I'd have been there by now."

"So where were you heading, Martin?"

You want to know my plan? Is that why you're sitting here? Well, I shall tell you, Dubin. Gita knows, she'll tell you anyway when you find her. You do want to find her, don't you?" His hostility about Gita got the better of him, and he showed a quick vulpine grin. I was surprised and somewhat relieved by Martin's pettiness-it was a crack in his perfect edifice-but I felt little other reaction when he mentioned her name. Not today. "You can tell my friends in OSS what I was up to and save them some time. I'd rather talk to you anyway.

I gave him nothing by way of response.

"You know, Dubin, you needn't be so peeved with me. I'd have kept my word to you in Savy. About surrendering? I had every intention. You don't think I prefer this, do you?" He lifted his handless arm, so that the bright red stump, a distorted knobby shape, crept out of the sleeve. I could have debated with him about dropping me off when he knew I wouldn't find Algar at his headquarters, or the last two and a half months that Martin had spent on the run since Gita helped him flee from Oflag XII-D. But I discovered that I had one enduring gripe with Robert Martin over and above all the others.