David Gibbins - The Mask of Troy

Rebecca shoved her hands in her pockets. ‘After we came back from Troy, Dad decided to see if we could find out what happened to her. To the girl with the harp. He’s been really preoccupied with that awful bunker, did you know?’

‘I know that NATO has agreed to an excavation, and meanwhile the airbase is on complete lockdown. I know there’s great excitement about the works of art and antiquities that might be there, but huge trepidation about what else they might find. It’s going to be the big story next year.’

‘And Saumerre,’ Rebecca said grimly. ‘When Dad had his little chat with him, the arrangement was that Saumerre keeps away from us, and we won’t expose him. Dad said he only spoke to him about underworld dealings, his family business, and in no way hinted that we suspected any fundamentalist terrorist connection. The media already knows about Saumerre’s family background, and if any of this stuff about stolen art and antiquities and the odd murder and kidnapping leaked out, then he could try to shrug it off as a media fantasy, meanwhile doubly securing himself against any personal implication. But if the idea of a fundamentalist backdrop leaks out, that’s another story.’

‘That’s why Raitz’s trial is so important.’

Rebecca nodded. ‘Dad’s hoping it can be stalled at least until the bunker excavation is finished. He thinks Raitz is a weakling and will spill the beans about Saumerre in his trial, even after what Dad said to him. If that happens, then Saumerre will disappear and become another Osama bin Laden. The security services don’t want that. He has to be kept in play as long as possible, until his organization can be infiltrated. But Dad’s worried that even before his trial, Raitz will break and try to plea-bargain. He’s got influential friends in London, lawyers, politicians, who will be encouraging him to do this, and meanwhile painting his detention as a human rights issue. That’s why the Turks are going to want to hold the trial pretty soon. They’re only putting it off because of all the strings we’ve pulled. The security services know what’s going on and why, but as far as public perception goes, it looks bad. Eminent architectural historian held for months without trial by the Turkish military for trespassing on an archaeological site. That’s what it looks like.’

‘Sounds almost as if a stray round should have got Raitz during your little showdown.’

‘Dad says keeping him alive was essential to the game that’s being played now, as Raitz is basically taking the fall for what’s happened. But it’s a pressure cooker and it’s going to blow. Realizing that was what made Dad push for the bunker excavation. If we can find and secure whatever’s in there, then at least that’s one ingredient out of the equation.’

‘Has Jack told Hugh about the excavation?’

‘He’s really torn about whether to tell him – because of Peter, how he might have died, that his body might still be in there. Anyway, Dad really wanted us to do this search for the girl. He said he’d spoken to you about it, and you’d decided we should do it straight-away, for Hugh’s sake. So we started off at the Imperial War Museum in London, where the Belsen material is archived. Eventually we found reference to a satellite camp. Some sign-off forms for supplies by a doctor who’d gone straight out there from medical school at Guy’s Hospital, and a tally form of new arrivals at the hospital the Red Cross set up at Belsen. The date was right. First of all we tried to find the doctor, but after the war he didn’t return to finish his degree and there was no record of him. Then came the real scoop. A few years ago, one of the Red Cross nurses at Belsen recorded her experiences for an audio presentation at the museum, and we found her. She remembered another nurse, a friend of hers, who’d spent her first day out there at this other camp, the satellite camp. Next stop for us, Australia.’

‘ Australia.’

Rebecca nodded. ‘The two women had kept up a correspondence. We found her in a nursing home in Brisbane. A lovely lady, Helen, very no-nonsense. But she wept so much when we spoke. It was like Hugh. It was the first time she’d really talked to anyone about it. She’d been in charge of the children at that camp. She remembered the girl with the harp, and the drawing. She was the one who gave it to Hugh when the SAS patrol came into the camp.’

‘So she knew what had happened to the girl?’

Rebecca paused, staring at the railway line. ‘Apparently the girl never spoke, but others who’d been at Auschwitz told the nurse the story. The girl and her parents were brought to the new Auschwitz camp at Birkenau in a cattle car in 1942, along this very line.’ She faltered, and shivered. ‘Her parents were immediately gassed, but she survived because they told the SS at the railhead that she was a talented musician. The SS put her in the camp orchestra, which played jazz and dance songs to the arriving Jews. Then they took her to the brothel. In early 1945 she was put on the march west, ending up in the camp near Belsen. Shortly before liberation, the SS camp leader, a woman, found out what the girl had been at Auschwitz and paraded her in front of the others, like an animal. Apparently, she screamed at the girl, I will personally see that you suffer. Ich werde personlich dafur sorgen, dass Sie leiden. Helen said she always remembered being told that. It was only a few days before the liberation, and the SS knew the writing was on the wall, yet that woman could still be so cruel. Helen was told that they dragged the girl off into the forest, where she was raped by the guards in that bunker. She was left for dead but escaped into the forest, then went back into the camp when she saw the SAS patrol arrive. She was seventeen years old at liberation.’

‘Have you told any of this to Hugh?’

Rebecca shook her head. ‘Dad said Hugh would have a good enough idea. And we didn’t want to upset him.’

‘So the nurse in Australia, Helen, sent you here?’

Rebecca nodded. ‘She’d worked here herself, in the 1950s. This is the last of these special houses, within sight of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. It’s a closely guarded secret. There are benefactors, Jewish organizations, others. They still call them the children, even seventy years on. They’re the ones who could never be rehabilitated. It’s as if their lives ended that moment on the railhead, and the only chance of happiness is to bring them back here, because this was the last place before the train drew up at that ramp.’

‘Hugh said that, when he showed us the drawing in Bristol. He’d spoken to the nurse.’

Rebecca nodded. ‘She remembered him. That’s why she agreed to tell us about this place. At first she wouldn’t, but then Dad went back to her alone, flew all the way to Australia to talk to her again. She said it was for Hugh.’

‘Okay. Let’s go inside,’ Dillen said.

Rebecca mounted the steps, then turned and held Dillen’s arm. ‘You said you knew? When I told you I thought Hugh wasn’t well.’

Dillen paused for a moment, then looked at her. He took her hand in his, and held it. ‘The day after we visited Hugh, just before you were kidnapped, when I went back to Bristol to set him up with the translation, I went with him to the hospital. He wanted me to know. He’d known for some time.’

Rebecca was crying. ‘I thought so,’ she said. ‘I thought there was something wrong when Dad and I picked him up. I just knew it. So Dad knew, too?’

‘He didn’t want to upset you. He thinks you’ve had enough already.’

Rebecca took off her glove and wiped her eyes. ‘So that’s what he went back to tell Helen in Australia. That Hugh was dying.’

‘We don’t know that. For sure.’