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The soldier handed him a message slip with directions.
Erik and Hermann gulped their tea, stubbed their cigarettes, and left the room. Erik put on a fur coat he had taken from a dead Russian officer, but left it open to show his uniform. They hurried down to the garage, and Hermann drove the ambulance out into the street. Erik read out the directions, peering through a light snowfall.
The road led out of town and snaked through the forest. They passed several buses and trucks coming the other way. The snow on the road was packed hard, and Hermann could not go fast on the glossy surface. Erik could easily imagine how there had been a collision.
It was the afternoon of the short day. At this time of year, daylight began at ten and ended at five. A gray light came through the snow clouds. The tall pine trees crowding in on either side darkened the road further. Erik felt as if he were in one of the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, following the path into the deep wood where evil lurked.
They looked out for a turning to the left, and found it guarded by a soldier who pointed the way. They bumped along a treacherous path between the trees until they were waved down by a second guard, who said: "Don't go faster than walking pace. That's how the crash happened."
A minute later they came upon the accident. Three damaged vehicles stood as if welded together: a bus, a jeep, and a Mercedes limousine with snow chains on the tires. Erik and Hermann jumped out of their ambulance.
The bus was empty. There were three men on the ground, perhaps the occupants of the jeep. Several soldiers gathered around the car sandwiched between the other two vehicles, apparently trying to get the people out of it.
Erik heard a volley of rifle fire, and wondered for a moment who was shooting, but he put the thought aside and concentrated on the job.
He and Hermann went from one man to the next assessing the gravity of the injuries. Of the three people on the ground one was dead, another had a broken arm, and the third appeared to be no worse than bruised. In the car, one man had bled to death, another was unconscious, and a third was screaming.
Erik gave the screamer a shot of morphine. When the drug took effect, he and Hermann were able to get the patient out of the car and into the ambulance. With him out of the way, the soldiers could begin to free the unconscious man, who was trapped by the deformed bodywork of the Mercedes. The man had a head injury that was going to kill him anyway, Erik thought, but he did not tell them that. He turned his attention to the men from the jeep. Hermann put a splint on the broken arm, and Erik walked the bruised man to the ambulance and sat him inside.
He returned to the Mercedes. "We'll have him out in five to ten minutes," said a captain. "Just hold on."
"Okay," said Erik.
He heard shooting again, and walked a little farther into the forest, curious about what the Special Group might be doing here. The snow on the ground between the trees was heavily trodden and littered with cigarette ends, apple cores, discarded newspapers, and other litter, as if a factory outing had passed this way.
He entered a clearing where lorries and buses were parked. A lot of people had been brought here. Some buses were leaving, skirting the accident; another arrived as Erik passed through. Beyond the parking lot, he came upon a hundred or so Russians of all ages, apparently prisoners, though many had suitcases, boxes, and sacks that they clutched as if guarding precious possessions. One man held a violin. A little girl with a doll caught Erik's eye, and he felt in his guts a sensation of sick foreboding.
The prisoners were being guarded by local policemen armed with truncheons. Clearly the Special Group had collaborators for whatever they were doing. The policemen looked at him, noted the German army uniform visible beneath the unbuttoned coat, and said nothing.
As he walked by, a well-dressed Russian prisoner spoke to him in German. "Sir, I am the director of the tire factory in this town. I have never believed in Communism, but only paid lip service, as all managers had to. I can help you--I know where everything is. Please take me away from here."
Erik ignored him and walked in the direction of the shooting.
He came upon the quarry. It was a large, irregular hole in the ground, its edge fringed by tall spruce trees like guardsmen in dark green uniforms laden with snow. At one end a long slope led into the pit. As he watched, a dozen prisoners began to walk down, two by two, marshaled by soldiers, into the shadowed valley.
Erik noticed three women and a boy of about eleven among them. Was their prison camp somewhere in that quarry? But they were no longer carrying luggage. Snow fell on their bare heads like a benison.
Erik spoke to an SS sergeant standing nearby. "Who are these prisoners, Sarge?"
"Communists," said the man. "From the town. Political commissars, and so on."
"What, even that little boy?"
"Jews, too," said the sergeant.
"Well, what are they, Communists or Jews?"
"What's the difference?"
"It's not the same thing."
"Balls. Most Communists are Jews. Most Jews are Communists. Don't you know anything?"
The tire factory director who had spoken to Erik seemed to be neither, he thought.
The prisoners reached the rocky floor of the quarry. Until this moment they had shuffled along like sheep in a herd, not speaking or looking around, but now they became animated, pointing at something on the ground. Peering through the snowflakes, Erik saw what looked like bodies scattered among the rocks, snow dusting their garments.
For the first time Erik noticed twelve riflemen standing on the lip of the ravine, among the trees. Twelve prisoners, twelve riflemen: he realized what was happening here, and incredulity mixed with horror rose like bile inside him.
