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“Do you really wish to talk about the law?” Matthew lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out in a steady, contemplative stream. “At Boizenburg, you were in charge of implementing the directive Vernichtung durch Ar
beit.” Extermination through labor. One of the survivors of Neuengamme had told them as much as he could. Ten- to twelve-hour days of forced labor under unimaginable conditions, little food, arbitrary beatings and other cruel punishments. Even though it hadn’t been a death camp like Auschwitz or Treblinka, it was estimated that half of the inmates there had died.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Henck said firmly.
They continued for another hour, Matthew remaining calm and controlled, Henck veering wildly between determined denials and blustery bravado, even as his story began to change. Yes, all right, he’d known about the camp, of course he had, but he’d never been. Then: he might have been once, very well, who could remember? He didn’t keep track of every place he went. He wasn’t aware of what was going on there, who had been? Well, yes, everyone knew it was something. But no one could possibly realize…
His forehead was shiny with sweat, the armpits of his shirt dark and damp. He kept glancing at Matthew’s cigarette with a look of naked longing.
And then he began to break. A single slip, made when he was tired.
“You should question someone important,” he said crossly, thoughtlessly, after Matthew had asked him a dozen questions in a row, rapid-fire. “Someone like Pauly. He was in charge of the whole thing. Or what about that lunatic, Trzebinski?”
Matthew merely raised his eyebrows.
“I’ve heard of them,” Henck blustered quickly. “Everyone has. Their names were bandied about.”
Silence, as he sweated. Matthew smoked.
“Look,” Henck finally said, and his voice broke along with his resolve. “I wasn’t anyone important. I was second in command of the labor, not even the Unterscharführer. She had that wrong, you know. I was just obeying orders. That’s all I did.” Another long, uneasy pause. “I’ll tell you what I know,” Henck said, wheedling now. “I can be helpful. I can give you names. But you must realize I didn’t make any decisions. I just carried them out. There are so many others you could—”
“Who was Trzebinski?” Matthew asked as if it were a matter of passing interest. “Why did you call him a lunatic?”
“He was the camp doctor, although one would hardly call him that. It wasn’t as if he made anyone better.” A slight guffaw, quickly suppressed.
Matthew eyed him coldly. “You called him a lunatic.”
Henck shrugged, caught between discomfort and indifference, battling a cautious hope that information might be the way out for him. “He did experiments on some of the prisoners. I never saw. I just heard.” He gave a little shiver as he grimaced. “It didn’t seem right to me,” he added with an absurd self-righteousness. “I never thought anyone should do that sort of thing.”
“Experiments,” Matthew said tonelessly, and waited.
“All sorts. Like I said, I never saw. But… all sorts.” Another self-conscious shiver, as if his discomfort somehow united them. “You heard things. Injections, prisoners made to stay in ice water until they’d died… I know he took twenty children, some as young as six, from one of the extermination camps, for experiments with tuberculosis. When he was finished with them, he had them hung in the basement of the Bullenhuser Damm school.” This was recited matter-of-factly, with no shiver, no moue of disgust. The man wasn’t bothered at all.
Matthew stared at him without any emotion. When he was finished with them. He stubbed out his cigarette.
“I’ve been here for hours,” Henck said plaintively. “I need to relieve myself.”
Matthew gestured to the door. The hallway and bathroom were guarded; Henck could not escape. He rose from his chair, straightening his cuffs as he gave Matthew a pointed look down his nose.
“At the end of the day,” he said with a sniff, “they were only Jews.”
Matthew did not reply. Alone in the room, he smoked another cigarette and tried to keep his mind empty. Don’t think of it. Don’t think at all.
Twenty children, perhaps like Gertie. Perhaps Gertie. As young as six. When he was finished with them.
A perfunctory knock on the door thankfully startled him out of his thoughts. “Hey, Lawson, where’s your prisoner?”
He turned to see Cardenas, one of the new military intelligence recruits, standing in the doorway, chewing a wad of gum.
“Relieving himself,” he said shortly. “But I’m done for now. I’ll do the paperwork and he can be returned to his cell.”
Cardenas raised his eyebrows. “How long has he been in there? Because you know some SS bigwig killed himself yesterday, while he was supposed to be taking a piss? Betts was spitting bullets. The bastard cut his wrists while he was on the john.”
Betts hadn’t told him any of that. Matthew stared at Cardenas for several seconds. Then he strode out of the room, down the corridor to the toilets. A new fury was building in him, rising like a tidal wave, or perhaps an avalanche, overtaking any thought. It had been there all along, of course, but Matthew had always controlled it, kept it down. He’d had to, for his own sake. His own sanity. Now he felt it unleash, a wild and uncontained thing, overwhelming him with its intensity.
He threw open the door to the toilets. “Henck, you fucker,” he demanded, “where are you?”
He pushed open the door of the first stall—empty. The second was locked and Matthew kicked it in, so full of rage now he could barely take in the sight before him—Henck hunched over on the toilet, his trousers about his ankles.
