The Company of Strangers

Rastenburg

5th January 1943

Dear Julius,

The officer who will give you this letter will be able to get you out of your predicament, fly you out of the Kessel and eventually into hospital back in Berlin. You have a stark and terrible decision to make. If you stay, our mother and, you know this to be true, more especially our father will be heartbroken. You, his eldest son, have always been his lodestone, the one to whom he is naturally drawn, from whom he derives his energy and now, since his retirement, in who he has invested all his hope. He would be a broken man without you in his life.

If you leave, your men will not despise you but you will despise yourself. You will bear the guilt of the survivor, the guilt of the chosen one. This is possibly, and only you can answer this question, reparable damage. Whatever happens in our father’s mind will not be.

I cannot believe I am having to deliver the burden of this choice to you in your desperate circumstances. In earlier attempts I tried to dress it up nicely, a temptation for Julius, but it refused to be pretty. It is an ugly choice. For my part, all I can say is that, whatever you decide, you are always my brother and I have never felt that there’s any better man living.

Karl

Voss buttoned his tunic, put on his coat and went out under the icicle fringes of his hut into the frozen air. His boots rang on the hard, snow-packed ground. He entered Restricted Area I and went straight to the Security Command post from where he knew SS Colonel Weiss would be running his brutal régime. The other soldiers looked at him as he entered. Nobody came willingly into the Security Command post. Nobody ever wanted to talk to SS Colonel Weiss. He was shown straight in. Weiss sat behind his desk in a state of livid surprise, his white skin even whiter against the deep black of his uniform, his crimson stepped scar from his eye to cheek redder. Voss’s nerve ricocheted around his stomach looking for a way out.

‘What can I do for you, Captain Voss?’

‘A personal matter, sir.’

‘Personal?’ Weiss asked himself; he didn’t normally deal with the personal.

‘I believe we reached a very special understanding between each other last February and that is why I have come to you with this personal matter.’

‘Sit,’ said Weiss, as if he was a dog. ‘You look ill, Captain.’

‘Lost my appetite, sir,’ said Voss, lowering himself into a chair on shaky thighs. ‘You know…the situation with the Sixth Army…is traumatic for everybody.’

‘The Führer will resolve the problem. We will win the day, Captain. You will see,’ said Weiss, giving him a wary look, already at work on the subtext of the words.

‘My brother is in the Kessel, sir. He is extremely sick.’

‘Haven’t his men taken him to the hospital for treatment?’

‘They have, but his condition did not respond to the treatment they have available in the field hospital there. He asked to be taken back to his division. I believe his condition is only treatable outside the Kessel.’

Weiss said nothing. The fingers he ran over his scarred cheek had well-cared for nails, glossy, packed with protein but tinged blue from underneath.

‘Where are you quartered, Captain?’ asked Weiss after a long pause.

It caught him off guard. He wasn’t sure where he was quartered any more. Numbers tinkered in his brain.

‘Area III, C4,’ he said.

‘Ah yes, you’re next to Captain Weber,’ said Weiss, so quickly that it was clear that his question hadn’t been necessary.

The chair back cut into Voss’s newly exposed ribs. You didn’t build up any credit in Weiss’s world, you always had to pay.

‘Captain Weber is not a careful individual, is he, Captain Voss?’

‘In what respect, sir?’

‘Drunken, loose-tongued, curious.’

‘Curious?’

‘Inquisitive,’ said Weiss. ‘And I notice you don’t disagree with my first two observations.’

‘Forgive me for saying so, sir, but in my opinion Weber is the least inquisitive man I know, very concentrated on his task,’ said Voss. ‘And as for drinking…who doesn’t?’

‘Loose-tongued?’ asked Weiss.

‘Who’s there to be loose-tongued with?’

‘Have you been with Captain Weber on any of his trips to town?’

Voss blinked. He didn’t know anything about Weber’s trips to town.

Weiss played the edge of his desk one-handed, a tremolo finished with a rapped flourish.

‘He has a very sensitive position right in the heart of the matter,’ said Weiss. ‘What do you two talk about when you’re drinking together?’

Voss shouldn’t have been shocked, but he was, at Weiss’s apparent omniscience. A squirt of adrenalin slithered through his veins, panic tightened his neck glands.

‘Nothing of importance.’

‘Tell me.’

‘He’s asked me to explain things to him.’

‘Like what? Chess?’

‘He hates chess.’

‘Then what?’

‘Physics. He knew I went to Heidelberg before I was called up.’

‘Physics?’ repeated Weiss, eyes glazing.

Voss thought he sensed a nonchalance that made him think that this was perhaps dangerous ground, mine-sown.

‘The evenings are long here in Rastenburg,’ said Voss to cover himself. ‘He teases me. He says I should be thinking of things more physical. You know, women.’

‘Women,’ said Weiss, laughing with so little mirth it became something else.

‘He’s more frustrated than he is inquisitive,’ said Voss, aware that Weiss wasn’t listening any more.

‘So you would like to get your brother out of the Kessel,’ said Weiss, opting for an alarming change of direction which left Voss thinking he’d said things he hadn’t. ‘Yes, in view of our earlier understanding I think that could be arranged. Do you have his details?’