Summit: A Novel Page 13

  Directly below the window, Josef could see only the fall of the roof. It ended abruptly and barred him from seeing what was directly below. He could only look diagonally down at a distant wood and, further on into the distance, at a wide valley with a brown river that meandered through barren, buff-colored meadows punctuated by copses of tall, leafless black trees.

  Holding on to the side of the window frame, Josef stuck his head and shoulders out further still. With a twist backward, he saw that the window projected out from a very steep, pitched roof that rose up to a high ridge. The covering was almost new, tiles of black slate, perfectly square, smooth to the touch, and tightly lapped together. His climbing instinct instantly questioned the grip they would offer and told him that that the unbounded edge below was unforgiving. One slip would send him down and out into the open air as efficiently as the ski jump his regiment had built in Garmisch for the ’36 Winter Olympics.

  To each side of him, more dormer windows punctuated the fall of the roof. The line of five to his right finished in a single, massive circular tower of a pale limestone that dominated that end of the castle. The tower’s flat, round top with only a shallow battlement gave it an incomplete look, as if still awaiting some tall spire to give it further height and drama. From the windows that ran down the tower’s side, Josef could see that it was at least five or six stories high. As he studied it, he noticed that the low sun had fallen a little from its first position. It was going down. His window was looking due west; the tower pointing directly to the north. The setting sun told him that whatever had been put in their food or drink the night before had knocked them out for the best part of a day.

  Why?

  Josef’s eyes were drawn back to the top of the tower. There were two tall white poles rising up from the top. Each held an immense flag, one scarlet, the other jet black. Both were too big to be more than faintly disturbed by the weak breeze that was blowing from the northeast. Within the blood-red flag, Josef could see the familiar black and white of the circle and the swastika. The black of the other was broken only by two white blazes, the SS insignia. The sight made him recall again the “SS-Schule Haus Wewelsburg” embossed on the crockery of his last meal.

  What is this place?

  Turning back into the room, Kurt was now sitting up. He asked where they were. Josef tried to describe what he had seen but was distracted by Gunter, who was mumbling unintelligibly. At first they thought he was still asleep, but as Josef moved closer, he understood that Gunter too was now awake. He was asking for water.

  Knowing already there was none in the room, Josef banged on the door to demand some attention. Almost instantly it unlocked, and a white-jacketed orderly entered as if they were at a hotel. Josef told him that they needed water. The man quickly left to return with a pitcher and some glasses. He waited as Josef gave some to Gunter. While he held the glass to Gunter’s lips, Josef asked the hovering orderly where they were. “Wewelsburg, Westphalia,” came the reply. “It is the castle of the reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler, the academy and home of the SS. Now that you are all awake, I will get a doctor for your friend.”

  A little later, an SS officer with a medical bag came in. He introduced himself as a medical doctor but gave no further name. Diligently and slowly, he examined Gunter, who was drifting in and out of consciousness again. Then he administered an injection from a nickel and glass syringe into a vein on Gunter’s inner forearm, saying only, “It will help him sleep,” as he gently laid the arm with its bandaged hand back down on the bed.

  Finished with Gunter, the SS doctor surprised Josef by asking to look at his finger. He stripped off the new dressing and thoroughly cleaned the ragged tear where his nail had once been with a strong disinfectant. The contact of the spirit with the bare flesh burned so much that Josef had to grit his teeth not to scream with pain. As the hole started to bleed again, the doctor quickly put on another new dressing, binding the individual finger so tightly that it throbbed intensely. After, he said, “I need to stitch that finger; the wound is still open. But now is not the time to anesthetize your hand, maybe later. It will hurt, but covered like this you can still use it.”

  The man then turned his attention to Kurt’s damaged right knee. He unwound the bandage and released the splint to slowly try and bend the limb, feeling, as he did so, the patella—the action of the joint. It could barely move. Just the doctor’s touch made Kurt flinch with pain. Rebandaging it, the doctor said only, “This knee is very badly broken,” and left the room without further comment. Alone again, Josef and Kurt said little, confused by the medical visit. Uncertain as to what they should or could do next, Josef leaned against the side of the window and watched the light of the dull day fade to darkness until, unannounced, a single electric light went on in the small room and the orderly returned to set down a tray that offered them a simple meal of bread, cheese, and ham. This time there was no mulled wine, only another carafe of water. There was also no cutlery.

  Instead of leaving immediately, the orderly joined Josef by the window. Standing alongside him to look out at the night, he said gently under his breath, “I don’t have time to explain what happens here, but if you can get out, I would. It would be better to take your chance rather than wait for what they are going to do to you when the reichsführer arrives.” Saying nothing more, the man quickly left the room. Josef heard the door key turn behind him even if the window remained open.

  “Did you hear that?” Josef whispered.

  Kurt nodded, looked at Gunter, and then pointed at his own knee as he shook his head.

  Josef understood.

  “Is he getting any better?”

  Kurt hopped on his left foot over to the bed and sat on the side of it as he touched the side of Gunter’s cheek with the back of his hand.

  Gunter didn’t move.

  Immediately Kurt rushed his fingers down onto the side of his neck, feeling for a pulse.

  He pushed once, then twice, in search of it, before stopping and turning back with a look of disbelief to say, “Josef, I think Gunter’s dead.”

  Josef rushed over to them.

  It was true. Gunter was dead.

  He replayed the visit of the SS doctor over in his mind.

  What was in that injection?

  What is happening to us?

  They both looked down at their oldest friend in silence, transfixed to the spot until Kurt said simply, “We will go when it’s darkest.”

  “But what about your leg?”

  “I would rather fall than wait here and let them play with us anymore.”

  25

  Josef felt the mountains call to him, offering escape, as he crept out the narrow window. Outside on the sill, he could see a light burning within one of the tower windows to his right and the twinkling constellation of a small town in the far distance; but everywhere else, the main part of the castle, the other dormer windows, the surrounding countryside, was pitch black.

  The cold night air blew across his face as he sat there thinking about the dead childhood friend he was going to leave behind. Unsought, the face of little Ilsa suddenly replaced Gunter’s in his mind. Seeking to banish the ghosts from his head, Josef quickly climbed around the window frame, holding on to it tightly with both hands, his wounded index finger stabbing with pain from the tension of the holds. To relieve the strain on his hands, he tried to get some purchase with his feet on the steep tiled roof to the side of the window but the studded soles of his boots slipped and slid as if on black ice.

  It wasn’t going to work.

  With his upper body strength, finger howling in protest, Josef pulled himself back up onto the window frame and into the room.

  “Kurt, the roof’s very steep and slippery,” he said when inside. “We will need to do this in bare feet to have any chance of getting some grip. Take your boots off and lace them together to hang over your neck. I think it’s too diffi
cult to go straight up such a steep roof. We must get up onto the top of the dormer window and then move sideways across the fall of the roof using the others. In this way, we can reach a rain gully to the left where two parts of the roof join. It will give an easier line up to the ridge and from there we can see where to go next. Take a look out and see.”

  Kurt hopped to the window and, using his arms, pulled himself up to lean out and see the route Josef had described.

  When he moved back in, he looked at Josef with a grim expression but resolutely said, “We go. Help me get this boot off.”

  “Okay, but you must watch exactly where I go. Keep your weight on your hands and your good leg,” Josef instructed, as he unlaced and removed his friend’s boots before climbing back out of the window.

  Slowly and carefully, Josef stepped down onto the steep tiles once more. Chilled and damp to the touch, he pushed his toes against their thin edges to steady himself and moved one hand up, gripping the projection of the window. Tensing himself, he brought the other hand up, and below slowly began to edge his feet up the sloping tiles. Even as he was telling himself to move faster, that he must pull harder on the window structure to get his weight off his feet however much his hand hurt, they slipped away out from under him. His body instantly jerked downward from the side of the window to fall fully onto the steep roof.

  Josef began to slide down the sharply angled roof toward the edge, an internal voice shouting, This is it!

  The slide accelerated, his hands slapping uselessly against the slick tiles, feet scrabbling for purchase.

  How long will I fall before I hit the ground?

  Just as he anticipated answering his question, Josef’s right toes touched something: a vent pipe projecting up through the tiles.

  It jarred Josef to a momentary halt. A stop just long enough for him to find another tiny edge with his other foot and smear his body hard against the roof to arrest the fall.

  Spread-eagled on the tiles, feeling their stone freeze his burning cheek, Josef desperately tried to regain his composure.

  When he looked up again he saw the outline of Kurt leaning out of the dormer window watching him.

  “Stay where you are,” his friend said before vanishing from the window.

  A few minutes later the end of the blanket that had covered Gunter was lowered to Josef’s outstretched hand and gradually it pulled him back up to the window.

  Shaken by his near fall, Josef rested inside. When he had recovered his breath, he said to Kurt, “I’m not sure we can do this.”

  “We must,” came the reply. “Out there if we die, we at least die free. In here, who knows? Go again.”

  This time Josef was much quicker in his movements and he did make it up onto the top of the window’s dormer roof, pausing there before making a darting sideways pass on all fours across to the next one and resting again. In this fashion he reached the guttered valley he had noticed before. To his relief he found that its two roof edges did give good purchase for his hands, and his toes slipped less on the rough lead sheet set between them, enabling him to rapidly monkey-climb up to the very ridge of the roof as he had anticipated.

  High above the castle, released from the concentration it took to get up there, he looked down to see Kurt’s dark form edging out of the window. However, almost the instant he was on the roof, his broken knee gave way beneath him and he vanished downward.

  Josef heard the beginning of a shout and then only silence. Horrified, he recklessly slid back down the gully between the two roofs to get nearer. Reaching the edge, he looked across to be confronted with the silhouette of Kurt hanging from rain gutter that lined the bottom of the roof.

  “Hold on. I’m coming,” he shouted as loudly as he dared.

  “No. Go,” came the reply.

  “You did it for me, I can do it for you,” Josef said as he extended a foot down into the gutter, gently pushing his weight down onto the narrow trough to test its strength. To his relief it felt strong. When he kicked into it a couple of times, it still didn’t move a fraction. It too seemed newly installed. It would hold them.

  “Keep holding on!” he called across to Kurt again. Then, using the gutter to hold his toes, he turned inward, placed both hands flat on the roof tiles, and started to crab sideways across to his dangling friend as fast as he could. Desperate to get there, he was oblivious to the sharp edge of the roof tiles cutting into the fronts of his shins as he shuffled them from side to side.

  Finally reaching his suspended friend, Josef leaned down, outstretching his left arm to reach him. His wounded finger stung viciously as he closed his hand around Kurt’s wrist.

  Leaning down further to try and tug it upward, Josef’s heavy boots, still slung around his neck by their laces, suddenly slipped off and fell.

  The boots hit Kurt’s upturned face hard in its center. The surprise caused him to lose his fingerhold on the gutter, spurring Josef to squeeze the wrist he was clutching as tightly as he could. His wounded finger exploded with pain but he didn’t let go, his grip holding Kurt who, after two attempts, managed to get his hands back onto the metal edge of the gutter. But however hard Kurt tried, he couldn’t pull his body up. He needed both feet to try to walk up the wall as he hung there; but his right leg was useless, leaving only his left foot to scratch hopelessly at the side of the smooth, newly repointed wall.

  Kurt struggled in vain to raise himself up using only the strength of his arms. Josef, still gripping his right wrist, encouraged him to keep trying, tugging on the wrist he was holding each time as he did so. With each painful pull, more blood oozed from his finger; seeping from the dressing into the grip he had on Kurt.

  Josef could feel the wrist beginning to slip through the bloody wetness of his fingers.

  Then Kurt felt it too.

  He looked up at Josef one last time, shook his head, and released his hold on the gutter.

  Kurt’s full weight instantly wrenched his hand through Josef’s bloody grip, ripping the dressing with it as it went.

  With a scream of pain, Josef watched Kurt’s body silently fall into the dark until, from somewhere deep below, there was a sudden crash through tree branches followed by a dull, heavy thump.

  Stunned by what had happened, Josef just lay there, straddled across the bottom of the roof, awaiting the shouts of guards, the beams of spotlights from below, the rifle shots or machine-gun fire that must surely follow. He didn’t even care. When those lights came on, he decided that he would jump too.

  Panting, shivering, he prepared himself for the inevitable. But no lights did come on. The silence, returning quickly after the sickening thud of Kurt hitting the ground, sustained, as if only a single stone had been dropped down a deep well.

  Orphaned by his friend’s fall, Josef slowly twisted himself back up the roof and, using the gutter once again to hold his feet, worked his way back to the diagonal rain groove.

  Still there were no noises, no lights, no shots, only the intense pain in his hand, so he climbed on back up to the central ridge of the main roof, where he stopped to rest. Straddling the crest as if on a horse, he sat there, taking in deep breaths of the cold night air while his desperate brain struggled to formulate his next move.

  From up there the first thing that was apparent was that the castle was not square. It was a narrow triangle shaped like a spearhead. The bigger tower to the north was the tip of the spear point, and the two other corners each had a smaller tower. The three flanks of the castle were set under steeply pitched roofs, and within Josef could see an illuminated triangular courtyard. He found it strange that the courtyard was so well lit, yet the outer walls of the castle were so completely dark.

  More pain from his ripped finger stopped him thinking about it. Tearing a strip of material from the bottom of his shirt, he bound his wounded, bleeding finger as tight to the next as he could. Josef then started moving along the
ridge of the roof toward the first of the two smaller towers. When he reached its side, he felt the surface. The stone was smooth and well-fitted. It would have been difficult to insert a pocketknife blade between the blocks, let alone fingers. It offered no possibility of a descent so he edged around the upper wall of the tower and down the next section of roof as far as he dared to study that face of the castle.

  It was as high and sheer as the one he had come from. His best option was beginning to look like climbing back into the castle through a window and trying his luck at getting out from the inside. But with the likelihood of a confusing maze of corridors and staircases all inhabited by SS soldiers, that didn’t appeal. Climbing quietly down the outside, if possible, had to be the better alternative. Josef moved back up onto the very ridge of the roof again and across to climb around the back of the next tower and on to the castle’s third side.

  This time he found that he didn’t have so far to climb up to get onto the crest of the roof. The third side of the building was at least two stories lower. He also saw that halfway along, it was breached by a cobbled bridge that gave access into the castle’s internal courtyard. Where the bridge met the wall of the castle, a tall yet narrow enclosed structure with a small roof projected out. It must once have housed a portcullis or drawbridge mechanism. The structure was buttressed to the sides and decorated with filigrees of ornate stonework, its construction older, rougher than the other parts of the building. Upon seeing it, Josef felt his heart leap. He knew he could down-climb it.