She had no intention of leaving. She would speak with Kriegler. Nothing less would do. But she could see from Mick’s grimly set jaw that he wasn’t going to acquiesce. And a night here would give her time to figure something out. “That would be fine, thank you.”
She thought he meant for her to follow on foot, but instead he walked around to the driver’s side of the jeep. “May I?” She nodded and climbed in to the passenger side. “Our barracks are a good half mile from here,” he explained, as he navigated the perimeter of the camp. “We’re lodged in one of the former SS barracks.” She was amazed by the size and scope of the camp that unfurled before her as he drove. It was so much bigger than she’d ever imagined.
He pulled up in front of a long, wooden, single-story building which, she was relieved to note, was outside the barbed wire of the camp. “Follow me.” He led her inside. There was an office, dimly lit by a lone Anglepoise lamp on a metal desk. An overturned tin was filled with cigarette butts and ash. Someone had pinned up a rogue’s gallery of photos, Germans who were still at large. “I’m going to see about getting you a room for the night. Wait here—and don’t touch anything.”
Eleanor stood awkwardly in the middle of the space. She desperately wanted to rifle through the papers on the desk and in the files, but she didn’t dare.
A few minutes later, Mick returned. “They’ll get a rack for you. Best grab some food before the mess closes.” He started from the office without speaking and she assumed she was to follow. They entered a dining hall with long tables that reminded her of the training facility at Arisaig House. She could almost hear the laughter of the girls.
But the mess here was served cafeteria-style. Mick handed her a tray and led her through the line, where she was unceremoniously served some sort of meat and potatoes without being asked. “Our quarters aren’t bad,” Mick remarked as they found two spots at a table. “Anything beats the winter we spent in the foxholes near Bastogne. Of course, the food is still awful.” Eleanor’s stomach turned as she thought of the starving children she’d passed near the train station in Munich, so emaciated their bones showed through their pale skin. And that, she reflected, surely paled in comparison to the suffering Jews who had been imprisoned at Dachau, scarcely a quarter mile from where they now sat.
Mick tore into his food without hesitation. “I’m sorry for being rude earlier,” he said between bites. “This whole operation has been completely messed up. While the big shots in Nuremberg prosecute the high-profile cases, the real beasts, the guards who did the actual killing, are down here. And we’ve got precious little to work with. We’ve got a trial starting next week and the work has been nonstop. We’re all exhausted.” He paused, looking her up and down. “You don’t look so good yourself,” he added bluntly.
She ignored the unintended offensiveness of his remark. “I’ve been traveling from Paris since yesterday morning. And now it seems, I’ll be heading right back out.”
“At first light,” he agreed, still chewing. He wasn’t trying to be rude, she realized. Rather he ate with the haste of one who had lived through combat, not knowing how long he had to finish the meal or when the next one would come. “Can’t have anything interfering with trial prep.” He paused. “I’ve heard of the female agents.” Eleanor was impressed. Few beyond SOE would have heard about her program. “I read in the reports that some were arrested along with the men. I don’t know if they were yours, of course,” he added hastily.
“They were all mine. Tell me,” she ordered, forgetting in her eagerness to be polite.
“We interviewed a guard who spoke of some women being brought in.”
“When?”
He scratched his head. “June or early July of ’44 maybe. It wasn’t unusual to have women here. There was a whole barracks for them over the hill.” He pointed toward the darkness outside. Eleanor’s stomach turned. In coming for Kriegler, she hadn’t realized that she’d stumbled upon the very spot some of the girls were lost forever. “But these women were never registered, never went into the barracks. They were taken straight to the interrogation cell.” Eleanor shuddered. She had heard of such places of suffering before death. “No one ever