My Name is Eva An absolutely gripping and emotional historical novel - Suzanne Goldring Page 0,27

be able to forget him.

21

Eva, 10 October 1945

The Promise

‘Bitte, helfen Sie mich.’ The words were half croaked, half whispered through the cracked and bloodied lips of the German prisoner, who had been dragged into the interrogation room and strapped to the metal chair. He was alone in the room, half mumbling, half sobbing to himself. His head slumped to his chest, his lank, dirty hair fell over his eyes and she could barely hear his words. ‘Ich habe nichts falsch gemacht.’

Eva had just arrived for that morning’s interview. The door to the room was open and she glanced over her shoulder along the corridor. It was quiet for the moment and she couldn’t hear those brisk clipped footsteps, but she knew Colonel Robinson would come back to the interrogation room very soon, accompanied by Arnold Miller, the brutal thickset sergeant who did his dirty work.

‘You poor man. I’m sure you’re innocent,’ she whispered, closing the door a little. ‘I believe you. I’m so sorry they’re treating you so badly.’

‘Jede nacht,’ he said, lifting his head so she could see his face, ‘they take away our clothes, we have nothing…’

Eva gave a sharp intake of breath. She realised she had seen him before. She recognised him, despite the bruises and the layers of grime. Kurt Becker. She knew from his file that he’d been a teacher before the war started and that he was planning to return to teaching in Frankfurt, but it also noted that he had links to Communist sympathisers. She remembered him arriving at the centre and greeting her cheerily with a comment about the wonderful weather and saying, ‘Ach, sehr gut. Ich habe Schlammbad sehr gern’, as if he was here for a spa treatment and a holiday, not imprisonment and deprivation.

At his first interview, six weeks previously, his blond hair had still been relatively clean and neat, his shirt unstained, his skin clear and healthy. He had smiled at her and politely introduced himself in a formal manner before the questions began. Now he was hollow-eyed, his face grey, his once-strong body skeletal, and Eva could smell the sour odours of vomit and urine from his filthy clothes.

‘Kurt – I can call you Kurt, can’t I?’ Then she stopped and listened. Steps were coming nearer. ‘I promise you,’ she whispered. ‘This is all so wrong. I promise I will do whatever I can to stop this. They shouldn’t be treating you like this.’

And then the door was flung wide open with a crash, making both her and the prisoner flinch, and it started all over again. She kept her eyes on her notepad, her hand shaking as she recorded the interview with her sharp pencil, trying hard to be indifferent to the Colonel’s curt questions and the prisoner’s faltering replies.

‘Come along now,’ Robinson said in his crisp, clipped tones. ‘You may as well admit it. We know you meet with your so-called friends.’ Kurt’s head slumped forwards. If he hadn’t been strapped to the narrow metal chair, he would have fallen onto the concrete floor.

‘Miller,’ Robinson snapped. ‘Sit him up.’ With a passive face, his sergeant grabbed a handful of Kurt’s hair in his huge fist and wrenched him back into an upright position. Kurt moaned and as his battered mouth fell open, Eva could see broken and missing teeth.

‘Good. That’s more like it,’ Robinson said with a tight smile on his face. ‘Now look me in the eye and tell me where you have these meetings.’ And all the time he probed with his insistent, repetitive questions, he stared with cold, unkind eyes, smiling at every blow, every slap from the guard. When Miller pulled him up by his ears or his hair, whenever his head fell forward, Robinson gave a little murmur of approval or said, ‘That’s it, Miller. Remind him why we’re here.’ And every time those fists lashed out, Robinson smirked.

Was that how Robinson had looked when he planned and executed that fatal mission, that final operation that meant the end for Hugh? And did he nod with smug satisfaction when he reported that while the loss of a handful of agents might be considered unfortunate, it was necessary collateral to hoodwink the Germans?

Eva bit the inside of her cheek, tasting blood, feeling her heart pounding, trying to control her anger and concentrate on taking notes. Hugh and his men were merely pawns for Robinson, that’s all he was thinking when he sent them on their last disastrous journey. And as the