Beneath Gray Skies by Hugh Ashton Page B

ministry came along a few minutes before seven o’clock. He was carrying a large broom and a bag full of what turned out to be coal, and he didn’t look like David’s idea of someone working in a government ministry. The sight of so many rifles pointed in his direction did not seem to worry him unduly, and he went quietly to the spot in the nearby grassy park where the Confederate soldiers indicated he should stand.
     
    Another five minutes went by, and a large black automobile drew up. Major Goering stepped out of it, wearing his military helmet and leather coat, complete with swastika armband, and David heard a sharp hissing sound from Brian beside him.
     
    “He looks like a caretaker,” said Goering in English to the Lieutenant, jerking his thumb at the prisoner. “Janitor, cleaning man, whatever you say. Send him to his home, he’s useless to us.” He said a few words in German to the man, who picked up his broom and bag of coal, and trudged off in the direction he had come from. Goering dismissed the car, and it sped off.
     
    After another ten minutes, a man in a suit which had once been smart, but now looked shabby, approached the building. “That one,” said Goering, pointing. Surrounded by a squad of Confederate soldiers, who understood not a word of the German protests the man was shouting at them, he was marched to the area the Lieutenant had designated for prisoners.
     
    After a short while, he was joined in the holding area by several more similarly dressed men, who had been seized and held by the Confederates. All of them started shouting at their captors—David didn’t need to understand German to work out that they were protesting their treatment, but Goering came over to them and shouted a few words in German, and they fell silent.
     
    About twenty bureaucrats later, an open-topped touring car drew up, driven by a uniformed chauffeur, who jumped out of the car as it drew to a halt, and opened the rear door for his passenger, an elderly white-bearded man, dressed in frock coat and vest, with a silk top hat, who gazed about him somewhat disdainfully as he stepped down, using a cane to support him, to the sidewalk in front of the building’s front door.
     
    “
Endlich
, at last,” muttered Goering to no-one in particular, a few yards away from David.
     
    “Who’s that, do you think?” hissed David to Brian.
     
    “If I’m not mistaken, that’s Walther Rathenau. Very important man. He survived an attack on him a few years back. Shot up by some bastards,” he dropped his voice still lower, “friends of your chum Hermann Goering. They drove by his car in another car and just sprayed him with bullets. He took five bullets in the leg and two in the lungs. Miracle he survived, what? And still driving around in an open car. Brave chap, don’t you think?”
     
    “Suppose so,” said David, looking at both Goering and Rathenau in a new light and asking himself how Brian knew so much about these things.
     
    “And, of course,” went on Brian, so quietly that David had to strain to hear him, “he’s Jewish. Which means that, if our friend in the smart leather coat has his way, this is the last morning the poor beggar will ever see.”
     
    “But we’re not going to be shooting anyone!” protested David.
     
    “No, we’re not actually going to be pulling any triggers,” agreed Brian. “But who are we working for, eh?”
     
    That was a good question, David asked himself. More and more he was getting the feeling that he and Brian weren’t working towards the same ends.
     
    Like the arrivals before him, Rathenau was rounded up and marched to the holding area, where the other Germans made space for him, treating him with obvious respect. Rathenau’s chauffeur was dismissed by Goering, and the car purred off.
     
    Next came a group of young women, giggling and talking as they prepared to enter the Ministry. As they saw the armed group outside the entrance, they fell