Who Has Buried the Dead? by KGE Konkel

Author:KGE Konkel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Optimum Publishing International
Published: 2022-11-29T00:00:00+00:00

Early the next morning, following the specific instructions he had been provided, the dealer himself took the painting, well secured in paper and twine, to Amsterdam Centraal train station and personally handed it over to a trusted contact to commence the seventeen-hour journey to Warsaw, a trip punctuated only by the mandatory stopover in Berlin.

It was understood that the journey might be sporadically delayed, subject as it was to the challenges of a temperamental Kriegslokomotive assigned the task of pulling fourteen war-battered coaches to their destination in broad daylight while fully exposed to the strafing whims of predatory American Eighth Army Air Force fighters.

The Amsterdam-Berlin-Warsaw dayliner endured a harrowing voyage, during which it was constantly shunted to lay-bys to enable heavily laden troop trains to roar eastwards to add fresh blood to the hemorrhaging Eastern Front. On one occasion, just outside Duisburg, the train was nearly blown sky-high by errant stick of bombs discharged by an American B-25 bomber.

It could be called a miracle that the train arrived at all, huffing and puffing, at the bomb-battered Warszawa Główna railway station, only a few hours behind schedule.

Railway station? “Adequate” would be a transparently deceitful compliment to describe what was once showcased as the most modern train depot in Europe and was now battle-degraded to a quasi-functioning shambles. Still, though the Warszawa Główna had been badly damaged during the initial months of the German occupation, it had managed to stubbornly struggle on with Ruritanian solemnity, if not efficiency.

The Amsterdam courier alighted from his coach and briskly walked to the rendezvous, careful not to appear too suspicious to the ever-watchful Blue Police. Any form of running, even a moderate jog, not only drew immediate attention. In these uneasy times, one also risked a bullet in the back. Or the head.

It was nearing midnight, but the building was still a hub of frenzied activity. The platforms were overflowing with German infantry dressed in either feldgrau or mottled camo—furiously smoking and backslapping, coiled-spring tense. Mingling uneasily among them were the obligatory clergy and stoop-backed peasants with their cheap cardboard suitcases tightly wrapped in rough-cut twine.

On the main tracks, locomotives muscled past in a steady stream, all heading east, pulling every imaginable type of rail stock; each wagon loaded to the brim with dispirited Wehrmacht troops. An occasional Red Cross train passed through, bound the other way. For Der Vader land. It always moved much more sedately, at an almost funereal pace. Considering the fragile, shattered living things carried on board, it was mainly out of kindness, he supposed.

At the station entrance, he was met by a pleasant-looking, middle-aged man in a black leather trench coat and matching homburg, whose erect posture could only have come from years spent bashing on a parade square. The man spoke German with a slight Eastern European accent. They exchanged discreet, coded pleasantries. The man in the trench coat partially undid the twine and appeared satisfied that the painting was the one he required. He gave the courier a slight smile and subtle nod.

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