Free Alphabet House by Jussi Adler-Olsen Page A

civilians at the freight station had obviously not been meant to see them. And now they lay in darkness, rumbling towards unknown territory. Two soldiers had been set to watch over them. This was the source of their worries.
    Bryan tried to smile at James. James showed indifference. He still didn’t see any occasion to worry.
    At every bend of the road the legs of one of the soldiers swung to and fro above Bryan’s feet. The railway had to bend, twist and turn itself through the snow-covered terrain alongside fields, drainage trenches, small streams and natural inclines and slopes in the landscape. Their journey took them around the southern edge of Schwarzwald and the town of Freiburg. They had passed a lot of small stations and stops on their way that could have been used for unloading if they should be sent southwards. So Bryan had to assume they were heading north or northeast into Schwarzwald itself.
    In all likelihood the idea was that they were meant to disappear here in some way or other.
     
     
    After another hour’s drive the transport came to a halt.
    Several men in white were already prepared to receive them. James’ stretcher was pulled out over the edge of the lorry before the two of them managed to give each other a farewell squeeze. The two porters who had taken hold of Bryan’s stretcher slipped on the slippery ground, almost dropping him. In front of them was a dark, pebbled clearing, encircled by a narrow border of dead fir trees.
    Behind them towered dense formations of snow-crowned pine trees that provided shelter from the worst gusts of wind. The landscape faded away into the valley below in a mist of snow crystals. There was not a single light to disclose any sign of lifedown in the Promised Land. Bryan assumed Freiburg was now directly south of them.
    They had been driven a roundabout way.
    The courtyard was partly hidden behind the windbreak. The badly shaken-up passengers were hustled around the stretchers and trudged apathetically behind the soldier in command. Another lorry came into view, empty and with the tailboard hanging open. The flock of men who had left it had been lined up further down the compound where several three-storey buildings could be seen. The pale yellow gleam from the windows shone softly over the yard. Bryan gave a grunt when he saw the Red Cross sign painted on the sloping flat roofs. It resembled an ordinary hospital, apart from the numerous sandbags heaped up against the walls at regular intervals, the barred windows on the second and third storeys and numerous guards with dogs. Seen from the outside, the rectangular boxes were far superior to the hastily assembled reserve hospitals to which the wounded RAF men were sent in ever increasing numbers. ‘But don’t let yourself be taken in,’ thought Bryan, as he was carried towards the buildings.
    Little by little, the patients were grouped at one edge of the compound. All in all about sixty or seventy men stood waiting as the stretchers passed by them. Further ahead, the rear porter carrying James tried to push back the arm he’d let flop over the edge of the swinging stretcher. Against a background of glazed yellowish frost, two fingers stuck out from the others in discreet disregard of danger, waving a V-sign back towards Bryan.
    Several yellow buildings, slightly staggered in relation to one another, became visible from where they were now assembled. Two of them had their foundations carved solidly into the rock, whereas the rest were scattered over the tree-encircled plateau that constituted most of the area. The tops of several posts could be seen above sticking out above a lush undergrowth of holly. They supported the fence between the walls of rock. Furthestaway a steel-wire fence cut roughly through the area, the frost on it sparkling in the glow of the occasional lights. Down by the gate stood a small group of officers, talking in a cone of light beside a black car with a swastika on the front door and