The Girl You Left Behind

almost shipshape, and darned
     if he didn’t knock on my door. ‘Why, Lieutenant,’ I joked. I
     was still fixing my hair. ‘You never told me you cared.’ It’s
     a running joke with us. He says he’s got pairs of marching boots older
     than I am.
    ‘Change of plan, Toots,’ he says. He was smoking, which was unlike
     him. ‘I can’t take you.’
    My hands stilled on my head.
     ‘You are kidding me, right?’ The
Register’
s editor
     was all lined up for this piece. They’d cleared me two pages and no
     ads.
    ‘Louanne, it’s … it’s beyond what we thought
     we’d find. I’m under orders to let nobody through till
     tomorrow.’
    ‘Oh, come on.’
    ‘Seriously.’ He lowered his voice. ‘You know I’d have
     you in there with me. But, well, you wouldn’t believe what we saw in there
     yesterday … I’ve been up all night, me and the boys. There are
     old ladies, kids walking round in there, like … I mean, little
     kids …’ He shook his head and looked away from me. He’s a big
     man, Danes, and I swear he was about to sob like a baby. ‘There was a
     train outside, and the bodies were just … thousands of
     them … It ain’t human. That’s for sure.’
    If he was trying to put me off it had the opposite effect. ‘You gotta get
     me in there, Lieutenant.’
    ‘I’m sorry. Strictest orders. Look, one more day, Louanne. Then
     I’ll give you all the access you need. You’ll be the only reporter
     in there, I promise.’
    ‘Yeah. And you’ll still love me afterwards. Oh, come
     on …’
    ‘Louanne, nobody but the military and the Red Cross is going in or coming
     out today. I need every man I have to help out.’
    ‘Help out with what?’
    ‘Taking the Nazis into custody. Helping the prisoners. Stopping our men
     killing those SS bastards for what they seen. Young Maslowicz, when he saw what
     they done to the Poles, he was like a madman, crying, going crazy. I had to put
     a non-com on his gun. So I gotta have an airtight guard. And –’ he gulped
     ‘– we gotta work out what to do with the bodies.’
    ‘Bodies?’
    He shook his head. ‘Yeah, bodies. Thousands of them. They made bonfires.
     Bonfires! You wouldn’t believe …’ He blew out his cheeks.
     ‘Anyway, Toots. This is where I need to ask you a favour.’
    ‘You need to ask me a favour?’
    ‘I need to leave you in charge of the storage facility.’
    I stared at him.
    ‘There’s a warehouse, out on the edge of Berchtesgaden. We opened it
     up last night and it’s pretty much stacked to the gills with works of art.
     The Nazis, Goering, have looted stuff like you wouldn’t believe. The top
     brass reckons there’s a hundred million dollars’ worth of stuff in
     there, most of it stolen.’
    ‘What has this got to do with me?’
    ‘I need someone I can trust to watch over it, just for today. You’ll
     have a fire crew at your disposal, and two marines. It’s chaos in the
     town, and I need to make sure nobody goes in there and nobody goes out.
     There’s some serious haul in there, Toots. I don’t know much about
     art, but it’s like – I don’t know – the Mona Lisa or
     something.’
    Do you know how disappointment tastes? Like iron filings in cold coffee.
     That’s what I tasted when old Danes drove me down to the facility. And
     that was before I found out that Marguerite Higgins had got into the camps the
     previous day, with Brigadier General Linden.
    It wasn’t a warehouse as such, more a huge grey slab of a municipal
     building, like a huge school or town hall. He pointed me towards his two
     marines, who saluted me, and then the office near the main door where I was to
     sit. I have to say, I couldn’t say no to him, but I took it all with bad
     grace. It was so obvious to me that the real story was going on down the road.
     The boys, normally cheerful and full of life, were in huddles, smoking and
     whey-faced. Their superiors talked quietly with shocked, serious expressions. I
     wanted to know what they’d found there, horrific as it might be. I needed
     to be in there, bringing the story out. And I was afraid: every day that slipped
     by made it easier for the topbrass to decline my request.
     Every day that passed gave my competitors a chance.
    ‘So, Krabowski here will get you anything you need, and Rogerson will
     contact me if you have any trouble. You okay?’
    ‘Sure.’ I put my feet up on the desk and sighed theatrically.
    ‘It’s a deal. You