The Schirmer Inheritance

by Ambler Eric

And then what?

The German forces had probably left Vodena two days or more ago. It was idle to suppose that he could catch up with them now. He would have hundreds of miles of difficult country to travel before he could do that. His only chance of getting through unseen would be to avoid the roads; yet if he did that, the long, hard marches would soon lame him. He could try the railroad, of course, but that was almost certainly in the hands of the Greeks again by now. His despair returned, and this time it was not so easily dismissed. The plain fact was that there was nowhere he could reasonably go. He was completely cut off in hostile territory where capture or surrender meant death and the ways of escape were all closed. The only thing he could do, it seemed, was to go on living under the thorn bush like an animal, stealing what food he could from the fields. An escaped prisoner of war would be in a better position; at least he would have had time to prepare for the venture. He, Schirmer, was relatively helpless. He had no civilian clothes, no money, no papers, no food worth speaking of; moreover, he was still suffering from the after-effects of being blown up by a mine and an attack of malaria. He needed time to recover completely and time to plan. Above all, he needed someone to help him get identity papers. Clothes and money he might steal, but to steal papers printed in a language he could not read, and risk using them as his own, would be folly.

And then he thought of Kyra; Kyra, who had wept so bitterly when he had had to say good-bye to her, who had implored him, foolishly, to desert; the one friend he possessed in this hostile, treacherous land.

She had a small photographic processing business in Salonika. He had seen the bold AGFA advertisement sign outside her shop one day and gone in to see if he could buy some film for his camera. She had had no film to sell-it had been hard to come by at the time-but he had been attracted by her and had returned to the shop whenever he had had time off. There was little processing work to be had and to make more money she had set up a small curtained “studio” for the taking of identity-card and passport photographs. When a local military identity card had been issued to the occupation forces, he had been able to suggest to the officer responsible for the issue in his own unit, that she should be commissioned to do all the photographic work. He had also brought her army food. She lived with her brother in two rooms over the shop. However, the brother was a night duty clerk in a hotel which had been commandeered by the occupation headquarters, and was only at home in the daytime. Quite soon the Sergeant had been able to apply for a sleeping-out pass. Kyra was a full-blooded young woman with simple and readily fulfillable demands to make. The Sergeant was both lusty and skilful. The relationship had proved most satisfactory.

Now it could be made to serve another purpose.

Salonika was seventy-four kilometres away by road. That meant that he would have to cover at least a hundred kilometres in order to keep away from the towns and villages. If he marched in daylight it would probably take him about four days to get there. If he played for safety and moved only at night, it would take much longer. He must not work his hip too hard. He must allow, too, for the time he would have to spend getting food. The sooner he started, the better. His spirits rose. The following night, having eaten the last of the army rations and with only the chocolate in his pocket for emergencies, he set off.

It took him eight days to reach his destination. Travelling at night, without map and compass to guide him, had proved too difficult. He had lost himself repeatedly. After the third night he had decided that he must accept the greater risk and travel by day. He had found it easier than he expected. Even in the plain, there was plenty of cover to move in, and it had been possible, except in the vicinity of Yiannitsa, to keep fairly close to the road. Food was the greatest difficulty. From an isolated farm he was able to steal some eggs, and on another day he milked a straying goat; but mostly he lived on the wild fruit he could pick. It was not until the end of the seventh day that he decided that the situation had become desperate enough for him to eat his chocolate.

It was about ten o’clock in the morning when he reached the outskirts of Salonika. He was near the railroad and in an area that offered reasonable opportunities for concealment. He decided to stop there and wait until nightfall before entering the city.

Now that his journey was nearly done, the thing that most concerned him was his appearance. The wound on his scalp was healing well and would not excite much curiosity. He disliked the stubble of beard he had grown, but only because it was unsoldierly; he did not think that it would make him too conspicuous. The trouble was his uniform. It seemed to him that to walk through the streets of Salonika in a German uniform now would be to invite arrest or assassination. Something would have to be done.

He moved nearer to the railroad and began to reconnoitre along it. Eventually he came upon what he was looking for-a trackwalker’s hut. It was padlocked, but there were some heavy iron rail-chairs on the ground near by and he used one to smash the hasp through which the padlock was fastened.