Chapter Eleven


Warning: This chapter goes more into detail of an execution. Please do not read it if this topic upsets you.


Dawson sat in a train on his way to Lublin, next to one German soldier. He was being transferred to help control a typhus epidemic that had broken out there. He wondered why; usually such epidemics gave the SS a reason to get rid of the weak and sick.

He looked at the German civilians sitting around him. He was the only prisoner, so he was riding second class, a change from the cattle cars. They paid no attention to him. Dawson had been given civilian clothes before his transfer, so he wondered if they knew he was a prisoner or not.

The guard next to him had drifted off to sleep. Dawson, in the early days of his imprisonment, would have eagerly used this opportunity to escape. But too many failed escape attempts and their punishments, most of them with Basil, had killed his own fighting spirit.

A man wearing glasses and a cap got up and walked towards the end of the train. As he passed Dawson, he gently pulled the doctor's coat, motioning for him to follow. Dawson glanced at the sleeping guard. His heart skipped with a rare emotion: joy. Was this an agent opposed to the Third Reich?

Dawson slipped unnoticed into the next car, a baggage car. The man was working at a door.

"What is going on?" Dawson asked. "Who are you?"

The man turned toward Dawson. He whipped off his disguise. "Basil of Baker Street, my good fellow," he replied in the same way he had said it when they had first met on the Eve of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, years ago.

Dawson was taken aback. He had heard of Basil's execution, so the presence of the detective before him suddenly made the doctor lightheaded and faint. "Basil! You're alive! But... how?"

Basil instinctively put a hand on the back of his head. "Later," he said, flinging the door open. The German countryside whizzed past as the train thumped over the tracks. "The guard is drugged. He'll be awake in half an hour. We'll have to jump for it."

"Like during the Matthew Childres' case, I suppose?" Dawson grinned.

Basil looked sadly back at his friend. "Yes," he said softly. "How long ago it all seems. All right, on the count of three. One, two, three!"

They jumped.


It was in a barn several hours later that Basil finally told Dawson the details of his escape from death.

"One day the SS collected about one hundred and fifty people. One woman with an infant shoved the baby into my arms and asked me to take care of it. One of the guards saw this and dragged me into the group, still holding the baby.

"We were marched to the edge of a pit, a mass grave. One by one they shot people in the back of the head and pushed the bodies into the pit.

"I was terrified, Dawson. I had never been so afraid in my life. Previously I had thought of all the ways I was going to die, and I had always thought that I would go down fighting. But I was so afraid that I did not try to save my own life. Perhaps, because there was no reason for these deaths, that I thought that it could not be happening. I thought to myself: 'Maybe, if I am compliant to them, they will spare me.' I just stood there, watching men, women, and children being shot, some holding onto each other, some crying.

"A guard took the baby out of my arms and shot it too, throwing it into the pit. Finally I was pushed roughly forward. I had half-turned to protest when the one soldier shot me in the back of the neck. They pushed me into the pit of bodies.

"At first I thought I was dead. I did not feel anything. But then pain, an unbearable, searing, white-hot pain took over me. I was not dead. I had to wait for death to come. The cries of the dying reached my ears as more bodies fell on top of me. I can remember every hellish detail of it. Blood spurted from the pit like spring water. And I believed I would have to watch it all as I died.

"The last of the people were executed. I heard the soldiers leave that place, leave to kill more people another day. But I was still not dead, so I attempted to move some of the bodies off of me. I could not die beneath them. I somehow managed to climb out of the pit, and dragged myself away. I had to get away. I could not vanish into that mass grave and become a mere number of dead. Even if I died, I would not die in that grave.

"I managed to make it to a house in the countryside. Luck was with me, for the house's owner was a doctor not friendly toward the Nazi regime. He treated my wound. It appears that the soldier who had shot me had managed to miss my brain and spinal cord, but I had lost a good deal of blood. The doctor took care of me until I could fully recover.

"Now I am part of a resistance force against the Third Reich," Basil shrugged.

Dawson looked at Basil's neck. There was a silvery scar where the bullet had passed through the skin. "It's a miracle."

"Yes," Basil said sadly. "But I keep asking myself: Why did no one else survive? Why was I lucky enough?"

Dawson sighed. "There was nothing you could have done. It was the mercy of God."

"I'm beginning to believe that more and more each day."

"Basil, let's just go back home."

It was Basil's turn to sigh. "I can't. There are still too many in the concentration and death camps. I could not leave, knowing that innocent people are being murdered every day."

"We've been gone for so long," Dawson said. "Isabelle and Meg have not heard from us in over three years."

"Dawson, Meg's being held at Ratigan's house outside Berlin."

"What? How did she get there?"

Basil explained all that he knew from what Ratigan had told him, as well as others in the resistance.

"We have to save her," he concluded, his eyes growing dark with hatred.

"You also want to kill Ratigan," Dawson said.

"If it is necessary, I will."


Basil and Dawson slipped past Josef the guard unnoticed. They headed to the stables. Peering in at a window, they observed a boy and an older man sitting at a table, eating a simple meal. They held back from contact, deliberating their next move. All distrust was dissolved when they saw the Star of David that marked them as Juden.

A quarter of an hour passed as they waited for one of them to come out. Finally Basil caught sight of a figure coming from the house. It was a boy with a Star on his jacket.

"Pst, pst," Basil called out from behind one of the bushes. The boy stopped and looked around him. "Pst," Basil repeated.

"Who's there?" Poleck asked, his voice small and frightened.

"A friend."

Poleck took a few steps away from the talking bush, unsure whether to trust this stranger. Basil emerged from the bushes. "Can we speak in private?"

"Wait here," Poleck said uncertainly. He ran into the stables. Basil and Dawson could hear some voices muttering. After about ten minutes Poleck returned with the elderly gentleman.

"I am Abram," the man said. "Come with me."

They followed them into the stables. "Who are you?" Abram asked.

"Can we trust you?" Basil asked.

"Depends. Can we trust you?"

"You can trust us," he reassured the man. "We're only here to help."

The old man and the two boys, Poleck and David, did not respond to this.

"Do you know a Meg Havers?" the detective continued.

They all looked at each other. "No..." Abram said slowly.

"Wait... I mean Meg Sarentis. She's an Aryan who works here."

"Oh yes, we know Meg. She works at the house with Genia and Danka."

"For Ratigan?"

"Yes. We all do."

Basil smiled gently. "Good. We're her friends."

"What are you doing here? She's a political prisoner. She can't leave. None of us can," Abram added bitterly.

"Can we trust you?" Basil asked again.

"Why? What do you want us to do?" Abram asked.

"All we need is for you to not tell anyone we were here."

"Why?"

"We are going to get her out of here."

David and Poleck dropped their jaws. Abram smiled. "Come with me, sir," he said, leading Basil to the other end of the stables.

Dawson looked at the two boys. They were only fourteen and sixteen. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a bar of chocolate. He had been saving it for Meg, but he figured that they needed it more than she did. "Here," he said kindly.

The boys did not even look at the chocolate. "No thank you," David said.

"Please, take it. Give it to someone else if you like, but take it."

They looked uneasily at each other. "Thank you," David said, reaching out for the chocolate. Once in his hands, he studied the wrapped bar for a few moments, as if trying to retain a mental picture of it. He went off to hide it.

Abram and Basil returned. "Of course," Basil finished. "Come Dawson, let's go."

The pair slipped back into the bushes when they were back outside, waiting for Josef to complete his next patrol of the grounds before making their next move. "Tonight," Basil murmured, "we get them all out. Everyone. Meg, the two Jewish girls, and the two boys. The boys in the resistance will help. Abram may come, but he will be covering our escape if something goes wrong."


And you all thought I killed Basil. Nah, I'm not that cruel.

Basil's near-death experience actually happened to a young girl from a Jewish ghetto. She was shot in the back of the neck and somehow survived. I picked up a book in my history class once and started to flip randomly through it, and came across her horrific testimony, which I think was for the Nuremberg Trials. I'm not positive, though.

The resistance is completely made up. If there was a resistance (on a large-scale basis, mind you) I do not know anything about it. I do know that small groups of resistance to the Nazi regime did exist. Basil's resistance group is more organized, kind of like a guerilla fighters-type thing. And if you still don't understand, don't worry. The resistance doesn't play a major role in the story.