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morning to shift as
much soil as they could into the neighbouring room. Till then they
had no option but to pile up the excavated earth in the room and
they’d already filled over half the cellar, floor to ceiling. Klaus
had stolen a further twenty bags and the forty remaining, filled to
bursting, sat in one corner, piled high on themselves in a shaky
edifice which made everyone near it wary and which they resented
because of the time spent juggling earth and bags around to fit in
the small space.
    On one occasion Kai had grown
dizzy and collapsed as he’d crawled back and might well have
suffocated had Bernhard, alarmed that he’d missed his shift change,
not gone looking for him and dragged him out. They’d discussed
trying to buy breathing equipment but in the end settled for
installing a long plastic pipe back to the cellar which they could
grab and get fairly fresh air through it if they began to feel
faint.
    One evening they returned to find
that there had been a minor fall as part of the roof had collapsed
and they’d then had to waste more time and space shoring up better
the sides and building roof supports for a three metre stretch. Kai
tried not to think about the many tonnes of material directly
overhead and about what would happened if the roof gave way while
anyone was under it.. Most of the time they’d had to work in the
dark or using a small lantern battery torch as the heat from the
electric lamp they’d brought quickly became intolerable.
    Klaus had been becoming more and
more withdrawn as he worked, grunting in response to comments and
ignoring the banter of the others as they dealt with the various
problems that kept occurring. On Saturday Kai repeated his
monitoring of a fortnight earlier, looking down from the top floor
to watch for Frau Schwinewitz’s departure to her debriefing
meeting. Ten minutes after she’d left Bernhard snapped off the
existing padlock on the room three doors away and hung on the
staple a second hand lock resembling the original. They crowded
into the room, relieved to find it empty.
    “Hey, it’s just like mine. A few
trips shifting that earth over and it’ll be even more like mine!
I’m going to paint the floor with a drawing of a jagged concrete
hole and a tunnel entrance. Make me feel at home. What do you
think, guys?”
    Klaus grunted and returned a few
moments later, dragging one of the sacks behind him, then emptied
it in the far corner. Bernhard carried one from one room to the
other and did the same but when Kai attempted it he could only drag
the sack, spilling earth on to the corridor floor as he went and
treading and scuffing it into the surface.
    “Kai, get a brush and a cloth,
maybe some water too, to clean all this up. Your snooping
caretaker’s going to go apeshit if she finds all this earth around.
She'll suspect something and start watching you closely. We can’t
risk that. Go on. Klaus and I’ll carry the bags over and empty
them. You can stay in the room and fill them up for us.”
    At midday, their limbs aching and
their faces and hands streaked with dirt, they took a break,
looking with satisfaction at the greatly reduced pile of dirt in
the tunnel room. Kai brought down coffee, a pail of water and some
old cloths to clean themselves up when they’d finished.
    “When does Schwinesnitch usually
get back?” Bernhard asked.
    “Half two, two maybe, something
like that. Once she got back at one but mostly it’s been later.
We’re safe for another half hour at least, I’d say, maybe another
half hour after that. We should just about clear it completely in
that time. I’ll go up to the hall with the alarm device at one,
though, to be safe.”
    Klaus stood, drained his coffee,
dragged a bag over the floor, hoisted it on to his shoulder as he
opened the door, stepped into the corridor and moments later burst
back in and slid the bolt across.
    “She’s back! I saw her walking
down that side corridor across from the other room. A few