Padlocked, p.1
Padlocked, page 1
PADLOCKED
Also by P.M. Terrell
Black Swamp Mysteries
Exit 22
Vicki's Key
Secrets of a Dangerous Woman
Dylan's Song
The Pendulum Files
Cloak and Mirrors
Checkmate
Checkmate: Clans and Castles
Hayley Hunter Mystery Series
The Misremembered Lighthouse
Ryan O'Clery Mysteries
The Tempest Murders
The White Devil of Dublin
Standalone
Songbirds are Free
River Passage
A Thin Slice of Heaven
The Adventures of Blade and Rye
April in the Back of Beyond
A Struggle for Independence
Dani's Decision
Padlocked (Coming Soon)
Watch for more at P.M. Terrell’s site.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Also By P.M. Terrell
Padlocked
Special Thanks
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Further Reading: A Struggle for Independence
Also By P.M. Terrell
PADLOCKED
By p.m.terrell
Published by
Drake Valley Press, a Division of P.I.S.C.E.S. Books, LTD.
USA
This novel is a work of fiction. Any other resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental except as noted under “A Note from the Author.” The characters, names, plots, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. References to actual events, public figures, locales, or businesses are included to give this work a sense of reality.
Cover by Willie Forde Photography. Copyright 2026, Willie Forde. All rights reserved.
Copyright 2026, P.I.S.C.E.S. Books, LTD. All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, used in AI learning models, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written consent of P.I.S.C.E.S. Books, LTD.
ISBN 978-1-935970-57-6 (Trade Paperback)
ISBN 978-1-935970-56-9 (eBook)
ISBN 978-1-935970-58-3 (Hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-935970-59-0 (Large Print)
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to others. If you would like to share this book with others, please purchase an additional copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.
Author’s website: www.pmterrell.com
Padlocked [pad, läkt]
When the gates are locked in the afterlife, and only one’s soul can open them.
What reviewers have said about p.m.terrell’s historical books:
“Terrell introduces a new level of excellence to the historical novel. Using the mastery of an artist, Terrell paints colorful word pictures and descriptive phrases that are so exquisitely well-chosen that the reader is magnetically drawn into the plot, taking on a role as an active participant in the intrigue of the story.” – Richard R. Blake, Midwest Book Review
“Wow. Padlocked will take your breath away. It is gut-wrenching and disturbing, but there is a glimmer of hope that clings to every page. It is a brilliant story and one I highly recommend.” – author Maggie Thom
“P M Terrell’s historical novels spring to life with vivid characters and descriptions. She is an artist, using words instead of paints to create her masterpieces. Her ability to merge fact and fiction makes reading about history an awesome adventure into the past.” – Reviewer Sherry Fundin, Fundinmental
“I felt as if I had been to Ireland after I read this book [April in the Back of Beyond]. I got so engrossed I even went to my computer to read more about some of its history. Don’t get me wrong; this is not a dry history book by any means. It’s a story about its wars, its people and its beautiful scenery. It’s one of those tales you just don’t want to put down. The kind you keep looking at the clock thinking “just 15 more minutes” and pretty soon it’s been a couple hours.” – Our Town Book Reviews
Special Thanks
This book was a labor of love, and I deeply appreciate all those who encouraged me along the way, including:
Martha Dunlop, author of The Starfolk Trilogy,
Glenna Mageau, aka Maggie Thom, author of suspense and nonfiction,
Reverend N. Neelley Hicks,
And world historian and scholar Rob Stere.
1
January 27, 1945, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland
The day dawned like any other, but ended like no other.
Hank Mullins was a long way from home. He’d left his family behind in North Carolina to travel the world as a roaming photojournalist and war correspondent, and he thought he’d seen it all. He’d covered the Spanish Civil War and had arrived in Guernica after Hitler’s first blitzkrieg test, an event that could still revisit his dreams, causing him to awaken in a cold sweat, as if the enemy were on him.
After Spain, he’d been trapped in Poland behind enemy lines when Nazi Germany invaded in 1939. The atrocities had piled up until he could no longer count them, nor did he wish to. Despite enormous challenges, he’d continued to perform his duties, even when it meant compromising his ethics, working with the enemy while simultaneously connecting with the underground resistance, all the while trying to get back home.
But as he rode in an open military vehicle, driven by a Red Army soldier, no less, his brain had difficulty processing what his eyes observed. He found himself in utter shock as he stood in the back, braced against the metal, as the vehicle crawled behind a long line of tanks and armored trucks, his camera steadily snapping. Through the years, he’d never had to force himself to take pictures, as it came naturally. Today, however, his arms kept dropping as he stared at the barbed wire fencing that effectively contained an entire city of barracks, factories, and buildings. Somehow, it felt as though he were violating the prisoners’ dignity by snapping their pictures.
Reluctantly, he reminded himself why he was here and raised the camera once again, his heart rate increasing with his rising anxiety.
“What the devil?” The words were in English, the voice unable to mask an elitist Spanish accent, the kind that had become a target in his native Spain under the dictator Francisco Franco.
“Are you taking notes, Rafe?” Hank asked his coworker. He tried to keep his voice steady, though it began to break as he said his coworker’s name. He glanced sideways at the younger man, noting his widened russet eyes and black hair tousled by the chilly wind.
“You haven’t been giving them,” Rafe Cabrera answered without looking at him.
“Read my mind.”
“The whole world has been under the control of the evil one,” Rafe continued as though he hadn’t heard him. “But the ruler of this world will be cast out. John, chapter 12, verse 31. But I paraphrase.”
“You’re not reading my mind.”
The vehicle slowed to a stop. Major Misha Volkov was waiting for them. He stood calmly with his back to the fencing, smoking a cigarette, as if he were casually awaiting them in front of a restaurant or hotel. His crisp uniform of the 60th Army of the First Ukrainian Front stood out amongst the privates. His deep dimples made him appear to be smiling even when he was not, a contradiction not lost on Hank as he struggled to understand the place to which the Red Army had taken them. Misha motioned for them to join him, and Hank and Rafe hopped over the side of the vehicle.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon, barely two hours before the sun would set. Light was already waning with the cloud cover. Hank knew the delay couldn’t be avoided, as Allied soldiers had spent the day securing the camp, but he was concerned. Even if they allowed him back tomorrow, the action was today.
“Remember what we discussed,” Misha said. He offered each of them a cigarette, which they accepted. As they lit them and looked past the major at the scenes unfolding all around them, he continued. “Though our troops have gone through the camp, there may still be boobytraps or holdouts. Stay on the main roads for now.”
Misha turned around to face the camp, his expression fixed but his eyes wider than usual. “We have some informants identifying guards and other employees of the Third Reich. We have already rounded up several who attempted to blend in with the prisoners.”
Hank raised his camera and shot th rough the fencing to capture scores of people so skeletal that it seemed like a miracle they could stand, let alone walk. He knew he would never be able to forget them, their eyes enormous within emaciated faces intently watching him. Some wore blankets over thin, nearly bare shoulders, emblazoned with the Red Army insignia, as medical personnel fanned out to usher them into the courtyard.
“There are only seven thousand or so still here,” Misha continued.
“Only seven thousand?” Rafe asked incredulously as he wrote down the figure in his reporter’s notebook.
“I’m told the camp’s capacity is roughly 150,000,” he answered impassively. “I want as many photographs as you can take. The soldiers are attempting to assemble the prisoners in the courtyard, there.” He pointed to an open area. “They’ll soon be transported to proper medical facilities, so you’ll have to hurry.”
“Matylda is there,” Hank blurted as he watched her rushing from one patient to another, her crisp nurse’s cap slightly off-kilter from her efforts.
“Yes,” Misha answered as he looked at him pointedly. “We need every medic, especially those from the Polish Home Guard. We have too few soldiers who can speak their language.”
“What’s happening over there?” Rafe asked, pointing to a different area by the fencing where a group of men and women were being rounded up under guard.
“Those are Nazis,” Misha said. He spat on the ground in disgust.
A sense of foreboding rose up inside Hank as he tamped down a wave of nausea. “Come on,” he said. “We’re wasting time.”
“Don’t feed the prisoners!” Misha called out behind them. “Doctors’ orders.”
“Does he think we’re at a zoo?” Rafe spouted. “These are human beings, for Christ's sake.”
Hank’s senses were overwhelmed as he hurried through the wide gate with Rafe on his heels. First and most curiously, there was a stench that made his eyes water and forced many of the rescuers to don facial bandanas. Despite Rafe’s comment, the only thing he could liken it to was the profuse odor that greeted visitors as they strolled into a zoo. This smell, however, was a thousand times more pungent.
Then there was the visual onslaught of so many men, women, and children who were clearly starving, their appearances gut-wrenching. Some acted as if they had dissociated from their environment and the actions unfolding all around them, their eyes blank and unseeing even as their feet moved them forward.
Others begged for food and water, and Hank and Rafe were compelled to tell them that it was coming. Still others kissed the ground before them, crying while they thanked them for being there. Still others knelt on the ground, their hands clasped in prayer, thanking God for their liberation from evil.
As if the scenes were not enough to overwhelm them, the sounds were deafening. Even those prisoners who spoke were oddly hushed, but the military rescuers were barking orders in every direction, causing men to scramble and repeat the orders throughout the camp. Other soldiers called out when they discovered something critical, the voices seeming to come from everywhere at once. It was a scene of organized chaos, soldiers and medics rushing in every direction.
“What’s the plan, boss?” Rafe asked as he came alongside him. He dabbed at perspiration across his forehead, despite the winter chill, pausing for a moment to close his eyes against the unfolding scene.
Hank peered around them as he attempted to focus on the job at hand. “We’ll follow this road first. I’ll narrate while I’m taking pictures, as usual.”
“Got it.” Rafe already had a notepad in his hands and his pencil at the ready, as he always did. They had become a well-oiled team ever since Hank met Rafe during the Spanish Civil War. He’d initially been assigned as his driver and translator, but as the war raged on, he’d become more than a valuable assistant. He felt joined at the hip. When the war ended in 1939, and Franco targeted Rafe’s family, Rafe followed Hank’s reassignment to Poland while his parents and siblings fled to southern France. Little did they know that they would be trapped a few months later when the Germans invaded.
They made their way past each building at a crawl, stopping to snap pictures of the crowds that had gathered to gawk at them with the largest eyes in the smallest faces that Hank had ever witnessed. Soldiers often interrupted, instructing the prisoners to gather in the courtyard, their Polish words often stilted as though they’d rehearsed specific phrases. They worked swiftly and politely, though Hank felt they were intruders with no right to take their photographs. He wished he could explain what their orders had been the night before, that they had to take pictures to share with the Allies so the world would witness the atrocities committed there. But he couldn’t. He could only try to tamp down the catch in his throat and keep snapping, dictating specific descriptions and key phrases to Rafe so they could later add them to the text with the photo.
“What the fuck?” Rafe asked suddenly, his voice sounding brash and incredulous. “Is that Max?”
Hank whirled around, following Rafe’s pointed finger. Soldiers surrounded a short man in a business suit so soiled and wrinkled that it appeared he’d been sleeping in it. He seemed to be searching the crowds for someone, occasionally pointing at specific people, who were then arrested and disarmed, including an unusually tall, ramrod-straight female guard.
Hank snapped pictures of her as the prisoners descended upon her, pummeling her with their fists, removing her baton, and cracking it over her, as she writhed on the ground. The soldiers did nothing to stop their attack. By the time the prisoners began to back off, she was bleeding profusely, her hair pulled out by handfuls, and one shoe was missing.
As the woman was frisked for weapons, and several knives and whips were recovered, the soldiers decided to strip her to her underwear. While they marched her toward the front fence line, others continued to check her discarded clothing for all the hidden weapons.
The man in the dark suit turned around, and Hank caught his breath. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “You’re right; that is Max.” He took a step further, then stopped. “Wait. Is that Agata?”
Rafe followed his line of sight. “Agata, from the village?”
As Hank’s eyes descended upon her, he felt a sinister chill rise through his spine. She was dressed in a guard uniform, and she appeared to be searching the crowds for someone. At Max’s instruction, soldiers surrounded her, pushing her to the ground to check for weapons. Unlike the earlier guard, the prisoners did not surround her but remained a few yards away, warily watching. They discovered only a baton. She cried out involuntarily as they tied her wrists behind her and grabbed her by her forearms to lift her to her feet.
Hank continued snapping pictures until his film ran out. Cursing with the delay, he tossed the spent cartridge to Rafe, who efficiently plopped it into a canister and labeled it. Hank couldn’t get the new film in fast enough, and he rushed after Agata as she was led away. Max was also being escorted toward the front, and Hank struggled to keep sight of both of them through the growing crowd.
“Has the world turned upside down?” The question was directed at Rafe, but his mind was spinning.
“You mean, Agata as a guard and Max helping the Reds?” Rafe continued without waiting for a reply. “I think that’s fairly obvious.”
While the prisoners were directed toward the courtyard, Hank followed the guards to the area beside the barbed-wire fence. Soldiers efficiently, though often brutally, lined them up as they arrived. Agata and the other female guard fell in beside the male guards, many of whom had been beaten and were in various stages of disheveled undress. Hank watched as a male guard was directed to the other side of Agata before he began taking photographs. Though he was seasoned, it didn’t take experience to understand this was a momentous historical occasion, and the pictures of these cruel Nazi guards would be analyzed for generations to come, as if a mere photograph could unravel the mystery behind their brutality.
Agata failed to look at him, and he dared not acknowledge her in front of the others. She stood with her eyes downward, her shoulders slumped, her face bleeding from her encounter on the ground. Her hair was tousled, the strands escaping the bun at her neck. While other guards appeared defiant, guilt was written across her face. Hank took several pictures of her, silently begging her to look up, but she kept her gaze on the ground.
