He threw a stick into the fire. “Yes, I suppose I will, to some extent.” He got up, unable to stand fully in the cave. “Time to eat.”
They took the bread and cheese they’d brought and within seconds devoured the amount they’d set aside for dinner. He opened one of the cans of meat. She suffered through hers first and then watched as he finished it. The empty can landed with a soft thud at the back of the cave. He sat beside her as they stared into the heart of the fire.
“So what next, once we cross the border?”
“I expect I’ll spend the rest of the war in a Swiss detention center, heaped in with the other refugees and prisoners of war who escaped across the border. What about you?”
“I’ll make my way to Bern. We have an office there. I’ll report my findings and likely be dispatched home to await my next mission.”
“The hero returns, eh?”
“Not quite. But the war won’t last forever. What will you do then?”
“I don’t know. With everything going on, I was just trying to focus on staying alive. I hadn’t thought much past that. I suppose I’ll go back to Munich and begin the job of rebuilding. Rebuilding my life, and the country too. My skills will be in demand.”
“Germany existed before the Nazis, and it will go on without them.”
“Perhaps, but their stain will take a lot to erase.”
John coughed, the noise reverberating through the enclosed space of the cave. “I hope we can keep in touch when this all ends, if we’re able. I owe you so much.”
“I owe you just as much for what you did for me in the cabin, and when I found you.”
“When you found me? You saved my life.”
“You gave me purpose when I had none. You were exactly what I needed when I needed it.”
“As you were for me.”
The fire spat and popped, and John reached down to toss some more dry wood onto it.
“Would you consider coming to America with me? It’s different than here, I realize, and it’s quite a distance, but you might like it.”
“To Philadelphia?”
“Why not?” he said. “Philadelphia’s a great town, but you’d be free to go wherever you pleased.”
She picked up a stick and took a few seconds to poke the fire before she answered. “Let’s just concentrate on surviving the next day or so, shall we? Then we can start thinking about the future.”
“Yes,” he said. “Perhaps I got a little carried away.” He put an arm around her shoulders. “Get some sleep. We hit the trail again in three hours.”
Franka took the sleeping bag from her backpack and laid it out on the floor of the cave, which proved to be softer and more comfortable than she’d imagined. John remained seated, staring out the mouth of the cave into the dark of the night beyond. Her last thought before she descended into a deep sleep was when he would lie down too.
Berkel came to her dreams again, but this time with hundreds of soldiers thrusting pikes, swords, and flaming torches into the air as they chanted the songs she’d sung as a member of the League of German Girls as a teenager. Berkel was bloodied and torn, showing the marks of the bullets she’d fired into him. An Alsatian strained against the iron leash he held around its throat. The horde of mad berserkers chased her into the forest, the torches they carried illuminating the night as she trod on her own shadow.
Her heart was thumping as she awoke to the brightness of the fire. John didn’t seem to have moved since she’d fallen asleep.
“It’s three in the morning,” he said. “Time to go.”
Chapter 14
Vogel rubbed the tiredness from his eyes as the car pulled up. It had been years since he’d stayed up like this. Responsibilities that would require an agent to work through the night were generally reserved for youth, not for a man of his experience. This was different. The thirst for revenge was fueling him. He greeted the dawn and the chance to question the old man with relish. Sleep could come later. The night had been spent combing the roadways for any sign of Gerber, and it was just after six when her car had been found on an overgrown trail near the hamlet of Bürchau—the same hamlet he was pulling into now with his armed escort. The local Wehrmacht had offered seventy-five men. There was a time when he could have expected hundreds. With little love lost between the local Wehrmacht officers and the Gestapo, he would have to settle for the seventy-five men they’d claimed they were able to spare at the last minute. Together with the hundred or so police and Gestapo men, it would be more than enough to find a little girl wandering in the woods.
Vogel knocked on the door himself, eager to see the look on the old man’s face as he answered. The Gestapo officer introduced himself with a salute, ignoring the old man’s bewilderment as he invited himself inside along with the five soldiers accompanying him. Vogel took a seat at the kitchen table, opposite where the old man had been sitting drinking his coffee, the mug still steaming. The old man offered Vogel a cup. Vogel refused and gestured for him to sit down. Time was a diminishing asset.
“What can I help you with, Herr Vogel?”
“I heard a report you had a visitor yesterday.”
“My neighbor, Karoline, comes to see me most days. She helps me—”
“Don’t toy with me, old man,” Vogel said, each word an implicit threat. “I’m looking for Franka Gerber. I heard she was here yesterday. She murdered one of my colleagues, a good man with children. Your niece shot him down in cold blood.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve not seen Franka in years.”
“Don’t waste my time, Gerber. We know she was here. Your false demeanor doesn’t fool me. What did she say? Did she tell you where she was going? Was she alone?” Vogel smacked the coffee cup with an open hand. It hurtled off the table and broke on the tile floor.
“Do you think I’m scared of you?”
“I think you should be. You have no one to turn to here.” He looked around the table at the five soldiers in full uniform with their rifles pressed to their chests. “I could take you outside and shoot you in the middle of the street, and no court in this Reich would convict me. I could lock you up in a cell and starve you to death or maybe just torture you for my own amusement. Now, I ask again. Where did that whore of a grand-niece of yours tell you she was going?”
“You watch your language! I remember when this country was great, when we were a bastion of industry and the arts, when bullyboys like you skulked in the shadows where you belonged. But now you wear that armband and that pin, and you think that gives you power over me?”
Vogel took out his pistol and aimed it at Hermann.
The old man didn’t flinch or waver.
“I haven’t killed a man in many years. Don’t make me do that today. Tell me where Franka is. I already told you she murdered my partner. Was she alone, or with someone else?”
“And I already told you I haven’t seen her in years.”
Vogel cocked the hammer on his gun and pointed it at Hermann’s forehead.
“I’m an old man, Vogel. Death comes for us all sooner or later. I’m not afraid of it, and I’m not afraid of you. So go ahead and shoot, because I’ll die before I betray my own blood to the likes of some jumped-up Nazi puppet like you.”
“Have it your way, then.” Vogel pulled the trigger.
The aching was numbed by the sheer cold. Frostbite was now a constant worry in Franka’s mind. Hours of wading through snow had left her feet little more than concrete blocks to balance upon. She greeted the stop for breakfast with massive relief. There could be no fire now. They spoke in whispers.
“What do we do if they find us, John?”
“We make sure that doesn’t happen.”
He laid down a blanket for them to sit on and handed her a bottle of water. Her body longed for a sleep she could not afford.
“We need to be careful not to dehydrate ourselves,” John said. “It doesn’t seem like a natural concern among all this frozen water.”