“You’d better be worth saving,” she whispered. “I’m doing this for your wife and daughters.”
The field they were in was on a plateau, with the trees leading down a hill to a valley below. The conifers were covered in snow that drifted to ten feet deep or more. It took a minute or two to get over to where the trees were. She crouched and burrowed into the snow. The powder was soft, and she was able to make quick progress. No one else was coming. This snow cave would be their only chance of making it through the night. Thoughts of ending her own life could wait until she saved his.
She went to check on him. He was still alive. A tiny light flickered within her, like a distant candle in a dark hollow. She made her way back over to the hole, not thinking about how she was going to get him there, just focusing on digging, one handful at a time. Another twenty minutes and the snow cave was big enough. She climbed down inside, using her own body to smooth out the snow. She made a shelf with her hands before poking out an airhole in the top with a long stick she’d taken from outside.
She made her way back over to where Werner lay, took the backpack and the sleeping bag, and brought them across to the snow cave. It was just long enough for him to lie down, with enough space to sit up. It would do. She made her way back across to him. It must have been after midnight. The relative safety of the morning seemed years away. There would be no way to move him farther than the cave until the blizzard subsided. She took the nylon of the parachute, still attached to the straps across his shoulders, and heaved. An ugly grimace of pain came over his face as his body slid along the snow. She grasped the parachute again, pulling as hard as she could. Her legs gave way, but she’d dragged him six more feet. This was possible. Hope ignited within her, sending streams of adrenaline through her beleaguered body. She heaved again, and again. It took twenty minutes. She was wet with sweat under her thick scarf and coat, but they reached the edge of the snow cave. It was the first time she’d felt anything like triumph in what seemed like a lifetime. Perhaps since the first leaflets of the White Rose, when the excitement of standing up for what was right had overtaken them, when the promise of a better future for the German people had seemed like a reality for the first time in a generation.
Werner Graf was still unconscious. Nothing was going to wake him. Not that night. The goal of him opening his eyes again drove her forward. It didn’t matter who he was anymore, just that he was a human being and that he was still alive. She took a few seconds to rest before pushing him down the slope she’d constructed into the cave. He moaned again, the bones in his legs giving a sickening crack as she pushed him down.
The snow was still drifting down from the dark sky above, and the wind howled like a voracious wolf. The cave lit up as she struck a match she’d taken from his backpack. She hadn’t really looked at him before. He’d only been a stricken body, not a man. He was handsome, unshaven, with short brown hair. She extinguished the match and reached around to pull the sleeping bag around him. She lay down next to him, able to hear the pitch of his shallow breaths and the dull thudding of his heartbeat within his chest. They were going to need each other’s body heat to make it through this night. She put an arm around him. She hadn’t touched a man like this since before Hans died, ten months earlier. Overcome with exhaustion, she spiraled into a deep sleep.
The sound of screaming jarred her, yanked her from the escape of sleep. It took her a few seconds to realize where she was, what was going on. The dark of the cave dulled her senses until she peered up at the opening above her head. The light of the moon was visible now. His head flipped to one side. His body was still warm. He was dreaming. She settled back down beside him, using his arm as a pillow. Her eyes were just closing when he screamed out again.
“No, please, no! Please, stop!”
Her blood froze. What he said was unmistakable—it was English.
Chapter 2
She lay motionless, paralyzed by shock. No more words escaped his lips. His eyes were still clamped shut. It was still night. She was still lying beside this man, whoever he was. His chest expanded in time with his breath, more solid now. She had already saved him, but to what fate? She tried to reason that he was indeed Werner Graf. But how could he be? What Luftwaffe officer would call out in English in their sleep? She wasn’t fluent by any means, but she knew the smooth rhythm of English words. It wasn’t hard to recognize. Who was this man, and what would happen to him if she turned him over to the local police? It would be tantamount to giving him to the Gestapo. He was dressed in a Luftwaffe uniform. If he was British or American, there was no question that he would be treated, and shot, as a spy. She would die before she’d help the local Gestapo extend its reign of terror. So what was she to do?
She raised herself off his body and shimmied out of the snow cave. The icy air bit at her exposed face and felt almost liquid as she pulled it into her lungs. The snow had stopped. The clouds had been cleared aside like a soiled tablecloth and revealed the stars burning against the ink black of the sky. The winds had calmed to a gentle tickle on the tree branches. All else was unmoving. What would happen if she left him? Would he ever emerge from his sleep? Would he even be able to raise himself out of the cave once he came to? The field she’d dragged him across was smoothed over, beautiful now. Anyone could have wandered past them and never known that they were there. But the morning was coming. They were isolated up here. People were rare but far from unheard of. She estimated that she had at least three hours until the low winter sun limped over the horizon to illuminate the forest—only three hours before they might be spotted. A cross-country skier could happen upon them as they were struggling back through the snow, and then any decision-making would be taken out of her hands. This man would succumb to the Gestapo by the consensus of strangers. It was always easier to side with the Gestapo—a citizen would be rewarded for doing so, thrown in jail for not. It required supernatural strength not to do the Gestapo’s bidding. That was the genius of their system—it took fortitude of an almost unimaginable scale to do the right thing. Not reporting your neighbors was as dangerous as the antisocial activities that the Gestapo was so interested in. It meant that they had spies everywhere. It meant that the “German look”—a swift, furtive glance to make sure no one was watching—was a part of everyday life now.