White Rose Black Forest

by Dempsey, Eoin

  Every frozen step was a step closer. It was less than twenty miles.

  John checked his compass. The sky was almost invisible. The forest was all they could see. His legs were sore, but it was hard to know whether it was because of the exertions of today or because they weren’t fully recovered yet. Probably both.

  John stopped by the stump of a long-dead tree to wait for her. She unfurled her scarf, and he found himself staring at her face as if it were a precious jewel. The mission had to remain his priority, yet the thoughts of bringing her home remained in his mind.

  “It’s almost five o’clock,” he whispered, though all signs of human life had dissipated. “It’ll be dark soon. I estimate we’ve covered about six miles since we started out. How are you feeling?”

  “I feel strong,” she said.

  “I think we should keep going, for another couple of hours at least. Moving at night is dangerous, but we’ve no choice. For all we know they’ve discovered Berkel’s body and are deploying troops to search for us right now.”

  “I agree.”

  “Watch out. Be careful where you step, and we’ll try to find a five-star cave to spend the night.”

  “Sounds fabulous.”

  “Don’t say that I don’t bring you to the best places.”

  “You certainly know how to show a girl a good time.”

  “If we don’t find somewhere, we have Berkel’s tent. Are you ready?”

  “Yes,” she said. They moved off.

  Armin Vogel, who had been a policeman for seven years before the National Socialists came to power, had transitioned to the Gestapo with ease. It was a matter of following the law, and the law gave him powers that he couldn’t have dreamed of when he’d first joined the force in the 1920s. Such power was persuasive, and the notions he’d held as a young man were swept away in the Nazi mudslide. He was untouchable now, answerable only to direct superiors, who almost never questioned his methods. As long as the putrid stream of information kept flowing, his place as a vital cog in the rule of law was assured. There was no room for pity or remorse. Not in such a crucial role as his. Pity was for the weak, remorse for the defeated. He was neither.

  It was just after two in the afternoon when the phone rang. Vogel pushed aside the paperwork threatening to overwhelm his desk and reached for the receiver. It felt cold against his ear. It had taken him some time to grow accustomed to the greeting he used all the time now.

  “Heil Hitler.”

  “Herr Vogel, this is Frau Berkel.” It wasn’t difficult to detect the anguish in her voice. “Do you know where my husband is? He never came home from work last night, or this morning. I’ve known him to stay out before, but never this late. I’ve called and called his desk, but no answer.”

  Vogel promised to find Berkel and hung up. He had no wish to speak to Berkel’s wife, particularly when she was in a mood like this. His own wife was annoyance enough. He stood up for the first time in several hours, his joints cracking as he straightened himself. Berkel’s office was next to his. The door was shut. He let himself inside and found it empty. Berkel’s desk was in a similar state to his own, but he kept his appointments written in a leather-bound planner. He found it in seconds, leafing through the pages until he found the entry for the day before. Berkel was meticulous in every part of his job, and sure enough, the address of the cabin was scrawled in the space for the previous evening.

  “You went to see Franka Gerber, did you?” Vogel said out loud. “Berkel, you old dog.” He placed the planner back down among the clutter on the desk, determining to wait an hour before investigating any further.

  Berkel’s wife called again fifteen minutes later. Vogel didn’t have quite the same ease in getting her off his ear this time and had to promise he would look into her husband’s disappearance immediately. He didn’t inform her that Berkel had gone seeking out his attractive ex-girlfriend from his teenage years. With no phone number in Franka’s file and only an address, Vogel had little choice. He made his way out to the car, wondering if Berkel was going to leave his wife. There were ways and means of doing these things, and dragging his partner into his love life wasn’t one of them. Despite the niggling thought in the back of his mind about the crutches Franka had acquired, Vogel spent much of the drive up to the mountains cursing his colleague’s inability to keep his pants tethered.

  It was past four o’clock when Vogel arrived at the cabin. He swore out loud as he got out of the car, knowing that he’d have to drive back in the dark. The cabin seemed deserted, but the footprints and tire tracks in the snow revealed something else. Someone had been here. He kept his eyes trained on the ground and noticed at least two different tracks. Several people had been here, and probably two or more cars. There were no lights on in the cabin, and only silence in the air. No phone calls, no wife nagging, no suspects crying under torture. This peace was something to savor. He’d not felt this alone in years. He rapped on the door once and then again. No answer. It was locked. He moved around to a small window and peered into a bedroom that was almost clean enough to suggest no one had slept there recently, but the bedclothes were creased, and the candle-wax stains on the bedside table were fresh. He went back to the front door and kicked it in. It clattered open on the third try. He was proud that at almost fifty he still had it in him.

  The cuckoo clock in the hall greeted him with incessant ticking, and he called out, knowing that no answer would come. He tramped down the hallway into the living room and saw a clean patch on the floor, clearly distinguishable from the rest of the wooden boards. He reached down to touch it with the tips of his fingers and felt the smooth surface.

  After getting up from his haunches, Vogel lit an oil lamp in the corner. He ducked his head into the kitchen. It was spotless, but the ashes in the stove were fresh, not more than a day or two old. Vogel emerged from the kitchen into the living room and studied the bare walls. It took him about five minutes of scanning the room before he saw the tiny hole in the back wall. He put a finger over it and felt the hole where a bullet had gone through. This bullet hole was already enough to go back to the Gestapo with, but he knew there was more, and he continued his search. Whoever had been here had left in a hurry. They’d done well in covering their tracks, but there was always something they overlooked, no matter how meticulous they thought they were.

  Vogel went into the main bedroom, going through the closets, looking under the bed, finding nothing apart from some old clothes hanging in the wardrobe and some ladies’ essentials. He went to the other bedroom. The closet opened with a bang, and he rummaged through old clothes for both sexes, coming up with little. He spent another five minutes rifling through the dresser and bedside table, before sitting on the bed to gather his thoughts. The bedsprings creaked under his considerable weight, and then he felt the breeze, the tiniest lick of cold air on the skin above his socks where the fabric of his pants didn’t cover. He peered at the floor and noticed a gap between the floorboards. He stood up and pushed back the bed, revealing the full length of the floorboards. He went to the kitchen for a knife to pry them up, and soon afterward found himself staring into the bloodied, dead eyes of Daniel Berkel.

  Karoline Biedermann considered herself a good person, a caring neighbor. At first, it was a sense of duty that brought her to the old man’s house, but in time, she developed a genuine affection for Hermann and even looked forward to seeing him on her regular visits. Her husband preferred to sit at home, reading the newspaper or listening to the radio between sips of homemade schnapps. Her sons had given their lives for the Reich, and her daughters had long since gone, one married to a civil servant in Bremen, the other engaged to an army captain in Freiburg, so it felt good to have someone to look after. She visited Hermann most days of the week and made his dinner as he sat recounting stories of better times. His political views were verging on liberal—a dirty word in today’s society, but she paid them little mind. Old men were entitled to their ramblings. They had earned that much.
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br />   She reached under the flowerpot for the key for Hermann’s front door and noticed that it was facing in the opposite direction than she always left it. That jarred her. She picked it up. Hermann was dozing in his armchair, and she went straight to the kitchen to begin preparing vegetable casserole. He awoke to the clacking of her dicing vegetables and called out to her from his chair.

  “No need to get up, Herr Gerber. It is only I.”

  Five minutes later the casserole was ready to cook, and she slipped it into the oven before going to him.

  “Karoline, you are so kind.”

  “I do try, Herr Gerber. That dish will be ready in twenty minutes. Will you need me to come back?”

  “No, that’s quite all right.”

  “Did you have a visitor today?”

  “I did. My grand-niece Franka was lost hiking. She arrived early this morning and took some rest here. We had lunch together, and she left. It was wonderful to see her. It had been years. I don’t know how many.”

  Karoline felt an itch. “Franka. Wasn’t she the one who had the trouble with those awful dissidents in Munich speaking out against the führer?”

  “Yes, that was her, but she’s served her time and is rehabilitated utterly now.”

  “Of course,” she said. “Everyone deserves a second chance. Well, almost everyone. I should be going now. Let me know if you have need of anything else. Otherwise, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  She left with the old man’s gratitude ringing in her ears, but her thoughts were of something else. It was likely nothing, but with all that was going on these days, it was best to be safe. She was sure that he was correct and that Franka had been led astray. Nevertheless, she was a known enemy of the state—at one time anyway—and the border was close by. What was she doing out hiking in the middle of the night, and why wouldn’t she have asked one of her great-uncle’s neighbors to bring her back home? The blanket of night was descending, the trees of the forest changing to black. Yes, it was best she called this in. The local police would be most interested.

  It pained Vogel to leave his colleague’s body beneath the floorboards in that shack in the mountains, but he knew better than to disturb a murder scene. He had never thought of Berkel as a friend when he’d been alive, but he was a good man, a family man, and a loyal servant of the Reich. His murder highlighted the qualities Vogel had never recognized in him while he was alive. Hatred for Berkel’s killer surged through him on the drive back to Freiburg, his knuckles bright white on the steering wheel, his teeth almost ground down into his gums. He didn’t bother to park his car in his usual space outside the Gestapo headquarters, instead abandoning it at an ungainly angle on the sidewalk. He assembled the agents on duty for an emergency meeting. The men were shocked as he recalled what he’d seen, and each swore vengeance on the murderous bitch who’d dared to perpetrate such a cruel and heinous act. With no picture of Franka on file, a composite artist came in to sketch her face from the memories of several of the agents who’d known her.

  “Her car was missing,” Vogel said. “Block off all roads for fifty miles in every direction, all the way down to the border. Enlist the local Wehrmacht garrison to help with the search. She’s making for Switzerland. I have little doubt of that. She has nowhere else to go. No one can hide from us in the country. Call every local police station and Blockwart. Someone knows something. We know she got crutches a couple of weeks ago—which she claimed were for her boyfriend who had been hurt in a skiing accident. She may well have someone with her.” The agents muttered among themselves before he began again. “This treacherous bitch cannot be allowed to escape. No one does this to the Gestapo. We are the law, and retribution will be brutal.” He slammed his fist against the wall. “Bring her in alive. I want the last miserable hours she spends on this planet to be horrific.”

  The call from the Blockwart in Bürchau came half an hour later, and Vogel called another meeting, with three times more agents in attendance now. The agents were baying for blood like a pack of ravenous dogs. All of their resources would be deployed between Bürchau and the border. That traitorous whore would never see Switzerland alive.

  Franka’s feet were blocks of ice. If there had ever been a trail here, it was covered, and they had to lift each leg out of the snow as they went. It was past ten o’clock, and her legs ached more with every step. John was two feet in front of her, and every so often she reached out to touch his back with her spare hand to let him know she was still there, to encourage him. Her mind was nearly blank, occupied by little other than the constant need to place one foot in front of the next, and the stifling cold. Her eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness. The moon only appeared when a break in the foliage allowed its silver light to shimmer down. The spread of trees was uneven—sometimes they’d come upon an open field to stride across, or a patch of deciduous trees, stripped of all foliage, their trunks like enormous spikes sticking straight up into the night sky. They passed farmhouses lit warm inside and saw the smoke billowing out of their chimneys, silent as the dead. But they didn’t stop.

  It was almost midnight when John held his finger in the air and she came to a halt behind him. She put her hands on her thighs and bent at the waist. He motioned for her to stand still and shuffled forward. Franka—with pain, burning, and freezing each fighting for supremacy in various parts of her body—leaned against a tree. Her breaths were heavy, and she was panting as he returned.

  “There’s a cave among those rocks,” he said, pointing a finger. “Do you see it?”

  She didn’t but said she did nevertheless.

  “We need to rest a few hours. Follow me.”

  John moved forward five or six steps before looking back. She was lagging behind, the energy within her disappearing since they’d stopped. He reached out a gloved hand, and she took it in hers. They went together in silence until the cave emerged as a darker patch against the gray of the rock face in front of them. John took a flashlight from his pack that Franka hadn’t known he’d carried. A hedgehog scuttled out as he shone it inside.

  “Just wanted to make sure we weren’t disturbing momma bear or a couple of wolves.”

  Franka wanted to acknowledge his thoughts but was too tired to speak. John reached over to take the pack off her back. She felt light-headed as he took the rucksack off, and he shepherded her inside the cave, sitting her down on the dry leaves that covered the ground. He reached into his backpack and pulled out a half-full bottle of water he offered to her. The cold liquid revitalized her.

  John gathered firewood. Within a few minutes a healthy fire burned at the back of the cave.

  “Won’t they see us?” Franka whispered.

  “If they’re right behind us, perhaps, but we need this. We can rest here for three hours or so. Then we make for the border.”

  He took out a map as he sat beside her, their hips touching. Franka took one end of the map, and he took the other.

  “I think we’re here,” he said, “about ten miles from the border. If we walk through the night, we can make it there by morning.”

  “We’re crossing in daylight?”

  “No. We need to take a look first. I think we can cross around here.” He pointed to an area near the village of Inzlingen. “There’s a trail there at the foothills of the forest, which leads to a Swiss customs office across the border. We can follow a stream that should lead us all the way to it. According to this map there are no guards there, no listening posts. It’s a blind spot—a narrow sliver that they missed. Have you ever been down there?”

  “No, I went to Switzerland when I was a child, but we didn’t see the need to steal across in the dead of night on our school field trip.”

  “That would have livened up your school trip.”

  “Our teachers didn’t share your sense of adventure.”

  “We’ll find that stream and then cross the border after nightfall. We should be safe in Switzerland this time tomorrow.”

  “You make it sound so simple.�
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  “There’s nothing complicated about it.”

  “And you’ll have fulfilled your mission.”

  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.”