He held it out of her reach and his facial muscles twitched, skin reddening, as he read the letter.
“You have no right to—”
“I have every right.” He stood, his expression controlled. “Ian? He fights against us?”
“Against those intent on destroying all of Europe.”
“Not destroy, Alison. Rebuild.”
“All I know is that you’ve invaded my country. For no good reason.”
“I see.” He crumpled the letter and Alison watched, mesmerized, as it dropped to the floor.
“As my wife, Göring would not have dared to harm you,” Theodor said coldly. “Or your family.” He glanced at the fireplace and his eyes narrowed as he focused on the blank wall above the mantel. He faced Alison, and she read the question in his eyes.
But the location of her long-ago ancestor’s portrait was none of Theodor’s business. And neither was her letter to Ian. Gathering her courage, she stood, posture straight and tall. “Please go.”
He clicked his heels and walked smartly to the parlor door, then hesitated and turned inside the frame. The chill in his brilliant blue eyes softened. “I can save you, Alison. All you have to do is come with me.” He sounded more like the man she had once been infatuated with than an ambitious Nazi officer. She wished he’d become that man again.
“I belong here,” she said, her voice shaking. “This is my home.”
He barely nodded and his eyes hardened. “Do what you can to save it. Our bombers will be here at noon.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Acrid fumes from burning oil stung Ian’s eyes as he crouched beside an abandoned supply truck near the French coastline of the English Channel. Beneath the black smoke, pounding waves crashed against the shore, relentless in their arrhythmic pounding. Survivors of the British Expeditionary Force staggered across the exposed ground as German cannon fire exploded around them. Weighed down with combat gear and their boots filling with water, the soldiers waded awkwardly through the surf toward a small flotilla of fishing boats. Farther out from the shore, larger ships waited to take the evacuees home to England.
Somehow he needed to get Mark into one of those boats.
He wiped the sweat from his stinging eyes and crept to the rear of the truck where Mark sat propped against the wheel. Blood seeped from the makeshift bandage, a cotton handkerchief that Ian had stuffed into the bullet wound only a hand’s width from his brother-in-law’s heart.
“Go, Dev.” Mark coughed, and a trickle of blood appeared at the corner of his mouth. “Before it’s too late.”
“Are you trying to get me in trouble with Trish?” Ian joked. But the same helplessness that had suffocated him when he failed to save his brother clutched at him now. Closing his eyes, he breathed a silent plea for courage.
“Tell her . . .” Mark struggled to speak. “Tell her I love her.”
“Tell her yourself.” Ian stared skyward as a German Messerschmitt roared overhead and fired at the fleeing soldiers on the beach. A moment later, the late-afternoon sun glancing off their metallic fins, four British Spitfires appeared from the northwest.
The Messerschmitt did a wide U-turn but couldn’t outrun the Spitfires. The German fighter exploded in a steel cloudburst that flashed outward in a metal arc. The cannon fire on the ground ceased as the Spitfires zoomed above the German artillerymen.
“It’s now or never.” Ian grunted as he hoisted Mark across his shoulders, slipping his arm between the captain’s legs. He staggered beneath the weight, then caught his balance. Peering over the hood of the truck, he assessed the chaotic retreat and marked the path he planned to take to the coast.
“Stay with me, Mark,” he said, taking a precarious step forward. He shifted his brother-in-law’s weight and cautiously paced through the scrub. In the shrouded sky, the Spitfires flew in and out of the black smoke as they circled above the rescue vessels.
A few other soldiers emerged from behind abandoned military vehicles and zigzagged across the beach. Ian guessed he wasn’t the only one counting on the Royal Air Force to keep the Germans from firing at them.
“Lieutenant!”
Ian faltered and fell to one knee. Browning, the corporal from the base, his babyish face streaked with dirt and sweat, ran toward him. Ian struggled to rise and fell again. Bullets whizzed above his head and he rolled Mark to the ground and stretched across him.
An anguished scream tore the air as Browning grabbed his leg and pitched forward, writhing in the sand. Ian belly-crawled to him, scarcely aware of the thorns and pebbles clawing his chest and thighs.
“My knee,” Browning moaned, eyes squeezed shut.
Ian quickly opened his pocketknife and cut Browning’s uniform around his shattered kneecap. The bits of bloody bone and torn muscle caused Ian’s stomach to roil, but he swallowed the bile.
“You’re going to be all right, chap,” Ian lied. How could he possibly get both Mark and Browning to the shore? He glanced back at his brother-in-law, lying still in a patch of scrub, and hurriedly cut a ragged length of fabric from Browning’s pant leg. The corporal moaned through gritted teeth as Ian wrapped the material around the destroyed knee.
“That’s the best I can do for now. Just hold on, okay?”
Browning grabbed Ian’s sleeve, twisting the material in a surprisingly powerful grip, and raised his head. “Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me here to die.”
“The captain will die if I don’t get him to the boats.” His eyes pleaded with Browning to understand, but the corporal dropped his head to the ground and wailed. “I’ll come back for you. I promise.”
He clasped Browning’s shoulder before running, stooped over, the few yards back to Mark. The captain’s shallow breathing barely raised his chest. With a last glance at Browning, Ian draped Mark over his shoulders again and awkwardly raced toward the boats, his mind focused on nothing more than reaching the shore and his heart fervently praying for a shield from the bullets and the mines.
He waded into the surf, searching the sea for an approaching boat. Two soldiers from his unit, both breathing heavily, caught up to him.
“There,” shouted one, pointing to the right. A red-and-white motorboat bounced across the waves toward the shore. “We need to get to that one.”
“Take the captain,” Ian ordered, lowering Mark into their arms. He took a deep breath and coughed as the smoke-filled air entered his lungs. Scooping up a double handful of the channel water, he splashed it over his face. “See to it he gets on that boat.”
“We will, Lieutenant,” said the second soldier, Private Gregg. Dirt streaked his freckled complexion and sunburnt nose. Earlier that summer, encamped along the Belgian border, the unit had dunked the boy in a nearby creek to celebrate his twentieth birthday.
Ian turned away and Gregg called after him, “Where are you going, sir?”
“Browning.” Ian gestured toward the scrub. The gunfire, though less frequent, sounded closer. “He can’t walk.”
“I’ll find Browning, sir,” said Gregg. “You go with the captain.”
Ian shook his head and waded out of the surf. “I made a promise,” he shouted over his shoulder. A promise made the day they buried his brother. A promise to protect the people he loved, the people he cared about, no matter the cost.
Head bowed, he ran past several retreating soldiers toward Browning, ignoring the burn in his calves and the ache in his side. He found the clerk half-hidden beneath a thin covering of brush, an indistinct trail showing where Browning had dragged himself. His eyes partially opened, appearing glazed, and his lips moved as if he were reciting an inaudible prayer.
“I’m here, chap,” Ian said softly. “Time to go home.”
Browning’s eyes opened wider and he focused on Ian. “Home?”
“That’s right. Are you ready?”
Before Browning could answer, a mine exploded somewhere on the beach. Ian flattened himself on the ground and covered his head as he was pelted with debris. For a bri
ef pause, all was eerily quiet. He raised his head, peering at the line of German soldiers between him and the beach. He glanced backward and his heart dropped to his stomach. More Germans advanced toward them.
They were trapped.
Staying low, he studied the beach again through a gap in the brush, trying to find an escape route through the German line. The men in the channel looked like toy soldiers, the kind he played with as a child, bobbing up and down among the boats sent to rescue as many as possible from their brutal enemy. He couldn’t find the two privates who carried Mark, or the red-and-white motorboat.
Brush rustled behind him. As he wheeled around, a bullet ripped across his shoulder. Yelping in anguish, he grabbed at the searing pain. Blood oozed between his fingers, sticky and hot. The stench of seared flesh mingled with blood, the burning oil tanks, the diesel fumes of the boats, the fishiness of the channel. And the smell of death.
Ian heaved, swallowed, and heaved again. Vomit filled his mouth and he spewed it into the dirt. He rolled onto his back with a dull thud and forced his eyes to stay open. Above him, the quarter moon appeared as an ivory crescent against the sunlit sky. If only the God who had halted the sun in Joshua’s day would quicken its descent beneath the horizon now. Maybe then, in the fading dusk, he and Browning could slip through the German line and into the surf.
But this twilight hour was not destined for cosmic-size miracles. Perhaps not for small ones, either.
Except for the flotilla of boats, both military and civilian, ferrying Allied soldiers to safety. Except for Mark, heading home on one of those boats. Except for . . . Alison. He shut his eyes, tried to shake her away. To think of Alison during a battle was to break a cardinal rule. But she refused to leave him, her gray-blue eyes willing him to stay strong. To come back to her.
Holland had been invaded, Rotterdam relentlessly bombed. Any letters she had sent to him since then were stuck in a mail bag somewhere, far behind the units fighting for their lives at Dunkirk. But she had survived the city’s destruction; of that he was certain. God was not deaf to their prayers. Surely not. Ian groaned, biting the inside of his cheek. Surely not.
“Lieutenant?” Browning’s voice, though weak, sounded too loud, and Ian realized the gunfire had ceased again.
“I’m here.” Ian turned his head toward Browning and their eyes met.
“You shouldn’t . . . shouldn’t have come back.”
“I owed you one.”
“Owed me?”
“For getting me on that diplomatic plane to Holland last September. Remember?”
Browning nodded, face scrunched in pain.
“Besides—” Ian grinned—“the captain likes the way you clean his car.”
“Wasn’t me, Lieutenant.” A puckish smile creased Browning’s face. “Gave that job to Private Gregg.”
Ian snickered. “He’s a good man.” He raised himself, groaning with pain, so he could see the channel. Hope he made it onto that boat.
“Sir.” The edge in Browning’s voice sounded a warning. Ian glanced at him, then followed his gaze to three Germans coming their way, weapons pointed at them. He reached for his pistol but hesitated when one of the Germans aimed his Karabiner rifle at Ian’s belly.
“Do not move,” ordered one of them in German-accented English. “You are now prisoners of the Third Reich.”
Ian blew out air and dropped his chin to his chest. A POW. He turned toward the channel, barely visible between the brush, and a wave of longing washed over him. The boats would return home, leaving him and Browning behind. No more fighting. No more options.
One of the Germans stepped closer and Ian stared at the dirty black boots. He moved his eyes upward, taking in the gray-green uniform, the barrel of the Karabiner.
“Stand up.”
Gritting his teeth against the pain in his shoulder, Ian managed to stand, hands half-raised in surrender. The German slung his rifle over his shoulder and took Ian’s revolver from its holster. Grinning at his spoil of war, he examined the Enfield, hefting it in his hand and showing it off to his pals. Then he pointed it at Browning. “You. On your feet.”
Ian reached toward Browning, but the German pressed the Enfield against his stomach. Ian glared at him. “His knee is shattered. He needs help.”
“It is a long march to the transport trucks.” The German arched his brow. “Will you help him each step?”
Ian subtly straightened and his eyes never wavered from the German’s malicious smile. “Each and every one.”
The German tilted his head, as if considering. “I think not,” he said and in one smooth motion fired the revolver twice into Browning’s chest. Ian lunged for the shooter, but another German slammed him with a rifle butt. Ian staggered but did not fall. He refused to fall in front of these murderers.
“If you do not wish to join your friend,” said the German, “you will march. That way.” He gestured away from the beach.
Ian stared at Browning’s lifeless body, then bent down and closed the corporal’s eyes. “I’m sorry, chap,” he whispered. “Sorry I didn’t get you home.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Theodor flipped through the stacks of framed paintings that leaned against a wall in the Berlin warehouse. “These are all the paintings from the Van Schuyler Gallery?”
“From the showroom, yes,” said Herr Wilhelm Gerrits. His career as an assistant curator at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam had been cut short when a prized Egyptian scarab had mysteriously disappeared. But the art connoisseurs of the Third Reich valued his expertise in establishing provenance and valuations. “The paintings taken from the upper rooms are in those crates.” He pointed to a half-wall of crates that formed an alcove for the loose paintings.
“Is there a catalog?”
“No, sir. Only an inventory list.”
Theodor held out his hand.
“The list is in the office, Count Scheidemann.” Herr Gerrits bowed. “If you’ll excuse me . . .”
With a wave of his hand, Theodor dismissed the overfed minion and focused again on the line of paintings. Several of these, he would swear an oath on it, had not been hanging in the gallery showroom last August. And several of the paintings he had seen, even admired, that day, were not in the stacks.
That day. Again he saw Alison, her blue eyes flashing with anger, throwing herself between Göring and her mother’s portrait. As if he were an indifferent spectator, he also saw himself dropping the sculpture and grabbing for Alison. But the bullet sped faster, and all he could do was kneel beside her, to cradle her bleeding head in his lap.
He dismissed the memory, vanquishing it with Prussian resolve, and focused on his duty. The missing paintings. Perhaps Hendrik had sold them, but Theodor’s intuition told him otherwise. What he’d refused to acknowledge when he saw the blank space above the fireplace in Alison’s parlor could no longer be ignored.
Herr Gerrits appeared with a thick folder. “The Van Schuyler inventory, sir.”
Theodor scanned the first page. With typical German efficiency, the typed list described each piece of art, the artist when known, and any other pertinent information. The items taken from the showroom were listed first, then the items taken from the other rooms in the gallery. He flipped through the pages, scanning each one, till he came to the document titled “Third Floor Studio.”
The first entry caught his attention. Though untitled, the description could only be of The Girl in the Garden, its damage duly noted. The following entries described watercolors, each painted by the same artist: Alison Schuyler.
Theodore slipped the studio document from the file and skimmed through the rest of the folder. The final document recorded the Van Schuyler sales and purchases over the past year as indicated by receipts taken from the gallery. Frowning, Theodor examined the list more carefully. The most recent purchases described the contemporary paintings he had just seen in the stacks. But he could only find a sales record for three of the paintings he remembered seeing at the gallery. One
of those was for A Young Lady Reading, the painting he himself had purchased.
“They hid the paintings,” he muttered.
“Excuse me, sir?”
“Nothing.” He half-smiled, pleased to have deduced a secret that Göring and his sycophants didn’t even know existed. He also found himself intrigued by Alison’s cunning. The lady had depths beyond the Aryan ideal of beauty and talent he had envisioned. He would play her hide-and-seek game. And he would be the victor.
“Is there anything else, sir?” The insincerity of Herr Gerrits’s groveling tone irked Theodor.
“Do you have more urgent business needing your attention?”
“Not at all, sir.”
“I thought not.” Theodor handed him the studio document. “Where are these items?”
Herr Gerrits examined the list, comparing its code to markings on the crates until he found the right ones. “These three.”
“Are you certain? Only those three?”
“Do you wish them opened, sir?”
Theodor thought quickly. He wanted those crates. But he couldn’t let Göring know or the Luftwaffe commander would certainly take them for himself. It was better to cut Göring out completely.
“Do you have a truck I can borrow, Herr Gerrits?”
The round little man blinked his myopic eyes. “Yes, of course we have trucks, but—”
“Good.” Theodor took the studio list, folded and pocketed it. He motioned toward his adjutant, waiting unobtrusively several yards away. “My lieutenant will oversee the loading of the truck and then you will give him the keys.”
“Count Scheidemann, I must protest. This is highly irregular.”
“Do not fear, Herr Gerrits. The truck will be returned.”
“It is not the truck that concerns me.”
Theodor sighed heavily. “Tell me. What does concern you?”
Gerrits wheezed. “The paintings.”
“What paintings?”
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