[Tempus Fugitives 01.0] Swept Away

by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

“We should go shopping together,” Heidi said and waved to get the waiter’s attention to refresh their drinks. “And spend our money before our husbands tell us we cannot.” Heidi made a face and Ella laughed.

  “The husbands we haven’t met yet,” Ella said.

  “Our work tonight is to find out why we haven’t met them yet,” Heidi said, “and why Hugo still has not made his move for you!”

  “Is he here tonight?” Ella asked, twisting in her seat to scan the other diners at the club.

  “Everyone in Heidelberg is here tonight!” Heidi said a little too loudly.

  A rush of sisterly concern flooded Ella and she reached over and took her friend’s hand. It was hard to believe that the happy and laughing Heidi had any problems. It was too easy to accept the façade as the truth and to ignore the sadness that might lay just below the surface.

  “I have an idea,” Ella said. “Let’s take the horse and carriage home through Altstadt to my place. You can spend the night since tomorrow’s Saturday. I’ll make you pancakes in the morning.”

  Heidi laughed, the sound a tinkle of genuine pleasure to Ella’s ears.

  “Nein, Ella,” she said, wagging a finger at her drunkenly. “I have a cheer-you-up present for you tonight. I have been waiting all day to spring it at you.”

  “Should I be worried?” Ella watched her friend with a combination of amusement, curiosity and mild trepidation. She really did look like she was going over the top tonight.

  “Only if hot sex and strong arms to hold you is a worry for you.”

  “Okay, now I’m really confused.”

  “Guess who?” A pair of warm hands covered her eyes from behind and Ella jumped and found herself resisting the powerful urge to judo chop her assailant to gain release. Just as well, she thought, when he dropped his hands and spun her around to face him. Her judo chopping skills were largely textbook, having had no real opportunity to ever practice them.

  “Hey, Hugo,” she said. “What a surprise.” She looked over her shoulder at Heidi who was snuggling up to a man Ella had never seen before who was obviously with Hugo. “My surprise tonight, I deduce.”

  “Happy birthday, Ella!” Heidi said too loudly.

  “Mein Gott!” Hugo said, running a hand down Ella’s arm in a proprietary way. She could smell the alcohol wafting off of him. Obviously the party had started much earlier than dinner. “It is your birthday?”

  Ella shook her head. “No,” she said. “Heidi’s being witty, is all.”

  “Well, happy birthday, liebling,” Hugo said, ignoring her words. “We’ll have to celebrate tonight!”

  “Yes! Yes!” Heidi said, clinging to Hugo’s friend. “Let’s celebrate.”

  Hugo picked up the check from the table and, over Ella’s protestations, threw down enough Euros to cover their meal.

  “I am buying you your birthday meal,” he said, happily. “Now, where to?”

  Heidi jumped up and grabbed her coat.

  “Erik and I are going back to my place,” she said, looking at Ella. “Pancakes another time, Ella?”

  Whoa. Things were happening fast.

  “How long have you known Erik?” Ella blurted the words before she knew they were forming in her head.

  Both Heidi and Hugo laughed. Erik looked like he didn’t understand English. A tall, lanky young man with sallow skin, he waited patiently for Heidi to extricate herself from the group. He stood apart, as if ready to drag her out of the restaurant if things took too long.

  “I love Americans,” Heidi said, swooping in and giving Ella a kiss on both cheeks. “Do not worry about me, my friend,” she said. “I have known Erik long enough to know him.” She giggled at her own nonsense and then turned to stumble into Erik’s waiting arms. She waved as he escorted her out. “See her safe home, Hugo!” she called before disappearing into the crowd.

  Ella looked at Hugo. “That’s not necessary,” she said quickly.

  “Few things in life are,” he said smiling enigmatically.

  The walk was slow and unhurried. When they arrived at her apartment, Ella had already decided she would allow him up for one drink as a thank-you for the escort home. She had to admit he was supremely gorgeous in that very blond Hitlerjugend sort of way. Like the messenger boy in The Sound of Music who’s so cute and fresh before he goes all Nazi on poor Elsa or whatever the girl’s name was. The fact was, it had been a horrible day and Ella wasn’t ready to be alone. She was absolutely sure she could manage things so they didn’t get out of hand. Just watching Hugo walk her to her apartment convinced her he was probably too smashed to even get it up.

  Once in the apartment, she poured them both wine from a bottle she had opened the night before. He offered her a cigarette and she decided to join him on the balcony where the two of them sat smoking and drinking and talking until one glass of wine turned into three and she was looking through her cabinets to find the Wild Turkey she thought she still had. She took her shoes off and loosened her hair so it fell down around her shoulders. When they ran out of matches, they lit their cigarettes off each other’s and giggled and talked about nothing until the streets outside her apartment were as quiet as death.

  She noticed he hadn’t mentioned the Vogel connection. Probably assumed she would just as soon forget it. He was right.

  “It’s getting chilly,” he said. “Shall we go in?”

  “I hate to,” Ella said, feeling woozy and high but better than she’d felt in days. “But you’re right.” She gathered up the bourbon bottle and the ashtray while he picked up the two drinking glasses.

  As they settled on her couch in the living room, he made his move, totally surprising her. He slid next to her and grabbed her hips with his hands and pulled her to him where he planted a very wet and somewhat sloppy kiss on her laughing mouth.

  “Oh, stop, you’re making me dizzy,” Ella said, giggling. When she reached up to wipe some of the slobber off her mouth, the gesture so tickled her that she started laughing like she couldn’t stop.

  “It is very funny.” Hugo said as he watched her try to get control of her laughter. Just the way he said it set her off again.

  “I’m sorry, Hugo,” she said, still laughing. “I’m not laughing at you, I’m just—” but she couldn’t get the rest of the sentence out because she was so definitely laughing at his patient expression.

  Hugo pulled back, frowning and watching her. When she finally stopped laughing, he reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked like a small block of white cheese.

  “You see what I have here?” he said, holding the white block up for her to see.

  She wiped her eyes and squinted at it. “Looks like…tofu?” she grinned like she was going to start laughing again but he spoke quickly.

  “C-4,” he said.

  She wasn’t laughing now. She looked at the tofu-like block.

  “C-4 as in explosive?” she said.

  He nodded. “I am using it in my job,” he said.

  Ella shook her head and tried to remember what his job was.

  “My job,” he said, as if hurt that she didn’t instantly know, as if she must have been thinking of him all these weeks as he was thinking of her.

  “Your job as a…”

  “I am a building demolition contractor. My firm dismantles buildings.” He waved the block in her face.

  “I’m impressed,” Ella said, feeling more sober by the moment. “You bring your work home with you?”

  Hugo shrugged. “It’s controlled,” he said. “To be certified to handle C-4 speaks to my ability as a contractor.”

  “What does it say about you that you would bring it on a date?” Ella asked.

  He grinned, tossed it in the air and caught it.

  “That I want to impress my date, of course,” he said. “Did it work? I have the blasting caps, too. Want to see?”

  “Sure.” Ella was starting to talk to him as she would a crazy person. Don’t upset him. Don’t let on he’s upsetting you.


  He pulled out three long metal tubes with wires attached to the ends.

  “I carry them around like most men carry car keys!” He placed them on the coffee table with the C-4 and then turned to Ella. His grin was so genuine and playful that Ella’s suspicions fell away. He was just a big doofus trying to impress a girl, she thought. In a really bizarre fashion. The interesting thing? It sort of worked. Ella found herself fascinated with the items on the coffee table.

  Hugo scooted back over to her and slipped his arms around her to hoist her up onto his lap. She was so surprised at the move that she let him do it. He held up a finger in front of her face in a mock scold.

  “No laughing,” he said, which made her smile.

  When he kissed her, she turned in his arms until she was straddling him on the couch. Within seconds, his hands were under her blouse and bra and cupping her naked breasts. She gasped at how fast she had gotten to this position. What he was doing felt amazing but a creeping feeling told her that there was something not right. Then it came to her: All the night’s alcohol and all the exquisite sensuous throbbing in all the right places couldn’t hide the fact that he wasn’t Rowan. As soon as the thought formed in her head, the wonderful feelings above and below the waist faded to nothing.

  She pushed away from him and pulled his hands from her breasts. “Hugo,” she said.

  “No, you are not going to stop us,” he said, nuzzling her breasts through her blouse.

  “Yes, I am,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m drunk. You’re drunk…”

  “Not that drunk. I can still perform if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “Hugo,” she said, moving off his lap. “I can’t do this. I’m sorry.” She moved out of his reach and rearranged her blouse. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll make us some coffee.”

  Hugo sat on the couch looking into space as if stunned that this is how the evening was ending up after all.

  Ella went into the kitchen and plugged in her electric kettle. She dug out two mugs and a jar of instant coffee.

  Where had all that about Rowan come from? she wondered. She thought she was pretty much over him. Was she fooling herself? She couldn’t imagine Rowan pushing some half naked, willing girl away. She poured boiling water into the mugs.

  “Milk? Sugar?” she called. “I think I have both.” She opened the refrigerator door to grab the milk and caught the time displayed on the oven. It was three a.m. Rowan would be at the office, probably drinking coffee and planning his day—not screwing some hot Alabama babe. She put the sugar bowl, the mugs and the milk on a tray.

  That would’ve been last night.

  She picked up the tray and walked into the living room. She hadn’t heard him leave but she wasn’t surprised to see that he was gone. She set the tray down on the coffee table and ran to the bedroom to make sure. On her way back to the living room, she locked the door and looked at the two steaming mugs on the coffee table…right next to the block of C-4 and the blasting caps he’d run off and left.

  4

  Ella knew she should have seen the coming storm. Although she knew some things just happen, like a natural impetus independent of the actions or desires of the people involved, she also knew that she was the author of every step that had taken her to this point. She wouldn’t sidestep the responsibility for that now. If she hadn’t taken the Heidelberg job, if she hadn’t let go of Rowan, if she hadn’t been so stubborn about accepting help from her own father, then maybe, just maybe the rest of the dominoes wouldn’t have fallen the way they did. But by the time it all came crashing down on her, it was way too late to think she could’ve done anything to have stopped it.

  The end of all hope of happiness began for Ella as a typical Tuesday morning. She walked to work from her apartment, hitting her favorite Konditerei for an espresso and a sweet roll on the way. She would have preferred something more substantial but she was already running late. It had been two weeks since her visit to Dossenheim. With the exception of Hugo taking great strides to avoid her and being sullen and uncharacteristically curt when he couldn’t, she had managed to put that day almost completely out of her mind. Glimmers of the day’s revelations would come to her when she wasn’t paying attention—taking a shower or waiting for the elevator. When they did, she would feel an overwhelming emotion that she couldn’t name but which was nearly unbearable in its pain. It was like a weight that materialized on her chest, creating such debilitating pressure that she could scarcely breathe.

  When those moments happened, she recited German verbs to distract her.

  That had worked pretty well. Up to now.

  As she hurried up the Hauptstrasse toward her office building opposite the Hard Rock Café, she caught her reflection in a shop window. She was pleased with what she saw: a young woman with a black peacoat and pashmina around her shoulders, her long dark hair blowing in the breeze. She looked like she belonged here. Definitely not a tourist. And then she saw him, reflected in the glass, standing across the street. He looked so much like Rowan that for a minute her heart lodged in her throat. She had whirled around expecting it to be him.

  She walked the rest of the way to her office, continually looking over her shoulder as if he might appear. When she got off the elevator in her office, Heidi half stood at the front desk and gave Ella an encouraging smile and a thumbs up as she walked by. As pleasant as Heidi normally was, it seemed such an unusual thing to do—even for Heidi—that it was then that Ella realized that Hugo must have told her about her famous Nazi grandfather. As soon as she made the connection, another, fiercer, urge grabbed her—the urge to forget it, let it go, turn away from it.

  As she smiled at Heidi and walked to her office, she knew that Heidi—and others in the office—were watching her.

  Granddaughter of a Nazi war criminal.

  Ella entered her office and closed the door, then stood with her back against it. Her heart was pounding in her chest and she felt a warm flush spread to her face.

  It wasn’t just her poor dead mother’s shame, she realized. This was what she had been trying to avoid thinking these last two weeks. It was the reason she had failed to call or visit or even drop a postcard to that poor old woman sitting in a nursing home in Dossenheim.

  It was because it was her shame, too.

  She went and sat at her computer and tried to compose herself, breathing deeply with her eyes closed. She held her hands over her computer keyboard and willed them to stop trembling but all she could think was: A monster’s blood runs through me.

  It dawned on her how she had deliberately avoided any research online that might take her close to the identity of her maternal grandfather. And she was a professional investigator. She knew it wouldn’t involve much of a search. She knew she wouldn’t need to drill down very deeply to see his picture, hear his voice, discover his legacy.

  And she didn’t dare go there. She couldn’t go there.

  She signed on to her email account and caught herself doing what she had been doing for the last month: looking to see if there was an email from Rowan. Before she even checked, the very truth of her need struck her like a sharp slap. She would always look for him and never find him. She had let him go.

  She had done that.

  She turned away from the computer and buried her face in her hands, her sorrow building like a sickness spreading throughout her body. The sobs shook her body and she realized she didn’t care if anyone could hear her. When she stopped, her head on her arms on her desk, she knew what she had to do.

  She sat up straight at the computer, and wiped her face.

  I am stronger than this.

  She opened up her browser and typed his name in the search engine window.

  Two hours later she had learned the truth about Rudolf Vogel. In two hours she had cried every bit of her makeup off and carefully ignored two taps on her office door and three emails from Heidi asking her if she were okay.

  In two hours she learned the whole truth about where she c
ame from and why her mother hadn’t wanted to live.

  As soon as she felt composed, Ella packed up her desk and folded her resignation letter into an envelope addressed to her supervisor. She timed it so that Heidi would not be at the front desk. She walked to the receptionist, handed the envelope to the young girl sitting there and left the office.

  She walked the entire way back to her apartment at a quick pace. Inside, she plugged in her cellphone and turned it to mute, then went to her bedroom where she collapsed on the bed and fell into a thankfully dreamless sleep.

  When she awoke it was after eight o’clock and dark out. She stripped off the work outfit that she had slept in—a silk dress over leggings—and stepped into the shower. She made the water as hot as she could stand it as if the scalding needles could eliminate the terrible images she had seen online that morning.

  She had seen pictures of a handsome man in jodhpurs and riding boots, a cruel smile, an arrogant set to his chin. She had made herself look at the camp he had commanded and the bodies of the people he had murdered. She had looked closely into his face, the face of her grandfather, and could see no trace of humanity or feeling or familiarity.

  He was a stereotypical cartoon. A farce. A cardboard villain.

  Granddad.

  She pulled on a pair of jeans and made herself a ham sandwich which she ate at the kitchen table.

  She got up and poured a light beer into a glass and sat down at the table. There was no way she could stay at that office. Not with everyone knowing. It would be different in the US. Maybe. She pushed the sandwich away and pulled out her phone.

  She hadn’t spoken to him in over a month. She wasn’t a hundred percent sure what she would say to him now. But she knew she had to talk to someone and she didn’t know who else to call.

  The phone rang and eventually went to voice mail.

  “Hey, Rowan,” she said. “Surprise. It’s me. Look, I was just wondering what you were up to. I mean, we haven’t talked in awhile. When you get this message...please call me back…And if you’re screening this call because you’ve got some Alabama hottie on tap there, that’s cool. Except I thought U.S. marshals had to be available at all times. I mean what if I were a Federal witness needing a ride somewhere? Anyway…” Ella took a long breath and glanced at the photo of the two of them. He looked so capable and sure of himself she could feel her throat close up as she fought to stay in control. “Look, not to get all dramatic here or anything but I kind of need you, Rowan.” She felt tears roll down her face when she said the words and started to choke on them. She willed herself to shake it off. “Anyway. Okay, so you know this is me, Ella, right?”