by Anna Schmidt
“We did,” he replied calmly. Then pinning her with his steel-gray eyes, he added, “I did.”
She felt the hairs on the back of her neck tingle. She was sitting across from a murderer—one who did not even try to absolve himself. It did not matter whether or not he had pulled the trigger or directly ordered the death. He was a murderer. She wished she had asked Theo to come with her.
Detlef leaned back and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fräulein Randolph, if you would please take what I have written and read it through, perhaps you will understand.”
“What is there to understand?” She pushed the notebook back across the table. “I will not ease your conscience, Mr. Buch.”
He stood up and glanced at the clock. “That is not what I am asking. And now I must leave you. I have my shift to work at the cannery.” Without another word he turned and walked out of the library, nodding to the librarian as he left. The notebook was still on the table.
She sat staring at it for a long moment. She closed her eyes and envisioned the fastidious handwriting—the words put down so close together as if he had feared that there might not be enough paper to tell the whole story.
“I will write about how it began,” he had said when she had first given him the notebook. “If you are interested and agree, then I will tell you the rest. My English is good in speaking, but writing takes time, and I fear we do not have such time.”
But she had read enough. More than enough. Did the man truly believe that he would be forgiven for the deaths he had by his own admission caused simply because in the beginning he had thought Hitler and his maniacal plan was the answer? He was obviously well educated and intelligent. But he was also desperate, she realized.
She spun the notebook around with the tip of her finger. She recognized her anger and also knew that she was judging the man without knowing his whole story—the way others had judged various groups in Germany. And not just Germany. How many people did she know right here in America who formed opinions about entire ethnic or political populations based on nothing more than a difference in belief or conviction?
Was she doing the same thing? Judging this man because she assumed that he was as evil as Hitler and his gang? Hadn’t Theo said that making assumptions was at the very root of misunderstanding? She picked up the notebook and opened it to the page where she had stopped reading. An hour later the librarian began flicking off the lights. It was closing time, and Suzanne was only partway through the German’s journal. Yet what she was reading was fascinating stuff—information that Gordon would no doubt find useful. Reluctantly she marked the page with a business card she had picked up from the local bank after establishing an account as part of her plan to convince herself that Oswego—not Washington—was now her base of operations.
She had come back to write the stories of the refugees—not the story of some German POW who unlike other POWs was not just a foot soldier in Hitler’s army but rather a high-ranking officer in the dictator’s reign of terror. As she walked back to the boardinghouse, she thought about her editor. Would Edwin publish the story of a captured Gestapo agent? She was fairly certain that he would. The man was in the business of selling newspapers, and a sensational and controversial story like this one would certainly fill that bill.
Yet it was not Edwin that she wanted to share this story with. It was Theo, and while he would not openly disapprove, he would question. He would find ways to make her stop and carefully consider what this was really all about. Unlike Gordon, Theo would not look at this as an opportunity for advancing his career but rather he would consider all parties concerned—including Detlef Buch.
She had learned the hard way that thinking something through made little difference. And hadn’t Edwin preached that a story is about now—not an hour from now or a week or a year? “Seize the moment,” was the way he ended every staff meeting.
So she would.
CHAPTER 13
From the moment Ilse told Theo about the connection between the POW and their family, Theo had tried to think how best to break the news to his parents and beyond them to Beth and her husband. They were still in England, but he could send a telegram letting Josef know that his father was alive. On the other hand, if the father had been with the secret police, was it possible that Josef had also worked for them? He could have been an undercover agent spying on those who would stage a resistance or plot to overthrow Hitler’s regime. He could have used Beth as his way out of the country.
Ilse assured him that Josef and Beth had been deeply in love and reminded him that Josef had been arrested and sentenced to Sobibor, a death camp in eastern Poland. His father had not been able to save him from that fate. She pointed out that Josef and Beth had escaped from the camp and they had been on the run for their lives for months afterward. Not only that, but they had further risked their lives helping Allied airmen reach safety.
Still, when Theo thought about his brother-in-law being the son of a Gestapo agent, he worried that his sister might still be in danger. Even if Josef were innocent of any wrongdoing, might not the authorities want to question him—and Beth? And would that delay even more the day when she could come home?
His concern extended to Suzanne. Evidently she had decided to pursue things with the German. Feeling it was none of his business, Theo had not spoken to her about it, and he had certainly not mentioned the connection between the POW and his family. In fact, ever since she had established a nightly routine of leaving right after supper for the library and not returning until well past closing time, he and Suzanne had barely seen each other. Hilda and Hugh continued to dominate mealtime conversation, and Theo was surprised when Suzanne did not challenge them as she always had before.
Before she began meeting the German.
Theo felt driven to warn her—to protect her. But he could not name the threat. Detlef Buch would not physically harm her as long as he thought she was doing what he wanted, so he was not the threat. Her editor was not involved in the story as far as Theo knew, so she was not being pressured by her former employer to deliver a story. Yet he had this uneasy feeling that when everything played out, Suzanne was going to end up hurt … again.
March quite literally melted into April as the snow finally let up and the temperatures started to rise. Theo spent his time after work climbing through the hole that the refugees had opened in the fence and following the path down to the lake. He walked the shoreline and thought about the future.
Ilse had confided her desire to return to Munich once the war ended. Theo knew that his parents would not think this a wise move, and certainly Liesl had settled into the American way of life so thoroughly that she would be unlikely to want to return to a homeland she had known mostly as a place where she had to watch everything she said or did and where her parents had been so obviously scared and unhappy.
Since Franz’s death, Ilse had become more withdrawn and only Gisele St. Germaine seemed to be able to draw her out of her mourning—for her husband, for her homeland, for a life that had once been so predictable and secure. Thinking about Gisele made his thoughts turn to Suzanne. The woman had once accused him of being attracted to the French actress.
“She’s been a good friend to my aunt.” He’d had no idea why he felt the need to defend himself, and that irritated him.
“Keep telling yourself that’s why she’s always going to the movies or some function at the shelter with you and Ilse.”
He had felt like taking hold of her shoulders as he had done the night he had kissed her. In spite of his annoyance, he had felt like kissing her until she saw her mistake. It wasn’t Gisele that he was attracted to. It was Suzanne. But there had been no further intimacy between them since that night, and neither of them had ever mentioned their kiss. Shortly after that shared kiss—and it had definitely gone both ways—she had started slipping off right after supper, turning down all his attempts to find time they could spend together. He had gotten the message. Her career came first.
Detlef Buch had an agenda, as had the congressman she had gotten that other story from. That man had not cared what happened to Suzanne or her reputation. He had used her ambition to get what he wanted. What if Buch was doing the same thing?
There was one way to stop the man from using Suzanne—or at least to make him think twice: if Theo told him that someone in the fort knew him, knew what he had done. Of course he would never reveal Ilse’s name. It would be the knowledge that his so-called facts could be disputed, could be checked that might make him think twice about what he was doing. He might even withdraw his permission for Suzanne to write the story. She would be furious, of course, but it would be for her own good.
“Penny for your thoughts.” Suzanne came alongside him, her hands in her pockets and a scarf tied around her unruly hair.
Theo had been thinking about her so much that it was almost as if he had willed her to appear. “Not sure my thoughts are worth a penny.” He paused and stared out toward a gray horizon that blended seamlessly into the gray waters. “I haven’t seen you down here before.”
She shrugged. “I come sometimes. I’ve seen you, but I didn’t want to disturb you.”
“So what’s different about today?”
“I need a friend I can talk to.”
“I’m flattered.” He took her hand and tucked it in the crook of his elbow as they started to walk. “Well here I am, so what’s going on?”
As if he had somehow opened the floodgates, her words spilled out. She told him all about the meetings with Detlef Buch, about the journal and how it had raised so many questions in her mind.
“Such as?”
“What if I had been in his shoes? What if I had been told to do what my superiors asked or suffer the consequences? What if I had seen others lose their jobs, their homes, their position in the community simply because they dared to question the government’s policies? What if—”
“You would still have refused. That is the difference.”
“But what if they had threatened my family?”
“Did they threaten the German’s family?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“They threatened to send his son to the front lines instead of keeping his service as a medic in relatively safe areas. They threatened to arrest his wife because once when she was a child her parents had entertained an enemy of the state’ in their home.”
“And how do you know this?”
“He told me.”
“Exactly. He has told you all of this—what he wants you to know. What has he withheld?”
“Nothing. In his journal he has revealed things that I’m certain could get him sentenced to life in prison or worse. And in the interviews I’ve had with him, he has answered all my questions without any hesitation.”
“Suzanne, this is what he does—what he built a career doing. Why in the world would you trust anything he tells you? The man is fighting for his life.”
She stooped to pick up a stone that had been smoothed by lake water over who knew how many years. “I want to understand how a man so obviously intelligent could come to this.”
Theo let out a breath and watched the fog of it disappear into the air. “Where are you going to meet him—and do not tell me the library because I checked and you are not going there.”
“You checked?” She folded her arms across her chest in a gesture of annoyance. “I’m not Liesl, you know. I’m not ten years old.”
“Forgive me for caring. You are here alone, and you do seem to have this habit of going off—”
“Half-cocked?”
“I was going to say you have a habit of going off on your own without anyone knowing where you are or when you might return. I was worried.”
She squinted up at him then stuffed her hands into her pockets. “You know, I do have to earn some money for the rent at Selma’s.”
Relief flooded through Theo. She wasn’t spending hours and hours with the POW. She was working. “You got a job? At the paper?”
“No. At the canning factory. It’s part-time, but it pays enough to cover rent and essentials and still leaves me the time I need to go to the shelter to gather stories and—”
“And Buch works at the cannery.” It was more than a guess.
“Yes. So you see, I am perfectly safe. We work next to each other on the assembly line, so I am able to interview him while I work, and then I get on the bus with other people from Oswego and come home. Perfectly safe,” she repeated.
“But exhausting. Talk about burning the candle at both ends. When do you take time to sleep?”
“I don’t need much sleep. Besides, once this is done I’ll have plenty of time to catch up.”
“And exactly what is ‘this,’ Suzanne?”
“My book. You see I’ve finally come up with an angle. I tell two stories—the one of the refugees paralleled with Buch’s story. Two sides of the same time period.” Her voice quivered with excitement, and she was talking with her hands—something Theo had learned was a sure sign that this was a topic that she felt passionate about. “I can barely wait to sit down each day and type up my notes.”
“You would defend this man and his actions?”
“No! I am simply telling the story of how it was possible for him and hundreds—thousands—like him to become caught up in the madness.”
“Sounds like a defense to me.”
She stopped walking and glared at him. “What do you want from me, Theo? I am a journalist. I write stories designed to inform and teach and help readers come to an educated point of view based on fact.”
Theo gave her a wry smile. “And so we have come full circle, Suzanne. How exactly are you proving those so-called facts?” He did not wait for an answer. “I promised Liesl and Ilse to join them for a meeting for worship on Sunday. Gisele is coming as well. If you’d like to come you’d be most welcome.”
“Maybe another time.”
“Thought so,” he murmured as he turned away and climbed the soggy path that led back to the hole in the wire fence.
Suzanne watched him go. What right did he have to judge her? If she wanted to pursue the business with Detlef Buch, wasn’t that her right? So she had originally sought his advice, but now … And what had he meant by that last comment? “Thought so.” As if he had expected that she would refuse any invitation to join in a meeting for worship. Wasn’t he the one who had made such a point of not making assumptions without fact?
But he was right—at least about the meeting for worship. Other than the night she had sat with Liesl in the frigid barracks apartment, Suzanne had not attended a meeting for worship or any other form of church service since she had been eighteen years old. As she stood staring out across Lake Ontario, she recalled another lake in another season in another part of the country.
As a teenager her summers had been spent working as a counselor at a camp set on the banks of a large lake high in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. But the summer of her eighteenth birthday, she had opted to do something else. Meanwhile at that camp something happened—something that maybe if she had been there would not have happened—something that changed her life. And it seemed to her that everything that had happened in the world following that summer had only served to prove the point. There was no “Light” and there was no plan.
She continued to stand on the rocky beach below the fort where hundreds of people still awaited their fate, until the chill of the day seeped through the fabric of her coat a
nd into her bones. Shivering, she climbed the path back to the hole in the chain-link fence where teenagers from town on one side and from the shelter on the other had created a makeshift if temporary escape.
As she crossed the grounds of the fort—soggy in places where the snow had melted and patches of grass had begun to appear—she saw several people gathered near the administration office and more exiting the barracks and community buildings to join them. Something had happened. Was it possible that the war was over? She quickened her step until she reached the silent throng gathered around the open door of the administration building. A radio had been turned to full volume, and over a mournful composition of funereal music the announcer was saying, “The president died at his home in Georgia.”
President Roosevelt had always seemed indestructible despite rumors that the onset of polio long before he had run for the land’s highest office had left his legs useless and paralyzed and that when out of the public eye he used canes or crutches and a wheelchair. It was common knowledge that one of the reasons he kept the home in Georgia was to take advantage of the hot mineral springs there.
He had just won an unprecedented fourth term in office. Suzanne tried to picture his running mate—a balding, bespectacled haberdasher from Missouri. Harry Truman was now the president of the United States.
“And so we begin again,” Gisele said wearily as she turned away from the broadcast to light a cigarette. “The question is if we were guests of FDR, are we now guests of Mr. Truman?”
“The wording has always been ‘guests of the president,’” Suzanne reminded her, but even as she attempted reassurance, she had doubts. Would this new president honor the promises of his predecessor? Only time would tell.
For days after the news of FDR’s death was broadcast, everyone in the fort and in town seemed to move through their routine in a kind of disbelief. How could this happen? What would they do now? What would the government do? What did this mean for the war, which had seemed to be winding down at long last?