Lena bit her lip. “Okay,” she said, taking a seat and laying the gun on her crossed legs, one finger still resting on the trigger.
Oskar felt too agitated to sit, but it felt odd to keep standing. He wondered if Lena knew anything about safety catches. Then he reflected that if he had time to wonder such a thing, the pace of events must have slowed, and the situation was likely controllable. So he sat down facing Lena and said, “What is it?”
“All right.” She shifted her posture, getting more comfortable. Settling in. “First of all, you need to tell us what’s going on here. You haven’t explained anything, but you expect us to keep traipsing along after you, just because you say so. Why are you so dead set on us getting to this Gasthaus? And what was that crazy phone call about, with the stupid code and Cousin Peter and all that? Just—start at the beginning.” She lifted the gun and waved it in his approximate direction. “Go.”
Oskar drew a breath. The beginning. He glanced at Hagen, who gave him a slight nod that could have meant anything, then at Clair, who looked politely curious. “I guess the beginning,” he said, “would be the Movement. So it’s going to be hard to explain anything, because to be honest, I’m not sure how much of it makes sense now. Especially to outsiders. And I don’t mean anything insulting by that. You can ask him.”
Hagen said, without inflection, “You had to be there.”
“See? So you’re right, this plan is crazy, but not exactly the way you mean, and the craziness is why it might work. It will work.”
“You’re not explaining this very well,” Lena said. “Try it in words even outsiders can understand.”
Oskar sighed, feeling helpless. But he did try. The whole shebang, as Leo would say. Höhe Meissner, the magic mountain. The yearly climb to its summit, almost a holy pilgrimage. Stopping at the Gasthaus before the final leg—the last place to buy food and drink and matches and toilet paper, whatever you wanted to have up there but hadn’t already squeezed into your rucksack. For the dj.1.11, this meant tchaj—a mysterious and potent beverage whose ingredients might not have been as secret as the Geheimeslied, though nobody seemed to know what they were. The proprietor of the Gasthaus—Müller, or Just Plain Müller, because that’s what he asked to be called—brewed up vats of the stuff when he knew a Movement gathering was coming, or when he felt in his hostelkeeper’s bones that the dj.1.11 might be about to arrive, or maybe because he’d grown to enjoy it, though Oskar considered this unlikely. Oskar personally thought it tasted horrible. As far as he knew, everyone else thought so too. Still, it was a group tradition, it marked special occasions and therefore made minor occasions feel special, it was red and murky yet if you sprinkled some on the fire it turned the flames clear blue, it felt daring and forbidden and it made your head spin. All these things the boys had liked, so they drank it. The taste was probably God’s way of making sure they didn’t like it too much.
And now we telescope from that misty past into the glaring present—when somehow, almost telepathically, his friend Herr Braun had gotten to tchaj from “Scotch on the rocks,” a code phrase of Oskar’s own creation, meant to trigger certain mutual associations. “Scotch” meant Scotland, where Oskar had traveled with members of the group and they’d been detained by local authorities. (No charges were brought; the boys were released on the recognizance of their Sippenleiter.) Herr Braun knew that story, he’d mentioned it at their first meeting, and Oskar hoped he’d make the connection now. “Rocks” was likewise a pointer, this time to a landform not far from where they sat: a promontory of silver-gray rock that was the group’s habitual camping ground. This had been Oskar’s attempt to suggest a rendezvous point. He knew it was a stretch, but maybe Herr Braun would understand.
And so he had, apparently. He’d caught at least the gist of Oskar’s message and responded in kind, with a revised destination. The companions were to proceed to the place where the weird drink comes from—which was just up there, look, a bit to the right, halfway up the slope. Now, if they could only get moving…
“What then?” said Lena. “What happens when we get there, assuming we make it that far? We’re trapped on a mountain instead of being trapped in the woods? Herr Braun swoops down out of the sky and plucks us up?”
A good question, Oskar had to admit. He could only hope Jaap had something in mind. “I really don’t know.”
Lena nodded. She’d been toying with the handgun, passing it from hand to hand, and now she gave it a spin on one finger like you saw in the movies. This trick must have been harder than it looked, because the gun made one full rotation before twirling off her fingertip and landing with a thud an arm’s reach away with its barrel pointed straight at Clair.
He sat staring at the gun for a couple of seconds until Lena snatched it back up. Then he said, in evident amazement: “You could’ve killed me.”
“The safety was on.” She looked shame-faced yet stubborn. “Do you think I’m an idiot?”
Clair laughed now—shakily, a hand to his heart, miming relief.
“Yes,” said Oskar. “If you make us sit here all morning, then yes, you’re an idiot.”
Lena twisted her mouth but did not immediately reply. At a guess, she was thinking that some sort of criticism might be warranted, though not of this exact nature. Still, the ground had shifted.
“I’m keeping the gun,” she said, looking from Oskar to Hagen. “And you two can go first. Clair and I will hang back a little.”
“Good,” said Hagen. He placed the floppy cap on his head and stood up, looking at once foolish and dangerous.
The others stood as well. For a few moments they examined one another in the new day’s light, in their eccentric clothing, before a landscape more breathtaking than any work of art, and it felt as though one of them ought to say something. They were the most wanted people in the Third Reich. The next step any of them took would likely begin their final journey. Maybe it was too much.
Oskar walked out onto the road. “Hu hüpf!” he said—a hiker’s call, it meant nothing in particular. And they set off for the Höhe Meissner.
ON THE ROAD WITH THE BARONESS VON F——
BERLIN, HÖHE MEISSNER AND KAUFUNGEN: THE SAME MORNING
The admiral’s custom-built Mercedes swung onto Fasanenstrasse a few minutes before seven a.m. The chauffeur, unfamiliar with the oversized vehicle, took the turn too wide and nearly sideswiped a dairy cart on its morning round. The skidding of tires and the milkman’s curses were barely audible through the armor plating and reinforced glass.
“Steady on,” murmured Jaap Saxo from the forward passenger seat.
Beside him though some distance away, the driver, a beefy gentleman lately employed as a percussionist by the Baroness von F——, flexed his boxer’s paws at the wheel. He wore formal evening attire and a black cap with a narrow brim he’d borrowed from a mate who worked on a river tug. It was perhaps the least odd thing about him. But the regular driver was out of town—dispatched last night on confidential business by Jaap himself.
“It’ll be fine,” Jaap said, not to the driver, particularly, nor to himself. To the gods, maybe. He held no unconventional beliefs in that regard, but if he recognized any patron it would be Odin, a devious fellow who’d given an eye to acquire secret knowledge—in Jaap’s view, an early-career blunder—though generally he kept to the background, sending a pair of clever birds out to spy for him.
Between Jaap and the driver on the wide front seat rested a foil-covered box of the type used for Swiss chocolates, tied with a bright red bow. There was a card attached, with a name inscribed in a light, possibly feminine hand; it barely quivered as the great motorcar eased to a halt before number 88. The beefy gentleman leapt out with surprising alacrity and fairly pranced up the steps of the grand Schinkel portico. Jaap stepped onto the sidewalk, glanced up and down the Strasse—all but deserted at this hour—and put on what he thought of as his battle face.
At seven o’clock exactly, the beefy gentleman drew open the door
and the Baroness von F—— breezed through it, followed closely by the elderly Brigadier. The grande dame descended the half dozen steps to street level without breaking stride, only then pausing to favor Jaap with a courtly nod. She was dressed in an outfit that must have been à la mode among the motoring set a couple of decades ago, before the advent of the car roof: a long coat of soot-brown leather tailored trimly and secured with straps, a streamlined hat probably anchored with pins somewhere, a pair of study gloves and a flamboyant, sky-blue scarf designed to billow. Jaap wondered if she’d omitted the goggles on purpose or just forgotten them.
“Allez. Dépêchez-vous alors!” she called—not, as it first appeared, to the bewildered driver still lingering at the door but to the Brigadier, who was negotiating the steps with an abundance of caution. He’d done himself up splendidly as well, in full parade dress, the Iron Cross at his neck and so many medals on his chest it was a wonder he could bear the weight. And having stood, could he walk? The uniform was a relic of leaner times, and the old man looked decidedly pinched. Though also magnificent, and rather singularly so. Those battle decorations had not come cheap. Jaap looked on with a complicated mixture of feelings as the Brigadier joined the Baroness, one arm gallantly extended to help her into the car. Should he be worried about them? Too late now.
“Bon courage, Votre Excellence,” Jaap told her. “Lives may depend on your success.”
“Yes, yes,” the Brigadier said, shooing him off, “we know all that. Out of the way now. Capable hands. You keep to your post, await my call. Radio works in this thing, does it?”
“The radio is…complicated. The driver can handle it; he’s been fully instructed.”
“Has he?” The Brigadier cast a stern eye at the man in question, now lumbering down from the portico, circling the flank of the car, muscles bulging under his tuxedo jacket. “Yes, I expect he’ll do. Well, then.”
Seized by an impulse, and despite his rumpled civilian attire, Jaap took a step backward on the sidewalk, came to attention and gave the Brigadier a formal salute. The old soldier returned it in kind, then turned stiffly on his heel and boarded the Mercedes, joining the Baroness on the commodious rear bench. Jaap shut the door and watched as the chauffeur eased the old car away from the curb like a barge drifting off the wharf.
All his forces were deployed now. The ravens were in flight. He allowed himself to enjoy a moment of exhilaration—a glorious moment in which nothing yet had gone wrong.
—
There were two main approaches to the Höhe Meissner, the mountain sacred to generations of German youth—the first one bold, steep and direct, hence favored by more adventurous elements of the Movement; the second longer, easier and more scenic, looping through a low spot called the Kasseler Kuppe, skirting a lake and a site of mythico-historic interest known as Frau Holle’s Well, then curling south and rising unhurriedly to a stony shoulder, the Schwalbenthal. The spot enjoyed modest and mainly local fame for its views, its calamitous history (including the 1907 landslide that carried most of it away) and its public inn, politely mentioned in Baedeker on the strength of a menu showcasing local game and a Biergarten perched thrillingly at the brink of a cliff. There were half a dozen tables out there, ranged beside a low stone wall that was broken in places, whole sections gone missing as though the mountain had shrugged them off. The footing was rough, and the tables needed shimming to keep them level. Even so, the inn was fantastic, the air crisp and the May sunlight gentle, and by midmorning four of the tables were occupied.
Frau Müller could scarcely remember a time when the Gasthaus had been this busy. Well, no, in fact she could—but that was many years ago. Right through the twenties and into the present decade, business had been so brisk that she and old Müller couldn’t manage it on their own; they’d taken on extra help, made new guest rooms up in the attic and even thought of modernizing the plumbing. But since 1933…well, things had changed, hadn’t they? The young people no longer came around so often on their hiking trips, and to Frau Müller it felt as though the life had gone right out of the place.
She would never have said as much to her husband—a great supporter of the new government, as was she, of course—but some of the changes were not so much to her liking. Ja, ja, she understood—you don’t need to tell her again!—that all Germany must move forward as one, that young people need proper values instilled in them and the Hitlerjugend was far more wholesome than the old rabble of motley bands with no adequate supervision. And yet…in a secret chamber of her heart, Frau Müller missed those days, those packs of rascals and vagabonds that used to tramp around back then. Birds of passage, wandering bacchants, self-taught troubadours with guitars strapped to their backs. Boys who tried to pay for their meals by writing poetry on a Reisekarte. Girls who asked Frau Müller to hold still, please, while they sketched her for their travel books.
Hold still! There’d been no time to keep up with her chores back then, even going full tilt. Stopping to rest for half an hour would have meant the chickens not getting fed or someone sleeping on dirty sheets that night, with her good man with that back of his already busy hauling a sack of potatoes up from the cellar.
Well—country life had never been easy, so you count your blessings. There were eight paying guests today, at the start of summer, when there ought to be twenty. But eight, as old Müller would remind her, was better than none; the world at least was saying, Yes, we know you’re there. And who could tell? Maybe business would pick up again. The Czechs might finally learn to behave, and this talk of war would die down and life will get back to normal.
Ach, but such idle thoughts—when there was plenty of work to do in the here and now! Eight paying guests—minus the lad who’d set off hours ago with his rifle—waiting at their tables outside and a tray of biscuits steaming from the oven and her good man malingering God alone knew where. Frau Müller parceled the biscuits into linen-swaddled bowls and bustled out the kitchen door, down the steps and out to the terrace—a journey of no great distance, yet at every step she felt herself nagged by something, maybe an uncompleted thought, a twinge of intuition. She went from one table to the next setting the bowls out distractedly: one for the pair of stout gentlemen in lederhosen; one for the older couple from Munich, regular guests; one for the middle-aged woman sitting alone with her historical novel; and one for the well-dressed couple from Hamburg, last night’s late arrivals—he looking bright-eyed this morning, she looking…what would you call it, anxious? Impatient? But whatever was nagging Frau Müller, it didn’t seem to be out here on the terrace.
No: it was coming up the road.
She saw them at last—four of them—and for an uncanny moment she felt as though they were stepping out of the past. They were young; they were gotten up in hobs and fobs; they didn’t look quite respectable. But you could tell—with an innkeeper’s eye you certainly could—that they’d chosen to look like that and were just trying to make an impression. Their stride was heavy, as though they’d been walking for a long while. Their faces were either cast down in weariness or raised in nervous expectancy. She took them at a glance for two young men followed by two young women—but no, that was wrong, one of the latter was a boy with long hair, something you never saw these days. Never. In fact, you never saw anything like this little pack of make-believe Gypsies. The sight of them tugged at Frau Müller’s heart from two very different directions. Part of her wanted to rejoice at what seemed a visitation out of the happy and prosperous twenties. Another part was afraid, because things you never saw these days were generally things you ought not to see. Improper, even dangerous things. But what could be dangerous about this little troupe of wanderers? Even her shrewd eye couldn’t tell her that. Which only made it worse.
Where had her husband gotten to? Old Müller wasn’t the quickest man in the world, but he had a good head on him and no shortage of opinions. He’d surely have something to say about this.
—
For a good part of that final push
up the mountain, Oskar had kept himself from worrying about such things as his swollen feet and the Ordnungspolizei and Lena several paces behind him with a nine-millimeter pistol in her bag by trying to conjure a scenario wherein he opened his eyes tomorrow to find himself lying on a soft bed somewhere, not locked in a cell in Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. While his imagination had not thus far proved up to the task, it was the attempt, not the outcome, that made this a useful distraction. Then, after a few kilometers, they reached a fork in the trail—left to Schwalbenthal, right to the lake—and a fresh distraction arose, one that required no effort on his part. He was not the only one who felt the pull of it.
“We used to go swimming in that lake,” Hagen said beside him.
They didn’t break stride—only stared together up the right-hand path as they turned onto the other one, bearing north, the road twisting back on itself in conformance with the terrain.
“So did we,” said Oskar.
“It seems like a long time ago.”
Oskar did not enjoy sharing thoughts with an SS man, even this one. Some accident of history had made them companions; that was all right, such things happened. But the troubling thought arose—it had done so already, and now it came again—that the two of them had much in common. They were German officers. They were Movement veterans. They were bound by oaths to the Fatherland. They were being swept along by the torrent of events. And now, without conscious intent, they’d fallen into lockstep on this mountain road that each had traveled many times before.
That was distraction enough, but the land itself eventually overwhelmed it. The trail turned east and gained altitude; the Upper Hessian plain spread itself out below them; the nearest peak of the Meissner, known for some reason as the Calf, came into view on their right; the sun inched higher into a huge and empty summer sky. Oskar began to feel warm and wondered what had become of the Wilhelm Tell cap, which he must’ve left somewhere. They passed a marker and a side trail leading down to Frau Holle’s Well—ancient and by legend bottomless, a shaft plunging straight to the Underworld, though Oskar preferred a variant he’d heard along the Movement’s mystical fringe: the well as omphalos, the holy navel of Germany. Had Hagen heard that one too? Oskar willed himself not to ask.
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