The Hazards of War

by Jonathan Paul Isaacs

  “Not all of it,” Tiedemann corrected. “There’s too much.”

  Quickly, a thought came to Tiedemann. “It looks to me that Hoffman tried to defend himself with this broken bottle. Maybe he got in a few cuts on his attacker. That would make it much easier to identify him, yes?”

  “Agreed. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “Luckier than Hoffman.”

  Tiedemann stood up. Gohler remained kneeling and quietly uttered what sounded like some kind of prayer over the dead body. After a curiously long minute he finished and also stood, his head hung in dejection. Tiedemann noticed the dampness in the man’s eyes.

  “Herr Gohler, how long have you known Hoffman?”

  “A long time, Herr Hauptsturmführer. Since May of ’41, when we were both camp guards at Bad Tölz. He was the only commanding officer I’ve had.”

  A year-and-a-half. That was practically a lifetime in the military of a nation at conflict with the rest of the world.

  “I’m sorry, Gohler.”

  The Sturmscharführer nodded absently, his eyes filled with the faraway look that men got from war.

  If there was ever a time that a man needed to be given something to do, this was one of them.

  Tiedemann put his hand firmly on the sergeant’s shoulder and spoke in a low voice. “Go upstairs and help round up the swine who did this.” He was sure that there would be plenty of motivation to do a good job.

  “Jawohl!” Gohler snapped, turning sharply as he exited.

  Tiedemann made one last visual sweep across the room. He was turning to leave when a metallic glint caught his eye from the edge of one of the wine racks. He bent down and picked up the shiny object that they had almost missed.

  A plain, tarnished ring nearly lost among the earth and rusted metal. A wedding band.

  “Not fair to a wife to lose a husband like this,” Tiedemann muttered to himself, feeling the ring that adorned his own finger. His own was far too loose after many months in the field, eating poor rations on an irregular schedule. The wedding band practically fell off every time Tiedemann washed his hands. If Hoffman’s had been just as loose, a wild blow could easily have flung it across the room.

  Taking the ring, Tiedemann squatted down and tried to put it back on the corpse’s finger. Oddly, the ring wouldn’t fit. Tiedemann squatted back and thought. He realized that because of Hoffman’s sitting position, his hands must have swollen up from the blood that had pooled in the lower portion of his body. Sadly, reluctantly, Tiedemann abandoned the effort and slipped the ring into his own pocket. He would be sure that it was sent back to Hoffman’s wife along with his other personal belongings.

  He stood up to leave. Tiedemann felt his lips drawing tight in restrained anger. When he found out which one of the Contis couldn’t account for their whereabouts the prior evening—the cold-blooded murderer who was responsible for this senseless crime—that person would pay dearly.

  It was time to see what those traitorous French had to say.

  5

  The first blow sent Papa to the floor.

  Forced to watch, Gabrielle could barely hold herself together. Papa writhed on the floor while the blond officer repeatedly kicked him in the ribs. Then the German followed by another vicious jab to Papa’s face. Now her father was curled into a little ball—coughing, struggling, not doing a very good job of protecting himself. Gabrielle thought she was going to be sick.

  The officer paced back and forth around Papa’s crumpled body. Gabrielle thought she had heard one of the other men call him Springer. He could be the Devil himself for the amount of malevolence that was radiating from him. He finally stopped, his boots ominously close to her father’s head.

  “Do not speak to each other again!” Springer barked in French. “No one talks! No one moves! No one looks around!”

  “Hände hoch,” another soldier commanded, waving his rifle. Hands up. Gabrielle winced as her father slowly lifted his arms, the agony clear as day on his face. She continued to stare transfixed as he painfully threaded his fingers behind his head.

  Springer had wheeled back on her. “I said, no looking around!” he shouted, spittle flinging from his lips.

  Gabrielle snapped her eyes back to the wall. They were all arranged in the Great Room—Grandpere, Mama, Girard, and even little Philippe—resting on their knees and facing away from each other along two of the walls. Springer was lurking behind them. Just the thought of him there, ready to strike unseen and without warning, was terrifying. But strangely, Gabrielle found herself more angry than afraid. How dare they threaten them! What she would give to sock that Boche in the mouth. What was all of this nonsense about, anyway? She had watched the Germans’ arrival last night from the top of the stairs. Springer had been embarrassed after being told to stand down by the captain. Now his resentment appeared to be bubbling through with renewed force. To Gabrielle it seemed obvious that he had it out for them; he wanted to show them who the boss was.

  The tension was palpable. Gabrielle could feel a trickle of sweat thread its way down the center of her back. Her fists involuntarily clenched each time Springer’s steps paused behind her.

  After several minutes she heard a new arrival from the foyer. This one had slow, deliberate footsteps in a much different cadence than the boot tromping of the soldiers ransacking the house earlier. Gabrielle stole a glance to see the German captain walking imperiously into the Great Room. He strode over to the large stone hearth and turned to look down upon them in their kneeling positions. She remembered him vividly from the night before. He was tall, with black hair and a piercing set of eyes that reflected a calculating mind behind them.

  Minutes passed. The captain studied the Contis in unnerving silence. From her position at the end of the lineup, Gabrielle could just make out his profile.

  Finally the captain motioned to Springer and said something in unintelligible German. Perhaps they would finally find out what was going on.

  “One of our men was murdered last night,” Springer translated.

  Gabrielle felt the blood drain from her face.

  “I intend to find out which of you is responsible,” the German captain continued, with the words turned into French as soon as he spoke them. “Normally I would interrogate you individually, without sharing my motivation. I would make each of you account for your whereabouts. It is more difficult to hide the relevant facts when you are not privy to the intentions of the questioner.

  “However, I am telling you upfront for two reasons. One, you are a small group and you already know something is amiss—no sense in trying to catch you off guard. More importantly, the body of my officer was not hidden. It was simply left lying on the ground without any care taken to conceal his death. This indicates to me that perhaps it was an accident. Perhaps somehow, for some reason, Herr Hoffman was killed through understandable, though not necessarily acceptable, circumstances. Unfortunate things often happen despite our best intentions.”

  The captain began to pace in front of the fireplace, his words coming out as if he were speaking rhetorically rather than to his prisoners. “So. My question is this. Which one of you is responsible for Herr Hoffman’s death? As a soldier, I must know. And I will find out, one way or another. But first, I am giving whoever did this the chance to speak out. Come forth with honor and dignity. If you are the culprit, tell me now and save us the painful alternative of extracting the truth by force. I am an understanding man. Accidents happen. I will take into account any extenuating circumstances. And I would be inclined to act leniently if the person who did this speaks out, in return for such a gesture of good faith.”

  Listening to the speech made it obvious that the Nazis weren’t going to let the death of one of their own go unpunished. But what would they do? Grandpere had reveled in his stories of SS cruelty last night, scaring all of them to death. Many were rumors, but they all rung with a degree of truth that gave pause. Beatings of French villagers for showing petty defiance. Men shot for anti-German
graffiti. Twenty-five French men and women, randomly selected, lined up against a brick wall, and shot in reprisal for the alleged murder of an off-duty German soldier.

  Of course, that was the way her grandfather was—alarmist and dramatic. Gabrielle could only guess as to whether any of those accounts were really true. If she listened to her ears, she had to admit that the captain’s words sounded rather reasonable. Wasn’t this the same man who reined in Springer the previous night? Wasn’t he a man of culture who appreciated fine wines and had acted with courtesy towards her father? Hadn’t he told his men to sleep on the floor rather than toss Gabrielle and her family out into the storm?

  Surely this was all just some kind of mistake. The captain had to know that. And glancing at the way the captain was now standing, with an earnest face and lips drawn tight, he seemed to be the sort to keep his word. He had proven the night before that he was a civilized man.

  But when she caught a glimpse of those icy blue eyes, a little voice in the back of Gabrielle’s head pleaded with her to not say a word.

  For what seemed like forever, the captain watched. Gabrielle felt her apprehension grow as no one spoke up. Keeping your mouth shut had been the unwritten rule of her schoolyard, and those principles seemed best to apply here. Silence seemed far safer than a member of her family laying their head on the chopping block, with a stranger’s word being all that stood between life and death.

  “I am disappointed.”

  The German started his pacing again. The boot steps echoed ominously on the wooden floorboards.

  “So. If no one will accept responsibility for his or her role in this crime, so be it. We will be forced to do this the hard way. I assure you the process will not be pleasant, nor will the outcome. But that is your choice, not mine. I have made my offering. You have refused it. Obersturmführer!”

  Springer stopped translating into French and snapped to. The captain continued talking in German but now in a much harsher tone. Gabrielle couldn’t begin to follow all the guttural commands. It sounded very military.

  “Jawohl, Herr Hauptsturmführer,” Springer replied at last, and started pointing to the soldiers around the room to carry out unknown orders.

  “Excuse me, monsieur.”

  Gabrielle turned her head in shock and stared at her grandfather.

  What was he doing? He had spent the entire night before lambasting her father, and now he was going to talk to the Germans?

  The captain motioned for Springer to come back and translate. He looked down at the old man. “Ja?”

  “Monsieur, if I may… I’m sorry, I don’t even know your name.”

  The captain stared at the old man as Springer translated. After a long pause he finally spoke. “Tiedemann.”

  “Ah. Monsieur Tiedemann. My name is Marc Rimbault. If I may speak for my family, I can tell you that none of us has committed any violence against you or your men. This is the first that anyone here has even heard of your loss. And we have no reason to act in such a way, as we all realize that you are merely passing through our vicinity on your way to do more important things. I admit it is unfortunate that you have lost one of your men. But why, pray tell, do you think that any one of us is to blame?”

  Tiedemann regarded the old man with narrowed eyes. Then he spoke to Springer. The blond officer smiled darkly.

  “He says, he will be glad to discuss with you why he thinks that. Privately.”

  Two soldiers grabbed Grandpere roughly by the shoulders and hauled him to his feet.

  Oh, God. Gabrielle felt the goose bumps crawl out in full force.

  There was a sudden, loud crash in the kitchen. Gabrielle barely noticed the ensuing commotion until Tiedemann himself became distracted by the noise. The German took a step back and looked inquisitively toward what sounded like men shuffling and stomping.

  A soldier with a black submachine gun appeared in the entry way to the Great Room. He was clearly agitated.

  “Obersturmführer, können Sie mit uns kommen, bitte? Ich glaube, wir haben einen Spion gefunden,” the soldier told Springer. He waved his head towards the kitchen and stole repeated glances at the prisoners.

  Gabrielle took advantage of the distraction and looked over at her father. She didn’t know what the soldier had said, but Papa had turned his eyes towards Grandpere and they were sharing a grim look.

  Tiedemann tucked his thumbs into his belt and turned back to her grandfather. His expression was a mixture of smugness and distaste.

  Gabrielle felt a terrible fear knot her stomach into a tiny ball.

  “Yes indeed,” Springer translated. “You ask me why I think one of you is to blame? Let us see if there’s a reason to think so.”

  6

  Cartwright held his breath and tried to stay still in the darkness. If his legs hadn’t been cramping up he wouldn’t have dared move, for during the past hour he had heard nothing but boot steps coming and going from outside his tiny hiding space. But hours of sitting motionlessly had twisted his muscles into knots. As the discomfort passed the point of being tolerable, he straightened his leg out until it extended right into a heavy iron frying pan, the only frying pan, and knocked it off of its shelf with a loud clank.

  He didn’t think anyone had noticed. The mansion was large and relatively empty. The soldiers combing through it had a lot of space to spread out and otherwise get lost in the daily noises of living. Surely that would drown out his little mistake.

  An entire minute passed by, and at last Cartwright allowed himself the luxury of taking a normal breath in the confines of the cabinet.

  A low voice somewhere nearby spoke in German.

  Cartwright’s heart started racing in mad contrast to the stillness he forced upon his body. More voices now, followed by shuffling feet that sounded far too close to be anything but deliberate searching. All because of the damned pan.

  He wasn’t even supposed to be hiding in the kitchen. He had spent most of the night in the rafters above, in a small cubbyhole sandwiched between floors that he had been told was used for hiding valuables and, in this case, shot-down Englishmen. That was the concealment into which Girard had shoveled him, under the loose floorboards of the green bedroom.

  The cubbyhole had to absolutely be the smallest, most inhospitable hole in all of southern France. This place is hidden, they had said. This place is safe. Maybe, as long as the rats didn’t chew his ears off as he dozed against the rough timber. Even the roaches refused to remain with him there. But they had been in a rush when the Germans arrived. Talk about being unlucky. Marc had said they had not had any contact south of the demarcation line in the two weeks since Germany had annexed Vichy France. Even then, the winery would have been small enough to escape most casual notice. The family was surely caught off guard when Germans actually appeared on the front doorstep.

  And then, there was the final twist that had led him to his current predicament. The hiding place happened to be right over the kitchen, and there was a gap of just over a foot between the edge of the little wooden platform and the wall that revealed the inside of the large kitchen cupboard built into the masonry. It was the cabinet where the pots, pans, tins, and cans were stored for cooking, and it had proved too much of a temptation to a starving airman to not see if he could slip down to the floor below and scrounge some food. So Cartwright had squeezed himself through the gap, landed softly, gorged on some fruit preserves, then discovered much to his dismay that he could not climb back up to the cubbyhole above.

  Now, jackboots clattered loudly in the kitchen. It was two or three men from the sound of it. Hushed voices spoke in strange words before being followed by a long pause.

  Cartwright’s breathing had slowed to a bare minimum, but he was sure his heart was beating loudly enough to be heard by everyone in the house. The footsteps started again, spreading out across the room, and were followed by the sounds of cabinet doors opening and closing. The Germans were searching for the noise.

  Then they found him.
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br />   Blinding light crashed into the cabinet as a young German soldier, eighteen or nineteen at the most, swung open the door and peered at Cartwright. Their eyes locked for a moment, both men unsure of what they were seeing or what to do next. Then panic washed over the boy’s face as he stepped back, gave out a yell and raised the barrel of his Mauser.

  The unnerving sight of the muzzle pointed right at him was all it took. Cartwright yelled, thrusting his hands out in front of him as if it would protect him from metal ripping through his body. “Don’t shoot! Please, don’t shoot!”

  “Heraus! Komm heraus!”

  Cartwright remained frozen with his hands outstretched. The last thing he wanted to do was to make any sudden, threatening moves. That would be a quick way to eat a bullet. But despite his docile behavior, the soldier only became more agitated.

  “Kanst Du nicht hören? Komm heraus! Jetzt!”

  Two more Germans with rifles quickly came into view, their alarmed faces squarely outlined by black steel helmets. One of the men, older and with hard eyes that must have seen years of combat, growled roughly as he reached down into the cabinet and grabbed Cartwright’s collar. Instantly Cartwright was flung through the air onto the hard stone floor, landing face-down with a thud that would have jarred his teeth loose if he hadn’t been clenching them so hard. A knee between his shoulder blades pinned him while the soldiers checked him for weapons. Of course they wouldn’t find any. At least, aside from the frying pan.

  Additional footsteps filled the kitchen. There wasn’t any way Cartwright could turn his head to see the new arrivals, though he had a good view of the dust underneath the kitchen cabinets.

  A lively discussion between his captors quickly started. Cartwright listened to the German words without comprehension. He was sure it was colorful; after all, it wasn’t every day that someone made the discovery of a grown man cowering amongst kitchenware. He noticed the word Spion seemed to be thrown around quite a bit. That made the hair on Cartwright’s neck stand up. Spion sounded a little too much like spy, and it didn’t take much imagination to think of what enemy soldiers probably did to spies.