A City of Broken Glass (Hannah Vogel)

by Cantrell, Rebecca

  He forced his fingers under the handcuffs. He twisted to the side. I yanked as hard as I could. With a crunch, his trachea collapsed under the metal encircling my wrists. He groaned. Even if he escaped, he would not be able to breathe properly.

  His fingers tore at the metal. I forced my knees up behind his shoulders and yanked harder. His shoes kicked against sodden leaves in the ditch. I hoped that the radio would distract Gravel Voice a few more precious seconds.

  The driver kicked convulsively. His head smashed my arm against the rock. I heard a crack as the bone broke. Hot pain shot up from my wrist. I bit my lips and did not let go. Soon, he went limp.

  His chest stilled. I shifted my fingertips to the side of his bruised neck and felt for his pulse. None. I remembered checking Miriam’s cold neck hours before and shuddered.

  Grimacing, I lifted the handcuffs over his head and felt for the holster on his hip. If I had a gun, I could force Gravel Voice out and drive away. No one else need die. My fingers slid to the bottom of the holster. They ran along cold leather. Empty.

  What options were left? Fight, flee, hide.

  A gunshot cracked. Gravel Voice.

  He was armed. I was not. That eliminated fight.

  I rolled sideways into the shelter of the wet ditch. Cuffed hands in front of my face, I belly-crawled toward a stand of trees faintly visible in the murk. A second shot broke the muffled stillness, then silence.

  I crawled past an oak and pushed myself into a standing position, hiding behind the trunk. I shook so that I could hardly stand. Any advantage I received from adrenaline had ended where I left the driver on the ground. I had killed him. My mind sheered away from that thought and tried to focus on the tree, the car, and Gravel Voice. I could regret my decisions, if I lived. Right now, I did not have that luxury.

  I peered between gray trunks. He would have trouble finding me if I stayed still, but even if I eluded him, I could well freeze to death. Warmth trickled down the nape of my neck. Blood from where I had bashed my head, but I had no time to worry about it.

  The engine of the Gestapo car still ran; its headlamps flooded the empty road with light. The driver lay on gravel next to the car, neck twisted into an unnatural angle. The car looked empty, but the dark made it hard to be certain. Where was Gravel Voice?

  A twig cracked next to me. I bolted.

  I told myself it was blind panic, and I should stop, but my legs had their own mission. A figure crashed painfully into me. We fell toward the ground together. At the last instant, he twisted and took the force of the fall on his own body. An odd thing for a Gestapo officer. Instinctive kindness? Or perhaps he wished to spare me for something worse later. We rolled when we hit the ground, and he pinned me under him.

  My handcuffed hands were smashed between our bodies. I had nothing to fight with. I thrashed under him, trying to free my hands. My arm reminded me that it was hurt and badly. I groaned.

  “Easy, Spatz!”

  Lars. I stopped struggling, suddenly conscious of his familiar weight atop my body. I wriggled out from under him and struggled to a sitting position.

  “Anton?” I asked.

  “Safe in the lorry.” He brushed wet leaves off my back.

  “The other Gestapo man?” I asked.

  “Dead,” he said. “Both of them.”

  The gunshots I had heard were Lars killing Gravel Voice. Lars had come after me. But why?

  He ran his bare hands along my arms. “You are frozen.”

  “You neglected to fetch my coat.” I shook in earnest.

  “How inconsiderate of me.” I heard the familiar smile in his voice. “Would you attack me if I offered you mine?”

  “I am f-f-fine.” I hated that I could not speak.

  A warm coat settled around my shoulders. Years before, he had given me his coat, back when I thought it meant something. I reached up to push it off.

  “Don’t interpret this as an amorous advance, but I fear that you are in no shape to walk to the road yet.” He wrapped his arms around me.

  My mind tried to argue about the wisdom of getting close to him, but my body only noticed how warm he felt. He smelled the same as he used to. I closed my eyes and tried not to think about the last time I had been in his arms, when I had wanted never to leave them.

  “My god, Spatz!” he said. “You are cold clear through.”

  He pulled me closer and rubbed his hands up and down my back under the coat. I tried to push away from him. I would rather freeze to death than owe him.

  “Damn it,” he said. Long ago, he had always apologized for swearing in front of me. It seemed quaint now. “Why must you fight everything?”

  He was correct, as usual. My pride would not get me out of this forest and back to Anton. I stopped struggling and relaxed against him. The shaking subsided to shivers. I tried to think about something other than the feel of his arms around me, his chest pressed close against mine. I reminded myself that he had not come to Zürich. He had not contacted me to explain why. I had been in mourning for two years for a man who was still very much alive.

  Slowly, even the shivering stopped. I felt warm, relaxed, almost drugged. Now, I thought, is when trouble starts. I stayed put.

  “Better?” His voice sounded soft, as it used to.

  I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.

  “Anyone else would have welcomed help,” he said. “Instead of freezing to death.”

  “I am not anyone else,” I whispered. A ridiculous point to make.

  “No,” he said. “You’re not.”

  His lips found mine, and the last two years melted away. My heart beat so hard that I suspected he must feel it, too.

  I thought of Fräulein Ivona and drew my head back. “No.” I pushed away, gasping when my arm moved. Cuffed hands awkward in front of me, I struggled to my feet. “Thank you for keeping Anton out of danger,” I said. “And for coming for me.”

  “It’s become a habit,” he said from his position on the ground.

  “Not all the time,” I said, bitterness strong in my words.

  “Quite.” He stood next to me. “Let’s get back to the car. We have much to do.”

  “Where is your lorry?” I asked.

  “Behind the car. You can’t see it, but it’s there.”

  I strained my eyes, but I could not see the lorry. I stumbled and slammed against a tree trunk. After that, I kept my eyes on the ground as we walked to the road. I did not want to fall down in front of Lars.

  When we were within range of the car’s headlamps, he stopped. A waltz now played from the car’s radio. How curious that I had not noticed it until now.

  He lifted my cuffed hands and winced when he examined my wrists. Blood coated my hands and ran halfway to my elbows. Metal must have sliced my skin during my struggle with the Gestapo driver. It looked dramatic, but was not so serious as the broken arm.

  “I hope I did not stain your shirt.” A dark smear ran along the front of his white shirt.

  “I have a woman who washes them.”

  “You seem to have a woman for everything.”

  He released my hands and pulled on a pair of leather gloves. He stepped over the driver on the ground. I stared down at the body. A swollen tongue protruded between his teeth, and his sightless eyes stared at the stars. I had done that.

  Revulsion climbed my throat. I turned from the body and vomited. The world darkened around me, but I was still awake and crouching by the roadside. Lars must have shut off the headlamps.

  I wiped my mouth on my sleeve and sank back on my haunches. Lars appeared in front of me and with a quick movement unlocked my handcuffs. Years of experience as a policeman. When he took the cuff off my right wrist, I smothered a yelp.

  I gasped when I tried to rotate my swollen wrist.

  “Broken?” he asked gently.

  “I am no doctor.” It was broken. As soon as I had a moment away from him, I intended to splint it. “We will have to see. But first, I think we must get away
from this car.”

  “We need to move it off the road. I know a place nearby where it might never be found. If you can drive one of the automobiles, I’d like to bring the Gestapo car there. Can you drive?” He gestured to my swollen wrist.

  “Of course.” I pulled my injured arm up under the coat.

  His face relaxed in relief. “Good. Once the sun rises, anyone who comes by will see it here otherwise. Would you prefer to drive the lorry?” He pointed back down the road to a barely visible rectangular shape. “Or this one?”

  I looked at the dead man in the passenger’s seat and realized that Lars had saved my life. I looked again at the dead man on the ground. The bodies would be traveling in the car. “I prefer the lorry.”

  He heaved the former driver into the backseat. He knelt and smoothed the gravel and leaves by the side of the road. I slid my hand inside Gravel Voice’s still warm jacket and withdrew my Adelheid Zinsli passport from his pocket. As I suspected, he had retrieved it from the hotel manager before he arrested me.

  “Follow me,” Lars said. “I’ll turn in about two kilometers, then drive along a dirt road. When I stop and turn off my headlamps, stop and turn off yours. I will keep driving and dispose of the car. In about fifteen minutes, I should be back at the lorry. If it takes longer, leave without me. Poland is a few hours away. Do you understand?”

  “I am not deaf, despite everything.” I slipped his coat from my shoulders.

  “Keep it,” he said. “You’ll need it.”

  “As will you,” I pointed out.

  “The fewer foreign objects we bring into the Gestapo’s car, the better.”

  He argued because he wanted me to keep the coat, but he was also correct. I let him help me put my arms into the sleeves, gentle with the broken one.

  He walked me back to the lorry, both of us holding our hands in the air. “That’s the signal,” he said. “So Anton won’t shoot us.”

  “Anton has a gun?” I asked.

  Before he could answer, Anton sprinted across the road. He threw his arms around me and held on tight, for the moment not worried whether thirteen-year-old boys still hugged their mothers. Blinking back tears, I kissed him on the forehead.

  “I thought you were gone,” Anton said.

  “It is much harder to get rid of me,” I said, “than most people think.”

  Next to me, Lars chuckled.

  When we arrived at the lorry, Lars helped me inside. I let him. For all my brave façade, I was exhausted. My wrist ached, my head throbbed, I had started shivering again, and I wanted nothing more than to curl up in a ball and sleep the clock around.

  Lars leaned across me to pick up a pistol off the seat, probably not trusting me with it. With a practiced gesture, he stuck it in his belt.

  “We’ll drop the car off and go straight back to Zbąszyń,” he said. “I have a compartment you can hide in while we cross the border. I promise to get you and Anton out safely.”

  What exactly were his promises worth? I took a deep breath. “Thank you.”

  “Getting you out of the Gestapo’s hands is in my own best interest.”

  “How fortunate for me that saving your own skin will help me to save mine.” I cradled my broken arm against my chest.

  “Are you certain you can drive?” he asked.

  “Have I ever given you cause to doubt me?” My voice shook at the end of the sentence. I bit my tongue. Even if I was tired and in pain, I would not lose control in front of him.

  He slammed the door and stomped back toward the car, limp more pronounced now that he was upset.

  7

  I fit the key into the ignition left-handed and started the lorry. I turned on the headlights awkwardly. Ahead of me, Lars started the Gestapo car.

  “Anton,” I said. “You must help me to shift the gears.”

  “I will,” he said. “I’ve practiced on Boris’s Mercedes. I could drive this by myself.”

  “Perhaps if both my arms were broken,” I told him. “But not yet.”

  He smiled. I felt better.

  I explained how and when to move the shift lever. If Anton could not manage it, I would have to shift with my left hand while he steered. He concentrated ferociously as I spoke, tip of his tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth, as it had since he was five.

  We managed to shift into first. I pulled onto the road and followed Lars’s taillights, closer than I would have liked, because I could not see far through the fog. Second gear went fairly well, too. I rested my broken arm on my chest and steered left-handed.

  “He was amazing!” Anton said. “I tried to get to you when they first took you, but he grabbed me and promised we would take them on the road.”

  “He has promised many things.” Such as his promise to return from Russia.

  Anton shook his head, his hand resting on the gear shift. “He was furious that they had you. I could tell. I knew that he would get you back.”

  “I see.” Steering the heavy vehicle took more strength than I had expected. I hoped Lars had chosen a straight road. I gritted my teeth and turned the wheel. When did he ever choose the straight road?

  “Then another car was ahead of us at the border, so we got farther behind. Plus we had to stop so I could hide to get across the border. He has a special compartment. He’s very clever.”

  “Indeed,” I said. A compartment? For smuggling people, or something else? Lars had certainly been busy the past two years.

  “He planned to shoot out your tires,” Anton said. “Soon, but your car stopped so he stopped, too.”

  “How thoughtful of him.” On either side of the road, bare trees loomed out of the gloom and quickly vanished again. I was weaving more than I should, and Lars must see it, too. I concentrated on ignoring the pain in my arm and keeping the lorry steady.

  “He pulled us over and jumped out practically before the lorry stopped moving. He can be very fast when he tries.”

  “Can he?” My head throbbed. The back of my throat burned. I would not vomit. I would not. I yanked the wheel straight. I could not drive the car one-handed much longer.

  “I saw a flash of light from his gun, but he was too far away, and it was too dark for me to see much else.”

  I thought about strangling the driver, the dead face of Gravel Voice, and Lars kissing me in the woods. “That is just as well.”

  Almost exactly two kilometers from where the Gestapo men had died, we turned onto a rutted gravel road. Each bump worsened the pain in my head. When we hit a deep pothole, my broken bones grated against each other. I cursed.

  “You said a curse word!”

  “I may say quite a few before we stop.” I risked a glance at him. Instead of looking shocked, he looked pleased.

  When Lars turned off his headlamps, I stopped the lorry so suddenly, it stalled. My head throbbed, and I vomited bile out the side window. Not good. How bad was my head injury? I extinguished our headlamps, too. Darkness rushed in around us.

  I opened the door and looked down. My seat seemed farther from the ground than it had when I got into the lorry. The sound of Lars’s engine receded. I climbed out, careful to avoid my mess.

  Anton scooted to the edge of the seat and jumped to the ground. He landed next to me, missing the vomit. I leaned against the cold metal door, uncertain if I could stand much longer. I had not expected my head and arm to hurt this much.

  “I can track him,” he said. “Report on his movements.”

  “I have other uses for your woodcraft.” I gestured with my good arm. “I need a flat stick to splint my arm. About this long. Two if you can find them.”

  I slipped down and sat on the running board. I had to stay conscious until Lars came back or fifteen minutes elapsed, and I had to drive to Poland without him, as agreed. But how would I get us across the border? Our passports had not been stamped. I closed my eyes.

  “Mother!” Anton sounded frightened. I hauled my eyelids open. My ears protested against the volume of his voice. I ran of
f another checklist in my head. Symptoms of head injury: pain, nausea, sensitivity to light and noises, strong desire to sleep.

  He shook my good arm.

  “Awake,” I said. “Hand me the stick.”

  With clumsy hands, I positioned the broad stick across my legs, then rested the back of my arm on top of it. “The perfect size. Thank you.”

  “The brave knows his woodcraft,” he said. “I could light it on fire for you, if you’d like.”

  I forced a smile to keep him from worrying. “Just this is fine.”

  “If I don’t light it, you’ll miss my circus act.” He crouched in front of me. Despite his light tone, I could see how upset he was. Me, too.

  He handed me the second stick and I aligned it along my arm from palm toward elbow.

  “Need something to tie this,” I said.

  He unlaced his shoes and proudly held up the laces.

  “Smart young man.” I was glad that he had taken first aid at school.

  I ducked my head to tie the splint on with my left hand and my teeth. Hot pain shot up my arm. I jerked backwards and smashed my injured head into the lorry, but my arm stayed straight.

  “Do you need help?” he asked.

  “No.” I spoke around the shoelace. “I have splinted quite a few arms in my life, including today. I can manage.”

  I tugged the knot snug. My stomach clenched against the pain. Cold sweat broke out on my forehead. Once I tied the splint and rested my arm against my chest, the pain changed to a steady, sickening ache. The ulna was not set, but at least it was stabilized.

  I leaned against the lorry. Held at bay while setting my arm, my headache pounded back to life.

  He examined my left wrist. “You’re bleeding, too!”

  “Cuts from the handcuffs,” I said. “Nothing serious.”

  “You were handcuffed?” His clear young voice rang with outrage.