The German Heiress

by Anika Scott

  He motioned for her to come with him, but she grasped the back of her chair, standing her ground.

  “You remember how the Wehrmacht hid supply depots all over the place so that your lot wouldn’t bomb them? There’s one still out there. One you didn’t find.”

  Fenshaw closed the door, looking skeptical. “And where is this long-lost cache of the German Army?”

  “I’ll tell you if you arrange a meeting with Elisabeth Sieland.”

  He shook his head, his hand on the door again.

  “It’s in an abandoned coal mine. Underground, but it’s a surface mine, not deep.”

  He turned back to her. Reserved, but listening.

  “The army put all sorts of things down there. Boxes and boxes, tunnels full of canned food, coffee, sugar, cigarettes. There are uniforms. And weapons.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I was there.”

  “When?”

  “Arrange a meeting with Elisabeth Sieland. Afterward, I’ll tell you everything. I’ll draw you a map. I’ll take you there myself if that’s what you want. But let me see Elisa first.”

  Without saying anything, Fenshaw left the room. Clara dropped into her chair. She was shaking, and she poured the last of the tea, lukewarm now, to calm herself. The timing was so important. When she told Elisa where her son was, Elisa had to try to get to the mine before Fenshaw. Somehow. She had to get Willy out before Fenshaw saw him in his Wehrmacht uniform, with his gun. If he was caught as he was now, he’d be arrested. If he was disturbed enough to fight . . . Clara didn’t want to think about that, just as she didn’t want to think about the possibility that Elisa hadn’t survived the war. And Jakob—Clara was robbing him of his dream to take the depot for his family. His betrayal still wounded her, but she had no desire to seek revenge, or make him or his sisters suffer. She didn’t know what else to do.

  She tried the door, found it locked. At the window, she could see soldiers carrying boxes and crates to a lorry. With a chill, she remembered Fenshaw’s steel locker, the complete darkness, the blindness like needles pricking the skin of her eyelids.

  Finally, he returned carrying a coat for her, army and a man’s; the shoulders were practically up to her ears. Then he led her outside and to the back of the truck.

  “Let me help you up, miss?” On the truck bed, Reynolds held his hand out to her.

  She turned on Fenshaw. “What is this?”

  “Transport.”

  “To where?”

  “Another way station. Safer than this one.”

  She wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth. Maybe he was taking her to the interrogation center after all. “Do we have a deal?”

  His nod was slight, but it was there and, with hope sparking inside her, she climbed onto the back of the truck. Fenshaw touched his cap and returned to the barracks.

  “Looks like it’s just you and me, miss,” Reynolds said with a grim smile, a pair of handcuffs swinging from his finger. “You’re not slipping away from me this time.”

  During the journey, she crouched between the boxes, her hands bound in her lap. Reynolds was nearby, clutching his rifle. The truck meandered through the countryside, stopping only when she had to stretch her legs or squat on the side of the road. The flat landscape could have been the Niederrhein to the west or Münsterland in the north. Eventually she saw hills in the hazy distance, felt the elevation as the air grew colder. Perhaps they were going east after all? The Sauerland? There were no stars in the night sky to orient by. The soldiers only stopped near wide and empty fields. If she ran, a rifle would soon find her—a dark spot moving across the white land.

  They halted for good at the edge of a forest where snow hung heavy in the trees. Nearby was a crude cabin of warped, dark wood. Two horse head carvings faced away from each other over the door.

  As the soldiers carried supplies inside, she shivered in the ruts the truck had made in the snow. All around her, there were only trees and hills and the lonely ribbon of the road. She was alone, so far from help, the soldiers probably had no fear of her escaping.

  On the doorstep of the cabin, she looked up. “Oh, God.”

  Over her head, cobwebs hung in the corners of a peaked ceiling crisscrossed by sagging beams. Snow from a hole in the roof dusted her hair. The floorboards creaked and bent under her feet as she turned from the stack of camp beds to the empty shelves, taking in the dirt, the decay. She didn’t want to know what little creatures crept and slithered in the dark corners of the room.

  The seclusion of this place was disturbing, certainly, but maybe it was a good sign. Tomorrow, or perhaps the next day, Fenshaw would drive up in the snow. Beside him, in the passenger seat, behind the damp windshield, would be the pale, freckled, anxious, and then joyful face of Elisa.

  22

  Where do you want this?” The British soldier had stopped in the kitchen doorway, his chin resting on top of the box he was trying not to drop. He was being polite, but it was the last thing Jakob wanted from one of them. They could all go to hell. Soldiers, Allied, German, he didn’t care. He’d had enough of them for a lifetime.

  The soldier touched his cap to Dorrit—polite boys, these Tommies. “Compliments of Captain Fenshaw.”

  This was the second time Fenshaw had sent them, along with food and coal, and Jakob didn’t want the man’s compliments now any more than he did before. “Tell the captain we wish him the plague and cholera.”

  The soldier looked confused, then withdrew, and not a moment too soon. Jakob had been squeezing his lighter in his fist. He wanted to burn something down.

  “Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut bars,” Dorrit said, reading the label. She looked at Jakob with a longing and guilt he could barely stand to see. She knew what he’d done for her, the baby, the family, and she blamed herself, as he’d known she would. Blamed herself for his scowls and his silence and the fact that he couldn’t sleep. He had betrayed Clara, and it didn’t matter that Dorrit understood why he’d done it. Did Clara? That was the poison he ate every day now—the idea that she might never forgive him.

  He nodded at Dorrit, and she tore open the package with her teeth and managed to get the whole bar into her mouth at once. Gabi came in bundled up from the cold and dug into the box too, going straight for the chocolate. The girls put the food in the cupboards, their shelves no longer bare. This was the trade-off for betraying Clara’s trust. Fenshaw had paid him well for it. So well, Jakob could almost think Fenshaw was feeling guilty for threatening Jakob’s family to get his way. Not that it mattered. The bastard had won. Clara was gone. Just gone.

  Jakob had returned to the Works to see for himself. There in the snow were the footprints of the soldiers who had taken her away. There, in their old shelter, were her blankets, the ones they had slept on together. There, on the factory floor, were the remains of their fire. He’d nearly crushed his own teeth looking at those ashes. He and Clara, they had had so little time and he’d wasted it.

  She was gone, yet there was no news about her arrest. Not in the newspapers. Not in the gossip at the markets. If a Falkenberg was arrested in this town, people would talk. He could only conclude that nobody knew, and something cold hardened inside him. A woman couldn’t just vanish, not a woman like her. Jakob had spent the past two nights tossing in his bed trying to decide what he could do to help her, whom he might appeal to. It had to be someone with access to the Allies, someone with influence who could find her and make sure she was all right.

  The solution came to him suddenly as Dorrit began ripping the box the soldier had brought them into pieces that would fit in the oven. Tearing, burning paper. The magazine he had burned with Clara at the club. The article had mentioned her mother: an Englishwoman.

  FINDING HER WAS easy enough. He knew some English fellows who supplied him from the British stores when they could get away with it. One of them got him an address in Bredeney, a district he hadn’t had much cause to go to, seeing as he didn’t know any rich people, at least not u
ntil Clara. Her mother’s place was powder blue and there were stucco grapes over the door. As he staked out the house, he saw British officers come and go through the front door, men with good instincts. A few stared at him as they passed, and one told him to move along.

  “Yes, sir,” Jakob said with mock respect, but he didn’t move from the pavement opposite Anne Falkenberg’s doorstep.

  He had been worried that he’d fail to recognize the right woman, but there was no mistaking her. The moment she stepped out of the house, wrapped in gray fur, he knew her face. This was Clara but older, blond, and painted, sly around the eyes. Anne was beautiful, no doubt about it, but he hoped Clara wouldn’t look that stiff and proud and spoiled in thirty years’ time.

  “Good day to you, Frau Falkenberg,” he said, touching his hat.

  Anne adjusted the furs around her neck. With the fur hat, it seemed her head nestled in the paws of some sleek animal. “Do I know you, young man?” She looked pleased and curious, and he took his cue from there.

  “My name is Jakob Relling and it’s an honor to meet you.”

  “Is it, now.” Her gray gloves slid through the fur at her collar. “Why is that, then?”

  He told her about his scholarship, that he owed his education to the Falkenbergs, that he wasn’t a complete dimwit wasting his talents in the mines because her great husband had supported him. The longer he spun the story, the brighter her face became and, by the end, she was holding his arm. “My boy, it’s delightful to meet such an admirer of my husband, and such a grateful one too. The world is full of ingratitude these days.”

  “It certainly is.”

  A car arrived at the curb and the driver leaped out to open the back passenger door. Anne gave Jakob a long, appraising look, then asked him if he needed a lift somewhere.

  “Wherever you’re going is fine with me,” he said.

  “Just the sort of man I like.” She allowed him to help her into the car and had the grace to say nothing about the clumsy way he climbed in, or his needing to rub his bad leg afterward. During the ride, they chatted while the ruins slid past the window. He couldn’t quite believe he’d talked himself into a car with Frau Falkenberg, and it made him feel dizzy, as if the world was moving too fast.

  “I’m having a lovely time, darling”—Anne brushed the back of his hand playfully—“but I’m afraid I do have to ask what you want from me.”

  “Nothing. I just wanted to express my support for your family.”

  “Very dutiful of you, but also unlikely. It’s a cold world we live in now. People only think of themselves. We used to live in a society, a great web of relationships”—she spread her hands—“linking the highest to the lowest as one people, helping each other, there for one another. Now”—she dropped her hands—“we’re reduced to fighting each other for edibles in the rubbish bins.”

  “I doubt you’d ever do that, Frau Falkenberg.”

  “You’re a good boy. Now tell me what you want.” She fit her cigarette into an ebony holder. He lit it with his lighter, her face illuminated behind the flame.

  “Did you hear what happened to your daughter?”

  There was the slightest shift in her face. A hardening around the eyes. “My daughter?”

  “Clara.”

  “I know my daughter’s name, darling. How do you know her?”

  “We’re just . . .” He was about to say friends, thought he should dampen it to acquaintances, felt cowardly and said, “We’re good friends.”

  “Really. And what happened to this good friend of yours?”

  “She was arrested two days ago, and—”

  Anne pressed her fingers to her lips and nodded toward the driver. He looked as though he was concentrating on the road, but Jakob got the message and kept his mouth shut.

  “There’s really no time to talk now, darling. Why don’t you come with me to the party? We can speak afterward.”

  “Anytime you want.”

  His charm wasn’t having the same effect as before. Anne had stiffened beside him, and something sharp edged her voice. “Do you have any children? It might look awfully odd if you don’t. It’s a children’s party.”

  He told her about Gabi, thirteen, but looking more like eleven. Anne said she would have to do. They stopped at his house, him praying Gabi was at home. He explained everything to her as quickly and simply as he could manage and she agreed, reluctantly, to join him. She didn’t like parties, but maybe there would be sweets?

  The party was at a hall in the Fürstinstrasse. In the doorway, a cheerful soldier with a silver ribbon pinned to his tunic consulted his clipboard before anyone could go in. Jakob held Gabi’s hand, expecting to have to wait with the crowd of children and adults ahead of them, but Anne forged a path to the soldier, announced she had special guests, and escorted them into the hall. To Gabi’s delight, there were vanilla crescents and cinnamon stars. Butter biscuits dented with anise. Chocolates in sparkling paper. A boy split a walnut in a nutcracker soldier. Another peeled an orange and mashed it into his face. Bewildered girls picked at Christmas crackers until a soldier showed them how to pull the ends. The girls jumped and screamed and one burst into tears. Carols were blaring from the speakers. Jakob hadn’t heard this kind of din since the Battle of the Ruhr. Maybe this was louder.

  Anne was quickly surrounded by women and officers, but she eventually broke away from them, taking him by the elbow. “You’re looking lost, darling. I am dying to speak with you, but unfortunately I can’t get away quite yet. Maybe you could have a little chat with . . .” She brightened and waved at a family that had just arrived, a plump woman with ringlets carrying a baby, her husband sleek and elegant, a strange match. He was holding the hands of two blond toddlers who looked exactly like him. Anne showered the family with greetings that seemed overly gracious. The woman looked stunned and pleased, and the man, introduced as Max Hecht, greeted them coldly but politely. His wife herded the children toward the food while he hung back.

  “Talk about man things while I’m gone, hm?” Anne said, and strolled to the Christmas tree on the stage.

  “I suppose she means the war,” Jakob said as he offered Max a cigarette.

  “Where did you serve?”

  Turned out they had both been in the first thrust into Russia, and they had wintered a few kilometers from each other. But while Jakob stayed in the east, Max had gotten a ticket home. Declared too valuable to be cannon fodder, he had spent the rest of the war at the Falkenberg Iron Works. “I’m a lawyer.”

  “Gesundheit.”

  Max had the grace to smile, and that was a surprise. He was the kind of oily fellow Jakob had never liked—too handsome, too polished. A university man, he had the dueling scar he’d earned in one of the student clubs. When sober, those types usually had no sense of humor.

  “What do you do, Herr Relling?”

  “I’m a wholesaler.”

  “Black market, then.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m a realist. The black market is the only functioning economy we have right now. If a man makes some money off it, I don’t hold it against him. How do you know Frau Falkenberg?”

  “I was a scholarship boy. I’m grateful to the family.”

  Max snorted. “Aren’t we all.”

  The music cut off, and a soldier announced their hostess as Anne Heath. Jakob guessed the name Falkenberg wasn’t popular with so many Allied soldiers in the room.

  “Children,” Anne said in German, “welcome to our Christmas party. Everything here is just for you, for this wonderful season of peace and harmony.” She addressed the adults, a line of drab and fatigued women and men sitting at the wall. “All of us in the British community would like to welcome you. We’re happy to give your children a carefree moment of joy. Before you go, you’ll be given one present for each child to take home.” She gestured at the boxes under the tree. “Please accept some refreshment, and enjoy the celebration.”

  The sold
ier choir struck up “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen.” A woman held a tray of steaming punch in front of Jakob. As he sipped, he watched Anne go down the rows of children, shaking hands, patting heads, squeezing shoulders. She greeted the adults with the same grace and cheer. She’d been an early convert to the Nazi Party, according to the magazine, a British Fascist and Germanophile. Now here she was, the benevolent Englishwoman who had put aside her German name.

  By the time Anne got to him, Jakob’s head was aching from the electric lights blazing against the silver and gold decorations. He wasn’t used to so much color and brightness, so much noise. The children were scurrying around with odd jerking motions, fired up from the calories and the glitter. It felt as though the party was on the edge of hysteria.

  “Oh, darling”—Anne held his arm—“you look a little overwhelmed. I can’t have that. No good friend of my daughter should suffer for my sake. Herr Hecht”—she turned an odd smile on Max—“take care of Herr Relling, will you? I’ll have a moment to talk very soon.”

  After she weaved away into the crowd, Max said casually, “You’re a friend of her daughter?”

  As much as Jakob wanted to deny it—his relationship with Clara seemed too tender and vulnerable to discuss with just anyone—he also wanted to admit it, this secret about her identity he couldn’t tell anyone about except his sisters. And Fenshaw.

  “We’re good friends, sure.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  Around the room, people began shushing each other and calming the children. The soldier choir began to sing “O Tannenbaum” in German. Jakob joined in but Max didn’t. He stared at Jakob while the rest of the room sang.

  When the noise of the party began again, Max said, “You haven’t answered my question, Herr Relling.”

  Jakob didn’t like his tone: the hostility, the suspicion. “Sorry, what question?”

  “About Clara. What do you mean you’re good friends?”

  That little slip—Clara, not Fräulein Falkenberg—was enough proof that Max had once known her well too, maybe something beyond being a friend of the family. Captain Fenshaw had mentioned an SS boyfriend. Was this him? This slick type who made Jakob want to bloody his nose to soil his collar?