The German Heiress

by Anika Scott

  “I think you should go home, Uncle Max.”

  “Tell me what will make you leave this place. Whatever it is. I can help you.”

  “No, you can’t.”

  “Willy.” A snap of frustration. Max quickly smoothed it over, his voice honey again. “Let’s go and find Gertrud. See what she has to say about all this.”

  Willy blocked his way. “No.”

  “This is madness, Willy. We’re good friends. We’ve known each other your whole life. Why don’t you trust me?”

  Jakob stepped into the dim light of the corridor. “He’s got good instincts. That’s my guess.”

  Max jerked back, and Jakob smiled at the blaze of fear and confusion on his face. He straightened the army tunic he still wore, clasped his hands behind his back, and said, “Sorry to interrupt. I stumbled upon this place, this wonderful place full of delicious food, and every time I come down here, something interesting happens. So I’m curious, Max. Are you really the person who put the kid down here to begin with?”

  “I recognize you. Relling.” Max knotted the scarf in his hands. “You’re the one who turned Clara in to Fenshaw.”

  Hearing it said aloud stung Jakob like a needle in the throat. He swallowed and kept up his smile.

  “I did that, yes, and I’ll regret it till my dying day. She’s a much better woman than she thinks she is, and she deserved better from me. From you too, I bet. Does she know you put Willy down here? No, I didn’t think so. She doesn’t know about any of this.”

  Max stepped toward Jakob. “If Fenshaw hurts her, it will be on your head. I’ll see to that.”

  “I’d watch my step if I was you. She promised to skin alive whoever did this to Willy.”

  “You don’t have any idea, Relling. I’ve known Clara half her life.”

  “You might’ve known her back then, but I know who she is now. She’s not going to accept what you did because there was a war on. She knows better than that. You wanted to save the boy at the center of the family secrets.”

  Willy backed up against the wall, his big eyes on Max. “What is he talking about?”

  “I’ll explain everything when you’re out of here,” Max said.

  “Explain what?” Willy was sliding along the wall away from them. “What secrets?”

  Jakob felt for the boy, but it wasn’t his place to explain to him what he knew. “Go on, Uncle Max. Are you going to be the one to tell Willy what everybody kept from him all these years?”

  “You don’t care about the boy. You’re a greedy opportunist, down here to steal the food. Well, it’s yours. All of it. Take it away and mind your own damn business.” Max stepped back, spreading his arms as if offering Jakob all the prosperity and good fortune in this world. But there was a catch, a sheen of malice in Max’s smile as he added, “It’s the best deal a cripple could ever hope for.”

  At that, Jakob punched him in the face. Max bellowed, holding his hands over his bloodied nose, a sight that made Jakob feel even better about what he’d done, at least until he noticed Willy staring at him, appalled.

  “Willy—”

  But the boy was stumbling into the next tunnel, fleeing as if terrified. Holding the scarf to his face, Max went after him, calling his name.

  Jakob flexed his stiff hand as he limped into the room with the sugar, then the one with the canned bread. The plans he had for this food, the ambition, the raw desire—all of that had somehow evaporated. He wouldn’t take a thing, not with Max Hecht dictating the terms. He knew now that the mine was too good to be true. It had been so from the very beginning. The only good thing to come of this place was Clara. He leaned against the wall and tried to imagine how she would want him to deal with Max and Willy. For her sake, if there was any more he could do, he would.

  CLARA PARKED THE truck in a field of frosty brambles off a dirt road by the river. The silence over the still water chilled her more than the wind. Behind her, the cliffs rose up, one of them holding the entrance to Willy’s mine. In the beam of her flashlight, she picked her way carefully up the slope and shone her light on the rock; seeing no dark crack in the cliff, she moved on. Unlike in the Sauerland, the snow had melted here. The last of it clumped in the folds of rock. On the ground, the slush had frozen, dirty and slick. She swung her flashlight from her path to the cliff and back again, uncertain how long it was going to take her to find the right mine.

  Finally, she recognized the shape of a rock and the vines and moss covering it. She hesitated outside the black hole that led to the mine, remembering both the gun Willy had pressed to her back, but also the kiss Jakob had given her the last time she was here, for luck. “Glück auf,” she whispered, warming a little.

  She climbed into the first tunnel, the dread mounting as the opaque darkness closed around the light beam. The flashlight flickered—a moment of panic—and then the light steadied. At the dead end, she remembered to turn right into the concrete corridor.

  “Willy?”

  The lamps were dark. Willy would never let the lamps go out, would he? Unless he was ill again. Or gone. She thought of the river, of him walking into it and sinking without protest.

  She looked for the marks she’d left in the tunnels, the labels and arrows she had scrawled on the walls and doors the last time she was here, her guide to the labyrinth. There was no trace. Even with her flashlight, the dark was too thick, too all-consuming. The air was damp and cold. She took a turn, then another, opened a door. A room with a row of stained toilets and chipped stalls. She didn’t remember this from last time. She backed out, took another turn, another door. The stench from inside drove her back into the corridor—feces and urine and rotted food.

  “Willy? Where are you?”

  The walls narrowed, no longer concrete but stone and timber. Willy’s camp was partly timber, she remembered that. Maybe she was close. Nervously, she swung her light along the tunnel, but could see nothing that would identify where she was: this tunnel was the same as the next one, and the next. She spotted the electrical cord overhead and began to follow it. Maybe it would lead to some kind of utilities room, or a generator. As she turned yet another dark corner, her breaths gusted in her ears and she felt the pressure in her chest. If she was panicking, she could control that, she could calm her heart with the right thoughts, the right breathing, but if it wasn’t panic, if it was bad air, it was already too late.

  A rough hand closed over her mouth, and she cried out, swinging her flashlight at his head. He caught her wrist, turned the flashlight on his own face.

  “Jakob?”

  “Clara?” His hug crushed the air out of her and she didn’t care. Her blood thawed immediately and was pumping through her veins again. “Clara, I am so sorry. I told Fenshaw—”

  “I know.” Inside her, the wound from his betrayal healed instantly. “You’ll have to make that up to me someday.”

  “That’s what I was trying to do. I couldn’t leave Willy alone. I knew you wouldn’t want that. It’s why I’m here. But where have you been? How did you get here? Did Fenshaw—?”

  “He showed me . . .” She couldn’t express it, not the detail of the horrors she had seen in his photographs. “I was in the Sauerland. I’m fine. But . . . Elisa is dead, Jakob. I saw proof.”

  “I’m so sorry. What happened?” When she let out a stuttering breath, he answered for her. “Gestapo.”

  She nodded, and he held her close for a few moments. “How did you get away from Fenshaw?”

  “I hurt my guards and stole their truck. I don’t have much time. Where’s Willy?”

  “In his camp, I think.” Jakob was caressing the back of her neck. “But Max Hecht is here too.”

  “Max? How can he be here?” Not how. The question was why, and she drew back slowly from Jakob, working it out. “Max knew. He knew Willy was here all along.”

  The heat in her stomach was boiling over, shifting between nausea and pain as Jakob told her more. Max had tried to convince Willy to leave, had promised a warm f
amily life, and Willy wouldn’t go with him.

  “Take me to them.”

  “I don’t want to. If we could just . . .” He was holding her face in his hands, and she knew he meant go away. If only they could just go away. She wanted it too, more than almost anything. But for Elisa and Willy, and for herself, she couldn’t leave her brother to Max. And she couldn’t run from Fenshaw any longer.

  She almost told Jakob about the map, that Fenshaw was coming, that she would surrender even if Willy didn’t. Though he would. She was almost certain of it. But she didn’t want to argue with Jakob about her plan. He would find out soon enough. She kissed him, one long warm kiss that tasted of the earth over their heads and under their feet. She was still scared of what she would find in the mine, Willy lost to madness and beyond help, and she clutched Jakob, held on to their kiss, as long as she could.

  His optimism hummed inside her, something warm and magical from the core of him passed on to her. In prison, she would remember him and everything he had given her, and it would keep her alive.

  HE LED HER by the hand through the dark tunnels, and as her anxiety grew, she was glad to hold on to him for a little while longer. They reached a lighted corridor and paused to blink the spots out of their eyes. It shocked her all over again to see Jakob in uniform. “Why are you wearing that?”

  “Willy respects it. At least, he used to.” Jakob pulled the tunic over his shoulders, down his arms, and flung it onto the ground. For good measure, he stomped on it with his wooden foot.

  Farther down the tunnel, Clara recognized the curtain blocking off Willy’s camp. Closer, she heard a labored, nasal voice from the other side, Max trying to talk reason. “This place isn’t going to stay secret forever, Willy. Relling found it. You think no one else will? He’s going to go in and out carrying supplies. Do you think someone isn’t going to notice that? You have to leave now.”

  Jakob gave her hand a last squeeze, and she moved the curtain aside.

  Willy was on his bed, wearing his steel helmet, his knees under his chin and his arms wrapped tightly around his legs. He reminded her of the little boy she used to know. She wanted to rush over and hug him, but of course he was too old for that now. Besides, there was something feral in his eyes. He might lash out at any moment, and might have done so already if it wasn’t for the soothing peeps of Gertrud shifting uneasily in her nest.

  Max was a shock, his nose swollen, blood encrusted on his lips. “Clara, treasure. How—?” He touched her hair, and the gesture detonated the fury inside her.

  “You knew.” She pushed him hard, and he was surprised enough to stumble back into the crate, rattling the tree with its tin stars. “You knew Willy was here. How could you do this to him?” She pushed him again, but this time he stood his ground.

  “Clara, listen, I did this for you. Did you want him thrown at the front? Cannon fodder? Elisa didn’t know what to do.”

  Clara hesitated. “Elisa knew? I don’t believe it. She would never have wanted him in a place like this.”

  “She knew I was going to help him. We’d agreed on that, but I had to keep the details quiet. It was dangerous enough to talk about hiding a boy from the army, let alone doing it. Once the Americans came, I was going to tell her about the mine—but she vanished.”

  “So you don’t know what happened to her?”

  “No. Willy was never supposed to be down here this long. But he refuses to come out.” Max turned back to Willy, who was still hugging himself on his bed. “I’ve tried over and over to take him home with me.”

  Clara couldn’t stand him talking as if his motives had been so pure, his generous act spoiled by circumstance and a stubborn boy. “Did my mother tell you to do this?”

  “Damn it, Clara, listen to me. I wanted to protect him. You remember how chaotic everything was at the end of the war. He was safe here.”

  “You didn’t do this for Elisa or even for Willy. You said it yourself. You did it for me.” She backed up to the timbered wall, its cracks smeared with black dust. “Why? What made you think I would want Willy hidden away like this?”

  “He’s your best friend’s son.” The discomfort in his eyes, how his gaze shifted away from her—they told her everything. She looked at Willy, the dismay on his face, and imagined the possibility that she wasn’t the first person he had told about what he saw in that warehouse in January 1945.

  “How long have you known about Elisa and my father?”

  Max let out a long sigh. “So you do know.”

  “How long, Max?”

  His nose had begun to bleed again and he pressed his scarf to it, muffling his words. “Since the night we met. Reinhard was drunk, and when you’d gone, he told me about the arrangements with your family. He’d been forbidden to talk but he was proud of himself. Getting a pretty girl and a career in the bargain. All he had to do was—” He glanced at Willy, who watched them with wide eyes, and said, “Keep everything secret.”

  She forced herself to go closer to Max, to see this man in the light of the lantern, a completely new light, after all these years. “This is why my mother tolerated us being together, why my father let you rise at the Works. Because you knew everything. In exchange for your silence, you got a bargain too, didn’t you?”

  “It wasn’t like that. It never was, Clara. I always loved you.”

  And she believed him. Late in the war, after months and months of estrangement from her, Max had decided to redeem himself by offering something valuable to Clara—her brother, even if she didn’t know it then. He made sure to stash him away so that he, Max, would be the one presenting the boy to her after the war—in triumph. In love.

  She saw all of it in Max’s mangled face. It disturbed her. Even his affection. It was pitiful, desperate, repulsive, using a child in this way. She shook her head at him, and went to sit next to Willy. He was taking gulping breaths with his mouth open, as if the three other people in his camp were suffocating him.

  “Mama is dead, isn’t she?”

  He took off his helmet, and something rigid in his face melted. He wasn’t playing soldier anymore. He had fought the battles and was dirty and crumpled and she had to believe that, like all soldiers, he wanted to go home. She didn’t know where that was, for her or for him. Now she was here, she didn’t know what to say to convince him that anywhere in this world was better than this. He would recognize the chaos outside, the feeling of oblivion, everything they’d known buried under the rubble.

  “I’m so sorry, Willy.”

  He turned the helmet upside down like a bowl, gazing at it as if he’d left some crucial thought inside. “I killed her.”

  “A Gestapo bullet killed her. It’s done. Hiding down here won’t change it. Willy, we can leave together. There’s so much to talk about.”

  “I’ll never leave. Never.”

  Max interrupted. “I told him I’ll take him in, and I’ll stand by that, Clara. Come with me, both of you—”

  She snapped at him, “Get out, Max. You’re not wanted here. Go.”

  “You’re angry, I can understand that, but—”

  From where he leaned against the wall, Jakob spoke up. “I think you’re not hearing right, Hecht. She said get the hell out of here.”

  Max planted himself in front of Jakob. “This is none of your business.”

  “I’d be happy to discuss that outside.”

  “Stop!” Willy was clutching his head between his hands as if to keep it from cracking in half. “Go away! All of you!” He blundered off the bed, colliding with the table, and ended at the map smeared with mud. “What am I supposed to do? Everybody’s dead. Everything’s gone.”

  “I know,” Clara said. “Everything has gone. So many are dead, but not everyone. We’re still here,” she added softly. “You and I.”

  He hiccoughed, close to a sob. He was so young. He was the same age she was when she first met Elisa that day over the Ruhr, the proud young heiress, safe in the cradle of her family. Willy had likely
never felt so certain about who he was or about his place in the world. At the very least, she could give him some of what she used to have, the truth of where he came from.

  “Willy, listen to me. Your father is alive.”

  “He fell in the war.”

  “I mean your father by blood.”

  “No.” Willy backed up to the wall. “No.”

  “Listen.” She told him everything slowly so that he would understand. She started with his mother, seventeen and—Clara knew now—in love with her employer.

  “Theodor Falkenberg,” she said. “My father. And yours too. He’s alive. In an internment camp, but alive. In his way, he tried to take care of you. Your mother did her best for you. But there was always love, Willy. It got buried under other things, pride and fear, but there was also love.”

  The anguish in Willy’s face disappeared. His blankness terrified her more than his anger ever could. He was thinking deeply, and she suddenly knew he was remembering that night at the Works when he saw his mother and father together. He was thinking about the terrible mistake he had made. His mouth opened, a long struggle before he said, “You’re lying.”

  “I’m done with lies. They were your parents, Willy—”

  He covered his ears.

  “Why would I lie about this? Do you think I wanted things this way?”

  “My parents?” He dropped his hands; there was something wild in his eyes. “My mother, do you know how she used to look at me? Like she was seeing somebody else. She never saw me.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “And my father. Herr Falkenberg? Smiles and a pat on the shoulder, that’s all I ever had from him, and he’s supposed to be my father?”

  “He should have been honest with you. With all of us, about so many things. But it’s done. We can’t change what we did in the past. We can only act differently now.”

  He was shaking his head.

  Clara had so little time until Fenshaw came. She was desperate to leave her brother with something that would help him. “You did what you did and you’re going to have to accept it. You can’t punish yourself forever. Nobody can live like that, Willy.” She could see he didn’t understand, that what she was trying to say wasn’t getting through to him. “I can’t explain it in here. Please come outside.”