by Anne Perry
Dizzy with the pain in her hand, throbbing now, she was led back to the car and pushed into the rear seat. The brush of her hand against the rough serge of the man’s uniform was almost unbearable. She felt waves of nausea wash over her as the door slammed and the car lurched forward.
This was a nightmare, and it was not going to stop. From here on it would get worse, until the end. She was not special, she was merely one of hundreds, thousands. She could die with courage, or without it. Did it hurt to die? Or was it just like a darkness that filled you until there was nothing else left?
She was jerked out of such thoughts by a violent collision, hurling her forward, then sideways until she landed on the floor. There seemed to be broken glass everywhere. The car was not moving. She tried to get up, but with her hands behind her back it was almost impossible. She was wedged. The driver’s side of the car was smashed in, the doors jammed.
The door on the other side opened and someone reached in for her, clasping her by the upper arms, easing her forward. Her burned hand knocked against the seat and she thought she was going to faint, but after a few desperate moments, she was hauled to her feet and found herself standing in the street, swaying a little, the fresh air reviving her.
The man who helped her was another German officer in uniform. More police! She had not been rescued, just changed captors. He was pulling her forward. There was blood on his arms, and on his face. He must have been driving the other car, the one that had rammed into them. He looked very white, his eyes frightened, as if he had been seriously hurt. And yet there was no visible wound.
“Come on,” he said urgently. “You’ve got to run!”
Run? Why?
“Come on! Hurry. We’ve only got moments.” He fumbled to unlock her manacles. How did he have the keys? “Come on!” Now that she was free and could move more easily, he dragged her into a shambling run along the street and to a corner.
There was a furious shout behind them. Gunfire! At least one of the two men in her car must have survived the crash.
They made it to the corner and just as they were about to turn into the next street, there was another shot. She felt nothing, except that the man holding her arm let go, almost dragging her with him as he collapsed to the ground. Beimler! It was Beimler who had questioned her before. The man with the photograph of his wife and daughter on his desk. They had spoken briefly about music.
She stopped and bent down to see if she could help him.
Someone pulled at her arm, ignoring the burn on her hand, now raging as if it were on fire.
“Come on! You can’t help him. He’s gone!” His voice was choked with grief.
She looked up to argue, and saw Walter Mann, tears on his face.
“Come on!” he shouted at her. Pulling her by force. “Don’t make it all for nothing!”
“But…”
“He’s dead, Elena. You can’t do anything except turn him over, so it looks as if his men shot him from the front.” He leaned forward quickly and heaved the body onto its back. Then he pulled her by the hand, so much it ached all the way through her. She thought that the driver of the car was dead, or too badly wounded to stand. The other guard must have shot Beimler. If so, he would appear around that corner any minute.
She obeyed Walter, running and stumbling another twenty yards, into an alley, where she banged herself against the wall in clumsiness. Then he commanded her to climb into a car that he had left at the curb, engine still running.
There were more shots in the street behind them. As the car roared away, a bullet shattered the rear window and left a jagged hole in the windshield.
CHAPTER
28
“We can’t just leave him!” Elena said, as the car swung out of the side street and into the mainstream traffic, becoming an anonymous black car, like any other.
“Yes, we can. He’s dead, Elena,” Walter said gently. “He chose to do the right thing, knowing what it would cost him. Those men know you didn’t have a gun, and neither of them is going to admit to shooting him, not when they realize who he is.”
“I know he interrogated me…Beimler…but who is he?”
“He’s pretty high up in the police.” There was a catch in Walter’s voice, more emotion than he knew how to mask. “A good man, caught in a bad part of the system.”
She felt a wave of emotion engulf her, too big for words. She had hardly known him, but she had seen the tenderness in his eyes as he looked at his child, and the trust in the little girl’s face. She knew only kindness. Now she would never see her father again. Would she understand, sometime in the years ahead, what he had done, and why?
It takes a great man to make such a choice. Would his wife understand? Elena was the beneficiary, but it wasn’t for her that he had died; it was for what he believed in.
The car swung onto a smaller road, and for several minutes neither she nor Walter spoke.
He was picking up speed, weaving the car through the traffic with considerable skill. It was late afternoon and cars were coming from every direction. She wanted to ask where they were going, but there was another question at the forefront of her mind. She had to know, but she was afraid of the answer.
“How did you find me?” She forced the words out.
He glanced at her, and then back at the road. “Beimler,” he said quietly. “I’ve been looking for you for a while. He stood out as…a man of conviction. Your coming here had something to do with Scharnhorst, didn’t it?”
Should she deny it? She had to supply an answer of some sort, and this was the obvious one. “How did you know?”
He smiled. “I didn’t, until I saw your picture in the newspaper. That was very clearly you. You look different now, but not so much that anyone who’d met you wouldn’t know you. I remembered the ring you wear on your right hand. It’s still there.”
“It won’t come off.” As if it mattered. “You…you took a risk getting me. Why?”
“You can’t work that out for yourself?” There was a wisp of humor in his face, there and then gone again. “And does it matter?”
Her hands were clenched so tightly her nails were digging into her palms. The answer did not matter now, but it might at some time far ahead. “Where are we going?” she asked instead.
“To pick up a new passport for you, and then to catch the night train to Paris. We should be there in time for the Calais train, and then the ferry to Dover.”
“You make it sound so easy.” It was not criticism, but gratitude, even admiration.
He glanced sideways at her with a quick smile. “Not fooling you, am I?”
“Thank you for trying…”
Everything was beginning to feel slightly unreal. She was so tired, she had slipped beyond exhaustion into a strange dreamlike state where only the pain in her hand had any urgency of reality. It was throbbing so hard she could feel it right up to her shoulder. The rest—the fear, the revulsion, the pity, and the debt to a woman and child she had seen only in a photograph—were all around her, closer than her skin. Perhaps the pain in her hand was preferable.
She glanced out of the window. The light was beginning to fade. She had no idea where they were. It was a part of the city she was unfamiliar with.
Walter suddenly put his foot down hard on the accelerator and the car shot forward, then in a hundred yards he swung to the right, and then right again.
“Is somebody following us?” Elena asked quickly.
“I think so,” Walter replied. “Hang on. We’ve got to lose them. If they ram us, we’re lost.” As he spoke, he twisted the wheel and the car turned violently to the right, slithered around a corner and then, leaning forward and gripping the wheel, he put his foot down again.
Elena was thrown to one side and then the other, as they swerved again and picked up speed. Car horns were blaring at them. Walter took no
notice. He drove with extreme skill, weaving in and out of lanes, often against the flow. Twice they actually grazed cars coming in the opposite direction. The first blow carried off the wing mirror; the second tore a scar right down the driver’s side with a scream of metal and curses from the other driver. Walter ignored it and rammed his foot down even harder, the tires squealing as the car shot forward.
Elena kept her eyes open, not because she knew where they were, or even where they were headed, but because she was compelled to watch the sheer skill of Walter’s driving. It was like being on a racing circuit. They swerved, slid around corners or across the road in an instant’s gap, and then went speeding in the opposite direction. She felt her heart pounding so violently it made her whole body shake. But with a feeling of victory, not fear.
Walter was smiling, but his teeth were clenched so hard his jaw muscles bulged. All his teeth would ache tomorrow, if they lived until tomorrow. If they were caught now, he would pay as heavy a price as she.
She did not speak. They were probably both thinking the same thing, perhaps even feeling the same. They knew the cost of losing. She had no choice, but why did Walter do it? What would she do if this were England? Would she tell herself this evil was a temporary necessity, and as soon as survival was assured, it would be cast off? The older order, the old moralities would be restored?
She knew the answer before she found the words for it. You do not need to believe evil, only to use its methods. You will get accustomed to them, until eventually they are not your last choice, but your first. For a while, you can justify it to yourself, and then eventually you will not bother. You have forgotten what you are fighting for; now winning is the only objective! And the more you win, the more you justify it, until the whole idea of right and wrong disappears and only winning matters.
For now, though, Walter was helping her, whatever his reason.
“Watch the road!” she shouted as a huge car passed them with a black and white swastika fluttering from its hood. “We can’t…we can’t be stopped for speeding!” Her voice choked. “He’ll not forgive you for being a better driver than he is.”
Walter laughed, but he pulled back a bit all the same. “That was an officer’s car; he won’t be driving it himself.”
“Please…” Then she realized how frightened she sounded. “I’m sorry. I should demand to know where the hell they think they’re going at that speed!”
Walter swiveled quickly in his seat to look at her with a momentary frown. Then he realized she was not serious, and relaxed. “Good idea,” he agreed. “Maybe I can catch up with them so you can ask.”
“Do you even know where you’re going?” She was not sure she wanted the answer.
“Of course I do! We’ll get a picture for your passport. We’ll take that when we get to Max’s. I think you could do with a new dress. Forgive me, but you look like a shop assistant, one who sells groceries or hardware. And we should get that hand seen to, before it gets infected.”
“Of course,” she said tartly. “I would rather be shot than die of septicemia!”
“Which is good, because that’s the more likely of the two,” he replied drily.
In spite of herself, she laughed, a little bit out of control, but laughter all the same.
“I’ll get you a red dress. Nice and brave,” he added.
“We haven’t time,” she replied. “You said the night train.”
“There are still lights in it.”
“What?”
“Lights…in the train. They’ll see it’s red.”
“You want me to be noticed!”
“Yes, of course. Skulking around in the shadows in colorless blue, you’ll be suspected…of something! Striding out in scarlet as if you owned the place and are perfectly used to people staring at you, they will never think you are running away from anything. You know, if you tried, you could be really beautiful.”
For once, she was stumped for words. She was not sure if he meant any of it, or if he was trying to make her behave in the best way to survive. And that could be as much for his own sake as for hers. If she was caught, then so was he.
She ignored the compliment. It would be ridiculous to take it seriously. But she sat up a little straighter. “Then you had better get me one that fits properly,” she said with a smile. “I should look as if I always wore such things, not as if I’ve borrowed it.”
“I will,” he promised. “We’re nearly there. You’ll have something to eat, wash, and put some decent makeup on. A woman who wears red dresses doesn’t look like a terrified rabbit!”
“Have you ever been bitten by an angry rabbit?” she retorted.
“Do rabbits get angry?” He began to laugh, and she joined in, because the whole thing was so ridiculous, and dangerous, and maybe they were going to escape after all.
They were going much more slowly now. It seemed to be a residential area. He pulled up outside a fairly small house.
“We’re here,” he announced. “We must be quick.” He opened the car door and climbed out, then came around and opened her door, but she had done it already and was halfway out. He offered his hand.
“Please hurry. We don’t have a lot of time, and we need to catch the night train.” He locked the car and led the way up to the front door. He knocked three times and it was opened immediately.
The man who answered almost pulled them inside, and then slammed the door. He barely looked at Walter, but stared at Elena as if studying her face. He was a little shorter than she, instantly forgettable in appearance, except for the intelligence in his pale green eyes. She noticed that his fingers were stained with ink.
Walter introduced him only as “Max.”
“Come back in an hour,” he told Walter. He shook his head. “You didn’t say she was going to be this much of a mess.”
Elena was stung. Thinking of what a woman wearing a red dress would say, she raised her eyebrows. “Is it beyond you, do you think?”
He was startled for a moment, and then he smiled, a curious, crooked expression. “Nothing is beyond me, young woman. I can make you look as if you were born brave and beautiful; I can’t make you behave like it. Perhaps Walter can do that?” There was more than a touch of sarcasm in his voice.
“I’ll be back,” Walter said from the doorway. Then he opened it again and went out, leaving Elena alone with the man.
For a moment, she would have given anything to be able to follow Walter, but she thought Max was expecting that, so she stood a little straighter. “My shoes are fine. I’m comfortable in them, and I don’t want to be any taller.”
“No, you don’t,” he agreed. “Not that it would matter if you did. I don’t have any women’s shoes big enough to fit you! A pity. It would be better if people looked at your feet, rather than your face!”
“Well, maybe you could paint a rude verse on them?” she suggested waspishly. “That would draw their attention, long enough at least to read it!”
He looked at her, eyes wide. “You have a sense of the absurd. That’s good. I will try to save you. We need somebody left alive to laugh at us as we sink beneath the slime. Sense of humor isn’t enough; you need to have a real deep awareness of the ridiculous. Come with me. We’ll see what we can do with you. First wash, for goodness’ sake! Where the hell have you been? No! I don’t want to know.” He led the way toward a downstairs bathroom and showed her soap and a small, rather thin towel. At least it appeared to be clean. “You’ll have to keep your underwear. Haven’t anything that’ll fit you. But we’ll get rid of that dress. You look like a fugitive housemaid! The art of disappearing is to look like something else, so people can stare directly at you and not see a fugitive, but someone who has a right to be here, and is afraid of no one. Well, get on with it! And wash your hair. Clean, it’s probably quite good. And don’t use all the hot water! Not that there is that much
.”
Twenty minutes later, Elena was sitting in her underwear with a blanket around her, while Max did her hair and made her face up, then put an old blouse on her to get a passport photograph. By the time Walter returned with the dress and a light coat to go with it, she was ready to put it on.
She watched while he lifted the dress out of its box and held it up. He waited for her to speak.
It was breathtaking. Scarlet silk, it seemed to radiate its own light in the small room. It was impossible to tell its cut without a body inside it, to make it hang exactly right. A dress hanger would not do it, not even a padded one.
“Well?” Walter asked. There seemed to be a look of anticipation in his face.
She put out her hand and touched the dress softly. She looked up and met his eyes. “It’s gorgeous!” She was praying silently that it fit her. “Wearing that, I should be able to slay…” She wouldn’t be predictable and say “dragons,” as she had intended to. “…rabbits,” she finished. “Really angry ones.”
Walter burst into laughter. Perhaps it was relief.
Max looked totally lost. He shook his head. “Not German rabbits,” was all he said.
Elena took off the blanket and slipped into the dress. For a horrible instant she was afraid it was going to be too small, but then she fastened it and found it was perfect. She looked at Walter and saw the same delight reflected in his face.
“Superb!” he said, breathing out slowly. “You look fit to take on anyone.” He put his head to one side a little. “Are you ready to?”
“Of course,” she lied. “Even furious German rabbits.” It was going to take a mighty effort to make that true. But too many people had risked their lives for her not to succeed. She had every hope of getting out—of going home—to be free of the hunger and the fear. How dare she not be grateful for it? She turned to Max. “Thank you. You’ve done the outside very well. I’ll do the inside.” She touched the red silk with her fingertips.
Walter picked up Elena’s camera bag and handbag, and put them all into one larger bag. Commandant Beimler must have made sure her vital belongings were in the getaway car for her! “Come on. We’ve got to get to the station.”