Letting his lucky ring fall back beneath his shirt, Josef clenched his fist and thumped backward three times on the door, alerting the other two that it was time. He felt the door move, opening inward a crack. Without turning, Josef quietly said, “The truck is coming up the hill.”
“Usual drill, Josef,” Gunter’s voice rasped in whispered reply. “Check the driver; seven-two-four, remember? Then get the travelers inside as quickly as you can. There will be nine. As little noise as possible. Don’t forget to cover your face.”
The three-ton Opel truck burst from between the trees out into the rain. A flash of lightning, higher up the hill, illuminated its driver wrestling with the steering wheel, trying to gain as much momentum as possible to make a fast, splashing loop around the clearing before the mud and wet grass could catch the truck’s wheels and stop it from turning back down the hill. Tires spinning, windshield wipers beating frantically, a jet of grey smoke thrusting from its exhaust, the dark vehicle almost toppled over onto its side before it came to a rest, facing back down the hill at the edge of the woods, engine running.
Josef pulled his scarf up over his nose and felt his heavy, studded mountain boots squash into the wet mud as he stepped out from the doorway to run down to it. At the mountain soldier’s approach, a shadowed head hidden beneath a black fedora leaned from the truck window.
“Are you a true German?” the driver instantly demanded.
Josef knew the routine.
“Yes, I am blond like Hitler—seven—slim like Göring—two—and strong like Goebbels—four.” He shouted the answer back quickly, projecting his voice up through the scarf and the rain to be heard over the loud engine. The joke was easy to remember; it was Gunter’s favorite, but he had to be careful to insert the numbers correctly as they were different every time. Even as he spoke, the driver stroked the accelerator, keeping the engine’s revs up, primed to immediately escape if a single word or number of the response was wrong.
“How many travelers are you expecting?”
“Nine.”
Satisfied with Josef’s replies, the driver quickly turned off the engine and stepped down from the cab. Without looking Josef in the eye, he shook his hand and together they splashed around to the double cargo doors at the rear. A hidden colleague from the other side of the cab met them there, the two of them unfastening the rear cargo doors and pulling them open. Inside, Becker saw nothing but a wall of stacked wooden crates that gave off an overpowering smell of goat’s cheese.
The driver pulled himself up onto the edge of the truck body and started pushing at the lowest row of boxes. A small opening appeared. Taking an electric light out of his pocket, the man removed his hat to push his head and shoulders deep into the little tunnel. There was a brief flash of illumination and voices from within before the driver awkwardly backed himself out again. A moment later, a worn cardboard suitcase jerkily slid its way out of the opening. Following it came the black form of a thin man, squeezing himself out from between the crates on his stomach.
The driver’s partner helped the man down from the back of the truck, his feet dropping heavily into the sodden ground. He had difficulty standing, still bent and stiff from the cramped confinement of his journey. With a groan, he reached up and held his forehead. Josef thought he must have knocked it during the truck’s violent arrival but he could see no blood. Gradually the man straightened himself up, but when he pulled his hand away from his bruised head, his tired, lined face reacted with horror at the sight of the Wehrmacht insignia on Josef’s uniform. He tried to say something, a stutter of fear overwhelming any words.
The driver instantly motioned him to be silent, saying through clenched teeth, “I told you they would be soldiers. It’s not important. You need to get moving. We haven’t got all night.”
Josef nodded in agreement, pointing the man up the hill to the cowshed, its opened door now edged in yellow from a lamp lit within.
The small man didn’t move, as if stuck in the mud. Oblivious to the heavy rain pouring onto his thin hair and overcoat, he was completely paralyzed by the sight of the eagle and the swastika on the front of Josef’s field cap.
“But you … you … you are a Nazi soldier?” he finally said in a Viennese accent, shaking his head in disbelief.
Josef put an index finger up to his covered mouth. “No questions. You need to be quiet from now on. I am here to take you over the hills. Just go up to that building. We will talk inside.”
The man tried to say something more but then refrained, visibly diminishing as if the rain were shrinking him. Hanging his head, he pulled his feet from the wet mud and lifted his pathetic suitcase to slog his way up the sodden hill. The man walked slowly despite the downpour, a figure of meek surrender to whatever fate he now imagined awaited him within that shadowy farm building.
Josef watched him go, shaking his head in disbelief at the fugitive’s light leather dress shoes and thin, black cotton overcoat. They would be soaked through before he even made it to the building. It was going to be a long, cold night for that man, for them all, in fact.