SEPTEMBER 1944

IN THE OFFICE OF THE Commandant a balding middle-aged man was putting the finishing touches on the massif mahogany desk when a young guard sporting a rifle with a custom carved butt came in looking concerned. “It’s confirmed, you are being transferred.”

The balding head turned and although considerably heavier there was no mistaking the smile and the comfortably innocuous gaze. Georg Elser looked up at the guard paternally. “Hardly a surprise now is it?”

The young man looked at him with apprehension. “Don’t you know what that means?”

Georg took a deep breath. “For them? Or for me?”

The young guard seemed baffled, Georg’s smile grew warmer. “For them it means that I can’t be explained away, so they have given up trying to make me something that I wasn’t. I’m pretty sure that is why I was brought here in the first place; they needed time to gradually erase the event, to diminish it to the banal and everyday and thus unworthy of further consideration. They needed time to generate appropriate pretexts for the destruction and or loss of previous accounts. … They may have gone so far as to print that I myself was killed in the blast, not as the perpetrator but rather just a poor schmuck carpenter who happened to be passing by outside on his way home from work when the bomb blew … I ceased to exist on the night of November 8th, 1939 one way or the other. Perhaps that sort of deed can only be carried out if there is an element of definitive finality to it. Perhaps that is why I never bothered to plan my escape—to do so would have meant foretelling a positive outcome, for me at least. For nearly five years I’ve been living on borrowed time and that is probably more than most people embroiled in a world war can possibly hope for.”

The young guard smiled at Georg, even though he wasn’t sure why. The only certainty was that something profound had been shared and that his limited experience had in no way prepared him to comprehend such things.

The following morning an unmarked truck was waiting and Georg dutifully took his place in the line. There weren’t many prisoners left at that small camp by that time and they all had one discomforting common denominator, they were persona non grata: the next best thing to being dead. Having been already dead would have been much more sensible, not to mention more humane and convenient to all concerned, but you can’t ask for everything. To think of all the resources wasted simply because in reality there was no longer any real chain of command and the country was swarming with eunuchs terrified of responsibility.

As Georg approached the truck he carefully observed the drill: each prisoner was shackled and then assisted into the truck. Eyes down, as docile as cattle, their spirits had passed on long before. Georg locked his wrists together and looked deeply into the young guard’s eyes with a most understated smile. The young guard smiled back and helped Georg step up into the truck. It really was after all a form of blindness, and that was, after all, a reason for hope. Georg was the eleventh and final man to be helped into the back of the truck.

And yet, when the truck reached its destination several hours later that afternoon only ten men stepped down.