Following a soft knock, Brad heard a hushed appeal through the door of the guest room in Major General March’s house, where he had spent Monday night. “Herr Wagner, may I speak with you a moment?”
Recognizing the voice, Brad tossed back the covers. It was not yet dawn, but he’d been awake since midnight, too high-strung from the roller coaster of the last forty-eight hours to sleep. He opened his room door to find Hans dressed in an army-issued wool robe and a night cap. Brad was in pajamas that he’d packed along with a few other things from his room over Madame Gastain’s stables. “Is my ride here already?” he asked. He and Lodestar and Lapwing would be leaving sometime after morning curfew, going separate ways in different vehicles to their safe houses.
“Non, Herr Wagner. I have come about another matter.”
Brad invited him in, and Hans cast a look toward Major General March’s room at the end of the hallway before entering. “I regret to disturb your sleep,” the aide said, speaking low, “but before the household is awake, I’ve come with a grave proposition that I hope you will accept. It has to do with the general’s concern for the safety of his son.”
Surprised, Brad said, “Isn’t Wilhelm safe at his aunt’s in Zurich?”
“For the time being, yes, but the general and I fear the day will come when he will be arrested. If that happens and he refuses to cooperate under interrogation, Reichsführer Himmler’s policy now is to incarcerate members of the prisoner’s family as leverage to get them to talk. Wilhelm will not be safe even in Zurich. He will be kidnapped and brought back to share the same cell as his father. Also, Herr General believes that should something happen to him, without his protection, and if the money dries up, he cannot be sure the aunt will treat Wilhelm kindly.” Sweat stood on Hans’s brow despite the night’s frigid temperature.
“What can I do to help?” Brad asked.
“I have come to propose that you take Wilhelm with you to America.”
Stunned, Brad stammered, “Hans, I’d love to, but I—I can’t promise he’d be any safer with me. I have no idea of my escape route and its hazards. I may not even make it out of France.” By what method he and the others would be extracted, Brad couldn’t even guess—by car, train, plane, ship, or on foot? Would their exfiltration take hours, days, weeks? Where would they be headed—to Spain, Switzerland, Gibraltar? The answers to these questions would not be answered until they got to their safe houses and made contact with Major Renault.
“You’ll be safe with this.” Hans handed Brad an SS-issued travel pass bearing his cover name, occupation, and all the official signatures and stamps. “Herr General arranged one for you and your comrades to carry with your papers to guarantee unquestioned passage to your ultimate destinations. He…doesn’t know that I took this one to show you. I must return it to his desk before he discovers it missing.”
Brad stared at the pass, hardly believing his eyes. With this impressive authorization, he and his teammates could get into safe territory without challenge. German officials had stepped up their scrutiny of forged passes, but not even the sharpest trained eyes could doubt this document’s authenticity.
“Will you do it?” Hans asked. “You may be Wilhelm’s only chance at survival.”
Brad thought of two ragged, frightened, and starving children on the bank of the White River in Meeker, Colorado, in September 1938. What the hell. How could he say no? With hardly a pause to consider, Brad said, “I’ll do it.”
Hans grabbed Brad in a bear hug, his eyes moistening. “Danke, Herr Wagner,” he said. “With all my heart I thank you.” Getting hold of himself, he released Brad and took back the pass. “Now I must return this downstairs. The general will soon be up. He does not sleep long these days. Once he’s down, you must present my proposal but not that it came from me.”
As he turned to go, Brad said, “Wait a minute, Hans! What about you and the general? Since he believes he’ll be arrested, why can’t you both come with me, and you guys take Wilhelm and lie low in Switzerland until this is all over?”
Hans said quietly, “Mein General is under constant scrutiny. He would not get far before he was discovered missing. Besides, my superior is a professional soldier and general officer, Herr Wagner. He would not dream of deserting his post and the responsibilities that rest on his shoulders. As for me, I must remain with him.”
“But if he doesn’t make it, he would trust me to take his son and only child to a foreign country to be raised by strangers?”
“Ja,” Hans answered. “He knows you to be a good man and that you would take care of his little boy. Auf wiedersehen, Herr Wagner. Gott sei mit dir.” He held out his hand.
Brad clasped it hard. “God be with you and the general, too, Hans. I hope we’ll meet again. I’d like nothing better than to welcome you and the general to my hometown in the mountains of Colorado. The area is a fisherman’s paradise.”
Hans’s resigned shrug expressed sadly that such a pleasure was not likely to be. “Little Wilhelm is very fond of mountains,” he said.
With the aide gone, Brad dressed hurriedly. The SS passes should convince Lodestar of Major General March’s trustworthiness. Yesterday when the hoods came off, and the general had greeted Barnard Wagner and Claus Bauer as old friends, he’d been puzzled. What was going on? Of course it hadn’t taken a minute for Brad and Lapwing to realize that the general had learned of their arrest and orchestrated their rescue. Lodestar had taken some convincing. “You can trust him,” Chris had assured him. “If and when we get out of this mess, you’ll be enlightened at our reunion in New York. Until then, the less you know about him, the safer he is.”
Last night over schnapps, the general offered no information on how they came to be sitting in his house rather than a Gestapo or SS cell, but Lodestar could not resist asking, “The woman your men executed—could you not have arranged for her escape, too?”
“She was one of you?” the general asked.
“Yes,” Lodestar said. “She was definitely one of us.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know. But I could not have helped her even so. Any assistance from me on her behalf would have aroused suspicion from the SS. The woman was the…special project of the SD officer in charge of her interrogation and…execution.”
Brad and the others exchanged a look. The SS colonel had to be the linguistics expert the major had feared would expose Liverwort. Their friend should have listened, and now it was too late.
The sun was up and curfew was only an hour away when Brad slipped down the stairs to await the general. Minutes later, he appeared at the head of the staircase and descended while buttoning the cuffs of his uniform shirtsleeves. “Did you sleep well?” he asked.
“As well as could be expected,” Brad answered.
“Let us go into my study,” Konrad said. “I have something I wish to give you and your comrades when they join us, a little parting gift to ensure your safe arrival at your destinations.”
A fire had been laid in the room, comfortable and familiar, but Brad would not be sorry to leave this place that he had come to regard as a tenuous harbor from the storm. The general handed him the pass, issued by the security service of the Reichsführer and signed by a Colonel Derrick Albrecht. Brad pretended surprise and said, “Now I have something to give you if you are willing to accept it, General. I know that you are not happy with the arrangements you’ve made for Wilhelm. Would you consider allowing me to take him to America with me until you can come for him?”
Konrad blinked as if he’d not heard Brad correctly. “You would do that—take Wilhelm with you to America?”
“Yes, if you agree.”
Hope shone briefly in the general’s eyes, then died. He shook his head. “But you don’t understand, my friend. I may not be able to come for him. I…don’t expect to survive the war, you see. What happens to my son in America should I perish?”
Brad replied, “Then he will simply become a member of my family, but you’re his father. He could never forget that, and I won’t, either. He’ll have a good life. That I can promise you.”
“My young friend…” Konrad began, but his voice faltered, and tears filled his tired eyes. He settled for pumping Brad’s hand. “My gratitude is endless.”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Brad said. “Now we must hurry, General. We don’t have much time. I will need documents, Wilhelm’s birth certificate, christening record, passport, anything you have, to establish who he is as well as a letter from you to his aunt authorizing me to take Wilhelm with me. I will leave you my address where you can reach me after the war is over.”