Elena spent a long, difficult night in the police cell. She was so tired she thought she might sleep, but every time she drifted off into troubled dreams, she was disturbed by footsteps, voices, and now and then the door opening and someone shining a light on her. Then before she could ask what they wanted, the door was closed and the iron flanges of the lock slammed into place.
The bed was uncomfortable, a straw-filled palliasse on a wooden frame. The ends of the pieces of straw poked through the canvas ticking. The single blanket was gray and smelled of rancid butter.
Perhaps she did not have much time left? If they found her guilty, they would execute her, surely. How? Shooting? Hanging? Did the Germans hang people, or was that just an English thing to do? The French used a guillotine. Bloody, but quick. Except in the case of Louis XVI, poor soul. They had botched it and had to make three attempts before they succeeded. At least that’s what the history books said.
Was this really it, the end? Was there a heaven? An afterlife? Would she find Mike there? She had accepted the idea of heaven, in the pain of losing him. People did. They were too dazed to it; they wanted to give one another comfort. If you say a thing often enough, at least some of the time you believe it. And who would say to a grieving mother, or widow, that death was the end?
She had never felt so utterly alone. Would anybody ever tell her family, her mother, or Lucas, what had happened to her? Please God—if there was one?—let her do this with courage.
She thought of famous people whose deaths had been witnessed and recorded.
Charles I, who had been executed at the end of January, and asked if he could wear two doublets, so he would not shiver in the cold and have people think that he was afraid.
How did you keep from being sick when you knew you were going to be shot any minute, absolutely for certain? She didn’t want to be pitiful. She would look them in the eye and tell them to go to hell!
She drifted in and out of sleep, sometimes dreaming, sometimes falling into a soft, gray oblivion.
When she woke it was light and someone was standing by her cot with a dish of porridge and a wedge of bread. There was something in an enamel mug that looked like tea. It steamed gently, so at least it was hot.
She thanked the guard and took it. Please heaven she was not so clenched up inside that she would throw it up. Was torture better on an empty stomach or a full one? She ate it anyway. It tasted stale, but it was edible, and perhaps she was better for it.
They came for Elena far sooner than she had expected. She was still sitting with the breakfast dish before her and the dregs of her tea, black and bitter.
“Stand up,” one of the policemen ordered. These three were men she had not seen before. She obeyed. There was no point in causing more trouble than she already had, just for the sake of pride. There was no one to impress.
The thing that hurt perhaps even more deeply than fear was the sense of being so alone. These policemen were all people who looked like most Englishmen. Only their uniforms and their language differentiated them. And yet she had never felt so violated.
Had Mike felt something like this, just before going over the top of the trench into the gunfire? She tried to think of him, to imagine he was there in spirit with her. “Chin up, kiddo,” he would have said, with a slightly twisted smile.
She was walked through the station and out to the back, where a car was waiting for them.
One of the police caught her surprise and smiled, without warmth. “We’re giving you to the Gestapo,” he said with satisfaction. “You did not know Scharnhorst, did you.” It was a statement.
“No…I didn’t!” she said fiercely.
“Then it’s not a domestic murder, it’s assassination. That belongs to the Gestapo. It’s an offense against the state, not just a local thing, like killing to steal or committing some crime against a neighbor.”
“I didn’t kill him at all!” she said levelly, almost.
“Bad shot, eh?” he said sarcastically. “You saying you didn’t mean to kill him? Who did you mean to kill?”
She started to deny it again and realized there was no point. They would think whatever they wanted to. Perhaps their own careers depended on catching the assassin. Or at least seeming to.
There was a driver sitting at the wheel, on the left-hand side, and for a moment she forgot where she was. It was all unreal. This was not the Germany she knew, the place in her memory where she had been happy, even amid the destruction and loss immediately following the war.
An officer got out of the other side of the car and came around to escort her. Not that she would really have escaped, with her hands manacled together behind her back, and the police on either side of her.
He looked at her curiously, with cold, careful eyes. Then he opened the passenger door at the back and nodded for her to get in. She obeyed rather awkwardly, hands behind the back not being the natural way to climb into a car and sit down, unable to straighten your skirt or rearrange yourself.
The door slammed and he walked around to the other side.
They pulled away from the curb into the traffic. Were the doors locked? She looked. Yes. Of course they were.
It was a clear day, sun shining, and to judge from the movement of people along the pavement, the flutter of summer skirts, the occasional hand to steady a hat, there was quite a breeze.
She saw groups of Brownshirts. You could tell them by the way they stood, not just their uniforms. There was a confidence in them. A sense of power. They could do whatever they wished, and everybody knew it. The only thing worse was the Gestapo, the secret police. Everybody knew that, too.
The questioning at the police station had been no more than a few hard slaps. The Gestapo interrogation would be much worse.
Suddenly, she was drenched in a cold sweat. What if they believed that Ian had intended to warn of the assassination, and she had killed him so that she could go ahead and do it? It fit perfectly with the facts they would know.
And Cordell? What would he say, if they had even questioned him at all? That she had said nothing to him about Scharnhorst? There was no proof that she had. She could have gone to the embassy for any reason.
She was trapped. Anything she said, true or not, could be twisted to condemn her. And there was no escape from the physical captivity. Both of her guards were armed, and she was manacled and could not run, even if she had anywhere to run to.
They turned a corner into a smaller street.
It was another few minutes at least before they pulled up outside a very ordinary building, just like thousands of others. The man in the front passenger seat got out and opened the door for her.
“Out,” he said, jerking his hand very slightly to make his meaning clearer.
Awkwardly, Elena climbed out, having to balance with difficulty. He took her arm when he thought she might fall. Or did he imagine she would use it as some kind of chance to run? And be shot in the back, of course, guilty of attempting to escape.
Reluctantly, trying to walk upright and stumbling on the step, she went inside. The room was small, anonymous-seeming. A narrow-shouldered man with a round belly was waiting for her. He looked ridiculous in his uniform. His rimless glasses were sliding down his nose.
Her manacles were undone, and then relocked with her hands in front of her.
She was forced to sit down in a chair opposite him, and the questioning began. He established her name, her nationality, then the facts of her trip to Berlin from Italy. It was all the details that she had already admitted. His voice was higher than one might have expected, and nasal. She could feel the hatred emanating from him the way heat does from a fire.
Neither of the other men had left; they were standing to attention, one at the door, the other at the window.
The questions went on. The man with the glasses lit a cigarette and blew smoke out with an expression of distaste, as if he did not like the flavor of it. She looked at him very steadily. His eyes were neither green nor brown behind the magnification of his lenses.
“You do not agree with Herr Scharnhorst’s plans for the destiny of the German people…” He made it more of a statement than a question.
How much should she lie? If she said she agreed with Scharnhorst, would that save her life? Or at least, end it without too much pain?
Probably not. And if there was a hereafter, how would she face Mike, and all the others who had died, especially those who had never denied who they were, or what they believed? And if there was nothing? Oblivion? It would hardly matter anyway. Please God, she could do this with some dignity.
“No, I don’t. But it’s none of my business,” she replied.
He took a deep draw on his cigarette, took it out of his mouth, then stubbed it out, hard, on the back of her hand. The pain made her gag. The room swam around her and she thought she was going to vomit.
“So, you shot him,” he said.
“No…” She knew immediately that it was a mistake. Carefully, as if he were preparing for something he was going to enjoy, he took another cigarette out of his case and lit it, pulling the smoke into his lungs, then after barely a moment, letting it out again.
Could she bear it? The pain was appalling. It shot up her arm as if the red-hot ash were still there on her skin.
The telephone rang, sharp and shrill, like a scream.
Reluctantly, he picked it up. He listened for a moment, and agreed with whomever was on the line, apparently with reluctance.
“Orders,” he said to the man near the door, who was the senior of the two. “They want her right now. You’re to take her to headquarters.”
“Sir?”
“Don’t stand there, you fool! Get her into the car and take her!”
The man snapped to attention. “Yes, sir!”
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.