The train slowed down and came to a stop, but they were far short of the platform.
“What’s wrong?” Elena asked.
“Probably nothing,” Walter replied, but there was uncertainty in his voice. He looked around, obviously wondering why they were stopped where they could not reasonably get off.
There were a few moments of silence and then the compartment door opened and a guard with an anxious expression regarded them. “One of our guards is missing,” he said grimly. “Totally missing! It is a very serious matter.”
“Are you sure he got back on the train at the border?” Walter asked helpfully.
“Why would he get off at the border?” the guard said irritably. “This is no joke. He has a good job! One a man would want to keep!” He turned to Elena. “He said he was coming to…question you? Is that so?”
Her mind raced over all the possibilities. What could she say that would demand no further response from them? They were so nearly there! They were actually in Paris!
Silence.
Walter leaned forward. “I saw him, toward the back of the train. He had a bottle of schnapps. Are you sure he is not asleep somewhere in a baggage car? He was…staggering a bit…” He left the suggestion in the air.
Elena forced a smile. “Maybe when you have off-loaded everything…?”
The guard shrugged. “Drunk again! Serves the fool right. If…if we found him…”
He went out, and after what seemed like ten minutes, but was perhaps only two or three, the train lurched forward again, and then stopped. This time they were beside the platform.
Elena was weak with relief when at last she stepped out of the carriage onto the platform and heard the sound of French voices around her. The few police she could see were gendarmes in French uniforms. Even the air smelled different. It was like a familiar embrace. Paris!
She turned and smiled as Walter stepped down onto the platform behind her.
He took her arm. “We’re almost there. Last leg. You’ll be home tonight. Now we’d better get out of here, so they don’t connect us with the Berlin train. A cup of coffee, perhaps. It’ll be French coffee!”
“Are you still coming with me…all the way?” she asked. She wanted him to, too much to dare show it. After the terrible night, she was still more afraid than she wished him to know, or even to acknowledge to herself. There was a search under way for the guard. Word would come soon enough that they had found his body on the tracks. She had no idea where they had been, but definitely in France. It was after they had crossed the border.
“Of course I am!” Walter said, pushing her forward and then walking beside her toward the exit.
She caught his urgency. Once they were out in the street, no one would know they had come in on that particular train. Unintentionally, she increased speed.
“Hold on!” Walter said, a momentary sharpness in his tone. “Don’t go so fast. We look as if we are running away!” His hand tightened on her arm and reluctantly she slowed.
They were nearly there. She must not look back. Head high, she walked out of the station. She had no idea if anyone was watching her. The street was already crowded with the early rush-hour traffic. They would be invisible in moments.
Elena tried not to think of the people she had left behind. She could not feel guilty. She was no use to anyone in Berlin, especially dead. But she was aware with a grinding pain deep inside her that Jacob was still there, in Berlin, with Eli and Zillah, helping where they could, a terrible risk. There were people like the man in the camera shop, prepared to lie to save a stranger whose pictures scorched the mind. And God knew how many more would give their lives to fight the darkness she now knew was coming.
They found a little bistro and took a table near the back. There was nothing to say that had not been said already. Their silence continued as they drank dark, aromatic French coffee and ate croissants…hot, flaky, delicious.
Elena and Walter returned to the Gare du Nord and went to the platform for the Calais train. They bought tickets and stood waiting, Elena too tired, too emotionally exhausted, for conversation. They still had three more legs of the journey: the train to Calais, the cross-Channel ferry, and then the journey from Dover to London.
Walter did not speak either, but when she glanced at him she saw the concern in his expression. She forced herself to smile. “We’re free,” she said quietly. “It’s just traveling from now on.”
He hesitated a moment, and she saw a flicker of doubt in his expression.
“Probably,” he agreed. “But we must still be careful. I’m not leaving you until I hand you over to someone who will take care of you. From what you’ve said, that’s your grandfather. Safer than your father. It would be easy enough for them to find out who he is and where he lives. In fact, they will certainly know already. For my safety, as well as yours…”
“Yes. I’ll go to my grandfather’s, please. He’s anonymous, as far as they’re concerned. There are lots of Standishes in London. Probably most of them in the telephone directory. Thank you.”
“Did you think I was going to leave you on a railway platform in London?” He raised his eyebrows. “In that red dress? I’ve seen enough of what can happen to you.”
She meant not to let her fear show, but she knew it did—in her face, the clenched hands, the shivering she could not control, no matter how hard she tried.
He reached over as if to touch her hand, and then pulled back again.
The journey from Paris to Calais was easy, and they had a while to wait for the next ferry, but they would still be in Dover before dark. Once or twice Elena thought she recognized a face in the crowd, gestures, attitudes she had seen before, but she said nothing, even when she caught a look on Walter’s face, as if he, too, had noticed.
She was tense going through Customs and Immigration, and apologized to the officer when she dropped her passport out of nervous fingers. “Not much sleep,” she added.
He made no comment, and she passed through the barrier drenched in sweat and shivering with relief.
“Is that all your luggage?” the Customs officer asked her incredulously.
Her mind raced. “It was mislaid,” she said quickly. “I’m sure they’ll find it, and then send it on after me. I’m going home, so I shall be all right.”
He opened her bag and searched it. “Nice camera,” was all he said. He closed the bag and handed it back to her, shaking his head.
She had no idea whether he believed her or not. It did not matter anymore.
Walter had arranged to hire a car. He told Elena he had wired from the Paris railway station. It was waiting for them, and they took charge of it and set out on the road inland. The last leg home.
There was traffic out of Dover, but soon they were clear of it, and the wide, pale evening sky was fading, shadows lengthening across the road. The air through the open window smelled sweet.
Neither of them spoke. Perhaps Walter was as emotionally drained as she was and, like her, might find it hard to believe that the adventure was nearly over…at least for them. Germany was behind them.
She directed him when he asked, but most of the road was plainly signed, and she had told him the general area. It was comfortable to be silent. The night darkened, but outside the air was still warm.
She was wondering how much she could tell Lucas. Had the photographs arrived yet? What did he think of them? Would he know how they could best be used? In fact, were they as good as she thought? Would he berate her for being stupid? Not if he knew what the stakes really were. Not if he had seen the violence, the fear, the hatred. Sitting at home, safe in England, he couldn’t even imagine it, though everyone knew the loss of war, the carnage, the crippling of mind and body that went on and on…all life long, for some.
But did they really know the alternative? The humiliation, the terror, and the shame? The corruption of all you thought you believed in, when the gun was pointed at your head? Or at the head of someone you loved more than your own life? Was there nothing so precious that you would pay the final price, rather than betray it? Most of us live and die without ever having to find out. But Elena had seen it too closely to plead ignorance anymore. How could she tell Lucas that?
Walter swung the car around the corner. “Somewhere along here?”
Her attention snapped back to the present. “Yes…yes, we’re home, next house.”
Walter drew the car up against the curb, familiar to Elena even in the near dark. The curtains were closed, and there was no light visible from the windows, but the lamp was lit over the front door.
She turned in the seat and smiled at Walter, overwhelmed with gratitude and, at last, peace. “Please come in and have something to eat. Stretch your legs. I expect you want to get to wherever you’re going, but if you don’t, you’ll be welcome to stay the night, and then go on in the morning.”
“I don’t think so, not now. But thank you, I do need to straighten my back. I don’t know if my driving scared you, but it certainly scared me.” Without waiting to see her acknowledge it, he opened the driver’s door and climbed out, moving a little awkwardly for a moment, and then easing himself to stretch. “I’ll get your bag.”
She climbed out of her side before he came around to open it. It was a relief to stand. She turned to make sure he was following her, and saw him close the trunk, her bag in his hand. She walked slowly up the front path, intending to push the doorbell, but the door opened before she reached it and Lucas stood on the step under the light.
She had never seen anything more welcome in her life. He represented everything that was bright and good and safe, everything that was worth fighting for. She could not recall his ever saying “I love you,” yet it was the one thing she had never doubted in her whole life.
“Hello, Grandpa,” she said almost steadily. She gave a brief glance over her shoulder, then back again at Lucas. “This is Walter Mann.” She would tell him all the rest later—maybe.
Lucas smiled, and for a moment his face filled with intense emotion. Then he looked beyond her to Walter. “How do you do, Walter?” He gave a slow, charming smile. “We’re very grateful. Would you like to come in and have a cup of tea, or even a meal? If you’re in a hurry, we understand, but it would be nice if we had a chance to express our gratitude.”
Walter stepped forward to be just behind Elena. “Thank you, sir. That would be very kind. A cup of tea that wasn’t made by the railway would be wonderful. I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”
“Not at all, come in.” Lucas stood back, pulling the door wide open, and Elena and Walter followed him into the hall, Walter still carrying the bag.
Josephine was coming forward from the drawing room, arms wide. She hugged Elena so hard that, for a moment, it actually hurt.
“Lavatory is at the top of the stairs, straight ahead,” Lucas continued to Walter. “How about a decent sandwich? We’ve got cold roast beef. A little French mustard, or the hot English stuff, if you prefer?”
“French mustard is excellent, sir,” Walter replied, showing the deference due a man two generations older than himself.
Elena stepped back, now overwhelmed with relief, and turned to Walter. She wanted to show him something of the gratitude she felt, and to make sure he was comfortable, that indeed he felt welcome. He was standing in the hallway looking a little confused, almost as if some deep emotion stirred him. She realized that she had told him that this was her grandparents’ house, but she had not mentioned their names. How thoughtless of her.
“Walter, I’m sorry. This is my grandfather, Lucas Standish, and my grandmother, Josephine.” She turned to Lucas again. She would tell him the whole story later, how deeply it had changed her, but she should acknowledge at least some of it now, so he knew how much she owed Walter. “Walter rescued me from one or two unpleasant situations. And then he drove me here from Dover. He’s an economic journalist.”
Lucas regarded Walter with considerable warmth. “Then we are doubly grateful to you.”
Josephine’s face was alight with pleasure. “And we are happy to offer you anything you care for,” she said warmly. “After roast beef sandwiches, I have an apple pie and cream. They’re last year’s apples, of course, but they store very well.”
Walter smiled, color rising up in his face. He looked tense, as if his shoulders were stiff, but he had driven a long way, and sometimes at dangerously high speeds. Elena saw that he was exhausted.
“Thank you,” he said a little awkwardly. “It sounds perfect.”
Josephine smiled back at him. “Then I’ll get started. Would you like the pie warmed? I do.”
“Yes, please,” he accepted. But he did not look as if she had put him at ease. Rather the contrary.
“Top of the stairs,” Elena reminded him, smiling also. “We’ll be in the drawing room.” She pointed to the nearest door.
Walter put down Elena’s bag and went up the stairs.
Lucas led the way to the long-familiar drawing room with its blue curtains and the arch where the dividing wall had been removed, so the room ran the full length of the house. At the far end, there was a second fireplace and French windows opening onto the garden. This was the house where Elena had been born, and she still felt bone-deep that it was home. There was the copy of a Delft painting over the fireplace, all in deep blues and greens, shadows and light on water, the outlines of ships resting in the harbor, the ghosts of buildings behind them. No one pretended it was the original, and she had seen many among the world’s great paintings, but none she loved as she did this one.
There was a small fire in the hearth. Even in May, the weather growing warm, there was a coolness in the air after sunset.
Now that they were alone, Lucas looked at Elena more closely. If he even noticed the scarlet dress, he made no comment.
“Are you all right?” he said gravely.
“I will be,” she replied to the far deeper question. “I’ve got a burn on the back of my hand and a few bruises, but otherwise I’m not hurt, just tired…” She left all the rest of the fear and pain unsaid. She would tell him about it later. “It’s…bad in Berlin. The books…” She gave a little shrug. “Later.”
“I know about the books,” he said. “And I got your photographs. We’ll talk after Walter’s gone.”
When Walter returned, Elena went upstairs to find the ointment and a clean bandage to put on her hand. The burn looked angry and sore, as indeed it was. Tomorrow, she might see the doctor, but for tonight anything was bearable. She was home. Safe.
At least the photographs were here, and in a way that was all that mattered.
Downstairs again, she went into the kitchen and began to take cutlery out of the drawer.
“You don’t need to do that, my dear,” Josephine said briskly. “It’ll be a little while yet. I have to heat the pie slowly or it will burn. Go and be pleasant to Mr. Mann. I dare say it’s your gratitude he would rather have than Lucas’s.” She frowned. “And you look exhausted. It’s good to know you’re home. You’ve been rather a long time and we’ve been concerned. You should telephone your parents and let them know you’re back. Margot sent a telegram to your parents to say she’s on her way back to London, too, with interesting news.” She looked at the bread, butter, beef, and mustard sitting on the kitchen table. “I think I’ll start the sandwiches now.”
Elena went into the hall and telephoned her parents, assuring them she was well. She would decide how much to tell them later, perhaps tomorrow. Her father asked her several questions, but she pleaded exhaustion and promised to tell him the details when she saw him. That was a promise she did not intend to keep. It would worry him far more than necessary, and she did not want to relive it.
In the drawing room, she found Lucas and Walter deep in conversation. They were talking about something during the war. She had been nine when it started. She could quite clearly recall the golden summer just before. The end of history and the beginning of modern times, Josephine had called it. Walter was about her own age. His memory must be like hers, all the emotions of war, the fear and the loss, but he was too young to have fought. Mike, five years older than Elena, was only just old enough for it to be required of him, although she knew there had been boys as young as twelve who had lied about their age and volunteered by 1918.
Both men looked around as she came in, closing the door behind her. Walter stood up. He moved awkwardly, as if his body was so tight that he was almost locked into position, and his face was flushed with some kind of emotion that he could barely control. He kept his right hand by his side.
Lucas watched, his face tense also. “Perhaps you should go and help your grandmother in the kitchen?” he suggested to Elena, looking very directly at her, his eyes clear blue, light as the sky.
What was wrong?
“Grandpa…” she began.
Then Walter was half behind her, and suddenly his left arm was around her, just above the waist. “No, I think you should stay here,” he said quietly, his voice utterly changed. “It’s been many years in coming—since 1917, in fact—but now it is time.”
Lucas started to rise to his feet.
Walter’s arm tightened around Elena, and his right hand was near her neck.
She felt the very slight prick of a knife blade at her throat. She fought against believing it, but now her body was drenched with fear. “Who are you?” she asked, her voice cracking. He had changed utterly! The friend who had helped her in the worst times had vanished, leaving a stranger behind.
“Walter Mann! I told you! Well, Walter Mannheim, actually. Ask your grandfather. See if he remembers Richard Mannheim, my father!” He said the last words so choked with emotion they were almost indistinguishable.
Silence filled the room. One second, two seconds.
“Better still,” Walter continued, “ask your grandfather who he is! If he doesn’t tell you, I will!”
“Walter…” Lucas started, then stopped as Walter’s hand tightened on the knife handle, and Elena winced as the blade pricked her again, and a slight trickle of warm blood slid down her neck.
“Be quiet!” Walter snapped. “I’ll tell her. Your grandfather was head of MI6 during the last part of the war. Spymaster general. A man whose power was secret, complete, and unanswerable to anyone. He could order a man executed, and it was done.” His voice was growing thicker with emotion, and higher in pitch. “Someone made a mistake and my father, Richard Mannheim, one of your grandfather’s men who risked his life over and over again, on Lucas Standish’s orders, was blamed for that mistake. And Lucas Standish accused him of being a traitor and had him hanged! Hanged…by the neck…jerking and twitching on the end of a rope…until he was dead. Because he could! He didn’t have to justify himself to anyone.”
Elena could feel Walter’s hand shaking, the knife moving fractionally, cutting a little deeper, the blood running.
Walter was so knotted with fury and grief that his whole body was rigid. His voice was unnaturally thin and high. “Do you know what that’s like? Do you? Have you any idea at all what he suffered? The betrayal by the one man he trusted?”
“Walter,” Lucas began. “Let Elena go. It’s not her fault.”
“Shut up! Was it my fault? You killed my father in the most hideous disgrace imaginable. A traitor! You hanged him like a criminal! My father! Do you know what that was like for me? It’s not Elena’s fault…of course it isn’t! She didn’t even know. You committed all your acts anonymously, where no one could find you. You didn’t care what you did to my father’s family, to my mother, to me! Yet you expect me to care what this does to Elena, or your wife? Why?”
“Kill me, if you think it will make you feel better, but leave Elena—” Lucas began.
Walter laughed, a harsh, raucous sound, ugly in its pain. “Idiot! I’m going to kill all of you! Elena first, so you can watch her fear, watch all that beautiful, passionate life slip out of her…watch her struggle…and lose it…knowing it was you who took it. And you will be blamed. I prefer to see you suffer for it, see you try to explain how it wasn’t you, and be condemned anyway, and then hanged. But that isn’t possible, because you might talk your way out of it. I expect you’ve still got friends. You could still be part of MI6, for all I know, although they didn’t rescue Elena in Germany! I did! I did—after I killed Newton.”
Elena was stunned. That was one thing she had not even thought of, but now that she heard it, the pieces all came together in her mind with a sharp, cutting reality.
“I sent him on a wild-goose chase, all the way from Amalfi to Berlin, to stop them from killing Scharnhorst. He thought it was your orders. I killed his contact there, so he couldn’t check. But then I met Elena—sweet, trusting Elena—at the hotel, and I heard she was your granddaughter. So, I killed Newton, because I knew she’d be all quixotic and take over his task—and she did.”
Elena tensed, trying to struggle, but he held her too tightly.
Lucas’s eyes darted around the room, as if trying to see any way of distracting Walter.
“Don’t!” Walter said between his teeth. “It will take one movement to cut her throat.”
Elena froze.
“She went to the British Embassy in Berlin,” Walter continued, “to tell them there would be an attempt on Scharnhorst’s life, but they did nothing about it. Did you know that?” He was talking rapidly now, almost stumbling over his own words. “They betrayed you! Your own man in Berlin betrayed you. I killed Scharnhorst and put the rifle in Elena’s hotel room. She went along like a good little English girl and did all I wanted her to.”
He tightened his grip until she flinched. “Pity. I quite like her, but she’s your granddaughter, the one you love the most. Perhaps you love her as much as I loved my father? What do you think, eh?” His hand tightened. “There’s a symmetry to it, you know. She was an obedient little puppet, except that I lost her for a while, after the assassination. She went to ground in Berlin, but I found her again. She couldn’t resist coming out for the book-burning, with her Jewish friend.”
Elena tried once more to alter her weight so he would have to change his grip. He yanked her hard, closer to him. “Enough talking! I needed you to know, because there’s no justice if you have no idea why your family’s going to be killed before your very eyes, and you are going to be blamed for it.” He moved the knife a little higher and cut across Elena’s cheek.
Lucas’s face was ashen. “Do anything you want with me…” he began.
Elena had always loved Lucas more than anyone else, for no reason that she knew of. It was simply so, and she would protect him at any cost. Without giving it any thought, she put her right hand forward, then jerked her elbow back as hard as she could, straight into the soft spot beneath Walter’s ribs. As his grip on her eased for an instant, she pulled away and swung around, lifting her knee into his groin. She lost her balance and fell to the floor on her hands and knees, as Walter lifted his foot to kick her. It could have pounded into her face, except that there was a crack of gunfire from somewhere near the door and Walter fell on top of her, with blood gushing everywhere.
Lucas lunged forward, dropped to his knees, and grasped her, pulling her free.
She wiped her hands across her face and they came away covered in blood. She stared toward the doorway where her grandmother was standing, very still and very pale, with a heavy Luger pistol in her hands, now pointed at the floor. Elena looked at Walter. His head was almost unrecognizable. It was hideous, a mass of blood and bone.
Lucas’s arms tightened around her. “Don’t look,” he said quietly. “He’s not there anymore. That’s just what’s left of who he used to be.” He turned toward Josephine.
She was beginning to tremble, and very slowly she let the gun slide to the floor.
“How did you know?” Lucas asked.
“I came to see if you’d like tea straightaway,” she replied, “and I heard him talking. I knew where your gun was.”
“Did you? I never told you I even had it!” His voice dropped. “Are you all right?”
She was shaking visibly now. “Lucas, I don’t need to be spoon-fed. I fought in the war, too, and some of it was nasty.” She left the gun where it had fallen and walked over toward Elena. She looked at her anxiously. “I’m proud of you, sweetheart,” she said quietly. “We’ve got to bandage that cheek and clear all this up. I don’t think any of this is something we want to report to the police.” She held out her hand.
Elena took it and got to her feet rather clumsily. She looked at the red silk dress that she had been so proud of. She wasn’t ever going to be able to wear it again, nor would she want to anyway. She felt a little dizzy. Her whole world, the safety she’d trusted for as long as she could remember, had changed. Her grandmother had just shot Walter, who had intended to kill them all. She turned to face Lucas.
“I’m sorry, my dear,” he said quietly. “Very sorry indeed. Now come upstairs and take that dress off. We’ll get you into something clean and attend to those cuts. Come on.”
She was battling tears and losing. She felt them slide down her cheeks. “It’s just…” She looked at him and shook her head. He seemed exactly the same, the blue eyes, the gray hair thinning now, the gentleness that went back to her very first memories. “Nothing is what I thought it was.” She could barely form the words. “In Germany, or anywhere, not…not even here.”
The grief was intense in his face, and she realized with amazement that he feared she would reject him. She stepped over Walter and put her arms around her grandfather. He had square shoulders, but he was always thinner than she expected. She held on to him as tightly as she could and felt his arms reach completely around her.
It was Josephine who broke the moment. “What are we going to do about this, Lucas? Shall I call that nice young man you speak to so often?”
“What?” Lucas was startled.
“We need help,” Josephine said more clearly. “Shall I call Peter Howard?”
“Do you—”
“I know where his number is,” Josephine reminded him. “He gave it to me if ever I were in real trouble and you were not here. And I think this is about to become real trouble.”
“Yes, please.” Lucas pulled away from Elena. “You need to change out of that dress.”
“Get rid of it,” Josephine interrupted from the door. “Go upstairs and change into something of your own, now! We aren’t expecting anyone, but don’t waste time. I’m going to tell Mr. Howard what happened and request that he come over immediately, with whatever equipment is necessary. I hope we can save the Turkish carpet.” She went out of the room after picking up the gun from where it lay on the floor.
Lucas took Elena upstairs to the bathroom and very gently, and surprisingly efficiently, cleaned the slight mark on her throat and the deeper one on her cheek. She could not see what he was doing, but it eased the pain quite a lot and it stopped the bleeding. Then she went into her bedroom and took off the red dress and put on a far less glamourous one of her own.
When she came down Lucas was waiting. “Are you up to this?” he asked grimly. “Would you rather stay in your room while we deal with Walter Mann?”
“Yes, of course I am! I’ll help. I was interrogated by the Gestapo, I escaped from them, and I didn’t tell them anything about who helped me in Berlin. Of course I’m up to it!”
Lucas looked at her steadily for a moment, then accepted what she said.
She peered down at Walter. He seemed smaller, now that he was lying crumpled up, with no person inside his body anymore. “The people in the photographs I sent, they look half human, half something unreachable. They were dancing and laughing. What can you say to people like that?” She stared up at Lucas intently, needing to hear his answer.
“Your photographs are superb…and terrible,” he said softly. “I wish I could tell you it’s going to get better, and there won’t be another war, but I don’t think that’s true. I also can’t tell you that I won’t fight against this new madness in every way I can. That wouldn’t be true either.”
She nodded very slightly. “I know. I’m going to fight, too. I’m scared stiff of them. But I know it’s real. I’ll tell you about Jacob, the Jewish friend Walter referred to. He’s still in Berlin.” She searched his face, his eyes. “I can do something, can’t I?”
“Yes,” he said simply. “You already are.” He moved toward the door. “Now come on, we can’t leave all of this to your grandmother. Right now, we need to start clearing this up. See how bad the damage is to the carpet.”
“People are being murdered in Berlin.” Her voice was suddenly out of control. “Old people, women, and children! What the hell does one bloody carpet matter?”
“It matters that we remove all trace of what happened here,” Lucas said firmly. “Spies operate in secret, Elena. Once everybody knows who they are, they’re useless. We’d better be busy doing what we can until Peter gets here. He’ll remove the body and probably my gun. No one should be able to find it here. I’ll have to get a different one.”
She said nothing, but drew a long, shaky breath, crushing down her feelings until she was in control again.
Josephine came back with a bucket of water. First, they rolled Walter’s body in an old picnic blanket, and then they worked for a hard twenty minutes to wash all the blood they could out of the Turkish carpet, which was fortunately a dark red and blue pattern.
Josephine took the bucket away to empty and brought back a tray of tea and insisted they each have a cup. “We’ll eat later,” she told them. “Need to keep our strength up,” she said calmly. “And you do know that you will tell your parents nothing of this, don’t you?”
Elena stared at her.
“They know now of your grandfather’s position during the war, but less of mine. It is totally necessary that we keep this from them, do you understand? It’s not fair or sensible to bother them with it. We each have our own load to carry, and our own secrets.” She reached across and pushed a stray strand of hair off Elena’s forehead. “You are now one of us, my dear, no longer one of them.”
Elena knew it was true. Perhaps she had known it since the night of the book-burning, but it was different hearing someone else say it, someone who had known her all her life. But she was prevented from replying to this immense statement by a ring on the front doorbell.
She froze.
Lucas climbed to his feet and went out into the hall to answer it. Nothing in his demeanor betrayed that there was a dead man lying in a blanket on the drawing-room floor, nor that his granddaughter had adhesive bandages on her cheek and throat where that dead man had intended to cut her.
Josephine sat motionless, her body strained with tension.
There were voices in the hall, Lucas’s and another man’s. Then the drawing-room door opened and the man came in, fair-haired, his face unremarkable. He moved with a certain grace.
Elena felt a wave of horror engulf her. It was the man from the Reibekuchen stall outside the embassy in Berlin. The man she had left slumped unconscious at the base of the tree. She tried to speak, but the words stuck in her throat.
“Elena,” Lucas said, “this is Peter Howard. I sent him to Berlin to get you out, but you rather got the better of him.”
The man looked at her with faint, rueful humor. “How do you do, Miss Standish?” he said, extending his hand.
Slowly, still shaking, Elena put her hand out and took his. It was firm and strong. “How do you do, Mr. Howard?”