Front Lines (Front Lines #1)(55)

“Think nothing of it.”

“Um . . .”

“Yes?”

“I don’t suppose you’d wish to repair with me to that diner and have a cup of coffee?”

Rainy is shocked and does nothing to hide it. “I don’t even know your name.”

“Halev. Halev Leventhal.”

About half her instincts are telling her to say a polite but firm good-bye. She listens to the other half. “You need some ice on that cut or it will swell up. They’ll have ice at the diner.”

The diner is like every other diner in the city—a narrow, greasy, noisy room with a grill down one side fronted by a counter with round stools, and a row of cramped tables along the other wall. It’s mostly empty, it being too early for dinner and too late for lunch.

Rainy takes charge, ordering some ice and a towel and two cups of coffee. A kind waitress brings ice and a small bandage and clucks sympathetically for a while before being called away to another table.

“Hurt much?” Rainy asks Halev.

“It’s mostly numb,” Halev says, touching the wound experimentally, wincing, and replacing the ice bag. He twists in his stool to look Rainy up and down. “So, you’re a soldier.”

“Is it the uniform that gave it away?”

“Well, that and the steely-eyed determination. What’s your name?”

“Rainy. Rainy Schulterman.”

“Ah, so one of the tribe,” he says. “A Jewish woman soldier.”

“Is that disapproval I hear?”

“How could I possibly disapprove of you?” he says.

Rainy’s not a fool; she knows a flirtatious remark when she hears one, but she pointedly ignores it.

“That’s a rhetorical question that avoids an answer,” she says.

“Yes, but I think you’re overlooking the obvious tone of admiration,” he says.

He’s enjoying sparring with her, and Rainy doesn’t mind that at all. It’s fun sparring with men who think they can make short work of her with leers and condescension.

“Misdirection doesn’t work very well with me, I’m afraid. Neither does flirtation.”

He leans toward her, cocking his head to one side, his eyes judgmental, amused, but not dismissive. “All right, you want a serious answer? My father would disapprove. My grandfather would disapprove. If you listen closely, you may hear the whirring sound of my great-grandfather spinning in his grave. But me?” The judgment and the sly mockery evaporate and a very different look now radiates from those really rather large and soulful eyes. “Me? I approve of anyone who means to rid the world of Adolf Hitler.”

Suddenly they have a second thing in common, beyond sharing a religion and a background.

“I wasn’t thinking of ridding the world of Hitler all by myself,” Rainy says. “However, should the opportunity come my way . . .”

Halev’s gaze is shrewd. “So that is it.”

“Like I said: if I get that opportunity.”

“You would take his life?”

“I would blow his brains out and dance a jig afterward,” Rainy says. There is no doubt, no humor, no wise-guy attitude in her voice. She means it. She means it, and she wants to see the look on his face when he realizes she means it.

What she sees surprises her: raw envy, mixed with admiration. For a few minutes they sip their coffee and say nothing.

“I would join up if I could,” Halev says at last, voice low. “Four-F. I broke my shoulder when I was seven, and it has never healed properly.” He raises his left arm and winces when it approaches horizontal. And he says it again, the damning designation. “Four-F. Unfit for service.”

“I’m sorry.”

Halev drinks his coffee, eyes downcast, then says, “He means to kill every Jew on earth. He means to exterminate us. Is exterminating us.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to exaggerate,” Rainy says. “The truth is bad enough. Jews are being dispossessed, impoverished, dying on forced marches to concentration camps. That’s enough.”

“Rainy.”

“What?”

“It’s not an exaggeration.”

There is a certainty in his tone. A sincerity and openness and pain in his eyes.

“You have proof?” she asks.

Halev shrugs. “Your family must know Jews in Germany and Poland. You must have family. Are you getting letters from those people?”

Rainy recalls the way her father pulled her aside to tell her that Cousin Esther has stopped writing. “I don’t know.” That is not an easy phrase for her to speak.

“No one is getting letters. Not in my circle, and we all have relatives. Relatives but no letters. Not from places the Germans have taken, anyway. A silence has descended on our people in Europe.”

Rainy tells herself this is paranoia. She tells herself that the Germans have simply cut off all communication. But in light of her father’s identical story, she is not so sure she’s right.

Not at all sure.

“So what are we to do?” she asks.

Now he grins. “Two things. First, this.” He taps two fingers on the stripes on her shoulder. “And also, you should come to a meeting.”

“A meeting? I do hope you’re not going to tell me you’re a communist.”