Silver Stars (Front Lines #2)(99)

“And there was no plan of action, no plan of withdrawal after you completed your mission?” the captain, an older man named Fraser, asks.

“No, sir,” Rainy says tightly.

“I find that hard to believe,” Fraser says, and Rainy’s eyes flare, a warning.

“How then did you decide how to proceed once you had delivered the document? The very useful document,” Herkemeier asks gently, sending a significant look to Fraser, who takes the hint and sits back, looking abashed.

“I started walking. I knew the gangsters might come after me for alerting Father Patrizio. And of course the Krauts. The Germans, sir.” She turns away slightly, and it is only the stenographer who sees her grimace of hatred and for a moment the stenographer is so startled she loses her place. “I walked out of Rome, not knowing where to go, but I figured the countryside would be safer than the city.”

“You simply walked? But surely it was many miles?”

“There are plenty of refugees on the roads, sir, some fleeing Rome in expectation of our arrival. I kept to myself, spoke as little as possible, slept at night in barns or under bridges. Three days and I reached a little village called Genazzano.”

Herkemeier snaps his fingers, and Fraser unfolds a map. “Here it is, sir, almost due east of Rome.” The captain points.

“My God, that must be forty miles!” Herkemeier says.

“Yes, sir. I hadn’t eaten much, and the countryside was picked bare. I had to steal a chicken from a farmer. Then I found a cave. And I got sick, and some children found me . . .” Her voice trails away as she remembers the chicken. She’d wrung its neck, a far more difficult task than she’d imagined. Then she’d made a mess of butchering it, using a sharp-edged piece of tin roofing as a knife.

“Anyway, some sisters, some nuns, took me in for a while until I was better. But I couldn’t stay there without endangering them, so I walked until I found an abandoned farm. I meant to wait there until our forces arrived.”

“Yes, well, our forces are all hurry-up and very little planning, I’m afraid,” Herkemeier says with savage disapproval. “Rather like your mission.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Please go on, Sergeant,” Herkemeier says with a frown of worry.

“I guess someone gave me up,” Rainy says. “One night a staff car pulled up. I ran, but . . . but not fast enough.” Then, feeling obscurely as if this was disappointing, added, “I shot at one of them. But I missed, at least I think I did.”

Should she tell them that her last conscious act had been to reach for her suicide pill? Would that help or hurt? Would she seem mad? Unstable? Unreliable?

Was that what she wanted?

Home to New York. Home to my father and mother. Home to see Aryeh and Jane’s baby, my niece. Home to Halev. Food. Warmth. Safety.

“What happened next?”

“Well, sir, I wasn’t raped at least, but they beat me. Fists and rifle butts that first time. I think it went on for a while. They were angry. Very angry.” She shook her head, trying to refocus. “I woke up in the cell where the soldiers found me.”

“You were weeks in Gestapo headquarters,” Herkemeier says softly.

It’s his kindness that sets Rainy’s chin to quivering. Tears flood her eyes and spill down her cheeks. At the same time her hands are clenched painfully and her teeth grind together and her breathing becomes ragged as she fights down the urge to sob openly.

“Yes, sir,” she manages to say.

“They questioned you—”

“I gave them nothing!” It’s a scream, a scream of rage, mountainous, vast, impossible rage. Fraser jumps in his chair, but Herkemeier never takes his soft, concerned eyes from her.

“Name, rank, and serial number?” the captain suggests.

“No.” Rainy stretches the word into an animal growl. “They’d have known Schulterman is a Jewish name and then . . . I guess I thought things would be even worse then, but also they didn’t expect it. See, they thought I told them the truth, and I didn’t, you see, I held it back, and I held it all back, I lied and lied, and it is so hard to keep the lies straight, see, Colonel, keep the fugging lies straight—that was the hard part, because you can’t sleep and you just hear the screams and you see the men shot down, bleeding, and . . .” She brings herself up short, painfully aware that she sounds crazy, that she sounds . . . emotional.

With great effort Rainy finds a version of herself, an earlier copy of Rainy Schulterman, a calmer, dispassionate, self-controlled version. As if she is an actress playing a role, she steadies herself and says, “I had no useful information I could give them. I fabricated things to let them think they were getting somewhere.”

“I believe that’s enough for now, Sergeant,” Herkemeier says gently.

Rainy shoots to her feet, wincing at the innumerable bruises that stiffen her body. She salutes and prepares to about-face, but Herkemeier says, “Just one moment, Sergeant Schulterman.” He stands. “I will tell you that I have had and still have many doubts about the part I played in getting you into this. But by God, Rainy, I have no such doubts about you. Well done. Damned well done.” He returns her salute sharply, and she flees the room as sobs take hold.





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RIO RICHLIN—RAPIDO RIVER, ITALY