The Ragged Edge of Night(83)

The man gives no obvious sign of having heard, but he alters course and slows. He bends near the drainage ditch, as if he has found something of interest in the dust—a dropped coin, some other artifact intriguing enough to catch a fellow’s eye on a lazy day. He straightens and looks up at the sky, as if wondering whether rain might come. Anton could roar with the torment of waiting. Pohl takes his pipe from his pocket, fiddles with a box of matches, and strikes a single, pale flame alight and dips it into the bowl of the pipe, as if time is his for the spending. Anton can only tremble and pray. He has thought Detlef Pohl a friend—or if not a friend, then at least a reliable colleague. Has he misjudged the man? Have they shared too much information; does Pohl know too much? Perhaps the man has been on the wrong side all along—a sour note planted deliberately among the players in the Red Orchestra. Now he has come to seek Anton out, to exact the vengeance of the National Socialists. This is the way it all falls apart.

Pohl draws on his pipe. A tail of smoke drifts into the hedge and hangs here, overwhelming Anton’s senses with its rich odor. He can just see the man’s back—blocky shoulders, the gray wool of his tailored jacket—through the tightly knit branches.

Anton whispers, “Are we alone?”

“Yes.”

“What are you doing here, man? I thought you weren’t to—”

“Listen carefully, Herr Starzmann.” Pohl pauses to enjoy his pipe again, but despite his casual air, there is no mistaking the urgency in his voice. “I haven’t much time, and neither have you. I’ve taken a risk, coming to you—but I had to take it. I had to warn you.”

Anton goes cold, down to the rapidly numbing soles of his feet. “Warn me?”

“There’s a man in your town—a gauleiter.”

Anton waits. He says nothing. The quiver of M?belbauer’s reddening face replays in his mind. That day in the market square, when Anton stepped between Elisabeth and that despicable man. When he said to Bruno Franke, Say one more word to my wife.

“He suspects you are up to treason.”

“Of course he suspects. He’s the gauleiter.”

“Listen, my friend,” Pohl says. “He truly suspects you now. This goes beyond a gauleiter’s natural peevishness.”

“All right,” Anton says. “I’m listening.”

“You convinced this fellow, this gauleiter, to give up his Hitler Youth program in favor of some musical group.”

Anton tries to speak, but his throat has closed tight. Distantly, beyond the welling blackness of his panic, he feels a certain awe, amazement at what a network of eyes and ears can uncover.

“Your gauleiter has figured you out. He has realized you never intended this music program to honor the Führer, as you’d originally told him. He knows now that you only meant to keep the children of this town from participating in Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls.”

“How?” His tongue, dry and thick, can barely form the words. “How do you know all this?”

“I only know what I’m told.”

“Then how do they know—the ones who told you?”

The only plausible scenario plays itself out in Anton’s mind, rapidly, dizzying him with the plain, clear sense of it. M?belbauer himself told all of this to someone—spilled out his suspicions into some convenient ear or scrawled his foul report on a scrap of paper. It was only by chance that the ear M?belbauer chose feels friendlier toward Anton than toward the NSDAP.

Another chilling possibility occurs. Has Franke already sent his letters? Has he notified his contacts in the Party, convinced them that the sleepy village of Unterboihingen harbors an enemy? The Red Orchestra knows Anton has been compromised—so, then, they must have intercepted one of M?belbauer’s letters. But how many did the gauleiter send? Was there only one, or are there a multitude of messages working their way across Germany, riding along the black tracks of the railway? How many have reached their destinations already?

“I have a family,” Anton blurts.

“I know. You told me as much, once—poor fool. Your family is why I’ve come.” He puffs on his pipe again, an act so leisurely it makes Anton want to scream with rage, with blind despair. “I’ve come to tell you that you should stop the work immediately. No more carrying messages. Stay here and lie low. Most of all, do not cross the gauleiter. We will find someone else to carry on the work.”

“No.” He says it quickly, but with utter conviction. He doesn’t want to stop. He wants to be a part of this; he needs to be a part of it. The resistance is his calling, as surely as he was called to be a husband and father.

“Listen to me, Anton. The only thing that’s saving you now is the fact that this town is an utter backwater. Who in the Schutzstaffel can afford to pay attention to what goes on in Unterboihingen? This place means nothing, not when there are students in Munich painting “Widerstand” all over the buildings, and feral boys roaming the streets, hunting down the leaders of the Hitler Youth. There was a resistance march in Frankfurt—did you know? It didn’t last long, to be sure; I heard bullets were fired on the crowd, though I don’t know if anyone was killed. As long as these disturbances occur in the big cities, where a greater number of people may heed the message of resistance, the SS won’t trouble themselves with you. But make no mistake: as soon as our friends in black have cleared up their schedules, they will descend on this town and take you. They will execute you and your priest, both.”