White Rose Black Forest(13)

A cuckoo clock sounded, the bell chiming nine times. The noise brought him back into the moment, and he found the strength to sit up once more. Gently, he continued lowering his legs down the edge of the bed, carrying the weight of his body in his arms and pushing out deep breaths through pursed lips.

“Control the pain,” he said in German. He made sure he did. Any slip now would be fatal. Maintain your cover. “You can do this.” His useless legs dangled off the side of the bed, and he was sitting now, facing the window. He looked down at the missing floorboards that the young woman had pried up. What had she been doing? Was she trying to make it as hard as possible for him to get to the window? He surveyed the room. There was nothing between him and the window, nothing to prop himself up on once he got there. Perhaps crawling to the door might be the better option.

He twisted his body around toward the doorway and let himself drop to the floor. He brought his hand down. Pain burned through him, but he gritted his teeth, taking as much weight as he could on the palm of his hand. He used his arms to pull himself along, dragging his legs behind him as he made it around to the door. He reached up to the handle. It was locked, but then, he’d known that already. It took him two endless minutes to drag his broken body to where she’d tossed his Luftwaffe blazer. He smiled as he reached into the breast pocket for the paper clips he’d put there after his final briefing.

The keyhole was set in a tarnished plate on the wooden door. He tried to peer through but could only make out the glow of the fire burning. Picking locks hadn’t been a specific part of his training. It was more of an extracurricular lesson his instructor had taught him. And he had excelled at it. He propped himself up, one hand on the knob, the other pushing the bent pin into the keyhole to turn over the tumbler. He missed it the first time. Seconds later he heard the click as the tumbler came off. With a turn of the knob, the door fell open.

The fire blazed. A stack of wood stood beside it, and above sat a mantelpiece with porcelain trinkets and a radio. A spot of wallpaper was less faded than the rest, signifying a missing picture. As he looked around the room, he realized that several pictures had been taken down. An empty rocking chair lay still beside the fire, with an old threadbare couch alongside it. The entrance to the kitchen was on his left, and the flickering light told of another fire she’d set in there. His backpack was sitting in the corner next to a bookshelf, and he wondered why she hadn’t tried to hide it. Maybe there was no reason to hide it if the Gestapo men were probably on their way here right now. The cabin was silent, no sounds at all apart from the popping wood in the fireplace.

He dragged himself over to his backpack on his forearms, reached into it, and pulled out a change of clothes, maps, and a flashlight. Both his pistols were gone, but he didn’t waste time wondering where she’d stashed them. Instead, he sat up against the wall and reached back inside. His papers were intact; his Luftwaffe paybook, his leave papers, and his travel orders were all properly rubber-stamped, signed, and countersigned. And in front of him, not thirty feet away, was the front door.



It took Franka thirty glorious minutes to reach the bottom of the valley and the main road into town. It had been cleared enough to let cars through, with the snow piled up at the side of the road on either side.

“National Socialist efficiency,” she mumbled to herself.

Five minutes passed before a truck stopped to pick her up. A Wehrmacht soldier waved her to hop on board as he ground to a snowy halt. Franka stiffened but had little choice now. It might look even more suspicious if she didn’t take the ride. She tucked her skis under her arm and tramped up toward the door the soldier had left open for her.

“Good day, Fr?ulein,” the soldier said with a smile. “Climb on board. I’m going all the way to Freiburg.”

“That would be wonderful, thank you.”

She climbed into the passenger seat, doing her best to return the soldier’s smile as she closed the door behind her. He was young, no older than twenty-two, even younger than she was.

“What brings you into town on a day like this?”

“A shopping trip. I didn’t expect this weather. We’re snowed in and running a little low on supplies.”

He glanced across at her longer than was comfortable, and the truck veered toward the curb before he righted it.

She decided not to comment on the young soldier’s driving skills. “I haven’t used these skis in years. I’m glad you picked me up.”

“My pleasure, Fr?ulein.”

She did her best to humor him as he talked and talked, all the way into town. She told him nothing about herself, deflecting every question. It was a skill she’d honed over the years. She had it down to a fine art.

The snow-covered hills around the city came into view first, followed by the roofs and spires, coated with white. From a distance Freiburg looked like any medieval town in Europe. However, like everywhere else in Germany, Freiburg had changed under National Socialism. The Allied bombers hadn’t rained destruction upon Freiburg like they had upon Hamburg, Kassel, or Dresden. Indeed, there had been only a few minor bombing raids on the city, but somehow that made the loss of her father even more severe. What had been the point of that raid in October? She wondered if the pilot or the bombardier ever thought about who they were killing when they dropped the bomb on her father’s apartment block as he slept. Were they even aware that they’d killed civilians? Would they even care? Somehow she doubted it. She felt her body tensing. They would never know the kind, gentle man they’d taken from her.