White Rose Black Forest(67)

John went to the bedroom, then reached through the floorboards and grabbed his rucksack. He had blankets, a knife, matches, a compass, and more than enough ammunition. The Luftwaffe uniform lay at the end of the hole, and he folded it into the bottom of the rucksack. A concealed zipper revealed a fold of papers—his alternate German identity as a traveling laborer. John stuffed the papers into his pockets, though he hoped he would never have to use them.

“Papers?” Franka said.

“I won’t be using them. It’s safer to bring all signs that I was ever here with me.”

“What are we going to do about Berkel?”

It seemed strange to refer by name to the grotesque corpse lying in the middle of the floor. It was difficult to imagine it had once been her boyfriend, the virile Hitler Youth leader all the girls had stared at as he strode past.

“We have to hide the body as best we can.”

“Outside? Do you want to bury him? The ground is most likely still frozen.”

“We don’t have time for that. We need to leave as soon as possible. Help me with him.”

John led her back out to the living room.

“Let’s put him under the floorboards. He’ll stink up the place something awful, but we’ll be long gone by then.” John looked across at Franka and knew he shouldn’t have said that. “It’s the only place we can hide him easily. If they do a cursory search of the cabin, they might not even find him there. We only need a few days. Hiding his body could buy us some time.”

Franka tried not to look into Berkel’s open eyes, but they seemed glued to her every movement and followed her around the room.

Berkel’s body was still warm as she picked up his feet. John took his arms. She could see John trying to hide his grimace as he bore Berkel’s weight. Blood streamed onto the floor, leaving a trail into the bedroom. The hole was waiting. They threw him in. She took Berkel’s trench coat and tossed it into the hole on top of him. She felt no sorrow, not even for his wife and children. They would be better off in a world without him. She stopped just short of spitting on his body. She felt relieved that he was dead. It was a comfort to know he’d never hurt anyone again.

John motioned to her to help him, and after replacing the floorboards, they pushed the bed over them once more. Franka went to the kitchen for a bucket of soapy water, and they spent the next twenty minutes cleaning the floor until all the blood was gone, until the murder scene was sanitized. No one would care that she’d acted in self-defense. Franka Gerber was soon to be public enemy number one, and the hounds of the Gestapo would be unleashed. The Swiss border was their only salvation.

They had spoken little as they’d cleaned, but now John took her to the kitchen and sat her down at the table.

“We need to dispose of his car somehow. Is there anywhere we could hide it? Any lane or wood within a short distance we could dump it so it won’t be found until we were away?”

“There are places.”

John tossed Berkel’s keys on the table. “I’ll follow behind in his car.”

They put on coats and stepped outside. Franka pulled her scarf over her face. Even if they stopped off at her great-uncle’s house, they would have to sleep outside for at least one night. It hadn’t snowed for a week or more, and the days had warmed, but the nights were still deathly cold. Franka’s breath plumed out white in front of her as she looked up at the stars tinseled above their heads.

John searched through Berkel’s car. “Thank you, Herr Berkel,” he said.

“What’s in there?”

“A tent. It’s small, but it’ll keep the rain off our backs. A medical kit too. We can do this. We’re going to do this.”

Having stowed the tent and medical kit in the trunk of her car, Franka pulled away from the cabin. White light spiraled out from the headlamps, illuminating little more than the outline of the road and the trees that surrounded it. John had suggested keeping the lights off as they drove but relented; he must have realized that would have been suicidal. It was almost impossible to tell one place from another in the dark of night. The roads were clear but more for the use of sleighs and skiers. She didn’t dare go more than twenty miles an hour as she rummaged through her mind for hiding places she’d known as a child.

It took five minutes to reach the spot she remembered, a road that led nowhere, perhaps to a house that was never built. She stopped at the end and directed John to drive down a few hundred yards, then trudged after him to help scatter branches and leaves over the car. It was hard to tell how well they’d hidden Berkel’s Mercedes—the night hid almost everything—but they had little time. It would have to do. It was a mile from the cabin, and closer to the village, but no one came here. Not in winter anyway.

They walked back to the car in silence, only just able to make out where it was parked. Franka peered into the black beyond the tree line.

John cursed under his breath, his hand over his face. “We should have hidden him in the car. I wasn’t thinking straight in all that panic earlier.”

“Can we go back and get the body?”

“It’s too late. We’d waste too much time.”

“Surely under the floorboards in the house is a better place than stowing him in the back of his own car? The cabin is so remote.”

“We’ll have to hope so.”