The Baker's Secret(61)

“You are see our army’s weakest element here,” Thalheim insisted. “Boys who have never thrown of a punch, and old soldiers sent to recover from the Eastern Front. All they do is fall in love with the sun and ocean and wine.” He wagged a finger at Emma. “And of you harlots. An army built to blitz grows bored easily. This is why we need discipline, to protect the fatherland’s high ideals.”

Something about that last phrase caused Thalheim to recollect himself, standing in a barnyard, pistol drawn, carrying on to the conquered about his nation’s supremacy, while the man smirked and the woman calculated her escape so visibly he could hear her wheels turning. “Also you never bathe, any of you. It is disgusting. Why am I speaking to you?”

“I’m finding it educational,” the Goat said. “Please continue.”

“Enough. The guns that belong to these bullets, where they are hidden?”

The Goat made a face. Perhaps it was intended to show courage or scorn, but to Emma it appeared as if he had finally become aware of his own scent.

Thalheim advanced on him. “Conversation is ended. Now you tell me location of guns.”

“Not in a hundred thousand years.”

Thalheim cocked his pistol. “I am out of patience. And I am due at the command post to report.”

The Goat made a little sweeping motion with his fingers. “Better hurry along, then.”

The captain waved his gun in the air. “You think this is some joke?”

“No.” The Goat shook his head. “Not in any way a joke.”

“You tell me of where guns are, or I shoot you now.”

“That’s it?” the Goat said, nearly a whisper. “This is the moment?”

“Tell, or die.”

“What the hell.” The Goat shrugged. “It is a small thing to leave an unhappy life.”

“Damn you stupid bumpkin fools,” Thalheim said. He raised the gun, holding it inches from the Goat’s nose. “Contemplate your mortality.”

Emma knew this moment too well, the horrible pause. But the Goat did not blink, nor scowl, nor squint at the pistol barrel. He only looked at Emma until their eyes met, his expression revealing the inner softness he had attempted to conceal all of his life, and with frank knowledge of what was about to happen to him, no escape, that softness contained their full history, the lifetime of it, how they had nursed while their mothers sat together, how they grew and fought and strove like brother and sister, and now in the moment when it all fell away, all of that time was reduced to this strange, powerful, tender sibling affection, one fraction of a second of recognized love, a thunderbolt, then the pistol’s trigger pulled, obliteration, the maroon splash of his existence on the barn wall and a body crumpled on the earth like one more ruin.

“Dear God,” Emma said, rushing forward but helplessly and too late. And Thalheim had not holstered his pistol yet.

“You were colluding with him.”

“No. I know nothing about these bullets.”

“I saw the look he gave you.”

Emma could not help seeing the Goat’s body, his legs in an awkward position. “It was old friendship. Not conspiracy.”

“What about the poison powder you put in the officers’ bread?” He stood squarely. “Explain.”

Those legs were distracting. She wanted to put them in a comfortable posture. “It wasn’t poison. I was—”

“I saw you gagging on it with my own very eyes. Also explain of the rations you stole, which made extra loaves when the Field Marshal was here. Don’t think I didn’t notice.”

“That was for my neighbors—”

“And the fuel you stole today?” Thalheim interrupted. He holstered his gun. “From an officer?”

“I can explain all of these things. But the Goat—Didier, that is—Didier and I grew up together.” Emma waved a hand at the hog shed. “Honestly, I had no idea about—”

“You lie.” He advanced on her.

Emma retreated, talking faster. “Our mothers were friends. We were schoolmates. I am not in the Resistance. I am just trying to keep people alive.”

He poked her chest with a hard finger. “I said you lie.”

“The powder for baking is not poison.” She backed into the barnyard wall. She was trapped, pinned.

Thalheim grabbed both of Emma’s arms and shook her. “Tell me the truth,” he shouted into her face.

But if he had intended to frighten Emma, or persuade her, it backfired because he had touched her. That contact brought forth the full measure of her disgust, rising like bile for this man who taken so much from her: food, home, loved ones, peace of mind for two years. But he had never possessed her obedience, and she was not going to oblige him now.

Emma looked down her nose and spoke in a voice dripping with contempt. “You are not worth lying to.”

His stung expression showed that her insult found its mark, but she had not expected him to answer it by punching her in the face. The force of it sent her spinning, her body a vine winding around itself though he grabbed her chemise before she hit the ground, jerking her halfway back.

“Your smelly friend was right,” he growled. “You are too proud.” And he smashed her forehead with the heel of his hand, snapping back her neck. It hurt spectacularly. She raised an arm to shield herself as the captain punched her face again.