December 1944
He had been a week at a concentration camp on the outskirts of Trieste, where he had recently been commissioned as a commander. It was a posting he didn’t like, that he saw no future in. One of the previous commanders had been killed in a partisan ambush, and the one just before Erich had been called away to another temporary commission elsewhere. He hoped it wouldn’t be for too long. The mostly Jewish prisoners were badly malnourished, with enough food only to keep them still working. He did not like to see them from his office, but occasionally he had to officiate over duties, executions.
Though recently, he had become more lenient, not quick to order the deaths of so many, perhaps having foresight that it would mean little in the months to come. He had taken rooms near the camp so he did not have to spend so much time with his wife.
Monique did not cook well. She did not like to look at him, and when she did, she rattled him, just the look of her reminding him that he ended the agreement, that perhaps he was weaker, for a moment. He was also thinking lately that she knew too much about him. She could potentially ruin him. But in the meantime, while he was tied up in Trieste, she did not figure greatly in his thoughts. And she had their daughter to keep her occupied. It was something that he must change once the war was finished, if Monique and Genevieve made it out alive. If they didn’t, he would live with that, too. He could put the past behind him when it was time.
There had been very little good news. Just south, the Allies had taken Florence and were still plotting and gaining strength. To the west, Paris had been taken back, and in the East, there was the monumental task of holding the Soviet line. With the help of Allied-supplied munitions, the Soviet forces were making dangerous strides across Poland and into Germany. And Georg was in the thick of it on the Eastern Front. Erich had thought a lot about him. He checked regularly on deaths. He wrote to Georg only recently and heard nothing back. Not that it surprised him. Trains and vehicles were sometimes sabotaged, and mail did not always get through.
From his windows he could see the alpine hills where trees were lined up like marching soldiers, weighed down with the fall of snow, like military backpacks. It had been a place to hide for the Italian resistance. Many were caught there in the summer, and by the autumn hundreds had been executed. There were still many out there, a fact that strangely didn’t bother him anymore. There were other things to worry about.
At his desk, he sat down to write a reply to his father. Horst had sent a letter asking for him to return to Berlin. There was urgency in this request, as if he would not get another chance. He put down his pen. The room was uncomfortably warm in contrast to the bitter winds outside, the same winds that whistled through the prisoners’ cells and ruffled their garb that was by then little more than threads.
He opened mail and several telegrams that had just been delivered. He read that Himmler had reached the end of the Final Solution and he had passed the final Jews through to Poland to the camps of no return. They were unlikely to survive the camps. Perhaps prolonging their lives, he conceded, was cruel, and fueled the belief that there was light at the end of a very long tunnel. Death was quicker, the future not bleakly filled with lice, disease, and hunger. Sometimes when he looked at the prisoners, he would picture his sister in a camp somewhere, dressed in prison garb, her head shaved. He had learned that she had been sent to Sachsenhausen just north of Berlin.
He read the first transmitted message. It was a formal letter advising that his father had died in an accident, but due to emergencies and lack of men in the field, to please delay a return to Berlin to organize the funeral. His body would be cremated. He didn’t recognize the name at the bottom of the letter, though it was on Goebbels’s letterhead. He had become more aware of unqualified people being placed in important positions, the führer becoming more erratic with decisions on human resources.
The second letter was from his mother—dated a week after his father’s letter—to advise that his father had “died unexpectedly” at his desk at the Reich office. Erich had to read the letter again, to look at the secret message beneath the words, detail that she would never put in writing. She did not give an explanation, but she didn’t have to. He had known that his father had not been well. He had learned from his mother of behavior that did not befit such a great mind. That he was less articulate, sometimes rambling. And he often went to visit Claudine in Sachsenhausen, and had been reprimanded for the visits by others from his office. His mother had tried to tell Horst that their daughter was lost to them, and there were greater causes, but he had not listened; she wrote this in a hand that was unsentimental, rational.
His father, his mother informed him, had not left a letter of explanation (a coded message for a much more sinister death), something that disappointed Erich. He would have liked some recognition from him at the very end at least, some encouragement and message of pride in Erich’s achievements.
He wrote back to his mother, suggesting she and his siblings return to the country house and when the war was over he would meet them there.
He has perhaps damaged our name, his mother had written also, the words icy, bitter. But you must fix all that now. You must be what they want you to be. You must not take prisoners. You must fight to restore your father’s name.
Erich folded the letters neatly before putting them into the fire.
There was a knock at the door.
“Enter.”
His lieutenant advised that there was a truck filled with Italian resistance members.
Erich briefly looked into the fire and could hear his father telling him that life is a process that we must endure, that it is important to respect and honor our leaders, but within reason. But above that he could also hear his mother telling him to be strong, to ignore the false messages of hope—to forget about hope. Hope is weakness. It is the doing that will get him places. Take him where he should go, enable him to be who he should be.
“Shoot them all,” he said calmly.
“Yes, Herr Steiner.”
There was no more time. They must win the war here at least. They must kill every single person who was betraying them. He would not wait there while the enemy edged closer.
Present-day 1945
Erich turns to Rosalind and asks her to get the medicine bag from the house. She nods as if she has already seen this coming. She is calmer now and exits the barn.
“Where did you get it?”
Erich is talking about the photo of Monique that he has thrown in Stefano’s lap.
“I found it in the room upstairs.”
“The photo is recent, taken with Genevieve. There was no such photo in the house.”
“Perhaps you missed it.”
Erich watches him. Stefano’s expression doesn’t change. There is nothing that gives the lie away. He is used to scrutiny; he is used to lying. And he is lying. Erich would have seen the photo, destroyed it.
“Where did you get it?”
Stefano looks down, very briefly. “I took it from Rosalind’s place. I liked it. Bella ragazza . . . She is very pretty. What does it matter? When Georg was upset the other morning, I thought it would pacify him to see it. Monique seems to have that effect.”
Stefano shifts slightly, swallows hard.
“Did you meet the female prisoners in Sachsenhausen?”
“We were separate from them, but there were times when we spoke.”
“Did you meet a girl there called Claudine Steiner?”
Stefano ponders.
“Yes, a German girl. Fair. I met her briefly.”
Erich’s heart quickens, though he assumes the answer to be a lie. If his suspicions are correct, Stefano would have been told everything about him.
“Did you know her?” asks Stefano.