“And the rest of your family? Did they fail you, too?”
The words burn because Stefano is getting close to the truth. He looks again at the writing on the wall by his brothers and Claudine, then imagines them dead. Nothing but pencil marks to show they existed.
“The Russians were looking for me. I was on the Allied list of those wanted for war crimes. And Russian soldiers came to my house just after my mother had told me to run, to disappear. But I didn’t. I stayed nearby. I never planned to leave them. And my mother, thinking that I had gone and not willing to be interrogated or worse by Russian hands, shot my young brothers in the head, then shot herself. The Russians found their bodies first. I heard laughter, and they fired off guns, which sounded celebratory. When I came out from hiding in the wood and returned to the house, I found my mother at the top of the stairs. She was the only one alive.”
He feels light-headed and sits down. The room feels unbearably close to the dying sun, and the heat through the glass window burns. He hasn’t eaten anything or drunk recently. He is suddenly thirsty.
“I’m sorry,” says Stefano softly, and Erich feels again a touch of regret at the thought that he will shortly kill the man who, until today, he’d begun to feel an affection for.
“I have lost family, too,” Stefano says. “I’m not a spy, Erich.”
He doesn’t like the way he says his name, the intimacy with which he uses it, the way it clouds his judgment.
“Why does Rosalind hate you so?” asks Stefano.
He had taken his mother in his arms to Rosalind. He could not take her to the town, not himself. Rosalind had treated her as best she could. He owed her for that.
“She dislikes everyone.”
“She hated you because you were in love with her husband,” says Stefano, the softness in his voice gone.
Erich stands up to move closer, his fist clenched. “Who said that?”
“She told me.”
“Monique?”
“Rosalind.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Last night she told me.”
Erich is remembering Georg. Damaged now. Not the man he was before, tall, beautiful, arresting. A magnet for women, he remembers, when they first met, and jealous of those who looked at him.
His fist lands in Stefano’s face, but Stefano’s arm is suddenly thrust forward, and in the moment of confusion, Erich does not see the thin strip of steel that suddenly wraps around his neck. He feels a pinch of his skin and then something sharp cutting into his throat, tighter and twisting, forcing him backward and down to the floor. He reaches both hands for the weapon he can’t see at his neck, struggling to get his fingers beneath it to free himself. His feet slip from under him, and he is in Stefano’s lap, and he reaches up behind himself, one hand to grab Stefano’s wrist, the other to claw at his face. The wire is tightened again, and he can no longer breathe.
There are sounds that he realizes are coming from him, strange gargling noises. He kicks out suddenly with his legs and scratches at only air now, grabbing on to life.
And then looking up behind him, he sees Stefano’s face, the burning sensation of his gaze. As the room begins to fade around him, Erich sees that the bracelet of finely woven silver is missing from Stefano’s wrist.
March 1945
He ordered the execution of the last of the partisans who had been kept in the cells. They had already been tortured over several weeks, and the SS had gleaned nothing. The prisoners had not broken.
He was only ever there for the questioning. When they no longer answered his questions, he sat for light torture methods—breaking of fingers, threats of hanging, and water. The other methods came later, when he was no longer in the room. He left it to others to break the prisoners. It could take hours, days. He did not wish to witness the last moments of their lives.
But there were more important issues to deal with. Personal ones. It was pointless sitting there waiting for an uprising. He could smell it in the air; he could smell the fear from his own men, the nervous excitement of the prisoners in previous days.
Like a tidal wave, the Russians had washed over former German strongholds, had crossed the border of Germany, and were breaking apart the country to get to Berlin. He could see the end, they all could, but any Germans or Italians who admitted this, who took the time to speculate, were shot. He could see the fearful silence in the faces of the civilians also.
He looked across the yard at some labor prisoners pushing a trolley full of coal to warm the officers. The faces of these prisoners looked so shrunken, flesh starved of sustenance, until they were no longer distinguishable from one another. When they had been lined up for inspection, a job that was harder than it looked, they no longer resembled people, he thought.
He stared at the piece of paper in front of him. It was a single piece of information taken by one of his enforcers during an interrogation elsewhere, information that had come to hand from the interrogations of women, relatives of the active resistance. He had been given an address of a safe house, at his own address in Verona.
He was thinking of everything Monique had said to him, all the times she had lied, pretended that she was content, all the while betraying him. She was not bound by blood or love, but she had a duty like all German women, and this betrayal had the potential to humiliate him in the worst possible way. The war might soon be lost, but he wanted to leave at least without dishonor, without being stripped of his rank for failing to see the enemy that had been in front of him all this time.
He knew the German propaganda—that Germany would still win the war—was false. He did not believe in hope. Italy was about to crumble, and he would not wait around to see it.
He called in his lieutenant, who viewed him cautiously.
He knows, thought Erich. The descriptions of Noelle, her cover name, and the child; everything matched. And he felt a fool. He was renowned for getting under the skin of others, for finding out things without torture. He put people at ease, but at the same time they were scared of the control, of his calm, of the paradox of his cold stare and amiable tone. Yet there he sat, a subject of humiliation.
She had wronged him, and there would be consequences.
On his desk was a list of offensives and military placements, which included Georg’s unit. Erich would find his old friend one last time near the front lines.
“Send a message immediately to my wife. Tell her that I have moved and that I will send further word later. Then send a car to pick me up to take me north.”
“And who is the replacement?”
“It is you for the time being. Do not advise Berlin.”
He did not tell his lieutenant that he was not coming back. The mood in the camp had been more somber, the sound of bombing and air raids constantly sounding in the dead of night, and the reported losses of men growing daily. The lieutenant looked uncomfortable with this order and hovered unsurely.
“I will send word. Out now! Follow your orders.”
“Yes, Herr Commander.”
Erich pulled out papers from the desk, threw them in the fireplace, and watched them light. Evidence now was the newest enemy. Nothing to say what he’d done, what his wife had done. He then walked to his car, choosing not to call for his driver.