“I’d appreciate it if you let me out here, Daniel. You’ve been so kind. Lesser men would have held what I did against me forever. I’ve made mistakes, but I’m determined to live the best life I can from here.”
Berkel pulled the car over to the side of the road and turned to her. “It is my job to be suspicious at all times, Franka, and I remain so. It was fantastic to see you, but you are not just an old friend to me. You are a convicted enemy of the state, and while I think that almost every Aryan deserves a second chance, you will need to prove your loyalty to the Reich and to our beloved führer. I hope that we will never meet in an official capacity, but know that I am watching you.”
“As I said, I’m moving back to Munich within days . . .”
“And if that is the case, I wish you good luck, and I’ll say, Heil Hitler.”
“Heil Hitler,” Franka said. Her voice was weak. She put the backpack on. He got out to help her with her skis and handed them to her.
“I enjoyed seeing you, Franka. I hope you find the peace you’re searching for. Be careful who you mix with.”
She nodded, and he got back into the car. She stood still as the car left.
She felt violated, reviled, disgusted. The cabin no longer felt safe, or free from the Nazi regime she despised more than ever. With little daylight left, she had not the time to stand at the side of the road analyzing their conversation, and she was glad of that. She slipped on the skis again and started up the trail toward the cabin.
Surely the fact that she’d told him that she was moving back to Munich would prevent any intrusions by the Gestapo. But what if they were looking for the man? Someone could have seen his parachute.
The journey back up the hill, with the provisions on her back weighing her down, was far more difficult than the way down, and she had to stop halfway for a rest. The light of day was shrinking to nothing, the air darkening by the moment as the cabin finally came into view. Flakes of snow meandered down. The bedroom window was unlit. Franka wondered if the man was asleep. Would he finally begin to trust her now that she’d gone all the way into town on his behalf? How much longer was the Werner Graf charade going to last? How could she trust him when she knew he was lying to her about who he was? She took off her skis as she reached the front door, and shook them off before resting them against the house. The door opened with a creak. The light of the fire colored the living room walls orange and yellow, and she wondered how the man had stocked the fireplace with wood. When she saw him, he was sitting in the rocking chair by the fire, her father’s pistol in his hand, the barrel pointed at her.
Chapter 5
Franka let the rucksack slip from her shoulder and let it fall to the floor. The man stared at her and had the gun pointed at her chest. His eyes twitched in the half-light, his teeth gritted in pain. She cursed herself for not hiding the gun better. It was hard to imagine how he’d gotten out of bed, let alone made it all the way to the table by the front door.
“How did you get out of your room?”
“I’m asking the questions here.”
She saw his finger tense on the trigger.
“I have your painkillers. You must be in terrible discomfort. I have food too, enough for both of us for days.”
“I asked you a question. Why am I here? Why did you bring me back to this cabin?”
His ingratitude was vexing her, and she felt her temper, blunt as it usually was, beginning to rise. He was terrified—a stranger in a hostile land. She was thankful he hadn’t pulled the trigger as soon as she’d walked through the door. “Simple necessity. It was too far to the nearest hospital, and I had no way of getting you there.”
“Have you told anyone else that I’m here?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you asked me not to. You said even the local authorities knowing you were here might compromise your mission.”
He stared on, the gun still pointed at her. He didn’t seem to know what to say next.
“I told you, my name is Franka Gerber. I’m from Freiburg, and this was my parents’ summer cabin. They’re both dead now. My father died just a few months ago in a bombing raid on the city. My mother died eight years ago, of cancer.” She thought to tell him about Fredi but realized that she wouldn’t be able to without breaking down—she was close enough to that already. “I brought you back here because you needed help. You would have died out there. It is an absolute miracle I found you. There is no one else around here for miles.”
“Why are you keeping me here?” His voice quivered as he spoke, perhaps from the pain he was in, perhaps from something else.
She stared at the barrel of the gun. “Because I have no other choice. The roads are closed. I can’t get you down to the main road. It’s just not possible with your broken legs.” She pointed at the bag. “I have plaster of paris, gauze, and everything else I need to set them in casts. I can do this for you if you let me, but I need you to trust me.”
“How do I know you’re not an Allied agent, keeping me here to win over my trust?”
“I’m not an Allied agent. I’m just a nurse, from Freiburg.”
The man let the gun drop a few inches before raising it up again.
“I’m going to take off my hat and gloves now,” Franka said.
He nodded, and she did as she said, letting them fall to the ground. She inched toward him with her hands out, as if approaching a frightened dog.
“You have nothing to fear. I’m not working for anyone. I don’t have an agenda.”
“What are you planning to do with me?”
“I want to see you walk out of here. I don’t want you to tell me about your mission. You don’t have to talk. I just need you to trust me and know that I don’t mean you any harm.”
Franka tried to hide it, but her voice was shaking. She motioned toward the chair beside her. He didn’t refuse, so she sat down.
“Who are you going to turn me over to?”
He raised his hand to cough, never letting the gun waver from her.
“I’m not planning on turning you over to anyone—not unless you want me to.”
“There’s no phone here? No one for miles around?”
“We’re alone. You can shoot me now, but you’d be killing yourself too. It’s snowing again. We could be here for weeks. You won’t be able to travel, and you’ll die here. You need to trust me. I don’t mean you any harm.”
“Can you take me into the city?”
“No. You’d never make it. I barely made it myself, and I know these trails. I’ve been coming up here my whole life. You need to realize that we’re stuck with each other for a while. We need to trust one another. I must say I’m finding it difficult to trust you with that gun pointed at me.”
“You had no right to take my guns from me in the first place.”
“It was a precaution, nothing more. You had no need for them.”
“How do I know that?”
“Because if I wanted you dead I’d have left you out in the snow. You were hours from death when I found you.”
She could see his eyes yielding, perhaps to logic, or perhaps to necessity.
The man lowered the gun a few inches and closed his eyes for a second. “How do I know you’re telling me the truth, about any of this?”
“If I were some kind of Allied agent, how on earth would I have known you were going to land in the snow, in the middle of nowhere, in Germany? Why would I be here, in the mountains, waiting for you to drop out of the sky? Your theory is someone found you when you were unconscious and deposited you here to be snared by a woman?”
He closed his eyes but didn’t speak.
“Who else is here other than the Gestapo? The Gestapo doesn’t deal in subtlety and nuance. They don’t try to coax information out of their victims. If I were Gestapo, I’d be torturing you right now.”
“Why on earth would I be afraid of the Gestapo?”
“Well then, why won’t you let me report you to them?”