“I’m going to need you to break the casts off. They’re strong. I didn’t feel any pain when I fought with that animal.”
“They’ll be looking for me now. You’re better off going alone. They don’t know that you’re here.”
“I owe you my life. You’re coming with me. I’m not leaving without you. I’d rather die trying than leave you behind.”
Franka took his hand off her face. “You should take my car. Your papers are good. You can try to slip across the border once you make it down there.”
“Stop. Understand this. I’m not leaving here without you. I’ll take you over my shoulder kicking and screaming if I have to, but we’re leaving together.”
“Okay.” She nodded. “We’ll go together.”
“Good, I need you.”
“And I need you.”
“It’s settled, then. The first thing is to get these casts off. Then we’re going to pack everything we’re going to require for our trip. They’ll be looking for us on the roads, so we’re going to have to go through the forests. It’s our only chance.”
“In winter?”
“We have no choice. We do have a head start, however. It’s almost nine o’clock. My guess is that it wasn’t unusual for our friend on the floor to stay out all night without telling his wife, so he likely won’t be missed for another twelve hours or so. But I’m sure he told someone he was coming up here. We have to scrub this place down and hide his body so that by the time they figure out what happened, we’ll be long gone. It’s about fifty miles to the Swiss border. How far could we get on the back roads if we drive through the night?”
“Halfway perhaps. It’s going to be difficult in the dark.”
“We’ve little choice. It’s too far to walk. We have to try and get as far as we can. That terrain is going to be rough. We might not make more than ten miles in a day walking.” John reached out and took her hands. “This is going to be incredibly hard, Franka, but we can do it together.”
“I know somewhere we can make for, where we may be able to stop off.”
“Franka, we can’t trust anyone . . .”
“My great-uncle, Hermann, lives in a village called Bürchau. It’s twenty-five miles or so south of here, between us and Switzerland.”
John shook his head.
“Hear me out,” Franka said. “He’s in his eighties and almost never leaves the house. I haven’t seen him in a few years, but he has no love for the Nazis. Both of his sons died in the last war. We’re going to need somewhere to lay our heads for a few hours. We can’t go through the night and start walking in the morning, not with your legs.”
“I’ll consider it.”
“We’ll drive every back road and trekking path big enough to take the car. We can get there by morning and then sleep.”
“What will you tell him?”
“That I got lost while hiking and I need somewhere to rest for a few hours. He won’t ask questions.”
“And if he does?”
“I’ll speak to him first. If he suspects anything, we’ll pass through.”
Franka went to the spare bedroom. The floorboards lay across the hole on the floor where John had jumped out. She brought him his other crutch, and on his way back to the room he shunted past Berkel’s dead body. Franka worked in silence, aware of how vital each passing second was. She cut the casts off his legs, using scissors to reveal the wizened, whitened flesh beneath. His legs looked thin in comparison with the rest of his body now, the muscles weakened. He stood up.
“As good as ever,” he said, but she wasn’t convinced. His legs needed another week, but time had slipped away like water through her fingers.
John felt like a child those first few seconds as he reveled in the freedom of movement that removing the casts had given him. The sight of Berkel’s bloodied body lying in the middle of the floor brought him back into the moment.
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.”