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“I expect you’ll need coffee.”
“That would be wonderful. And we’ll take it in the courtyard, thank you, Aunt Adele,” Jürgen said quietly. Adele and Mayim whispered as they walked down the hallway, leaving me alone with my husband.
“The courtyard?” I said, protesting. “You need to rest.”
“I am tired,” he admitted, which seemed the understatement of the century. Even so, he forced a smile. “The sunlight on my face will help to wake me up.”
We sat on the wrought iron chairs in the courtyard. Mayim brought a tray out and set it up in front of us, with rye bread and Adele’s black currant jam, and coffee so strong I could smell it as she stepped out of the back door.
Once she was gone, Jürgen slipped his arm around my shoulders and drew in a deep breath, as if he were breathing me in.
“They knew we were talking about leaving. That’s why they took me. My options are limited but simple. I’m alive and I work for the rocket program...or...” He broke off and I swallowed hard. “It’s like I said last night. They need me too much to let me walk away.”
Jürgen released me gently and poured himself a cup of coffee. He sipped it gingerly, then touched his swollen eye socket, wincing.
“They said it sends the wrong message to the public if a senior employee like me associates with Jews.”
“Well,” I said, trying to stay calm. “We can just—”
“Sofie, she has to go. We have to erase her from our lives. That’s what they said.” His voice sharpened with disgust. “Erase her.She’s like your sister, and that means she’s like mysister. She’s a part of our family.”
“Wecan’t,” I choked out, stricken.
“We’ll be an example to the public one way or another. Do you understand what that means? It means if we aren’t an example of how to shun a Jewish friend, we’ll be an example of what happens to people who don’t. I don’t know how we survive if I lose this job, let alone if...”
“I wondered about the timing of this,” I whispered. “Mayim thought maybe Dietger was outside the window.”
“They repeated back to me what you and I said last night,” Jürgen said. “There’s no way Dietger would have heard us so clearly if he was outside. It was as though the Gestapo were in the room with us.”
“I checked the study this morning,” I said, shaking my head. “Surely if there was a microphone in there, we’d be able to see it?”
“Maybe not,” Jürgen said hesitantly. He glanced at me. “There was talk at Kummersdorf about a weapons designer who went rogue. They say he was caught because of a passive listening device in his office. The Gestapo were supposedly sitting in the next building listening to every word he said. I never took the rumors seriously until last night. Secret listening devices? So small that a person wouldn’t even notice them, so small that they can’t even be found? The very idea seems so fanciful. I figured the rumor was just more propaganda. It would suit the Gestapo for people to think they could hear us even in the privacy of our offices or our homes too.”
“But...there is nosign of a device in that room. Could they really have invented invisible microphones that don’t even need electricity? There must be another explanation.”
“If you told an electronics engineer that I have reasonably reliable rockets firing on a regular basis, he’d probably say that’sabsurd. For all we know, someone else working for Army Ordnance has designed passive microphones that really could be hidden in plain sight. We have to act as if it’s true.”
“We have to assume they can hear everything we say? Everywhere we go?”
“It’s probably safe out here,” he whispered. “Maybe there are ways we can cover the sound of our whispers inside, but we’ll have to be careful. We’ll never know which rooms they are listening in on...” He motioned toward Adele’s building next door. “Or even which homes.”
“Dietger was there when you were taken last night,” I said, my throat tight. The existence of such a technology might explain his mystical ability to stick his nose in everyone’s business. I felt physically ill. “I tried to call Lydia after the Gestapo took you. I didn’t know what else to do. She didn’t answer, and this morning their housekeeper told me they unplugged their phones last night.”
Jürgen and I stared at one another, connecting the dots in the only way that made any sense.
“They knew you’d be calling,” Jürgen said finally.
“You were friends with Karl and I was friends with Lydia long before you and I even started dating,” I said. “If we can’t trust them, who can we trust?”
The answer was in my husband’s eyes. Moving forward, we would have to trust no one outside of our family.
“What do we do about Mayim?” he asked.
I could never bring myself to send Mayim away, but she couldn’t stay. We couldn’t allow our children to be brainwashed, but we had no choice otherthan to allow our children to be brainwashed.
I couldn’t join my thoughts together in a way that made sense.
“My love,” Jürgen said suddenly. I turned to him, and he gave me a gentle smile. The skin around his swollen eye crinkled. “Leave it with me, will you? Let me think on it.”
