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I dismount my bike.
Johann steps out of the barn, his expression winter-storm dark. The pistol grasped in his hand is pointed at me.
“Where the hell are they?” Johann’s tone isn’t just angry. The anger is laced with accusation. His eyes burn with loathing, with despair, with grief, and my chest tightens, forcing air from my lungs.
A shudder grips my body. I have been in the presence of Nazis, and I have been closer to SS soldiers than I ever want to be again. But the fear I felt then is nothing compared to now.
This—Johann’s reaction—is so much worse.
“I-I can explain.” The words are sand in my throat, rough, crumbling apart. “W-we should go into the house.”
Unless Jacques has called it a day earlier than normal—which I have never witnessed him do—he will be working in the vineyard. He won’t be inside.
Johann nods but keeps the gun trained on me.
I wheel the bicycle to the barn, lean it against the wall, and walk to the farmhouse with Johann following behind. I can only hope that is a positive sign. He is willing to listen to what I have to say. Whether he will believe me is another matter.
Inside the house, I look at him to see where he wants to conduct this interrogation. In retrospect, I should have taken him to the barn. That way if he did shoot me, he wouldn’t get blood all over Jacques’s possessions. The consequence of my actions wouldn’t be a stain on the furniture.
Johann appears to consider his options for a second and points to the drawing room with the pistol.
I sit on a chair, a bergère I hope doesn’t have too many memories for Jacques attached to it. Johann doesn’t sit. He stands several feet in front of me and nods for me to talk.
“They’re safe.” For now. “I can’t tell you anything.” I gesture to his uniform with the wave of my hand. “It’s not safe for them or for you if you know where they went. I will tell you that I’m trying to get them as far away from Hitler and his deportation camps as possible.” I release a long shaky breath. “Oskar asked me to give this to you.” I remove the old Austrian coin from my pocket and hand it to Johann. “He said to tell you it is a lucky coin. He said you would know what that means.”
Johann inspects the coin, and a small smile twitches on his mouth. But the smile isn’t directed at me. It’s for whatever memory is linked to the keepsake.
He lowers the gun to his side. “Are they really safe?” His voice is scratchy, and my heart squeezes into a grenade-sized lump at what he must be thinking.
No one is safe as long as Hitler is in power.
“Are they safe? Or is that wishful thinking?” The emotion in his voice is gone. His tone is like marble, hard and cold and dangerous when wielded as a weapon.
“To be honest, I don’t know. Nothing is predictable. We can only hope it will be all right.” My breathing is shallow as I wait for him to strike. My SOE training didn’t prepare me for something like this. It prepared me to be tortured, to die for my country. It didn’t prepare me to die because I was trying to save a family from possibly being murdered. “I promise you everything is being done to protect them. I can’t tell you where they will end up because I don’t know those details either. That is to keep everyone involved safe, including you.”
“Will you be able to tell if they are all right? Or will we never know what happens to them?” Some of the hardness has faded from his voice.
“If I had a radio, I might find out when they arrive at the destination.” I am hardly going to admit I have one hidden in the house. Jacques and I listened to the BBC France news while Johann is away. Radios are forbidden in the country. To be found with one could result in death.
Johann sits in the wingback chair across from me, places the pistol on the small table next to him, and drops his head into his hands, elbows on his knees. “God, this is all my fault,” he says in German.
He has lost so much due to this war. I still have my sister and friends back home. Although that might change if Hitler cannot be stopped.
God, I miss Hazel. All I want right now is to hear my sister’s voice. To hear about her day and about her dreams once the war is over. Are Hazel and Charles expecting their first child yet?
Is Charles still alive?
During those infrequent times when I’ve been able to listen to BBC France, I’ve heard about RAF pilots who have been safely returned to England after their planes landed in enemy territory. But there is no way for me to know if Charles is one of them, or if his code name was mentioned during the many times I couldn’t listen to the reports.
The anger I felt towards him, the sting of betrayal he caused—none of it exists anymore. It has faded. Disappeared. It took too much energy to be angry at him and Hazel. Energy I need to survive this war.
And maybe Hazel was right. I hadn’t loved him as much as I thought I did.
The sound of an engine pulling up to the house alerts me to approaching danger. My head jerks up.
Johann jumps to his feet. “Upstairs. Now.”
I don’t argue. I run up the stairs to my room and shut the door. I press my body against the wall and listen to what’s happening downstairs. The front door opens and closes, but I don’t hear anything beyond that.
