AllFreeNovel
Share Us
13
Elena woke up on Tuesday morning, and it took several moments for her to recognize where she was…in a hotel room in Berlin…and to remember how she had got there. It was the room Ian had booked for himself, when he headed here to stop the assassination of Scharnhorst.
She sat bolt upright, cold, still aching with tiredness and, above all, the deep, disabling pain of loss. She had made a promise to Ian to act. But she had managed to tell Cordell, so it would be all right.
She lay back again, still clutching the bedcovers around herself. She must get new clothes, clean ones, not crumpled and stained with blood. It seemed awful to just throw these away, but she could hardly keep them.
She would get up and dress, have breakfast and go buy decent clothes, dispose of the old ones in some street rubbish bin. A caterpillar turning into a butterfly! A flying beetle, more likely. She could go to the square where the rally was to be held and see if anyone had been arrested. There might be something worthy of a decent photograph. Maybe one she could sell to a newspaper back in London? The British press would not be likely to have a good photographer here. They did not know there was going to be an attempted assassination. That is, if there was? Cordell might have prevented it completely. But there was a good chance the authorities would want to arrest whoever was behind the plot. Hitler never wasted the chance to celebrate his victory over an enemy. A show trial! Blame the Communists. Or the Jews.
She accomplished all her shopping successfully, and returned to the hotel with her purchases, looking quite different. Her hair was washed and shining. She was dressed in plain navy, neatly tailored. She had kept her own shoes, because this was no time to try getting used to new ones.
She left again with plenty of time to spare, but already she saw people moving toward the square along the dusty, still shabby streets. They looked little different from when she had been here before, when her father was stationed at the embassy ten years ago, in 1923. Broken windows were replaced. There were new storefronts, here and there new paint, but pavements were not mended. Everything looked old, patched up rather than replaced. But this was what they did in England, too.
She moved with the thickening crowd and overheard snatches of conversation. It had a brittle sound to it. People were careful of what they said, knowing they could be overheard.
“Yes, wonderful! A real new start,” she heard over and over again. It was all statements; nobody seemed to be asking any questions.
On a street corner, two old men stood talking. Both had long beards and wore dark clothes. A couple of young men in Brownshirt uniform came swaggering along, glanced at each other, then changed direction and approached the old men, who did not move.
The young men stopped in front of them. “You are blocking the street!” one of them said loudly. “Get out of the way!”
“There’s plenty of room,” the old man with the longer beard replied. “I am not blocking your way.”
“You’re blocking my way if I say you are.” The young man raised his voice. “Move!”
“There’s plenty of room,” the old man insisted. Indeed, there was. If he were to move in the only direction left open to him, it would be into the gutter.
The Brownshirt lifted his arm to strike the old man. He was smiling. It was plain in his face that he intended to knock him over.
Movement in the crowd stopped. There was a sudden silence.
Now the old man was trapped. Which was worse? That the crowd watched his humiliation? Or that they all stood around as if it did not matter, as if it were in some way all right?
One woman of perhaps fifty stepped forward. “You can go around him,” she said to the Brownshirt. “You’re stronger and younger.”
The young man turned and glared at her.
She froze.
A woman of about twenty came forward and took the older woman by the arm, with all her strength, forcing her to step back.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she said to the young man. “She doesn’t understand. Please excuse her.” She pulled at the woman again, almost dragging her off balance, and the older woman yielded, perhaps to protect them all.
The Brownshirt looked at the old man, who stood without moving for another long three seconds, then stepped into the gutter and lowered his gaze.
Elena was so outraged that she was shaking, but she understood. You accepted your own humiliation rather than allow someone else to be beaten while you looked on, helpless to prevent it.
The two young men in uniform walked off, smiling.
Swine, she thought. But there was nothing she could do except stand there like everyone else, and then take a moment to steady herself and follow the increasing crowd toward the square, still trying to swallow her rage.
But as she reached the end of the street, busier now, people almost shoulder to shoulder, she knew it was not enough. She was ashamed of herself for watching someone else be needlessly and pointlessly shamed and, like everyone else, doing noth
ing. She had partly avoided confrontation because she wanted to protect her camera, but why else? Fear. If not the excuse of the Leica, there would have been something else, and she knew it.
The square was already tightly packed with people. There was not much noise, at least not yet. She looked around. There was a podium built for the occasion so Scharnhorst could be seen by everyone. In all directions there were brown-shirted guards. They all seemed to carry weapons: rifles and pistols, some holding cudgels as well. For show? To make them feel like men in control? Or would they use them against the crowd if they felt threatened? She knew the answer to that. Everyone did.
And who would report it afterward? Would the Brownshirts say that the crowd had attacked first?
