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Telling Charles was a very different matter. They were alone in Charles’s study at his own home. He had papers spread all over the desk, as if he intended to work all evening.
“How the hell do you know this, and not me?” Charles demanded.
“Is that what you care about?” Lucas asked incredulously. “That I heard before you did? Because I have a friend in Berlin who told me. It…” He stopped. Was Charles picking a quarrel because he couldn’t bear to face the truth—that Elena was in great danger? They might lose her, in addition to Mike. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He could not mention Peter Howard. Certainly not that he had gone to Berlin and failed to bring her back. “There’s nothing you can do, Charles.”
“Of course there is!”
“It will only draw attention to her, and that is the last thing she needs. When you’ve thought about it for a moment or two, you’ll realize that.”
Charles turned away, hiding his face. “You have no idea what it’s really like.” He was almost choking over his words. “Hitler’s turning into a monster. He’s lost all sense of proportion. The new police force he’s created is out of control. God knows what they’ll do to her if they catch her. We’ve got to find her! Get her out of there. They’re brutal. Looking for Jews has become an obsession.”
“I know,” Lucas admitted. Perhaps it was unwise, but he couldn’t lie to his son. Not now.
“No, you don’t,” Charles said bitterly. “Our man over there, Roger Cordell, tells me the truth now and then. They’ve built a huge camp outside Munich, at a place called Dachau, to keep suspected dissenters: Communists, Gypsies, Jews. The young men who missed the war are spoiling for a fight, to prove themselves, and they’ve only civilians to pick on!” He swung around to face Lucas. “God in heaven, what possessed Elena to go there? Do you know that as well?”
Lucas hesitated. He chose the lie. The truth would hurt and do no good at all. “Not for certain. I haven’t spoken to her, Charles, I only know they suspect her of something she can’t be guilty of.”
“Can’t she? There’s a sort of stubbornness in her…idealism…and she’s hopelessly naïve. I…” He stopped, unable to go on.
“Taking a sniper rifle and shooting someone?”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“That’s what she’s suspected of. I told you, it’s ridiculous. She couldn’t do such a thing, even if she wanted to. I’d bet anything she’s a rotten shot.”
“She’s not a shot at all! She’s never handled a gun!”
Lucas did not know what to do. He could not reach out and touch Charles, although that was his instinct. They had not bridged that gap in years. It would be unnatural now.
“Margot might!” said Charles. “She has all the courage in the world, and the temper, but not Elena.”
Lucas did not argue. Charles did not know his younger daughter at all. “I had to tell you, in case someone else did…before…before she’s safely home.”
Should he warn Charles not to reach out to Cordell? How could he explain that?
?
?Don’t get in touch with Cordell,” he said quickly, his mind racing. “They’ll be watching him. The embassy is the obvious place to look.”
“Yes, of course. I do realize that, Father. What a bloody mess!”
Lucas wanted to tell him it would be all right, but not offering platitudes was the one honesty he could afford him. “Yes, it is,” he agreed.
“Father…” Charles hesitated, but the look of urgency was so plain in his face, for once Lucas did not evade it.
“Yes?” He knew what Charles was going to say next. It had been inevitable for years.
“Just how do you know this?”
“I still know people in government.”
“I see…No, I don’t see.” He let out his breath slowly.
CHAPTER
