AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The man snapped to attention. “Yes, sir!”
Dizzy with the pain in her hand, throbbing now, she was led back to the car and pushed into the rear seat. The brush of her hand against the rough serge of the man’s uniform was almost unbearable. She felt waves of nausea wash over her as the door slammed and the car lurched forward.
This was a nightmare, and it was not going to stop. From here on it would get worse, until the end. She was not special, she was merely one of hundreds, thousands. She could die with courage, or without it. Did it hurt to die? Or was it just like a darkness that filled you until there was nothing else left?
She was jerked out of such thoughts by a violent collision, hurling her forward, then sideways until she landed on the floor. There seemed to be broken glass everywhere. The car was not moving. She tried to get up, but with her hands behind her back it was almost impossible. She was wedged. The driver’s side of the car was smashed in, the doors jammed.
The door on the other side opened and someone reached in for her, clasping her by the upper arms, easing her forward. Her burned hand knocked against the seat and she thought she was going to faint, but after a few desperate moments, she was hauled to her feet and found herself standing in the street, swaying a little, the fresh air reviving her.
The man who helped her was another German officer in uniform. More police! She had not been rescued, just changed captors. He was pulling her forward. There was blood on his arms, and on his face. He must have been driving the other car, the one that had rammed into them. He looked very white, his eyes frightened, as if he had been seriously hurt. And yet there was no visible wound.
“Come on,” he said urgently. “You’ve got to run!”
Run? Why?
“Come on! Hurry. We’ve only got moments.” He fumbled to unlock her manacles. How did he have the keys? “Come on!” Now that she was free and could move more easily, he dragged her into a shambling run along the street and to a corner.
There was a furious shout behind them. Gunfire! At least one of the two men in her car must have survived the crash.
They made it to the corner and just as they were about to turn into the next street, there was another shot. She felt nothing, except that the man holding her arm let go, almost dragging her with him as he collapsed to the ground. Beimler! It was Beimler who had questioned her before. The man with the photograph of his wife and daughter on his desk. They had spoken briefly about music.
She stopped and bent down to see if she could help him.
Someone pulled at her arm, ignoring the burn on her hand, now raging as if it were on fire.
“Come on! You can’t help him. He’s gone!” His voice was choked with grief.
She looked up to argue, and saw Walter Mann, tears on his face.
“Come on!” he shouted at her. Pulling her by force. “Don’t make it all for nothing!”
“But…”
“He’s dead, Elena. You can’t do anything except turn him over, so it looks as if his men shot him from the front.” He leaned forward quickly and heaved the body onto its back. Then he pulled her by the hand, so much it ached all the way through her. She thought that the driver of the car was dead, or too badly wounded to stand. The other guard must have shot Beimler. If so, he would appear around that corner any minute.
She obeyed Walter, running and stumbling another twenty yards, into an alley, where she banged herself against the wall in clumsiness. Then he commanded her to climb into a car that he had left at the curb, engine still running.
There were more shots in the street behind them. As the car roared away, a bullet shattered the rear window and left a jagged hole in the windshield.
CHAPTER
28
“We can’t just leave him!” Elena said, as the car swung out of the side street and into the mainstream traffic, becoming an anonymous black car, like any other.
“Yes, we can. He’s dead, Elena,” Walter said gently. “He chose to do the right thing, knowing what it would cost him. Those men know you didn’t have a gun, and neither of them is going to admit to shooting him, not when they realize who he is.”
“I know he interrogated me…Beimler…but who is he?”
“He’s pretty high up in the police.” There was a catch in Walter’s voice, more emotion than he knew how to mask. “A good man, caught in a bad part of the system.”
She felt a wave of emotion engulf her, too big for words. She had hardly known him, but she had seen the tenderness in his eyes as he looked at his child, and the trust in the little girl’s face. She knew only kindness. Now she would never see her father again. Would she understand, sometime in the years ahead, what he had done, and why?
It takes a great man to make such a choice. Would his wife understand? Elena was the beneficiary, but it wasn’t for her that he had died; it was for what he believed in.
The car swung onto a smaller road, and for several minutes neither she nor Walter spoke.
He was picking up speed, weaving the car through the traffic with considerable skill. It was late afternoon and cars were coming from every direction. She wanted to ask where they were going, but there was another question at the forefront of her mind. She had to know, but she was afraid of the answer.
