event of attack bombings, hostage situations, and the like. Not cold bodies of old women with swastikas carved into their foreheads.
Then she checked BRI's files, but no Herve Vitold came up. She spent two hours logging into all government branches with corresponding security.
If Vitold was who he purported to be, then Aimee was Madame Charles de Gaulle, God rest her soul. She found no one named Herve Vitold existing in any data bank.
Friday Evening
T HE GRAVELLY VOICE DIDN'T sound happy.
"Consider this an order, Hartmuth. The chancellor is very set on this item of the trade agenda."
Hartmuth kept his voice level. " Jawohl. I've said I'll review the adjunct waiver proposal before I decide."
He clicked off. Briefly he wondered about Bonn's reaction if he didn't sign the agreement.
Hartmuth wearily set his briefcase down on the Aubusson carpet, collapsing into the recamier's brocade. All the rooms were furnished in authentic antiques, yet they were so comfortable, he thought. This silver-and-silk-threaded pillow was familiar, like the kind his mother embroidered on winter evenings long ago.
But that world had been shattered out of existence. Setting his stockinged feet upon the pillow, he lay back exhausted and closed his eyes.
Yet he couldn't sleep. He relived the journey, the one in which he returned to his father's home on the outskirts of Hamburg. Of ninety-one thousand taken at the defeat of Stalingrad he'd been one of the five thousand Germans limping back after the Siberian work camps.
At the end of the muddy road, rutted with bomb craters, he'd recognized the blistered paint and blown-out windows. Entering the doorless shell, now empty and deserted, he'd seen that even the fireplace bricks had been taken. He shuffled to the back, looking for his fiancee, Grete. His family had arranged their betrothal while they were in the Gymnasium, before the war.
A steady chopping and then a sound of splintering wood came from a dilapidated outbuilding in the crisp, bitter air. Red-faced, her breath frosty on a chill March afternoon, Grete was chopping down the back garden shed for firewood, using a rusty ax. She clapped a cracked and bleeding hand over her mouth, stifling her cries, and hugged him.
"You're alive!" she'd finally managed to say, her voice breaking with emotion. "Katia, Papi is here. Your Papi!" Grete said, shivering in the icy wind.
A child, wrapped in sewn-together burlap sacks, sat in a nearby wheelbarrow. Oddly, he felt no affection for this hollow-cheeked, runny-nosed creature with yellow ooze dripping out of her eyes. The baby had been playing with a warped photo album and his father's violin bow, all that remained of his family. Grete assured him proudly that Katia was his, born of their coupling on his last furlough in 1942. Yes, he remembered that. He'd been so anxious, after his fiancee's doughlike legs and desperate embrace, to return to Paris and Sarah.
He knew Katia was his and he resented her. He wished he didn't. Guilt flooded through him for not wanting his own child.
Because of Katia he knew he'd have to stay and take care of them, marry Grete, and keep his promise. She deserved it, for bearing his child, protecting the house. She told him herself what had happened to his parents.
"Helmut, the snow hadn't melted by April and Muti and Papi couldn't stand to see Katia shiver so badly. They decided to investigate a rumor about black-market blankets in Hamburg. Only one tram was left running, painted white and red to resemble medical transport," she said. "I'm sorry." Grete put her head down. "I'm sure they didn't feel a thing, Helmut. We saw yellow-white light." She pointed beyond the muddy, rutted road. "After the explosion, smoke billowed into the sky and a rain of little red slivers fell on the snowy field."
He wondered if she was telling the truth or was the truth too painful to tell? It sounded like the explosions in the Siberian oil field where he'd been a POW. Working at the camp
Then she checked BRI's files, but no Herve Vitold came up. She spent two hours logging into all government branches with corresponding security.
If Vitold was who he purported to be, then Aimee was Madame Charles de Gaulle, God rest her soul. She found no one named Herve Vitold existing in any data bank.
Friday Evening
T HE GRAVELLY VOICE DIDN'T sound happy.
"Consider this an order, Hartmuth. The chancellor is very set on this item of the trade agenda."
Hartmuth kept his voice level. " Jawohl. I've said I'll review the adjunct waiver proposal before I decide."
He clicked off. Briefly he wondered about Bonn's reaction if he didn't sign the agreement.
Hartmuth wearily set his briefcase down on the Aubusson carpet, collapsing into the recamier's brocade. All the rooms were furnished in authentic antiques, yet they were so comfortable, he thought. This silver-and-silk-threaded pillow was familiar, like the kind his mother embroidered on winter evenings long ago.
But that world had been shattered out of existence. Setting his stockinged feet upon the pillow, he lay back exhausted and closed his eyes.
Yet he couldn't sleep. He relived the journey, the one in which he returned to his father's home on the outskirts of Hamburg. Of ninety-one thousand taken at the defeat of Stalingrad he'd been one of the five thousand Germans limping back after the Siberian work camps.
At the end of the muddy road, rutted with bomb craters, he'd recognized the blistered paint and blown-out windows. Entering the doorless shell, now empty and deserted, he'd seen that even the fireplace bricks had been taken. He shuffled to the back, looking for his fiancee, Grete. His family had arranged their betrothal while they were in the Gymnasium, before the war.
A steady chopping and then a sound of splintering wood came from a dilapidated outbuilding in the crisp, bitter air. Red-faced, her breath frosty on a chill March afternoon, Grete was chopping down the back garden shed for firewood, using a rusty ax. She clapped a cracked and bleeding hand over her mouth, stifling her cries, and hugged him.
"You're alive!" she'd finally managed to say, her voice breaking with emotion. "Katia, Papi is here. Your Papi!" Grete said, shivering in the icy wind.
A child, wrapped in sewn-together burlap sacks, sat in a nearby wheelbarrow. Oddly, he felt no affection for this hollow-cheeked, runny-nosed creature with yellow ooze dripping out of her eyes. The baby had been playing with a warped photo album and his father's violin bow, all that remained of his family. Grete assured him proudly that Katia was his, born of their coupling on his last furlough in 1942. Yes, he remembered that. He'd been so anxious, after his fiancee's doughlike legs and desperate embrace, to return to Paris and Sarah.
He knew Katia was his and he resented her. He wished he didn't. Guilt flooded through him for not wanting his own child.
Because of Katia he knew he'd have to stay and take care of them, marry Grete, and keep his promise. She deserved it, for bearing his child, protecting the house. She told him herself what had happened to his parents.
"Helmut, the snow hadn't melted by April and Muti and Papi couldn't stand to see Katia shiver so badly. They decided to investigate a rumor about black-market blankets in Hamburg. Only one tram was left running, painted white and red to resemble medical transport," she said. "I'm sorry." Grete put her head down. "I'm sure they didn't feel a thing, Helmut. We saw yellow-white light." She pointed beyond the muddy, rutted road. "After the explosion, smoke billowed into the sky and a rain of little red slivers fell on the snowy field."
He wondered if she was telling the truth or was the truth too painful to tell? It sounded like the explosions in the Siberian oil field where he'd been a POW. Working at the camp
Similar Books
