The Children's War (62 page)

The other possibility was a city; he was more comfortable with that idea since he had an innate understanding of patrols and papers and life among the crowds. But what about the car? Could he sell it? The money would be enormously useful. Yet the mountains offered a hope of freedom and isolation. He could be alone, truly alone! He could leave the car in the woods and make his way on foot to civilization.

Suddenly he hissed at himself with exasperation. What was he thinking? He could never buy enough papers to cover his numbers! How could he forget that? Society would never be an option—he was marked for life! He sighed at the muddiness of his thoughts—was this the way he had been thinking all along? Or was it just fatigue? His vision had grown blurry, and his head ached with a dull roar. It was getting near dawn, and he was almost falling asleep at the wheel; he pulled out another cigarette and was surprised to see it was his last. An entire pack? No wonder he was so jumpy. He squinted and blinked in a vain attempt to focus his thoughts.

A nebulous panic began to develop as he realized he had reached that point in his plans beyond which he could not see. He had headed out of a fog into a fog with nothing but the path in between illuminated. He had not expected to get this far, and he had left Berlin in the sure knowledge that his destination had to be irrelevant, that as soon as he worried about it, he would be trapped into inaction.

He sighed. The mountains would be good. He would dump the car and start walking. Maybe then something would suggest itself. Live off the land? Try to find the Soviet border? Head for a village and seek help among the natives? Locate some partisans? Whatever. Surviving two or three more days might be the limit of what he could reasonably hope for. Three days of freedom; that was all he would ask for. It would be enough.

64

H
E EXITED THE PATHETIC
road that the vaunted autobahn had become and headed south deeper into the rolling hills toward the mountains that had emerged with the morning light. He passed through tidy Bavarian-style villages, each oddly accompanied by a miserable shantytown a kilometer or so down the road. The villages looked weirdly out of place, and he noticed on closer inspection that many of the buildings simply had Bavarian mountain-chalet façades stuck onto preexisting structures. The strange architecture, combined with the gray light of dawn, gave the entire region a surreal quality as though he had driven into a gingerbread nightmare.

People were already emerging from the hovels of the shantytowns and trudging-along the road toward the fields; they scuttled out of his way as he drove his car along the broken pavement. Peasant workers or slave laborers going to work in the fields: Poles, probably, or maybe Czechs or Slovaks if he had wandered across an old border. Or denizens of a work camp. Or possibly an entirely transplanted population. He wanted to stop and ask them some questions, but he noticed overseers nearby, so he decided not to risk their lives with his interest.

He studied them as he drove along. Despite the cold predawn damp, most were barefoot. The women wore heavy skirts and oversize blouses and had all tied their hair back with scarves; the men had tattered trousers and wore woolen caps. All touched their forehead or lifted their caps in an unthinking salute as he drove slowly past them. He tried not to wince as the gesture was repeated over and over—he had so hated doing that! Most did not look up at him. Some did though—their faces were a mask of oblivious exhaustion. Many limped; most had that malnourished and emaciated look that comes from a lifetime of hunger: the sunken eyes, the absent expression.

They looked weak, diseased, and inferior; their miserable existence condemned them to be exactly what their oppressors claimed they were—incapable of anything more than mindless physical labor. His heart went out to them; he knew what it meant to be robbed of so much, to be so oppressed that he became ashamed of the truth in the insults hurled at him. The times he had shaken with fever while listening to Elspeth berate him for his weakness. Or how she had petulantly ordered him to shut up when he coughed uncontrollably. Or called him stupid when he was too exhausted to think. The humiliation he had felt when his strength failed him as he lifted those countless drums! How he had bowed his head in shame when Karl had called him a cripple because the bones of his legs had been fractured. Or sneered that he stank from his long day’s labor. He wanted to stop and tell them: I’m not one of them, I haven’t done this to you!
But of course, he drove on in silence, ignoring the salutes, ignoring the occasional sparks of hatred that he ignited with his unwanted presence.

He left the workers behind as the car entered a woods and the last of the villages disappeared from view. He drove for miles with no sign of life anywhere along the road. The trees closed in and the road narrowed as it continued inexorably uphill. After a while he saw a smaller road off to the side, and on an impulse he turned onto that. He was forced to drive slowly as the rough surface of the road twisted and turned, heading deeper into the mountains. Miles passed without a single sign of habitation. Nothing, no one, just the road and the trees. As the car jolted around one particularly nasty turn, a small roadside shrine came into view. The sight shocked him—not that the statue that had sat upon its altar had been hammered into hundreds of pieces and the structure itself was pockmarked with bullet holes, but rather, that fresh flowers were lying at the base of the shrine.

Farther along, on his right, he spotted a small, rutted dirt track. It may once have been a logging road, but now it was clearly unused and almost completely overgrown. He forced the car onto the track and decided to proceed as far as possible. Once the car was stuck, he would cover it as best he could and abandon it. With luck, it would not be discovered until long after he had left the area.

The car continued to inch forward; after the first half kilometer, the track was in much better shape than it looked. It seemed that under all the brush and mud there was a gravel base that prevented the tires from slipping or getting stuck. He began to wonder if he should just abandon the car anyway since by now he was sure his absence had been detected and Karl would have discovered that his papers and car had been stolen as well. He imagined the initial confusion followed by Karl and Elspeth’s fury as they berated and blamed each other. He laughed quietly to himself as he saw their anger die down only as they realized they were hungry and there was no bread for breakfast. He could envision them yelling confused orders and struggling to determine who should do what and when to cope with all the morning’s routine before they would even think to call the police. He did not know, but would not have been surprised to learn, that Teresa swore to her parents that he had brought water to Gisela just before dawn, and that consequently, she was sure he had been in the house only an hour or two earlier. The authorities were notified accordingly, and Teresa smiled to herself at the farewell gift she had given him.

The vehicle plunged through some low-hanging branches. As the view cleared, a German soldier appeared pointing his automatic rifle directly at him. Shit! Where the hell had he come from? Had some border been crossed? Or had he stumbled into some secret military installation? Was that why it was so devoid of life? Damn! So close and yet . . .

His grip on the wheel tightened and he cursed quietly to himself. The car lurched to a stop and the soldier approached menacingly.

“Get out of the car!” the soldier ordered.

That suited him just fine—there was no way he could hope to escape in the car as the going was too slow. He noted that the soldier’s automatic rifle had slipped a bit and was now pointing at the windshield. He emerged and pointed his Luger at the soldier’s chest.

“Drop your weapon!” Peter commanded. He knew it was a mistake not to shoot the soldier immediately, but the boy was so young and looked so inexperienced that he decided to try to avoid having to kill him. The youngster stared at him in surprise and let the muzzle of his gun drop a bit farther so that it was nearly pointing at the ground, but he did not release his hold on it.

Although Peter was sure his absence had been detected by now, it seemed unlikely that this soldier in this remote location would be aware that his car was stolen or that he was an escapee. He decided to continue his masquerade as Karl. “How dare you interfere with a government minister on official business!” he barked angrily.

This did not have the desired effect of immediate apologies and docile obedience. Instead the boy’s face lit up as though he were privy to a surprise.

“Drop your gun!” It was a female voice and it came from behind. A woman? Something was not right here. Peter calculated quickly: he could duck and shoot the boy, and with some luck he could swing around and aim at the woman before she managed to fire a second shot at him. Chances were that he and the boy would end up dead and the woman would be wounded at the very least. His promise to himself never to be taken prisoner again argued against his urge to avoid a senseless waste of lives. And his intuition insisted, something was not right here.

Peter sighed, dropped his gun, raised his hands, and said, “Don’t shoot.” He fervently hoped his intuition was right.

“Babciu!”
the boy exclaimed happily.

“Shut up!” the woman ordered, apparently angry at his breach of discipline.

The boy, looking abashed, obeyed, and taking a precautionary step backward, he raised his rifle and pointed it determinedly at Peter’s chest. “If you move, you’re dead.”

Babciu?
Peter’s hopes rose. If only he could keep them from killing him long enough to find out what was going on. A woman’s hands frisked him, found his papers, and removed them. She stepped around in front of Peter, picked up his gun, and confronted him. She was an older woman at least a head shorter than he—her black hair was threaded with silver, her face was lined, but her brown eyes were alight with a passionate fire. Like the boy, she looked healthy and well fed—not at all like the gaunt remnants of humanity he had encountered on the road. She was wearing dark trousers, a nondescript shirt, and heavy hiking boots. She had a rifle slung over her shoulder, and a small radio and a knife in her belt. Pointing the gun at him, she ordered him to move away from the car.

He did; the boy’s rifle rotated to follow him. Still holding the pistol, the woman scanned the inside of the car. She pulled the satchel off the front seat and rooted around inside. She ignored the documents, books, and clothes— apparently they were not what she was looking for. Satisfied that his bag contained no obvious threats, she placed it a careful distance away and dropped to the ground and inspected underneath the car, then reached inside and checked under the seats and in the glove box. After that she removed the keys and opened the hood. Once she had checked under the hood and in the trunk, she shoved the keys in her pocket, tucked the gun into her belt, and began perusing his documents.

“Interesting, interesting,” she muttered sardonically. “You’re quite a big official, aren’t you?” She turned a page. “And quite far from home, eh?” She turned another page, studied the photograph, and then studied his face. “You don’t look much like your picture, do you?”

“No. It’s not me.” With that answer, he destroyed any hope of his being kept alive as a hostage. He hoped instead that immediate honesty would work to his advantage.

“Of course not. And the car is not yours either?”

“No.”

“So, you are a thief?”

“I guess you could say that,” he agreed nervously. If they decided he was valueless, their most sensible course would be to shoot him then and there.

“What are you doing here?”

“Escaping. I am, was, a slave laborer.”

“Oh, really?” She looked dubious. “But you are German.”

“No, I’m English—my papers are in that bag,” he said, gesturing with his head.

“You idiot! Do you think we don’t know the English aren’t used that way?”

“Some are. I have criminal convictions.”

“For stealing cars?” she asked with a smirk.

“No. Please don’t shoot me. Let me explain.”

The woman pursed her lips, stared in silence at him for some moments. He knew she was deciding whether to kill him. He knew he was asking her to take an enormous risk, and he was unsure what he himself would have done in her position.

Suddenly she asked, “Why did you not kill the boy immediately upon emerging-from the car?”

“I hoped to avoid hurting him.”

“Or you thought he would lead you to our encampment?”

“No. I thought he was a real soldier.”

She nodded noncommittally.

“Can I put my hands down?”

She nodded again. As he dropped his arms, the boy tightened his grip on his gun, raised the muzzle slightly to correct the aim.

“Look at me!”
Peter pleaded. “Do I look like a Gestapo agent?” Carefully, so as not to excite the boy into action, he pushed up his left sleeve. “Look at this! Do their agents have numbers indelibly marked on their arms?”

The woman touched the numbers but did not say anything.

“If anyone knows English, I can prove my fluency to them. If you let me remove my jacket, I’ll show you the manacle on my right wrist. I can show you scars from beatings I’ve received. Would any agent go through this effort to convince you?” He knew that, unfortunately, the answer to that question was yes.

She remained silent.

He began to feel desperate. “Oh, God, I haven’t come this far to be killed by my own side, have I? Please, you’ve got to believe me. Give me a chance. I can be useful to you. Please.”

“Useful?” The tone of her voice conveyed serious doubt.

“Yes, I know about German life, I can speak without an accent so I can pass for one of them.” He had already noticed that neither the boy nor the woman had a discernible accent, and that puzzled him, but he did not have time to worry about that now. “And I can give you this car. I’m educated, I’m healthy, I can work—any sort of work, anything you want! Translations, manual labor, anything! I learn fast! And I know something about codes and strategy and . . .” And it was all wildly out-of-date. “I was in the English Resistance, maybe I can be of help to you,” he finished lamely. Why in the world should they risk everything for a stranger? There was no proof he could offer them. Even if he could convince them that he really had been a slave laborer, he had no way to prove that he was not now simply being used as a decoy by the Gestapo. It was hopeless and the woman’s face conveyed as much.