Safe Haven (26 page)

She stopped reading, determined to go no further, but there were only a few more lines on the page. She would finish the page and then close the notebook, place it next to him, and leave. He would have his answer. She read on:

Enough!

“Special treatment?” Suzanne waved the notebook at Detlef Buch.

“Sh-h-h,” the librarian hissed, although Suzanne and Detlef were the only patrons.

Suzanne lowered her voice to a whisper as she leaned across the table. “Your government murdered people in cold blood for no reason other than they were against the Reich.”

“We did,” he replied calmly. Then pinning her with his steel-gray eyes, he added, “I did.”

She felt the hairs on the back of her neck tingle. She was sitting across from a murderer—one who did not even try to absolve himself. It did not matter whether or not he had pulled the trigger or directly ordered the death. He was a murderer. She wished she had asked Theo to come with her.

Detlef leaned back and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fräulein Randolph, if you would please take what I have written and read it through, perhaps you will understand.”

“What is there to understand?” She pushed the notebook back across the table. “I will not ease your conscience, Mr. Buch.”

He stood up and glanced at the clock. “That is not what I am asking. And now I must leave you. I have my shift to work at the cannery.” Without another word he turned and walked out of the library, nodding to the librarian as he left. The notebook was still on the table.

She sat staring at it for a long moment. She closed her eyes and envisioned the fastidious handwriting—the words put down so close together as if he had feared that there might not be enough paper to tell the whole story.

“I will write about how it began,” he had said when she had first given him the notebook. “If you are interested and agree, then I will tell you the rest. My English is good in speaking, but writing takes time, and I fear we do not have such time.”

But she had read enough. More than enough. Did the man truly believe that he would be forgiven for the deaths he had by his own admission caused simply because in the beginning he had thought Hitler and his maniacal plan was the answer? He was obviously well educated and intelligent. But he was also desperate, she realized.

She spun the notebook around with the tip of her finger. She recognized her anger and also knew that she was judging the man without knowing his whole story—the way others had judged various groups in Germany. And not just Germany. How many people did she know right here in America who formed opinions about entire ethnic or political populations based on nothing more than a difference in belief or conviction?

Was she doing the same thing? Judging this man because she assumed that he was as evil as Hitler and his gang? Hadn’t Theo said that making assumptions was at the very root of misunderstanding? She picked up the notebook and opened it to the page where she had stopped reading. An hour later the librarian began flicking off the lights. It was closing time, and Suzanne was only partway through the German’s journal. Yet what she was reading was fascinating stuff—information that Gordon would no doubt find useful. Reluctantly she marked the page with a business card she had picked up from the local bank after establishing an account as part of her plan to convince herself that Oswego—not Washington—was now her base of operations.

She had come back to write the stories of the refugees—not the story of some German POW who unlike other POWs was not just a foot soldier in Hitler’s army but rather a high-ranking officer in the dictator’s reign of terror. As she walked back to the boardinghouse, she thought about her editor. Would Edwin publish the story of a captured Gestapo agent? She was fairly certain that he would. The man was in the business of selling newspapers, and a sensational and controversial story like this one would certainly fill that bill.

Yet it was not Edwin that she wanted to share this story with. It was Theo, and while he would not openly disapprove, he would question. He would find ways to make her stop and carefully consider what this was really all about. Unlike Gordon, Theo would not look at this as an opportunity for advancing his career but rather he would consider all parties concerned—including Detlef Buch.

She had learned the hard way that thinking something through made little difference. And hadn’t Edwin preached that a story is about now—not an hour from now or a week or a year? “Seize the moment,” was the way he ended every staff meeting.

So she would.

  CHAPTER 13  

F
rom the moment Ilse told Theo about the connection between the POW and their family, Theo had tried to think how best to break the news to his parents and beyond them to Beth and her husband. They were still in England, but he could send a telegram letting Josef know that his father was alive. On the other hand, if the father had been with the secret police, was it possible that Josef had also worked for them? He could have been an undercover agent spying on those who would stage a resistance or plot to overthrow Hitler’s regime. He could have used Beth as his way out of the country.

Ilse assured him that Josef and Beth had been deeply in love and reminded him that Josef had been arrested and sentenced to Sobibor, a death camp in eastern Poland. His father had not been able to save him from that fate. She pointed out that Josef and Beth had escaped from the camp and they had been on the run for their lives for months afterward. Not only that, but they had further risked their lives helping Allied airmen reach safety.

Still, when Theo thought about his brother-in-law being the son of a Gestapo agent, he worried that his sister might still be in danger. Even if Josef were innocent of any wrongdoing, might not the authorities want to question him—and Beth? And would that delay even more the day when she could come home?

His concern extended to Suzanne. Evidently she had decided to pursue things with the German. Feeling it was none of his business, Theo had not spoken to her about it, and he had certainly not mentioned the connection between the POW and his family. In fact, ever since she had established a nightly routine of leaving right after supper for the library and not returning until well past closing time, he and Suzanne had barely seen each other. Hilda and Hugh continued to dominate mealtime conversation, and Theo was surprised when Suzanne did not challenge them as she always had before.

Before she began meeting the German
.

Theo felt driven to warn her—to protect her. But he could not name the threat. Detlef Buch would not physically harm her as long as he thought she was doing what he wanted, so he was not the threat. Her editor was not involved in the story as far as Theo knew, so she was not being pressured by her former employer to deliver a story. Yet he had this uneasy feeling that when everything played out, Suzanne was going to end up hurt … again.

March quite literally melted into April as the snow finally let up and the temperatures started to rise. Theo spent his time after work climbing through the hole that the refugees had opened in the fence and following the path down to the lake. He walked the shoreline and thought about the future.

Ilse had confided her desire to return to Munich once the war ended. Theo knew that his parents would not think this a wise move, and certainly Liesl had settled into the American way of life so thoroughly that she would be unlikely to want to return to a homeland she had known mostly as a place where she had to watch everything she said or did and where her parents had been so obviously scared and unhappy.

Since Franz’s death, Ilse had become more withdrawn and only Gisele St. Germaine seemed to be able to draw her out of her mourning—for her husband, for her homeland, for a life that had once been so predictable and secure. Thinking about Gisele made his thoughts turn to Suzanne. The woman had once accused him of being attracted to the French actress.

“She’s been a good friend to my aunt.” He’d had no idea why he felt the need to defend himself, and that irritated him.

“Keep telling yourself that’s why she’s always going to the movies or some function at the shelter with you and Ilse.”

He had felt like taking hold of her shoulders as he had done the night he had kissed her. In spite of his annoyance, he had felt like kissing her until she saw her mistake. It wasn’t Gisele that he was attracted to. It was Suzanne. But there had been no further intimacy between them since that night, and neither of them had ever mentioned their kiss. Shortly after that shared kiss—and it had definitely gone both ways—she had started slipping off right after supper, turning down all his attempts to find time they could spend together. He had gotten the message. Her career came first.

That was it. She was the threat—or at least her obsession with her career was. Ever since she had told him about the story that had ended her almost meteoric rise in the world of journalism, all she talked about was her work. Her focus was on finding the story that would erase the memory of that embarrassing episode. But from what she had told him about how she had gotten so caught up in the details and possible shock waves of that first story, he wondered if she might not be on the verge of making the same mistake all over again.

Detlef Buch had an agenda, as had the congressman she had gotten that other story from. That man had not cared what happened to Suzanne or her reputation. He had used her ambition to get what he wanted. What if Buch was doing the same thing?

There was one way to stop the man from using Suzanne—or at least to make him think twice: if Theo told him that someone in the fort knew him, knew what he had done. Of course he would never reveal Ilse’s name. It would be the knowledge that his so-called facts could be disputed, could be checked that might make him think twice about what he was doing. He might even withdraw his permission for Suzanne to write the story. She would be furious, of course, but it would be for her own good.

“Penny for your thoughts.” Suzanne came alongside him, her hands in her pockets and a scarf tied around her unruly hair.

Theo had been thinking about her so much that it was almost as if he had willed her to appear. “Not sure my thoughts are worth a penny.” He paused and stared out toward a gray horizon that blended seamlessly into the gray waters. “I haven’t seen you down here before.”

She shrugged. “I come sometimes. I’ve seen you, but I didn’t want to disturb you.”

“So what’s different about today?”

“I need a friend I can talk to.”

“I’m flattered.” He took her hand and tucked it in the crook of his elbow as they started to walk. “Well here I am, so what’s going on?”

As if he had somehow opened the floodgates, her words spilled out. She told him all about the meetings with Detlef Buch, about the journal and how it had raised so many questions in her mind.

“Such as?”

“What if I had been in his shoes? What if I had been told to do what my superiors asked or suffer the consequences? What if I had seen others lose their jobs, their homes, their position in the community simply because they dared to question the government’s policies? What if—”

“You would still have refused. That is the difference.”