Saving Amelie (25 page)

“I need to speak with Frau Bergstrom.”

“You are American.” It was an accusation.

“I can’t help that. I still need to speak with her.”

“Come back tomorrow. It is time to black the windows.” The maid pushed the door, but Jason was quicker, planting his foot over the threshold. She grabbed his coat collar and sleeve, almost bodily lifting him from the floor and out the door.

“Tomorrow might be too late,” he pleaded. “Frau Bergstrom knows me. I’m a friend of Pastor Bonhoeffer—a friend of Dietrich.” It was a stretch, but he was desperate.

“You do not need to roughhouse my poor maid, young man.” He heard a smile in the cultured voice coming from the darkened room to their left. “Let him in, Greta. Let us hear what he has to say.”

Jason gasped as the short but burly maid he now respected more than the Tiergarten police thumped him to the kitchen floor.

“You were saying?”

“Frau Bergstrom—we met when Dietrich spoke here. You gave me his book.”

“I remember you, Herr Newspaperman. But I do not remember
that you knew Dietrich personally.” She drew him into the next room and closed the door. “Could you not come in daylight?”

“I’m in a bind, and I’m hoping you can help.”

She waited. He couldn’t read her face.

“There’s a kid—a little girl—who needs a place to stay.”

“Ah.” Frau Bergstrom hesitated. “She is Jewish?”

“No, she’s deaf.” He knew he must be up-front. “And she’s the daughter of an SS officer.”

She blanched. “Surely this officer can find a place to . . . to care for his own daughter.”

“He believes she’s dead. He wants her dead.”

“But how did you—no—no.” Frau Bergstrom stopped. “What is it you want of me?”

“I want you to hide her, to save her, and if you can, help me get her out of the country—to the US, if that’s possible. I don’t know if this is something you can do or help with, but after hearing Dietrich preach, after reading
Nachfolge
, I . . . I just want to save her. I only have a room at the Adlon—no place to hide a kid. But she’s a good kid—a great kid.”

She shook her head. “And how do you know this child—this wonderful German child for whom you feel such compassion? This child of an SS officer for whom you risk, and ask me to risk, everything?”

“That’s a long story, ma’am.” Jason felt the weariness descend as the craziness, the audacity of what he was asking caught up with him.

“It is a story you must tell me if you want me to help you, to risk my family.” She opened her hand, indicating Jason should take a seat at the dining room table. She nodded to the maid, who slipped coffee between them as Jason talked.

Jason told her—all he knew. He never doubted he could trust this woman who’d opened her home to a dissident preacher watched by the police, the Gestapo, the SS—a preacher who risked his life helping, teaching, warning Germans and foreigners alike, encouraging all
in need of backbone. That kind of guts in the midst of Nazi brutality was contagious, and he’d seen the fire in her eyes.

Frau Bergstrom placed her cup in its saucer when Jason finished his story. “Perhaps the safest place for the child would be with her mother’s American friend. She is a link to the mother—someone who evidently cared enough for both of them to try to save the child.”

“I haven’t heard from her yet. She might have found a way to leave the country,” Jason hedged. “We didn’t realize the Nazis would move so soon.”

She folded her hands. “Few did. Dietrich saw so much of their evil in its infancy—before Herr Hitler came to power. And he saw the weakness, the crack, within the church—the church’s refusal to stand up, to shout back, to protect before the evil spread so far, so wide.” She sat back and observed him. Jason felt he was weighed in the balance. “You said you read his book?”

“I did. That’s why I hoped you’d help me—help Amelie.”

“Bring the child here by night and I will help you get her to her mother’s friend, because I believe that is what my Lord would have me do. But I think, Herr Young, before you ask others to risk their lives and the lives of those dear to them, you must answer this question: Why am I doing this?”

Jason swallowed. “It’s the right thing. It’s wrong to kill little kids.”

“Why? You must ask yourself why it is wrong to kill this child if by doing so you can make room for others who are strong in mind and body.”

Jason couldn’t believe she’d said that.

“That is what our Führer maintains—that some are more worthy of life than others. Indeed, he asserts that an elite few in the world are worthy of life and procreation.” She paused. “Ask yourself, if you do not believe that to be true, why is it not?” She waited again. “If this child is not able to contribute to society in the same way you and I are able, does it make her less valuable? How do you know?”

Jason knew Hitler had it wrong, but Frau Bergstrom’s run around the issue and his lack of sleep made his head hurt.

“Are you doing this for a newspaper story?”

“No. I can’t print this—not now.”

“But later? Are you hoping, laying the groundwork for a sensational story? Or are you willing to lay your life down for the sake of this child?” She waited. Jason squirmed. “Will you abandon her if things do not go smoothly? If no one else can take her?”

“I thought . . . I just thought someone could—someone would.”

“Who, if not you? When, if not now?”

Jason felt his chest tighten. They were the questions that confronted him each time he turned out the light at night, each time he tried to sleep. Bonhoeffer’s challenge rose before him, shadowed him, haunted him. He wanted to do the right thing but was in over his head.

“This is the cost of discipleship.”

“Costly grace,” Jason remembered, knowing he understood so little.

She nodded and stood, taking his hand. “Bring the child here. I promise to help you find out about your friend—if she is still in Oberammergau. If so, I have friends able to transport the child there. In return, you must promise me to read the passages I will mark for you in my Bible. And then you must tell me what you think, whom you do this for, and why. And then you must tell me if you are willing to do it for others.”

Jason nodded, returning the pressure of her hand in agreement.

He was halfway back to his apartment, Frau Bergstrom’s Bible hidden inside his jacket, before he realized he’d just agreed to a long-term relationship with Frau Bergstrom and her friends—friends whose convictions might draw his neck in a noose alongside theirs. Oddly enough, he felt a weight lifted and wasn’t one bit sorry.

27

S
TURMBANNFÜHRER
G
ERHARDT
S
CHLICK
read the dispatch from Frankfurt a second time, then threw it to his desk. Rachel Kramer could not have disappeared without a trace—not in Germany, and not in New York.

Her passport had been found aboard a liner in New York Harbor, but Rachel had not appeared—not at her home, not at the Long Island Institute, not at her New York University, and not at the Campbell Playhouse, where a job was reportedly being held for the young woman. She was presumed dead, having stowed away aboard ship and disappeared en route to New York.

Rachel’s disappearance, accompanied by her scientist father’s sudden death in Berlin, had created quite a stir in the international press and recriminations on both sides of the Atlantic.

But Gerhardt refused to believe that anyone in Germany’s ranks had eliminated the young woman. Drs. Verschuer and Mengele still wanted her; they’d questioned—such a mild word—Dr. Kramer until he was not fit to answer questions. They were furious, as was Gerhardt, that the experiment they’d invested over two decades in had been thwarted. He and SS troops had been sent to Oberammergau on the chance that Rachel had learned of her twin. The interrogation had been thorough, but to no avail.

More than angry, Gerhardt was humiliated when Dr. Kramer confessed that he was unable to control his daughter’s willful streak, that she was determined to have nothing to do with Schlick. It was
for that remark that Gerhardt had struck him, perhaps too hard. The idea that Rachel would spurn him a second time was not to be borne.

No, he didn’t believe she was dead, nor that she had disappeared. Every border patrol had her photograph in hand—well before the doctor was interrogated, before she could have possibly reached Germany’s borders. They’d reported her at a border train station, but she’d run away. How? Where could she have gone? Who would have helped her? Whom in Germany did she even know once Kristine was eliminated?

He had the staff at the Institute interrogated, along with the hotel staff in Frankfurt, the driver of the car that took them to Berlin, the maids of their rooms there, the waitstaff, the doorman, the bellhop. Nothing.

Gerhardt racked his brain.

Then he remembered the gala. And a particularly obnoxious American who’d spilled champagne on his chest, his sleeve.

The second American—the one with spectacles—had pulled Gerhardt aside, taken his photograph, made quite a pretense of getting the exact spelling of his name, his address. He’d promised his photograph would appear in the foreign press, right beside Himmler’s—a tribute to the gala and the men leading the eugenics movement. A moment in the sun Gerhardt could not afford to miss.

Gerhardt had checked. He’d had his staff check every paper in Berlin. Their contacts had checked papers in New York and London—nothing.

The Americans had formed a team—a ruse to sweep Rachel from his arms. And while he was being photographed and questioned, where was Rachel? He closed his eyes, recapturing the vision—a swirl of blue, laughing, talking . . . with the champagne-spilling American.
A reporter. Foreign press. Did she know him from New York? Who was he?

Gerhardt lifted the telephone receiver from his desk. It should not be hard to find out.

28

R
ACHEL
’
S
ANONYMOUS
,
coded note finally reached Jason, looking as though it had traveled halfway round the world and been opened and resealed half a dozen times.

He telephoned Frau Bergstrom from a public box, saying that he’d heard the symphony and, knowing how she loved music, highly recommended it—the score was excellent and the evening worth sharing with friends. It was playing tonight. He’d have the tickets sent round.

Thirty minutes later Jason had borrowed a car and made his way to the country and the farmhouse where he believed Amelie was hidden.

The woman who answered the door denied that she housed a child, but when he produced thirty marks, her eyes widened and she showed him into the kitchen.

He’d seen Amelie from a distance the day Kristine had taken her to the clinic. He’d seen her just after they’d dyed and cut her hair and changed her clothes. Even so, the timid, sad child pulled from beneath the kitchen sink was barely recognizable.

“We call her—call
him
Herbert,” the Frau said.

Jason swallowed. He’d thought he was prepared. The disguise was for the little girl’s safety, after all. But he couldn’t have guessed this was the pink-and-cream beribboned cherub who had walked into the clinic with her mother—her mother who was dead. “She doesn’t look like herself.”

“But that is the point,
mein Herr
.” The woman huffed, motioning
Amelie to the table. “Your coming here is dangerous—for her and for me. As you can see, she is well. In these times that is all you can hope for.” She lifted her chin, defensive.

Jason winced. “I appreciate that.”

The woman softened, sighing. “Come, sit with her at the table while I tend to my dishes. Eat something. That is the only thing you can share with her.”

Jason didn’t openly disagree but was relieved he’d thought of something to bring the child. When the woman stepped from the room he pulled a small picture book, one with the brightest colors he could find, from inside his jacket pocket.

Amelie’s eyes widened and the first spark of life filled them. Jason felt a spark to match. He signed,
My name is Jason,
then made a
J
beside his ear, a whimsical sign he’d chosen for his name. Nothing in Germany could rival the tentative smile the little girl gave him as she made her name sign, an
A
beside one dimple in her cheek, in response.

Jason laughed, and Amelie pushed her hand to his chest.

“You feel that?” He laughed again.

Amelie smiled shyly up at him, but he could barely see her for the sudden dam behind his eyes. He coughed, pointed to the book on the table before them, and made a sign Eldridge had taught him, pressing his palms and fingers flat together, then opening them in an offering, like the cover of a book. He signed that it was a gift for her.

Amelie tilted her head and made the sign for
thank you
but looked puzzled. He made the sign for
book
again and waited.

She blinked, waiting too.

Jason smiled, then opened his arms.

Amelie climbed into his lap, all the while searching his eyes. Apparently satisfied, she settled in and opened the book. She began to mouth shapes, and Jason knew she was mimicking reading—surely memories of her mother’s reading aloud to her. She turned, clasping
his face between her small palms, circled his mouth with her finger, then pointed to the book.

“You want me to read to you?” He stroked her hair. “But you can’t hear those words, can you, kiddo? You don’t know what they mean.”

But Amelie shook her finger at the book and leaned against him. Jason wrapped his arm around her and opened his palms again. Amelie opened hers.

The squat woman shook her head, wiping her hands on her apron. “She’s like a monkey—imitating everything she sees.” She set a cup of hot but watered-down chicory before Jason and a tumbler of milk before Amelie. “A pity—she’ll never be more than that.” The woman went back to her washing at the sink.

A monkey?
Jason gritted his teeth to keep his opinion to himself.
She’s bright. She’s quick. She can sign rings around both of us!