9781940740065

by Paul B. Kohler

  They arrived at the café and bounded inside, away from the searching eyes of the German soldiers. The Frenchman who would normally be waiting on customers was hiding behind the counter. He placed his finger over his lips and he told them to hide. “Cachez,” he whispered harshly.

  Julie grabbed Peter’s hand and darted into the back of the café, behind a crooked red curtain. The tattered drape didn’t reach the floor, which meant their feet could be seen beneath it. “Why do you think they’re here?” Peter asked Julie quietly.

  “Parlez le francais,” she murmured back, her eyes bright with fiery energy.

  Peter bit his lip, hoping beyond anything else that the Nazis wouldn’t come bursting into the café. If only Mandrake hadn’t have followed them; if only they’d been able to shoot up to Oradour-sur-Glane as they’d planned.

  Suddenly, he heard it: the sound of crashing glass. Julie grabbed Peter’s shoulders and peered up at him, petrified. They had to leave. The Germans were coming. Searching.

  “Bonjour,” someone with a German accent called into the empty café. “Je cherche les Jews…” His words were harsh, rude. He sniffed the air, and Peter could hear snot lingering deep in the man’s head.

  Peter peered beyond the tiny hallway in which they stood. He saw a bit of light glancing in from the exterior. He knew they could run; they could get out that way. He mapped it in his head: it was only a quarter mile back to the hotel, back to the car. They could bolt from this formerly sleepy French town. He blinked several times, feeling deep fatigue. He’d only slept a few hours that morning. But he knew the time for sleep was over.

  He gestured with his head at the window in the back. Julie crept toward it, keeping her eyes alert. They could both hear the soldier out front, harassing the café owner. A sudden crash of glass told Peter that the German soldier had slashed his arm through the air, knocking dozens of beer glasses to the floor, where they shattered into pieces. Peter could hear the café owner weeping softly. His terror was obvious.

  Peter snuck his hand into Julie’s as they crept closer to the window. They would make it out alive, his grasp told her. They would be fine. As long as they stayed together.

  CHAPTER 6

  Peter and Julie hoisted themselves through the open window at the back of the café. Peter could already feel the sun on his face as he launched his body into the clean air. They were far more exposed than he was comfortable with, although they were away from the main road.

  He looked at Julie, ready to say something in high spirits, something that would reassure her. He watched the slim arch of her neck as she peered up at something, and then her face turned to stone. His heart beat fast in his chest as he followed her gaze.

  There, at the edge of the building, stood two unfamiliar men. They were leaning against the old brick of the wall, their dark eyes staring back.

  “Bonjour,” Julie murmured. She nodded at them.

  Peter’s mind was rushing. The man on the left was wearing the familiar dark gray, slim-fitting Nazi uniform. He was tall, a bit burly in his chest. The man on the right was slim-hipped, wearing the colors of Vichy France.

  “Ah, oui, madame. Bonjour a vous,” said the Nazi man, grinning at Julie in a way that made Peter want to punch him in the face. He felt a surge of negative energy, the anger he’d had when he was training for the mission back in San Francisco.

  “Qu-est-ce-que vous avez fait?” the French officer asked Julie and Peter. He gestured toward the window, asking them what they’d been doing. Peter grabbed Julie’s hand, hoping the men would turn their attention toward him. He could be strong enough for the both of them, he thought. He could lead them to safety.

  “Ah, oui,” Julie began. Her body didn’t betray a hint of anxiety. “Moi, j’ai un peu de peu pour cette situation.” She gestured, speaking about her fear of the Nazi situation. She smiled, appearing a bit sheepish, nothing like her actual self. “A chez moi, oui.” She shrugged, meaning she was going back to her home, back to safety. She turned toward Peter, looking at him curiously.

  “Est-ce que vous savez cet homme?” the Vichy asked her, wondering if she knew Peter, standing beside her.

  “Non. Il est mysterieuse pour moi. Il etait dans la café, mais pas avec mois.” She turned her head back toward the men, nodding. She didn’t know Peter, she’d said. They weren’t together. Peter tried to track the story she was telling the men, trying to stay on track.

  But the Vichy officer and the Nazi didn’t appear to buy her small talk, her childlike nature. They began to advance toward Peter and Julie. The Vichy’s eyebrow was raised high on his face. “Ah, oui. Okay. Et vous? Vous n’etes pas avec cette femme?” The Vichy turned toward Peter then, forcing him into an immediate moment of panic. He searched for the words to say. The French ones he had practiced (albeit half-heartedly) for so many hours.

  “Les papiers?” the Vichy asked him, bringing his fingers together.

  Peter searched through his pockets, looking for his identity papers. He breathed a sigh of relief when he found them. Maybe he and Julie would make it out of this after all. Maybe they’d would be all right.

  “Ah, oui. Vous visitez cette ville?” the Vichy asked Peter then, peering at his papers. He asked if Peter was visiting this town from somewhere else, since his papers clearly illustrated he wasn’t a local. He certainly didn’t look like a local, he knew.

  Peter cleared his throat, preparing to respond as easily as possibly. “Oui. Um.” Think! Think! “Je suis de Paris. Je suis un architect de Paris a—” He felt the American notes in his voice, and he watched the eyebrows of the men before him descend toward their eyes. He could see panic swelling in Julie’s eyes, as well. This wasn’t going well. He trekked on, feeling like he was walking the plank. “Je dois documenter les architectures de cette region—” he said, saying that he’d meant to document the beautiful architecture of the region. He brought his hands out, gesturing to it—to the slumped-over café beside him, to the crumbling ground beneath his feet.

  They weren’t buying it. The German leaned toward the Frenchman, whispering German into his ear. Peter understood the words, if vaguely. They thought he was a spy.

  The Frenchman wrapped his arm around Peter and led him to the side of the building. Peter felt like he was being ripped away from Julie. His heart began to tremble, and his head tried to find where she was. He could hear her continue her talk with the German solider. She was murmuring her affirmation that she didn’t know Peter; that she lived in the town. That she was, indeed, French.

  Suddenly, he heard her scream. He started squirming in the hold of the Vichy. “Get your hands off me!” he yelled, pushing against the Frenchman’s incredible strength.

  The two men grabbed his arms and brought them around to his back. They quickly tied his wrists, and he fell to the ground, nearly slamming his head into the brick wall before him. He could hear French words humming around him. All was lost, he knew in that moment. All was lost. He and Julie would be murdered here in 1942, and nothing would ever come to pass the way it was meant to. His children would live on in the future, perhaps. Or maybe another timeline would open; Minnie would meet someone else, have a different set of children. Maybe she wouldn’t die.

  Peter felt tremors all over his body as his vision descended into blackness. There was no hope.

  Peter’s body flew through the air, then slammed into something solid. The vehicle swayed a bit with the weight of his body. He felt blood flow through his mouth as he sat up, trying to make sense of his surroundings. He’d bitten his tongue.

  To his right, he saw her: Julie. She was strapped to the side of the German Jeep into which they’d been thrown. His heart surged with happiness, even as they looked at each other with tremendous fear. They’d been captured. All their best-laid plans couldn’t have saved them from this horror. But they couldn’t speak; they couldn’t allow the Germans to understand that they knew each other. They needed to stay as surreptitious as possible. Maybe, maybe they could escape. T
hey could go on with their mission. But Peter couldn’t help but feel that with each moment that passed, they were creating new timelines, new elements of this brand-new past. He shuddered as he looked toward Julie.

  Julie stomped her foot in anger. Peter could feel the same anger coursing through his body, through his arms. Through his legs. His heart forced him to calm her with an assured look. He mouthed the words to her in English. “It’s going to be okay.”

  Peter heard a laugh and turned his head quickly to the left. His eyes widened. The German soldier sitting in back with them peered at them malevolently, his gun slung over his lap. He’d seen the small moment between them; he’d seen it all. He grinned a bit stupidly, as if he were a child. He was missing a tooth on the left side of his mouth. He called up to the front seat in a rough, rollicking German voice. “Ich denke, dass sie sich gegenseitig kennen.”

  Two German soldiers turned back from the front seat and eyed their captives, the beautiful woman and the grizzled American man with her. They looked at Peter and Julie hungrily. Lying spies.

  Peter turned back toward Julie, his eyes searching. He felt like he couldn’t get enough oxygen. She whispered to him slowly. “They know we know each other,” she said in English.

  The soldiers up front snickered, holding their bellies as they laughed. They kept peering back at the pair, knowing the trouble to come.

  Peter lowered his head, feeling utterly hopeless. Their lives, he knew in an instant, were over. He peered out the window beyond Julie’s small, pointed face. The countryside of war-torn France glowed outside the car as they darted down the bumpy dirt road. A castle gleamed in the distance. Maybe this past world wasn’t so dismal-looking, after all.

  CHAPTER 7

  The Nazi Jeep swept out of the small village. Fear seemed to bleed through Peter until it became all-encompassing, and he was sure the same was true for Julie. Nothing he experienced seemed real. He thought he was in a sort of hellacious dream once more—like the one with the German soldier in his dining room, holding her gun at his daughter’s head. Maybe he’d wake up any moment, feeling Julie’s warm fingers on his back. “It’s just a dream, baby,” she would murmur.

  But this was all too real. When they reached the compound, a low gray building seemed to sprawl out ahead of them, crawling with soldiers. Peter felt the car door burst open behind him. A German soldier grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him backward sharply, and his neck snapped back. Another soldier grabbed at Julie’s upper arms, forcing her to hit her head against the exterior frame of the jeep. Peter’s throat ached as he screamed at them. “Stop it! You’re hurting her!” The stakes were too high; he had to speak. He had to make his feelings known.

  The soldiers shoved him and Julie toward the compound. He could see the deep footprints of Nazi boots surrounding them: all the soldiers who had marched round and round without a single thought of 2013, of the way his life had been. Of all that could be. Their eyes were directed toward German dominance. Would they get it in this newly created timeline?

  The soldiers seemed not to notice them, this new round of “spies” who were being dragged toward the interior. The sun arched above them in strange juxtaposition to their terror. Peter peered up at the sky, remembering a time when he and Tori had launched a kite into a similar blue sky, watching as it arched back and forth. He and his daughter hadn’t had a care in the world.

  The German men pulled them into a stone structure and led them down a narrow hallway. Peter continued to turn his head back toward Julie, who had begun to cooperate, marching forward in subtle anger. Her eyes were dark and turned directly toward him.

  Another soldier emerged from an opening as they passed. “Halt!” the soldier called toward the men who thrust the two Americans down the hall. He marched forward toward the man who held Peter’s arms behind his back and spoke to him in stark, direct German. “Was ist die Bedeutung dieses,” he snapped. What is the meaning of this? Peter recognized the insignia on his uniform as that of a higher officer of some sort.

  “Feindliche Spione,” the soldier replied. Enemy spies.

  The German official nodded. “Gute Arbeit,” he said. Good work. “Nehmen Sie sie mit der Kammer,” he ordered.

  Peter tried to peer back toward Julie. What were they saying? His German was so elementary. He cleared his throat as the German who held him tight forced him forward, further down the hall. The strange, bleary notion that this hadn’t happened before in this timeline—that this was happening to him, now, in real time, hurt his head. Blood pounded in his ears.

  The men who held Peter and Julie forced them into a small stone cell. A splintered wood table sat in the center. Three chairs surrounded it. Two of them had shackles on the armrests. The German soldier forced Peter into the chair on the left and snapped the shackles around his wrists. Peter’s wrists were far too large for the cuffs, and his bones crunched together as the restraints locked shut. He started straining against them, wondering if it would mean something if he fought his own death. If it would mean something rather than nothing.

  The German pushed Julie forcefully into the chair next to Peter’s. Her supple, beautiful body strained in the seat. Her eyes darted around like the eyes of a small animal in the forest, ready to flee from its impending demise.

  A Nazi soldier guarded the doorway and glared at them as the other soldier left them alone, muttering to the man by the door. It was clear they’d be questioned before they were murdered, Peter thought. He felt an emptiness in the room. He couldn’t reveal anything; he didn’t want to put Dr. Epson in danger. He didn’t want to jeopardize the welfare of anyone in his life.

  Julie’s eyes were brimming with tears. Peter thought he understood why. They hadn’t been able to go to Oradour-sur-Glane. They hadn’t been able to save her family. After all she’d sacrificed to be here, nothing had played out as planned. They’d simply come to France and been captured. Peter wondered how many other times in the history of the world this had happened: when training led to nothing. It was almost like dying in a car accident during the driver’s test. What was the point?

  They heard great strides outside the door, Nazi boots hitting hard against the floor. Peter saw a visible shudder from the soldier guarding the doorway. Who was approaching? He felt the blood begin to pool in his hands; it couldn’t escape due to the shackles. He was growing light-headed.

  In the doorway, suddenly, stood perhaps the most attractive man Peter had ever seen. He seemed to be glowing. His skin was tanned and beautiful; his blue eyes were animated as he looked toward Peter and Julie, grinning with broad, white teeth. His Nazi uniform was trim at his thin waist and then pulsed outward at his great, muscled arms and chest. His neck was thick, holding a great head and its curling blond and brown hair. His face was clean-shaven and wide.

  “Oh, hello, American people,” he called to them. His accent was incredibly German, but his English was clear and accurate. He strode toward the front of the room, eyeing them fiercely. “My, my. What a beautiful woman you are.” He leaned toward Julie and kissed her hand, even as it splayed useless, strapped in the unyielding shackles. Peter’s face burned.

  Julie spat on the ground at the man’s feet. Her aim was true.

  “Well, well, well,” the man murmured. “We have a feisty one, don’t we?”

  He turned toward the German soldier at the door. His eyes grew dark. “Fritz. You’ll be wanting to get the mechanism.”

  Fritz nodded and spun around, eager to leave the room. He shut the door behind him, leaving Peter, Julie, and this strange German alone in the echoing chamber.

  “So. Allow me to introduce myself,” the Nazi said. “My name is Friedrich Manstein. I am head general of this—shall we say—exhibition in the lower French region. And may I say, I’m quite pleased to meet you both. Such fine American people, traveling through Nazi-occupied France. What a wonder.” He tapped his ring finger for a moment on the table, allowing the sound to echo against the stone wall. “We haven’t capture
d spies in quite a while. So you might say you’re quite like celebrities right now in this camp. All the men are talk-talk-talking about you. Wondering what it is that will happen to you. You know—they are so much like hungry dogs. Always down in the pit. Looking up at you with these big eyes.” Manstein made large eyes himself, aiming a look of pleading at Julie and Peter. There was a lot of malice behind his eyes, Peter thought.

  “Anyway. You might say it’s good that we’ve found you. To boost morale, so you say. Oh. You also might wonder how it is that I speak such profoundly wonderful English.” His voice bounced with zeal as he spoke. He seemed nearly giddy. “You see, I was actually born in Berlin, but I grew up in New York. Amongst the Jews, amongst the Irish, amongst them all. Which gives me quite the advantage, here in Nazi-occupied Europe.” One eyebrow rose high on his forehead. “I know how they operate, you know. I know how they think.” He tapped his temple with a long, thin finger. “Ah, well. That’s beside the point. What we’re really here to do is talk about you. You both, of course.”

  He collapsed on the chair in front of them, smiling heartily. Peter felt he’d seen the smile before; something about it twanged at his stomach. He swallowed, hoping he wouldn’t throw up.

  “Now. Now. Now,” Manstein murmured, rubbing his hands together. “I need to know why you’re here. Who the hell you are. And what your mission is. Why are you spying on this small French town? What is to be gained?”

  Peter bit his lip. His eyes lurched toward Julie. Blood rushed to his head. He longed to bring his arms forward, to strangle this man sitting in front of him. He wouldn’t say anything.

  Manstein began to laugh. “I see, I see. I don’t know why I thought it would be so easy. You’ll forgive me. It’s been a while since I had an interrogation on my hands.” He sprang up from his seat and brought his body forward, toward Julie. Peter felt a bead of sweat roll down his face, into his mouth. Almost unconsciously, his throat started making small, guttural noises.