Break Point

by Yolanda Wallace

“Arrested?” Meike’s father asked. “On what charge?”

  Meike knew there could be only two possibilities. Gottfried had either been taken in for being a homosexual or for smuggling money to his Jewish lover, Manasse Herbst, who had fled the country three years earlier and had been living in exile ever since.

  “Jutta doesn’t know,” Meike’s mother wailed. “The agents would only say they were taking him to Berlin. They gave him time to pack a few things, then they drove him away.”

  “What does this mean, Meike?” her father asked. “What does it mean for you?”

  “I don’t know, Papa.”

  But when a uniformed Oskar Henkel knocked on the door, she knew she wouldn’t have to wait long to find out.

  Oskar smirked as he took in the scene in the foyer. “Judging by your display of emotion, I assume you’ve heard about von Cramm. Good news does travel fast.”

  Meike’s father took a protective step forward. “Who might you be?”

  “I am afraid we have not been formally introduced, Herr Count.” Oskar removed his hat and gloves and handed them to Rainer Schultz, a butler who had been employed by Meike’s family in one capacity or another since Meike was a toddler. “I’m Lt. Oskar Henkel of the SS. I was assigned to accompany Meike on her trips abroad until she saw fit to seek to have me reassigned.”

  Meike’s father gave her a questioning look but saved his actual queries for Oskar. “Why are you here?”

  “I came to speak to your daughter—and to give her the freedom she so desperately seeks.” Oskar turned to Meike. “Is there somewhere we can talk in private?”

  “In here.”

  Doubting the freedom Oskar was offering would come without a catch, Meike led him to the study. He took a seat in one of the armchairs she and her father had recently vacated.

  “Changing your travel plans without telling me wasn’t a very nice thing to do. Neither was the complaint you lodged against me with my superiors. Were you foolish enough to think either would prove successful?”

  Meike had sent telegrams to Nazi headquarters and to the German Tennis Association when she arrived in London. When she had heard nothing in return, she had thought her pleas had fallen on deaf ears. Oskar’s presence in her home, however, proved she had been sadly mistaken.

  “I did what I did because I wanted my life back. I refuse to apologize for my actions.”

  “I didn’t come here seeking an apology.”

  “Then, as my father said earlier, why are you here?”

  “I came to obtain your signature.” Oskar retrieved an official-looking document from his valise and placed it on the table between them. “The only way for you to receive the concessions you’ve asked for is to swear your allegiance to the National Socialist Party.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  His reply made her blood run cold. “Do you want what’s happened to von Cramm to happen to you?” He unscrewed a fountain pen and carefully placed it on the document. “Sign this form and you will receive everything you have asked for. If you refuse, chances are your family will never see you again outside of a prison cell. Is that the kind of legacy you want to leave behind?”

  Before she left New York City, Meike had wondered if she should continue to fight or give in. After she heard the Nazis’ latest ultimatum, the choice was clear.

  “Don’t trouble yourself with my legacy, Oskar. History will decide it for me.”

  The muscles in Oskar’s jaw crawled as he clenched his teeth. “You are refusing to sign?”

  “I am.”

  He picked up the pen and paper and shoved both into his valise. “I must inform you it is my duty to report your refusal to my superiors.”

  “Do what you want. And tell your superiors they are free to do to me what they will. Allow me to show you to the door.” She escorted him to the foyer. As Friedrich and her parents looked on in astonishment at her defiance, she unceremoniously returned Oskar’s hat and gloves. “If you have said all you intend to say, please leave my home so my family and I can have dinner in peace. Have a safe trip back to Berlin.”

  “You will regret this decision, Miss von Bismarck.”

  “No, Lt. Henkel,” she said as she slammed the door in his face, “I don’t think I will.”

  Chapter Seven

  April 1938

  Rheinsteifel, Germany

  After the baggage handlers placed everyone’s luggage on the station platform in an orderly line, Helen reached for one of her suitcases and hefted it without thinking. The resulting pain offered a searing reminder that, though improved, her damaged shoulder had not yet healed. She was used to doing things for herself, not being forced to rely on other people for help. Today, though, she didn’t see any other way.

  Three weeks after the training mishap that had resulted in her injury, she was finally able to raise her right arm above shoulder level without pain, but she was under strict doctor’s orders to exert herself as little as possible and to avoid lifting anything heavier than twenty-five pounds. Each of the six pieces of luggage she was traveling with weighed considerably more than that paltry amount. She let the suitcase fall from her grasp and looked around for a porter.

  “May I help you, miss?” one asked in heavily accented English.

  “Please.”

  The porter tipped his cap. “Gerhard Maier at your service, Fraulein.”

  Helen nodded her thanks. She hadn’t spoken to Gerhard before he approached her. How had he known she was American? Did he recognize her from a newsreel detailing one of her tournament victories or did something else give her away?

  Some spy I am if I can’t even fool a porter at the train station. The Nazis will see me coming from a mile away.

  Swifty said she was crazy for making the trip to Rheinsteifel alone, and she was starting to think he might be right. Even though Germany and the United States weren’t at war, she felt like she was in enemy territory. Sure, she had the gun Lanier had given her, but she hadn’t practiced shooting left-handed. If someone approached her with the intent of doing her harm, how was she supposed to protect herself with only one arm?

  But the chance to see Meike and spend time with her was worth the threat to her safety. Lanier thought she could use her visit to Meike’s home to get closer to her. So did she, though not for the reasons he might have wanted. She needed to know if what she was feeling for Meike was real. She had always been attracted to her—she probably always would—but something was different now. She didn’t just want to sleep with her. She wanted a life with her, though she had no idea how to provide it or how to make it last.

  Her relationships, if you could call them that, were typically measured in weeks or months and, more often than not, only hours. With Meike, it was different. With Meike, one hundred years wouldn’t be enough.

  Meike had left her once because she didn’t think she was capable of sustaining a real relationship. What if she still felt the same way? And, even worse, what if she was right? That thought frightened Helen even more than the idea of taking on the Nazis in their own back yard.

  “Where would you like me to take these?” Gerhard asked after he loaded her bags on a luggage cart.

  “Good question.”

  One for which she didn’t have an answer. Meike’s telegram said there would be a car and driver waiting to pick her up from the station, but Meike hadn’t bothered to mention the make or model of the car or describe its driver. Details that would have come in handy as Helen tried to find her bearings in a country she had visited on several prior occasions but felt abjectly foreign to her on this trip.

  She shuddered as she remembered the pro-Nazi and anti-Jewish propaganda that had assaulted her in Munich when the train made a brief stop there before continuing on to its terminus in Rheinsteifel. The swastika flew over the station in Rheinsteifel, too, but things felt different here. Helen felt like she was not only visiting another place but another time as well.

  When Meike warned her Rheinsteifel was a smal
l town that lacked the trappings a metropolis like Los Angeles or New York City could provide, Helen had expected to see acres and acres of rolling hills and more cows than people. She hadn’t expected this.

  The town in which she currently found herself seemed like something out of a fairy tale. Helen could picture knights on horseback riding through the cobblestoned streets, which were lined with houses, churches, and monuments that were nearly a thousand years old. Imagining Meike standing on the balcony of the castle on the edge of town like a princess surveying her kingdom, she wondered if the brothers Grimm had spent time in Rheinsteifel while they wrote some of their famous tales.

  “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair,” she said before the sight of a quartet of khaki-clad Hitler Youth chasing each other down the street brought her fairy tale-fueled fantasy to an abrupt end.

  “Pardon me, Fraulein,” Gerhard said, “but I think the gentleman over there might be looking for you.”

  Following Gerhard’s line of sight, Helen spotted a short, middle-aged man wearing a chauffeur’s uniform. The handwritten sign he was holding up bore her name. “You are Helen Wheeler?” the man asked in halting English after she took a few steps in his direction.

  “The one and only. Did Meike send you?”

  The chauffeur’s soft brown eyes crinkled as he flashed a smile tinged with fondness for the subject at hand. “Miss von Bismarck, yes. My name is Rainer. Rainer Schultz. You will come with me, please?”

  He bowed and indicated the stately Opel Olympia parked by the curb. The car’s name reminded Helen of the 1936 Olympics, when American track star Jesse Owens had embarrassed Adolf Hitler in his own backyard by singlehandedly disproving the German leader’s claims of Aryan superiority. The four gold medals Jesse had taken home from Berlin had earned him the moniker of hero. Helen doubted her mission would garner similar accolades for her. Considering the veil of secrecy she was under, headlines were out of the question and she might not receive much more than a “thank you.” Provided, of course, she was able to pull off what she had been assigned to do. Basic training was over. She had finally made it to the front lines. But did she have what it took to see her task through to the end?

  She climbed into the backseat of the Opel as Rainer stored her luggage in the spacious trunk. Then she sat back and enjoyed an impromptu tour as Rainer pointed out the main attractions. By far, the tallest, most imposing building in the town filled with squat, orange-roofed houses was the medieval castle Meike called home.

  At the train station, Helen had admired Meike’s childhood home from a distance. Up close, the structure took her breath away. The shingles on the conical towers on each corner were obviously new, but the limestone in the rest of the abode appeared to be original. Some of the huge blocks bore scars from past assaults by man, Mother Nature, or both. Helen craned her neck to see the towering keep and the battlements that now served as a widow’s walk.

  “Impressive, isn’t it?” Meike asked.

  “That’s one word for it.” Helen tore her eyes away from Castle von Bismarck and rested them on something even more beautiful: Meike’s smiling face. The tension she had observed in Meike’s demeanor the last time they had seen each other was gone now. Meike looked calm. Relaxed. Happy. Here, she didn’t have the weight of the world on her shoulders. Here, she didn’t have to fear anyone or anything. Here, she was home. “No wonder people call you the Countess. You live like royalty.”

  “Purely an accident of birth, I assure you.” Meike bounded down the steps and gave Helen a crushing hug. Helen winced at the flare of pain in her right shoulder as she tried and failed to return the affectionate gesture.

  “If you think this place is something, you should see my cousin’s,” Meike said after she let go. “It’s twice as large and perched on top of the limestone cliff from which it was formed.”

  “It sounds impregnable.”

  “One would think so, but, according to family history, it has been ransacked by everyone from the Gauls to the Saxons to the Huns. Rainer, please take Miss Wheeler’s things upstairs.”

  “Of course, Miss von Bismarck.”

  “I have taken the liberty of giving you the room across from me, Helen. My brother’s room is down the hall, but it stands empty at the moment since he is away at university.”

  “Sounds cozy. I hope you plan on joining me from time to time in case I get lonely or afraid of the dark.”

  Helen’s innuendo-laden comment brought color to Meike’s cheeks but failed to elicit an acceptance of her invitation.

  “I thought you came here to relax.”

  “I can’t think of a better possible way to relax than making love, can you?”

  Meike dipped her head and brought her lips so close to Helen’s ear Helen could feel her breath brush her skin. “If you found making love to me relaxing, I must have been doing something wrong.”

  “Give me a refresher course and I’ll let you know.” Helen nuzzled Meike’s cheek, rejoicing in the remembered warmth of her skin. “A girl from Cannery Row and a countess-in-waiting from Germany. That would be the ultimate fairy tale.”

  But she didn’t see a way for this fairy tale to have a happy ending. Not when she was living the ultimate irony: lying in an attempt to uncover the truth.

  Meike’s father cleared his throat to announce his presence. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

  “Of course not, Papa.” Meike took Helen’s uninjured arm and led her up the steps. “You remember my father, don’t you?”

  “Certainly. It’s a pleasure to see you again, Count von Bismarck.”

  “The pleasure is mine,” he said as he bent to kiss the back of Helen’s hand. “And, please. It’s Max, remember?”

  “Yes. How could I forget?”

  Helen had never met Meike’s mother, but she had been introduced to Maximilian von Bismarck, Meike’s father, a few years earlier. He had treated Helen and Meike to dinner after a tournament in Hamburg to celebrate their victory in the doubles final. Max had proven to be a witty and charming dinner companion, but he had been filled with so many questions about her game Helen had felt like she was being interviewed.

  “And this,” Meike said, indicating the woman to Max’s left, “is my mother, Katharina.”

  “Countess.” Katharina looked so regal, Helen had to fight the urge to curtsy. She settled for a handshake instead.

  “Please call me Katja. Welcome to our humble home.”

  “I hope I’m not imposing.”

  Katja gave Helen’s hand a reassuring pat. “When it comes to overnight visitors, I’m normally an ardent proponent of Benjamin Franklin’s quote about fish and houseguests stinking after three days. But for you, my dear, I will gladly make an exception. My husband is an ardent fan, and my daughter has sung your praises for years. It is a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance. The news of your impending arrival has managed to shake the gloom that had descended upon us after we received word of Gottfried von Cramm’s arrest, followed by Meike’s decision to force Friedrich into exile.”

  Meike sighed as if the argument she and her mother were about to have was an old one. “I didn’t force Friedrich into anything, Mother, and, in your heart, you know leaving was the right thing for him to do. He resisted the notion at first, but in the end, remaining in France long enough to secure safe passage to Switzerland was a decision he made.”

  “After following your advice. It is my fear that Friedrich’s very public defection will cause the Nazis to double their efforts against you. I don’t want saving a friend’s life to cost you your own.”

  “Neither do I, but I’m doing what needs to be done.”

  “Doing or have done?” Meike’s silence gave Katja the answer she needed—and the one she didn’t want. “Please tell me you aren’t continuing to help him, Meike. Do you know how dangerous that is? Consider the consequences if you were to get caught smuggling money out of the country.”

  “I have considered the consequences.”r />
  “And you are still willing to take the risk?”

  “They can only kill me once,” Meike said firmly.

  “But, my darling girl, I would die a thousand deaths without you.”

  “You won’t have to.”

  “Promise me.”

  Katja held Meike’s face in her hands, a moment so tender Helen was forced to look away. She felt like an intruder. An enemy invader. She felt like what she was: someone who didn’t belong here.

  “I promise.”

  Helen had never known Meike to lie. Until now. She could tell by Meike’s expression she had just made a promise they all knew she might not be able to keep.

  “Come, Helen.” Meike extended her hand. “Let me show you to your room. Then, if you aren’t too tired from your long journey, I shall take you on a tour of the house and grounds. This place has dozens of rooms. Unless you plan on leaving a trail of bread crumbs behind you, you won’t be able to find your way.”

  “I’ll be fine as long as the path leads me back to you.”

  The words tumbled out before Helen could stop them. The beaming smile on Meike’s face made her wish she had said them sooner.

  “No wonder my father finds you so charming.”

  “What about you? How do you find me?”

  “Irresistible. That’s my second-favorite English word.”

  “What’s your first?”

  “Yes.”

  Helen drew a fingertip across Meike’s palm, eliciting a shiver. “I can’t wait to hear you say your favorite English word, preferably at the top of your lungs.”

  “No. I brought you here to rest. I won’t be responsible for setbacks in your recovery. Tennis wouldn’t be the same without you on the court.”

  And my life, Helen thought, hasn’t been the same without you in my bed.

  Two winding staircases led to the second floor. One pointed to the east wing of the castle, the other to the west. The room Meike showed her to was bigger than some apartments Helen had rented over the years. A large four-poster bed sat in the middle of the room. An oak dresser, chest of drawers, and wardrobe large enough to stand in offered more than ample storage room for her clothes, which two maids had already started to unpack and put away.