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“I didn’t murder him! I saw the gun and I was afraid. I just ran, because I couldn’t prove to anyone that I knew nothing about it.” She heard the desperation in her own voice. Why did he not believe her? Or was it that he really didn’t care? Innocent or guilty, she was the one they were looking for. Or perhaps anyone would do, if they satisfied the crowd. A hideous thought. It filled her with fear, and drove out everything else. Victory was not in getting the right person, it was in getting anyone who could be made to look right. She must get rid of illusions. These people would kill her, and they would kill others, too.
How easy it was to blame someone else when you were sick with fear, the sweat breaking out on your skin and instantly going cold.
The second man was nodding slowly. “You panicked, because you realized that the gun had been used to assassinate one of the Führer’s best men? You had not the courage to hand the gun over and trust our justice.”
Another trap. “I didn’t think,” she said, as if it were an admission. Did she have to apologize to these arrogant men? “I should have trusted.”
“Perhaps English police are not so trustworthy as we Germans?”
She looked at his face, his eyes, and had no idea if he was being sarcastic or not. She did not doubt he would do whatever he thought was in his own interest. Perhaps he was too afraid of whoever was higher up the chain of command? Perhaps they were all afraid, of one thing or another?
She said nothing.
“Are English police trustworthy?” he said more loudly.
“I don’t know.” She fumbled over the words. Her mouth hurt, her whole face hurt. “I have friends who say they aren’t.”
A tiny victory. It had given him no leverage.
“So, when your friends did not answer, where did you sleep? What did you eat? It has been several days. Someone helped you. Who?”
“Different people. I begged.” Did that sound believable?
The first man looked her up and down. “Don’t be stupid,” he said contemptuously. “She earned it on her back!” His meaning, and his disgust, were both plain.
Elena felt the heat rise up her cheeks. It was humiliating to be taken so easily for a whore, or perhaps just a desperate woman! How many such women might have slept with men for their own survival? Or even, more likely, to feed their children, or save someone else’s life. Wouldn’t a woman with a child to protect do anything necessary, no matter how repulsive? A child alone would die. Or worse.
She nodded her head very slightly. It was believable. Good, if he accepted it.
“Put her in the cells,” the second man ordered and turned away, clearly thinking of the next task.
It was a very ordinary cell: bare stone floor, one small window high up in the wall. Nothing to see out of it but sky. There was a cot along one side, and a bucket. Nothing else. They had searched her handbag and kept it, along with the photographs of the assassination and her passport. At least Jacob had copies of the pictures. They would be safe, as long as Eli and Zillah were. Perhaps Jacob would be safe because he was American? If he kept his activities quiet, wrote for American newspapers only, then his U.S. citizenship might protect him.
But her British citizenship had not protected her!
Was that because they really thought she had killed Scharnhorst? Would she have been all right, but for that?
Jacob was a Jew. She felt despair well up inside her as she thought of people she had seen beaten and humiliated in the street. Why? Just because they were Jews.
For the love of heaven, Christ himself had been a Jew! So had the Virgin Mary, and all the Apostles. Hatred was a kind of insanity, and there was no reasoning with it. It was corrosive like acid, burning all it touched, destroying in the cause of…what, inadequacy? People who were filled with rage because they had failed, they could not cope with defeat, hunger, or most of all, the consuming darkness.
Wasn’t she afraid? Yes. She was in a police cell, accused of something she had not done. The Nazis were terrible, beyond terrible. There was no word for them.
But they were still a minority. She knew the German people. They were as decent as anybody else. She had lived here and been happy. Stop the imagination. Think what to say when they questioned her again.
* * *
—
That time came sooner than she expected. She had gone over and over the possibilities in her mind. Her head ached from where the man had hit her, and from the turmoil of her own thoughts.
She was taken back to where she had been before, or a room exactly like it. She had been too frightened to take much notice. The same two men were there, and both of them looked in ill temper.
“Commandant Beimler wants to see you,” the man who had hit her said angrily. He seemed to resent the fact. Perhaps it was a reflection on his competence that she was taken out of his hands. Elena had no idea whether it would be better or worse for her. Perhaps it made no difference, except that this senior man might be cleverer, far more difficult to mislead.
She did not speak. Nothing could make it better, and a mistake would make it worse.
Elena was marched in silence, her hands manacled behind her back, along several corridors, across an open space almost like a barrack yard, and in through another door. This new building was cleaner and rather better cared for. The commandant must definitely be senior.
