Should she tell them that her last conscious act had been to reach for her suicide pill? Would that help or hurt? Would she seem mad? Unstable? Unreliable?
Was that what she wanted?
Home to New York. Home to my father and mother. Home to see Aryeh and Jane’s baby, my niece. Home to Halev. Food. Warmth. Safety.
“What happened next?”
“Well, sir, I wasn’t raped at least, but they beat me. Fists and rifle butts that first time. I think it went on for a while. They were angry. Very angry.” She shook her head, trying to refocus. “I woke up in the cell where the soldiers found me.”
“You were weeks in Gestapo headquarters,” Herkemeier says softly.
It’s his kindness that sets Rainy’s chin to quivering. Tears flood her eyes and spill down her cheeks. At the same time her hands are clenched painfully and her teeth grind together and her breathing becomes ragged as she fights down the urge to sob openly.
“Yes, sir,” she manages to say.
“They questioned you—”
“I gave them nothing!” It’s a scream, a scream of rage, mountainous, vast, impossible rage. Fraser jumps in his chair, but Herkemeier never takes his soft, concerned eyes from her.
“Name, rank, and serial number?” the captain suggests.
“No.” Rainy stretches the word into an animal growl. “They’d have known Schulterman is a Jewish name and then . . . I guess I thought things would be even worse then, but also they didn’t expect it. See, they thought I told them the truth, and I didn’t, you see, I held it back, and I held it all back, I lied and lied, and it is so hard to keep the lies straight, see, Colonel, keep the fugging lies straight—that was the hard part, because you can’t sleep and you just hear the screams and you see the men shot down, bleeding, and . . .” She brings herself up short, painfully aware that she sounds crazy, that she sounds . . . emotional.
With great effort Rainy finds a version of herself, an earlier copy of Rainy Schulterman, a calmer, dispassionate, self-controlled version. As if she is an actress playing a role, she steadies herself and says, “I had no useful information I could give them. I fabricated things to let them think they were getting somewhere.”
“I believe that’s enough for now, Sergeant,” Herkemeier says gently.
Rainy shoots to her feet, wincing at the innumerable bruises that stiffen her body. She salutes and prepares to about-face, but Herkemeier says, “Just one moment, Sergeant Schulterman.” He stands. “I will tell you that I have had and still have many doubts about the part I played in getting you into this. But by God, Rainy, I have no such doubts about you. Well done. Damned well done.” He returns her salute sharply, and she flees the room as sobs take hold.
32
RIO RICHLIN—RAPIDO RIVER, ITALY
“I want you to know, I’m relieved you’re not suggesting we stay on this side of the river.”
“The Krauts are on this side,” Rio points out.
“Precisely,” Jack says.
It’s easy enough to say swim, but it turns out to be rather more difficult. The current is powerful, and the river bends in places so it threatens to bear them right back to the same shore farther downstream. They walk in silence, searching for a place to cross, creeping through the night, guided by the sound of water on their left and the frenzied sounds of battle and machine gun fire behind them.
The squad may be back there fighting, if any of them made it ashore, but Rio and Jack tacitly acknowledge that they will search for a ford farther from the battle, not closer to it.
He thinks I’m crazy.
No, Rio, he thinks you’re “splendid.”
At times the stumps of burned trees and the tangle of blasted shrubbery obscure their view of the river, which in any case can be better heard than seen in the deep darkness. This is a blessing because from time to time a boat or a body comes floating by. None of the bodies are German.
Rio fears looking over and seeing Jillion’s body . . . or Cat’s . . . or Stick’s.
Or Jenou’s.
She pushes that thought away as far as she can, but it doesn’t work. Jenou was in the water, the water that boiled with machine gun bullets.
Not Jenou, please, God, not Jenou. I told her she would be okay.
Rio and Jack walk for perhaps a half mile, creeping silently, alert to possible German patrols, before coming to a place where they can get at the river and where the bend ahead is toward the right, which should help them to land on the opposite shore. They fashion a sort of tiny raft out of small branches woven together and buoy it by draining their canteens and sealing them tight to act as floats. Weapons and gear, excess clothing and boots are all piled onto the raft, which rides way too low in the water to keep anything dry, but is better than nothing.