HAEF), identified him as being assigned to the European Command (EUCOM). The gold bars of a second lieutenant were pinned to his epaulets, and the insignia of the Quartermaster Corps to his lapels.
Hessinger got out of the front seat. He was also wearing an OD Ike jacket and trousers. The first time Cronley had ever seen him not wearing his pinks and greens was that morning. His uniform now was adorned with staff sergeant’s chevrons, QMC lapel insignia, and the EUCOM shoulder patch.
Two other of Tiny’s Troopers and the ambulance were parked down the street just within sight of Hachelweg 675. The fourth had made his way to the back of Hachelweg 675, with orders from Sergeant Hessinger to “follow anyone who comes out the back door when we knock at the front.”
Staff Sergeant Hessinger had orders for Second Lieutenant Cronley and Sergeant Finney, as well. “Remember,” he said in German, “the only German either of you knows is ‘Noch ein Bier, bitte’ and ‘Wo ist die Toilette?’”
“Jawohl, Herr Feldmarschall,” Cronley had replied.
“You already told us that, Freddy,” Sergeant Finney said in German.
He opened the trunk of the Ford and took out an open cardboard box. Four cartons of Chesterfield cigarettes, on their ends, were visible. So was an enormous canned ham.
Hessinger opened a gate in a stone wall and walked up to the house, with Cronley and Finney following him. The tile-roofed two-story building looked very much like Cronley’s house in the Pullach compound, except that it desperately needed a paint job, several new windows, and roof repairs.
Cronley and Finney had been given a lecture by Professor Hessinger on the history of Strasbourg on the way from Pullach. He told them that over the years it had gone back and forth between being French and German so often that Strasbourgers never really knew to whom they owed their allegiance.
Cronley was surprised, even a little ashamed, that he had never given the subject much thought before. His mother spoke German; she had taught him to speak German from the time he was an infant. He had naturally presumed that she was a German. Or had been before his father had brought her to Midland, after which she was an American.
But when they had crossed the border today, it had been into France. Strasbourg was in France.
Hessinger told them it had been French until after the Franco-Prussian War, when, in 1871, the Treaty of Frankfurt had given it to the newly formed German Empire. The Germans had promptly “Germanified” the area, and surrounded it with a line of massive forts, named after distinguished Germans, such as von Moltke, Bismarck, and Crown Prince von Sachsen.
After World War I, Hessinger had lectured, the area was given back to the French by the Treaty of Versailles. The French, after renaming the forts—Fort Kronprinz von Sachsen, for example, became Fort Joffre, after the famous French general, and Fort Bismarck became Fort Kléber—held Strasbourg until June of 1940, when the Germans invaded France and promptly reclaimed Strasbourg for the Thousand-Year Reich.
Four years later, Hessinger said, the French 2nd Armored Division rolled into Strasbourg and hoisted the French tricolor on every flagpole they could find.
“Strasbourgers,” Hessinger said, and Cronley couldn’t tell if his leg was being pulled or not, “keep German and French flags in their closets, so they can hang the right one out of their windows depending on who they’re being invaded by this week.”
There was a large door knocker, a brass lion’s head, on the door. Freddy banged it twice.
Jesus, this is my mother’s house, Cronley thought. She went through this door as a little girl.
And where we got out of the car is where Dad punched her father’s—my grandfather’s—lights out.
The door was opened—just a crack.
Cronley could see a woman. She had blond hair, brushed tight against her skull. She looked to be in her thirties, and she didn’t look as if she was close to starvation.
“We are looking for Herr Luther Stauffer,” Hessinger announced in German.
The woman shook her head, but otherwise didn’t reply.
“Then Frau Stauffer,” Hessinger said. “Frau Ingebord Stauffer.”
The woman tried to close the door. She couldn’t. After a moment, Cronley saw why: Hessinger had his foot in the doorjamb.
He also saw the fear in the woman’s face.
It grew worse when Hessinger snapped, like a movie Nazi in a third-rate film, “Papiere, bitte!”
The woman, her face now showing even more fear, stepped back from the door.
And then the door opened.
A man appeared. He was blond, needed a shave, appeared to be in his middle to late thirties, and looked strangely familiar.
Why do I think my cousin Luther has been hiding behind the door?