He’d laughed, that Felix, but he’d meant it seriously.
Otto suddenly stood on the brakes and downshifted.
Kappler jerked his head to look forward. He saw that a herd of forty or more goats blocked the road. A farmer carrying a long wooden staff was trying, and failing, to hurry them across.
“Sorry,” Otto said, then tapped the horn.
The honking caused the animals to run in circles and around the car.
“I’d suggest just running them over,” Kappler said, “but I don’t think this flimsy little car is much of a match against even those small animals. And we don’t want to be stuck out here.”
Jesus! Kappler thought. Stuck out here indeed.
My family’s very existence is at grave risk and I’m stuck in a joke of a vehicle surrounded by a damn herd of crazed goats?
Otto hit the horn again, impatiently revving the engine.
This time the farmer prodded at the animals with his staff and after a moment managed to part the herd.
Otto shot through the gap.
Okay, think, Oskar. Think!
Getting back to those “extraordinary actions” . . . what am I supposed to do with Mother and Anna? Do I try to get back to Berlin now? Try to prepare them for whatever happens next?
No. Father wrote “if something should happen to me, you will need to take your own extraordinary actions.”
And in that case I would be approached by a powerful man, someone who was involved with the family enterprises that Hitler cannot touch.
I wonder if Hitler even knows about them?
I’ve known about them, known they exist—I even remember Father going to Argentina with Thyssen—but never knew details of exactly what we have there in South America and in the United States.
Father always said that he would tell me “in due time.”
And—ach du lieber Gott!—what a “due time” it is!
He shook his head.
I never thought that those properties would one day “constitute the family’s entire wealth.” It certainly appears to have been a brilliant business strategy, particularly in light of Hitler stealing all we have in Germany.
Yet Thyssen did the same—and it’s all utterly worthless to him locked up in a konzentrationslager.
And what the hell will I do if the same happens to Father?
And what if the bastards decide “like father, like son” and throw me in, too, for good measure?
Father writing that he prayed the war will soon end, and that we will soon be together as a family—that read like his last words. Ones in vain, especially considering he said those secret, dangerous tasks that God chose “may not end well for me.”
So, what to do? I’m just supposed to wait? For what? And for how long?
That Beck said he thought it was “going to get very interesting very quickly.”
Does he know something?
Kappler felt his heart race. And he suddenly realized he had no idea how long he’d been holding his breath, and now found himself making rapid, shallow breaths.
He could hear his father’s voice: “Calm down, Karlchen!”