Chapter One Hundred Sixty-One
2nd July, 1938
Werder, Germany
Gerta von Wolvogle was enjoying a warm Summer Saturday walking barefoot on the shore of the Havel River, dancing to a tune only she could hear. She was thinking about her friends. Little Kat had finally decided what she wanted to be and Helene had very firm ideas about what she didn’t want to be, even going so far as to starting a rumor about buying a race car. Gerta really needed to get into Berlin to see them but her mother’s townhouse and the Tiergarten couldn’t compare to the woods and fields outside the city. Here she was free of obligation and that suited her fine. There was also the expectation that she would need to at least pretend to go about what was expected of someone of her station. Stiff formal clothing and rooms full of people with questions she did not care to answer. It was the reason why she liked Kat, Kat never ever asked her about anything or had expectations.
“Mama said we shouldn’t bother you” a child’s voice said.
Gerta smiled at that statement. “I see that you do a good job listening” She said without actually looking at the source of the voice.
“How can you see when you aren’t even looking at us?” a different child’s voice asked.
“How do you know that?” Gerta said “I could have an eye on the back of my head.”
“That’s silly” one of the children said “You couldn’t see through all that hair.”
Gerta arched her back, leaning backwards until her hands touched the ground behind her. She saw that it was two children, little girls, obviously siblings a couple years apart in age.
“So, logical to see that I couldn’t see out of the eye on the back of my head” Gerta said before kicking her feet and twisting her body in the air to land on her feet in front of the children “Of course the world is too big and wonderful to use logic all the time.”
“That’s not what Mama says” the older of the two children said.
“How did you do that?” the younger asked.
Her mother had insisted that Gerta take lessons in gymnastics and dance. Gerta had been good at it in spite of her dislike of how regimented the classes were. “Practice” Gerta said “Now you two get back to your mother before she realizes that you’ve wandered off and talked to people she told you not too.”
“But we didn’t get to ask our question” the younger child said.
The older of the two looked mortified at what her younger sister had just said.
“And what question is that?” Gerta asked.
“Why do you act like you do?” the younger child asked “All the other grownups act grown up all the time but not you.”
Gerta thought about it for a moment, she was quite aware of plenty of adults who behaved worse than children. Many of them in elected office.
“Who said I was a grownup?” Gerta asked.
“Your tall and what not” the older child said. To these two she was tall but Gerta knew the truth, she was actually of only slightly higher than average height and she had a dancer’s body. That was a nice way of saying that there wasn’t much to see. Unlike Helene who could have had artists lined up to have her pose for them if such behavior wouldn’t get her disowned.
“I’m still in school” Gerta said “This is just my Summer holiday and I’m still trying to make the most of it.”
“By wandering around the river bank humming to yourself” The older child said. Gerta noted with a touch of sadness that the older child was already finding the cynicism of adulthood. Magic was where you found it and when you did you clung to it. There was more of that to be found listening to birds singing and feeling the warm sun on your face than in the adult world of rushing about and forgetting what was truly important.
“We spend our days as we wish if we can” Gerta said and she walked off down the river. She didn’t pay attention to what became of her two questioners.
Hohenasperg Prison, Near Stuttgart, Germany
Of all the guards, Reinhard Heydrich was the most sadistic. There were rumors that he had taken this job because it was the only thing he could get after the Navy had thrown him out for conduct unbecoming. Sauvageot was a frequent target of his, not that anyone cared, not even the other prisoners. Sauvageot had endured this in silence, that silence had become his power. Every few months, agents from Abwehr showed up in the interview room and pumped him for information about the French Intelligence Ministry, whatever they were calling it these days.
Not as if Sauvageot knew anything that would be remotely relevant. If he had said what he knew then odds are they would go away and never come back. He would become like Stoltz, having totally lost his baring, perspective and sanity. Regardless of whatever strides Abwehr had made over the previous decades they were still Germans. Like clockwork they were there at the start of every quarter, every three months. Inadvertently providing Sauvageot a thin thread to the outside world.
“That bunch of frauds might think you are good for something” Heydrich said as he led Sauvageot back into his cell “But I know the truth, you truly are a worthless piece of shit.”
“That’s not what your mother said” Sauvageot said in French, breaking his silence for the first time in weeks.
“What did you just say to me?” Heydrich demanded.
Sauvageot said nothing but was waiting for the first blow when it arrived, which it did. It staggered him and nearly left him unconscious as his legs crumpled under him. There was a series of blows and kicks, finally there was the sound of splintering wood as Heydrich broke his baton over Sauvageot’s back. Heydrich stood there for a small eternity before muttering a series of swearwords and slamming the cell’s door shut.
After several minutes Sauvageot finally stirred, despite Heydrich’s best efforts he had lacked the focus to hurt Sauvageot too badly. Then he saw it, for eight years he’d been waiting for his guards to make a mistake. Now one had. The broken end of the baton had been left in his cell. Archimedes once said that if he had a long enough lever and fulcrum on which to place it he could move the world then he could move the world. César Sauvageot now had a lever.