Safe Haven (27 page)

“But what if they had threatened my family?”

“Did they threaten the German’s family?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“They threatened to send his son to the front lines instead of keeping his service as a medic in relatively safe areas. They threatened to arrest his wife because once when she was a child her parents had entertained an enemy of the state’ in their home.”

“And how do you know this?”

“He told me.”

“Exactly. He has told you all of this—what he wants you to know. What has he withheld?”

“Nothing. In his journal he has revealed things that I’m certain could get him sentenced to life in prison or worse. And in the interviews I’ve had with him, he has answered all my questions without any hesitation.”

“Suzanne, this is what he does—what he built a career doing. Why in the world would you trust anything he tells you? The man is fighting for his life.”

She stooped to pick up a stone that had been smoothed by lake water over who knew how many years. “I want to understand how a man so obviously intelligent could come to this.”

Theo let out a breath and watched the fog of it disappear into the air. “Where are you going to meet him—and do not tell me the library because I checked and you are not going there.”

“You checked?” She folded her arms across her chest in a gesture of annoyance. “I’m not Liesl, you know. I’m not ten years old.”

“Forgive me for caring. You are here alone, and you do seem to have this habit of going off—”

“Half-cocked?”

“I was going to say you have a habit of going off on your own without anyone knowing where you are or when you might return. I was worried.”

She squinted up at him then stuffed her hands into her pockets. “You know, I do have to earn some money for the rent at Selma’s.”

Relief flooded through Theo. She wasn’t spending hours and hours with the POW. She was working. “You got a job? At the paper?”

“No. At the canning factory. It’s part-time, but it pays enough to cover rent and essentials and still leaves me the time I need to go to the shelter to gather stories and—”

“And Buch works at the cannery.” It was more than a guess.

“Yes. So you see, I am perfectly safe. We work next to each other on the assembly line, so I am able to interview him while I work, and then I get on the bus with other people from Oswego and come home. Perfectly safe,” she repeated.

“But exhausting. Talk about burning the candle at both ends. When do you take time to sleep?”

“I don’t need much sleep. Besides, once this is done I’ll have plenty of time to catch up.”

“And exactly what is ‘this,’ Suzanne?”

“My book. You see I’ve finally come up with an angle. I tell two stories—the one of the refugees paralleled with Buch’s story. Two sides of the same time period.” Her voice quivered with excitement, and she was talking with her hands—something Theo had learned was a sure sign that this was a topic that she felt passionate about. “I can barely wait to sit down each day and type up my notes.”

“You would defend this man and his actions?”

“No! I am simply telling the story of how it was possible for him and hundreds—thousands—like him to become caught up in the madness.”

“Sounds like a defense to me.”

She stopped walking and glared at him. “What do you want from me, Theo? I am a journalist. I write stories designed to inform and teach and help readers come to an educated point of view based on fact.”

Theo gave her a wry smile. “And so we have come full circle, Suzanne. How exactly are you proving those so-called facts?” He did not wait for an answer. “I promised Liesl and Ilse to join them for a meeting for worship on Sunday. Gisele is coming as well. If you’d like to come you’d be most welcome.”

“Maybe another time.”

“Thought so,” he murmured as he turned away and climbed the soggy path that led back to the hole in the wire fence.

Suzanne watched him go. What right did he have to judge her? If she wanted to pursue the business with Detlef Buch, wasn’t that her right? So she had originally sought his advice, but now … And what had he meant by that last comment? “Thought so.” As if he had expected that she would refuse any invitation to join in a meeting for worship. Wasn’t he the one who had made such a point of not making assumptions without fact?

But he was right—at least about the meeting for worship. Other than the night she had sat with Liesl in the frigid barracks apartment, Suzanne had not attended a meeting for worship or any other form of church service since she had been eighteen years old. As she stood staring out across Lake Ontario, she recalled another lake in another season in another part of the country.

As a teenager her summers had been spent working as a counselor at a camp set on the banks of a large lake high in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. But the summer of her eighteenth birthday, she had opted to do something else. Meanwhile at that camp something happened—something that maybe if she had been there would not have happened—something that changed her life. And it seemed to her that everything that had happened in the world following that summer had only served to prove the point. There was no “Light” and there was no plan.

She continued to stand on the rocky beach below the fort where hundreds of people still awaited their fate, until the chill of the day seeped through the fabric of her coat and into her bones. Shivering, she climbed the path back to the hole in the chain-link fence where teenagers from town on one side and from the shelter on the other had created a makeshift if temporary escape.

As she crossed the grounds of the fort—soggy in places where the snow had melted and patches of grass had begun to appear—she saw several people gathered near the administration office and more exiting the barracks and community buildings to join them. Something had happened. Was it possible that the war was over? She quickened her step until she reached the silent throng gathered around the open door of the administration building. A radio had been turned to full volume, and over a mournful composition of funereal music the announcer was saying, “The president died at his home in Georgia.”

President Roosevelt had always seemed indestructible despite rumors that the onset of polio long before he had run for the land’s highest office had left his legs useless and paralyzed and that when out of the public eye he used canes or crutches and a wheelchair. It was common knowledge that one of the reasons he kept the home in Georgia was to take advantage of the hot mineral springs there.

He had just won an unprecedented fourth term in office. Suzanne tried to picture his running mate—a balding, bespectacled haberdasher from Missouri. Harry Truman was now the president of the United States.

“And so we begin again,” Gisele said wearily as she turned away from the broadcast to light a cigarette. “The question is if we were guests of FDR, are we now guests of Mr. Truman?”

“The wording has always been ‘guests of the president,’” Suzanne reminded her, but even as she attempted reassurance, she had doubts. Would this new president honor the promises of his predecessor? Only time would tell.

For days after the news of FDR’s death was broadcast, everyone in the fort and in town seemed to move through their routine in a kind of disbelief. How could this happen? What would they do now? What would the government do? What did this mean for the war, which had seemed to be winding down at long last?

But Ilse’s mind was on another matter. Ever since Theo had told her that Detlef Buch was a prisoner of war and living in the area, she had been unable to get the man off her mind. Her first reaction had been a kind of kneejerk fear and anxiety—the same feelings that had overwhelmed her whenever the man was around back in Munich. But then she would remind herself that this was different. He was a prisoner—not someone in authority. He could no longer bring harm to her or Liesl.

Once she had worked through that, her thoughts went to Beth and Josef. Shouldn’t Josef be told that his father was in America? And what of his mother? Where was she? More and more she felt the need to contact Josef and Beth.

So when she saw Suzanne Randolph sitting on the steps of the administration building with Gisele one afternoon just after President Roosevelt’s body had been carried by train to his home in Hyde Park, New York, for burial, she crossed the parade ground to speak with the reporter.

Suzanne and Gisele sat with their faces turned to the sun, their eyes closed, soaking in the warmth of spring. Ilse hesitated to disturb them but did not wish to lose her nerve.

“Hello,” she called as she reached the walkway that ran around the camp connecting all the public buildings.

Both women blinked and squinted and then smiled. “Come join us,” Gisele invited. “I can finally believe that the horrid winter is at long last behind us.”

Suzanne scooted to one side, making room for Ilse to sit between them.

“I would like to speak with you,” Ilse said, turning her attention to Suzanne. “About Detlef Buch.”

Suzanne sat up straight and gave Ilse her full attention. “Theo told you? Look, I know that he thinks I am making a mistake but—”

“I told Theo who this man was—is. I have known for some time now that you have been writing down his story in the same manner that you have been writing stories about the people here in the fort. That is your privilege, and I do not judge your motives. The truth is that I wish to speak with him myself.”

Surprise registered in Suzanne’s eyes, and Gisele gasped behind her.

“Why?” Suzanne asked. “What possible good could—”

Ilse smiled. “I do not judge you, and you will do me the courtesy of not questioning my reasons. Will you arrange a meeting?”

“You know him?”

“We have family in common. Theo did not tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“Herr Buch’s son is married to my niece—to Theo’s sister, Beth. When we were in Munich, he came to our home on at least two occasions.” She saw that Suzanne knew none of this. “So Theo is perhaps correct,” Ilse said softly.

Surprise had disintegrated to confusion and irritation. “I don’t understand. What is it Theo is correct about?”

“That Herr Buch is telling you
his
story but that may not be the whole story. Theo has worried that you are being taken advantage of and he tells me it would not be the first such experience for you.”

Gisele leaned forward, her eyes probing Suzanne’s eyes. “Why on earth would you agree to consort with this criminal—this man who with a stroke of his pen sent perhaps hundreds or even thousands to their deaths?” She stood up. “I—we have trusted you, and you have gone behind our backs to—”

“To get the other side of the story,” Suzanne protested.

“There is no other side to this story,” Gisele growled as she stalked away.

Ilse and Suzanne sat on the step without speaking for several minutes. Finally, Ilse could stand it no more. “Will you arrange for me to meet with Herr Buch?”

“Does Theo know you plan to do this?”

“Theo is not my keeper. I am a grown woman, and if I have decided to do this, I hardly need Theo’s permission—or yours. But I could use your help in arranging the meeting.”

“I’ll ask Mr. Buch when I see him at work tonight at the cannery. If he’s willing—”

“No! He is not to know of my presence here. I do not wish to give him the choice of whether he wishes to see me. If you will arrange a time for him to meet you—perhaps again at the library?”

“We are to meet there on Saturday at three.”

“Then I will get a pass and be there in your place.” Ilse got to her feet. “Thank you, Suzanne.” And as she walked back toward the barracks, she was already planning exactly what she would say to Detlef Buch.

But on Saturday morning she began to have second thoughts. Gisele had made it clear that she thought Ilse was out of her mind to have anything to do with the Nazi POW. “How can you even think of being in the same room with him, much less sitting civilly across a table from him?” Gisele actually shuddered.

“It feels like something I need to do,” Ilse replied as she checked her hair in a hand mirror she had rescued from one of the donation boxes. “I should wear a hat,” she murmured and went to the bedroom to get one.