Free For Such a Time by Kate Breslin Page B

several pages. The second of November was the last recorded, almost four months ago.
    A chill ran along her spine at the word Auschwitz scrawled in pencil across the top of each sheet. Rumors had spread as far away as Dachau of a place where Jews were sent and never returned. Where Krematorium fires burned day and night . . .
    “Fräulein Muller!”
    Stella jerked at the sound of the colonel’s voice. She quickly shoved the lists back into the folder. Grabbing up her steno pad and pen, she rushed from her desk into his office.
    After a week’s absence, the colonel still looked formidable. Seated behind his large mahogany desk, elbows against its top, he gestured her toward a chair across from him.
    She edged onto the leather seat and waited. He said nothing as he studied her a long moment. She wondered when he’d left the note to re-file the Auschwitz deportation lists.
    “Anxious to get this over with?” He nodded at her death grip on the steno pad and pen.
    Stella’s cheeks warmed as she eased back into the chair. “I’m merely eager to get started, Herr Kommandant.”
    He exposed her lie with a sardonic smile. She raised her chin, refusing to back down.
    “I’m glad to see the shadows gone beneath your eyes. You’re sufficiently rested, then?”
    She’d slept almost nonstop for days. “Yes, Herr Kommandant.”
    “And your cheeks are starting to fill out.” He scrutinized her as though she were a ripe tomato at market. “Helen’s food must agree with you.”
    The brusque woman brought increasingly larger meals to her room each day, and she seemed to enjoy Stella’s discomfort at having to force down every bite. “As you see,” she said curtly, then thought to add, “Thank you.”
    “You’re welcome.”
    His gentle tone affected her like an unwanted caress. Traitorous heat rose in her face. She felt as if she’d lost some unspoken battle between them.
    “Nightmares?”
    She shook her head and flipped open the steno pad on her lap, unwilling to continue this one-sided laundering of vulnerabilities. “Shall I take dictation now?”
    “Ah, yes, to work.” His sigh could have been amusement or exasperation. “To SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann, SS Headquarters in Berlin. Heil Hitler . . .”
    When he’d finished dictating his letter, Stella read her notes:
    . . . after our meeting in Prague, I received new information that the International Red Cross plans a “surprise” inspection of Theresienstadt as early as March. In light of this important event for the Führer and Herr Reichsführer Himmler, you will agree we must postpone the final matter we discussed.
    What final matter? She glanced up to find the colonel had left his chair to stand in front of the barred window of his office. Watery light filtered through narrow panes of glass, casting him in ethereal shadows.
    He seemed pensive. She wondered which of the letter’s contents he found more disturbing, the Red Cross visit or the postponement of some unnamed “matter” with Lieutenant-Colonel Eichmann.
    The colonel moved slightly, and Stella glimpsed his face in the light.
    His abject misery shocked her.
    She envisioned him as a young man leaving his father’s house; perhaps he’d vowed for some painful reason never to return. Not until the older man’s death forced him back.
    Sudden empathy seized her. She rose from her chair to reach out to him, to . . . to . . .
    The deportation lists flashed in her mind. “Will that be all, Herr Kommandant?” She gripped the back of the chair, shaken by what she’d nearly done.
    “Yes.” He turned to her, his breath coming fast, uneven. “We are finished.”
    Ten minutes later, Stella sat at her desk typing, unable to shake the colonel’s last remark. Did his words hold some double meaning? Why did his mood bother her so much?
    Each day that she grew stronger fueled her determination to leave—with or without his permission. If she chose the latter, she would need time