Free In Satan's Shadow by John Anthony Miller

long.”
    He got out of the car and moved quickly to the alley entrance. The street was alive with people. Some sat on their steps, neighbors talking, a man walked his dog, and two small girls passed on bicycles. No one paid attention to a man with a cane. He peered around the corner.
    The truck was parked fifty meters away from the street, perched in the dirt lane next to a small carriage house. The driver stood in the rear of the vehicle, doors open. York could see shelves in the interior, stacked against the sides, boxes and open crates perched on them, but he couldn’t see what was in them.
    Erika Jaeger removed two cloth bags that were clamped in the storage rack on the rear of her bicycle. She reached in the pocket of her skirt and withdrew money, handing it to the man. He took the cloth bags and started to fill them with packages wrapped in paper, round items that he handled delicately, then larger pouches. After he filled the bags he handed them back to her. She put them over her handlebars and gave him two more. He filled those as well, but now with produce: lettuce and carrots and peppers and onions.
    York hurried back to the driver and gave him the name of his hotel. When Erika Jaeger pedaled out of the alley and turned towards the taxi, he ducked down while she moved past. After she was thirty or forty meters in front of them, the taxi pulled away from the curb and turned at the next cross street. She never noticed them.
    York wondered why she had purchased four bags of food from an unmarked van. Many Berliners bought food on the black market, especially items with limited availability. But Erika Jaeger lived with her mother. There were only two people in their household.
    Why did she need so much food?

 
    CHAPTER 12
     
    York went to his translator assignment every Monday and Wednesday. Since the availability of British newspapers was sporadic and sometimes non-existent, he sometimes went on Friday, also. Even then, he rarely had much to do.
    The scenario was always the same. He walked in the room with four tables, a single chair at each. A pad of paper, a pen and, occasionally, a newspaper that needed translation was waiting for him. But sometimes when he arrived the table was bare. He would wait awhile, in case someone arrived with a newspaper, but no one ever did.
    He never saw the lieutenant who had given him the assignment, but each time he went, one of the four men who was there during his indoctrination waited, reading their newspaper rather than translating it, but always watching York very carefully. He now knew they were Gestapo, but he acted as innocent as possible, leaning heavily on his cane, exaggerating his limp, favoring his right arm and occasionally massaging his healed bullet wound, perfectly playing the role of a front line soldier on convalescent leave.
    “Is there anything interesting in the Moscow newspaper?” York asked that Wednesday, directing his comment to the other occupant in the room.
    The man looked at him sullenly, as if he didn’t want to be bothered. He didn’t voice a reply, frowned, and shook his head. He raised the paper a bit higher, so York couldn’t see his face.
    York got the message, although he had enjoyed irritating the man. He returned to his paper, translating the personals, and finished as quickly as he could.
    An hour later he walked out of the office. The man with the Russian newspaper was still in there; no one else had come or gone. He exited into the alley, walking past the rubbish cans, and went down the side street and up to the Ku’damm.
    It was a beautiful day, with thick, cottony clouds sprinkled across the sky. Pedestrians passed, shopping or hurrying to work. Cars and bicycles moved down the road, competing with taxis and trolleys. York paused, enjoying the weather and watching the bustling city. For a minute, he almost felt like he was in London. And then the Nazi flags draped from the buildings reminded him that he wasn’t.
    He gazed across