Free Pursuit by Robert L. Fish Page B

commit suicide, regardless of the reason. There had been the loss of the estates; he remembered vaguely driving away from them, his aunt holding his hand tightly, leaning back to watch them disappear, the stable the last thing he had seen before the trees and a curve in the road blocked them from view. But he had heard that there were debts, run up and owed to Jews; and there had been the persecution, he had also heard, by the Communists who ran the Weimar Government in the twenties, before Hitler. But still, should a general have succumbed to any amount of pressure, to the extent of surrendering to death before death had won with its own weapons? No!
    Von Schraeder would feel a rare and unwanted prickling behind his eyes when these thoughts came; he would crush out his cigarette and wave a hand to dissipate the smoke, blinking rapidly. How did he really feel about his father? He told himself repeatedly he really didn’t know. When the general had been found with a gun in his hand, a bullet in his brain, and an apology to his family on his desk, Helmut had been too young. But he remembered many things. He remembered the mustiness of the study, always a forbidden place to play, with the ancestral pictures on the wall and the huge fireplace lit only on important occasions, the patterned carpets, the furniture upholstered in thick velvet, shiny with age, the heavy drapes, his father’s massive desk, the endless bookshelves, and the all-pervading odor of pipe tobacco. Why? Why ? A general should be stronger. A von Schraeder should be stronger! The general should have been a survivor, as his son was determined to be!
    And how could a father have deserted a small boy, a small helpless imaginative son, who needed him …?
    Von Schraeder shook his head, clearing it of the unpleasant recollections, and glanced at his desk calender. July 16, four days until the Valkyrie plan was to go into effect. And after that, one way or the other, all this would soon be memories: the camps, the war, the barracks, the entire business. A trip to Switzerland to collect from his numbered account, held in a name no one knew but him, and then—where? He suddenly realized he hadn’t considered that phase at all as yet; it had always seemed too far in the future. But the decision would have to be made; the planning would have to be gone into. Assuming that Valkyrie were to be successful and a general amnesty granted—in itself a doubtful assumption—would he care to remain in Germany? No. Even with amnesty Germany was not the place he wanted to be. The country would take years to recover and rebuild, and would demand sacrifices during that period. Sacrifices were for people without money; he would not fall into that category. The United States? Probably not. Admittedly the life was easy in America, but the Jews, even though a tiny minority, seemed to run the place. South America? Again a possibility, but the weather, he had heard, was a bit unpleasant. Remain in Switzerland once he was there? Another possibility. He leaned back in his chair, fingering his cigarette holder, feeling expansive. With money, the possibilities were endless.
    He smiled as he thought back on his conversation with Franz Schlossberg in the car that day, driving from Lublin to Weimar. Undoubtedly the good doctor had managed to convince himself by now that the conversation had never taken place at all, or if it had, that he must have completely misunderstood the colonel. It would be so like Schlossberg. They saw each other occasionally in the mess hall or in the canteen in the evenings, but on those occasions the doctor would turn his head resolutely, as if fearing he might be drawn into conversation. An idiot, von Schraeder would think indulgently, a man with a God-given talent in his fingers and cotton in his head. Ah, well—very shortly he might have to remind the good doctor of their conversation, although in all honesty, he hoped not.
    Four more days