First Thrills - Lee Child [108]
“Have you ever had Swiss chocolate?” Herman asked.
Joachim clasped his hands in his lap.
“I can almost smell it,” Herman continued. “Thick dark chocolate with bitter marzipan.”
“Or with—” Joachim did not finish his sentence, surprised that he had even begun it.
“Peppermint,” Herman finished. “Crisp peppermint.”
Joachim pushed his chin against his chest. His shoulders were taut and raised, and he forced them down. He would not think about chocolate.
Herman swallowed. “I wanted to go to school in Zürich. A friend of mine went. Came back in thirty-three as a Nazi. I was stunned.”
Joachim raised his head. “It’s hard to lose a friend that way.”
Herman searched Joachim’s face. “It’s hard to lose a friend any way.”
Joachim tried to imagine the friendship he could have had with Herman in Berlin. Then someone farther down the car coughed, and he forced his mind to go blank.
Herman rubbed his hands together. “When do we arrive in Dachau?”
“I don’t know. Try to sleep.”
Herman almost fell when the train abruptly slowed to climb a steep grade. “I could run faster than this train.”
Joachim laughed, quietly and cynically. “What good is that? Do you want to run to the next car? Get there earlier?”
Herman’s words tumbled out. “We can get out of that door. It’s not wired on very well. We could jump off the train and no one would notice.”
Joachim’s stomach clenched again. His hands trembled. He could not remember when he had been so terrified. Even when the Nazis came for him, he was not so afraid. “The Nazis notice everything.”
“Not everything,” Herman said, staring at Joachim’s yellow triangle. “Not everything.”
“If they catch you, they will kill you. Slowly.”
Herman smiled. Suddenly he looked very old, and Joachim flinched away from him. “Aren’t we dying slowly now?”
Joachim thought of the cold outside, the Nazis who were sure to be around with rifles, the incredible distance to the Swiss border. They would never make it. Never.
He spoke to his worn wooden shoes. “Eventually the war will end, and Germany will lose. They will set us free then.”
“Maybe,” Herman said. “Eventually.”
Joachim stared at a brown stain on top of one shoe. Blood? he wondered. “It won’t be too long.”
“Are you daring to dream?” Herman mocked him as he turned to the door. “You shouldn’t do that. It’s not careful.”
Joachim’s voice trembled. “I don’t want you to go.”
“By this time next week we could be in Switzerland, with Kurt.”
“Or we could be dead.”
“Or we could be dead,” Herman repeated. “We could be dead anyway. At least this way we get to decide.”
Muscles tightened in the backs of Joachim’s legs. He wanted to stand. But he did not know what kind of death waited outside. It would be a death, probably a sooner death than awaited him at Dachau. A sooner death.
Herman dropped his warm hand onto the crown of Joachim’s head. “I’m leaving. Are you coming with me?”
Joachim shook his head. He needed time. He hated his cowardly survival instinct.
“Kurt didn’t escape to Switzerland,” Herman said abruptly. He withdrew his hand, the spot he’d warmed now colder than the rest of Joachim’s head. “Kurt died.”
Joachim’s stomach convulsed. His voice almost broke when he spoke, but he brought it under control. “I don’t know any Kurt and I don’t care what he did.”
He gazed into Herman’s eyes, surprised that they were such a vivid blue. They reminded him of a mountain lake he swam across as a child. Joachim dropped his eyes first.
“Be careful then, Joachim Rosen.”
Herman forced the door out, grunting as his arms shook with the strain. Slowly, the wire stretched. Joachim admired his strength. He could never force the door like that.
“Good-bye.” Herman dropped out of the train into the snow.
For the first time since they took him, Joachim wept. He did not cry with the loud, wet wails of his childhood. He sat and wept the dry, silent sobs of a new grief.
The prisoner next to him reached over and put a cold hand on his arm. Joachim slowly brought himself under control.