Locals could surely guide him. The sheer mass of the train station’s grey Hauptbahnhof building came into view, promising anonymity to all who entered, one Jewish fugitive in particular. The enormous concrete symbol of German-Austrian unity filled David’s chest with dread. Its swarm of German military men arriving and departing from various fronts did not encourage him. It prompted him to take precautions, parking the wagon a hundred yards away from the main building, sheltered from light beacons by a train shed. Avoiding the main entrance, he found an alternate path to the platform. It called for a march along the rail bed toward the gaping maw from which every train engine approached the station platform, all of it beneath the enormous canopy’s steel ribs.

  The wound in David’s thigh was an agonizing complication. He numbed the pain by tightening his jury-rigged tourniquet. David snapped the leather trench coat against his body, a Teutonically-shaped gesture prompting him of the need for deceptions to come.

  Men of the SS and Wehrmacht moved in a mass from the main building’s large waiting hall toward the station platform. A train thundered into the station. A Wehrmacht guard stood between David and the platform, his ruthless eyes sizing up all loyalties—in or out of uniform. The muscled hands gripping his rifle might have belonged to a common laborer, yet standing a head taller than every other man on the platform made him the most formidable figure in the station. He watched soldiers disembark and took special note of the wounded, some with the aid of crutches, others carried toward debilitating futures. The bill of the guard’s Wehrmacht field cap cast a shadow over his eyes even when his head swiveled in David’s direction. The sight of David in Gestapo regalia surprised him. Snapping to attention and with a deferential click of his boot heels, the man greeted David: “Oberführer.”

  An Oberführer needed no reminder to maintain his officer’s posture. The imposter returned the nazi salute, an unenthusiastic wave reserved for privileged senior officers. He held the man in his stare. Without any idea of the soldier’s rank, David felt the man’s respect and ordered, “Tell me, soldier. Do you know the area?”

  The man answered, “Yes, Oberführer.”

  David instructed, “Please point me toward the church orphanage.”

  The Wehrmacht guard told him, “There’s no orphanage nearby, Oberführer.”

  Arriving soldiers observed the tall man’s deference to David with considerable curiosity.

  “No? In Ebensee, then?”

  The man countered, “No, Oberführer. Not that I’m aware of.”

  David couldn’t let the matter drop yet. He only had to dig for the truth a bit longer, probing, “Church or otherwise?”

  “Forgive me, sir,” the guard told him. “I don’t know of such a place.”

  David nodded his thanks and told him, “As you were.” In a corner of his eye, David spotted a couple of civilian prisoners, bloodied and humbled, being forced toward a train. Strolling past the crowd of soldiers and railroad workers, David now understood that Petra’s story of the orphanage and the rescue of the Margolit children was one last fiction, her last act of devotion to the Reich.

  David wondered whether any of these trains could deliver him to Switzerland. Just as likely, they would house other Sturmbannführers, other Leibigs. He emerged from the station disenchanted, still looking like a senior officer yet dragging his boots through the snow like a prisoner. He forced himself forward, toward the rail shed. When he made his way back to the wagon, he unhitched Desdemona. He stretched an arm toward the saddle in the wagon’s cargo bed. Alongside it, the sight of the art tube buried in the straw reminded David how this evening had begun, of life crushed and labors wasted. He set the rolled canvas aside. It took a good deal more labor to lift the saddle off the straw. It was still propped alongside Petra’s corpse, wet and darkened by her blood. Now her body was exposed to the night, more like carrion than a battlefield casualty worthy of a burial.

  David hoisted the saddle onto Desdemona’s back and strapped it to her torso. The art tube fit snugly between the belly strap and Desdemona’s ribs. David’s boot heel snapped against the stirrup and lifted him onto the cold leather saddle. The station disappeared as David rode away, leaving Petra and the wagon frozen in his memory.

  26

  Salvage

  Sturmbannführer Leibig followed the wagon tracks into the Alps, atop a three-wheel Zundapp, applying the same degree of precision he once used to calibrate shelf space between art books at the National Museum. He had little choice. Overcoming the effects of the morphine was an act of will. Fighting the insult to his brainstem was the greater challenge. Imagine surviving a mountain ride with a damaged sense of balance. It took supreme effort, a resource Leibig strengthened with every breath of mountain air.

  His Ebensee crew wasn’t as well-equipped. At this elevation, men who had been trained to guard condemned grocers and tailors found themselves negotiating terrain that their Kübelwagens and Zundapps were not made to handle. As the trail narrowed, their vehicles surrendered to the punishing elements. The men quietly celebrated. Nature had favored them with a legitimate excuse for abandoning the chase. The Sturmbannführer pressed on, thrilled to be rid of them.

  Leibig didn’t allow himself a full breath for the entire Alpine descent, exhaling only when he skidded onto Strasburg’s pavement. From there, he had to decipher Desdemona’s trail in the snow from a half-dozen pair of unknown hoof prints, a mystery only slightly less challenging than the journey itself. The trail dissolved as soon as the snow melted on the street. He soon found snow and multiple hoof prints but only one set of wagon tracks.

  They led gradually and unswervingly down the angled street toward level ground, en route to the Hauptbahnhof entrance. Another Zundapp on an unrelated mission idled atop the wheel prints as if its reason for being was to disrupt Leibig’s pursuit. The Sturmbannführer climbed out and approached the uniformed men. With memories of his own participation in a Reich operation to exterminate mental and physical defectives, he walked slowly, an exaggerated calm he used to conceal his struggle with his own broken nervous system. Without his official identification, he prompted their compliance with nothing more than swagger and disdain.

  The headlights from Leibig’s three-wheeler stripped the cloak of night from David’s escape route. The thunderclap of its engine smothered the squeak of its sidecar and persuaded Desdemona to pull up. David held his breath against the choking diesel fumes. He heard bits and pieces of a conversation between Leibig and a Sturmführer, a bonier version of his tormentor. He thought it might have been an exchange about a Jew in a wagon. The SS man listened to Leibig’s story and gestured in sympathy with his cause, describing a path toward the train shed, as if they knew where to find David.

  The wagon wheel imprints, in fact, pointed Leibig right at the carriage that had become Petra’s mobile crypt. Leibig skidded to a stop in front of the wagon. He stared despairingly at Petra’s remains, the woman in whom he had invested so much hope, their romance so promising he still felt its bloom. There was nowhere he could look for solace. It made him grateful for the privacy of the train shed. He climbed out of the Zundapp. Bowing toward Petra, he buried his cheek in her inert hand. He pressed his skin into hers as if he were mourning the Führer himself. A thin film of snow melted against her face, its fading warmth a dim echo of life. A train rolled away from the station canopy, picking up enough speed to shunt its warm exhaust at Leibig.

  David couldn’t risk another encounter with Leibig. He had guided Desdemona in a wide turn back toward the rail tracks. And they would have escaped notice if not for the blare of the train’s warning horn. It startled Desdemona and forced her into a high-pitched bray. Fearing they’d been seen, David slapped the reins against her flank. She dared not resist. David asked her to race ahead on the cobblestones, toward no particular destination but away from Leibig. The slippery streets threatened to unhorse him.

  Desdemona’s cry refreshed Leibig’s attention. He rushed to climb astride the Zundapp, but kick-starting the ignition with Desdemona’s shit on his heels almost dismounted him. He changed course and finally put himself on the horse’s path. Between the darkness and the roar of the motorcycle engine, he almost lost track of her. Thanks to the echo of hooves against pavement, the Sturmbannführer found a sound he could follow. He steered his three-wheeler onto the street parallel to the one traveled by his prey. He kept pace with the mare, the hard surface making his tires bounce while Desdemona’s hooves skidded. Parallel streets gave them glimpses of each other.

  Despite the horse’s pedigree, her exhaustion put her at a disadvantage against the motorized bike. And David sensed it. Leibig’s Zundapp appeared on the next street, in Desdemona’s path, as if he knew where she would be. He stood there holding a Walther at his side. Yet there was no sign of a horse. He choked the engine and listened. He rolled toward the sound of hooves slapping pavement.

  David had already forced Desdemona into a right-angled turn, back toward the rail yard. He directed her toward the train station, looking for a crowd in which he could get lost, but he misjudged the route. He swerved at a switched stretch of rail. It brought him to an idled, cargo train, parked near a cargo terminal.

  David knew he had to allow Desdemona a rest. He fed her a handful of snow and oats and hoped for inspiration. Given their diminished resources, his only move was to steer her into one of the cargo cars. It was pointing South, away from the German border. It would carry them within hailing distance of Switzerland. And if a railroad worker found them out, David would deal with the complication then. After all, Desdemona was a jumper.

  David expected to share the car with armaments or farm goods. But the same ramp that invited Desdemona aboard pointed the way for a farm good he hadn’t expected: a small herd of sheep. They clambered onto the rail car so quickly, David and Desdemona found themselves pinned against its wooden cross beams. The sight of the large thoroughbred got the sheep bleating, certain they were about to become prey. Fearful herself, Desdemona snorted an unconvincing threat at the herd.

  A yard worker rolled the cargo door violently into a steel latch. The noise petrified them all. But once the car rolled away from the city, the rhythmic reverberation of steel wheels over iron rails pacified them. David prayed they weren’t heading toward Germany.

  He nudged Desdemona toward the door, and the terrified flock retreated, giving David access to the door’s massive steel bearings. More unsettling was the rumble of a motorcycle engine. The view between horizontal timbers gave him a glimpse of Leibig, on his Zundapp, keeping pace with the train. David turned away reflexively hoping the nazi officer would vanish.

  A blast from Leibig’s Walther jolted David out of his fantasy. The round splintered the joist and gashed a sheep at the shoulder. The animal bleated in agony and fell against the forelegs of two other sheep. They stumbled all around David. Desdemona struggled to stay upright. The sight of Leibig reaching for one of the train’s wooden supports sent a tremor through David.

  Leibig had to holster the pistol to grab at the wooden panel. Pain turned to numbness when a kick from David’s boot heel splintered Leibig’s fingernails and coated the timber with his blood. Still the Sturmbannführer kept his grip on the wood until his front wheel wobbled, unable to resist gravity, pulling the motorcycle into a hillside slalom. Will and effort gave way to common sense. Leibig returned to the Hauptbahnhof for reinforcements.

  —-

  With the support of an SS detachment, Leibig caught up to the train at Innsbruck and forced it to stop. When Leibig and his armed team approached the rail car that carried David from Salzburg, they found a single ewe, on its side, losing blood, done in by the Sturmbanführer’s Luger. It was still breathing but its eyes made sense of nothing. Leibig considered whether his Jew medic had slipped into the shelter of a neighboring cargo container. The next car carried potatoes, the one behind it enormous rolls of fabric, likely raw material for the next generation of SS uniforms. He examined each car. None of the rail cars showed a sign of sheep, horses, or Jew laborers. Leibig’s quarry must have disembarked before this spot and, if he was traveling West, the herd of sheep would give away his location.

  Discarding the Zundapp’s sidecar, Leibig followed the route 60 miles back, to an unscheduled stop near Kitzbuhel. There, he learned a rail yard worker had nearly been killed when a stampede of sheep disembarked in a panic. By the time Leibig caught up to the flock, they had been pacified by the landscape. It was hazardous ground, a snowy Alpine meadow. It persuaded the herd to work its way down the slope in a group, not quite skiing, but in a hurry to find level ground.

  In case David used the sheep to camouflage his escape route, Leibig followed them down the hill on his motorcycle. He searched every barn in the valley. A farmer adept at chasing off predators with a blunderbuss was startled by Leibig’s appearance. Leibig caught some of the buckshot in his backside, but made the farmer pay with his government-issued pistol, delivering the man from this life. He walked his Zundapp back up the hillside, all the way to the rail bed. He steered West. His rump bled liberally. The wound made sitting on the motorcycle too painful. He was forced to stand the entire distance to the Swiss border.

  27

  The Border

  As the day went on, David watched the ground rise before him. Desdemona lifted him toward evening. Was it safe to stop, he worried, to allow himself a moment for checking his leg wound? He slowed Desdemona with a tug on her reins.

  He climbed down and examined his thigh. All he could make out in the darkness was an expanding blood stain, the dim light limiting his ability to see anything more than a black shape against Gestapo grey. The gash, however, felt fully red and prompted David to tell himself, “Don’t be a difficult patient.”

  A strip of bedsheet-turned-bandage hung off Desdemona’s flank. David pulled it free and wrapped it around his own bloody thigh, tight enough to numb the pain, deluding himself into believing he was well enough to vault once more onto Desdemona’s back. With the mention of her name, Desdemona carried David up a mountain road.

  As the night sky merged with the pink horizon, David felt the horse lift him over the mountain crest. Almost asleep, David had begun to lose his balance. Submitting to gravity’s pull jostled him awake. He shouted, “No. Not now. Almost there.” He climbed off to revive himself. He slapped his cheeks. A handful of snow rubbed against the back of his neck jolted him—if not awake—making him aware of his surroundings.

  Desdemona nibbled a handful of snow from David’s palm. As he pointed toward a river carved into the bottom of a valley, she appeared to look in that direction.

  “There. The border.” He retrieved Desdemona’s reins and walked her gently down the slope.

  It took David most of the day to negotiate the snowy incline and all its furrows. Soon the foothills gave way to a perfectly white flood plain broken only by the bank of the Inn River. Its flow had given way to winter, transforming it into solid ice. The frozen surface served as a recreation area for local skaters more than it did as any sort of official barrier. Its white blanket of snow rendered it almost identical to the lands it separated.

  David approached the river basin on foot, with Desdemona in tow. The frozen surface was intermittently broken by ice floes and black water. It persuaded him to veer North for an hour in search of a bridge. There he was finally able to make out a shaky wooden span just a few metres above the frozen river. This one had a border station astride its entrance. Scuffing the leather of his oversized Gestapo boots against the stirrups, he used the champion thoroughbred to rise above any rank that would dare challenge him. He prodded Desdemona to approach the bridge casually, as if there had never been a war or a need for national boundaries.

  A young German border guard, Neuer, stepped out of his guard shack to await David’s commanding pose atop his mount. The bitter wind stung the young soldier’s cheeks and made him wish David’s pace had been less casual. He stole a look at his guard shelter as though it might warm him but he chose to wait outside. He saluted the man in the leather trench coat and asked, “May I see your identification papers, please?”

  David reached inside his coat for Karsten Hausler’s Gestapo ID.

  Neuer almost overlooked a small matter before deciding to address it. “You can’t bring the horse,” he ordered. He wondered about the risk of standing up to a senior Gestapo officer but decided his primary loyalty had to be to the rules.

  David looked sideways at the young soldier. “I’m taking her to a veterinarian.”

  “It’s an order I can’t disobey.”

  “Yet you disobey me,” remarked David as if he’d been pulling rank on his inferiors for years.

  Neuer answered, “Man or beast, the war effort requires it.”

  “What’s your name, soldier?” David took the fountain pen from an inside

  pocket, the one he used to adjust Leibig’s tattoo. Its barrel still bore a droplet of Leibig’s blood.

  Neuer glimpsed the pen and hesitated.

  David repeated, “Name?” Neuer spoke up, and David recorded the reply. As the Oberführer wrote, Neuer noticed a red smear transferred from the pen onto David’s fingers. It persuaded him the Gestapo had rightly earned its murderous reputation.

 

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