Chapter 42 Munich #3
“Hell,” the second man said, “it could be worth five thousand to the right guy. Maybe more, but I only have a few hundred on me. That’s some kind of royal piece, or maybe taken off some filthy-rich Jew.
I’ll bet she stole it and has no idea what it’s worth.
Tell her three hundred, and that’s our final offer.
If she doesn’t bite, we take it. I’m not letting this one get away. ”
Silence for a moment, and the first man said, “I told you, I don’t do violence.”
“Aren’t you lucky, then,” the second man said, “that I do?” His voice was smoother now, but somehow worse than ever.
“We’ll have to change spots, we do that,” the first man said. “And there are witnesses. The woman knows who I am.”
“So?” the second man said. “We get rid of her and find another one. Plenty of them out there.”
“I don’t know, man,” the first man said. “That’s awful risky.”
I said in German, keeping my voice level with a major effort, “We’re leaving now.” I put the brooch in my pocket, put my left hand out for Dr. Becker, and found his sleeve. I could feel, somehow, that he was rigid. Tense.
“I don’t think so.” The second man had something in his hand now. A knife. “Hand it over.”
My hand came out of my pocket fast. It was holding Frau Heffinger’s knife, which I’d grabbed the second I’d let go of the brooch.
I didn’t think, I just slashed at his face with all the speed I was capable of.
Somehow, I got him on the forehead—he wasn’t a tall man, but short and squat, like a troll—and he called out, turned, blood streaming down his face, and slashed blindly with his own knife.
I’d already jumped back. I had hold of Dr. Becker’s sleeve again, and we were running. Our guide came out of the shadows ahead of us and didn’t say a word, but started running, too.
Chest heaving, throat burning, I ran, expecting any moment to feel a hand on my shoulder, a knife cutting my throat. But it didn’t come, and after ten minutes or so, when my side had a stitch like a knife wound itself, the three of us came to a gasping halt.
“What have you done?” the guide asked me in distress. “Why?”
I told her what I’d heard. I couldn’t see her face well in the darkness, but her voice was shaky when she asked, “He said that? That he’d get rid of me?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I speak English.’
“You do? How?”
“The same way most people do,” I said. “I was taught. We can’t stop here. Keep going.”
Dr. Becker said, “You’ll be found. We’ll be found.” He was still laboring for breath, and I could hear the fear in his voice.
I said, “Nonsense,” and kept hurrying along. My heart was still hammering with effort, but I wasn’t afraid anymore. The anger had taken care of that. “What will he say? That he tried to rob me? What about when I say that he tried to rape me?”
“It would be a lie,” Dr. Becker said.
“Yes,” I said, “and one I’m quite happy to tell. But they’re not going to tell anyone. How can they, without implicating themselves? And I’ll be on a train in the morning anyway.”
“We should have taken their money,” the woman said. “You should have taken his knife once you sliced him, so we could have made them give us their money. They must have hundreds. A thousand, maybe. A thousand American dollars!”
“That would be a good idea,” I said, “if I were a thief. But I’m not. Just a common everyday vigilante with a very sharp weapon and a very bad attitude. Never get into a knife fight with a cook.”
“Are you a cook, then?” the woman asked.
“No,” I said. “But I knew one.”
“Oma,” Alix said.
“You’re kidding,” Ben said.
“That’s some serious badass,” Sebastian said. “Excuse the language.”
Ashleigh didn’t say anything. That’s because she was recording me.
“What about the money, though?” Alix asked. “What about your train ticket home?”
“Dr. Becker and the children left the next morning for Fohrenwald,” I said.
“They went on the train, and I saw them off. It was a hard parting. Not for them so much—Dr. Becker was grateful to me, I know, and to my family, too, but oh, how he wanted to be safe again, to have the children in a real school, and to practice medicine! He couldn’t hide how eager he was to get there, and why should he have?
No, I was glad for them, but I felt very much alone once they’d gone. ”
“Excuse me,” Ben said, “money?”
“I went back to that office. Back to the sergeant. I told him what had happened, he told me I shouldn’t have tried to sell on the black market, which was extremely illegal, and I agreed most humbly and said that I’d learned my lesson.
And then I showed him the brooch and asked if he might possibly know anybody wealthy enough to buy it.
In the end, I sold it to a captain from New York City.
He bought it for his wife and paid me nine hundred dollars—it was probably worth a good seven or eight thousand even at the time, but nine hundred American dollars was a fortune.
A fortune. After that, he arranged a lift for me on another Army truck back to Nuremberg.
I even got to sit in the cab. So you see”—I spread my hands—“how much one can do if one takes the initiative. Audentes fortuna iuvat.”
“What does that mean?” Ben asked.
I smiled and took a last sip of coffee. “Fortune favors the bold.”