Lee Child - First Thrills

Joachim’s stomach cramped.

“They ruined those delicate cheekbones. He could barely walk when they were done.” Herman watched Joachim, a gleam in his eye. “I think he escaped to Switzerland.”

Joachim’s stomach relaxed. The car rattled along.

“Where are they sending us?” Herman asked again.

“Dachau, I think,” Joachim said, angry at himself for not lying this time. He’d also heard they might be going to Auschwitz, but he didn’t tell Herman that.

“Dachau is only a few hours by train from Constance, from Switzerland.”

“You wouldn’t be allowed on a train.”

“So I’d walk.” Herman rubbed his palm over the rough stubble on his shaved head.

“A few hundred kilometers in the snow? Anyone who sees you will turn you in. Or shoot you. You are the enemy now.”

“I’d reach the border.”

“The Swiss won’t let you in.”

“I won’t go through the checkpoint.” Herman smiled. “I’d lift a boat and row across Lake Constance.”

“Nazis guard the boats. You’d never make it.”

“What a way to die.” Herman sighed. “Free and on the water.”

Joachim stirred on the bench. He had loved to swim as a boy and had been the best swimmer in his school. “You shouldn’t think of dying,” he said to the door. “It’s not… careful. You have to be careful.”

“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.

The train jerked to a stop and knocked him to the floor. He pulled himself back onto the bench. Whispers ran the length of the car. Why were they stopping?

Were they in Dachau already? Herman had escaped at the last instant. Joachim tried to imagine him rowing across Lake Constance to a land filled with chocolate, but instead pictured him bleeding in the snow.

The familiar aroma of cigarette smoke wafted in. Behind him several prisoners inhaled the smell greedily, but Joachim shrank back. That odor meant soldiers.

The car door jerked open, and Joachim threw up an arm to shield his eyes from the scalding light. Dark profiles of three soldiers with guns loomed in the doorway, a prisoner sagged between two others. They heaved a body in and slammed the door.

Joachim alone crossed to the inert figure, giving up his precious seat on the bench. He knelt and rolled him over. Dim light from the window illuminated a battered face. Herman.

Joachim shook him, thinking of Kurt’s beautiful face broken by the Gestapo. Herman’s head lolled on his shoulders. He looked dead.

Joachim put a finger under Herman’s nostrils to check for breath just as the car jolted back into motion. Off balance, he fell across Herman’s body. Herman’s heart beat against Joachim’s chest. Joachim smiled. He lay there a moment, remembering other men and other nights.

He pulled himself to a sitting position and peeled off his own jacket, shivering. He wiped blood from Herman’s face with its tattered sleeve, tracing the angle of his cheekbone. Herman moaned.

Joachim’s shaking fingers unbuttoned Herman’s jacket. He lifted Herman with one hand and pulled his jacket off, wincing at the darkening bruises on his ribs.

Another prisoner put a skeletal hand on Joachim’s naked arm. “Careful,” he said. “You don’t want to be pink at Dachau.”

Joachim squeezed his hand.

The prisoner pulled back. Joachim finished switching jackets with Herman. Now his own jacket bore a pink triangle, Herman’s a yellow one.

The prisoner turned away.

Joachim cradled Herman’s head in his lap until the train stopped hours later. The doors opened onto darkness.