Juan Gomez-Jurado - The Traitor's emblem

“Nice car.”

“It’s not bad.”

“Had it long?”

“A couple of months. It’s secondhand.”

For God’s sake, don’t call the police… You haven’t seen anything but a respectable worker stopping to make a call.

He felt the employee’s suspicious gaze on the back of his neck as he got into the car. He had to grit his teeth to stop himself from crying out from the pain as he sat down.

Everything is normal, he thought, focusing all his senses on starting the engine without fainting. Go back to your paper. Go back to your quiet night. You don’t want to get mixed up with the police.

The receptionist kept his eyes on the Mercedes until it turned the corner, but Paul couldn’t be sure if he was just admiring the bodywork or making a mental note of the license plate.

When he arrived at the stables, Paul allowed himself to slump forward onto the steering wheel, his strength gone.

He was awoken by knocking on the window. Manfred’s face was peering down at him with concern. Beside him was another smaller face.

Julian.

My son.

In his memory, the next few minutes were a jumble of disconnected scenes. Manfred dragging him from the car into the stables. Washing his wounds and sewing them up. Stinging pain. Julian offering him a bottle of water. Him drinking for what seemed like an eternity, unable to quench his thirst. And then silence again.

When he eventually opened his eyes, Manfred and Julian were sitting on the cart, watching him.

“What’s he doing here?” said Paul hoarsely.

“What should I have done with him? I couldn’t leave him alone in the boardinghouse!”

“What we have to do tonight isn’t work for children.”

Julian climbed down from the cart and ran over to hug him.

“We were worried.”

“Thank you for coming to rescue me,” said Paul, ruffling his hair.

“Mama does that to me too,” said the boy.

“We’re going to go get her, Julian. I promise.”

He rose and went to clean himself up in the small washroom out back. It was little more than a bucket-now covered in spiderwebs-positioned under a tap, and an old mirror covered in scratches.

Paul studied his reflection carefully. Both his forearms and his whole torso were bandaged. On his left side, blood was straining against the white fabric.

“Your injuries are nasty. You have no idea how much you screamed when I put on the antiseptic,” said Manfred, who had come to the door.

“I don’t remember a thing.”

“Who’s the dead man?”

“He’s the man who took Alys.”

“Julian, put that knife back down!” shouted Manfred, who had been glancing over his shoulder every few seconds.

“I’m sorry he had to see the body.”

“He’s a brave boy. He held your hand the whole time I was working, and I can assure you it wasn’t pretty. I’m an engineer, not a doctor.”

Paul shook his head, trying to clear it. “You’ll have to go out and buy some sulfonamide. What time is it?”

“Seven a.m.”

“Let’s rest for a bit. Tonight we’ll go and get your sister.”

“Where is she?”

“Dachau camp.”

Manfred opened his eyes wide and swallowed.

“You know what Dachau is, Paul?”

“It’s one of those camps the Nazis built to house their political enemies. Basically an open-air prison.”

“You’ve just returned to these shores, and it shows,” said Manfred, shaking his head. “Officially, these places are wonderful summer camps for unruly or undisciplined children. But if you believe the few decent journalists who are still around, places like Dachau are a living hell.” Manfred went on to describe the horrors going on just a few miles outside the city limits. A few months earlier he’d come across a couple of magazines that described Dachau as a low-level correctional facility where the inmates were well fed, were dressed in crisp white uniforms, and smiled for the cameras. The pictures were staged for the international press. Reality was very different. Dachau was a prison of swift justice for those who opposed the Nazis-parodies of actual trials that rarely lasted more than an hour. It was a hard-labor camp where watchdogs prowled the perimeter of the electric fences, howling into the night under the constant glare of searchlights from above.

“It’s impossible to get any information on the prisoners jailed there. And nobody ever escapes, you can be sure of that,” Manfred said.

“Alys won’t have to escape.”

Paul outlined a rough plan. Just a dozen phrases, but enough so that by the end of the explanation Manfred was even more worried than before.

“There are a million things that could go wrong.”

“But it could also work.”

“And the moon could be green when it rises tonight.”

“Look, are you going to help me save your sister or not?’”

Manfred looked at Julian, who had climbed back up onto the cart and was kicking his ball against its sides.

“I suppose so,” he said with a sigh.

“Then go and rest for a while. When you wake up, you’re going to help me kill Paul Reiner.”

When he saw Manfred and Julian sprawled on the ground, trying to rest, Paul realized just how exhausted he was. However, there was still one thing left for him to do before he could get some sleep.

At the other end of the stables, his mother’s letter was still attached to the nail.

Again Paul had to step over Jurgen’s body, but this time it was much more of an ordeal. He spent several minutes looking at his brother: his missing eye, the increasing paleness of his skin as the blood accumulated in his lower parts, the symmetry of his body, felled by the knife that had cut into his abdomen. In spite of the fact that this person had caused him nothing but suffering, he couldn’t help feeling a profound sorrow.

Things should have been different, he thought, finally daring to step through the wall of air that seemed to solidify above the body.

With the utmost care he pulled the letter from the nail.

He was tired but, all the same, the emotion he felt when he opened the letter was almost overwhelming.

My dear son:

There isn’t a right way to begin this letter. The truth is, this is only one of several attempts I’ve made over the last four or five months. After a while-an interval that gets shorter each time-I have to pick up my pencil and try to write it all over again. I always hope you aren’t in the boardinghouse when I burn the previous version and scatter the ashes out the window. Then I set to the task, this poor substitute for what I need to do, which is to tell you the truth.

Your father. When you were small you used to ask me about him. I would brush you off with vague answers, or kept my mouth shut, because I was afraid. In those days our lives depended on the charity of the Schroeders, and I was too weak to look for an alternative. If only I’d

… But no, ignore me. My life is full of “only’s” and I grew tired of feeling regret a long time ago.

It’s also been a long time since you stopped asking me about your father. In a way this has worried me even more than your tireless interest in him when you were small, because I know how obsessed with him you still are. I know how hard you find it to sleep at nights, and I know that the thing you want most is to know what happened.

Which is why I have to remain silent. My mind does not work all that well, and occasionally I lose track of time, or the sense of where I am, and I only hope that in those moments of confusion I don’t give away the location of this letter. The rest of the time, when I’m lucid, all I feel is fear-fear that the day you learn the truth you will rush to confront those responsible for Hans’s death.