He chuckled. “Maybe not,” he conceded. “But when I imagine heaven, I believe it will look much like the Black Forest with its great canopy of leaves and sunlit glades. I dream of those wonderful forests at night and long to return to them.”
The patter of footsteps sounded outside his cell. Finn dropped onto the mattress, praying that whoever was coming hadn’t heard the whispered conversation. He held his breath as the clank of a key turned in his cell-door lock.
“Hoch!” the guard ordered.
It probably meantup. Finn didn’t know German, but whenever a guard opened his door, they always shoutedhoch, and Finn always rose, which seemed the proper response.
It wasn’t time for the daily delivery of turnips, so he stood there motionless, straining to see if a translator was with the guard. But the thin sliver of light shining behind the guard almost completely blinded him.
“Kommen,” the guard said. When Finn didn’t respond, theguard repeated the word and gestured for him to come out of the cell. There were in fact other men behind the guard. He could make out their silhouettes, and it looked as though they had weapons trained on him.
Finn cautiously stepped from the cell, squinting against the glare. After clamping handcuffs on him, they nudged him forward.
Father Gerhardt,please pray for me, he thought.
Aside from the delivery of turnips and water each morning, Finn had been ignored since the day they’d told him of Mathilde’s execution. That had been, what, ten days ago? Fifteen maybe? It was impossible to guess in his cell where he never saw the sun as the days blended into nights.
Something was about to happen. He feared it as much as he was desperate for change. All his senses went on alert as they neared the end of the dim hallway. Keys jangled as the guard unlocked another door, and then he was led up a stairway.
He quickly grew winded from the climb. Once at the top of the stairs, guards on either side of him seized his arms and steered him toward a door at the end of a corridor. They opened the door and led him into a room flooded with sunlight glaring off white walls. Lots of people were inside. He squinted, trying to determine if they were soldiers or civilians, but still couldn’t see much aside from their silhouettes.
One of them had the frame of a woman, and she approached him.
“Finn?” she asked.
He jerked to attention. That was definitely a female voice. His eyes slowly adjusted, and he blinked rapidly against the sun streaming through the windows. She was slim, had dark hair and a heart-shaped face. She reminded him of Delia, and a sad, wistful feeling arose within him.
“You look like my girl from back home,” he said.
“Oh, Finn ... Iamyour girl from back home.”
He would have fallen over if the guards didn’t have him by bothhis arms. A million thoughts cascaded through his brain. How did she get here? Was the war over? The chain on his handcuffs rattled as he reached out for her.
Instantly, guards jerked him backward, and Delia winced. A flurry of German commands was pretty good indication that he’d done something wrong.
“We’re not allowed to touch each other,” Delia hurried to say. “It was part of the conditions we agreed to for the visit to occur.”
“We?” He glanced at the other men in the room, all of them wearing the ordinary attire of civilians. Not one of the men was familiar.
“This is Benedict Kincaid and Baron von Eschenbach,” she said, gesturing to two of the men. “The others are here from the German Consulate. Benedict was able to get authorization for a visit based on the Hague Convention of 1907.”
Finn had no idea what the Hague Convention was, but if it allowed him to see Delia, he’d say it was the greatest document in the history of mankind.
“It’s good to see you,” he finally stammered in what was surely the understatement of the century.
Finn was directed to sit in a hard-backed chair at a plain wooden table. Delia took a seat opposite him, sitting between her two companions.
The man named Benedict spoke first. “Are you being treated well?”
Finn glanced at the Germans standing at the far side of the room, watching. Did they speak English? It was impossible to know, so he took care with his response.
“I’m being fed,” he said. “I doubt I’ll have much of an appetite for turnips after this is all over, but I haven’t been beaten or deprived of sleep.”
“I saw a photograph of you taken in the prison,” Delia said. “You didn’t look good.”
He should have expected it but knowing she’d seen the patheticphotograph was humiliating. No man wanted to be seen at the worst moment of his life.
“That was right after they told me about Mathilde’s execution,” he said, the words sour in his mouth.
