“Captain Weisner has been in the post for the past two years,” Mr. Bakker responded.
“And if Captain Weisner is not available?” she asked.
The lawyer glanced around the room as he considered the question. “My guess is that they’d appoint the lieutenant who reports to Weisner.”
Benedict’s gaze sharpened as he grasped Delia’s train of thought. “A lieutenant isn’t good enough,” he said. “This is a high-profilecase, and if they dare use a lieutenant, it would be a significant deviation from military protocol. The Germans can’t risk a botched execution or one that is not carried out with the utmost adherence to protocol.”
“They’ll simply find some other captain in Brussels to stand in,” Mr. Bakker said.
Benedict shook his head. “Commanding a firing squad carries a stigma, and few officers would gladly accept the assignment. They will almost certainly await the return of Captain Weisner to assume responsibility for the task.”
Delia smiled. For the first time that day, a glimmer of hope had begun to surface.
33
Delia’s audacious gambit paid off. The Germans, bound by their rigid adherence to protocol, agreed to postpone the execution until Captain Weisner’s return. The good news arrived an hour before the execution, and she listened with relief as Benedict recounted the details to Inga and Bertie, who had arrived in town on CRB business earlier in the afternoon. They were gathered at the bistro outside Bertie’s grand hotel—the Hotel Ravenstein, the headquarters for the CRB in Brussels since the start of the war.
“Once I learned Captain Weisner was part of the delegation sent to Munich, I turned to the staff at the Spanish Embassy to lean hard on the Germans.” Though Benedict sounded nonchalant, the nervous strain from last night still lingered in his voice.
Delia received a lesson in international diplomacy throughout the tense eighteen hours following Mathilde’s trial. As Americans, she and Benedict had little bargaining power with the Germans, but neutral nations like Norway, Spain, and Switzerland were able to act as mediator between the warring nations.
It was how Inga met Benedict in Berlin. The two of them worked in the American Embassy before the United States entered the war.They did their best to mediate disputes for those caught in the cross fire of war. It was one of those deals that had freed Baron von Eschenbach from a British detention center. Now Benedict turned to staff at the Spanish Embassy for help with Mathilde.
“The Spanish ambassador made a late-night appeal to theKriegsgericht, stressing that if the Germans carried out a botched execution because the captain of the firing squad was carousing in Munich, it would reflect poorly on them. Captain Weisner is not due back in Brussels until Saturday evening, and since a Sunday execution is considered poor form, it has been rescheduled for Monday morning at seven o’clock.”
Hearing the time of the rescheduled execution caused a knot to form in the back of Delia’s neck. It was Saturday afternoon. The hours were slipping by quickly and there still had been no word from Baron von Eschenbach. The clock on their three-day reprieve was ticking, and barring a miracle, Mathilde would be dead in two days.
“We ought to have heard from Baron von Eschenbach by now,” Benedict said darkly. “He understands the urgency and should have at least let us know if he’d gotten an appointment to see the kaiser.”
“You think he may have come to harm?” Inga asked.
“It’s a possibility,” Benedict said. Berlin was four hundred miles away, and the nation was at war. Half the countryside was starving, and he might have appeared a tempting target for desperate and hungry people.
The frazzled waitress with a coffee-stained apron arrived with their lunch platter. The beer was watered down, the bread sliced paper thin. That with a jar of olives rounded out their lunch. Rations were paltry for everyone in Belgium except German soldiers. Every time the door to the inside restaurant opened, the scent of Wiener schnitzel and fried potatoes made her mouth water.
“Is there any butter or jam?” Benedict asked the waitress. His tone was polite, but the waitress gave only a noncommittal shrug before returning inside.
Bertie opened the jar of olives and began distributing them on small plates. “Mrs. Verhaegen’s fate is in the hands of God, but allocating thirty tons of oats, flour, and condensed milk arriving from New York is our responsibility. We need to reestablish our network of distribution before the ship’s arrival on Wednesday.”
“I still have the register of local volunteers,” Delia confirmed. “I’ll start tracking them down immediately.” It would give her something to do rather than obsess over Mathilde and Finn.
She gazed up at the steely clouds scudding across the sky as they morphed and changed shape in the wind. Finn would love to see this. Any moment drops of rain might come spattering down, but he’d love that too. At this very moment, he was trapped in a windowless cell. She’d give anything to allow him a glimpse of these awesome, ominous clouds unfolding above her.
She popped an olive into her mouth and listened to the ongoing conversation about expediting food throughout Belgium, but it was hard to tear her eyes from the awe-inspiring sky. Was it wrong to enjoy the clouds when Finn couldn’t see the sky? Or to savor the salty tang of black olives when he was hungry?
The surly waitress returned. “Here is some jam,” she said, plopping a mostly empty jar beside Benedict’s plate. “And here is a telegram that arrived for you.”
Delia’s breath caught as Benedict tore the flap open, his stern face tense as he skimmed the lines of the message. He gave a very uncharacteristic pump of his fist and said, “The kaiser has granted Mathilde clemency!”
Inga shrieked in delight and shot to her feet to throw her arms around Benedict. Bertie lifted his glass of watery beer in a toast while Delia simply stared in wonder. Despite the gloomy skies, this tiny corner of Brussels was suddenly an oasis of joy.
Benedict extracted himself from Inga’s enthusiastic embrace to relay more information. “Her clemency is contingent on her agreement to house arrest in Switzerland for the duration of thewar. As soon as that agreement is signed, she will be allowed to leave the country.”
“Does it say anything about Finn?” Delia asked.
Benedict sobered and handed her the message. It was a lengthy telegram. When her eyes found Finn’s name, she read it aloud: “No leniency for Finn.”
She lowered the telegram to her lap. It meant Finn would remain in his cell until the end of the war. Everyone had told her it was foolish to believe that both Mathilde and Finn would be spared, but a corner of her heart had clung to that tiny flicker of hope.
