“Otto—” The Baroness’s tone held a gentle nudge.
“Right. Sorry, ma’am. The car is this way, and we should not linger.” His expression sobered. “There are eyes everywhere in Bern these days. The Baroness’s absence has been noted. Questions are being asked.”
We followed him through the station and out into winter’s grip. A black Mercedes waited at the curb, polished to a mirror shine. Otto held the door for the Baroness as we climbed in from the opposite side.
The drive through Bern was an education.
Otto talked constantly about the weather, the roads, his nephew’s new baby, his sister’s troublesome cat, and the shocking decline in Swiss chocolate quality (“They use less cocoa now, can you imagine? It is a national disgrace!”). He had opinions about everything and shared them with the enthusiasm of a man who had never met a thought he didn’t want to express out loud.
He was amusing, but his eyes kept flicking to the mirror, and his route through the city doubled back on itself, cutting through narrow alleys and quiet residential streets in a pattern that seemed random but wasn’t.
Otto Hartmann was very good at appearing harmless, but this man wasn’t harmless at all.
“Otto,” the Baroness said during a brief lull, “tell them about 1940.”
The car went quiet.
“1940,” Otto said finally. “Yes. That was the year the world ended. Or began, I suppose, depending on how you look at it.”
He turned onto a narrow street lined with medieval buildings, their façades painted in faded pastels.
“I was living in Munich then. I had a wife, a daughter, and a small business repairing automobiles. It was nothing grand, but it was enough. We were happy.” His voice had lost its jovial edge entirely. “Then the Gestapo came. Someone informed on me. I still do not know who. They claimed I had been helping Jews escape across the border. It was true, of course. My wife’s sister was Jewish. What was I supposed to do, let them take her?”
I felt Will tense beside me, so I reached over and took his hand.
“They arrested me. I never saw my wife or my daughter again. I learned later that they were sent east . . . to the camps.” Otto’s hands tightened on the wheel. “I was being transported to a work detail when the truck was ambushed by resistance fighters. In the chaos, a woman appeared. She was elegant, imperious, and utterly out of place. She pulled me from the wreckage and told me to run.”
“The Baroness,” Will said quietly.
“The Baroness.” Otto’s eyes found hers in the mirror, and something passed between. “She had no reason to save me. I was no one, a mechanicfrom Munich of no strategic value whatsoever. She risked her life to pull me from that truck and then risked it again to smuggle me across the border into Switzerland.”
“Why?” Will asked.
Otto smiled despite the grief beneath it. “I asked her the same question once we were safe. Do you know what she said?” He affected a surprisingly accurate imitation of the Baroness’s imperious tone. “‘Because it was the right thing to do, you ridiculous man. Now stop asking foolish questions and help me change this tire.’”
The Baroness laughed. It was bright and unguarded, a sound I hadn’t heard from her before.
“I have been with her ever since,” Otto continued. “She gave me a purpose when I had none. She gave me a family when mine was taken. There is nothing I would not do for her. Nothing.”
The car pulled to a stop outside a narrow building in the Niederdorf, its façade unremarkable, its windows shuttered.
“We are here,” Otto announced. “Bisch is waiting inside.” He turned to look at us, and his jovial mask evaporated. “The Baroness is in danger. I feel it in my bones. Whatever you can do to help her, please do. She is too proud to ask for herself, but I am not. Keep her safe.”
“Otto—” the Baroness began a protest.
“We will,” I cut her off.
Otto held my gaze. Whatever he found seemed to satisfy him, because he nodded once and stepped out to open the Baroness’s door.
The safe house was a maze spanning three stories of cramped rooms and narrow staircases. The walls were lined with books and maps and filing cabinets that probably contained enough secrets to topple governments.
The Baroness led us through the labyrinth to a sitting room on the second floor where a fire crackled in a stone hearth and a man stood waiting.
Bisch was exactly as I remembered him: wiry and weathered, with a face like a granite cliff and eyes the color of dirty ice. He stood with a pronounced lean to the left, favoring his right leg, and the look he gave Will and me was pure professional assessment. I could hear his mind calculating our threat level, our usefulness, and our likelihood of becoming problems.
I knew the look well. I’d given it to plenty of people myself.
“Baroness.” His Austrian accent was clipped. “You made good time.”
