Another shot through the window. Outside a car horn blared.

Paul moved into the next row, swinging the gun before him, finger on the trigger. The Mauser was ungainly – good for distance, bad for this. He looked fast. The aisle was empty. He jumped as another shot shattered a window. Someone must have heard by now. Or seen a bullet strike a wall or house across the street. Maybe a car or passerby had been hit.

He started for the next aisle. Fast, swinging the gun before him.

A glimpse of the man’s black uniform, disappearing. The SS man had heard Paul, or anticipated him, and slipped behind another stack of crates.

Paul decided he couldn’t wait any longer. He’d have to stop the guard. There was nothing to do but charge over the center row of crates, just like he’d gone over the top of the trenches in an assault during the War, and hope he could get off a fatal shot before the man sprayed bullets at him from the semiautomatic pistol.

Okay, Paul said to himself. He took a deep breath.

Another…

Go!

He leapt to his feet and climbed onto the crate in front of him, lifting the gun. His foot just touched the second crate when he heard a sound behind him and to his right. The soldier had flanked him! But as he turned, the grimy windows shook again from a gunshot. Paul froze.

The SS soldier stepped directly in front of him, twenty feet away. Paul frantically raised the Mauser but just before he fired, the soldier coughed. Blood sprayed from his mouth, and the Luger dropped to the floor. He shook his head. He fell heavily and lay still, blood turning his uniform ruddy.

To his right, Paul could see Otto Webber on the floor. He clutched his bloody gut with one hand. In his other was a Mauser. He’d managed to crawl to a rack of guns, load one and fire. The rifle slid to the floor.

“Are you crazy?” Paul whispered angrily. “Why did you go toward him like that? Didn’t you think he’d shoot?”

“No,” the white-faced, sweating man said, laughing. “I didn’t think he’d do that.” The man sighed in pain. “Go see if anybody has responded to his subtle call for help.”

Paul ran to the front and noted the area was still deserted. Across the street was a tall, windowless building, a factory or warehouse, closed today. It was likely that the bullets had struck the wall unnoticed.

“It’s clear,” he said, returning to Webber, who had sat up and was looking down at the mass of blood on his belly. “Ach.”

“We have to find a doctor.” Paul slung the rifle over his shoulder. He helped Webber to his feet and they made their way out the back doorway and into the boat. Pale and sweating, the German lay back with his head against the bow as Paul rowed frantically to the dock near the truck.

“Where can I take you? For a doctor?”

“Doctor?” Webber laughed. “It’s too late for that, Mr. John Dillinger. Leave me. Go on. I can tell. It’s too late.”

“No, I’m taking you for help,” Paul repeated firmly. “Tell me where to find somebody who won’t go running to the SS or Gestapo.” He pulled the boat to the dock, tied it up and climbed out. He set the Mauser in a patch of grass nearby and turned back to help Webber out of the boat.

“No!” Paul whispered.

Webber had untied the rope and with his remaining strength pushed off from the dock. The dinghy was now ten feet away, drifting into the current.

“Otto! No!”

“As I say, too late,” Webber called, gasping. Then he gave a sour laugh. “Look at me, a Viking’s funeral! Ach, when you return home play some John Philip Sousa and think of me… Though I still say he’s English. You Americans take credit for far too much. Now, go on, Mr. John Dillinger. Do what you have come here for.”

The last glimpse Paul Schumann had of his friend were the man’s eyes closing as he slumped to the bottom of the boat, which gathered speed, drawn into the murky water of the Spree.

A dozen of them, all young men, who had chosen life and freedom over honor. Was it cowardice or intelligence that had motivated them to do this?

Kurt Fischer wondered if he was the only one among them plagued by this question.

They were being driven through the countryside northwest of Berlin in the same sort of bus that used to take them on outings as young students. The round driver piloted his vehicle smoothly over the winding road and tried, unsuccessfully, to get them to sing hunting and hiking songs.

Kurt sat next to his brother, as they shared stories with the others. Little by little he learned something about them. Mostly Aryan, all from middle-class families, all with degrees, attending universities or planning to do so after their Labor Service. Half were, like Kurt and Hans, marginally anti-Party for political and intellectual reasons: Socialists, pacifists, protestors. The other half were “swing kids,” richer, rebellious too but not as political; their main complaint with the National Socialists was cultural: the censoring of movies, dance and music.

There were no Jews, Slavs or Roma gypsies among this crowd, of course. Nor any Kosis, either. Despite Colonel Ernst’s enlightenment, Kurt knew that it would be many years before such ethnic and political groups would find a home in the military or German officialdom. Kurt’s personal belief was that it would never happen as long as the triumvirate of Hitler, Göring and Goebbels was in power.

So here they were, he was thinking, these young men, brought together by the predicament of having to choose between a concentration camp and possible death or an organization they found morally wrong.

Am I a coward, Kurt wondered again, choosing as I did? He remembered Goebbels’s call for the nationwide boycott of Jewish stores in April of ’33. The National Socialists thought it would receive an overwhelming show of support. In fact, the event went badly for the Party, with many Germans – his parents among them – openly defying the boycott. Thousands, in fact, sought out stores they hadn’t previously been to, just to show support for their Jewish fellow citizens.

That was courage. Did he not have this bravery within him?

“Kurt?”

He looked up. His brother had been speaking to him. “You’re not listening.”

“What did you say?”

“When will we eat supper? I’m hungry.”

“I don’t have any clue. How would I know?”

“Is army food any good? I heard you eat well. I suppose it depends, though. If you’re in the field, it’ll be different than at a base. I wonder what it’s like.”

“What, the food?”

“No. Being in the trenches. Being-”

“We won’t be in the trenches. There won’t be another war. And if there is, you heard Colonel Ernst, we won’t have to fight. We’ll be given different duties.”

His brother didn’t look convinced. And more troubling, he didn’t look that upset that he might be seeing combat. Why, he even seemed intrigued by the thought. This was a very new, and disturbing, side to his brother.

I wonder what it’s like…

Conversation in the bus continued – about sports, about the scenery, about the Olympics, about American movies. And girls, of course.

Finally they arrived, turning off the highway and easing down a long maple-lined drive that led to the campus of Waltham Military College.

What their pacifist parents would think to see them in such a place!

The bus squealed to a halt in front of one of the school’s red-brick buildings. Kurt was struck by the incongruity: an institution devoted to the philosophy and practice of warfare, yet set in an idyllic vale with a rich carpet of grass, fluttering ivy crawling up the ancient buildings, forests and hills behind, which formed a gentle frame for the scene.

The boys gathered their rucksacks and climbed off the bus. A young soldier not much older than they identified himself as their recruitment officer and shook their hands, welcoming them. He explained that Doctor-professor Keitel would be with them shortly. He held up a football that he and another soldier had been kicking around and he tapped it toward Hans, who expertly sent it on its way to another of the recruits.