Some Murders in Berlin by Karen Robards

Author:Karen Robards [Robards, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2024-03-28T20:28:05+00:00

22

TO HER SURPRISE and despite everything she’d been through, Elin slept the sleep of the dead, only to wake up not long after dawn with Niles’s name on her lips. She couldn’t remember the dream that woke her, but it left her with a panicky feeling that she knew only talking with her child would ease. She was afraid to use the telephone in her room in case her calls were being monitored so she got dressed and went downstairs. She placed a call from a pay telephone kiosk located in a corner of the lobby as soon as she felt she could reasonably expect Hilde or the Rasks to be awake. No one answered her several attempts, which shook her to her core.

Pia came down the stairs with Jens behind her just as Elin gave up and stepped out of the kiosk. They were heading to breakfast in the small restaurant off the lobby, and Elin joined them. Most of the tables were full, and the restaurant was abuzz, with diners leaning in and talking among themselves about something that was obviously both important and sensitive.

“The Allied invasion of Italy is failing.”

“How do you know? It’s not in any of the papers.”

“Heard it on the BBC.” That was said in a hushed whisper.

“Shh. Don’t say that.”

Listening to the BBC was strictly forbidden, as everyone knew. After overhearing that snippet of conversation, Elin, Pia, and Jens exchanged worried glances over their menus. What a collapse of the Allied invasion of Italy would mean for Denmark, for all of them, was instantly on their minds.

“Is this the beginning of the end, do you think?” Pia whispered. Elin and Jens both knew what she meant—the end of the war.

“Oh, please don’t let them lose,” Elin replied. To hope for an Allied victory was such a dangerous sentiment that her voice was scarcely louder than a breath.

“In the meantime, I’m afraid there’ll be massive crackdowns.” Jens sounded worried. He’d already told them, as they’d walked into the restaurant, that Schneider had stayed with him for only about twenty minutes last night and seemed to suspect nothing. The entire time, he’d been wondering if he’d have to kill the Kripo detective if he’d found him out. Or if he even could, because the other man, while smaller, was fit and armed. The possibility that the two men might end up in a fight to the death had never occurred to Elin, and it filled her with a mixture of horror and dread. Which encapsulated her problem right there: she and Schneider might be working closely together, she might be attracted to him, she might even like him—but they were enemies, firmly entrenched on either side of an unbreachable divide.

“Where did he go after that? Did he leave?” Pia had asked. Elin could have enlightened her about what she’d seen, but she didn’t. Instead, she merely shrugged. She wasn’t so much preserving his secrets as staying out of anything that might involve them in something they had no need to get involved in, she told herself.

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