Brad heard light footsteps on the stairs to his apartment and smiled to himself. He knew who they belonged to. The boy’s father and Hans would chastise him for bothering the fisherman, but Brad welcomed the company. He got up and opened the door before the boy could knock. “Wilhelm, my friend! What brings you up to my lair?”

The boy thrust forth a tray covered in a table napkin. “For you,” he said, large blue eyes filled with a giver’s hope that his gift would be well received. Brad removed the napkin. The tray contained a plate going cold of slices of roasted chicken with servings of a mushroom concoction and apples smelling of cinnamon and sugar. A bowl of custard sat alongside.

“Food,” the boy said in case Brad needed an explanation.

“I see that,” he said. “It looks and smells delicious.”

“But don’t tell Papa or Hans. I was to eat it myself, but I know you are more hungry.”

Brad’s heart moved at the boy’s selflessness. It resurrected a memory of Bobby in the days he’d brought him and his sister home. Here, sister, take part of my share. You’re younger than me and still growing.

“I promise not to tell,” Brad said. “You are very nice to do this.”

“And I’m to invite you to dinner tomorrow night with Herr Bauer.” The boy’s face lit up. “We’ll have a party!”

“I will look forward to it. Thank you very much.”

“Good-bye now. I’m not to pester you,” the boy said, and scampered down the stairs before Brad could invite him to stay.

At an upstairs window, Konrad watched his son sprint across the adjoining lawns back to the house before he could be discovered missing. He had taken the fisherman his own dinner, and now he would go to bed hungry. Pain and pride filled his chest. The boy would never make it in the army. He was too loving and kind, but to no regret of his father. Konrad regretted only the world in which his son was too tender to live, a world that he and his kind had helped to create that would cause him to be suspicious of young men like Claus Bauer and Barnard Wagner. But his professional detectors were now on full alert. He had caught those whiffs of smoke, and the fisherman as well as the tutor was not beyond their scope. He hoped with all his heart that tomorrow’s trap would prove his suspicions absurd, but God help those young men if it revealed either of them to have befriended his son only to spy on his father.

CHAPTER FIFTY

CHAPTER FIFTY