Avery Knowle’s office was at the end of the long corridor on the first floor of the three-story building. Chris let the door close loudly to alert the principal of his arrival, its sound reverberating in the Saturday quiet of the building. Halfway down the hall toward his open door, Chris could hear the calm, terse, universally recognized voice of Edward R. Murrow delivering a radio broadcast. Chris stopped and grew cold as he heard that the night before, citizens of a French village near Bastogne, Belgium, were roused from their sleep by rounds of staccato gunfire. Investigating in the light of dawn, they found the bodies of two downed U.S. American pilots along with six members of the family that had hidden them from discovery. They had been brutally tortured then executed by order of the commander of the ruthless and feared German paramilitary organization, the SS—Schutzstaffel—billeted in the area.

Oh, God, Chris thought and forced his steps to the threshold of Mr. Knowle’s door. Glancing up from his desk, the gaunt principal turned off the radio with a hard twist of the knob. “You heard?”

“I did. Horrendous news.”

“It happened last night while you were at your party feting your German friend,” Mr. Knowle said. “I can only imagine the grief the families of those American boys will have to live with knowing the suffering their sons went through before they died.”

“Indeed,” Chris agreed, nape hairs rising at the principal’s insinuation that he was making merry with the enemy while his countrymen were being tortured and murdered.

Mr. Knowle’s eyes burned into Chris with a fire of deep dislike, undoubtedly set off by memories of his own experiences at the hands of the Germans. “If I were the father of one of those boys, I would not rest until I discovered the name of the bastard that ordered my son’s execution, and then I would see how brave he is.”

“Vengeance would be understandable,” Chris said, for lack of anything else to say. He wondered if he’d be invited to sit down or forced to stand before the principal’s desk like an errant schoolboy.

Mr. Knowle regarded him coolly through rimless spectacles and finally waved him to a seat. “I’ll get right to the point, Mr. Brandt,” he said, pressing the thin pads of his fingertips together over a folder on his desk. “It has been brought to my attention that some of our parents are uncomfortable with a teacher of German descent instructing their children.”

“Really?” Chris said, his apprehension coiling tighter. He would not accept that assertion on Mr. Knowle’s word alone. Despite the anti-German sentiment going around, he’d gotten along very well with his students’ parents, supposedly because they valued his teaching and coaching ability over the defect of his ancestry. “How many parents and which ones?”