It only added to her horror to see Gustav take a seat on the bench her father had built for Marion. She couldn’t imagine why, but it seemed he had intended to come to this very spot!

“An interesting array of plants around us here,” he said after perusing the small plot. “Unless I am mistaken, they are not native to Germany.”

“My father has traveled widely and collected many different varieties.” The nervousness in Sabina’s voice was impossible to mask.

“Where are these particular varieties from?”

“I, uh… farther south, I think.”

“South?” repeated Gustav.

“You know. Where it’s warmer.”

“Ah, I see,” he said, nodding knowingly. He scanned around, then stood up and walked slowly about. Sabina watched, perspiring now far more than the heat of the day would account for. He seemed to be taking note of her father’s small brass emblems too!

I’ve got to get him away from here, she thought. No matter what has to be done to get his eyes off Papa’s signs!

She stood also, as if a new idea had suddenly occurred to her.

“Would you like to see my father’s rose garden?” she asked. “It is the most special place of all for him.”

Slowly Gustav glanced this way and that, trying to absorb what he saw. He had noted Sabina’s agitation and knew there must be more reason for it than met the eye. He would put the pieces together later. For the present, he would not let her suspect he knew a thing.

“Yes, that would be nice,” he said. “I would like to see your father’s roses.”

He did not even realize until later that he had forgotten to ask about the two girls he had seen. No matter, he thought. He had discovered what he needed to.

85 Gustav Makes a Discovery

85

Gustav Makes a Discovery

This time as he made his way along the dirt tractor paths through the fields, Gustav was perfectly sober. He was no impressionable boy on his return from an evening listening to a Nazi recruiting diatribe. Now he was the highest-ranking Gestapo agent in this whole area, and he was on a secret mission that could mean—well, if he was right, it would be of huge importance!

He would know soon enough.

He struck a match and glanced down at his watch. It was two-thirty in the morning.

He threw down the flickering light, ground it into the dirt with his boot, then continued on.

Finally reaching the Dortmann estate, he who had traversed this way many times as a neighbor now began the long ascent up the hill as a spying midnight enemy.

He approached from the north, walked in the dim light of the cloud-enshrouded moon around the vegetable garden, found the east path, circled around the house, past the oak tree, arriving at length under the stone arch entryway into Der Frühlingsgarten.