The Eleventh Hour

Michael Phillips

Copyright

The Eleventh Hour

Copyright © 1993 by Michael Phillips

Cover art to the electronic edition copyright © 2021 by RosettaEbooks, LLC.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

ISBN e-Pub edition: 9781625391544

Contents

Introduction

Prologue—1961

PART I: The Mystery of the Garden—Summer, 1937

1 Among the Elite

2 Conversation on the Lawn

3 Baron Heinrich von Dortmann

4 The Opportunist

5 The Estate von Dortmann

6 Silent Witness

7 Der Frühlingsgarten

8 The Mystery of the Garden

9 Inner Storms

10 Low Advancement

PART II: The Mystery of the Kingdom—Midsummer, 1937

11 Guests in the Country

12 A Morning in the Garden

13 Woods and Countryside

14 House of Intrigue

15 Prayer for an Aging Saint

16 The Tour Continues

17 Old-Fashioned Farm Work

18 Change of Plans

19 A Visitor

20 The Invalid

21 The Mothers

22 Infiltrating the Brotherhood

23 Husband and Wife

24 Noises and Dungeons

25 The Hidden Passageway

26 Mystery of the Kingdom

27 A Father to Call Father

PART III: The Mystery of the Fellowship—Fall, 1937

28 Finkenwalde

29 Private Scheme

30 A Most Difficult Question

31 A Fateful Call

32 Bonhoeffer at Lebenshaus

33 Curious Proceedings

34 Neighboring Visit

35 Suspicious Inquiry

36 Exchange of Letters

37 Fateful Decisions

38 Irregular Correspondence

PART IV: The Mystery of the Dungeon—1939

39 Approach to Conflict

40 Frustrated Vendetta

41 Tightening the Squeeze

42 Another Invitation

43 The Party

44 Light and Darkness

45 Renewed Friendship

46 Outburst

47 A Talk on Anger

48 The Red of the Rose

49 The Three Parents

50 Corridors High and Low

51 In the Harvest Field

52 Old Eppie’s Tale

53 The Coming of War

54 Heart-Wrenching Offer

55 Testimony of Urgency

56 Parting

57 Prayer for Direction

58 Clandestine Assignment

PART V: The Mystery of Lebenshaus—1942

59 Darkness over the Land

60 Nighttime Vigil

61 Gestapo Schemes

62 Flight in the Night

63 Savage Search

64 Tomb of Safety

65 Night of Death

66 The Network

67 Reunion

68 Wilderness Wandering

69 Even the Petals Have Fragrance

70 A Morning in the Garden

71 Life at Lebenshaus

72 Clues Leading South

73 The Dungeon

74 Hidden Workroom

PART VI: The Mystery of Sacrifice—1944

75 The House of Schmundt

76 The Holy Box

77 The Baron and the Rabbi

78 North Again!

79 Another Visit

80 Suspicions

81 A Stranger

82 The Three Girls

83 God’s Handmaidens

84 Gustav Visits

85 Gustav Makes a Discovery

86 Somewhere in Poland

87 Heinrich and Marion

88 Last Night at Lebenshaus

89 Betrayal

90 The Passover Seder

91 Unpleasant Thoughts

92 The Communion Supper

93 Evil Approach

94 Angel of Death

95 Sacrifice

96 Freedom

Epilogue

Note on Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Introduction

Introduction

Nobody but an author could understand quite how a book takes you over and, in a sense, “writes itself.”

You’ve all heard that phrase, I’m sure. You probably have mixed reactions to it. One of my editors, quite some time ago, in response to my attempt to explain the phenomenon, replied, “That’s a little spooky, Mike… you don’t want readers to hear you talking like that!”

Well, certainly, no book really does write itself.

It’s a lot of hard work and takes a long time, and of course the author has to put in his fair share of the process and know what he’s about.

Yet there really does exist a mysterious dynamic in it all. Once you set some foundational momentum in motion, characters actually do sometimes pull you along almost as if they were setting the pace and direction. Your only job is to follow where they lead!

My wife, Judy (who is intrinsically involved with me in the development of nearly every book bearing my name), and I, along with our friend Judith Pella, were all three aware of that process throughout the writing of Robbie Taggart. Robbie himself proved such a captivating fellow that we quite literally followed him all over the globe, waiting—and maybe here’s where it gets spooky—to see what would happen to him next.

In the writing of the Stonewycke books, the two main characters, Maggie and Ian, did not even exist in the three of our minds when we began. They wandered into the story sort of accidentally, and then proceeded to take the whole thing over. Before long they were setting the course for the entire rest of the series!

Characters do that. Plots and situations and relationships do that too. There can be stories that quite literally compel themselves to be told.

The Secret of the Rose is such a story.

We love roses. I gave Judy yellow roses before we were married, and we have been exchanging them ever since.

The other day, in the dead of winter, Judy picked a stray red bud that didn’t seem to know the season for blooms was past off one of the bushes in our yard. The leaves were a little small, sort of a brownish green, not the lush and brilliant shapes and textures of spring. Though nicely formed, the flower itself was stinted of size, and it seemed clear this specimen would never mature to full stature. It was a “wintry” rose.

Judy clipped it with about twelve straight inches of stem, put it in a slender vase, and set it on the bathroom counter.

Something about it, however, was unique. This was no ordinary rose.

Perhaps its charm was heightened by the tiny bud-shape, which would never open into full-petaled array. Perhaps it was the strong odor of red which, in spite of the petals being tightly folded, warmed by coming inside the house, began to spread its perfume out through the bathroom and beyond. Perhaps it was the symbolism of its brave flowering in the midst of the two weeks we had just had of driving rains and frigid, fierce winds.

How did it come to find life in the midst of all that? Yet there it was, sticking up its proud, tall head—let the rain and wind do their worst.

Every time she passed the bathroom Judy could not help glancing in. There stood the small red fragrant winter rose… calling her… beckoning her to inquire into its mystery.

It was only a flower, you might say. Do you really think there’s all that to read into it?

I suppose all writers have a healthy dose of poet and mystic in them. Judy and I are always looking at everyday occurrences from such allegorical and significative angles.

If it seems a little odd, you’ll have to forgive us. We’ve been married over twenty years and still give each other roses. I suppose we’re hopeless romantics. But then… maybe that’s why I write books!

In any case, we had, during this time, been talking about and brainstorming several new book and plot ideas. Two mornings later Judy called at my office and told me about the rose she had picked.

“I can’t help thinking there’s a story here,” she said. “Can’t you just see a book called The Rose? It’s so simple, yet full of… I don’t know—don’t you feel the mystique in it?”

“Yeah, yeah… right,” I replied. I was busy on something else at the time. End of discussion.

Half an hour later the phone rang again. Essentially we repeated the same conversation all over again. My wife was being the romantic at that stage, not me!

Again the phone rang.

“I’m sorry,” laughed Judy. “I don’t mean to sound like a broken record, but I think there’s something here. There’s a story behind this rose, I’m sure of it! A mystery, a love story… something! Picture this scene….”

By this time I was ready to listen.

Actually, in the meantime, somewhere between the second and third call, the same compelling sense of a story had begun slowly to come over me too. So now when Judy called, I found pictures and feelings and thoughts rising spontaneously out of my own awakened poetic side as well. Suddenly in my mind was the image of a man, lonely from loss, sitting in a rocking chair, holding the fragrant dead leaves of a treasured rose potpourri—

Before I could finish telling what I had envisioned, Judy was telling me of—

Well, you will read all about it soon enough!

We finished our conversation. A few minutes later Judy showed up at my office door with the red rose in hand, in a vase for my desk. She sat down and, after we both admired it a while, we began to talk once more.

Literally within a matter of minutes, we both knew that this was a story that had to be told, a story that compelled itself onto the page, a story that was bigger than we were. Perhaps you’ll agree with my editor’s comment of years ago and think all this sounds a little strange. Another editor once told me that authors were known to be somewhat of a peculiar breed, so maybe all this is in keeping with that!

But in all seriousness I say that there was a strong sense of truth about the whole (may I call it this?) revelation. It became extremely real, as if a true piece of history were being “revealed” to us, a story that our little wintry rose knew all about, because it knew the universal story of roses everywhere and was determined to tell us.

So it raised up its persistent head in the midst of the storm, and it beckoned to us. “Let me tell you of some of my brother and sister roses,” it said. “They are dead now, but their hearts are preserved, and some of their petals have been crushed, so that in death they might live on. For the aroma and bouquet of a rose never dies. If but one has smelled of its glory and sighed, or smiled, or thought of a loved one, that rose has been lifted into realms of the eternal. For those who love them, even the petals have fragrance. In the hope of giving such pleasure they expend their perfumes abroad over all the lands of the earth.

“In the heart of the rose is contained the tale of love universal. For what other purpose have roses been created than to assist in the telling of that saga and to offer faint, fragrant glimpses of that greater creating Love out of which are born and in which dwell all the loves of the universe? The reminders of its sachet can be bittersweet as well as jubilant, however. Love is no respecter of feelings. And that is why I, a winter’s rose, with a touch of sadness in my shriveled leaves, have come to lead you into this particular tale.

“I came out of the ground, not to tell you the story of the rose, but so that you might smell my sweet balm and behold the creating Love by beholding me. And, gazing into my wintry face, that you might seek and discover that story I would tell you if I could but speak of my brother and sister roses, who lived across the sea, in a time now gone and of the men and women who loved them.”

So I sat down at my typewriter the next day to see if I could discover the beginning strands of the mysteries our rose may have been thinking about.

But first of all, before I even began, I paused to write these few thoughts of introduction to those of you who may someday read my words.

I nearly always wait until a book is completed before attempting to add any particular word I might have to its readers. On this occasion, however, I felt it might be appropriate to share my thoughts before the quest begins.

You see, at this moment in time, I know little more than you do about what may lie past the next turning of the page. I’m full of excitement and wide-eyed anticipation to find out. But I literally do not know where this story will lead, once we open the door and look back to a time, not so far behind us really, but an era in the world’s history that will never come again—and that none of us will ever forget.

I do know that the tale will make itself known. The book will not write itself, but I have the sense its truths will tell themselves. This is not my story at all, but rather an account of the universal experience we each become part of every time we put a rose to our nostrils and breathe in deeply of the mysteries and secrets God placed within it.

Michael Phillips

Eureka, California

Prologue-1961...

Prologue

1961

A man sat quietly rocking in a plain oak chair.

The hair on his head shone brown and full in the sun’s fading afternoon light and revealed only the beginning signs of grey. In all other respects, however, he appeared old, though his face could not readily be seen. His shoulders slumped with the sagging invisible weight of despondency.

The back-and-forth movement of the chair, slow and melancholy as it was, seemed to originate in some ethereal region having no connection whatever to his own limbs. Indeed, both arms and legs appeared to hang lifeless from the rest of his frame and, had they been so inclined, did not look as though they would contain even the modicum of strength necessary to give the wooden pendulum upon which he sat the rhythmic movement it now somehow exhibited.

He wore the aspect of one altogether dead to life, both the life around him and, if there chanced to be any left, that within him as well.

The only sign that he in fact was alive, besides the slow creaking motion of the oak runners over the boards of the floor, was a slight movement of the fingers that lay in his lap, though what they held could not immediately be seen.

Around him, the Bavarian mountainside was idyllic, peaceful, and still, just the consoling balm his soul needed after the tragedy.

The green of the forests, the snow that yet covered parts of the ground, the bells tinkling their random carols from around thick bovine necks, an occasional hiking yodeler who could be heard, and glimpses far to the south of the towering peaks of purest white—all these added their own soothings to his spirit and reminded him of letters from long ago, even as those who cared for him watched over the healing of his wound and leg.

Even if he did walk again, however, what did it matter, he thought. What would anything ever mean again… without her to share it with?

Life had been so good, so rich, so full of joy! He had never imagined it was possible to know such happiness!

Then so suddenly and cruelly had the evil hand of fate snatched it all away!

So it seemed, at least, in his more disconsolate moments, though deep inside he tried to convince himself otherwise. He did not believe in fate any more than she had, though during these days of darkness, it was very difficult not to slip back into old patterns of thought.

He knew what she would say, that all things turned out good in the end. That this catastrophe could ever be called good he would never accept. That it might work for good he occasionally allowed himself to contemplate, though such was an idea equally strenuous to lay hold of.

Yet he knew that is exactly what she would say. For the sake of her memory he would do his best to hang on to that truth.

Her memory—it was all he had left.

The sound of her voice in his ear… the musical ringing of her laughter… images of her teeth and lips and smile…

Her memory… and these few dried leaves in the container she had given him. What a treasure they had been to share! Now these too seemed lifeless and old, the aroma of their once-cheery perfume now turned pungent and melancholy.

He could no more keep himself from the bittersweet nostalgia than he could bring her back. Though the smell seared his heart with hot iron, it was the odor… of her.

He raised the box to his face, lifted the lid, and leaned forward to place his nostrils over the opening of the small container.

He breathed deeply the ancient fragrance of many years. He had done so a hundred times before this and would a hundred times again. For in the aroma were many secrets, and his was the only heart that knew them.

He set the small box back in his lap, a lonely tear now falling from his eye, and, continuing to rock, he let his mind drift back many years to the first day he had seen the beautiful face of the one with whom he had discovered the mystery of love.

PART I: The Mystery of the Garden-Summer, 1937

PART I

The Mystery of the Garden—Summer 1937

1 Among the Elite

1

Among the Elite

A more distinctively old-world setting it would have been difficult to imagine.

To one side of the expansive lawn, a string quartet was playing the “Menuetto” from Mozart’s Serenade in G.

Waiters attired in fashionable suits made their way inconspicuously among the guests. Silver trays were held aloft by the deft fingers of catering experience, and were laden with truffles and single bites of bread topped with a multitude of colored things and glasses of white and red wine from the Mosel Valley. Many other delicacies adorned various tables spread throughout the garden.

The silently moving waiters were by no means overdressed for the occasion. Most of the men wore tails and black ties, the women long gowns. The occasion had been long awaited. Everyone who was anyone in Berlin was here. Even the Führer was expected, someone had said, though he had not yet made his appearance.

The only men not sporting expensive tails were those in uniform, and more members of the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe were indeed on hand than the dozen or two foreign diplomats present were altogether comfortable with. That Germany was rapidly becoming a military power again was certainly no secret, and the look in the faces behind the uniforms was not one to engender a feeling of security concerning the development.

Three or four there were, too, whose eyes revealed an intensity and devotion to their cause which, not many years hence, would produce such panic as to hold an entire nation of their countrymen in terror. Only a year before, the Gestapo had been combined with the SS under the command of Heinrich Himmler. Though the name of the secret police was by now well enough known, the cruel connotations of dread at the very hearing of the word were still in the embryonic stage.

The bright smiles and laughter and setting of cultured serenity that on this day surrounded Gestapo and military officers, as well as the most wealthy and influential from every walk of life in Germany, belied the ominous rumbling of world events as they approached from an ever-shrinking distance. This was Berlin, the eye of the hurricane whence all the windy tumult originated but where none of it could yet be felt. Here were the elite of society, those caught up, though they yet knew it not, in determining the direction history would march, changing the world for all time.

How could they know the facade of ebullience and good cheer for what it was?

They were part of the charade; how could they then recognize its hollow ring? The distant kettledrums of history were beating a faintly discernible cadence, though few of the Berliners in attendance that afternoon were aware of it. All the others—enjoying the quartet’s rendition of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and the tinkling of champagne glasses, the laughter of gaiety and the faces full of smiles—basked in the self-satisfying glow of importance, feeling the flush all the more after two or three glasses of the expensive wines Otto von Dortmann had brought in for the occasion.

The host, at the moment, was engaged in the perfunctory process of welcoming one with whom he bore a striking resemblance yet whom he seemed altogether nonchalant to see.

“So, Heinrich,” Otto was saying, “Your field hands are, ah, able to carry on without you.”

“Of course,” answered the other with an imperceptible smile. “As well, I’m certain, as your bank without you.”

“Ah, but farming and banking are too different to be compared, wouldn’t you agree?”

“You are right, Otto, which is why I am content to be a farmer.”

Otto forced a smile. “Well, Heinrich, I am glad your fields and cows could spare you long enough to come to the city…. But, now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to greet my other guests.”

Heinrich nodded and watched Otto walk away.

The tight smile was still spread across Otto’s face. To him it had been an awkward exchange despite its brevity. In truth, he did not like it known that Heinrich was his brother. But the state of the family finances demanded that he show him at least the respect of an occasional invitation to such affairs.

The man with whom he had been speaking watched him leave with what almost looked like a twinge of compassionate sadness in his eye. Gradually the sounds of the string quartet and tinkling glasses intruded once more into his hearing.

The “country brother” of the host, however, as Otto referred to him in his absence, Baron Heinrich von Dortmann, was aware of a different strain of music that day than that which emanated from the two violins, the viola, and the cello. And it sent shivers up his spine. As it also did to the few foreign diplomats who were in attendance.

“Ah, Herr Baron, es freut mich sehr Ihnen noch einmal zu sehen,” said a man to Heinrich in flawless German.

“The pleasure is all mine, Mr. McCallum,” returned Dortmann. “You must let me return your favor and speak to you in your native tongue!”

“Favor granted then,” replied the other as the two men shook hands.

“And let me add that it is a pleasure to see you once again as well. How are things in the embassy?”

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