London Dawn Read Online Free Page B

against you? Aren’t you still SS?”
    “Someone has suggested I’m harboring Jews and spiriting them out of the country. It did not come from Hitler or the Reichstag . It was one or two individuals spreading the word to others. But whoever they are, they know what I’m doing and where our safe houses are. If they were able to persuade my driver, they have a great deal of influence indeed. I trusted him with my life.”
    The baron was white. He put the Luger in his trench coat pocket and sat down on a trunk.
    “People are being murdered all over Germany tonight. I’m no threat to Hitler’s power, nor is he killing SS. Someone is using all the bloodshed and mayhem to cover up my own death. I don’t believe this has anything to do with Hitler’s purge. It has to do with stopping what I’m doing. Someone doesn’t want me getting you out of the country. Someone doesn’t want you to live, Albrecht, or continue to write your books against the Third Reich.”
    “But we’re not Jews,” protested Catherine.
    “They used that to stir up the people they informed. To get them good and angry at me.”
    “Wouldn’t using Albrecht’s name get them angry enough?”
    “No. Not if they’re unaware of his books or that they were burned.As for the anonymous books and pamphlets that have been distributed across the country, no one knows he’s the author of those except the SS. It was better for those hunting us to say I was protecting Jews who had been charged with crimes against Germany. That’s something the simplest people understand. That’s something they feel duty-bound to bring to a halt.”
    “Who have all these people with their attics and cellars thought they were protecting?”
    “Refugees from Communist persecution. They understood they were keeping you from harm at the hands of left-wing death squads.”
    Albrecht stared at the baron a long time.
    “Catherine and I have talked about you. Gerard, you make no sense. Every day we’re expecting a trap. Why should you rescue us? Why should you help me survive and write more books against Adolf Hitler? You are SS. You think he is the savior of Germany. Yet here we are, less than fifteen miles from the Swiss border, and it is you who have brought us here.”
    The baron looked at his hands. “It was necessary to fool everyone. To make everyone believe. Even you. I am where I wish to be. Deep inside the Nazi organization, trusted by my fellow SS, I have been close enough to Herr Hitler on several occasions to pull out my Luger and shoot him through the head. But the time is not yet. Brutal as he is, Hitler is still the only one capable of bringing our nation out of the bones and ashes of the war. In two years our athletes will be winning gold medals in Berlin. He will give us back an army and air force and navy. So long as this trend continues I am his bodyguard. Yet I remain his executioner. If he crosses the line and is bad for Germany, I kill him. In a few years it will be even easier for me to do than it is now.”
    “But you are discovered.”
    “I told you. None of this is the doing of Berlin. Berlin is not hunting the SS. It is only a few. These few who turned my driver and the household here against me are using the purge as a smokescreen.”
    Albrecht sat back down. “Who is it? Who has done this to you?”
    The baron continued to study the veins and creases on the backs of his hands. “I am tempted to take you across the border tonight. On my authority. But who knows how far this person’s reach extends? The border guards may have been alerted. A person will come to this house in the morning. Probably a carload. The perpetrator of all this will be in the caror will have told those who arrive what to expect and what to look for. In either case, I will find out who is the source of all my trouble—by direct confrontation with the individual or by questioning those who drive up. I will get a name one way or the other.”
    He lifted his head. Seeing the