“I had to make sure you were not connected with Vierhaus.”
“Why? Because of Jenny? Is this some kind of bizarre family tradition, to try and scare the hell out of her suitors? I’m in love with your sister. I’ve asked her to marry me. I mean, why would I do such a thing?”
“I don’t know, but you and I were the only ones who knew where she lived. Somebody got to her place and she’s gone. And I didn’t tell anybody, so that leaves you.”
Keegan was getting angrier but he controlled himself.
“I didn’t tell a soul,” he said.
The big question now was, why was anybody after Jenny?
“Why do they want her?” Keegan asked.
“You really do not know, eh?”
“If I knew would I ask you?”
“Perhaps. If you were trying to convince us you are not involved.”
“You’re very paranoid.”
“Yes, it keeps us alive.”
Wolffson lit another cigarette. He held the tip of it up and blew a stream of smoke across the end of the cigarette, watching it glow, giving himself more time to make his decision.
“Come on, Wolffson, why would the Gestapo be dogging me?”
“The light is on her. She is the target.”
“What do you mean, the target?”
“I mean the Gestapo is onto her. She has been betrayed and we think your friend Vierhaus is the one who is after her.”
“Betrayed? By who? And for what?”
“Some miserable
“A what?”
“A
“You still haven’t told me why.”
“To get to me.”
Keegan sighed. “Okay, I’ll play. Why do they want you?”
“Have you ever heard of an organization called the Black Lily?”
“No . . . Wait a minute. I did hear that expression once. At the American embassy.”
“The night you refused to help Reinhardt?”
Keegan did not answer for a long time. He felt his pockets for his cigarettes and matches and lit a cigarette and then slowly started to nod.
“That’s right,” he said. “The night I turned my back on Reinhardt.” He rubbed his eyes. “Look, Wolffson, I know a lot of things now I didn’t know then. But I don’t know what the Black Lily is. And can we do without the hot lights? I’m getting a headache.”
Wolffson turned around and made a motion with his hand. The heavy light went out and a small table lamp was turned on in its place. A third man was sitting at a table nearby. The room appeared to be a one-room flat. It was small and contained a bed and dresser, a table and two chairs, a stuffed easy chair and a floor lamp. Black cloth was taped over the windows. In a corner there was a small table that held a hot plate with a coffee pot simmering on it.
The man at the table was unarmed and his nose was flattened and bruised. He was clean shaven, had a conventional haircut and wore wire-rimmed glasses. The shorter man with the gun had a bandage taped to his jaw, which was badly bruised and swollen. He was burly, his muscular arms straining rolled-up sleeves, and had fierce, angry eyes, the demeanor of a man holding himself in check but about to explode. A thick black beard added to his ominous presence. The tall man’s left eye had begun to swell. He, too, was in excellent physical condition but his look was intense rather than mad and his beard was more scholarly than menacing. He was calm and totally in command.
None of them could have been more than twenty-five or twenty-six years old.
“One gun?” he said. “You have one lousy gun?”
“We are on the run, have been for months. But it is now more intense. You know what it means in German,
Keegan thought for a moment. He wasn’t familiar with it. He shook his head.
“It would be in English something like ... freedom. We don’t blow things up. We don’t kill people. We distribute pamphlets and try to help people who are in trouble with the government. Jews, Germans, gypsies, no matter. If they become targets and we know about it, we try to get them out of the country.”
“In America, back in the slave days, we called it the Underground Railroad.”
