The Hunt

“The newspaper was started by our professors at the university. Sternfeld, Reinhardt and Eli Loehrman. Now Reinhardt and Sternfeld are dead. Only Old Eli is safe. He is in Paris with his son. He is the one who arranged to get Jenny back here.”

“And you boys picked up the banner, eh?”

‘Ja, I suppose you could put it that way. But now the Black Lily is very important. So important that Hitler has put a price on our heads and the Black Lily is the main target of the SS.”

Somewhere in another room a phone rang. Joachim got up from the table and went to answer it.

“Three college boys and one gun and you’ve set the entire Gestapo on its ear?” Keegan said to Wolffson.

“Not just three college boys anymore,” Wolffson said. “There are over two hundred of us in the network. We have connections in Switzerland, France, England, even Egypt and America. So far we have been very lucky. But some of our people

have not been so lucky. You know what happens if they catch us?”

“1 can imagine.”

“1 do not think so,” said Wolffson. “We are taken to Stadelheim Prison and tortured. And then we are beheaded.”

“What!”

‘Ja, Herr Keegan. Beheaded. And most of them are students.”

Weber returned and called Wolffson to the door. There was a whispered exchange, then they walked back into the room. Wolffson looked stricken. The veins around his jaw had hardened into blue ridges.

“The Gestapo arrested Jenny,” Wolffson said in a harsh voice that quivered with emotion. “She has been at Stadelheim prison for five hours. I don’t know that she is still alive.”

Keegan fell back in his chair, ashen.

“You may as well face it, Keegan, they will be very hard on her,” Weber said. “They will assume she knows much more than she does.”

“And we just sit around and let it happen?” Keegan said. “We don’t do anything?”

“There is nothing we can do at this point,” Wolffson said.

Keegan panicked.

“We’ve got to get her out. Get bail, get lawyers! I’ll call the embassy, maybe they can help.”

But hell, what could the embassy do? And why would they help him? He understood now how Wally must have felt the night he was trying to get Reinhardt out. There was one big difference. The Gestapo already had Jenny.

“It will do no good,” said Wolffson.

“If we can just get her out on bail,” Keegan pleaded. “I’ll take her to New York, she couldn’t be safer anywhere else.”

Gebhart suddenly spoke up for the first time, his voice trembling with suppressed rage. “Damn it, man,” he said, “get it into your head. It’s too late!”

“There is no such thing as bail,” said Weber. “There will be no trial.”

The shock began to wear off and Keegan slowly realized how desperate her predicament was. What they ‘re saying, he thought, is that she’s gone!

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Don’t even say that.”

Dear Jenny, he thought, is this what you get for loving me? Why did this happen? Was it some kind of cruel joke? Crazy things raced through his mind. God, I may never see her again! I can’t even say good-bye. Jesus Christ! What’s happening here?

“What’s happening here!” he cried aloud, his fists clenched in front of him. Tears flooded his eyes and he tried to fight them back. “It’s unacceptable, unacceptable. There’s got to be somebody we can bribe, somebody we can blackmail, threaten

They stared at him with sadness but little pity.

“Now you know vot it iss like for us every day of der year,” Gebhart said bitterly. “Every day they take somebody avay. Friends, lovers, children. Sometimes whole families simply disappear off the street.”

“Understand, Keegan, we know your frustration,” Wolffson said quietly. “My hatred and anger consume me. I wanted to be a zoologist—work with animals. Look at me. Running all the time. Helping one out of perhaps every fifty or one hundred who get on the list. Throwing pamphlets around the city to people who don’t care.”

“Then why do you do it?”

“We cannot just surrender our lives without doing something,” Weber said.

“I want to kill Vierhaus,” Keegan blurted. “I want to kill that son of a bitch slowly. I want him to plead . . . no beg beg, for mercy. I want to hang him up by his heels and pour honey all over that miserable hump on his back and then let the rats eat their way through it right into his miserable black heart.”

He slammed his fist into the wall and then, exhausted, sat down on the edge of the bed.

“I am sorry, Keegan,” Wolffson said. “But we also love her.