Sniper's Honor(126)

He told her what he intended.

“It sounds risky.”

“It is. But it’s better than being worked on in a cellar by SS.”

“I understand. But let’s be practical. This isn’t the movies. You can’t just fly away.”

“Actually you can.”

“Where are we going to go?”

“I thought we’d try . . . Switzerland. They have excellent cheese.”





CHAPTER 59


Idaho


Outside Cascade


THE PRESENT


Switzerland!” Swagger said.

“And that’s what they did. They hijacked their own plane and landed in Bern. All of them. They seemed to be some kind of paratroop outfit—very small, commandos, I guess—but evidently they’d had enough of the Nazis. They took her and they went to Switzerland. Some officer figured it out.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Bob, standing on the lone prairie like a movie cowboy.

“Not only that, here’s the twist. Oh, what a twist. He married her. His name was Karl Von Drehle, some kind of aristocratic war-hero type, dashing, from the pictures. He looked a little like Errol Flynn. After they got out of internment, they decided that since Europe had tried so hard to kill them, they’d go someplace sunnier and emigrated to Australia.”

“That’s why you’re in Australia.”

“Her son Paul called me from Sydney. Everything he said checked out. I flew, I’ve been here a week with the family, looking over all the records, looking at the photos. They had four sons and a daughter. The daughter, by the way, was a big Aussie tennis star in the ’70s. And now the granddaughter is on the tour as well.”

“What happened to Mili?” said Swagger. He was almost afraid to ask. Something tight and dry in his chest.

“She died at the age of eighty-four, a few weeks after Karl, surrounded by children and grandchildren. She became a professor of math at New South Wales University, where she was much loved, if the obits are telling the truth. Everyone thought she was German; no one suspected she was Russian.”

“Ain’t that a kick in the pants,” said Bob.

He couldn’t stop imagining Mili in the circumstances she’d deserved: Mili with her kids. Mili goes out to dinner. Mili on the job. Mili in her life, a good life, a life both loved and loving.

You’re in love with her, you crazy old coot.

“Karl brought his wartime sergeant over,” Reilly continued from Australia, “and the two of them went into business. Ever hear of Volkswagen? Karl and Wili became the first Volkswagen dealers in Australia, and the second and the third and so on. He and Wili got rich. Oh, God, Swagger, after all the shit they went through, all the murder and mud and slaughter, they had such good, decent productive lives. It shows there is life after hell. It’s amazing. I cry every time I think about it. Are you crying?”

“Cowboys don’t cry,” said Swagger through some goddamned prairie grit that had come into his eyes.