Near the front gate, the water truck had only just arrived. Emil was feeling happy that he’d get to fill his water bag before the line got too long, when out of the crowd of refugees came Nikolas. He didn’t seem to notice Emil at first. But then Nikolas did see them, and he ambled over and used his height to loom over Walt and Will, who eyed him suspiciously.

“Fine young German stock,” Nikolas said, and nodded to Emil with that oily smile. “You must be proud of your bloodlines. I know the major was.”

Emil hated the man. He knew in his gut that Nikolas was not only a stone-cold killer, he was a persecutor, someone who wallowed like a pig in another man’s pain. If Emil allowed it, Nikolas would continue to goad and poke him for weakness, and he would show him none. He knew there were times to fight and smarter times to wait. He said nothing.

Nikolas’s smile vanished. He tilted his head slightly and studied Emil.

“There’s something about you, Martel. Something that’s off.”

“Why do you care?”

“Because in the Selbstschutz, the militia, it was my job to care, to tell the Nazis the truth behind people who told so many lies. Like you, Martel.”

Emil had no idea what power if any Nikolas held over him, but it was better to be safe than sorry. “I’m here for water for my family,” Emil said. “Nothing more.”

Nikolas looked like he wanted to continue, but Emil pushed by him and got in line. When he looked back, the executioner was gone.

After filling the water bag full, Emil and the boys went looking for enough wood for a cook fire. Deeper into the cemetery, they found branches broken off trees during winter in a thicket near several SS soldiers who were standing around, having a smoke.

Gathering up the broken branches, Emil came near to them and overheard one soldier talking disdainfully. “Why are we guarding these ignorant peasants? These are the future of the Reich? You must be joking.”

“According to Reichsführer Himmler, I’m not joking,” said another soldier. “Or do you wish to tell the chief of the Gestapo that he is wrong about who is of pure Aryan blood and who is not? Their ancestors left Germany, kept mostly to themselves, and ran big farms and colonies in isolation for more than a century. Who else would have purer Aryan blood?”

Emil took a load of firewood to the wagon, helped the boys with their armfuls, and then returned to gather more.

The loud soldier was still talking. “At least these are almost the last of them. There will be fewer coming now. Good riddance, I say. Get the trains in here.”

“No trains to be had for at least a few days,” his friend said. “Himmler commandeered them for all the Yids outside Budapest. They’re starting at the Kistarcsa transit station. Those are the ones being taken north first.”

“Rats,” the loud one said, and spat. “Take them all, I say. Be rid of them for good.”

“Papa!” Walt called.

Emil picked up one last branch about the thickness of his wrist and walked back to his sons. He didn’t understand the exact meaning behind the words “being taken north,” but in light of their earlier conversation about the pure bloodlines, Emil got the gist and felt torn apart. The Nazis were still killing Jews, and he and his family were evidently supposed to replace them.

Emil and his sons returned to find the long mausoleum almost filled now with families making temporary homes against the crypts and among the statues of long-dead Hungarian royalty.

“I thought we would have the place to ourselves,” Emil said, pulling the little wagon and the boys up to their camp.

“We’re not so lucky,” Adeline said. “Look at the far end, other side.”

Emil acted as if he had not heard her as he turned to lift Will and then Walt from the wagon. But as he did, he got two good looks diagonally across the mausoleum courtyard, enough to know that Nikolas was camped there along with two of the men who’d been with him that night around the campfire back in Moldova.

He set Walt down and said, “Stack the wood near Opa. Make it a good stack.”

Armed with purpose, Walt reached into the wagon and left with an armful. Will did, too. When Emil looked across the courtyard again, Nikolas was leaning against a carved stone column, smiling over at him, his hand raised in a mocking Heil Hitler salute. Emil did not return the gesture and gave the man no outward reaction before helping Walt and Will with the last load of firewood.

But in his street-smart mind, he had seen that taunting salute as a direct threat to himself and to his family. Whatever the man’s relationship to the SS, Emil decided he could not avoid it any longer. It was time to protect his family, and the sooner the better.

He waited until it was almost dark, then excused himself and left their camping area, walked straight past Nikolas and his two friends, slowing to look at them and to spit in their direction. Leaving the courtyard, he trailed a steady flow of other refugees drawn by the distant lights the SS had put up around the camp latrines.

He walked in the darkest shadows, which allowed him to keep peering back toward the colonnades. Not twenty seconds later, he recognized the tall silhouette of Nikolas ambling after him. Emil left the shadows then and let himself be seen the rest of the way to the latrine area, which was crowded. He used that to his advantage, ducking a little to blend in more, and then standing up straight enough to be seen as he pushed toward the long, low latrine tents.

Inside, he did not use the urinals or the toilets. The traffic was meant to be one-way, and Emil walked straight through the tent and out the other side.

He stood at the corner until he saw Nikolas enter the latrine tent at the far end, and then moved fast back in the general direction of the open-air mausoleum, the colonnades, and the encampment, but off the direct route by several degrees. A hundred meters out from the electric lights around the latrine, he stopped, panting in the shadow of a statue and watching the exit from the toilet.

“The only thing a man can rely on is himself,” Emil muttered, and felt his resolve harden to a place he’d learned to go during times of extreme starvation and want.

Nikolas appeared in the exit to the latrine, his head swiveling. Emil waited one count, then waved his arm like a windmill as he stepped out in the last good light of the latrine. He paused in profile to the light and then took three long, slow strides into the darkness.

Emil took two more steps out of Nikolas’s sight before crouching behind a large monument, reaching into his pocket, and pulling out a folding knife he used to slaughter farm animals.

The only thing a man can rely on is himself, he thought again. His heart raced. He breathed deep, trying to calm his nerves as his night vision got better and better.

Gravel scuffed, and pebbles rattled and became slow footfalls coming closer. Emil reset his feet, coiled low, and pressed his left flank into the side of the monument.

Nikolas walked closer, came abreast of the monument, and paused for what felt like an eternity to Emil. Finally, he took a step, and then another, and then he was right there, or at least the tall, dark, sidelong silhouette of Nikolas, towering above and in front of Emil, who exploded from his crouch, driving his legs and propelling his farmer’s shoulders and body low and hard against the side of the bigger man’s right knee.

There was a crunching noise. Nikolas buckled and fell with a howling grunt of pain. Emil dove on top of him and with his powerful left hand pinned the man’s head down, left cheek against the gravel. With his right hand, he held the blade above Nikolas’s throat.

“My knee!” Nikolas cried, and squirmed. “Something’s broken!”

“I don’t care,” Emil said, grinding his face into the gravel. “You don’t care, either.”

“What? I care! My leg’s—”

“I have a slaughtering knife in my hand, Nikolas,” Emil said, and lowered the keen edge of the blade. “Feel it against your throat?”

The man stopped squirming, the fiery pain in his knee forgotten.

“Don’t,” he said. “Please. Have mercy.”

“I’ll give you more than you gave,” Emil said. “You have a choice, Nikolas. Stay away, don’t even look at me, my wife, and sons, and you live. Or I come back, break every bone in your body, and cut your throat ear to ear like a shoat pig.”

Not long after, Emil padded into the courtyard of the mausoleum, his heart still pounding wildly as he passed other refugee families sitting by their small fires on his way to his own family’s fire, which was already down to coals. Adeline and Malia were cooking over it. The rest of his clan looked on hungrily.

He smiled when he stepped up to the circle, noticing the shadows of the angel statue moving in the fire’s glow.

“Where have you been all this time?” Adeline said.

“There was a long line,” he said. “Someone said there’s diarrhea going around.”

Walt thought that was funny. Emil went and sat next to his older son on the marble steps of the colonnade with the statue behind them, put his arm around Walt, and looked at his family, feeling deeply satisfied.

You’re all safe, he thought. You’ll never know what I just had to do for you or what I’ve done for you before. But for now, you’re safe.