You decide; then you act. You choose faith; then you walk through the door.

Another, larger group of German prisoners came into the station with their fingers laced behind their heads at the same time the conductor entered from trackside to call for all passengers westbound. Emil made his decision and acted in faith, stuffing the rest of his food in the pockets of the jacket he carried.

The original three Soviet soldiers ordered their prisoners to stand and lace their fingers behind their heads at the same time the bigger group tried to move past them to get better seats on the train. There was some bumping. Grumbling. Cursing. In the mild upheaval, Emil slipped in among the prisoners and laced his fingers behind his head.

No one checked Emil’s documents before he boarded the train. If they had, he would have shown them his ticket to Rzepin and gotten off at the next stop. Instead, the train was waved through at the German border, picked up speed, and took Emil swiftly west.

He modified his cover story on the ride, telling the men who asked that he was Corporal Emil Martel, an ethnic German who fought for the Wehrmacht. He’d survived Stalingrad and fought at the Dnieper River where he lost his documents before being captured and put in a prison in a place called Poltava.

“But you are not German,” sniffed one of the men. “Why are you here with us?”

Emil fixed him with a steady gaze, then smiled, and offered him some dried sausage. “No, I’m not German. But Reichsführer Himmler himself thought I had purer Aryan blood than most. Because of it, my family was protected by the SS and brought to Germany. They are waiting for me.”

The man seemed slightly taken aback and accepted the meat. “Where?”

“Braunschweig,” he said. “They’re in a camp near there for refugees.”

“British Zone,” the man said, his suspicions dulling as he chewed some of the sausage. “That’s not far from where they’re taking us.”

“I’ll just be happy knowing my family is near and safe until I am freed.”

An hour and a half later, the train passed south of Berlin and Adeline and the boys. Emil would later figure out that he’d gone within eighty kilometers of them.

The train finally stopped east of Wolfsburg. Emil and the other prisoners were ordered out onto the narrow platform while the three passenger cars they were riding in were transferred to another engine. It was sweltering hot by then, and the prisoners were irritable and restless when they were told to show their documents before getting back on the train.

Emil went boldly near the front of the line, ready to bluff his way on. But he’d no sooner told the soldiers that his documents were lost at Stalingrad than he found himself ordered to stand over against the wall of the train depot. The car behind the locomotive was filled with prisoners before the soldiers checking documents moved on to the next car in line.

Emil watched them carry the table forward and set it in front of the open door to the car before ordering the man next in line to present his papers. No one seemed to be watching him, so he strolled down the platform, jumped off the far end, and crossed the tracks in front of the locomotive, waving at the engineer.

He hurried along the opposite side of the train to the third passenger car, which was empty. Crouching, he climbed inside, hurried down the aisle, and took the third seat before ducking down and waiting.

He heard the table being moved into place outside the train car. When the first prisoner entered the car, Emil made a show of tying his shoe before sitting up. When he glanced at the man taking the seat beside him, he saw the prisoner he’d given sausage to earlier in the day. The man nodded at him and looked away.

Sweating from the heat and the risk he’d just taken, Emil pulled his cap down and pretended he was sleeping until the train finally left, heading south. Less than thirty minutes later, the train veered west and slowed to a stop amid rolling farmland. Emil could see a stream running through a lush field and could not help thinking of Adeline’s green valley. Was he close at last? Was she already there?

But then a Soviet soldier came through the car from behind Emil.

“Get out your papers again!” he shouted. “Show me your papers! If you wish to cross into the British Zone, you must have your papers out and ready. Now!”

Chapter Thirty-Five

December 24, 1946

Gutengermendorf, Soviet-Occupied east Germany

Adeline awoke at five o’clock that Christmas Eve morning and eased out of bed, feeling as if her legs and arms were made of lead. Her head was pounding and groggy as she dressed in the dark, left the room, and got her coat and canvas shopping bag.

She trudged out into the cold, heading to the station and the five-thirty train to Berlin. She wanted to be first in line when the officer’s commissary opened at seven. Then she could be back in time to prepare lunch and the evening meal for Colonel Vasiliev and his officers, and still make it home before dark to celebrate the holiday with the boys.

Waiting alone on the platform, stamping her feet to stay warm, Adeline felt alternately irritable and deeply, deeply sad. At first, she tried to blame it on the terrible sleep she’d been getting lately. But after she got on the train and closed her eyes, the real reason for her depression wormed its way forward.

The Christmas Eve before, after she’d held off Captain Kharkov with the butcher knife in the old church, she’d asked herself who she would be if another year passed and she found herself lying on a cold, hard pew with no word from Emil.

A poor, lonely woman, she thought. That’s who I am a year later. A poor, lonely woman, who can’t face the fact that she’s probably a poor, lonely widow clinging to false hope. It’s what Lieutenant Gerhardt hints at every time I see her, isn’t it? Emil has died of some disease, and I am forced to spy on everyone. My housemates. My neighbors. The colonel and his men.

What kind of life is this? And who are Walt and Will becoming? Are they being told at school to spy on their friends? On me?

It all made her angry, bitter. She wondered what the last two years and nine months were really about. They had survived the Long Trek and the last year of the war, only to be cruelly split apart. She had tried to go as far west as she could, only to not go far enough. She had tried to live her life quietly, keeping her faith in Emil’s return, only to face rapists and secret police who said her faith was foolish and misplaced.

What have I done to deserve this? Adeline asked herself. Why in God’s name am I being punished like this?

By the time she reached the central station, Adeline knew she wasn’t being punished in God’s name. She was being punished in Communism’s name, in Joseph Stalin’s name, just as she had been punished in his name when they took her father away nearly two decades before.

Sent to the East. Thrown to the wind and the wolves. Never to be seen again.

Like Emil.

Adeline felt something shift inside and realized sadly that she didn’t have the emotional strength to put a question mark on that last thought. After drinking tea and eating strudel from one of the few vendors already open in the Berlin central station, she set off through the streets toward the officer’s commissary, suddenly missing her mother, Malia, and her brother, Wilhelm.

What’s become of them? Where are they? In that little town where I left them? Will I ever see or hear from them again? Or are they gone from my life? Never to be seen again. Like . . .

Adeline stopped herself from using her husband’s name, but she saw Emil clearly in her mind, then, as he was the last time she’d seen him, being led away by the soldiers, and bellowing at her to go as far west as she could and he’d find her. Try as she might, she could not stop herself from bursting into tears. That was probably the last time she’d ever see him. That was the image that would stay with her until she was old, wrinkled, and dying with the question of Emil’s fate still in her heart. Would she ever know what became of him?

That question drove her deeper into the darkest state of mind she could ever remember, a despair so complete that she barely noticed the familiar soldier at the commissary door.

He said, “I need chocolate for my lady friend tonight. And any kind of cigarettes.”

“Chocolate and cigarettes of any kind will get me a visit from the secret police.”

“I had to talk,” he said. “I told you that. They threatened my sister.”