The Second Son

Wilson looked across at Vollman. He saw his own disbelief staring back. He looked again at Hoffner. “You’re talking about your own son.”

Hoffner felt his own rage and despair like wet rope coiling around his throat. “Yes,” he said quietly, “my own son,” and the glass shattered in his hand.

It was nearly half a minute before he realized he was bleeding.

Mila was already pressing down on his wrist, pulling pieces of glass from his skin, as Hoffner stared down at the hand and saw one long cut. A single thick shard rocked easily on the table, while tiny grains of glass shimmered across his palm. Mila picked and brushed, and Hoffner felt nothing. It was a hand, not his own, until she finally took a cloth from Vollman and pressed it into the flesh. Instantly, Hoffner felt the pain shoot up through his arm like the twisting of raw muscle. He heard himself groan, and realized it was the burning of alcohol coursing into his skin. His throat constricted and he coughed.

“Bring over that bucket,” Mila said, and Hoffner angled his head as she continued to work on him. Only once did he come close to vomiting, but the acid stayed in his throat, and his hand began to throb with its own isolated pain.

Hoffner’s head cleared. He swallowed and looked over to see his hand encased in thick gauze. Wilson had produced a second bottle. He filled a glass with whiskey and held it out to Hoffner.

“He’s had enough,” Mila said.

Hoffner took the glass and drank. Wilson set the bottle on the table and retreated to the counter. Vollman was back by the door as Mila sat silently.

Finally Wilson said, “You’re saying this has nothing to do with the guns or Franco?”

Hoffner kept his eyes on the glass. He flexed his fingers. He could still move them. “Not everything shatters the world as a whole, Herr Wilson. This one shatters just mine.”

Wilson started to answer, and Hoffner said, “He left the film. He wanted it found. He wanted me to know.”

Wilson was still struggling. “But why?”

Hoffner heard the question in his own voice. “Because I’m his father.”

It answered nothing and brought a silence to the room.

Finally Wilson said, “I could help you.”

“No,” said Hoffner. “You couldn’t.” He felt the need to stand. He pushed back his chair and steadied himself against the table. “Thank you, Herr Wilson. Thank you for Doval, the doctor”-the word caught in his throat-“Georg. I imagine you’ll be leaving Spain now.”

Wilson showed a genuine sympathy even if he understood nothing. He nodded slowly.

Hoffner extended his good hand. Wilson hesitated, then took it. Vollman followed suit. It was a bizarre moment of protocol, until Vollman said, “You’re going to try and find him.”

Hoffner said nothing.

Vollman added, “I have a plane-for another two days. It has room for four.”

Mila stood, and Wilson said, “He’d be heading west. Portugal would be my guess.”

“He’ll be in Badajoz,” Hoffner said, his voice empty, his eyes distant: it was as if he were speaking to himself. “He found enough about Hisma to track Georg. He’ll know Badajoz is where the last of the guns are going. And he’ll think it’s where he can find his way back.”

Wilson hesitated. “His way back?”

Hoffner looked directly at him. It seemed as if he might answer. Instead, he took Mila’s arm and moved them to the door.

They buried Georg in the first light, in a field just beyond the last of the houses. Wilson had offered to take the boy to Berlin-he, too, had a plane-but Hoffner said no. He thought of Mendy and Lotte, standing through the taunts-those roving packs of boys who waited outside the cemetery gates, jeering while a Jew was laid in the ground. Why put them through that? It was quiet here, and simple. Whichever way things went in Spain, it would be better than in Germany.

The priest stood off to the side while Hoffner mouthed ancient words whose meaning he had never learned. He had no idea if this was the place or the time for them, but they were all he knew. His mother had insisted he say them for her. He said them now for his son.

When he finished, Hoffner took a clump of earth and tossed it onto the sheeted body. Mila did the same, then Wilson and Vollman. She held his arm.

The sun had climbed to the horizon as they stood and waited for Wilson in the square. He had gone to see Doval. Mila hadn’t let go of his arm. Vollman smoked through the silence.

Wilson appeared from the prison gate, and Hoffner said to Mila, “He’ll fly you to Barcelona. It’s the least he can do.”

Mila said nothing, and Wilson drew up.

“I told him it’s a direct request from the Admiralty,” Wilson said. His shirt was damp through at the back. “He’s promised no interference. You have two days. After that-”

“After that,” said Hoffner, “Doval gets to finish what he started.”

Wilson said nothing, and Vollman tossed his cigarette to the ground. “I can wait. I can fly on the fifteenth. That gives you enough time.”

There was no reason to answer.

Wilson said, “We’ll go get the car, then. Vollman and I.” It was a moment of unexpected chivalry: he was giving Hoffner a last few moments with Mila. It took Vollman another few seconds to catch on.

“Right. Yes.” Vollman gave an awkward nod, and followed Wilson off. Mila and Hoffner watched them go.

“They hid you in the church?” Hoffner said. It was first time he could ask.

“I’m not going to Barcelona.”

“There are good priests everywhere. All this must make them shudder. It’ll be the same in Germany one day-”

“I’m not going.” She waited until he was looking directly at her. “You don’t have to do this, Nikolai. If he was capable of killing Georg, what is there possibly to gain?”

Hoffner saw the vulnerability in her eyes. “And what if he wasn’t capable?”

“You don’t believe that.”

Hoffner waited. “No. I don’t.”

“So you go for-what? To let him finish this, to let him free you from whatever you think you deserve?”

“He killed his brother.”

“It makes you a coward.”

He hadn’t thought her capable of causing this kind of pain. Or maybe it was only now that he let himself feel it.

His voice remained low and calm. “He doesn’t get to walk away. If that makes me a coward, so be it.”

“No,” she said. “You’re a coward because you go alone.” It was an anger he had never imagined, raw and bitter, and doing nothing to hide its fear. “You’re going to stop thinking there’s something noble to be done, or that you could possibly know what it would look like. You don’t. All you do is hurt me with this and show how weak you are. I know how weak you are, and I know what terrifies you. Your boy is dead, but not because of you. And your Sascha-” She stopped. The words were tight in her throat. “You don’t get to throw yourself away because you want to believe that. There’s more to it now. You don’t get to do this alone.”

“I do it to protect you.”

“You do it to protect yourself.”

She stared across at him, her strength like shattered glass. It hung from them both and fell aimlessly to the ground. Hoffner’s hands ached, and still he gathered up the shards. He knew what it was he deserved, knew with every breath he took. It was the weight of this love-brutal and free and untethered from a lifetime of self-damning-and yet meaningless if he chose to run from his past now.

“Then you come,” he said.

The little Ford from Toledo appeared from a side street. Hoffner and Mila waited while Wilson and Vollman drove up.

The two men got out. There were a few awkward exchanges, a moment of surprise. Someone might have mentioned luck.

The car had been stripped down and searched, the rear cushioning all knife tears and disgorged stuffing. The front bench was much the same. Mila laid a blanket across it so they could sit. Even so, they felt the springs in every jolt and bump. Hoffner let Mila drive. He slept. And he dreamed.