The 34th Degree

100

Stavros and Erin were upstairs in the parlor over Theo’s when the door burst open and Theo entered. “SS paratroopers,” he said breathlessly. “They’re downstairs!”

Stavros moved to the window overlooking the town square and lifted the curtain. Several armored cars, troop carriers, and Kubelwagen appeared in the platia, and armed soldiers were converging on the taverna.

“The Baron’s Death’s Head battalion!” Stavros cried. “The ones I said we don’t want to meet.”

“Any ideas?” asked Erin, standing beside him.

Stavros dropped the curtain. “The alley,” he said. “If we can cut through the kitchen.”

They had started down the stairs when they heard the rumble of heavy boots coming up.

“This way,” said Erin, ducking into another bedroom.

They closed the door as the jackboots moved past them toward the parlor they had just vacated. They stood before the open window facing the alley, garbage strewn out below in the darkness.

Erin said, “We’ll have to jump.”

“You can’t be serious!” said Stavros.

But the pounding on the door followed by the heavy shout “Raus! Schnell!” outside in the hallway convinced him otherwise. The two crawled out the window and were hanging on to the sill by their fingers when the Germans crashed through the door.

Breathlessly, they hung outside in the darkness while the Germans overturned the room. Suddenly, Stavros was aware of voices below. He looked down and saw the helmets of SS men searching the piles of garbage in the pool of light from the kitchen. Had they simply looked up, they would have beheld the strange sight of a big priest and a young woman hanging in the air.

As it was, fed up with the stench and finding nothing outside, the Germans disappeared into the kitchen. But before Stavros could relax, he heard a rumble down below and the screech of brakes as a shadow moved in the dark.

“It’s the lorry with Andros,” whispered Erin. “Let go and we’ll drop onto the sacks of grain in back.”

“What? How do you know?”

“Let go, I tell you. The sacks of grain will break the fall.”

Before Stavros could respond, the window above them slid open, and he looked up into the disfigured face of an SS officer who stared down at them like the devil with a crooked smile.

Before the German could make a sound, Stavros felt Erin slip her hand into his cassock, remove a dagger from his belt, and hurl it into the SS officer’s chest with such speed that all Stavros saw was the flash of the blade and the German lurching forward. Erin reached up, grabbed the German’s uniform, and disappeared as she pulled the dying German down with her into the darkness below.

Stavros clenched his teeth and released his grip. He landed with a thud among the sacks, just as Erin had said. He could see her removing his dagger from the dead German and hiding the corpse behind a sack of grain.

She wiped the blade clean against the rough sackcloth. “Better that his friends don’t find him at all than find him dead,” she said, handing Stavros’s dagger back to him, handle first. Then she called to Andros in the cab, “We’re in!”

The lorry lurched forward. Stavros looked behind at the dark alley and saw a German poke his head outside the taverna window, look about curiously, and then, seeing nothing, disappear.

“It’s not over yet,” Erin warned as they turned the corner.