The Dark Frontier A. Decker (i like reading TXT) 📖

message to the office of his father’s old lawyer. Burow himself was now retired, but if he could persuade a lawyer’s office in the country of Italy’s closest ally to vouch for him, he felt that he might stand a chance of getting out of the hole he was in. Whether it was this that did it, he had no idea. But one day, out of the blue, they began to treat him with a little respect. And as the interrogations became less frequent and less intense, he sensed that his case was being handled more seriously.

So it was that, in due course, he was charged with nothing more than unlawful possession of a firearm. Just a few weeks later, he was deemed to have served a sufficient sentence for this crime and was quietly released.

When he finally got to taste fresh air again, Frank was shocked to find it was mid-winter. He must have been in detention for the best part of a year. And all that time there had been no contact with the outside world. They had refused him permission to contact anyone except immediate family. But he saw little point in contacting his mother, since she would probably not even know him.

And, as Frank had remained entirely cut off from Patricia, the vast gaping hole that now defined whatever there had been between them totally consumed his every waking hour. He was desperate to know how she was and what had become of her after he failed to get back over the Maloja Pass as planned. So, on his release from prison, he wasted no time finding a tram to the station.

His prolonged incarceration had made him acutely aware of how time had left him behind. So much had passed him by. On the tram, he was struck by shop facades now sprayed with the words ‘Negozio Giudeo’ under the Star of David in evil imitation of his own country. It was something he had never seen in Italy before. On a more cheerful note, some of the newspapers on the newsstands at Milan’s sparkling new triumphalist central station were full of pride in the national football team’s bid to retain the World Cup in Paris during the summer. But his acute awareness of time past was brought home to him above all when he bought a newspaper to read on his journey north.

The headline that caught his eye was the news that Ribbentrop had just been appointed to head the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Germany. How much deeper into its swamp of incompetence can this country stoop, Frank asked himself, when it appoints a dull salesman of cheap, sparkling wine to represent it abroad? But if nothing else, the news made him thankful that his own case was now closed and hence no longer a foreign affair.

Other than this, the newspaper offered little newsworthy content, and after crossing that fateful border at Como, he soon fell into a deep sleep.

It was an early March morning in 1938 when the train pulled into the central station at Basel. The square outside the station bristled with too much activity for so early on a Monday. Frank sensed a buzz of excitement in the air. Even the trams were running. It was as if the whole city had come out to celebrate his arrival home. The return of the hero who had rid the streets of the Third Reich’s ambassador for thuggery in Basel. For the first time in this city, he felt the world was on his side, and he leapt onto the first tram that came along with a heart which was lighter and more carefree than he remembered it having been for a very long time – until he tried to find a seat amid the swarm of excited faces that crammed into the carriage more tightly with every stop as it headed into the city. Why so early in the morning? Frank asked himself. Where were they going?

As the heat and noise in the tram rose, memories of his last night in this city impinged on every direction his mind tried to take in an effort to shake off the images of Breitner bleeding onto Patricia’s file. A whole year had passed. Yet it seemed like only yesterday when he fled the scene of reckoning, with Breitner’s youth sports thugs in hot pursuit. He pictured the whole place on high alert when the killing was discovered. Imagined it could well have led to a local diplomatic crisis while he was incarcerated in Italy – in the same way the killing of Gustloff did in Davos. And today, the moment he stepped off the train, he felt the eyes of the city were on him.

When Frank was released from his Italian prison, he was surprised to have the two pages from Patricia’s file returned to him by his jailers, complete with photographs. They kept the gun, of course. But he had expected them to hold on to Breitner’s file contents as well. Now, finally back in the place where he had come under her spell, he was tempted to take the pages out and pore over the contents before their reunion. But he felt deterred by the people crowded around him on the tram. The cause of his hesitation lay deeper than mere inhibition. It lay right down in the fragile new roots of his existence – roots that were struggling to establish themselves in the rocky soil of an entangled past which seemed already close to withering. He knew the contents of the file would lend a definition to this past which reason told him would be best left in darkness. It served no one’s interest. Certainly not his, nor Patricia’s, nor her father’s. As he was contemplating where the pages with their photograph of Patricia’s father might be safely and permanently disposed of, his thoughts were interrupted by a disembodied voice:

“Endstation.”

The tram was already grinding to a halt. It was the end