فصل 95

florian

I waited in the chimney, shivering, still tormented by the departure scene on the dock. The ship swayed as it cut through the stormy swells. My stomach lifted up and then dangled back down. I had to think of what lay ahead.

When I left, the Amber Room was packed in crates in a secret underground room in K?nigsberg Castle. The map to the underground vault, along with the key, was still in my boot heel. Only three people knew of the location:

Me. Dr. Lange. Gauleiter Koch.

I thought of my father’s maps and pictured Kiel, tucked within a crease of northern Germany. Kiel was approximately a hundred kilometers from Denmark and only eighty kilometers from where my sister was sent to live with our old great-aunt. If I could get there, I would stash the swan in her barn until the war was over.

If.

That meant I would have to disembark in Kiel without incident. Without suspicion. If the blond soldier had told Koch that I was on the Gustloff, would someone be waiting for me in Kiel? The boat’s motion was too severe to forge new papers. And then I remembered.

I dug through my pack and found it. The identity card of the German soldier that the Polish girl had killed in the forest. When we reached Kiel, maybe I could leave the ship as a wounded soldier.

But once again, I would need Joana’s help.