Felix held the door open. His cousin stood at attention.

“Excellent driving,” Klaus said. “You’ll be rewarded.”

They saluted. “ Danke, Herr Obergruppenfuhrer! ”

He helped Tanya into the car and was about to follow, but paused. “What was that?”

The two soldiers looked around, uncertain.

“I heard something!” He drew his service Mauser.

Felix and Karl cocked their submachine guns and followed him around the hood of the car. The night was quiet, the moon exposed by the thin clouds. He stayed back as the two soldiers advanced toward the trees, their boots sinking into the snow, their weapons ready.

He raised his arm, aimed, and pressed the trigger once. The shot caused a flock of birds to scramble off a nearby tree. Felix turned to his cousin, who collapsed, blood trickling from a hole in the back of his head. The Mauser shifted, aligning with Felix’s head, silhouetted against the snow-weighted branches. The next bullet entered Felix’s temple and exited on the other side. The driver’s knees folded under him and he knelt down, blood oozing down both sides of his face. His mouth gaped as if attempting to speak, and he fell forward in the snow.

Klaus got behind the wheel and shut the door. “I’m sorry you had to see this,” he said. “But they knew too much.”

Tanya didn’t answer. She forced her mind to recall the photos he had shown her of the ranch in Argentina, the rolling hills and lush pasture, the sturdy cattle and proud horses. She imagined the sound of chirpy children.

E lie Weiss crouched in the snow by the roadside. The wool coat, stripped from a corpse a month earlier, was too big. The gloves were tattered, the knuckles bare. Another hour of exposure could cost him a finger, or worse.

“We’re too late,” Abraham Gerster said, clapping his hands to keep the circulation going. “We missed them. Let’s go back to the village, steal some food.”