fought against panic as she tried to gain some measure of control and stop her descent. She felt the boy’s flailing arms crash into her, and then one clamped around her neck, followed by the other. She gagged, forcing out some of the precious air she’d been able to inhale before going in.
Jo’s underwater training came back to her, and she quickly pried one arm loose by pinching the ulnar nerve at the elbow. But the training was so long ago, and she was so tired and it was so cold…The boy thrashed with his suddenly useless arm but locked the other even tighter around Jo’s neck. She felt her lungs about to burst, and then came a sharp blow on her head that made everything even blacker than before.
CHAPTER THREE
Estancia Valhalla, Argentina
November 1981
They seemed nearly without end. La pampas , the natives called them, the prairies stretching so many kilometers to the west, to the foothills of the distant and invisible Andes. The man gazing upon them now, from the veranda outside his office, knew them by that name, but also by another, seemingly less elegant name: die Steppen . His father’s name for the vastness, and the son knew that name, but also the native name, because in truth he was a man of two cultures, and many days, like today, he felt them pulling him this way, then that.
For perhaps the thousandth time, he wondered if it was it like this when his father and fellow countrymen first pushed eastward from occupied Polan d, forty years ago, into Russia. As they looked upon it from their airplanes, their tank turrets, their troop trucks, were they awed by the vastness, by the challenge before them? No. They would have gone forward with apprehension, certainly, but tempered with the iron discipline of their race and profession, the confidence bred by years of triumph, and the admonition of their superiors that only inferior peoples stood between them and a victory unmatched in their nation’s history.
He looked down at the cognac swirling in his glass. Ah, but if they had only succeeded, he wouldn’t be here now. Where would he be? Perhaps in that very place now, enjoying the new Lebensraum bought with blood by his father’s generation, the living space seized from the subhuman Slavs and their Jewish masters. An industrialist, with factories belching smoke around the clock and churning out ever more tanks and planes and ships, or maybe consumer goods for the people whose sacrifices had made it all possible. Yes, they would be driving his Volkswagens along mighty Autobahnen stretching from the Urals to the Pyrenees.
Or maybe he would be a landowner, with thousands of hectares under his dominion, breeding horses and cattle, and people would give him the title of Freiherr , even if such appellations were archaic in modern times. He liked the sound of it, though. Baron Wilhelm von Baumann. It had a ring to it, as the Americans would say, especially when he added the formal von .
Yet he also liked the sound of el jefe , the chief, the title used by many of his native employees when they spoke to him. When he gazed out over the lands his father had amassed, and which would someday be his own—were his already, in all but name—he felt a fierce sense of pride. The call of the pampas was strong, and even now he felt his heart race from the memory of his powerful horse beneath him as they thundered across the prairie, the hot bloodlust that gripped him when he watched the señoritas dance the chacarera , even the pleasant tug of lethargy when he saw someone taking an afternoon siesta or talking about putting something off till mañana .
His mixed heritage could be a blessing or a curse, and sometimes he wavered between the extremes by the day, even by the hour. More often, he felt it was a curse. He knew, for instance, that if his father’s cause had been victorious, he never would’ve been able to take his wife back to his homeland. Although Anna Baumann’s
Jo’s underwater training came back to her, and she quickly pried one arm loose by pinching the ulnar nerve at the elbow. But the training was so long ago, and she was so tired and it was so cold…The boy thrashed with his suddenly useless arm but locked the other even tighter around Jo’s neck. She felt her lungs about to burst, and then came a sharp blow on her head that made everything even blacker than before.
CHAPTER THREE
Estancia Valhalla, Argentina
November 1981
They seemed nearly without end. La pampas , the natives called them, the prairies stretching so many kilometers to the west, to the foothills of the distant and invisible Andes. The man gazing upon them now, from the veranda outside his office, knew them by that name, but also by another, seemingly less elegant name: die Steppen . His father’s name for the vastness, and the son knew that name, but also the native name, because in truth he was a man of two cultures, and many days, like today, he felt them pulling him this way, then that.
For perhaps the thousandth time, he wondered if it was it like this when his father and fellow countrymen first pushed eastward from occupied Polan d, forty years ago, into Russia. As they looked upon it from their airplanes, their tank turrets, their troop trucks, were they awed by the vastness, by the challenge before them? No. They would have gone forward with apprehension, certainly, but tempered with the iron discipline of their race and profession, the confidence bred by years of triumph, and the admonition of their superiors that only inferior peoples stood between them and a victory unmatched in their nation’s history.
He looked down at the cognac swirling in his glass. Ah, but if they had only succeeded, he wouldn’t be here now. Where would he be? Perhaps in that very place now, enjoying the new Lebensraum bought with blood by his father’s generation, the living space seized from the subhuman Slavs and their Jewish masters. An industrialist, with factories belching smoke around the clock and churning out ever more tanks and planes and ships, or maybe consumer goods for the people whose sacrifices had made it all possible. Yes, they would be driving his Volkswagens along mighty Autobahnen stretching from the Urals to the Pyrenees.
Or maybe he would be a landowner, with thousands of hectares under his dominion, breeding horses and cattle, and people would give him the title of Freiherr , even if such appellations were archaic in modern times. He liked the sound of it, though. Baron Wilhelm von Baumann. It had a ring to it, as the Americans would say, especially when he added the formal von .
Yet he also liked the sound of el jefe , the chief, the title used by many of his native employees when they spoke to him. When he gazed out over the lands his father had amassed, and which would someday be his own—were his already, in all but name—he felt a fierce sense of pride. The call of the pampas was strong, and even now he felt his heart race from the memory of his powerful horse beneath him as they thundered across the prairie, the hot bloodlust that gripped him when he watched the señoritas dance the chacarera , even the pleasant tug of lethargy when he saw someone taking an afternoon siesta or talking about putting something off till mañana .
His mixed heritage could be a blessing or a curse, and sometimes he wavered between the extremes by the day, even by the hour. More often, he felt it was a curse. He knew, for instance, that if his father’s cause had been victorious, he never would’ve been able to take his wife back to his homeland. Although Anna Baumann’s
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