35
Second Rendezvous?
17 April 1944
It was early—far too early for a girl who had a late date tonight with a dark-haired, blue-eyed prince—to be interrupted by a loud knocking on the front door. Buffer was barking viciously. Iris heard a man’s voice and, on her way to the hall, she heard her mother make a peculiar sound. Rushing, she took in the scene and her heart fluttered, then burned with fear. A down-mouthed Rogers and next to him, the Colonel, stern-faced, lunged forward to catch her mother, who reeled toward the hard parquet floor like a puppet whose strings were viciously cut.
“What’s wrong?” Iris asked as she knelt down next to her mother.
“He’s gone. Gone. Gone.”
“Who, Mom, who? For God’s sake, who?”
Sergeant Rogers stepped forward and held Iris’s shoulders. She looked at
