In the early months of the First World War, a young Canadian soldier uses quick thinking and ingenuity to evade capture after being wounded fighting in Flanders. While escaping through Germany to the Swiss border, he becomes intimately entwined with...
After Maria and Rachel had left to drive northward, David spent the remainder of Friday morning and on into the early afternoon poring over the documents in the dossier and discussing them in German with Bethia. She didn't know the details of many of the items, but there were some she remembered with fondness.
"This bound portfolio of engineering drawings." She passed it to David. "We found it in an old bookstore in Zürich about five years ago. He was so excited. It's a collection of working drawings for the big viaducts on the Sauschwänzlebahn."
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He read the title, Die Wutachtalbahn - 1890. "That's before the line was completed. This looks like something an engineering company would have had printed to show their current projects and to use for marketing their services."
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"This map," Bethia said, as she pulled out a large folded sheet. "This shows why it's compared to a pigtail — all the switchbacks, and there's a spiral tunnel here that does a circle and a quarter. Look at all the twists. This section takes twenty-two kilometres of track to go just over six kilometres distance."
"You said the other day that the road goes back and forth under the bridges and viaducts."
"Yes, at times it follows beside the tracks, but it often winds into the valleys, under the viaducts and up the other side. The roads don't need to maintain the gentle grades and curves of the rails."
"How far is it from here to the start of the twists?"
"Can't be more than twenty kilometres. Aaron and I went there often to gather juniper boughs loaded with berries. The fields through there are covered with juniper shrubs, and one of my secrets in making Klettgauschinken is the juniper smoke. Now I have Manfred cut a load of boughs every couple of weeks on his way back from Donaueschingen."
"We'll lose that source next week. We'll have to go and get some for you. It'll give me a good opportunity to study the railway engineering."
"Here! Look at this. This is my favourite." She pulled a large colourised photo from its envelope. "We found it in the same shop. It's an image of one of the bridges in the Hell Valley. It has information stamped on the back."
