by Kay Kenyon
As they drove, Kim filled in more of the missing pieces. “How did the Nazis get this Annakova, the catalyst?”
“They call her the tsarina. She will rule Russia when the Soviets fall. They link arms, the Third Reich and the pretender to the throne. Two devils.”
An alliance between Germany and Russia. It was not the one everyone feared, the one between Hitler and Stalin, but the one between Hitler and Tsar Nicholas’s successor.
If tonight’s operation failed, the fallout went beyond her drawing the attention of the SS. London could lose confidence in her, especially after warning her to use discretion. Once she no longer had their trust, they could recall her. Her career might not survive.
In that case she would spend her life, her gift, listening to the dark longings of villagers and the sins of friends. So the fourth floor both called to her and warned her.
“Getting into the sanatorium. Who are we supposed to be?”
Hannah shrugged. “That depends on Fivel. From his cleaning service, two uniforms will go missing. So it depends on which hospital they are from.”
“You’ve got an impressive network.”
“Network.” Hannah snorted. “Franz has an uncle who lives in Lindow, who knows the wife of the butcher, and Fivel is her nephew who works at the laundry that serves the regional hospitals. If that is a network, then I guess we have one.”
The Oberman Group was not strong. A few daring feats of sabotage and kidnapping. But it appeared they had few members, were hunted relentlessly by the Gestapo, and had quite limited resources. And yet, radiophosphorous. That could not be easy to acquire.
They turned onto a side road skirting a lake. The car shuddered as it hit a rut. From the back seat came the clinking of glass tubes.
Kim glanced behind, noting that the box was very small. “You’re sure the vials aren’t going to break? We’d be exposed.”
Hannah threw a droll look at Kim. “To beet juice.”
Slowing the car, Hannah turned them down a narrow lane.
They sat at the kitchen table eating corned beef sandwiches Charlotte had prepared. The stone-flagged kitchen was hung with a chandelier that looked to be a small wagon wheel, candles rimming it. Unlit for now. It was early afternoon.
Charlotte, rotund and red-faced, watched them eat, now and then looking up at her husband, Eli, who could be seen in the next room hunched over a treadle sewing machine. Fixing one of the uniforms. A tailor, Eli didn’t need Kim to try it on but measured her with a practiced eye and had gone to work.
“This is not a good idea,” Charlotte said again. “We know what is in Treptow. Why see it again?” She worked as a cleaning woman at the sanatorium.
Hannah paused, as though considering whether to answer. “We need more information.”
Charlotte frowned in Kim’s direction, saying in German, “This one doesn’t speak German. As soon as she opens her mouth, they’ll know.” Kim caught the gist of it. Charlotte was right.
“She will not open her mouth.” Fixing Charlotte with an iron stare, Hannah said, “Tell us about the doctor. In English.”
A sigh through pursed lips. “Doctor Amstutz, he is gone until Monday. A symposium in Magdelburg. He is assistant director, someone who can order medicines. But the treatments, they are heliotherapy, fresh air, why would there be medicine?”
“Radioisotopes,” Hannah said. “They are used in research. I think it is something that the duty nurse will not want to criticize. She will wait for Doctor Amstutz to explain.” Hannah brought their plates to the sink. “Don’t worry so much.”
The whirring of the sewing machine stopped. Eli, lanky and bearded, appeared in the doorway holding a nurse’s uniform and apron over his arms. He nodded to Kim. She rose from the table to take the outfit. The blue wool cape would suit as it was, and she had worn sturdy shoes that might pass for nurse duty.
“Danke,” Kim said to him.
Charlotte sighed. “As soon as she opens her mouth.”
17
TREPTOW SANATORIUM, THE LAKE DISTRICT
11:20 PM. In the car park Hannah killed the engine. “Ready?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be.” Kim got out of the car and retrieved the little box from the back seat.
The sanatorium loomed out of the woods with a fairy-tale glow. Its elaborate brickwork and mansard roof with dormer windows gave it an aesthetic, humane aspect. Beauty was important to recovery. Stained-glass windows flashed shards of color from dim lights within.
The starched uniform collar pulled at Kim’s neck. But the outfits with their white bib aprons, starched white hats, and capes helped put her into the role.
“Be careful,” Hannah said, glancing at the little box.
A joke. Kim’s smile felt like ripping stitches. She had come here to see the Nachkommen, their bodies pale yet unusually strong, their minds slipped free of moorings. She would know they were the Progeny by how similar their faces and hands were and by the powerful straps of their restraints. Rikard Nagel was bad. Apparently, it got worse.
Ascending the steps of a portico, Hannah pushed through the double doors into the entryway, holding the door for Kim, who carried the box with elaborate care.
A woman at the night desk was rising to meet them, probably having heard their car. She said something to a man in an SS uniform. Kim and Hannah approached the desk. The guard’s uniform bore the stylized lightning bolt insignia on the collar, not the vulture.
Hannah rolled out their story. Kim picked up enough to know it followed the script of Dr. Amstutz’s requisition of radiophosphorous—here a keen look at the little box from the night desk nurse—and apologies for their late arrival caused by a puncture on the road, and the need above all to bring Dr. Amstutz’s material to a safe location. She had also hurt her ankle while changing the tire, so she would like to be about her assignment as quickly as possible.
The nurse was clearly unhappy about this development and, as the SS guard appeared out of his depth, she took charge.
“Doctor Amstutz has said nothing about such an order. It is most irregular. We have no ability to hold something like this.”
Hannah agreed it was unusual. Perhaps nurse would like to wake her superior? Or perhaps the material might sit under lock and key until morning, when Dr. Amstutz might be reached by telephone for his instructions.
Soon the nursing director was roused, and the conversation was repeated. Nurse Bernauer, thin and brisk, was a calmer individual than the night desk nurse.
“We will bring the package to the dispensary where it can be stored. Then we will discuss how this came to happen without my knowledge.” Her low, assured voice conveyed an unflappable German attention to procedure. First this, then this. Then we shoot you.
She walked with the two of them down the corridor, Hannah limping slightly, and the SS officer, referred to as lieutenant, bringing up the rear. A building this size could never be warm in winter, nor was it, but with the wool cape Kim felt hot and flushed.
At the door to the dispensary, Hannah said, “We will need a larger box to store this in. One with padding.”
The nurse frowned. “But you have come all this way without padding.”
“It is not strictly necessary, but it contributes to safety. Dr. Amstutz did not want any accidents when the medicines came into his keeping. Perhaps the lieutenant?”
Nurse Bernauer paused in irritation, then sent the officer in search of a box and insulating material.
Hannah made eye contact with Kim, then nodded at the box. Kim placed it in Hannah’s hands as though it were a prize Ming vase.
Having unlocked the dispensary door, the nurse let them inside. Kim, last in, left the door open.
Spotless white cabinets lined the walls, along with several refrigerators and, in the center, a stainless steel table. Turning toward it, Hannah stumbled as though her ankle had buckled under her. The box slammed into the table edge. Nurse Bernauer charged forward, but too late, as Hannah lost her balance and d
ropped the box onto the floor, creating a sickening crunch of glass.
“Mein Gott!” Hannah rasped.
Kim’s cue to disappear.
She backed into the corridor, leaving behind the chaotic scene in the dispensary, and hurried to the first intersection of the hallway, where she turned the corner. Ahead was a curved stairway leading up, with its decorative handrail of turned ironwork, and at the landing, tall leaded-glass windows.
With Charlotte’s description of the hospital’s layout firmly in mind, she ascended. Behind her, the shouts from the dispensary had ceased, leaving the building in eerie silence.
She rushed up to the second floor, taking care to make no sound.
A corridor lay before her, a fey light warming the walls. Down the hall, a nurses’ station attended by someone hunched over a book. She pulled her dark cloak around her uniform and moved as slow as a sloth up the next flight of stairs, clasping the keys in her pocket, ready to say, A delivery of radioisotopes. A box is needed.
No one stopped her. Coming to the top, she found a broad hall with wheelchairs and chaise longues lined up for use on the sun deck, accessed by a line of French doors.
She crossed the room to the double doors that closed off what Charlotte had called the east wing. Here, a metal pipe was secured through the rounded door pulls. It rested at both ends on hardware screwed into the paneling. As Kim slid the heavy pipe free, it clanked against the door, sending alarms along her nerves. She set the pipe on the floor. Then from her pocket she removed the two keys secured on a lanyard, the keys that Charlotte had provided. Using the larger one, she shoved it in the lock and turned it.
With a resounding click, the lock released, and she was through. It seemed her journey to this point had taken many minutes. She had to hurry. Turning up the narrow staircase just inside the doors, she reached a stairwell lit only by ambient light from the wall sconces below. She climbed to a door at the top. The fourth floor.
If you turned a lock very slowly the tumblers might slide into place without a click. But despite a brief prayer, this was not the case. The lock clattered like a shoebox of marbles. Kim hesitated at the noise, but Charlotte had said that fourth-floor patients were not only heavily sedated at night but were restrained in their beds.
Entering, Kim stood unmoving, surveying the room. She was in a large dormitory with beds along both walls. By the light of a lamp on the desk by the door, she saw the headboards on one side pushed up against windows that were sealed with shutters and crossbeams. About half the beds were occupied. None of the forms moved.
Drawing out a subminiature Minox camera from her pocket, she approached the first bed. A man lay sleeping on his back, his head sunk into a pillow that bulged around his face. Her first impression was that he was a cancer patient, so emaciated he looked. The covers hid his body, but by their drape, he was very thin. A high-domed forehead and long jaw made his head unnaturally long. Only wisps of hair remained on his skull. His lips, full and smooth, his skin with no hint of lines or sagging. She could easily imagine that this was what Rikard Nagel would become, a cadaverous, almost inhuman creature. She clicked off a picture.
Two beds farther on, a woman lay. She thought it was a woman, by the long strands of hair, the slightly smaller features. Her blanket had slipped to the floor, allowing Kim to see her elongated body. The fleshy part of the hands was stretched long, and the remarkable fingers spanned joints to create what must be a formidable grasp. Crisscrossing the woman’s chest and limbs were heavily woven cloth belts. These connected by buckles to restraints on the side of the bed. The shutter of the Minox, a whisper as Kim snapped the pictures.
She continued around the room, working more quickly now, but each skeletal body was indeed of a type: muscular and gaunt, unnaturally long hands and feet, and faces disturbingly lengthened, most noticeably at the forehead and chin.
A motion on the far side of the room. Kim snapped around to look.
“Nurse,” came the voice. Speaking German.
She froze.
“Nurse.” More insistently.
So as not to cause him to call her more loudly, she approached.
When she reached the foot of the bed, she found a Nachkomme gazing at her as he lay strapped in the bed. He was completely bald, adding to the elongated impression of his face. A sign hung from the end of the bed, displaying a word she couldn’t translate, and below that a clipboard on a chain.
“I know I should sleep,” he said, with a modulated, deep voice. “But I cannot.”
She felt a pang of sympathy for him, knowing that his condition was fatal, and imagining the misery of ending it in this place.
His voice was wistful. “Do you ever try to sleep and fail?”
She hesitated to answer him. It would be best to leave now, but something about him gave her pause.
“I’m sure you know what I mean. But for us”—he looked around the room—“we prefer to sleep at different hours than others.” She caught most of what he was saying and filled in the blanks.
He moved his body a few inches under the covers. “The straps hurt. I have sores. You could check if you don’t believe me.”
“I believe you,” she said in German. She didn’t want to pick up his blanket. Why had she spoken? A trickle of sweat sped down the side of her rib cage.
“You are new.”
“Yes. I am just learning.”
“You aren’t like the others. I knew that when you first came in and started to take pictures.”
Time to leave. No one would hear him if he cried an alarm.
“Just loosen the strap around my hips one notch. The bruises, they hurt me so.”
She glanced down at the end of a leather strap dangling below the covers.
His eyes flickered with pain. Well, just a notch, then. She bent down and unbuckled the strap, slipping it into holes farther down.
“What does the sign say?” She gestured to the end of his bed.
“Ah,” he said, nodding. “It is my condition. You know it, ja? You are a nurse.”
“No,” she said, sweat now pouring from her face. She folded the cape away from her shoulders.
“The sign says compulsion.” A long, flat smile carved across his face. “But we don’t need to worry about that. This is a hospital.”
“We don’t need to worry,” she agreed.
“And perhaps the other straps? I know it is a great deal of trouble.” His voice was soft and even, like snow falling on a river and disappearing.
She fumbled with the buckles on his ankles. The straps were very tight and hard to unfasten, but she finally managed.
“Why not just take them all off? Now that we’ve started, that’s what we should do.”
He was right. Kim had finished with the right side of the bed and now went around to the other side. As she worked, she asked, “What will you do when you escape?” She was very curious about this. What his plans were. As though in a dream, she knew his answer would be vitally important, but she wasn’t sure why.
“I think I’ll have supper.”
She didn’t like hearing that, but could think of nothing to say. She left one strap buckled. They keep them restrained, because they are mad.
He erupted from the bed. Bellowing, he slammed his feet onto the floor on the opposite side of the bed from her. Slowly he bent down, then like a whale breaching, he threw his arms into the air, and the strap ripped free. All the straps were still attached to him, and he swung them around like whips, howling with glee.
Kim stumbled backward into the empty bed behind her. Between her and the Nachkomme there was only the bed he had lain in. She scrambled over the next bed, terror turning her movements clumsy, while he pranced into the middle of the room, slashing the straps back and forth around him.
Crashing backward, Kim fell against the next bed, sprawling against the patient, who groaned. She sprang up and ran for the door as other patients began to wake. Some shouted in German. Some begged the free patient to re
lease them.
He dove onto the bed of one such, straddling the patient secured there. He leaned down and used one of the buckles barbing the end of a strap to rip open his throat. He bent over the gash and, while holding the victim down, thrust his face into the neck.
Kim reached the door as the room filled with screams. She yanked it open.
The key. She slammed the door behind her and dug for the key, her hands shaking so hard she barely controlled them. Finding the keys, she drew them out, but dropped them. They skittered across the landing as she heard a crash from the other side of the door.
She fled down the stairs just as the door slammed open, and the Nachkomme stood in the opening, covered in blood and with the straps drooping at his side like strips of flayed skin.
All she could think of was the metal pipe. She pounded down the stairs and jammed toward the double doors. He was right behind her, but with a crazy, shambling gate. He was slowed by the straps that whipped against his ankles.
Yanking the double doors open, she slammed them shut and grabbed the metal pipe. Sliding the pipe through the door handles, she turned and charged across the room, hurdling over the line of chaise longues toward the French doors. Get out, get out.
The doors were locked.
Behind her, the door with the pipe crashed and swayed. She raced for the stairs. “Help!” she shouted. “Help!” Now she hoped for guards, for nurses, for everyone to hear her.
At the landing she heard a great smashing noise from above. The doors breaking.
She skittered around to the next flight of stairs. From below, two nurses came running down the corridor toward her, along with several guards.
Kim pointed behind her. “He’s killing patients!” she screamed, remembering to do so in German.
They met at the foot of the stairs. One of the nurses grabbed her. “Who are . . .”
A guard had pulled his gun and loosed a volley of bullets at something coming down the stairs. They might not know what it was, but Kim did.