by Ryan Graudin
Adele’s brother bent down, salvaging the Zündapp’s pieces with his eyes. “Axle seems fine this time, though. I’ll take a closer look once we get you cleaned up and set up camp.”
They were camping together? But—she’d tried so hard to shake him off, keep her distance. Cold shoulders in the refueling stations, scuttling to the opposite end of the Mediterranean ferry, putting in days of full-throttle kilometers… all to end up here. Stranded in the middle of the desert with the person who knew Adele Wolfe best in the world. Bike names and backstory and all…
How long would it take Felix to realize Yael was not his sister?
And what would she do when that happened?
Was that a line she could cross?
Every muscle in Felix’s body strung tight as he shouldered Yael’s Zündapp, shoved it upright. He was strong—it took him only one try, where Yael supposed it should be two. Were they to fight, she’d have to rely on speed. Take him out before he had a chance to blink. Much less throw a punch.
“Priority one is getting you patched up,” Felix called over his shoulder as he unlatched her panniers. Fished out her first-aid kit and an electric lantern, which he wielded straight in her face. “Your skin looks like schnitzel and pasta sauce blended with gravel.”
She’d figured as much. Road rash spread hot over her neck, onto her face.
“Get ready.” Felix picked an amber bottle from the first-aid kit and unscrewed the dropper. Yael could mark that smell anywhere: iodine. “This won’t feel very nice.”
Again, she’d figured as much. But even bracing herself while Felix positioned the dropper over her raw cheeks didn’t help. Drip, plop. Two tiny splashes of iodine and an entire fresh wave of pain.
“Schei—serlksm.” Yael’s curse fell apart as she clenched her teeth.
“Sorry.” Felix sounded like he meant it. “I’m not the best doctor. Hitler Youth first-aid training only goes so far.”
The sting of the iodine plus Felix’s purely unironic words added with other doctor memories caused Yael to laugh. Adele’s brother was far, far and away from the worst.
If only he knew.
No—if he knew it was “tainted” blood he was touching… who she really was…
Yael’s laugh wilted into a shudder.
Felix pulled a pair of tweezers from the kit. “Stay still. I need to pick out some of these bigger rock pieces.”
Why did getting better hurt so much? She needed something to distract her, Yael decided when the first gravel bit was yanked from her flesh. “Back in Prague. Why did you drug my soup?”
It took two more rock pieces, another drop of iodine, and a patch of gauze taped to her cheek before Adele’s brother started speaking. “You didn’t leave me any other choice.”
More iodine on the second cheek. Sting and tears.
“You haven’t been there, Ad. You haven’t seen—” Felix stopped; he sounded like he was the one who was getting his skin scraped up and minced. “While you’ve been cocooned up in that Germania flat, I’ve been at home, trying to hold things together. Running the garage, trying to get Mama out of bed every day, watching Papa’s hair get grayer and grayer.
“I’ve been trying to hold them together. But I can’t.” There was a weight behind his whisper. A weight Yael understood. Because it was always there. Pressing down, down, down at night. Pressing on, on, on during the day. “I just can’t. Not by myself.
“I know why you ran away. Believe me, I’ve thought of it myself sometimes.…” Felix’s face grew shame red in patches. As if he’d said something he shouldn’t. “But Mama and Papa need me. And they need you, Ad. If you die, this will kill them.”
“I’m not going to die,” Yael said.
More gravel tugged out with tears. A long, smarting silence.
“You asked how I got into the race,” he started. “I sold the auto shop. Used the money to bribe Dirk Hermann and the officials.”
Yael had never been to the garage, but she’d seen pictures of where Adele grew up. A house barricaded by mountains of spare tires and car parts. It was the Wolfe family’s stake in the ground. A place of generations.
“The auto shop?” She strung out her voice, tried to twine perfect hints of anger, loss. (It wasn’t so hard with a face on fire.) “You sold Papa’s garage?”
“I’d do anything to keep you safe, Adele. I’d sell the garage a thousand times over if I had to.” He patched the second cheek and moved the iodine dropper down her neck. “You need to come home. Before something worse happens.”
A last-ditch effort to get a wayward sister home—that’s all the drugged soup was. (And, truthfully, all Yael suspected it to be.) Felix was trying to put his family back together. Snap, snap, snap, safe. Just like the matryoshka dolls.
Yael couldn’t think ill of him for it. Not when the smallest doll sat so lonely in her pocket. Not when the picture of the happy siblings in Adele’s flat made her heart crawl. If she still had family, she’d fight for them, too.
She was fighting. Still. Even though the dolls Miriam kept were as gone as the girl herself. Beyond saving.
Yael craned her neck up to the sky, so Felix could patch the wounds there. Above them light broke through the black in thousands: the dead’s eyes and stars. The view spoke to the deepest parts of her, gorgeous and hopeful and sad all at once.
“I can handle Luka and Katsuo,” Yael told him.
The tweezers trembled at the sound of Luka’s name. Jabbed a little extra hard into her neck. “I still can’t believe you stood up for that Saukerl. After what he tried to do to you…”
When Yael stared down the length of her nose, she could see Felix’s jaw knotted tight, his nostrils flared. Such a sudden, fierce anger. Not for nothing.
“Luka Löwe is an Arsch,” he said, once he’d regained his composure. “But it’s not him I’m worried about. Or Katsuo. Look, I swore on my life not to say anything, which is why I didn’t tell you sooner, but something’s going to happen during this race. Something dangerous. Something big.”
He knows about my mission. It took all of Yael’s training for her to stay still. Eyes back to the stars.
“Who told you that?” This might not have been the right question, but Yael wanted its answer. The details of her mission had been kept only to the highest levels of resistance leadership. The rest of the partisans all over the map had simply been told by their cell leaders to be ready.
Was Felix part of the resistance? If so, Henryka and her informants had missed this information; there was nothing in Adele’s brother’s file about partisan activity. More likely the secrets of Yael’s mission were slipping, down the ranks, through the cracks.
Neither option was terribly good.
“It doesn’t matter who told me. All I know is that we can’t stick around much longer. Even if your bike can be fixed, it’ll take an act of God for you to catch up on these roads. I know how stubborn you are, but the Double Cross isn’t worth your life. Think about the people who love you. Papa, Mama, me. Don’t we matter?”
Yael shut her eyes, and the stars’ brilliant light was gone. Only darkness and the burn, burn, burn of bruises blooming down her arms. Under the road-gnawed leather of her sleeves. Between the markings of the ones who had loved her.
Had. So much of her life was in the past.
“This is worth it,” she said, and looked at him.
Those eyes—blue on hurt on blue. It was as if she’d just raised her gun again and shot Felix through the heart. His stare fell down to the dropper. “You should take your jacket off. Some of the road rash got under your collar.”
Yael could. But the sleeves of her undershirt were thin, while the bandage over Vlad’s wolf was noticeably thick. It was the sort of thing an attentive brother like Felix would not overlook. Just like the patrolman in Germania, Felix would ask. Question would lead to question would lead to question.…
There were five reasons Yael could not do this. Five reasons why she stood (her feet were
much steadier now). Five reasons she said, “I can fix the rest on my own,” and moved to start setting up her pup tent.
There were five reasons, and they mattered the most.
CHAPTER 13
NOW
MARCH 16, 1956
Yael did not take off her jacket. (Changing the bandages on Vlad’s wolf could wait. She was too afraid Felix might come bursting into the tent at the wrong moment, see all.) Instead she sat by the tent flap, ate a packet of dried field rations, and listened. Felix hadn’t disappeared back into his tent like she’d hoped. Instead he was working. Filling the night with the chokes of a failing motor as he tried to bring her Zündapp back to life.
It was clear now that the motorcycle was past saving, leaking its own oily epitaph into the sand. But despite this—despite Felix’s wanting nothing more than for his sister to drop out of the race, go home—he kept working. Knees in the cold sand, shoulders hunched. The wind was picking up, moaning outside the tent. Sand hissed against the tarp. Fuzzed around Felix’s lantern. Bit into his tools.
And still he worked.
Partisan or not, Felix was a good brother. Adele didn’t know what she had.
Which made Yael even more sorry for what she was about to do. It might take an act of God for her to get ahead, but before that happened she needed a bike.
Felix’s perfectly whole Zündapp sat parallel to hers. All Yael had to do was pack up her tent and switch the panniers. If she was lucky, the wind would be enough to mask the sound of the engine crank as well. By the time Adele’s brother woke up, she’d be long gone. He’d spend a day or two stranded in the desert until the caravan of supply trucks made its way through. That far behind and he’d be certain to forfeit. Out of race, out of mind.
Simple. No secrets spilled, no lines crossed.
Yael chewed her jerky and waited until Felix packed his wrenches away, walked back to his tent. She waited a few more minutes before she crept outside, her footsteps feather light as she made her way to the motorcycles. Swapping out the panniers should’ve been easier than it was. Yael’s wreck-shocked fingers were clumsy on the buckles. Sand whipped through her hair, stung against the back of her neck. The wind had picked up from gusts to a steady, rushing force. Yael had to shield her face as she turned back toward the tent.
And then she saw it.
Really, it was more what she did not see. Where a crescent fingernail moon had hung moments before was only black. And the stars—the stars were being eaten alive, light by light. Swallowed into a darkness that had nothing to do with the night.
It was a sandstorm. Reiniger had warned her about them. He’d seen plenty during his war years: walls of dust that rolled from the horizon, as fast as a swarm of locusts.
Take shelter. Hunker down, Reiniger had told her. Breathe light so the sand doesn’t get in your lungs. You’ll be useless until it passes. No light. No air.
She had to get inside. So many stars were gone now, and she’d ventured out without a lamp, but Yael knew it was eight paces from the motorcycles to her tent. She had no choice but to plunge for it.
The storm—it wasn’t just howling. It was an army of noise: threading, twining, roaring all around. Dust seeped through the cracks in her facial bandages, watered the edges of her eyes. She had to push her way against the wind, through the living rivers of sand at her feet. The tent held true as Yael pried her way in, coughing as if her lungs depended on it.
More of Reiniger’s advice was coming back to her: Most times the storms are small. They roll over in an hour or so. She’d have to wait it out. Make her move for the bike once the hour (or so) was up.
But the storm only grew worse. The hour or so stretched into two. The wind cried louder, and the tent leaned further, until Yael was certain it was only her weight keeping the structure in place. The walls and floor were gone. It was all just a tangle of plastic, cocooning Yael against the sands.
She slept it out, curled up in a fetal position, catching snatches of dreams. Sometimes it was hard to tell what was sleeping and what was waking, since her nightmares were also made of howls and darkness.
But finally the light came. Morning sun cut through a deep orange haze. The wind dropped, the clouds thinned, and Yael pulled back the tarp.
The land was changed, a desert reborn. Sand as far as the eye could see. Everything was covered in it, Yael discovered as she started to dig her way out of the tarp. Felix’s tent was half swamped, and the Zündapps sat hub deep. She’d have to dig the motorcycle out, too—and fast if she wanted to be back on the road before Felix woke up.
It was only when Yael stood and started walking toward the bikes that she noticed the hitch in her plan: There was no road. The potholes, the rocks, the gravel—all of it was gone. The dunes stretched all the way to the sea. It was so silent, Yael realized as she looked out over the tabula rasa landscape. No wind, no engines. The sun was well over the horizon, but no one was racing. Without a road, most of the racers were stranded.
Sand was tricky to drive in, but not impossible. She had a compass and a map. And even if those failed, she knew the stars. Yael could find her way to Cairo. Road or no.
This was her act of God. Her chance to get ahead.
She sprang toward Felix’s bike and started digging. Palmful by palmful, she excavated the first wheel. It took longer than she liked. The sand was silky and loose, and kept sliding back into her trench.
She didn’t make it to the second wheel.
“Ad! Have you seen this?”
Dread pooled at the bottom of Yael’s stomach when she heard Felix’s voice. She twisted around, so it looked as if she were examining her own shattered motor. She could see Adele’s brother through the gaps in the bike’s broken gears—stretching in front of his pup tent.
Oh, how she wished he’d kept sleeping.
“Ad?” he called again. “You awake?”
Yael slid her hand into her P38 pocket and stood. “Over here! Just looking at the engine.”
He smiled. (The sight left her amazed and sick all at once. How could he smile at her, after everything she’d said and done? How could she grip her pistol, after everything he’d said and done?) “You really scratched it up,” he said, walking over. “There are two big cracks in the engine block, and the carburetor is completely busted. I can fix it, but we’re going to have to wait for the maintenance van.”
Usually cradling the Walther P38 in her palm centered Yael: life, death, power. But this time she felt her own pulse rattling against the metal. Hard and scattered. Not ready.
Felix pulled out the pocket watch he’d looked at in Adele’s apartment. Up this close, Yael could confirm that the watch had seen (vastly) better days. Its edges were blunted and warped, the glass on its face, cracked. Felix clicked it open only a second before shutting it again. “It’s late. Not that time really matters out here. Might as well eat something.” He moved over to his bike and started to unbuckle the pannier. “I’ve got some protein bars in here if you want some. Drug free.”
Adele’s brother was wrong. Time did matter out here, which was why Yael lined up like a shadow behind him as he spoke. She slid out her gun, stared at the back muscles beneath Felix’s thin cotton shirt. Already spotted with sweat against the morning sun.
He means well. He loves his sister. He doesn’t deserve this.
“That’s odd. I thought I packed them somewhere in here,” Felix was mumbling to himself, digging through the pannier that wasn’t his.
Just knock him out, Yael’s pulse prodded. Get it over with. Quick.
Her hand scabbed around the pistol. She couldn’t make it move.
Felix’s own hands slowed. His back muscles clenched. “This—this is your stuff.”
Too late. Adele’s brother was turning. It’s now or never.
Yael’s boots sprayed sand as she launched at the boy. Felix did not fight back. He didn’t even try to shield himself as she whipped the pistol—a starburst blow to his temple. He crumpled to earth.
The desert’s heat was building, layer by cruel layer. Yael knew it would be many minutes, maybe even hours, before Felix woke from the blow she’d dealt him. Too long to lie exposed under a high African sun. So she took an extra minute to drag him into his tent—Scheisse, he’s heavy for such a wiry boy! All muscle!—trying not to look at the nasty bruise already swelling against his eye socket.
Then she left him there. And rode on.
Driving a motorcycle through sand was like trying to sprint through water or run inside a dream. Impossibly slow. It took Yael several tries to get the Zündapp’s tires level and moving. Every time the wheels caught and burrowed deep she had to slide off. Dig it out with strength and painstaking technique. It was exhausting, sweat-glazed work.
Constant speed was key. She slid all the way to the back of the seat, finding the perfect balance so that her weight wouldn’t drown the wheels.
The way was long, gritty, hot. But she was moving. Yael let the sun guide her, gauging her path east. She knew she was on the right track when she mowed past Luka’s tent. His head popped out at the rumble of her engines. Like every other racer, he was hunkered down, waiting for the supply vans to make their way through with further instructions. He’d been shaving, his jaw half masked in creamy lather. The look on his face was one Yael knew she would treasure—mouth open, stray bubbles dripping from his chin.
She flashed him a grin. Even took the time to wave.
Luka’s eyes sobered. He ducked back into his tent.
Katsuo’s camp was just two dunes on. He squatted in front of it, his hands covered in glittering scales as he gutted a fresh Mediterranean fish. When he saw Yael’s bike, he stood—his catch forgotten in the sand. He made no movement toward her or her bike, nor did he rush back into his tent as Luka had. Instead he tracked Yael’s progress with his eyes, knife clenched tight in his fist.