by Ryan Graudin
“The Germans aren’t our friends,” Takeo said. “No matter how many presents you leave under Victor Wolfe’s pillow.”
The girl’s face paled.
“They’re going to pull out our fingernails first!” Lars’s German escalated to a wail. Drowning out the Japanese conversation. “Then they’re going to kill us!”
“Will you all shut it?” Yael found herself scowling at the entire room. Her head was pounding, clashing with plans and the impossibility of the situation before them. The knife was still in her boot, but it wasn’t enough. From what she’d seen on their way in, the village was well guarded.
None of the racers challenged her. Unsteady quiet blanketed the room, interrupted only by the diesel burps of truck engines and the chatter of their guards.
“We have two hours before the Axis Tour’s supply vans complete their detour and realize the racers are missing. We’re hoping to find the Japanese boy before we move out.”
“He can’t have gone far.”
“The scouts swear he’s disappeared. No big loss anyway. The racers we got should be enough leverage.”
Two hours. Their time was running out. And Yael very much doubted that Katsuo was coming back to rescue them.
“Do you have a plan?” Felix whispered into her ear.
Not much of one. Reiniger, she knew, had been in communication with Novosibirsk, where the remnants of the Soviet Union’s government now sat. She’d seen the messages delivered to him in blocky Cyrillic symbols. But Reiniger never allowed her close enough to see the meat of those letters. These were things not related to her mission, he reasoned. Things she did not need to know, so they could not be tortured out of her if she was captured. Yael suspected that this line of reasoning went both ways. It seemed Reiniger had not thought it necessary to share the finer details of her mission with the Russians.
He never thought she’d be captured by his own allies.
Protocol was this: Reveal nothing. Especially under duress.
But now, Yael did not see any other way. Her skinshifting was no help in a village with only men. And one knife against a whole platoon… The only effective weapon she had was the truth.
Yael wheeled around and kicked the wooden door with her boots. The guards’ chatter snuffed short. She yelled to them, “Comrades!”
“Are you mad, Fräulein?” Luka scowled. “They’re about two steps away from shooting us as it is!”
She ignored him and kept thrashing at the wood. The door flew open. Afternoon light speared through, along with the muzzle of a rifle. Yael froze.
“Quiet!” the guard ordered with a jerk of his Mosin-Nagant.
“I need to speak with your commander.” The German tumbled out of her, blurring and fast, before he could shut the door again. The guard’s brow wrinkled; she could see him trying to interpret her words.
“Vetrov,” she tried again. “Let me talk to Vetrov.”
A second silhouette edged into the door. The other guard. His German was better. “Why? What do you have to say to him?”
The first guard’s rifle was still aimed at her chest. But more than this, Yael was aware of the twelve pairs of eyes and ears in the room behind her. If this was to work, she had to maintain her cover. She couldn’t make it look like she was collaborating with the Russians.
“The Japanese boy. The one who ran. I know where you can find him.” It was the only thing she could think of that might drag her to Vetrov’s office without raising the others’ suspicions. She only hoped the guards would bite.
(“See?” Takeo spit in the room behind her. “The Germans aren’t our friends.”)
The fluent guard reached out, lowered his companion’s firearm. “Where?”
She shook her head. “Take me to Vetrov. I’ll only tell him.”
The soldiers looked at each other for a moment, conferring in murmurs of Russian she could only catch in pieces.
“Come with me.” The second guard pulled her up by the arm, out of the building.
“While you’re at it, could you tell them I want my cigarettes back?” Luka’s proud voice slipped out of the closing door. She found it oddly comforting as the guard with the good German dragged her through the village, into another abandoned building.
Comrade Commander Vetrov was wilted over his makeshift desk, like a houseplant left weeks to its own devices. Even his eyes were the color of sad celery—watery, tired—when they settled on Yael and her guard. He sat up straight and waved them into the room.
“What’s she doing here?” His Russian was snapping, edged with exhaustion.
“She says—”
Yael broke in. Her own Russian was as fluent as it was those many years ago, during her nights with the Babushka. “Many pardons, Comrade Commander, but I had to speak with you in private. Away from the other racers.”
“I was not aware you spoke our mother tongue, Miss Wolfe.”
“I’m not Miss Wolfe.”
And there it was. The truth. All lies stripped back in a single sentence.
She stood—as exposed as the smallest doll—while a mountain breeze licked through the glassless windows. It rattled stacks of papers and curled the edge of Vetrov’s map. It blew some of Adele’s angel-wisp hairs into Yael’s face. She watched through the fringe as the comrade commander’s face twisted and turned. Several times he opened his mouth, but no words came.
“I’m part of the resistance movement. I’ve been assigned to steal Adele Wolfe’s identity and participate in the Axis Tour. I’ve been posing as her for a couple of weeks now.”
“So you’re saying that you are not Miss Wolfe? You’re… someone else?”
Yael nodded.
Vetrov’s eyes were no longer drooping. They were more of a biting mint color as they narrowed at her. “You’re lying.”
She nodded at the gold band on his right-hand ring finger. “Do you have a picture of your wife?”
“Yes, but—”
“Show it to me,” she said.
From the bolster of neck veins and the thinning of his lips, Yael expected him to shout nyet, but the officer dipped his hand behind his lapel. Pulled out a black-and-white photo—worn and loved. Looked at many times. The woman printed on the paper had dark hair and a sad gray smile. One that matched her eyes.
Yael took this woman’s image deep into herself. She folded the sad and gray into her own irises. Pressed it behind her own lips. The hair ruffling against her cheeks turned dark, heavier. Yael had to guess the finer colors, the way she had with Bernice Vogt’s photograph oh so long ago. Again, it worked.
Comrade Commander Vetrov took in this uncanny version of his wife with remarkable calm. His hands clasped together over the map. “I see.”
The guard behind her did not start or reach for his Mosin-Nagant. Something was not right. Both men had just watched her change—become someone else in front of their very eyes—and they hadn’t even flinched. True, Comrade Commander Vetrov’s eyes looked even more alert (a whole garden of fresh now), but it was more out of thought than surprise.
Perhaps it was because they were soldiers. Trained to see the impossible, deal with shock. But the others had been soldiers, too. Like Reiniger, who’d sworn and turned so white he could have been dead. Like Henryka, whose mouth had hung open for a good two minutes before she could shut it. Like Vlad, who’d reached for his drawer of hunting knives before Reiniger could calm him down. Explain things.
It was all very odd.
“I’m not Adele Wolfe.” It sounded strange, saying this aloud after so many days of telling herself the opposite. Yael went on, trying to shake the men’s apathy. “You’re making a very big mistake, stopping this race. If I fail my mission, the entire resistance will suffer.”
“And what exactly is your mission?”
Lying would be natural, simple. What she was trained to do. But Yael had also been trained to read situations, and she could taste the tension of this room—the years of warfare and guerrilla fighting that wei
ghed on Comrade Commander Vetrov’s shoulders, a bitterness toward the Reich in his eyes. (Yael recognized these things because they were what she herself carried.) She knew that only the truth would convince this man. Only the truth had a chance at setting her free.
“The Third Reich is rotting from the inside. People are unhappy with the New Order, even some in the Führer’s closest circles. The resistance has been growing, connecting under the Gestapo’s nose. We’re strong enough to change things now. Every cell in every city is waiting for the signal to rise up and destroy the New Order.
“My mission is to give that signal. My mission is to kill the Führer at the Victor’s Ball. For all the world to see.” The enormity of Yael’s words filled the room, pressing into every corner.
This time Vetrov looked surprised. “You? You are going to kill the Führer?”
“Only if I win the Axis Tour, which will be impossible if you kidnap all of its participants,” Yael said sharply. “You have to release us.”
“That will be difficult,” the commander told her as he slipped the photograph of his wife back inside his weathered uniform. “My orders came directly from Novosibirsk. We’re to capture the racers of the Axis Tour and use them as political leverage to reclaim our territory in the west.”
“Leverage?” Yael couldn’t believe the word leaving her mouth. “How does Novosibirsk expect to keep racers hostage without bringing the wrath of Hitler on its head?”
Vetrov shrugged. “As you said. The Third Reich is rotting, on the verge of falling apart. We’ve been… alerted that a putsch is on the horizon. We’re just trying to reclaim the land they took before anarchy takes over.”
“But—it won’t work. The Reich won’t fall apart unless I give the signal. And that can only happen if you let us go.”
The commander frowned. “If I released you, it could be considered treason.”
Treason. Facing a firing squad and their gun barrel’s punctuating ends. What commander would risk that?
“This is all a big misunderstanding,” Yael said. “Erwin Reiniger. He’s my commander, and I know he’s been in contact with Novosibirsk. He’s the one who alerted you to the putsch. If you radio them and explain things—”
Comrade Commander Vetrov stood slowly.
“I will radio Novosibirsk. But even then I cannot guarantee your freedom. Also, I would prefer it if you stopped imitating my wife, Miss W—” The officer caught himself, choked back her alias. “What is your name, exactly?”
Yael melded back into Adele’s features. The winter-struck hair and eyes that fit as tight as a glove.
“If they ask, you can tell them I’m called Volchitsa.” She knew her code name was the only one of worth. The only one Reiniger would have offered to the Soviets, if he’d offered one at all.
“Volchitsa.” The officer repeated it in a way that Yael, even with her flawless Russian, could not imitate. With the same crusting lilt her old friend used to use, with the love of a mother tongue. “She-wolf. An interesting choice.”
“I didn’t choose it,” she told him. “It chose me.”
Yael spent an hour slumped against the far wall of Comrade Commander Vetrov’s improvised office. Watching the afternoon sun shift through windows, over the cracks of the forgotten building. Counting the trucks and men and guns that rolled past the window. (Three trucks. Twenty-three men. Too many guns.)
The guard stood across from Yael. It was clear he did not think of her—cross-legged on the dirt floor, hands bound—as a threat. He looked relaxed: shoulders sloped, rifle loose at his side. It would’ve been easy enough to overpower him—kick his feet out from under him, pin him unconscious, use the knife still hidden in her boot to sever her ropes.
She could even escape the camp, she figured. If she stripped off his uniform, used it with some added height, short hair, and the cap tugged low over her eyes.
But that wouldn’t help things. Not really. She needed to win the Axis Tour, and for that she needed the other racers. There was no way she could smuggle twelve racers out from under a loaded platoon with only an hour left.
A long shadow grew in the doorway, materialized into a red-faced Comrade Commander Vetrov. Yael stood, her lungs as full as a hot-air balloon while the Soviet officer walked back to his desk.
“I’ve spoken with my superiors. They have no knowledge of communiques with Erwin Reiniger, or of the name Volchitsa.”
Yael felt the air in her lungs leaking. Down, down, down to earth.
“They’ve ordered me to bring you back to Novosibirsk,” the officer went on. “So they can verify your story.”
Back to Novosibirsk? That was thousands of kilometers in the wrong direction. It would mean the end of her race. The failure of her mission.
Not now. She’d come so far, fought too much.…
The commander’s eyes flashed to the guard. “Aleksei, go resume your post at the prisoners’ house. Leave the girl. I’ll take care of her.”
When the guard bowed out, left them alone, the Soviet officer sighed. It was a sound that pressed him into his desk chair.
“We’re no good to you as leverage.” Yael tried not to yell this. “If I go back to Novosibirsk, the resistance won’t strike. The Reich will be as strong as ever, and once you threaten the lives of their prized youth, they’ll invade. Raze Novosibirsk to the ground. It’s in everyone’s best interests if you let us go.”
“The thing is, Volchitsa, I believe you. I believe you, but my hands are tied.” He nodded at Yael’s arms as he said this. The ones that were actually bound with rope. “If I let you go, my life and my men’s are forfeit.”
Yael thought there would be an end to her breath. That her insides might stop sinking. But they seemed bottomless.
The Soviet officer put his hand on the desk. It landed harder than it ought have: with a clunk over the splay of papers. When Vetrov’s fingers drew back Yael saw why. Her Walther P38 sat on the map—over coordinates and red marks and countries that long ago lost their names.
Vetrov nudged the pistol forward with his knuckles. Over borders. Back toward where Yael stood.
“But—should you escape on your own—that’s a different matter entirely.”
CHAPTER 23
NOW
MARCH 25, 1956
“Took you long enough.” Luka’s voice was the first to greet Yael as she was shoved back into the racers’ room. Even with his arms tied behind him the boy looked lounging, lionlike. “No cigarettes?”
Yael fought the urge to roll her eyes as she stepped over Luka’s outstretched legs. No, she didn’t have cigarettes. But she did have the gun Vetrov slipped into her jacket pocket, and a plan. Both of these things sat close to her heart as she settled by Adele’s brother.
“What were you doing, Ad? You were gone so long.” Felix swallowed. “I thought something had happened.”
“Yes, what were you doing, Fräulein?” Luka sat up straight. “Chatting about the weather?”
“She was selling out Katsuo to the commies,” Takeo said in Japanese, scowling from the other side of the room’s shadows. The ones that grew thicker with every minute the sun dipped lower behind the mountains, swelling their valley with early twilight.
Felix tensed beside her. In the corner of her eye, she could see his jaw working. His own icy stare was locked on Luka, who caught it and smirked back.
This—it occurred to Yael—was the perfect chance to leave the boys behind. She alone had a gun. She alone knew that there was a transport truck parked at the fringes of the village. She alone knew that Comrade Commander Vetrov was calling all his men to a briefing at 1800. The only soldiers between them and that truck would be Aleksei and the other door guard.
But she couldn’t finish the race without them. There would be no race without them.
“I was scouting.” Yael fished her knife out of her boot as she whispered this. It took a few tries. She had to bend her body at awkward angles (which might have been impossible if Yael hadn’t used her
skinshifting to lengthen Adele’s arms a few centimeters), fumbling for the hilt with bloodless fingertips. Once the knife was out, she twisted around, wedged the blade (edge up) between the soles of Felix’s boots, and started sawing.
Every eye in the room watched as her ropes fell away. Yael rubbed life back into her wrists, then started to cut the fat twines of Felix’s rope.
Luka’s spine strung even straighter, his eyes narrowing. “Scouting what exactly?”
Another flash of silver and Felix was free. Yael peered through the window’s rusted bars. Light pastelled against the ridge-backed hills—sharp jags and soft glow. They’d have to move out soon; 1800 was coming, dipping low with the sun.
“There are plenty of transport vehicles a few hundred meters from here. We reach one of those, and we’ve got a chance of getting out of here.” She looked straight at Luka and held up her knife. “Do you want to be free or not?”
His eyes whet against the blade, their own kind of sharp. Finally he turned, offering up his hands. “So… what… we’re just going to walk out the door and drive away?”
“Most of the men are concentrated at the north end of the village.” Yael sliced his bonds as she said this, passing the knife along so Luka could do the same for Lars. “If we can take care of the two guards at the door, we should be able to sneak down the western side streets without being seen. We get to a transport and steal it. We’ll be kilometers away before they realize we’re gone.”
Ryoko, Yael realized, was busy translating her German. Explaining the situation. The Japanese racers listened quietly, their faces still. Betraying nothing.
“And what if we get caught?” one of the younger Japanese boys (Masaru, 14, no threat) asked Ryoko once she’d finished explaining. “Has Victor Wolfe thought of that?”
“They’ll kill us!” Takeo said this twice. Once in Japanese. A second time in German, so the whole room could understand what was about to happen.
All eyes turned to Yael. Waiting for her to tell Takeo he was wrong.
Unfortunately he wasn’t. This was one thing Vetrov had made clear. If his men saw them running, they’d shoot. And the commander would do nothing to stop them.