by Ryan Graudin
Yael gasped, choked on the feeling of the drug seeping into her. Luka pulled back.
The shine on his lips was still there, and it was not petroleum jelly. The victor swabbed his jacket sleeve across his mouth.
“Yooou saaaid—” Her words were already slurring. So was her vision. “F-Fair race.”
Luka shrugged off the words. (Or, at least, she thought he did. He was little more than a brown stain against the daylight.) “Well, you know what they say about love and war.”
Yael’s hand fumbled for the railing. Missed. The tranquilizer was lead-heavy in her veins, threading through every part of her, melting with the rest of the weight. There was no keeping things together.
Luka caught her midcollapse, whispering into her ear as he laid her to rest on the deck, “Sorry, love. I really am. But even just five seconds apart you’re too good. And I will not let you win again.”
Darkness like smoke was swirling in, flushing out the last of Luka’s soft words: “I’ll see you in Tokyo.”
And just like that it was all slipping away. Away, away…
CHAPTER 32
NOW
APRIL 1, 1956
The world around Yael was pitch-black and shaking. A voice hissed. “Wake up! You have to get up now!”
Why? It was so nice here, in the warm dark.… If only the quaking would stop, she could rest here forever. But the shaking grew and grew. Until it buzzed under her teeth and jolted the edges of her fingernails. Rattling everything inside her—words, visions, memories—like dice in a cup.
A long, long train. Holi colors bursting out of a smokestack. The too-yellow-haired woman in the beer hall basement crying and crying as she ripped the world from the wall. Thumbtacks raining down, red as blood. Blood on her jacket. Blood between the tiles on the floor, soaking deep into the grout.
“Wake up!” the voice hissed again. This time Yael hung on to it, tried to remember why it sounded so familiar.
The shaking continued, but the memories that floated back to Yael this time were more solid: Japan’s ragged shore drawing close. The morning sun so warm on her face. Luka Löwe leaning down, touching poisoned lips to hers… a kiss that meant everything.
—WAKE UP WAKE UP NOW IT’S TIME—
Opening her eyes meant sharp, painful LIGHT. Yael found herself staring into the bottomless afternoon sky. Then a different, sharper shade of blue appeared in the form of Felix’s stare.
“Get up!” He did most of the work for her. Pulling Yael into a sitting position by her elbows. She could see she was still on the Kaiten, though she’d been dragged from the bow back to the midship portion of the deck. The swallowing stretch of sea was gone. In its place were a crowd of ships and the buzz of Nagasaki’s port at the end of the ramp.
Two motorcycles sat close: hers and Felix’s. The ten other Rikuos were nowhere to be seen. The sun beat down on them from much too high.
—PAST TIME—
It took Yael’s body another second to react to these horrible things. First it produced a scream. Then a frantic clawing to get to her bike. Felix moved in synchronized motions beside her as she lunged toward the Rikuo.
“How long have I been asleep?” she wheezed, slipping the goggles over her grease-flat hair.
“I didn’t find you until all the racers had been lined up. You weren’t there, so I went looking—”
“How long?” She turned and found herself shouting in Felix’s face. Some spittle landed on the bruised bridge of his nose. He didn’t even flinch.
“I couldn’t wake you up,” he went on. “Nurse Wilhelmina said it seemed like you’d been drugged. I tried everything. And I tried to get the officials to hold the race, but they wouldn’t. That was two hours ago.”
The helmet Yael grabbed slipped out of her hand. Tumbled onto the Kaiten’s deck.
She didn’t bother picking it up.
Two hours. Luka and the rest of the pack would be well past Fukuoka by now. Crushing her five-second lead. Third gear, driving without stopping, all the rage and reason in the world could not get her to Tokyo in time.
It was over.
A part of Yael felt like crying, but the tears weren’t there. There was a hollowness instead, scraping the pit of her stomach. Pushing out, expanding, threatening to devour every next moment.
Felix retrieved the helmet, held it out. “Put it on.”
Yael’s arms hung useless beside her.
When she didn’t move, Felix placed the helmet on her head himself. Fastened the strap firm to her chin. “I told you there were other ways. These Rikuos, they’ve been fitted more for endurance than speed. Luka was right. They’re Scheisse for a race like this, but machinery-wise, they’re capable of so much more. When I was test-driving it in Hanoi, I passed a garage and decided to do some tinkering.
“I switched out the sprockets in Hanoi, to improve the gear ratio and take full advantage of the bike’s rpm. It gets better top speeds now.”
He’d rigged his bike in Hanoi? Of course, it all made sense now. How he’d reached the ferry so quickly…
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.
“There didn’t seem to be much point after you pushed Katsuo into the river. You were all set to win. And then on the roadside… I tried. But I couldn’t say it out loud. I thought Luka might steal the bike if he knew.”
Luka. The name sent a shudder through her. Not fear. Not all rage.
(But mostly.)
Yael swallowed it back. “How much faster?”
“About twenty more kilometers an hour. But I had to forfeit some of the acceleration power. It takes a bit longer to get going.”
The calculations whirred through Yael’s head. Twenty added kilometers an hour… It was twelve hundred kilometers from Nagasaki to Tokyo. If she pushed hard enough, she could get to the Imperial Palace in just over ten and a half hours.
Two hours ahead of schedule.
If she left now, she might catch up with the other racers on the capital’s outskirts. There was still a chance.…
“Go,” Felix said. “Keep our family together. Beat the Saukerl.”
A different drug was pumping through Yael’s veins. The one she’d been craving in the mess hall. The one she’d tried to build out of crumpled paper and foolish kisses. The one this Wolfe had given her, in the name of blood and iron: hope. It was as heavy and powerful as it had always been. Only now, instead of crushing Yael down, it was pushing her forward. Sliding her onto Felix’s Rikuo, kicking the engine to a roar, urging her down the Kaiten’s gangway, into Nagasaki’s streets.
Japan smeared past Yael in solid strokes of color, like pieces of an impressionist’s oil painting. Brown-green for rice paddies. Sterling blue for mountain passes. Glittering silver for swathes of seashore. Pale pink for rows and rows of blossoming cherry trees. And—once the night fell—neon bright for shop signs.
It was a beautiful string of shades and earth. Sights that begged for you to slow, look at, savor. Another face, another life, another time Yael would have. But she kept her stare straight, down the sights, at the road ahead. This asphalt was the smoothest she’d encountered the entire race, and once she’d coaxed Felix’s Rikuo to its top speed—and it took some coaxing (he was right; the acceleration had been diluted, no longer the powerful rumble that shot her out of Hanoi)—the ride passed like a dream.
She couldn’t yet tell if it was a nightmare or not.
Her time was good. She reached Hiroshima just over the three-and-a-half-hour mark, Osaka at the six-and-a-half-hour mark. Stretching the Rikuo’s engine to its maximum potential.
She’d just reached the fringes of Tokyo when she spotted the first taillight. The last in a long line of eager Rikuos, weary racers. Yael didn’t dare slow as she weaved around the first two stragglers. She blew past their motorcycles with all the extra speed Felix’s adjusted sprockets had to offer. Too fast for the city’s many turns. Yael rode them relentlessly. She caught up to another taillight and passed it, slingshotting i
nto the heart of the capital.
The wheels of her Rikuo whined, carrying Yael past the next rider. And the next. The streets had been cleared of all traffic, made sacred for the racers. Axis banners lined the way, lording over spectators and cameras alike. The crowd roared like walls of water on either side of her: a sea of red flags and white. It was only a few kilometers now—until the Imperial Palace. The finish line. She could taste it on the neon-lit air, feel it in the rumble of her engine, hear it in the wild screams of the crowds.
Three more taillights; the middle of the herd. Yael threaded needle-tight through them.
Dream or nightmare? Either way she was flying. Throttle twisted all the way down. Fueled by screams and hope, hope, hope. She found Takeo and Luka riding close. The knife-wielder’s front tire overlapped with the victor’s rear. The main gate to the Imperial Palace wasn’t far. Its spotlights glared over the crowd’s heads. And though Yael could not yet see the finish line, she could envision it (thanks to the final racing shots of prior Axis Tours). A stone bridge lined with orb lanterns, ending in a yawn of black iron gates. The threshold would be marked with a thick white line, flanked by a swastika banner on the right and the rising sun on the left.
The end. Almost there.
The victory. Almost hers.
In a heartbeat Yael was at Takeo’s side. Past him. She could hear the boy yelling over the gnash of the engines, but she did not look back. Her focus was on the rider just ahead. She stared hard at the brown jacket as her Rikuo flew: closer, closer, there.
Slowly—centimeter by centimeter—she passed him. The finish line was not much farther, and she had five seconds to Adele Wolfe’s name.… Five precious, wonderful, hope-filled seconds that would crumble an empire. Heal the world.
The path to the Main Gate bridge was not a straight shot, but a pair of ninety-degree turns—around squares and a mass of spectators—too sharp to take on the highest gear. Yael nearly skidded out on the first one, pumping the brakes just enough to stay upright. The Rikuo growled beneath her—its racehorse gallop faltering. Yael swore at the throttle, pushing it with her gloveless hand, remembering Felix’s warning: It takes a bit longer to get going.
How much is a bit? Four seconds? Five seconds? More?
The motorcycle chugged desperately toward the second, final turn. The bridge and the victory. Its engine plodded draft-horse slow, clopping forward in sleepy jolts.
And it was not enough.
Luka, his engine fully recovered from the same turn, ripped past—a brown leather blur—crossing the finish line to the crowd’s earth-trembling roar. Yael tried not to let the sight, the sound shake her as she spurred the engine forward.
Pop. Pop. Pop—went her Rikuo’s acceleration. Too tired, too angry, too helpless to go on.
The seconds crawled like hours, like lifetimes. Each its own small death.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
She did not reach the line.
6, 7, 8. (Another death, and another and another.)
Yael rolled through the Imperial Palace gate and pulled her motorcycle to a stop. The engine jerked, sputtered, died when she let go of the clutch, but the cheers would not cease. They roared and fuzzed and ate through the night like television static.
Takeo was the next to wheel through the gate, all burning gears and disappointment. (He hadn’t stood a chance, really, but that was the power of hope, the utter cruelty of it.) More racers piled after. Iwao, Taro, and Ralf shot through in quick succession. Masaru, Ryoko, and Karl followed a few minutes later. And then there were the stragglers: Lars and Isamu. But it didn’t matter.
It didn’t matter.
There was only one winner, and it was not Yael. They wouldn’t officially announce the victor of the tenth Axis Tour until all the times were in. Until Felix and her old Rikuo came along two and a half hours later to claim twelfth. But Luka was already being swarmed—Reichssender cameras and racing officials flocked to him. The Reich’s golden boy wore a smile made of straight white teeth as he looked into the lenses.
Yael could not move (she was static, all static). She sat on the dead Rikuo and watched as Luka Löwe stripped off his riding gear and breathed loudly into the microphones. All around her the remaining racers parked their bikes and dismantled themselves: helmets, goggles, gloves. But she could not seem to take her eyes off Luka. The boy who was now at the center of everything.
She should have kept hating him.
But all she could feel now was… nothing.
The empty spaces inside her were opening again—cobweb weak and wide. Yael was falling through them, grabbing on to only snatches of thoughts and words. She could only hold on to three:
All.
For.
Nothing.
All of it. For nothing. She’d failed her mission. Failed Reiniger, Henryka, Vlad. Failed Aaron-Klaus, the Babushka, Mama, Miriam. Failed the young partisan behind the oxblood door in Rome. Failed the old balding man at the shisha café. Failed too many to count.
She’d changed nothing.
Yael’s mind was scrabbling, trying to find a loophole. Something. Anything.
She could steal one of the serving girl’s faces and kimonos, slip into the Victor’s Ball with a tray of poisoned hors d’oeuvres. But that would not work. The Führer’s security was too tight. The SS guards who mushroomed around Hitler always delivered his meals themselves, food flown in from select Reich farms and prepared under the strictest supervision.
Perhaps she could disguise herself as one of the officials’ wives. But the Führer had never danced with any of them. Not even Empress Nagako. Adele Wolfe had been the only exception to this rule. The only face he’d ever let close.
If she tried to cut down his life from afar—throw a knife, pull a trigger, and hope that it pierced his ever-alert human armor, hope that it hit his nothingness of a heart—there was little chance of success. Probably, definitely she would end up surrounded by SS and tortured slowly for information. Carved to slow pieces in a dungeon while she shrieked out the names and addresses of the resistance.
Besides, now that she’d lost the race, Reiniger and Henryka wouldn’t be ready… they would assume she’d boarded a flight back to Germania (as mission protocol instructed her to do in such an event). If Yael tried to infiltrate the ball now, the resistance would be caught off guard, their element of surprise and unity lost.
Going to the Victor’s Ball as Adele Wolfe had been the only way.
“Seems we’re both full of surprises today.” The voice that pulled her out of her plotting was like a shot of rum—warm, stinging all the way down. Yael looked up to see Luka in front of her bike, both of his hands on her handlebars, leaning in over the front wheel. A wall of Reichssender cameras stood a good way behind him, their bulbous lenses pointed at the pair.
Yael wondered if Henryka was watching this, or if she’d already turned the television off.
“You…” What could she say? What words were there for a loss this huge? An anger this deep? “You tricked me,” was all she could manage.
“Come now, Fräulein, don’t act like that.” Luka snorted. “Don’t pretend you didn’t do the exact same thing last year, leaving me with a bloody head and a bloodier heart while you went on to win. All I did was make things fair: Take back what you stole from me. A betrayal for a betrayal. A win for a win. Only I did it with a lot less blood.”
“And I’m supposed to be grateful?” Yael hissed. The burn she felt at the very first sight of him was back: catching, growing. Close, too close to her gasoline-tank rage.
“I might not go that far,” Luka said with a twitch of his too-dark eyebrows. He was practically hooked over her handlebars, straddling the front wheel. Yael couldn’t help but fantasize about starting the engine, letting it ride, watching that Scheisse smirk slide off his face.
He went on. “Don’t you see? You and I, we’re even now. Well, almost even.” He caught himself. “You still owe me a favor.”
A favor? A FAVOR? If only he k
new how close she was to actually revving the motor. Letting the blackness out. Yael crammed the rage into her reply instead. “You’re a verdammt dummkopf if you actually think I’ll give you a—”
“Come to the Victor’s Ball with me,” he said.
It took Yael a minute to process his invitation, since he’d said it so calmly, dousing her own coals of words.
“It was such a bore last time. All those officers and officials and speeches…” Luka sighed and leaned back. His hands still clutched her steering, twisting the lifeless throttle and squeezing the useless brakes. “We could have fun. It’ll be a fresh start for us.”
Yael stared at the boy. This strange, magnetic boy who didn’t blink at leaving his first Iron Cross with the Russians, but fought so brutally to gain his second. Who kissed her like he meant it. (Both times.) Who lost his ear tip to save Nagao Yamato, and hardly shed a tear at Tsuda Katsuo’s demise. Who made her want to choke him and hug him all at once.
Arschloch, hero, National Socialist, saint.
He made no sense.
But this time Yael didn’t have to figure him out. She didn’t have to sift through mask after mask after mask to figure out which one was real. All she had to do was say yes.
And she meant to, but she could quite believe it. “You—you want me to be your date? Is that allowed?”
Luka shrugged. “I’m the first double victor of the Axis Tour. I can do whatever I want.”
Ah, so they were back to the Prague version of Luka Löwe: puff-chested, proud, who’d been all swagger and brag before Felix’s knuckles roughed up his face.
They’d come full circle.
But circles didn’t end. Another hit was coming. All thanks to him.
Yael slid off her bike and walked up to where Luka perched. The Reichssender cameras had drawn closer, catching every movement, every angle, every word between them in live time.
“I’ll go to the Victor’s Ball with you.” Yael looked into the cameras as she said this. Even if Henryka had switched off the screen, someone in the resistance would be watching. Word would get back to Henryka and Reiniger and the rest of the cell leaders that the mission was still on.