Wolf by Wolf

by Ryan Graudin

  The music slowed. Their steps stopped.

  Their dance had come to an end.

  Across the room, the Führer stepped away from his bodyguards, into the center of the dance floor, to claim the waltz she’d promised him. He moved like a fighter entering the ring: ignoring all spectators, rolling his shoulders, eyes on the prize.

  “Looks like your dreams are about to come true.” Luka didn’t bother removing the bitterness from his voice. He let her go. “I’m going out for a smoke.”

  “Good-bye.” The word clawed out of her before she even thought to stop it.

  The victor acted like he hadn’t heard. He turned his back on her and walked toward the door.

  Yael turned her back on him and faced the Führer. His hand curled like a meat hook around her waist. The current in his eyes thrived and flashed. He was not quite smiling, but his lips were hungry and tight beneath his mustache.

  The music started anew.

  Adolf Hitler was a much better dancer than Luka Löwe. Though his movements were brutish, more forceful. He seemed to take no mind of the limitations of Yael’s kimono, pushed her through them.

  All six cameras were crowded on the edge of the floor. Six clear shots.

  There was a small break in the crowd, by the windows. The world outside was dark, and the lights against the glass showed Yael herself. In miniature—being spun around and around by the man she hated most in the world. He was steering her closer and closer to the gap. Closer and closer to his own death. Just a few more steps now.

  Her right hand was clasped tight in his, caught up in the traditional waltz stance. She’d have to use her left.

  “You’re quite the woman, Victor Wolfe,” the Führer said. “Beautiful, smart, brave. You are one of the highest compliments to our race.”

  She didn’t know if she could keep the hot inside her anymore. Her blood boiled and rose: up, up, up, until she imagined it seeping through her kimono. The same red that ran through its silk. The same red that poured out of every vein everywhere. The same red she was about to tear out of him.

  But before Yael did all this, she wanted him to know. Not just why, but who. Who, who, who. Because if she couldn’t be herself now, what was the point of it all?

  She’d forgotten who she was so many times. She would never forget again.

  Nobody would. After this.

  Every version of her rose up with the blood. The smallest doll and the Jewish girl marked with an X. The feral pickpocket and the girl who ate crullers, studied calculus. The girl who ran without looking back. The girl who stopped and did. The monster and the Valkyrie.

  So many lives behind one solid voice: “I am Yael. I am Inmate 121358ΔX. I am your death.”

  Yael’s left hand dove into her obi as she said this, taking hold of her P38. She had to act fast. The room, the world, had heard her, and the bodyguards were already moving.

  “You were the first.…” The Führer’s voice trailed to a whimper, but the swimming in his eyes only grew—a fear as frenzied as sharks who’ve caught their first scent of blood.

  She did not inhale. She did not exhale. But she did look straight.

  Life and death. Power in her hand and wolves on her arm.

  —KILL THE BASTARD—

  The fear flashed loud, louder, loudest through Adolf Hitler’s irises. And just like that they shifted: blue, green, gold, brown, gray, black… into a brightness. Yael saw all these colors pass through his eyes, just as she squeezed the trigger. Just as the bullet tore through the P38’s barrel, bridged the nothingness of space between them, tore through his brown shirt, his thin skin, his fleshy cardiac muscles.

  This is how empires crumble. This is how tyrants fall.

  Like everyone else.

  For a moment, he was flying. The wings of death bearing him back, plowing his body to the ground. Red sprouted like moss around the buttons of his shirt. His eyes stared—empty and impossibly bright—seeing nothing of the gold ceiling above.

  Adolf Hitler, the Führer of the Third Reich, was dead.

  But something was wrong… not just his eyes… the silver of his hair was frothing out, spilling white along every hair. Even his skin turned a shade paler.

  He was dead, yes, but he was changing. Changing in a way she’d seen before. In the death camp, Barrack 7. In the shadows of Germania’s alleys. In mercury-spotted mirrors.

  You were the first… not the only.

  It was not the Führer who’d just died. The body at her feet belonged to a skinshifter. Someone like her.

  Someone she’d shot and killed.

  Yael’s seconds were up, spinning back into real time. Bodyguards lunged from all sides and she had to —MOVE OR DIE—There was still a rage inside her, and she used it to accelerate her motions. Full throttle.

  Yael hitched up her kimono and ran for the window. The glass was antiquated and fragile, taking only one shot to shatter, crumble, make a way for her. Yael lunged through it; more bullets bit the side of the window, followed by the bodyguards’ brute screams and a chaos of emotion, rising, swelling from the ballroom.

  The grounds were not well lit, and there were more than a few pools of darkness to melt into. Yael shed her kimono, planted it under one of the few lamps, and sprinted off in the opposite direction. Her body moved to the instruction manual of Vlad’s relentless training, but her mind was stuck on one line of thought.

  Not him. Not him. It was not the Führer I killed, but an innocent decoy. The cameras caught it anyway, and the resistance will be rising, moving, not knowing that the real monster still lives on… still sits fat on the bones of the world.

  A monster I’ve poked, very viciously.

  The thought made Yael want to retch as she reached the bushes with her survival pack. Changed her clothes, changed her face, pulled her boots back on.

  She had to find a telephone, a telegraph, something to message Reiniger and Henryka, warn them.…

  But it was already too late.

  The shot had been heard around the world.

  The fuse had been lit.

  And there was no extinguishing it.

  CHAPTER 35

  NOW

  APRIL 1, 1956

  The Angel of Death sat in front of a television. His glasses had slid to the end of his nose. Everything was blurry, but he didn’t bother shoving the spectacles back.

  There was nothing left to watch. He’d already seen it all. The happy crowds, the elaborate dinner, the pretty blond girl waltzing with the Führer’s doppelgänger, killing him.

  It wasn’t the sight of blood that rattled Dr. Geyer. (He was a surgeon, after all. It was what he waded through every day—filthy, dirty, red. Blood was just blood was just blood.) No—it was the words that slid under Dr. Geyer’s skin, filled him with dread beyond dread.

  I am Yael. I am Inmate 121358ΔX. I am your death. That was what the girl had said, with a wrath like hellfire. With the kind of judgment reserved only for gods.

  Yael. Inmate 121358ΔX. She went by other names in Dr. Geyer’s head: Patient Zero. Lost Girl. Deepest Secret.

  She’d always been one of his favorites. Strong, hard to break, unwilling to die. It was a quality he never really could define until he saw it. Iron will, iron soul. It was rare that he saw these things in the eyes that poured from the cattle cars. Even rarer in the children he had to sift through.

  Patient Zero had been easy to spot from the apple crate—even though a river of ragged humanity threatened to drown her. Like so many other children, she clung to her mother’s coattails. There was fear in her eyes, too, but it wasn’t the same animal terror that blinded the others. No—it was calculating, stripping her down, exposing the iron inside.

  As soon as this girl stared back at him (and kept staring, through the fear and the pain and the wails of those so much older), Geyer knew she was something he could melt down. Something that might survive the forging.

  He was right. She’d been the beginning of everything, his first real success
. It wasn’t until after she escaped that Dr. Geyer realized what he’d stumbled upon: camouflage—ultimate, endless potential. The escape itself he’d covered up as quickly as possible: firing the nurse (he’d never liked her anyway) and ordering the gassing of Barrack 7. (He’d told Vogt it had been infected with lice, which wasn’t exactly a lie.) He stamped DECEASED on 121358ΔX’s folder and filed it away. When Himmler asked about her months later, he’d said the girl was dead.

  Then the Angel of Death moved forward. (Progress waited for no man.) He tested the compound on more subjects, making sure to lock them up in observation cells as their symptoms manifested. Most died from fever and infection. Others tipped to the other side of sanity and had to be disposed of. But a few survived. And a few was all he needed to show Himmler the world he’d unlocked, the possibilities. Himmler was all he needed to have the results of Experiment 85 presented to the Führer himself. The Führer’s permission was all he needed to test the compound on soldiers and establish the Doppelgänger Project, a top secret initiative to design decoys for important political figures.

  Even though he’d closed the file eleven years ago, he sometimes wondered about the Lost Girl. Logic told him she’d starved in the woods, or had caught a stray bullet and bled out (all that glorious research gone to waste). He never expected her to show up again. And certainly not like this.

  She’d survived too well. Been forged into something too strong.

  The television was off now, but the girl’s iron voice kept ringing in his ears. I am, I am, I am. Stripping back the Führer’s secrets, and his own lies, for all the world to see.

  Her judgment was not in vain. Dr. Geyer knew the blame for all this would tumble down the ranks. Land on his shoulders with all the thunder of Thor’s hammer. Already he was shuddering.…

  If only he hadn’t lied to Himmler. If only he’d kept her locked up in an observation cell like all the others. If only he’d chosen someone else that night on the apple crate…

  But it was done now, and there was no use squirming about it. A girl had lived and a doppelgänger had died, and all Dr. Geyer could do was shove his glasses back up the bridge of his nose and wait. He sat at his desk, staring at the shiny black rotary phone.

  It stayed silent for a long, long time. He supposed the Chancellery had its hands full trying to patch up the incident (after all, everyone had seen it). Himmler was probably getting the whipping-boy earful that came with screwing up. A verbal flaying that would be passed on to Geyer with exponential fury.

  The Angel of Death hoped that was all he would receive.

  This girl was the beginning of everything, and as the phone began to ring, Dr. Geyer couldn’t shake the feeling that she was also the end of it all.

  CHAPTER 36

  NOW

  APRIL 2, 1956

  THE RED LANDS

  This was what the world saw: the Führer, dying millions of times. The screaming girl, the shot, the fall flashed across millions of separate screens in millions of separate moments.

  And then there was static, all static, screeching, NO SIGNAL FOUND.

  But the signal had already been sent. One by one the people turned off their televisions. And they started moving.

  In Rome, a door the color of oxblood opened. Partisans ran the streets like rats. Only this time it was a plague instead of a scurry. An acne-riddled boy made the sign of a cross on his chest and blessed the Volchitsa.

  In Cairo, a man put down his shisha pipe and picked up the carbine he’d kept hidden since the Great Surrender. All across his city others did the same. They had a meeting to keep at the Reichskommissar’s compound.

  In Germania, General Erwin Reiniger finished convening with all the officers he’d won over to the resistance’s cause. Some of them were nervous: with sweaty lips and darting eyes. Others were unshakable. All of them had itching consciences. Together they represented over half of the Reich’s army, and their regiments were already surrounding the city. Ready to devour it whole.

  In a basement, Henryka tugged at her too-bleached hair and shuffled pins on a map. With every other breath, she prayed for the girl who might as well be her daughter. With every breath between, she prayed the red away.

  Twenty thousand kilometers away (give or take), Yael limped through Tokyo’s streets, her short black hair still damp with moat water, facial features blending perfectly with every pedestrian she passed. She kept her ears sharp as she walked, eavesdropping for news—any news at all—of what was happening back west. But the only words out of people’s mouths were Adele and assassination. Everyone’s attention was on the shot fired at the Victor’s Ball. Just as Reiniger had planned.

  Her mission had faltered, yes, but it had not failed. She’d done everything that had been asked of her: rode across continents, attended the Victor’s Ball, pulled out her gun, shot straight. A man had died to make the world better, and though it was the wrong sacrifice, there was no taking back the blood.

  The red was spilled. But this time, hope ran with it.

  Operation Valkyrie the Second was a go. All around the Reich, the web of the resistance was working, spreading. London. Paris. Baghdad. Tripoli. Prague. Vienna. Amsterdam. Cities upon cities were rising up.

  The world was not just moving. It was alive.

  And it was ready to fight.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  As a writer, I try to examine all facets of life through a single question: What if? This question tends to lead to more questions, which lead to more questions.… It’s not uncommon for me to try to answer these in book form.

  History—such a fluid, fragile collection of dates and events—has always fascinated me. It holds a countless opportunity for what-ifs. What if Hitler had made the decision to execute Operation Sea Lion, invading Britain in the summer of 1940? What if, instead of attacking Pearl Harbor, the Japanese aided Hitler’s assault on the Soviet Union, causing Stalin to fight a two-front war? What if the Americans had held fast to the isolationist policies that were so popular in the United States during the 1930s?

  What if the Axis had won World War II?

  Entire books and Internet forums explore the technicalities of this possibility. (A particularly good book is a collection of essays called If the Allies Had Fallen: Sixty Alternate Scenarios of World War II, edited by Dennis E. Showalter and Harold C. Deutsch.) Though historians disagree on the likelihood of an ultimate Axis victory, most concede that it was, at some point or another, possible.

  The world you’ve glimpsed within these pages could have been our own. For a time and in a place, it was.

  Hitler’s New Order was to be built with the sweat and blood of the Slavic peoples. Their cultures were to be stamped out, their lands seized for Lebensraum (territory for what Hitler believed was the Aryans’ divine right to expand eastward), their populations used for slave labor. By autumn of 1944 over nine and a half million foreigners and prisoners of war were being worked to death in factories, fields, and mines all across Germany.

  Hitler, who’d held a special hatred for Jews ever since his days in Vienna, sought not just to enslave them, but to annihilate them altogether. His “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” was implemented with firing squads, gas vans, and extermination camps. It’s estimated that six million Jews lost their lives by the time the Allies won World War II.

  The Reich’s women were discouraged from pursuing education or taking jobs outside the home. Instead, women were encouraged to produce as many children as possible for the spread of the Aryan race into their newly seized lands. Mothers who bore four or more children were even rewarded with the Cross of Honor of the German Mother. However, as in the case of this novel’s very own Adele Wolfe, there were exceptions. Among the most notable of these was Hanna Reitsch, a female Nazi test pilot who was awarded the Iron Cross by Hitler himself in 1941.

  There were over forty documented attempts to assassinate Hitler, but the most infamous of these was the “July Plot,” a plan put together by high-ranking off
icers in Hitler’s own army who—like this novel’s own Reiniger—felt morally obligated to end his reign of terror.

  On July 20, 1944, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg reported to a meeting at the Wolfsschanze (Hitler’s Eastern Front military headquarters) with a time bomb in his briefcase and every intention of killing Hitler. Hitler’s death was an essential part of the conspirators’ plan to execute a coup d’état against the Nazi government using Operation Valkyrie: a military protocol (designed by conspirator General Friedrich Olbricht and approved by Hitler himself) that allowed the Territorial Reserve Army of Germany to secure Berlin in case of civil unrest.

  Only when Hitler was announced dead (and all German soldiers were freed from their oath of fealty to him) could Olbricht and the other conspirators initiate Operation Valkyrie, take control of the Wehrmacht (armed forces), and establish a new anti-Nazi government.

  When Stauffenberg’s bomb went off at 12:42 PM, the explosion killed four people. Adolf Hitler was not one of them. Unfortunately, Stauffenberg, who’d fled the scene, thought differently and convinced the conspirators in Berlin to initiate Operation Valkyrie. As soon as news of Hitler’s survival reached the capital city, the carefully planned coup failed.

  The Gestapo’s response to the July Plot was ruthless. There were seven thousand arrests and close to five thousand executions following this assassination attempt.

  For a time and in a place, this was our world.

  Alternative history is a genre composed of educated guesswork and speculation. Some elements of this story are more speculative than others. Despite the fact that Hitler and Mussolini’s relationship was temperamental and that Hitler was not known for honoring alliances, there is no evidence that Hitler intended to betray Mussolini for his territories. There is also no evidence that Hitler intended to extend his Lebensraum policy into Africa and the Middle East. Historically, his projected Lebensraum was contained to Eastern Europe, though there are historians who theorize this acquisition of territory was only his first step to world domination. Hitler did, after all, name his plans for Berlin’s architectural rehaul Welthauptstadt Germania, or World Capital Germania.