Projekt 1065

by Alan Gratz

  He’d joined the SRD so he could become the bully himself. Just like little Hitler.

  “So this is what it’s come to,” I said. I didn’t get up. I didn’t want to fight Fritz. That’s not why I was here. “You’d burn these books,” I said. I hurled the book I’d taken back at him, and he batted it away. “You’d burn something you love just to be on top for once in your life. Even if it means turning your back on who you are.”

  Fritz tugged at his SRD uniform. “This is who I am. I’m going to lead Germany into the future. I’m going to help Hitler rule the world. But to do that, I have to make sacrifices,” he said, quoting the Führer back to me. “You’ve burned books too. You made me burn books, that day the other boys attacked me!”

  “I told you to burn those books so the other boys wouldn’t kill you!”

  “No,” Fritz said. He picked up the book I’d thrown at him. “They were right. This is degenerate filth. I should never have read it to begin with. And neither should you. A good Nazi doesn’t need books or philosophy or art. We think with our blood.”

  “You think with your blood?” I said. “What does that even mean? How is that even possible?”

  Fritz threw the book back at me, but I ducked it. “You’ve never taken any of this seriously, Michael. You’ve always treated this like a game. Maybe it’s because you’re not German. But this isn’t a game. It’s real.”

  It was strange, hearing the things I’d just been saying to myself come from Fritz’s lips. It was as though I suddenly stepped outside myself and saw me sitting there on the ground at Fritz’s feet. We were just thirteen, me and Fritz, but we didn’t look like boys anymore. Nazi Germany, the war, the Hitler Youth—all of it had made us into men. Not “man-gods” as Hitler had said, but boy-men. Boys whose insides, whose hearts and minds and souls, had been forced to grow up faster than our bodies. The war had made us men, and it was time to act like it.

  “My parents are spies,” I said.

  I felt light-headed as I said it. Hollow. Like it was some dream version of me. Something that would go away when I woke up.

  Fritz froze. “What?”

  I wet my dry lips. “You’re right. It’s time for me to stop playing games. To commit myself completely. It’s time I told the truth. My parents are spies. They’re harboring the British airman. The one we were searching for in the countryside. They’re hiding him until they can get him out of the country.”

  Fritz staggered back, the black smoke from the burning books swirling around him.

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know,” I lied. “But they’re moving him tonight. You have to tell the Gestapo. I’ll find out where and when, and lead them there.”

  Fritz blinked in amazement. His eyes went elsewhere as he considered all this, then finally found my face. When they did, the anger was gone, replaced by something like … admiration. Awe. He offered me his hand to help me up, and I took it. We were friends again, and I was the boy who’d denounced his parents to the Nazis.

  There was only one thing left to do.

  I caught Horst later that day coming home from the over-age movie he’d snuck in to see at the cinema. I knew I could beat Horst in a fair fight, but this wasn’t going to be a fair fight.

  I hurried up behind him, threw a flour sack over his head, and kicked him in the back of the knee. He went down hard on the sidewalk, and before he could tear the sack off his head and see who attacked him, I kicked him hard, right in the ribs. I heard something crack, and he screamed and doubled over. A quick German Look told me we were still alone, and I kicked him again and again—his arms, his legs, his chest, his head. He’d had this coming ever since he’d been our Jungvolk leader, ever since he’d let the bigger boys pound the smaller boys for fun, ever since he’d put me and Fritz in the ring together and told him to keep getting up, ever since he’d beaten that Edelweiss Pirate to within an inch of his life. I gave Horst the beatdown he’d delivered to so many other boys, the beatdown I wanted the Allies to give to that bully Adolf Hitler. I kicked him and kicked him and kicked him until he didn’t scream anymore, didn’t moan, didn’t move. He was still alive when I was finished, but just barely.

  I dipped two fingers in the blood that was pooling on the sidewalk underneath him, and on the wall above his broken body I drew a picture of an edelweiss.

  I led my parents into Da’s study when I got home and pulled Simon out of the hidden room.

  “We have to do it tonight,” I told them. This time my voice didn’t crack. “There’s been an opening on the science team.”

  It was colder that night, as if winter had given spring a thrashing that would lay it up in the hospital for another month. I stamped my feet and buried my hands in the heavy overcoat I wore. It was even colder by the River Spree, on the pedestrian path underneath the Moltke Bridge. There were no Fussgängers down here tonight. No “footgoers.” Not officially. It was after curfew. Everyone but the SRD and the Gestapo were supposed to be shut up tight in their homes.

  A dozen of us waited in the shadows. Owls in the night, waiting for our prey to emerge. Our steamy breaths made faint gray clouds in the darkness.

  “Where’s Horst?” I whispered to Fritz. Ottmar and Erhard had been there when we set out from the Gestapo station, but not the fourth musketeer.

  “The Pirates got him,” Fritz growled.

  I nodded. Not that Fritz or anyone else could see me, which let me smile a little in the darkness. The smile quickly faded, though. I was far too nervous about what was about to happen to enjoy my easy victory over donkey-faced Horst.

  We heard a soft step on the cement path under the bridge, and the breathing around me stopped as we all strained our ears to listen. A whisper—words I couldn’t understand. The sound of scuffling feet. Whoever it was, they were coming our way. The wait was agonizing. My stomach did somersaults. Was this Simon? Or had we unwittingly scheduled this little piece of theater in the same place and on the same night that some family was trying to escape, some Edelweiss Pirates were attempting an act of vandalism? And if it was Simon, would the SS shoot first and ask questions later? Would he be sent to a concentration camp? What if the nervous sweat rolling down my back made the tape around my waist come loose, and the blueprints for Projekt 1065 slipped out of my shirt? What if the Nazis still didn’t pick me for the team after I’d turned Simon and my parents in?

  A flashlight clicked on, catching Simon full in the face. He looked genuinely startled. He flinched as if to run, but another flashlight clicked on, and another, and Simon blinked and raised his hands against the light that held him in place. It was obvious there were too many of us for him to run away.

  Simon was caught.

  “Where are your parents?” SS-Obersturmführer Trumbauer asked me.

  “I—I don’t know. They were supposed to be with him,” I said, giving the answer my mother and father had prepared for me.

  “The embassy—go. Go!” Trumbauer said, dispatching some of his soldiers. “Find them!”

  I held my breath as the soldiers ran off into the night. I prayed my parents wouldn’t be caught. They should already have been gone from the city hours ago, but it was a long way from Berlin to Dublin, and they would have very few allies along the way.

  SS-Obersturmführer Trumbauer walked up close to Simon, who was being held by two SS men. Simon wasn’t squirming or trying to get away.

  “You should know, it was the O’Shaunesseys’ son who turned you in. Turned his parents in too,” Trumbauer said with unmitigated delight. It wasn’t enough that he’d caught Simon. He wanted to rub my betrayal in his face.

  “Michael?” Simon said, searching the darkness. “Michael, say it isn’t so!”

  The heartbreak in his voice was so real I thought my own heart would explode. How could anybody do this to someone else?

  But I had a part to play, or else this would all be for nothing. I pushed through the other SRD boys in the darkness and stepped into the light.

&nbs
p; “You’re an enemy of the state,” I told Simon, my voice shaky. “And my parents broke the laws of Germany hiding you. But even worse, they broke the laws of human nature. They betrayed the Aryan race by hiding a Jew.” I said the word like an insult. Like profanity.

  “How can you say that?” Simon asked. “How can you believe any of it?”

  I stood taller, making sure the flashlights caught my puffed-up chest, my upturned chin. “Because I belong to Hitler now.”

  “I can see that you do,” Simon said. “Well, if you belong to Hitler, why don’t you go to him? Go to the devil!”

  One of the soldiers slammed the stock of his rifle into Simon’s stomach, and Simon doubled over in pain. I had to resist crying out for the soldier to stop, and did my best to hold back my tears. The boy in me was scared for what was going to happen to Simon now, scared to be on my own for the very first time in my life. I took a deep breath and tried to remember to be a man.

  “I wonder, Michael,” Simon said, still hunched over in pain, “did you ever hear the one about the Englishman, the Irishman, and the Scotsman who were all lined up in front of a firing squad?”

  I couldn’t believe Simon was telling jokes here, now. I didn’t even have a chance to stammer a response before he went on.

  “The lads are told they each can have a final request. The Scotsman says, ‘I’d like to hear “Scotland the Brave” played on the bagpipes before I’m shot, to remind me of the auld country,’ and the Irishman says, ‘I’d like to hear “Danny Boy” sung by Gracie Fields before I’m shot, to remind me of the auld country.’ So knowing what’s to come, the Englishman says, ‘I’d like to be shot first.’ ”

  Simon yanked himself free, decked the closest SS man, and sprinted down the tunnel. Whistles blew. People shouted. Shots rang out. Simon fell. No! Without thinking, I ran to him, but luckily, others did too. One of the SS was already kneeling down beside him when I got there.

  “He’s dead,” he said.

  “He died while trying to escape.”

  There was almost happiness in SS-Obersturmführer Trumbauer’s voice as he said it. One more dead Jew—and an enemy soldier to boot.

  No sucker punch, no broken bone had ever hurt so much as this. My knees went weak, like I was up on the rooftop with Simon all over again, the bombs exploding all around us. It was all I could do to stay on my feet, to not double over and sob like a baby. I couldn’t keep the tears from streaming down my face, though, and I turned away so no one would see.

  Simon had meant to do this all along, I realized. As soon as he’d suggested I turn him in, he’d planned to get shot. To die trying to escape rather than be taken alive by the Nazis. He knew what was to come, even if he pretended it didn’t matter. If they took him alive, they would torture him, and eventually he’d tell them about stealing the plans for Projekt 1065. Maybe even tell them about me, and how I had helped him.

  He’d died to protect me, to protect his mission. Committed suicide by Nazi. Now they couldn’t torture Simon Cohen, and he couldn’t reveal any secrets. Because Simon Cohen was dead.

  “Why do you cry?” SS-Obersturmführer Trumbauer asked, shining his light in my face. I hurriedly wiped away my tears.

  “I—I can’t believe my parents threw their lives away for this filth,” I said, thinking fast. “I can’t believe they didn’t see that he who serves the Führer serves Germany, and whoever serves Germany serves God.”

  It was Nazi claptrap propaganda, but SS-Obersturmführer Trumbauer nodded with approval. He put a comforting hand on my shoulder. It was all I could do not to flinch away from it.

  “You have done well, Michael,” SS-Obersturmführer Trumbauer told me. “Very well. You have done more for Hitler tonight than most men twice your age.” He called Fritz and Ottmar and Erhard over with a flick of his head, and I tried not to watch as Simon’s body was dragged away by the others.

  “In fact,” SS-Obersturmführer Trumbauer said, “I am in charge of training a select group of young men such as yourself for a very special mission for the Führer, and we have an open position on the team.” He nodded at Fritz. “Quex here has suggested you for the job, and I quite agree with his recommendation.”

  Fritz smiled. I would have too if I hadn’t just watched Simon gunned down in cold blood. I thought of my parents, somewhere out there in the cold, dark night, on the run from the Nazis. At least it all hadn’t been for nothing.

  “I would give anything and everything to be on that team,” I told SS-Obersturmführer Trumbauer.

  And I already had.

  The cable car bumped and juddered as it went over one of the pylons that supported it during its four-thousand-foot climb. I closed my eyes and gripped the metal bench so hard it left deep lines in my skin. I felt light-headed, and not just because of the thin air of the Swiss Alps.

  Standing at the base of the aerial tramway in Mürren, I had watched the tiny little cable cars as they moved up and down the mountain, hanging from spiderweb-thin cables that snaked up into the snowcapped peaks above us. Now I was inside one of those little trams, dangling a hundred feet over a sea of green fir trees and white snow. Not that I was looking out the window.

  “I think I can see my house from here!” Ottmar said. He and Erhard both ran back and forth across the cabin, weaving between the other passengers for the best views. I wished they would just sit still. Every time they moved from one side to the other, I could feel the cabin sway left to right, right to left.

  “Is your friend going to be all right?” a woman asked Fritz, who sat beside me. “He looks a little green.”

  “Something he ate,” Fritz said. All this time, and he was still covering for me, still helping me hide the fact that I was deathly afraid of heights. I was better with heights now than I ever had been—able to actually step onto a cable car I knew was about to climb up the second half of an 8,422-foot-tall mountain, for example—but only because of the work I’d done with Simon.

  Simon. Whenever I closed my eyes, all I could see was him looking up at me. Punching an SS officer. Running. Twisting as the bullets hit him. Falling. I saw it play out in my head over and over again, like a piece of broken film. Why did you have to do it, Simon? Surely there had to have been some other way.

  I wrenched my eyes open. The brilliant blue of the Alpine sky glared back at me through the windows—so many windows!—and I quickly stared at the floor.

  I had to ignore what I knew lay just outside the walls and floor of the cabin. Space. Empty air.

  Nothing.

  An Irishman, a Scotsman, and an Englishman apply for a chauffeur’s job, I thought, trying to distract myself, remembering Simon. “I’m such a good driver, I can go within six inches of a cliff and not drive off,” says the Scotsman. “I’m such a good driver, I can go within one inch of a cliff and not drive off,” says the Englishman. “Oh yeah?” says the Irishman. “Well, I’m such a good driver I stay as far away from cliffs as I can.”

  The long arm atop the cable car rumbled across another pylon, and I put a hand to my mouth for fear I’d puke all over the lady standing in front of us.

  “That which doesn’t destroy us makes us stronger,” Fritz said, quoting an old German philosopher the Nazis loved. The last thing I needed right now was Nazi platitudes, but I nodded. I had to keep playing the part of the zealous Hitler Youth. For a little while longer, anyway.

  “There it is!” someone said at last. “The resort!”

  The Edelweiss resort clung to the side of a mountain a few hundred feet below the peak, its spindly-looking wooden pillars supporting decks that stuck out into the air. It was all golden-brown wood and soft glowing lights and pointy A-frame roofs, covered with windows and terraces that offered guests incredible sweeping long-distance views of the valley far below.

  Basically, it was an acrophobe’s worst nightmare.

  My legs wobbled as I left the cable car, but I was glad to be back on solid ground. Even if that solid ground was eight thousand feet in the air
. I kept my back to the view and my eyes on the resort, where all the passengers were queuing up in a Warteschlange—a “waiting snake,” German for a long line—to go through security.

  Security! The Swiss soldiers at the doors were going through the bags of each of the attendees and patting each of them down. For weapons, I guessed, though one man in the full-dress uniform of a country I didn’t recognize was let through with the sword on his belt. They were searching for guns, then. Guns and explosives.

  I glanced at Fritz and the other two boys. Each of us carried two cases—one with our clothes, and another with the scientific equipment to assemble our fake science projects. To attend the conference, we were posing as junior scientists, and the kits were our cover. I had no idea what the plan was. How we were supposed to assassinate Professor Goldsmit. Only Ottmar knew the plan, which he promised he would tell us when we got to the resort. Did he carry a rifle in his second suitcase? A bomb?

  If the Swiss Guards at the door discovered the weapon we were to use to kill Professor Goldsmit, if they caught us and sent us back to Germany with our tails between our legs, then my job would be done for me. My parents, Simon, they would have sacrificed themselves for nothing. But the professor would be safe, and that’s what mattered now.

  What I was worried about were the plans for Projekt 1065 taped around my stomach.

  One simple pat to the side of my body and the guards would feel the tape there. Open my shirt. Reveal the jet fighter plans I was still carrying. They might not care that I was hiding papers on my body, but Ottmar and Erhard and Fritz would care. I would never leave this resort with the plans—if I left the resort alive at all.

  The waiting snake slithered closer to the Swiss Guards at the door, and the plans felt like a stone hanging around my waist. I had to get rid of the papers before we went through security. Put them somewhere safe, where I could retrieve them on the way out.