by L. E. Waters
I panic for a moment, deciding if I should say Mr. Gordon or just Gordon, and the man repeats his greeting as if he’s doubting if someone’s on the line. Dr. Evert rolls his hand for me to say something.
“Georg Elser told me to call.”
There’s a quiet pause at the end of the line and I ask, “Gordon?”
“Only one person calls me that.” His British accent throws me. Maybe Georg was working with British spies after all.
“My name is—”
“I know your name. No need to say it. I also know where to meet you.”
“I don’t think you can come to me.”
“Of course I can.”
“When?”
“I will decide that. Don’t call me again.”
Click.
“Gordon?” I ask the emptiness at the other end of the line.
Dr. Evert takes the phone from my hands. “You sure this person is a friend?”
“Georg wouldn’t have told me to contact him if he wasn’t.”
“Well, it sounds like he’s on his way, like it or not.”
Dr. Evert checks the hall again and waves for me to hurry out. Once we’re back in the safety of his room, I say, “I don’t think he realizes how hard it will be to get past the guards here.”
“If he can’t get in, then how on earth do you think he’d get you out?” It’s moments like this, with his crooked smirk on his still beautiful face, that I see James again. “And I hope he does get you out soon. You’re getting far too skinny.”
I nudge him in pretended offence. “You’re getting pretty skinny yourself.”
He lifts up the corners of his coat to show that he’s on the last notch of his belt. “How would it look to be getting fat while all my patients have only stale bread and coffee to drink?”
“At least they haven’t taken away the coffee.”
I get a true grin out of him. “At least we still have that.”
I hear loud boots coming down the hall and he pushes me under his desk. He collapses into his chair and tucks his knees around me in protection.
“Evert.” A man calls out, not even knocking on the door. I can see why he was so worried about me being in his office.
“Yes?” Dr. Evert tries to calm his voice.
“So you are still here?” There is a laugh in his voice and I recognize it at once as Luther’s.
“Where else would I be?”
“Such an interesting question. Yes, where else could you be?”
“I have a job here.”
“But you really don’t. There are no more patients for you to counsel. We have sent them all to other institutions.”
“We both know that is not true, so please spare me the theatrics.”
I can almost feel Luther’s predatory smile. “Even the more reason why you are not needed here anymore. We could use you to look over patients at other facilities we are…improving.”
“I still have patients here.”
“That brings me to why I’ve sought you out. I’ve noticed that almost all of the patients left here at this facility have been deemed by you as curable and functional.”
“I stand by my diagnoses.”
“Well, I am hoping that you will reexamine these patients and make a more detailed analysis of actually how functional and curable these creatures are.”
“That is not necessary. I was extremely careful with my examinations.”
Luther takes a heavy step toward the doctor and his boot is only a few feet away from me. I worry he might be able to hear my breathing under the desk.
“I’m not asking you, Evert. I’m commanding you to make revisions. Massive changes, or we will have to have an unpleasant conversation.”
Dr. Evert doesn’t say anything, and the boots turn and leave the room slowly. As soon as the door closes, he hunches down to me. “Hurry. We need to get you back to your floor before anyone sees you.”
He takes me under his strong arm and walks me down the hall and out one of the side doors. He pushes me out into the courtyard between our buildings.
“Thank you for helping me, again.”
He nods as he checks up the pathway. “Go. I’ll check on you later. Good luck with Gordon. I’ll be praying that he will get you out of here.”
“You should leave too. Luther—”
He turns around to a noise behind him and closes the door in my face. I run as fast as I can back to our floor just before the grey skies open up in freezing rain.
Chapter 20
Minna’s playing the new song she’s learned as Gitta sings happily along to it. Suddenly they both stop, and I look up from my checkerboard to see a man pushing aside the gate. He isn’t a soldier and, by the looks on everyone’s faces, he isn’t any visitor they’ve seen before. Although I recognize his fish-face at once. Maybe he’s not a hero after all.
Bathilda stands up, snarkiness in her voice. “Can I help you?”
He’s unaffected by her tone, even rises higher. “No, thank you.” No hint of the British accent exists. He doesn’t even remove his hat as he struts down the hall.
“Who are you and why are you here?” She comes out from behind her desk to stand in his path.
“Mr. Gordon to see Miss Annelie. Our business is private.” I size him up while he glares at Bathilda. He isn’t dressed particularly spy-like. He could blend into any German crowd with his grey suit and beige overcoat. He appears middle-aged with a slight potbelly protruding.
Bathilda snaps, “You only have fifteen minutes.” She turns to yell into the office, “Frieda.”
Frieda emerges, confused by the stranger standing there.
“Watch the patients and this…Mr. Gordon. I’m going to find out how he got in here.”
Mr. Gordon turns to us in question as to where I am. I stand up and he walks to me.
“Annelie?” His dull, empty eyes don’t look any more lively up close.
“Yes.”
I point to the table by itself in the corner of the room for us to sit, but he asks, “Can we speak in private?”
I look to Frieda and she hurries to get the key to open my bedroom door. As we pass, she gives me a wide-eyed look and mouths, Be careful.
I sit on one end of my narrow bed and he sits down carefully, as if not sure the small frame will support him; but it does, despite groans and creaking.
“So you have found me.” I try to smile, but every time I see those eyes, I feel like running.
He isn’t amused. “We don’t have time to waste. I am only here since I promised Elser that I would come if you called. What do you want from me?”
I have to look away to speak to him. “How do you know Georg?”
He gets up immediately. “I haven’t come to answer your questions. I have only promised to assist you, should you need the help.”
“How did you get in here?”
He actually laughs, but it makes the hairs rise on my neck. “What do you need from me?”
“I need to know if it’s your fault Georg planted that bomb.”
He sits down nearer to me and I try to sit as far back as I can. “For someone asking for help, you have a rude way of doing it. Do you want my help or not?”
“I need to get out of here. I need to get my friends out, too.”
“I can’t get you out at this time, and I definitely can’t get anyone else out, but I can get you to safe place once you get out.”
“How am I going to get out of here? The front gates are locked and guards are all over the place.” I throw my hands up and pace the floor. “This was a waste. I risked so much and Dr. Evert risked so much just to call you, and you think I’ll be able to get out of here on my own?”
“Call this number if you figure it out.” He throws a piece of paper on my bed.
“I already have your number.” Why did Georg think he could help me?
“That number has been disconnected now. This
is another number. If you call it, I will come to help you immediately.”
“Just like you’ve been so helpful to me already. No wonder Georg got caught if people like you were helping him.”
That strikes a chord and his vacant eyes flash suddenly. “Has it even crossed your mind that this is all just a ploy to make Hitler seem invincible, to use Georg for propaganda and manufacture an excuse to go after the British?”
“Georg would never work with Hitler.”
“Maybe he didn’t know that he was?”
“Then why did he have your number and why did you come?”
He knows I caught him. Why did he want me to distrust Georg so?
“Some questions will never be answered.” He walks to the door. “I will grant you aid if you can free yourself.”
“If you can’t get me out, then I will never get out. They will kill us all.”
He puts his empty hands up. “My hands are tied. It’s all I can offer.”
“If you can get yourself in here, why can’t you take me out with you?” I look out the window toward the gates.
“Time’s up.” He smiles and bows and walks out of my room.
I’m sure he is glad that he couldn’t help me. The last thing fish-face would want is to save my life. I wonder how close he and Georg are if he feels so indebted to him. I throw my pillow against the wall.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Dr. Evert appears the next day. He whispers to me, “Well? Is Gordon going to rescue you?”
I hate to dull the faint hopefulness in his eyes. I shake my head and his shoulders droop immediately.
“Why did he come here, then?”
“He says he can’t get me out, but he can help me once I escape.”
He slaps a heavy hand on the table and makes Minna yelp in surprise.
“Don’t worry. We’ll be fine. We can ride this out together.”
He shakes his head. “Didn’t you hear what Luther said? He wants you all reexamined, now by other doctors.”
“We could pass their tests.”
His eyes meet mine and he silently tells me how wrong I am. He takes my hands in his. He doesn’t even look around to see who’s watching. “I am going to try one more thing. Say some prayers that it will work.” He leans over and kisses my hand sweetly. “Maybe I can rescue you after all.”
“Do you have to go now? I haven’t talked to you in so long.”
He squeezes the hand he just kissed, and courage or desperation glints in his heavy, beautiful eyes. “I’ll see you after the storm.” He winks.
I want to stand up and hug him tight, but he dances away down the hall, singing something that Minna was humming.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Kathrin can’t stay away long, especially when she needs to know about my visit with Mr. Gordon.
“Tell me. What happened?”
“I called him with Dr. Evert and he came this morning.”
She smiles so large it looks like her face will crack. “I knew it. I knew that he would help us.” She claps in eagerness. “So what is the plan?”
“There is no plan. He has only promised to help if I can get out of here.”
Her hands flop to the table. “The hardest part is getting out. How is that any help?”
“I know, but Dr. Evert said he was going to try one more thing.”
“This is all so terrible. This only gets worse.” She hangs her pretty head in her small hands.
“Don’t worry. Dr. Evert looked so hopeful. It might be just a matter of days.”
“Good, because I can’t keep going to Luther. I really can’t.” I can tell something must have happened in her last visit with him.
“The sleeping pills didn’t work?”
“Not at all, and he’s so much as told me that you and your friends are in peril soon, and, and—”
“I know already, Kathrin. They are going to reevaluate us.”
“No, they have plans to send you all to House C 16.”
Ashes into the Elbe.
“He’s just trying to worry you. Have faith.” I try to hold her thin hand and it’s freezing. Kathrin gets up once she sees the piano open and no one playing. She starts to play and sing,
“Tell me the tales
That to me were so dear,
Long, long ago,
Long, long ago”
I try to bring the cover to the piano down carefully on her fingers. “You know I don’t like it when you sing that song.” She’s always teased me with that horrible song. “What aren’t you telling me?”
She stops and turns back around toward me. “Luther told me that if I stayed the night with him, I could take you home with me in the morning.”
“Oh, Kathrin, you can never do that. Don’t even think about it.”
She bites her bottom lip and looks into my eyes. “I’d do anything to save you.” Her large honey eyes fill with fat tears.
“No, you mustn’t do that. It won’t have to come to that. Dr. Evert will figure something out. Stay far away from Luther today.”
She wipes her tears, gives me a strong hug, and heads in House C 16’s direction.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
The sun appears after days of gloomy skies, and I watch for Dr. Evert on such a promising day. He must have some news by now, and I cross my fingers and toes that it will be good news for us all. But only Bathilda struts in, glowing like the sun. I don’t pay any attention to her but she comes and sits across from me at the table.
“Do you want to know why I’m smiling?”
“You must have run a small animal over with your bike.”
Spurts of laughter snort out around the room and it almost infuriates Bathilda, but she keeps that slick smile pasted on. “I have just heard about poor Dr. Evert.”
Her steel eyes glisten as a panic sets in deep within me. She waits for me to ask more, but I won’t. I’m not sure what new game she’s playing now.
Gitta asks, “What happened to Dr. Evert?”
“Well, no one really knows for sure. But he’s gone.”
“Gone?” Odelia says.
“He meet with Luther yesterday and no one’s seen him since. I just walked by his office and guards were busy emptying it out.”
I check with Frieda, who looks down at her nails. “Is it true, Frieda?”
“No one has seen him since yesterday.” She glances up with a glimmer of optimism. “Maybe he resigned?”
Bathilda guffaws. “I talked to a few nurses who’re screwing the guards, and they’ve said that he was taken away in a truck. Others have said Luther shot him in the head himself.”
Minna starts to cry and I feel like crying, but I won’t in front of such a monster.
“Those are all rumors, Bathilda,” Frieda says, trying to argue for hope.
“Well, do you think Dr. Evert would just quit without saying goodbye to his precious patients?”
He would have said goodbye before leaving.
Bathilda continues, as she sees the pain set in. “And do you think he’d allow two doctors from Berlin to come here to reexamine his patients who’ve avoided the oven all this time?”
“Oven?” Gitta asks.
Bathilda laughs, a laugh that made me want to slap her mouth shut. “That’s what they built down in House C 16. First, they gas everyone when they think they’re going for a shower.” She giggles. “Then they cook them in the ovens.”
“I knew that was what they were doing. I told you all. The spiders are baking them all like cookies. I was right, see?”
Bathilda sneers. “You just remember to tell the doctors about those spider bakers, Elfi. Don’t leave anything out.”
“If you don’t stop talking, I’m going to punch you in the face.” Both fists curl, eager to wipe that grin off her face.
“Go ahead.” She squares her chin to me. “I’d love to show t
he doctors how violent you are.”
Frieda’s arm wraps around my shoulders. “Let’s go to your room for a bit.”
I slowly get up from the bench. Once we get inside my dark room, Frieda tries to settle me. “I’m sure he’s fine. He can take care of himself.”
“But the last thing he told me was that he was going to try one more thing to get me out of here. It’s my fault.”
“Shhh, now.” She hugs me with one arm. “We don’t know what’s happened. He might just come back in here tomorrow morning explaining everything.”
She leaves me and I curl up on my cot and go to sleep, hoping that she’s right.
Chapter 21
Frieda sits with us at breakfast. As we hunch over our nearly empty plates to hear her, she tells us, under her breath, “There will be a doctor coming soon to talk with you all. I’ve heard Bathilda arranging it.”
Elfi says too loudly, “This is how they’ll get us.”
Her statement draws a few glances, but this is not out of the norm for Elfi.
“Elfi, keep calm or we won’t be able listen,” Minna tells her.
“What can we do, Frieda?” I ask.
“I’ve been thinking about it. You must all stay calm and only answer their questions with as little words as possible. They’ll have your files and they’ll know each one of your difficulties, but you must pretend that you are a different person.”
“Nothing’s wrong with us, though,” Ursel says.
“I agree. I don’t understand why people don’t want things clean,” Juliane says. “They’re as comfortable in their own filth as pigs.”
Verena spurts out laughing. “Even I know I’m crazy. Ursel, Juliane, you’re as cracked as they come, dears, and I mean that with love.”
Ursel crosses her arms, but I try to explain it better to her. “Ursel, I know you see things others don’t see, but you don’t have to tell these doctors. It’s enough that we know you see them, but if you want to get out of here with us, you’re going to have to pretend that you don’t see them either.”
She nods and I turn to Verena. “You’re going to have to change too.”
“I won’t have any problem with the evaluation. I can convince any man of anything.” She giggles, but I shake my head.