by Ryan Graudin
Silence.
Another hit (more silence), another (more), another (more). Blows so hard the SS-Sturmmann who held Yael struggled to stay in place. If her flesh had been schnitzel, it would’ve been long finished, ready for the skillet. Luka kept expecting her to break—to yell, scream, anything—but Scheisse if this strange-named fräulein wasn’t tough. Pain seemed like nothing to her. Maybe it was. But from where Luka was standing, it was too much.
The color, the silence, the blow after blow…
It was all too much to watch.
“Hey!” he heard himself yelling.
The thuds stopped, replaced by the heavy, bloodful sound of Yael trying to breathe. Luka couldn’t see the extent of the damage, with her hair plastered to her cheek the way it was. But that was enough of a thrashing for any man to take, much less a fräulein her size. Even the SS-Standartenführer looked tired as he retrieved a kerchief from his pocket, toweling pink spray off his knuckles. He spent an extra few seconds polishing his signet ring before letting the soiled fabric fall to the floor.
SS-Standartenführer Baasch’s eyes met Luka’s. They were the color of sharkskin. Too calm.
“You don’t happen to have a cigarette, do you?” Luka asked. “I could really use one right now. Helps my nerves. They’re a bit jangly—”
A fist. A flash of gold. The signet ring did hurt like hell.
Luka shook the sparks from his eyes, working the Sieg rune pain out of his jaw. “Could you avoid the face next time? I need to keep it pretty for my press release.”
“It’s a bit too late for that,” the SS-Standartenführer said. His face stayed smileless. “Victor Löwe has asked for a cigarette. Should we oblige him?”
Seconds later, a cigarette and silver lighter appeared. Click, whoosh! Smoke crept in tendrils out of Baasch’s thin lips; fire flared circle-bright off his fingertips. “We used these a good deal in the early days. Easy torture tools that fit in your pocket. Ever since the Aryan Health Laws were instated, they’ve become much less convenient. Illegal, expensive. Though I hear you’re quite partial to them.”
“Like I said. Helps my nerves.” Right now Luka’s nerves were the furthest from calm they could be. Prickling, jabbing, SCREAMING as the SS officer brought the cigarette’s smolder closer to the victor’s skin.
“You know what happens when you play with fire,” the SS-Standartenführer said.
You get burned. On the collarbone.
The fire ate into his first epidermal layer, fizzling along Luka’s nerve endings. He would be steel hard, leather tough. He would push, push, push through this.…
Luka managed not to scream. He bit through his lip instead.
“Stop!” Even Yael’s voice sounded weeping-meat wet. She spoke in short chops of sentences. “Luka had no part in this. Neither did Felix. They know nothing.”
Scheisse. It was a nice gesture. Luka was genuinely touched. But the SS-Standartenführer was right. It was too late for that. The victor braced his boots against the ballroom floor—the very one they’d danced on—and got ready for the next burn. But the cigarette hung limp in the SS officer’s fingers. His face looked… thoughtful. “These two… they were found at the docks?”
The SS-Sturmmann holding Yael nodded.
“In what order?” the SS-Standartenführer asked.
“Victor Löwe was restrained first,” the SS-Sturmmann recounted the Japanese patrolmen’s report. “They caught the girl trying to rescue him.”
“An assassin with attachments. How unique.” There was that smile again. The expression would’ve looked more natural on an actual shark than it did on the SS-Standartenführer’s face. The sight of it dragged tooth tips along Luka’s spine.
“Luka and Felix are innocent.” Yael’s protest smudged through her battered face. “Let them go.”
Again, nice gesture. But the end of an era lay too close by, death rusting through the white sheet, as tangy as the taste edging Luka’s own lips. Blood… mixing with the charred stink of his own flesh. Just the beginning, he knew. He could see it in the edge of Baasch’s smile. Shark-hard, drifting closer, expecting so much more.
The SS-Standartenführer lifted the cigarette again, but this time he flipped it. Wedged it butt-first between Luka’s lips. Ash and surprise—the victor almost choked on it.
“Keep these two here,” Baasch instructed his underlings. “I have a few calls to make.”
CHAPTER 9
Felix couldn’t keep down any of the water that Bulbous Nose had brought him, so he poured it over his fingers instead. It was a shoddy cleaning. His left hand, still cuffed to the bed, slopped the liquid over his injuries in uneven jolts. Felix had nothing but the hem of his Hitler Youth uniform to pad the mess dry. He wasn’t even sure why he bothered.
The SS-Standartenführer was gone much longer than the average phone call. When the officer finally did return, Felix braced himself against the bed frame, crippled hand clutched close to his uniform. But Baasch didn’t seem set on breaking any more fingers. Nor did he order Bulbous Nose’s jackboots back into position. Instead he started pacing, treading through the bloody water on the floor.
“I’ve been encouraged by your recent cooperation, Herr Wolfe. Your information regarding the girl’s markings has already proved useful.”
“You—you caught her.” Felix’s stomach turned. He couldn’t tell if it was from this realization or the constant pain relaying through his tendons or the smoke stink rolling off the SS-Standartenführer’s uniform. (All three of these things made him want to retch.) “How?”
“The girl possesses more sentimentality than the average assassin. It does not work to her advantage.”
But… if they had the girl, they had no need for Felix’s answers anymore. What was Baasch doing here?
Felix’s spine felt crooked against the bedpost, as if Bulbous Nose had kicked that out of alignment, too. He watched Baasch’s jackboots closer than he would a fanned-out cobra as they splashed back and forth across the room. Wafting that awful ill-wind, burning smell…
“The girl isn’t the only one we caught.” Baasch halted at the bedside table. His hand went for the rotary phone—picking up the receiver, sliding through a series of numbers.
What was the SS-Standartenführer talking about? Felix’s gut wrenched tighter as the officer murmured into the phone, “You’ve connected with Frankfurt? Good. Put them on the line.”
Frankfurt. Home. Oh God…
Baasch carried the phone as far as its cable would allow, pressing the receiver—hard—against Felix’s ear. There was a crackling quiet, and then: “Felix? Is that you?”
“Papa?” It was his father’s voice. A raspy baritone lined with age and arthritic pain, made faint by tens of thousands of kilometers of distance. “Papa, where are you? Where’s Mama?”
The sound of tears, high and frail, answered Felix’s last question.
“Some men came to the house. Gestapo. They took us.… I don’t know where we are. Are you hurt? Where’s your sister? What’s happening over—”
Baasch’s finger punched into the switch hook. Silence sliced through his father’s voice.
Gestapo. Felix’s parents were being held by the Gestapo. It was among his worst fears. One he’d voiced in this very room just hours earlier, to the girl who was not his sister: If you succeed, what do you think the Gestapo will do to Mama and Papa? You’ll destroy them.
But the girl didn’t give a Scheisse about the Wolfes, did she?
“You’re quite a remarkable person, Herr Wolfe. Not many brothers would travel the lengths you’ve gone to for your sister’s sake. Twenty thousand kilometers, ruined fingers…” The SS-Standartenführer’s eyes flickered over Felix’s stained uniform. “Family is clearly important to you. Tell me, how much further would you go to keep your parents from harm?”
Felix’s heart jump-started, rattling electric against Martin’s pocket watch.
“I’ll do anything,” he said, and meant it.
&nb
sp; “I thought as much,” Baasch said. “The situation has changed. The girl posing as your sister was only a single piece in a much larger plan. The Fatherland is in peril. As we speak, there is a putsch taking place back in Germania.”
A revolution? In Germania? It didn’t seem possible, not with the hold the National Socialist government had on the population. Every few years, there were small rebellions in the outer territories—uprisings in the mining camps and oil fields—but news of them hardly reached the Reichssender screens before they were squashed. Cleaned out with the ruthlessness of a root canal: quick, brutal, painful.
To have a movement deep enough to launch an assault against the very heart of the Reich? That wasn’t just a cavity. That was years of hidden rot.
“Some generals have used the Führer’s apparent demise to trick their Wehrmacht units into seizing the capital. They’ve started arresting key National Socialist officials. This attempt to overthrow the government appears to be highly organized. They might have gotten away with it if not for a crucial flaw in their plan.” Baasch paused, letting his eyes pick Felix to pieces: toned arms, hair paler than pale, crooked bridge of a nose. “How old are you, Herr Wolfe?”
“Seventeen.”
“So young.” The SS officer tutted. “Too young to remember… There was a situation like this years ago, during the war. The Führer was betrayed by those in his closest confidence, men who planned to assassinate him and take over the government. They smuggled a bomb into Hitler’s Wolfsschanze headquarters. When it went off, these traitors attempted to use the Führer’s death as an excuse to overtake Berlin. But Hitler survived the explosion. The resistance was quickly squelched, its conspirators arrested and tortured. They spilled the names of more conspirators, which led to more arrests, more torture sessions.… Can you guess, Herr Wolfe, how many were executed in the wake of that incident?”
Felix had no idea. “Three hundred?”
“Five thousand. Five thousand traitors were eliminated. And yet here we are, nearly twelve years later, facing another putsch. Clearly the roots we tried to pull up survived. Regrew…” Baasch drifted off. Shook his head. “We must take a different approach this time. The resistance should be crushed beyond regrowth, all who are involved exterminated. You—Herr Wolfe—are going to help us.”
“But I know nothing. Even when I thought she was Adele… the girl gave me no information. I didn’t even know Ade—I mean, the girl—was involved in the resistance until halfway through the race.” It hurt to think of those conversations, now that Felix knew the truth behind them: lies, lies, all lies. The girl’s manipulation—flesh and feelings, right and wrong—was nothing short of masterful.
“Oh, I’m not going to torture the information out of you.” The SS commander glanced back down at the marbled pink puddle. “We’ve both had quite enough of that, I think.”
“Then… how…”
“If you let a rat out of the trap, where does it go?” Baasch didn’t wait for an answer. “It scurries straight back to its nest. It’s true that we’ve managed to capture the girl with the help of your tattoo information. We could continue torturing her in the hope that she’ll give us a name or two, but she seems to be even more adept than yourself at resisting pain. It’s far easier to let her lead us straight to their headquarters. Of course, I can’t have any of my men tail her. She’s too well trained. She’d get scared off.”
“You want me to do it,” Felix finished.
The SS-Standartenführer nodded. “We’ll give you the tools you need to escape. You’re to gain this girl’s trust and follow her back to the resistance’s headquarters. When you discover where they’re hiding, you’ll contact me through the channels I’ll provide you. No one will lay a finger on your parents as long as you keep to the plans of your mission.”
It was amazing, how many ways the SS-Standartenführer could make a threat without actually verbalizing it. Felix preferred the nuts-and-bolts version: Fail and we’ll kill your parents.
“What about Adele?” he asked.
“I’ve already spoken with Reichsführer Himmler about the pardon,” Baasch said. “Should you succeed, Adele’s name will be cleared.”
What the SS-Standartenführer was asking him to do was not a simple fix. No mere swapping out parts. This was more like the few times Felix watched his father rebuild an engine from scratch. Exhaust manifold bolts, valve covers, cylinder heads, rod caps… every piece of the machine had to be taken apart, sifted through, and refitted with unforgiving precision. The job took weeks to complete and could be ruined by a single misplaced part.
Faking an escape, tracking a trained killer back to Germania, infiltrating the resistance, and leading the SS to its stronghold. This was no simple fix, but it was a solution. If Felix pulled this off, his family—Mama and Papa and Adele—would be safe.
And the girl… if Felix’s veins hadn’t been so thinned out from blood loss, they would have kept boiling. But he was exhausted, and his anger was sinking into something deeper. The girl had lied to him, used him, made him care, left him for dead. The girl had tried to hurt his family.
The girl would pay for what she’d done.
Speaking of compensation… Felix jerked his chin at the television. “What about the ‘blood to pay’?”
The question had hardly left his mouth when the screen’s static vanished, giving way to a familiar scene: a National Socialist flag hanging above a chair. It was the same piece of furniture from Adolf Hitler’s weekly Chancellery Chats: high-backed, upholstered in velvet.
It was not empty.
The Führer sat as he usually did—meter-stick back, shoulders slightly turned like a portrait of some long-dead king. A pallid face and raging eyes bored into the camera.
It was a recording. It had to be. Even if the Führer had somehow managed to survive a point-blank shot to the chest, he wouldn’t be sitting up in a chair just hours afterward.
Yet when the Führer spoke, all resemblances to a ghost vanished. His words were as strong as ever, made of Krupp steel syllables. “My fellow countrymen. Our great empire of peace and purity is under attack. Earlier this evening, many of you witnessed a desperate attempt on my life—”
Felix stared at the screen, trying his best to believe.
Not a recording. Not a ghost.
Not even a scratch.
“The hand of Providence has, once again, protected me—”
“Mark my words, Herr Wolfe.” Baasch’s voice swelled over the Führer’s speech. He watched the television, a half smile breaking his face. “There will be blood. There will be more than enough. The world is about to drown in it.”
CHAPTER 10
Henryka’s map was beginning to change.
Cairo had been the first news to come through, at 1430 hours. The message Brigitte decrypted—letter by penciled letter—was simple:
Reichskommissar Strohm arrested. National Socialist forces surrendered. Republic of Egypt declared. More to follow.
The other operatives whooped and roared when Brigitte read them the news. Kasper smiled so hard his left cheek dimpled. Johann raised an imaginary glass. Cheers! Reinhard used another imaginary glass to clink it. Henryka took a marker to her operations map—its deep indigo ink blotting out Egypt’s borders.
One Reichskommissariat down. One and two half-continents’ worth to go.
More reports trickled in, creating a web of battle lines all across Henryka’s map in the form of thin yarn, held in place by thumbtacks. Riots were springing up across London and Dublin. Rome was burning. Violence had not yet broken out in Germania because the revolution there wore a uniform. Many of the mutinous generals had guided their regiments to key points throughout the city without trouble. Reiniger and his portion of the army had marched down the Avenue of Splendors all the way to the Volkshalle, where they were making quick, quiet arrests. Göring had already been apprehended, control of the Luftwaffe air force seized along with him. (According to the report, he’d been sitting in
his office, smoking a celebratory cigar at the news of his “promotion.”) Goebbels was still in Tokyo, which left just Bormann and Himmler unaccounted for.
The crimson tide was turning. Bit by bit, the red was ebbing away.
Adele was kicking the door again. The sound of her foot against steel provided a metronome for the map room’s work. THUD, THUD. Receive a transmission. THUD. Key the letters into the Enigma machine. THUD. Write down the decoded message. THUD. Type out notes. THUD, THUD. Relay the news to General Reiniger about the victory in Egypt. THUD.
Occasionally, Adele added words to her solo: “All of you are going to pay for this!” Henryka drowned out her cries with the clatter of typewriter keys, wondering if the girl ever got tired. She was mulishly stubborn. Almost as much as Yael.
This thought reminded Henryka that they still hadn’t heard from the girl. There’d been nothing in Yael’s mission protocol stating she had to report, and getting a message through on the run was almost impossible. Henryka looked up at Japan’s dark gray smattering of islands on the map.
Was she still in Tokyo? Surely by now she’d gotten out.…
“Henryka.” There was a strangeness in Kasper’s voice that made her look at him. His dimple was gone. The radio’s handset hung limp in his hands.
Brigitte’s pencil had dropped to the floor, but she made no move to pick it up. Reinhard and Johann wore shattered-glass stares. All four operatives were looking over Henryka’s shoulders, in the direction of the television.
When Henryka turned around, she saw why.
The Reichssender was back on the air. Adolf Hitler sat in front of the camera. Alive and, by all appearances, very well.
This was what he had to say: “My fellow countrymen. Our great empire of peace and purity is under attack. Earlier this evening, many of you witnessed a desperate attempt on my life. Victor Wolfe, in her feeble, feminine state of mind, was brainwashed into believing the world would be a better place without me in it. The hand of Providence has, once again, protected me against those who would seek to destroy our way of life. Despite their best efforts, I am not dead.