by Ryan Graudin
He was going to let them through.
It never ceased to amaze Yael, the moment when she realized she’d gotten away with her lies. The truck’s engine shuddered as she tucked her papers away. It’d been doing that lately. (Three thousand kilometers and counting was a lot to ask of a twenty-year-old machine.) The SS man had just finished giving them directions when the motor sputtered, stopped.
Dead.
The SS-Schütze motioned toward the hood. “Car trouble?”
“It’s an old truck,” Yael told him. She could hear her own pulse inside her eardrums. “This happens a lot.”
“I can take a look at it for you if you want.”
Having SS prodding beneath the hood of their smuggling truck was the last thing Yael wanted. Felix was due for another round of morphine and antibiotics soon, and she wouldn’t be able to signal the time to Luka without the patrol noticing. With the engine cut off, things were so quiet the soldier would hear a cough. Much less a scream.
She twisted the key, desperately hard. The ignition churned… several agonizing seconds… before it caught and held. The SS-Schütze waved them through the blockade.
—GO GO GO—
But the truck wasn’t going. Yael’s foot had to pump the gas pedal several times before the acceleration finally kicked into first, then second gear. She couldn’t tell if the ride’s roughness was due to the cobblestone street or the ailing engine.
Don’t die. Don’t die. Please, don’t die. Her prayer hung—unsaid on harp string breath—as they crawled through the town.
“That was too close.” Miriam cranked up her window. “What if it hadn’t started?”
Yael’s eyes darted to the rearview mirror, watching the SS men watch her. Their black uniforms and silver badges pulled—TOO SLOW—into the distance.
—TOO CLOSE NOT FAR ENOUGH AWAY—
The sight through the webbed-glass windshield wasn’t much more reassuring. Yael supposed that the town could have been charming, but it was impossible to tell. Its peak-roofed buildings were overwhelmed with swastika banners. Even more sinisterly strung were the bodies. Partisans and their boots dangled over the streets, hung from any available post. Mostly men, a few women. Some had crows on their sagged shoulders. All had the same handwritten sign looped around their bloating necks: I AM A TRAITOR TO THE REICH.
Yael tried not to count the corpses, but fifty-six was too many to ignore. Fifty-six lives and fifty-six deaths. Fifty-six signs meant to drain the hope and fight out of all who read them.
Even though all of them said the same thing, Yael read as many as she could. Each new declaration pressed her foot harder on the gas.
—HOPE HOPE FIGHT GO—
The engine kept coughing and smoothing out with each new injection of fuel, while they crawled through the morbid streets. At last, the motor managed to chug to the other side of town, onto what promised to become a quiet country lane. Within minutes, the townscape was already melting back into fields. Farmlands interrupted by lakes and bursts of trees. These passed in shades of silver and green as the speedometer gained momentum.
It was almost peaceful, this land. But no matter how quickly the truck’s wheels spun in their corroded wells, no matter how much Yael opened her window to let the spring air rip into the cab, the death they’d passed lingered. Spoiling her nostrils, curdling her mouth dry.
“Do you really think this truck is going to make it all the way to Germania?” Miriam asked a few kilometers later, when the vehicle began shuddering again. Yael somehow knew her old friend wasn’t talking about the engine.
This truck: a bunch of useless stabbed potatoes + Luka + Felix.
Yael frowned. They’d been over this. And over this. “Let’s just focus on getting to the safe house first. We can get things sorted there.”
But Miriam kept pushing: “All we’d have to do is drop them off outside one of these settlements. We can find a city with a medical facility for the Wolfe boy.”
“They’re in as much danger as we are. The SS arrested them in Tokyo because they thought the boys were a part of the assassination. Luka and Felix were being flown to the People’s Court—”
“Do you really think the People’s Court would choose to execute their double victor?” Miriam asked.
“Hitler executed thousands when the first Operation Valkyrie failed. Some inside his closest circles. There’s no reason a victor would be spared. Besides, the boys know our plan. If we dumped them on the side of the road, how long do you think it would take for the SS to punch it out of them?”
At this, the older girl relented. “We never should have brought them.”
Yael wished the smell of rotting flesh wasn’t so unforgettable. She wished she wasn’t driving toward hundreds more bodies. She wished that she didn’t have to keep throwing herself between her past and her present, Miriam and the boys.
Yael wished that, just for once, her life could hold a shade of normality.
“Tell me about your flat in Novosibirsk.” Yael had never lived in one. Basements and barn lofts and barracks, yes, but never a flat. “What color are the walls?”
It was a sudden shift in topic, but Miriam understood. (Of course Miriam understood.) “They were white when I moved in, but I found a can of bright blue paint and remedied that. It’s small, one room. I got a discount because I’m on the seventh floor and there’s no lift in the building. I have a brilliant view of the city and t-toned c-c-calves—”
This time, when the engine’s shaking peaked and Yael pumped an extra burst of fuel into its systems, it did not smooth out. It cut off instead, rolling to a standstill in the middle of the dirt lane. When Yael twisted the ignition, it groaned and wheezed and did not catch, did not catch, did not catch.
This time, it really was dead.
CHAPTER 30
Luka was along for the ride.
It was not pleasant.
Bathroom breaks (or any break, for that matter) were a luxury on the Fräulein Express, and whizzing into an empty canteen while lying on your side on roads rougher than smallpox skin was no easy feat. It didn’t help that Herr Wolfe was less than a lick away. Constantly crammed against Luka’s shoulder, breath annoyingly hot as he slept the days away under the influence of morphine. Luka was tempted to stick himself with the drug, just to escape this jumbling, diesel-filled misery, but the number of syrettes was limited, and they couldn’t afford to let Felix scream again.
He didn’t. Even when the mechanic’s morphine dose thinned and he woke, he was a man of few sounds. There was one constant question, though, whispered every single time: “Are we close?”
“Closer,” Luka always answered. He had no idea how close. The truck’s hidden compartment swallowed all sense of time. The slats in the wood were thick enough to let oxygen in, but too crowded with potato sacks to allow for any light. The paper-check patrol stops were becoming more frequent. Once or twice he thought he’d heard gunfire.
They were stopped now. The engine was running rough enough to wake Herr Wolfe from his sleep. “Something’s wrong,” he mumbled. “Don’t you hear it?”
“I hear you.” Luka scowled back through the dark. “And unless you want to become a bounty prize for some SS-Schütze, I suggest you keep the talking to a min—”
The engine cut off. And Luka’s words along with it.
Scheisse! He had no more breath in his lungs as he listened to the exchange between the fräuleins and what he figured was a patrol of some kind. It was a brief affair, ending as soon as the truck started again.
“This isn’t good,” Felix muttered when the vehicle began rolling. “It’s going to die again.”
Verdammt if that mechanic wasn’t right. His prophecy didn’t play out immediately—it took an entire half hour before the hum of gears shut off again. This time, there were no patrol voices. Just the churn of an ignition catching, stalling, dying all over again. A car door squealed open.
“Do you think we can get it farther into the trees? We’
re sitting ducks out here in the lane.” This voice, this logic, belonged to Yael.
“Not with all this extra weight in the back,” Miriam countered.
Miriam and Yael pulled the potato sacks away in record time, prying the false floorboards back so Luka could finally, finally breathe in air that didn’t smell like gasoline, piss, and wound juice. Neither fräulein mentioned the stench as they crouched over the opening. Both had changed their faces to look like local girls, and their sleeves were long enough to cover up any ink, but Luka found he could still tell them apart. It wasn’t the shades of the sweaters so much as their eyes. Windows to the soul, he’d heard them called once. Yael’s soul, whenever he looked into it, did not seem to hate his guts. Miriam’s was a different matter.
It was Yael who reached down to pull Luka out of the compartment. Their hands clasped, callused palms aligned. Her touch was all warmth against Luka’s skin, raising him up. He felt it long after she let go.
Not nothing, then.
Luka shoved his hand inside his jacket pocket and took a look around. They clearly weren’t in Muscovy anymore. Gone were the endless, edible pines, replaced by a country lane lined with beech and linden trees—leaves thin with spring. Not very good cover, Luka noted. No matter how deep we push.
“Felix?” Yael knelt over the truck-bed opening. “Can you examine the engine?”
The mechanic looked as if he could do nothing more than go back to sleep. Luka had seen dead houseplants with more perk. Somehow Felix found the energy to nod, managing his way into daylight with wincing movements.
The truck was a beast to move. It took all of them (minus Herr Wolfe) to shove it off the road, where, under Yael’s key-turning and Felix’s examination, it died another dozen noisy deaths.
“Engine’s not getting fuel.” Felix’s words were extra slow, fighting the opiates in his system. “That’s why it’s stalling.”
Yael slipped out of the cab, moved to join the rest of the group. “Something wrong with the lines?”
“Dirty carburetor is my best guess. I’d have to take it out and clean it to be sure.”
“You don’t need to be scrounging around an engine with your wounds,” Yael said. “I’ll do it if you tell me how. What do we need?”
“Tools. Time.”
“How long?” Miriam asked.
“Half a day.” Felix frowned. “Maybe more.”
Miriam looked at Yael, jaw square. “You and I can’t spare half a day. The safe house should have tools. Luka can help Felix patch up the truck while we finish our errand.”
“It’s only a few more kilometers up the road,” Yael said. “Will the truck make it that far?”
Felix shook his head. “Even if we can get past the hard start, it’s going to stall again. We won’t be able to limp it far.”
“How many kilometers is a few?” Luka asked.
“Five.” Yael thought for a moment and then added, “Or so.”
“No towns between here and there?”
“There shouldn’t be.” Her eyes met his. They were green this time. Fresh like the spring leaves around them. “Why?”
Luka pounded the truck with his fist. “Let’s push it.”
Oh, how he came to regret this suggestion. Bitterly. Sweatily.
Luka was perspiring from places he didn’t know had pores. New blisters nagged his heels, and he was working up a wicked thirst. One of his few comforts was that Yael was pushing alongside him. Hands to the bumper, sweater sleeves shoved high.
It was the first time he’d seen her markings in daylight. They were mesmerizing. Each wolf was unique. They ran at different gaits. One had its ears laid flat. Another was snarling. He could tell they meant something, but he was too afraid to ask. Afraid because he wanted to know. Afraid because there was still something massive and unsaid between them.
Afraid because it was not nothing.
He kept pushing instead, packing all the fear and frustration of the past few weeks into his shoulders, shoving it away into the truck. More than a few times, they were passed by cars laden with fleeing Lebensraum families. Luka turned his head the opposite direction each time, and Yael tugged her sleeve to her wrist, but the vehicles’ inhabitants hardly spared the travelers a second glance. Nor did they stop to offer help. They had enough problems of their own.
It took two and a half hours to reach the farmhouse lane.
“This is it!” Yael yelled to Felix, who’d been in the cab steering while the other three pushed. “Turn here!”
“How can you tell?” To Luka, the turnoff looked like every other drive they’d shoved past. Gravelly. Lined with eager April weeds. Sloping up a verdammt hill.
“Henryka told me to look for those.” She jerked her chin to a pile of stones at the corner. They’d been stacked with careless care—strewn enough to be natural. Unusual enough to signal those who were looking. “This farm has long been a haven for U-boats.”
“Submarines?” Luka didn’t even have the extra energy to quirk his eyebrow. “Aren’t we a bit far from the ocean?”
“Jews in hiding.” It was Miriam, to his left, who said this.
Oh.
With the end in sight, Luka shoved extra hard. His shoulder blades were wings of fire by the time Felix pumped the brakes. It didn’t take long to realize something was wrong. The farmyard was too quiet—and there was that smell. Wet leather Scheisse. Fingers filled with pus. City squares filled with bodies.
Death.
Yael bristled and let go of the bumper, producing a pistol from who-knew-where. Miriam matched the motion, and the two women swept up the sides of their vehicle. Luka leapt into the truck bed, grabbing his jacket and the pistol it held. (Not his Luger, but an older Russian gun. His hands felt odd on it.) He hunched down by the cab, waiting for the first shot. The first yell.
It wasn’t what he expected. “All clear!”
Luka leapt out of the truck bed. Slipping on his jacket. Keeping his gun close.
The odor was coming from the front yard, beneath a cloud of flies. It was an Alsatian dog—stiff limbs, matted fur—wreathed in weeds. Luka only ventured close enough to the decaying animal to tell that it had been shot through the skull.
The farmhouse was a larger carcass. The front door hung on its hinges like a child’s loose tooth. Inside was a mess of things broken just for the hell of it. China smashed. Bookshelves overturned. Mattresses upended. Floorboards plied. Luka couldn’t step anywhere without crunching glass as he followed the sound of Yael’s voice into the foyer.
“This is the safe house?” he asked.
“It was.” Yael knelt on the floor, examining a family portrait that had been dashed there. The Alsatian from the yard sat in the corner of the photograph. A family stood above him: father, mother, son, son, daughter, son. Faces framed by jagged glass.
“That dog is days dead.” Yael placed the picture back where she’d found it. “The Gestapo are long gone.”
“That’s no guarantee they won’t be back.” Luka looked out the window, as if the secret police were driving up the lane now. Trench coats and treacherous Lugers. All he saw was the fly cloud and Felix, still sitting in the truck’s cab.
“It’s not,” Yael agreed. “But we’re only a few hundred kilometers from Germania. SS and Gestapo are everywhere. This farm is the best chance we have of hiding you and Felix while Miriam and I complete the first part of our mission.”
What was the first part of their mission? Luka knew the bits-and-snatches answer: labor camp, doctor, Experiment 85, changing faces, something about fake Führers. But nothing his imagination could cobble together could explain the expression on the fräulein’s face: Real fear. White fear.
Seeing the emotion on someone as steel strong, leather tough as Yael made Luka’s stomach churn. “Exactly how long is this side trip going to take?”
“Stay in the barn. Help Felix fix the engine. If we’re not back in twenty-four hours…” Yael didn’t have to finish her sentence. Not when she w
as surrounded by smashed shelves and pictures of missing children.
“What do I do then?” he asked.
“You’re a survivor.” Yael rose to her full height. Her words weren’t cruel, just pointed enough to sting. “You’ll figure it out.”
“I don’t want to. I mean…” Luka paused. What did he mean?
Why was he here, in the middle of this ruined safe house?
The answer stood in front of him. Green eyes, straw hair, face in the shape of a heart. Some of her makeup had sweated off while pushing the truck. Luka could see hints of bruises beneath; faint yellows and browns were all that remained from SS-Standartenführer Baasch’s hits. “Tell me you’re coming back,” he said.
Yael’s lip twitched. “You worried about me?”
Yes, actually. It was more than worry. The thought of Yael not returning was unbearable, and not because there were SS sharks and wilderness wolves circling, but because the fräulein was making his cardiac muscles feel. (Even now Luka wanted to reach out and run his fingertips along the edge of her jaw, the way he had that night in the cabin.)
“Just… tell me. Please.” His hands hung—too leaden, too fearful—at his sides. “I need to hear you say it.”
“I thought all Double Victor Löwe needed was a cigarette.” It felt like a test, the way Yael said this, stringing out each syllable on a whisper.
Had that ever been the case?
Not behind Herr Kahler’s shop. What eleven-year-old Luka needed when he took that first (terribly bitter) swallow of smoke was to be himself. What about all those evenings with Adele, when the air around them was filmy with chain-smoking haze and tickling with laughter? All he’d needed then was to be heard, understood, known in a way ten thousand Sieg heil posters could never display.
Cigarettes were just tar-stick crutches, and, Luka realized, he hadn’t been itching for a smoke in days. Maybe Baasch had burned the craving out of him. Or maybe, just maybe, he’d found something better.
Someone better.
“I—” he started to say, when Miriam appeared in the doorway.
The young woman was still holding her gun, and even though she was wearing the same skirt-and-sweater getup as Yael, she looked every centimeter a soldier. “Barn’s clear. No animals. We should move the truck in there so the boys can start cleaning out the carburetor. You and I need to head out soon if we want to make it to the camp by sundown.”