I checked to see that Anton was lying safely across the backseat before I slid into the front seat. Boris looked at me in shock. I remembered that I was dressed as a boy.
“Thank you for coming,” I said through lips swollen from Röhm’s kiss.
“You are full of surprises.” Boris put the automobile in gear. He drove for a moment before saying, “Maybe someday we can drive somewhere like normal people.”
“We will be followed.” I looked out the back window. “By the man who was standing next to the car.”
Boris looked in his rearview mirror. “Two of them,” he said. “But their car is not as powerful as mine.”
I kept watch as Boris accelerated. “They are still following us.”
“No one follows me.” Boris began to speed in earnest. The car engine groaned with delight at being let loose to run. Anton laughed in the backseat. I closed my eyes.
Boris cut the wheel sharply to the right and careened the wrong way down a one-way street. A car honked at us, but Boris drove up onto the sidewalk. Metal screeched on the bottom of the car. I held on to the dash and hoped that we escaped our pursuers before we ran into something or someone.
I looked back. The other car was having trouble maneuvering around the car that had honked at us.
Boris yanked the wheel to the left. I feared the car might roll over. I gasped when my wounded side slammed against the door.
Anton’s head popped up out of the back. “Stay down, Anton,” I said, and he disappeared behind the seat.
Boris accelerated and made for a main road. I glanced back. Our pursuers were no longer in sight.
“They’re gone,” I said.
“Let’s put a little more distance between us.” Boris shot past a white-gloved policeman, who waved his hands and blew his whistle at us.
Anton glanced back at the policeman. He and Boris laughed together.
“You are enjoying this,” I said to Boris.
“What’s wrong with that?” Boris asked. “I’ve never had a chance to enjoy this car as much as I should.”
“Faster!” screamed Anton, and Boris obliged.
I ripped off my Nazi shirt, emptied the pockets, and flung the shirt out the window. I rubbed spirit gum and hair off my upper lip.
Boris slowed. “I think we are not being followed anymore.”
I pulled off my trousers and threw them after the shirt.
“Somehow, this isn’t how I thought I’d see you naked again.” Boris looked down at me with a grin.
“We haven’t much time.”
Boris raised an eyebrow. “You have another appointment?”
“I’d hoped not.” I bit my lip. “But I do.”
“What’s our destination?”
I gave him Sarah’s address while pulling on a dress and stockings from my suitcase, glad to be a woman again. As I’d hoped, my suitcase had been rifled through. I’d known what Röhm’s men would do the instant Röhm said my name in the dark room. They knew the suitcase contained a set of tickets to Hamburg. I smiled, thinking of them staking out the train station.
At Sarah’s apartment I retrieved a set of plane tickets, a forged visa for England, and two forged passports from her mailbox where I had hidden them earlier that day. I checked the clock in Sarah’s apartment. We barely had enough time to get where we needed to go.
Again Boris drove like a madman, and not much later we parked at Tempelhof Airport.
“Thank you.” My hand stroked my suitcase. Inside were false papers I’d had created at Tegel prison that morning, for twenty packs of cigarettes and three gold pieces. No one knew about them but me and Herr Silbert, the forger. Anton and I would have to leave England before Röhm found us there. I was not certain where we would go.
Röhm would not think I had money for plane fare. I hoped that he would waste time looking in Hamburg because of the tickets I’d planted in the suitcase. I’d known his men would search it.
Boris reached in the backseat and brought back a cloche hat. “It’s Trudi’s, but I know she won’t miss it. Your hair looks terrible.”
“I thought it rather dashing.” I put the hat on and looked in the mirror. I looked like a woman again. A woman with no breasts.
“Maybe if I were that sort.” Boris’s lips smiled, but his brown eyes were sad.
I ran my hand along his close-shaven jaw. “I am grateful you’re not.”
“Call me when you arrive, so I know you’re safe.” He paused and nervously licked his lips. I leaned over and kissed him once, lightly. I did not dare kiss him too long, because I could not be tempted to stay. “I’ll be in London in August, for a finance conference.”
“I could meet you, if we’re there.” My heart sunk. We would not stay long in London.
“If you’re not there, I’ll be at another conference in New York in December.”
I smiled. “You are a world traveler.”
Boris reached an arm around the nape of my neck and kissed me slowly and gently. It hurt, because of the damage that Röhm had done to my mouth, but I did not want him to stop. “Hannah,” Boris said in surprise. “Your lips are bleeding.”
I looked into his worried eyes. “It’s a long story.”
Anton climbed into the front seat. “I like stories.”
Boris moved over to his side of the seat.
I handed Anton Winnetou the bear. “He missed you.”
Anton grabbed the bear and hugged him. “What is wrong with his eyes?”
“They see magical things,” I told him. “Take good care of them.”
Anton nodded gravely.
Boris looked down at Anton, who held the bear and stared at us suspiciously. “I have a gift for you, brave little man.” He pulled a brown-wrapped parcel from the backseat. “I’d hoped you could open it at my house.”
I bit my lip, and Boris cleared his throat. “Open it on the plane,” I said. “We do not have time to open it now.”
We trotted across the tarmac, Boris on one side, holding my hand and my suitcase, and Anton on the other, clutching my free hand. How I wished that I could hold on to both of them. I squeezed Boris’s hand, the one that I would have to let go of.
“Do you need money?” Boris asked. “For traveling?”
I shook my head. “We are well provided for.”
When we reached the stairs that led to the plane Boris kissed me for the last time, long and slow, blotting out any trace of Röhm. I never wanted him to stop, but eventually I pulled back.
He ran one hand down my cheek.
“If things had been different.” I traced my finger across his lips. “I would have stayed.”
“If things had been different,” he answered. “I would have insisted.”
“But things are not different.”
“Will you ever be able to come back to Germany?”
“I suspect Röhm won’t give up on his son easily.”
Boris nodded. “I could not give up on my child easily either.”
I stepped out of his arms. “Nor can I.”
Boris sighed. “I don’t expect you to.”
“Excuse me, miss,” said a burly man in coveralls. “I have to roll away the stairs now. You must get on if you’re taking this flight.”
I nodded and turned toward the stairs so that Boris would not see me cry. I clutched the handrail and climbed the stairs. I had to get through this.
At the top of the stairs, I turned around. Boris lifted one hand. I waved back through eyes blurred with tears. I might very well never see him again, and there was no chance that we would ever have a life together. It felt like losing Walter all over again.
Anton jumped up and down and waved his red silk handkerchief. “Until our trails cross again,” he called.
Wind tore the handkerchief out of Anton’s hand, and he cried out.
“It’s gone,” I said, as he turned to go down the stairs.
“But it’s the last thing you gave me, before—”
“It won’
t be the last thing anymore, I promise.”
Anton looked uncertain as I pulled him into the plane. “You are safe now,” I told him. “We are safe, and we will have many years together.”
As the door to the plane closed, I hoped that I had told him the truth.
The engine noise changed to a high-pitched whine, and I realized, for the first time, that I was afraid of flying. I clutched the arms of my seat. Soon I would be leaving the ground. I would be leaving behind all that was familiar in my life with a small boy I barely knew.
Anton, unaware, plastered his face against the window to watch the ground rushing by. We rose into the clouds, away from Berlin, away from Boris and the life I might have had with him, and away from Röhm, at least for now. I wondered how long we could stay ahead of Röhm, if he tried to find us.
After a few minutes of watching clouds, Anton unwrapped his gift from Boris. All three volumes of the Winnetou series by Karl May. I covered our laps with my peacock-green scarf and settled down to read him the first volume, the one he knew by heart.
Glossary
Abitur. German equivalent of a high school diploma.
absinthe. Bitter alcoholic drink made with wormwood that was banned in Europe and the United States because it was said to cause insanity. It is now legal again in some parts of the United States and Europe.
Alexanderplatz. Central police station for Berlin through World War II. Also called the Alex.
Bahnhof. Train station or subway station.
Berliner weisse. Pale wheat beer made in Berlin. It is usually mixed with a shot of raspberry or woodruff syrup.
Berolina. Tour company in Berlin.
El Dorado. Gay bar in Berlin that was popular during the 1920s and early 1930s, closed by the Nazis, and reopened in the 1990s.
Ernst Röhm. Early member of the National Socialist party and close friend to Adolf Hitler, often credited with being the man most responsible for bringing Hitler to power in the early days. Openly gay.
Hall of the Unnamed Dead. Hall in the Alexanderplatz police station that showed framed photographs of unidentified bodies found by the police.
Horst Wessel. Young Nazi turned into a martyr by the Nazi party after being killed by a Communist. A song he wrote, “The Horst Wessel Song,” became the Nazi party anthem.
jawohl. Emphatic form of yes.
Kaiser. Leader of Germany before the founding of the Weimar Republic. After World War I, the last Kaiser, Wilhelm II, abdicated his throne and fled to the Netherlands.
Kinder, Küche, Kirche. Children, kitchen, church. Policy of the Nazi party on where women belonged.
Kölnisch Wasser. Popular German cologne created in the early 1700s. Literally translated as “water from Cologne” in English and “eau de cologne” in French. Still sold today.
Kommissar. Rank in the police department similar to a lieutenant.
loden green. Grayish green color usually found in traditional Bavarian wool clothing.
Mosse House. Building that housed the Berliner Tageblatt, where Hannah Vogel worked. It was damaged during the Spartacus Uprising in Berlin in 1918 and restored by Erich Mendelsohn, a famous German architect. The building was again damaged during World War II and restored in 1990.
National Socialist German Workers party (Nazi party). Party led by Adolf Hitler that eventually assumed control of Germany.
Paragraph 175. Paragraph of the German penal code that made homosexuality a crime. Paragraph 175 was in place from 1871 to 1994. Under the Nazis, people convicted of Paragraph 175 offenses, which did not need to include physical contact, were sent to concentration camps, where many of them died.
Peter Kürten. Serial killer from Düsseldorf. He was arrested, tried, and guillotined shortly before the novel takes place. Hannah Vogel would have covered his sensational trial.
pfennigs. Similar to pennies. There were 100 pfennigs in a Reichsmark.
Reichsmark. Currency used by Germany from 1924 to 1948. The previous currency, the Papiermark, became worthless in 1923 due to hyperinflation. On January 1, 1923, one American dollar was worth nine thousand Reichsmarks. By November 1923, one American dollar was worth a little more than four trillion Reichsmarks. Fortunes were wiped out overnight. In 1924, the currency was revalued and remained fairly stable until the Wall Street crash in the United States in 1929. When the novel takes place, one American dollar was worth 4.23 Reichsmarks.
Reichstag. Elected legislative assembly representing the people of Germany.
Schultheiss pilsner. Pale lager brewed at the Schultheiss factory in Berlin.
Schutz Staffel (SS or Blackshirts). Nazi paramilitary organization founded as an elite force to be used as Hitler’s personal bodyguards. Led by Heinrich Himmler.
Sturm Abteilung (SA, Brownshirts, or storm troopers). Nazi paramilitary organization that helped intimidate Hitler’s opponents. Led by Ernst Röhm.
Tempelhof Airport. Famous airport in Berlin. It was remodeled under the Nazis, used in World War II, and became the central airport for the Berlin Airlift of 1948. It is currently slated to be shut down.
Wannsee. Both a borough in Berlin and a pair of linked lakes. It is a well-known swimming and recreation spot in Berlin, with one of the largest inland beaches in Europe. Wannsee, however, is best known because it was at a villa on this lake that senior Nazi officials came up with the “final solution to the Jewish problem” (i.e., the murder of all of the Jews in Europe) on January 20, 1942.
Weimar Republic. Name given to the German government from the end of World War I until the Nazi takeover (1919–1933).
Wertheim department store. Large department store chain in Germany. The store in the novel was one of the largest department stores in Berlin at the time. The Nazis later seized the business, as the Wertheims were Jewish. In 2006, Wertheim’s heirs successfully sued another department store chain that purchased the store after World War II. The property in the settlement is now valued at 350 million dollars.
Zehlendorf. Wealthy borough in Berlin. Boris’s house is on Kronprinzen Avenue in this borough, later renamed Clayallee to honor General Clay, the American general who ordered the Berlin airlift in 1948.
Author’s Note
A Trace of Smoke is set in Berlin in 1931, the year Germany was lost to the Nazis. Although the characters are mostly fictional, their world is based on meticulous research. When I lived in Berlin for three years in the mid- and late 1980s, I became fascinated by the city, its history, and the German language. I graduated from high school and finished a semester of college there. When I chose 1930s Germany as the topic for my senior history thesis at Carnegie Mellon University, I remembered the city I loved, and a pink triangle I’d seen at the Dachau concentration camp that showed gays were imprisoned there. In 1989, I began to research what had happened to them. It was difficult, as not much had been written about it. When I returned to the topic years later to write this novel, I was pleased to discover a wealth of useful primary and secondary sources.
Many places in the novel existed as I described them. The novel opens with the main character viewing her dead brother’s picture in the Hall of the Unnamed Dead. This hall in the basement of the Berlin police station at Alexanderplatz where pictures of unidentified corpses were displayed was hauntingly described in a 1923 newspaper article by novelist Joseph Roth, in What I Saw: Reports from Berlin 1920–1933.
The newspapers Hannah longs to hide behind, and many other visual details, appear in the movie Berlin: Symphony of a City. This 1927 documentary shows a day in the life of Berlin, filming everyday Berliners going about their business from early in the morning until late in the night. The newspaper she works for, the Berliner Tageblatt, was published by the Mosse House, which looks as I described. I don’t know if they carried details from the trial of the Vampire of Düsseldorf, one of the earliest documented serial killers, but many German newspapers in mid-1931 covered this trial.
Hannah’s apartment is similar to the mother’s in the opening scenes of Fritz L
ang’s movie M, which was released shortly before my story starts. I saw comparable apartments while visiting student friends in Kreuzberg, a neighborhood in Berlin, in the late 1980s.
The gay club where her brother sings, the El Dorado, existed in 1931, became a Nazi political headquarters in 1933, and is currently a gay bar again. I first came across it while doing research for my history thesis. Numerous pictures of its exterior exist on the Internet, and Mel Gordon’s Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin contains photographs of the interior, as well as pictures of dancers and letters from the time, describing the activities there.
When I lived in Berlin, I often shopped at the Wertheim department store, but wasn’t aware of its complicated history until I decided to send my main character there to face the Nazis. There are numerous pictures available of the department store on Leipziger Strasse. Its fascinating history—it was stolen from its Jewish owners by the Nazis, ended up being owned by the Communists in East Germany, and was recently the subject of a court battle by Wertheim’s heirs—is documented online and in newspaper articles.
Ernst Röhm really did exist. He helped Hitler come to power and was one of his closest friends. A charismatic soldier decorated several times in World War I, he expanded the Sturm Abteilung (the storm troopers) in three years from eighty thousand men to over four million. He was unashamedly gay and was prosecuted for it in 1932, on the basis of sexually explicit letters similar to those in the novel, although less graphic. These letters were leaked to the press during histrial for offenses against Paragraph 175 and were published in the Munich Post in 1931 and 1932. He was acquitted. I was lucky enough to find and study one of the original copies of his 1928 autobiography at Berkeley’s Doe Library. I don’t think it’s ever been translated into English or even published using modern German fonts. His tendency to staff his offices with attractive young men was commented on by socialite and journalist Bella Fromm in Blood and Banquets and a visit he made to the El Dorado is described in Sefton Delmer’s autobiography, The Counterfeit Spy. There is no evidence that he fathered a child. All of the encounters he has in the novel are fictitious.
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