12:30 a.m.—Between Leer and Berlin, Germany
The transformation had been swift.
After a quick clean-off and a splash of Maria’s perfume, which now permeated the car, Emma had changed into a knee-length silk dress, a short fur coat like Maria’s, and shoes with heels. Her hair fell to her shoulders, still damp from her freezing sponge bath. Using a small mirror, she’d even applied a touch of lipstick and blush at Maria’s insistence.
If by chance they were stopped by the authorities on their way to Berlin, Maria wanted it to appear inconceivable that any of them could have arrived that night as a stowed-away foreign invader. Maria would simply explain that Emma was visiting from Munich and that they were sisters—a lie Gottfried wagered would never be doubted, given how much they resembled each other. This included their blue eyes, their high cheekbones, and their blond hair. “Twins would be more believable,” he said, though at five feet five inches, Maria was a couple of inches shorter than Emma, her nose broader, her chest fuller.
“Did Nash say anything more about which feeding area you should go to in the Tiergarten to meet his contact in the red hat?” Maria asked. “Because there are dozens of possibilities.”
“He didn’t offer up any more information than that,” Emma said. She could feel the defensiveness in her voice. “I just assumed he was referring to the Victory Column, where you, Alina, and I used to play among the hundreds of pigeons.”
“I’d guess the same,” Maria said. “But I can tell you that times have changed. Most sane people don’t waste their crumbs feeding birds—they eat the birds. And Hitler moved his victory monument just before the war. It was part of his plan to remake Berlin into Germania—a grander version of Paris that would become the capital of his global empire. The monument is now on the Tiergarten’s west side, but it doesn’t attract as many people as it once did. Berliners are increasingly skeptical of anything linked to the word ‘victory.’ ”
Emma sighed, chastising herself for assuming anything. “We have less than a day and a half to figure out what Everett was trying to say.”
“Until now, I thought the rumors in the streets about a ‘wonder weapon’ were a Nazi ploy to keep people hopeful and loyal in the face of looming defeat. But if this disintegration bomb is as real as you say, Hitler could win.” Maria paused. “We have to find this Red Hat.”
Emma could see the changes in her cousin. Maria seemed hardened. She still had her warm heart and humor, but there was an edge now—understandably. As Emma caught glimpses of the devastated countryside through her window—destroyed homes, twisted rail lines, and crumbling roads—she wondered how Maria and Gottfried could laugh about anything. She knew she’d stopped laughing for at least two years after Axel was taken from her.
“Maria, why did you decide to stay?” Emma asked. “Alina never told me.”
“Alina never knew the real reason,” Maria said.
Emma looked at her cousin with surprise. “I thought you two shared everything.”
“Yes, but in this case, because Alina is my sister, I couldn’t tell her the truth.” She cleared her throat, leaning forward to look out the front windshield. “Gestapo roadblocks aren’t usually a concern for us, but because you don’t have documentation yet we’re hoping to avoid one tonight. Every citizen has to travel with official photo identification, which also states whether they are from the ‘superior’ Aryan race—or Jewish. Our group uses IDs from dead bodies and we replace the photo, or sometimes we just forge an entirely new document. Once you have the right ID, you can get ration tickets for food and clothes, and move around somewhat freely, assuming you aren’t Jewish.”
“How will I get my ID?” Emma asked.
“Our colleague Peter is forging yours as we speak,” Maria said. “As soon as we arrive back at our base, he’ll take your photo.”
“Thank you for arranging that, Maria.” Her cousin nodded. “So, back to why you chose to stay in Berlin . . .”
Maria sighed. She looked away briefly, out her window this time, her tone softening as her words began to tumble out. “You know, we adored our Oma Hanna—do you remember her? Our grandmother on our mother’s side?” Emma nodded. “She was always a feisty, lovable force in our lives. My grandfather died a decade ago, leaving Oma to fend for herself. She chose to stay in Berlin, even though the rest of us had left. She couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.”
Maria smiled weakly, remembering Oma’s determination.
“When I was here after the paranursing mission, I thought I’d track her down—make sure she was all right, maybe persuade her to come back with me to England. But I couldn’t find her. She had moved from her flat and none of her neighbors knew where she’d gone. I had no papers at the time, so I had to stay discreet to avoid being caught. I’d almost given up looking when I came across one of Oma’s oldest friends, Bertha Markum. When Bertha recognized me, she started crying. She told me that my grandmother had been ‘taken.’ ”
Maria looked into her cousin’s eyes. “Do you know what that means, Emma?”
“By the Nazis, to jail?”
“Yes, but not to jail,” Maria said, her voice more distant now. “Oma was cooking dinner with Bertha in her flat one night when there was a fierce knock at the door. The Gestapo told her she had just fifteen minutes to pack a suitcase. Oma was seventy! Why would they want her? Bertha said Oma agreed to leave but asked to use the lavatory first. Once on her own, she tried to escape through a window from the second floor. But they wrestled her back in. The next day, another family moved into Oma’s fully furnished flat. Bertha learned that Oma Hanna had been forced onto a train headed north for occupied Latvia. I later learned that’s where the Nazis were testing mobile gassing units before installing more permanent fixtures.”
Emma gasped. She reached out to touch Maria, who pulled away. They sat in silence before Emma spoke again. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “Does that mean the worst rumors are true?”
“Yes, they’re all true,” Maria said, her upper lip tight. “Our contacts have confirmed them. The greatest crime in history is being committed here, and no one is stopping it. Maybe only a third or so of Berliners know of the death camps, and many have risked their lives to help those being targeted. But most Germans remain clueless—because that’s how the Nazis want them.”
“How can anyone not know of the atrocities going on all around them?” Emma asked.
“The Nazis control all media. And to guard their ugliest secret they’ve placed their extermination camps outside Germany—mostly in Poland, far from prying eyes. Many of their top officials don’t even know about them.” Maria paused. “Ready for a shocker, Emma? I did a little digging: Oma Hanna’s parents were Jewish. They must have hidden their true identities for fear of persecution. But the Nazis somehow figured it out and arrested Oma for being a Jew—they don’t care if you practice the religion or not. Since Jewish lineage is determined by the mother, not only was my Oma Jewish but so was my mother—and therefore Alina and I are, too.”
Emma struggled to make sense of this. She and her cousins had been raised as devout Lutherans. She breathed deeply, trying to brace herself. “How many Jews have died, Maria?”
“A Jew named Rudolf Vrba escaped the Auschwitz camp in Poland earlier this year. He spread the word that hundreds of thousands of Jews, if not millions, have systematically been shot or corralled into large stalls and killed with lethal gas. They’re shipping Jews from across Europe to these camps.”
Emma blinked. “Millions?”
“I know—it seems impossible. The Nazis have been so efficient that Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda, declared last year that Germany’s capital was officially judenfrei—cleansed of every single Jew, meaning that we’d all been removed from the city. What he didn’t mention was that most of us have been murdered.”
“Thank God he was wrong about you, Mar
ia.”
“Exactly. Goebbels clearly wasn’t including me in his count, or thousands of other Jews like me who are hiding in Berlin and around the country.”
“So after learning about your Oma you decided to stay and fight?”
“How could I leave knowing what I knew? Knowing that I could make a difference here.”
Emma saw the tears in her cousin’s eyes, but Maria wasn’t going to let them fall. The pair sat, saying nothing more for several minutes. Gottfried filled the void with his humming—combining parts of Beethoven’s fifth and ninth symphonies.
Emma finally spoke. “No one else in the family knows about your Oma?”
“There’s nothing my family could do from England,” Maria said. “I’ll tell them someday, but for now it would destroy my mother to know that she’d left Oma to these Nazi wolves after she herself crossed the Channel for a new life.”
She hadn’t told Alina, either, Maria said, knowing that her sister would be devastated and might well want to come and fight herself. “But Alina lacks fighting skills—and I don’t want to lose another member of our family.”
“Tell me about your group here,” Emma said.
“It’s smaller than it once was. We’re only seven now, including my husband.”
“Husband! When did you marry?”
“When I had to,” Maria answered. “Gunter is considered Aryan. In Berlin, he runs a highly successful art gallery, one that is frequented by the most senior members of the Third Reich. But he hates the Nazis, so years ago he secretly began to gather a team to work against them. Over time, our team has had fifteen members. Our leader is extremely loyal to Germany—but Gunter believes Hitler is a traitor to what most Germans want.”
“If you’re only seven now, are your other members—”
“Dead? Yes. Those who’ve survived stay hidden, for the most part, while I hide in the open, coordinating. I keep my hair dyed Aryan blond. Herr Goebbels inspires my deception. He once said at a party I attended that if you tell a big enough lie and keep repeating it people will come to believe it. He did that with the Jews and with this war. And, if he can lie big, I can, too.”
“And what is your deception?”
“I play the role of an airy, happy-go-lucky aristocrat from Austria who fell in love with a cerebral Berlin art dealer.”
“And no one suspects what you’re actually up to?”
“People believe what they want to believe,” Maria said, a fleeting smile crossing her face. “They can’t get enough of me in high society. I flit around town in this Mercedes with my driver as though there is no war. Some people laugh at me, and others with me, because they want so desperately to laugh about something. And they tell me secrets in weak moments, usually after several drinks. At night, I share these secrets with my hidden friends and then we go and bring down a building, disrupt a rail line, or ‘attend to’ specific enemies—anything we can do to stop these monsters.”
Chapter 21
Friday, September 29, 1944
5:30 a.m.—Between Leer and Berlin, Germany
“Maria!”
Maria had fallen asleep in the back seat, as had Emma, but at the sound of Gottfried’s voice she sat bolt upright. “What is it, Gottfried?”
“It looks like a Gestapo checkpoint. I’ve never seen one here. We have no choice but to go through it.”
They were just an hour outside Berlin, having traveled six hours already. Emma roused herself from a deep sleep.
“Emma, the Gestapo are different from normal police,” Maria said. “They usually don’t wear uniforms, they tend to operate covertly, and they’re focused on crimes against the state, not on common criminals. Let me and Gottfried do the talking and we should be fine.”
The car rolled up to the checkpoint. Two beat-up black Mercedes 260D sedans sat in the middle of the road, a pair of Gestapo officers between them, both in black suits and the typical outerwear of the Gestapo—long leather coats and trilby hats.
Emma reached into her bag for her gun. She placed the weapon inside the inner pocket of her fur coat, just as she’d seen Maria do. Gottfried rolled down his window.
“I am Criminal Director Rolf Berg. Where are you coming from?” the graying, jowly officer asked Gottfried.
“Brinkum,” Gottfried answered.
“And why were you there?”
“We were buying a painting. My employer owns an art gallery in Berlin, perhaps you know of it—the Perfekt Gallery.”
“I can’t afford art, and, no, I’ve never heard of it,” the rotund officer said. He leaned in, looking past Gottfried, gazing through his spectacles at Maria and Emma, eyeing them carefully in their short silk dresses and high heels. Berg’s thin, redheaded report stood yards away, holding back a Doberman.
“Show me your identity cards,” Berg commanded.
Maria threw her fur coat around her shoulders, opened the car door, and got out. She bounded toward the officers, introducing herself, her voice light and warm.
“I am Maria Hildebrand, wife of Gunter Hildebrand, owner of Perfekt. I assure you this intervention isn’t necessary.”
“Oh, but it is, Frau Hildebrand,” Berg responded. “One of our agents alerted us that someone arrived hurriedly by water at Leer and fled with two others in a car suspiciously similar to this one. Please present me with identification for the three of you immediately. And you, driver, open the trunk—now!”
Maria retrieved her purse from the car, whispering “Stay put” to Emma. Gottfried pulled out his identification and exited the car, Emma seeing for the first time just how tall and wide he was. He made his way with Maria to the back trunk, the large, brawny dog snarling and barking at them as they moved.
Emma swiveled toward the rear window, straining to see.
The freckled junior officer pulled out his gun, holding it low in one hand, the leash restraining the angry Doberman in his other. The boy appeared to Emma to be just out of his teens, nervous and eager to use his weapon.
Emma listened as Gottfried opened the trunk, showing Berg the Adolf Wissel painting he said Maria had purchased in Brinkum. There was silence, followed by the sound of the art being tossed back into the trunk.
“Please,” Maria said, “such a painting must be treated with care.” Emma heard Berg’s hand slap her cousin’s face.
“Don’t speak that way to me,” the officer said.
Emma hesitated, thinking. She grabbed her bag, opened her door, and stepped into the cool, dark air. She pushed her dress down as far as possible toward her knees before striding to where the others stood.
“I am the one causing the problems here,” Emma said, introducing herself. “Our driver didn’t get to fully explain our whereabouts. My sister was good enough, after buying her painting in Brinkum, to retrieve me in Leer, where I was visiting a dear friend who took me boating today. I was indeed chased by someone, which scared us all, but I assure you that our actions were only honorable.” The officers looked at Emma quizzically, clearly contemplating whether her story might make sense in light of the limited information relayed to them.
Emma turned to Berg. “May we speak privately?” The criminal director seemed intrigued by this request, coming, as it did, from an attractive woman who wasn’t wearing a ring.
“Criminal Assistant Dunkle,” Berg instructed, “you and your dog, guard these people.”
Maria and Gottfried glanced at each other with concern as they watched Berg and Emma walk away behind the officers’ sedans in the roadway.
After they had moved out of sight, Emma spoke first. “I have something for you,” she told Berg. He grinned, wondering what this sweetly perfumed blonde had in mind; his wife certainly hadn’t given him anything in years. Emma raised her rucksack, balancing it on her exposed knee. She directed Berg to open one of the bag’s outside pockets.
“This is l
ike Christmas,” Berg said, laughing. “Okay, Emma, let’s see what you have for me.”
She didn’t like the overly familiar way he used her first name. She’d only provided it to preempt his asking for her last name—which Maria hadn’t yet shared with her.
Berg’s chubby hand began to untie the leather strings keeping the pocket tightly closed. He speculated to himself just how many Reichsmarks this beautiful maiden thought would be enough for him to allow her and her two companions safe passage to their destination. Certainly none of his superiors had paid him anything extra or shown him any kind of appreciation for his excellent work, something that his wife pointed out to him almost every day.
As Berg’s fat fingers fumbled at the strings, Emma held her breath. She was gambling here. Nash said the coin would somehow help her. She knew he’d intended her to use it with his contact, but she had nothing else to trade with Berg and the situation was dire. If she didn’t survive the trip to Berlin, the coin would be useless to her anyway.
The whites of Berg’s eyes glowed as his fingers withdrew the large coin. He peered into his hand, flipping the gold coin back and forth, massaging it, bringing it right up to his spectacles to take in all the details, a smile creeping across his wide face.
At least I’ve caught his interest, Emma thought.
The criminal director’s body suddenly went rigid. He took a full step backward, his back upright, his chest out. Emma prepared herself to dive out of the way and grab her weapon if he went for the gun in his exposed holster.
“Heil Hitler!” he exclaimed, his hand meeting his forehead before his fingers launched out toward her.
Seeing Berg value her gold currency so highly made her realize why Nash had given it to her.
Now she wanted it back.
“Where did you get this?” Berg asked her politely, his tone notably more respectful.
“A special friend gave it to me,” she said.
“I’m sure,” he said. “How special?”
“Of the highest rank.”
Weapons of Peace Page 19