“We’re coming.” Yael nodded, then looked back at Luka. “What was it you were going to say?”
“Nothing.” At least, nothing that could be spilled with Comrade Jumbly Name listening. Nothing he couldn’t tell Yael later, when they were alone, because she was going to come back. She’d always come back. (Her bruises, his being here, were both testament to that.)
Luka rolled his still-burning shoulders and started toward the truck. “Let’s get this over with.”
CHAPTER 31
Felix’s good hand was almost as white as his bandaged one as it gripped the steering wheel, driving without going anywhere. He stared at their destination through the mud-flecked windshield.
When Yael first explained they were stopping at a safe house on the way to Germania, Felix’s hope grew an extra centimeter. It was a tiny, seedling thing, but he clung to it anyway. The idea that his parents were alive, unharmed, that Felix might see them soon, that not everything was broken (except perhaps his hearing) was too tempting not to believe.
“Not the one your parents are staying in,” she’d explained after seeing the look on his face. “It’s just a way station while Miriam and I retrieve information on Experiment Eighty-Five. You and Luka should be safe there.”
But there was nothing safe about this house. The place was a shambles: hinges hanging, beams splintered, glass everywhere. Darkness that did not belong to shadows streaked through long grass, rose up in the form of fly clouds. Yael gave this spot a wide berth as she marched back to the truck. She stopped by the open cab door.
“What happened here?” Felix knew the answer. He knew, he knew, he didn’t want it to be true.
“Gestapo.”
Some men came to the house. Gestapo. They took us.…
Ears did not lie, nor did his eyes. The farmhouse’s windows looked hungry for daylight: all ragged glass teeth and dim shadows. The home had been gutted.
Yael was wrong. No place was safe. Mama and Papa weren’t safe.
(If, if, if they weren’t already dead.)
“We’re going to push the truck into the barn so you and Luka can get to work repairing it. What do you need?” Yael asked.
“Assuming it’s the carburetor? A screwdriver, a rag…” There was only one item Felix really needed, though he couldn’t list it. All he could do was squint at the farmhouse and hope that somewhere in its squalor was a functional telephone.
“I’ll see what we can find,” Yael told him. “If all goes well, we should return from the camp around midnight. Can you get things fixed by then?”
Could he? The engine shouldn’t pose much of a problem. It was everything else that made Felix doubt. “I’ll try my best.”
His mechanical intuitions proved correct: the GAZ-AA’s carburetor was clogged with dirt, messing up the fuel flow. With two functional hands and his auto shop, Felix could’ve had the motor running again in a few hours.
It was going to take much longer than that.
He’d refused the latest dose of painkiller. Repairing an engine with only an Arschloch wielding a rusted screwdriver required clear thoughts. These came at a price: Felix’s not-there fingers throbbed as he redirected Luka’s attentions from the radiator. “Not that one!”
The screwdriver Yael found in the tractor shed might as well have been a sledgehammer the way the victor clattered through the engine. Indelicate to the max. “That’s the one you pointed at.”
“That is a radiator. Not a carburetor.”
“They all look the same to me.” The other boy scowled.
Felix didn’t see how every engine part could possibly look the same when they looked so very, very not the same. He shut his eyes, lids fluttering with the pain of yet another headache. “How did you ever get through five Axis Tours without learning basic engine parts?”
“It’s easier to fix stuff when you have a fleet of mechanics catering to your every whim.”
As opposed to just one mechanic? Felix bit the question back. If they were going to sit here and argue, they wouldn’t get anything done.
Not that their current progress was looking so stellar. It took twenty minutes before Luka had a grasp on where the carburetor was and how to pry it free. With the way the victor was handling the tools, Felix estimated the task would take another fifteen minutes. At least.
Normally, such roundabout workmanship would’ve nursed a twitch in Felix’s temple (So much time wasted! So many screws scattered on the floor! Bah!), but now he welcomed it. Yael and Miriam had left the farm on foot over an hour ago. Luka’s preoccupation with the screwdriver afforded Felix an opportunity to search for a telephone without an audience.
“We’re missing some tools,” he told the victor. “I’m going to see if I can find some down at the farmhouse. You keep working on that. Try not to trigger any explosions.”
The clinking stopped. Luka looked up. “That can happen?”
Not really. But the clanging noise was worsening Felix’s headache. He was glad to leave it behind as he made his way across the overgrown farm. Days of rest and antibiotics had left his steps steadier than they’d been since… well, since Tokyo. Felix shuffled as quickly as he could past the plague of flies in the front yard, as well as the garden hose they’d need to siphon fuel from the GAZ-AA’s tank to clean the carburetor with. (He’d forgotten to request that tool, preoccupied as he was. No matter. He’d come back for it later.)
The inside of the house was worse than Felix had imagined. The way it had been torn apart—with such intentional, Gestapo wrath—added a frantic charge to his search. There was no phone in the foyer, just snapped table legs and glass shards that threatened to impale Felix should he fall. He kept close to the wall as he entered the kitchen. No phone in there either, only an abundance of flies, spoiling fruit, and a drawer of cutlery that had been yanked off its tracks—silverware everywhere.
Felix found the phone in the hallway, perched on its own shelf, intact, cable connected. He stopped and stared at the rotary dial. The house was horribly silent around him, reminding Felix that SS-Standartenführer Baasch was not his ally. The SS officer wasn’t even the lesser of a select number of evils. He was just the man with an iron heel above Felix’s family.
Because of this, Felix felt no guilt in picking up the receiver. Simply sheer terror. His stomach relived those fifteen terrifying seconds before the parachute: flip-flop falling as he spun through the numbers Baasch had given him. Salvation, damnation, for Adele, for any Wolfe who was left…
It was a direct-dial call, free of sweet-voiced operators. The person who answered was snapping. Brusque. “Yes? Who is this?”
“Sorry.” Felix had no idea why he was apologizing. He folded into a stutter. “I—I need to speak with Standartenführer Baasch. Is he available?”
“Who is this?” the voice on the other end repeated.
“Felix. Wolfe. He told me to call—”
“A moment.”
A grandfather clock sat at the end of the hall. Its glass plating had been smashed, and its weights had almost finished their long-wound, eight-day course, but the pendulum kept swinging, hands plodding around an elegantly scripted face. Felix watched its motion, mesmerized.
At least something still worked.
When the SS-Standartenführer got on the line, there were no hellos or how are yous. Just a single wheeze of breath before he asked, “Are you in position?”
“I want to speak to my parents.” Felix’s voice sounded much stronger than it felt. “I’m not telling you anything until I know they’re alive.”
There was a pause. Long enough to make Felix fear that Baasch would hang up the phone, sever their connection for good. Instead the SS officer grumbled, “Your father’s alive. I had him transferred to Germania as soon as I arrived so I could be more… personally invested in his questioning.”
“What about my mother?”
“You did not keep to the plans of your mission,” Baasch reminded him. “For that there are consequences. I
can’t say she didn’t suffer.”
Falling, falling. Everything inside Felix was falling. His heart ached high in his throat. All he could think of was Mama—standing over the kitchen sink, potato peelings clinging to her wrists as she hummed an absent tune. Mama—ever so patient, trying to teach Adele how to loop yarn over the knitting needles. Mama—who, even though she was never the same after May 2, 1950, still smiled when Felix brought her cups of tea in the evenings, walking slowly so as not to spill the scalding liquid on his coveralls.
Mama—gone.
“No,” Felix whispered, as if one word could make this untrue. But what was done could not be undone. What was broken could not always be fixed. Especially when death was involved.
“Your father is still with us, however. In fact, here he is now—”
“Felix? Son?” Papa’s voice, again. It sounded even more broken than before. Vocal cords unoiled, ground to pieces with grief. “Have you done what they asked?”
“I’m trying, Papa. I’m on my way to Germania now. I’ll be there soon. I’ll do what I have to do. You’ll be safe.”
“You need to hurry,” his father rasped. “These men—”
There was a rattling on the other end, the phone passing hands.
Back to Baasch: “Need I remind you, Herr Wolfe, this is not a negotiation. Are you in position?”
“Not yet—I—we jumped too early. But we’re coming. We’ll be in Germania in a day or two if your patrols don’t stop us—”
“My patience is wearing thin, Herr Wolfe. As is the Reichsführer’s. Take much longer and the deal will be off.”
“No! No, please!” Felix’s good hand tightened around the receiver. Tendons so frayed they felt ready to snap. “One of their leaders is named Erwin Reiniger. He’s a general—”
“I don’t need just one name, Herr Wolfe. I need all of them. Heads on a platter. This resistance needs to be stamped out so thoroughly it has no chance of ever rearing its head again. Do you see the time?” Baasch didn’t wait for an answer. “Mark it. You have thirty-six hours to get in position and contact me. Fail to do this, and the lives of your father and sister are forfeit.”
Felix was hurtling toward the earth. Terminal velocity: two hundred kilometers per hour. Salvation, damnation, salvation, damnation. He’d do anything, say anything, to stop it. “They have a plan. Something about a camp and retrieving information on Experiment Eighty-Five—”
“Herr Wolfe?” The voice that cut Felix off this time came from outside the tinny telephone speaker, accompanied by the crackle/clatter/crash of Luka Löwe’s boots through the foyer wreckage. “You in here?”
“I’m coming,” Felix whispered into the receiver. He’d just managed to set it back on the switch hook when the victor blundered into the hall. There was a large snub of grease on his nose.
“Nothing’s exploded. Yet,” Luka added. “What are you rooting around for?”
Nausea, shock, thirty-six hours sat on the tip of Felix’s tongue. His mother was gone, and the rest of his family would be next if he didn’t swallow these things back, lie through his teeth. “I need a toothbrush.”
“I appreciate fresh breath, but I don’t think it’s our priority right n—”
“We’ll need it to scrub out the carb bowl. I figured a toothbrush would be more thorough than the rag we have.”
The victor’s eyes narrowed at the dim hallway. “And you decided to look for one in here?”
“I was on my way to the bedroom.” Felix waved toward the grandfather clock—which was poised to chime the five o’clock hour. He hoped there actually was a bedroom back there. “Walking’s not exactly my strongest skill right now.”
Luka shoved his way down the hall. Within moments he was back. Frazzled red toothbrush in hand. “Anything else?”
“We need the garden hose,” Felix said, a little too loudly, trying to drown out the SS-Standartenführer’s threats in his head. They clamored anyway: THIRTY-SIX HOURS against his MIGRAINE. Thrashing like a man without a parachute.
“Right.” The victor tucked the toothbrush behind his ear. “Let’s go fetch it. The sooner we get this truck running the better.”
Felix couldn’t agree more.
CHAPTER 32
Dusk. Floodlights clashed against growing shadows. Death’s workday was coming to a close. Yael lay belly-down in a pine forest, eyes on the gravel road that snaked along the perimeter of the camp. Eleven years ago she’d walked this path as Bernice Vogt, hand in hand with Dr. Geyer’s nurse. Eleven years ago she’d run into these very trees, heart full of holes.
Yael wanted to run now. Even though she’d spent most of the afternoon pushing the truck and walking the long road here, her legs were twitching to the tempo of her iron voice.
—NOT SAFE RUN KEEP RUNNING DON’T LOOK BACK—
But she had to stay still. She had to look back.
Yael had to ignore the instincts that had kept her alive so many times.
How else would the world survive?
There was movement in the woods beside her. Darkness streaking through darkness, materializing into an Aufseherin—female overseer. The mere sight of her uniform—wool blazer and skirt, impractical cap, eagles everywhere—sent Yael’s insides into a tailspin, even after Miriam told her: “It’s me.”
As many times as Yael had looked into the mirror and seen a stranger, it was still unnerving to see the shift on her friend. She wondered if this was how Miriam had felt all those many years ago, when she’d discovered young Yael wearing her dead mother’s face.
“Success?” Yael asked, mouth dry.
The only way inside the camp was through the front gates. To walk this path, they needed aliases—convincing ones. Names and faces that belonged to actual guards. Miriam had gone to fetch these. It’d taken her a little under an hour.
Her friend nodded and began pulling smuggled clothes out from under her jacket. Shoes, hat, even hairpins… everything needed for a second Aufseherin outfit. “It’s a good thing these blazers are baggy.”
Night air nipped at Yael’s skin as she stripped the Lebensraum bride wear and pieced together the overseer’s uniform. Trading stocking for stocking. Skirt for skirt. “Who are we?”
Miriam fished a set of papers from her breast pocket. “My name’s Ingrid Wagner. Yours is Elsa Schwarz. Looked like this. Sounded like this.” Her voice box went squeaky thin, face shifting in the same moment. When Yael opened the woman’s booklet, she found that exact visage staring back: Stark cheeks. Eyes limpid, tinged with cruel.
Usually, when Yael changed, she tried to imagine the life of the skin she was wearing, letting it settle into her thoughts and speech. But Elsa Schwarz did not fit. Everything inside Yael squirmed against this woman.
“Can you see my bruises?” she asked, once the transformation was complete. She’d freshened her makeup before the trek here, but it was a delicate balance: powdering her face enough to hide Baasch’s battering, yet not so much as to look cakey.
“Your makeup’s fine.” Miriam melted back into Ingrid’s face as she smoothed Yael’s collar, pinned Elsa’s mousy hair just so. “Pinch your lips a little more. Make your eyes harder.”
“I know!” Yael snapped. Nerves. Too many nerves. Her guts felt akin to the camp’s fences—barbed and electrified. “I’ve been doing this longer than you have!”
Her friend’s hands froze. “You don’t have to do this.”
“We need this intelligence, Miriam. If we make a mistake and assassinate the wrong man again—”
“No.” Miriam swallowed. “I mean you, Yael.”
The buzz in Yael’s stomach jagged and leapt.
“You didn’t leave me, Volchitsa. I made you go. You were six years old. Six.” Her friend spit the number. “And I sent you out alone to face wolves so much larger than yourself. Lying to the guards, lying to Dr. Geyer… I can only imagine how terrifying that was. I won’t ask you to face that again. I can gather the intelligence myself.”
W
ait and watch in the pines. Leave Miriam without moving. Let someone else hold the torch for a while. These were such strange thoughts, because for so many years Yael had been the only one who could do the impossible. Changing things was her job, her burden to bear. Hers, hers, hers alone.
But she wasn’t alone anymore.
Yael shook her head. “I’m coming with you.”
“Are you sure?” Seeing so much concern on the face of an Aufseherin was eerie. It was all Miriam. Her sister. Her guide. No uniform or Roman nose could change that.
“Two sets of eyes and ears are better than one,” Yael told her. “As are two sets of pistols and knives. We go together.”
Walking back through those gates was the hardest thing Yael had ever done. Nothing in Vlad’s training had prepared her for this: returning to the edge of devouring, staring back at it, stepping in.
There wasn’t so much smoke this time. It crept out of the stacks, wreathing into the night sky with phantom fingers. The killing machine’s supply of bodies had thinned. By the turn of the decade, the central Reich had been officially declared free of Jews, but it wasn’t just Yael’s people the crematorium fires hungered for. Romani, Slavs, and other groups Hitler designated as Untermenschen kept the train cars clattering, though such transports were rare these days. According to Henryka’s documents, most of the camp’s current inmates were Aryans—homosexuals, political prisoners and their families, anyone the Führer deemed a threat to his New Order—condemned to a lifetime of hard labor. The furnaces remained to greet their withered end, once-roaring flames now a dull glow. Guards stood in their towers, high above, seeing all. Yael felt every one of their eyes and crosshairs on her changed skin. Marking her.
Miriam did not flinch when the SS-Sturmmann by the gate nodded at them, nor did she shudder when the Alsatian dogs growled and tugged at their leads.