Conspiracy of Blood and Smoke

  “As you all know, the Nazis have pledged to stamp us out,” he said. The room was so quiet Gretchen could hear chattering voices in the street, the cheerful sound so jarring that she started. “They say we’re subhumans—that we’re wicked and beyond redemption.”

  The men muttered angrily, and Friedrich raised his hands for silence.

  “Now they’ve gone after one of our own. They must be the ones who killed our Fräulein Junge; there’s no other reason some SA men would have taken her lockbox. Some of you in the room know what a sweet young woman she was. Caring to her friends, ambitious in her plans to become an actress someday. She deserved to live a long life.” He firmed his lips into a line, as though struggling to maintain his self-control.

  “Herr Cohen tells me,” he went on in a low voice, “that if we can prove the Nazis killed our Fräulein, the scandal could ruin them forever.” He nodded at Gretchen and Daniel. “As Herr Cohen has shown himself to be both honest and an enemy of the Nazis, I propose we join forces with him and his girl and investigate our Fräulein’s murder.” A grim smile twisted his lips. “We can avenge Fräulein Junge’s death and rid ourselves of our opponents once and for all.”

  A hush fell. The men sat motionless, scrutinizing Gretchen and Daniel. What could they possibly be thinking? Had Friedrich convinced them?

  One man’s arm slowly rose. “I agree,” he said.

  More arms went up, and more, then more, until Gretchen was confronted with a forest of arms. She and Daniel smiled uncertainly at each other. Friedrich thumped the table with the flat of his hand.

  “It’s settled!” he announced.

  The men milled about, talking and smoking, while Friedrich leaned closer to Gretchen and Daniel. “All Ringverein recruits must prove themselves by completing a challenge before we offer membership—impossible for you, naturally—or our protection and help, which you’ll have if you accomplish this task.”

  Daniel shot him a wary glance. “What do we have to do?”

  Friedrich stubbed out his cigar in an ashtray, looking pensive. “I haven’t decided yet. Now get back into your room until I’m ready to deal with you again.”

  “Thank you,” Daniel said quietly. “You’ve been more than fair.”

  Friedrich barked out a laugh. “I’ve been your savior, and don’t you forget it. If you two had stayed out in the open much longer, I’m sure the Nazis would have tracked you down. We’re not so naive to pretend that we don’t know what they would have done with you.”

  Gretchen’s throat went dry. He was right; he had kept them alive, and they were beholden to him. But what price would they have to pay?

  18

  GRETCHEN HAD THOUGHT THAT FRIEDRICH would be eager to begin the investigation, but he didn’t return to their room that day. No one did except for a man who brought them trays of food at mealtimes and escorted them to the lavatory. As she was guided through the cigar-scented rooms, Gretchen studied the activities from the corner of her eye: a handful of men in cheap suits, playing cards and dice, and a couple poring over accounts ledgers. They fell silent when she passed, and none of them looked at her.

  By the morning after the hoodlums’ court, she was ready to scream with frustration. She listened to the minutes ticking past on her wristwatch—minutes they couldn’t afford to lose if they wanted to solve Fräulein Junge’s murder before the Enabling Act was approved. Today was the thirteenth, which meant they only had ten days left.

  After her lavatory trip, the man guided her to a different room, where Daniel was waiting for her. It was a proper bedchamber, with a bed in a brass frame, a bureau holding a chipped blue-and-white water basin, a hooked rug on the floor, and wallpaper striped brown and gold. On the foot of the bed lay their two suitcases. Daniel was already going through his. He shot Gretchen’s guard a wary look.

  “Why is Iron Fist Friedrich having us shut up in another room?” he asked. “We should be out investigating Fräulein Junge’s murder right now!”

  “Friedrich is very busy,” the fellow snapped. “He oversees dozens of enterprises and is responsible for well over one hundred men. Consider yourselves fortunate that he’s spending any time on your harebrained scheme.”

  “Harebrained?” Daniel looked shaken. “Then he doesn’t believe that exposing Fräulein Junge’s killer could ruin the National Socialist Party—and get rid of some of your toughest enemies?”

  The fellow shrugged. “He believes it, but he’s far too clever to put all his eggs in one basket. He’s ordered us to assist in your investigation, but we can’t assume that it’ll be successful. In the meantime, we must look after our business, Herr Cohen. Friedrich will send for you when he’s ready.”

  He shut the door. Gretchen flew to her suitcase, letting out a soft cry of relief when she saw her false papers lying inside, on top of the pile of her neatly folded clothes. She riffled through her things. Her revolver wasn’t there, but someone had tucked her purse in the suitcase. It still held the envelope with the Whitestones’ money. She looked at Daniel in surprise.

  “They returned all of the money. Everything except the revolver, but that would have been too much to hope for, I suppose.”

  “I would have been shocked if they’d taken your money—given their strict code of honor.” Daniel flashed her a grin. “This is a sign. They’ve accepted us. We’re part of them now.”

  Gretchen dropped the silk blouse she’d been holding. “What if they want us to commit crimes, too?”

  “I’ll do whatever I have to in order to survive and bring down the Party.”

  “Are those the sorts of things my father told himself?” She folded the blouse, needing to keep her hands busy. “He’d promise me that it was all right to steal coal from the building furnace because we needed it for our stove. He’d say that we should hate Jews because they grew fat off our misery.” She blinked away the tears in her eyes. “It’s such a slippery slope. You begin with one little lie, and the next one gets bigger and easier, and then the next, until you don’t even know anymore what’s real and what’s false.”

  Gently, Daniel put his good hand over hers, stilling her nervous fiddling with the blouse. “You’re not your father. You’re not,” he said when she shook her head. How could he know how hard she’d had to fight her former ways of thinking when she’d never told him? The shame had always stopped her.

  When she’d first moved to England, sometimes she had missed her old hate. Back when she’d been Uncle Dolf’s darling, she’d wrapped herself in it like a coat, and felt warm and protected. Safe. Without it, she had been stripped bare. Vulnerable and aching in the cold.

  Hate had made her life easy. Hitler had taught so carefully. Any of the wrongs done to her could be traced back to Jewish or Communist hands. A poor exam mark meant her teacher didn’t approve of her political beliefs; a slight from friends on the playground meant the Jewish students had turned their classmates against her. Nothing was her fault.

  Love was so much harder, messy and complicated and confusing. A minefield full of unexploded bombs that she must step carefully between. Walking through that field toward Daniel, though, had been worth it. She’d rather have the pain and pleasure of love than the comfort of hate.

  “The difference between your father and us is we won’t ever lie to ourselves,” Daniel said. “Yes, we’re going to work with criminals. But I wouldn’t change things. Not if it means that Friedrich will help us. Stopping Hitler matters more than anything else.”

  Keeping their hands linked, he guided her onto the edge of the bed, where they sat together, so close their knees touched. “I can’t stop thinking about Aaron.” His voice was ragged. “He died alone in the hospital for nothing. And my colleagues—stuck in jail or who knows where because they dared to write the truth.” His thumb traced a circle in her palm, the same careless gesture he used to make when they sat in the flickering darkness of a movie theater in Oxford. The familiar motion pulled a lump into Gretchen’s throat. Those days, and their old,
uncomplicated relationship, seemed as though they belonged to another life.

  For a moment, Daniel was quiet. “When I was a kid,” he said at last, “I used to get excused from religion class at school. The three other Jewish boys in my class and I would sit in the hall until the lesson was over. Nobody ever teased us. It wasn’t until a few years ago that everything began to change for me, when the National Socialist Party started getting popular in Berlin.”

  He paused. Gretchen waited, sensing he had more to say.

  “The boys I’d been friends with for years started avoiding me,” Daniel said. “Or mocking me to my face. One of my teachers made me and the other Jewish students sit in the same corner. He called it ‘Jerusalem.’ My father didn’t get any more promotions at work.”

  He glanced at her. There was a hesitance in his expression that she hadn’t seen before. “I’ve never told you this. It happened the year before I graduated. I was planning to attend Berlin University. I wanted to become a physicist.”

  He smiled a little as Gretchen started. “I know. It doesn’t sound like me. I was different then. Anyway, I was walking home when my best friend, Otto, came up to me. He was wearing a Hitler Youth uniform. I started to tease him because he looked so ridiculous. And he—he punched me in the face.”

  Gretchen gasped. “Oh, Daniel!”

  “No, please, don’t say anything or I don’t know if I can finish.” Daniel stared at the pool of lamplight wavering on the floor. “I didn’t know what to do. I just looked at him. And he said, ‘I had to do it. They’re watching me.’ I saw some of our classmates in Hitler Youth uniforms, watching us from behind a bush. They’d wanted him to prove his loyalty to them, I guess. I didn’t say anything. I just left. After supper that night, he showed up at my house to practice boxing in our cellar, as if nothing had happened. He wanted us to secretly remain friends. Because he liked me but he was ashamed of me. And that made me ashamed of myself, too.”

  Gretchen’s heart felt so full that she didn’t know if she could contain it. Her beautiful Daniel, who kept handing her pieces of himself. Even those that humiliated him. Despite the new awkwardness between them, he wasn’t afraid to share each part with her.

  “I’m not ashamed of you,” she said fiercely, her hands tightening on his. “Everything about you makes me proud.”

  Finally he looked at her. His face calm, his eyes quiet. “Thank you. I’m not ashamed anymore. But it took me a long time to get to this point. After Otto hit me, I knew I couldn’t pretend anymore that things weren’t changing. I started going to newspaper offices after school. I thought if I could become a reporter and write about what was happening to my people, then I could help to stop it.”

  His voice broke. “But nothing the other reporters and I did seemed to do any good. Now they’re gone, with no one left to speak for them. So many people are gone. Dead or jailed unjustly because of Hitler. That’s why I’m willing to do anything to prove the National Socialists killed that woman. I’ll steal and I’ll lie, if that’s what it takes. But if the Enabling Act passes . . .” He took a deep breath. “I’m afraid nothing will stop Hitler.”

  He reached forward, brushing a strand of hair from her face. His smile seemed tired. “This fight needn’t be yours. You’ve got your papers and money. Why don’t you go back to England? You deserve to have a good life.”

  “I’m never leaving you,” she told him. For a moment, they looked at each other. He wanted her to leave; she saw it in the sadness in his eyes. “But . . . what happens if we manage to get out of Germany? You said you won’t go back to Oxford.”

  He sighed. “I can’t. I don’t know where I’ll go. Wherever it is, it won’t feel like home unless you’re there.” He stroked the side of her face, his touch feather-soft. “But I don’t want to take you from the only real family you’ve ever had.”

  Gretchen swallowed hard. How could she remain with Daniel and not hate him for taking her from the Whitestones and her planned career? How could he return to Oxford and not despise her for condemning him to a dead-end job and loneliness? There were no answers, at least none she could find.

  “Besides,” he added softly, “I have nothing to offer you.” His face twisted and he looked away. “I’ve lost everything. My family, my home, my work. My fellow Jews are being beaten in the streets, and I can’t help them.”

  She’d never seen him look so depressed before: his eyes damp, his shoulders hunched, his face drained of color. “Oh, Daniel!” she said. “I understand how you must feel—”

  “How can you possibly understand?” he interrupted. “You’ve gained so much while I’ve only lost—” He broke off. Suddenly, in every unhappy line of his face, she saw what he had stopped himself from saying: their relationship may have ripped her out of her old life, but she’d gained a loving family and a stable home.

  And it had cost him everything. The family he loved so much, the work that had given his life meaning. The pretty home in Waidmannslust, the sense of community and faith he’d felt when he’d walked into his temple on Friday nights.

  For a long moment, they stared at each other. She noticed the hollows in his cheeks, the stiff lines of his shoulders, as though he were holding himself tightly together.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I never meant for any of this to happen to you.”

  “It’s not your fault,” he said quickly. The Adam’s apple in his throat bobbed as he swallowed hard. “Gretchen, I love you so much. No matter what.”

  “I love you forever.” The words felt razor-sharp, scraping the inside of her throat. She looked at his left hand hanging at his side, the damaged fingers curled in their habitual position. How she loved those fingers. And the wasted muscle between the bones of his hand. The skinny wrist, the rigid lines of his forearm, the long scar. Every part of him. She didn’t know how she would bear it, if someday she couldn’t hold that injured hand again. Couldn’t feel his fingers jerking in hers, and both curse the pain that plagued him and be proud of it, because it was proof of his bravery. A sob rose in her chest. She didn’t want to live without him. But she also didn’t want to stay with him and watch their love harden into resentment.

  He cupped her face in his hands. “I cannot give you forever,” he said softly. “In my faith, we don’t focus on the afterlife, but on our actions in the here and now. I don’t even know if I believe that there’s anything beyond this world. But I promise I’ll love you until the day I die.”

  Then he kissed her. His lips on hers were as light as a breath. And she couldn’t stop the horrible thought that his touch felt like a farewell.

  PART THREE

  THE FIRST OF HUMAN QUALITIES

  Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities, because, as has been said, it is the quality which guarantees all others.

  —Winston Churchill

  19

  IN THE KITCHEN THE NEXT MORNING, GRETCHEN found the guard sitting at the table, flipping through the morning papers. The dark-haired girl from the Fleischer Rooming House sat next to him—Birgit, she remembered. Today she was dressed as simply as Gretchen in a pleated skirt and sweater set. She flashed Gretchen a cheerful grin and bit into a piece of toast slathered with jam.

  “Good, you’re finally up,” the Ringverein man said, his pale eyes meeting hers over the top of his newspaper. “Have something to eat. Then you and Birgit need to go to Friedrich’s apartment. She’ll show you where it is. He wants to speak with both of you.”

  “Where’s Daniel?” she ventured to ask. He had been gone when she’d awoken a few minutes ago.

  The fellow tossed the paper onto the table. “At the bar down the street. There was a brawl last night, and he’s helping with the cleanup.”

  She wanted to ask why Daniel had been sent to work at a bar, but the hardness in the man’s face stopped her. Uneasily, she sat and tried to choke down some ham and cheese with hot rolls and butter.

  When she had finished, she fetched her coat from the bedroom and
hurried outside with Birgit. Up and down the street, men streamed from the brick apartments, clutching sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper, their workday luncheons no doubt. Children skipped along to school. Over the roofs of the buildings, smoke from nearby factories sent black plumes into the winter-white sky.

  Gretchen sneaked a glance at Birgit. When they’d talked at the rooming house, she’d seemed kind. Maybe she would answer some questions.

  “I don’t understand,” Gretchen said as they cut over to the next street. “Why do they have Daniel working at a bar?”

  “The bar is under our control,” Birgit said.

  “So . . . Rings run businesses?”

  Birgit laughed. “No. I suppose it must be all right to tell you, seeing as you’re staying at our hideout. We offer businesses protection in exchange for jobs. Each Ring has its own territory in Berlin. We keep criminals and other Ringvereine from robbing or causing trouble at the restaurants, nightclubs, and businesses in our area. In return, loads of fellows in our Ring work as bouncers or porters at our bars and restaurants. I fancy Friedrich is hopping mad about the fight in his bar last night. His men are supposed to prevent that sort of damage from happening.”

  She huffed out an impatient breath at Gretchen’s uncertain expression. “We’re not a bunch of killers. Mostly the men operate fraud schemes and loan shark businesses. Everybody pushes drugs, of course, mostly cocaine.” She fished a packet of cigarettes out of her purse, holding it up in invitation. Gretchen shook her head.

  “Stealing is our bread and butter, though,” Birgit went on in an unconcerned voice as she lit a cigarette. “That’s why safecrackers are at the absolute top of the Ring hierarchy. Pimps are at the bottom, and I’m afraid that we girls don’t even rate a spot. Women aren’t allowed to become members, you see. We’re the prostitutes, wives, or girlfriends. Nothing more.”