The crowds kept cheering behind them, though they had no reason to.
Luka stood straight and stepped off the wheel so they were close. Face-to-face. Shoulder-to-shoulder. There were still a few centimeters between them (tense, taut, trying to tease her with smells of leather and musk), but to Yael it might as well have been kilometers.
“It’ll be our first proper dance.” He smiled with his teeth again. “I look forward to it.”
Instead of nothingness and rage, all Yael could feel was the press of her knife inside her boot. The extra weight of the Walther P38 just below her chest.
He wasn’t the one she planned on dancing with.
“Me too,” Yael said, and smiled back.
CHAPTER 33
NOW
APRIL 2, 1956
THE IMPERIAL PALACE TOKYO, JAPAN
Late afternoon light poured through the open windows and sliding doors of the Imperial Palace. Warm wafts of air followed, threaded with the sweet scent of cherry blossoms. Yael breathed it in with a weightless chest.
So many things were new. Or about to be.
She’d been a wreck when she first took inventory in the washroom mirror. Though all the dirt and greasy hair had been washed away with her morning bath, there were still faint pink goggle rings around her eyes—shadows of exhaustion scribbled into them like a child’s illustration. Road rash scabs smattered her cheeks, so that the freckles she shared with Felix were nearly invisible. Her lips were as cracked as Luka’s had been before the not-petroleum jelly.
Yael addressed these things one by one with the makeup kit she’d found sitting in one of the washroom drawers. (One of the few skills Vlad hadn’t trained her in. Lipstick and foundation and mascara had been Henryka’s area of expertise.) Until every trace of the road was gone. Until it looked as if she’d been through nothing at all.
The rest of her body felt just as battered. Every limb stiff, every ligament overstretched. She’d soaked them for hours in a second afternoon bath, staring at the painted wooden panels of the washroom ceiling. Imagining the night to come, over and over again.
There was an official itinerary, which had been proffered to her as soon as she’d been shown to her room:
6:00–Presentation of the Guests
6:30–Hors d’oeuvres and Cocktails
6:45–Toasts
7:00–Dinner
8:00–Dancing
8:15–Murder
8:16–Escape
Of course, the final two hadn’t been on the list, but that was where they fit in the timetable. It would be better to make an escape on a full stomach, Yael reasoned. Who knew when she’d be able to stop running?
She’d taken a stroll around the grounds that morning. She knew it all from blueprints Henryka had gathered, but it helped having a physical survey of the palace complex. Getting a feel for the copper-roofed buildings and methodical garden paths.
By the end, Yael had a solid route mapped out: Get out of the ballroom as fast as possible, grab the survival pack she’d hidden in the gardens, swim across the moat (bridges were out of the question—too many guards and gates), and disappear into Tokyo’s night. Leave Adele Wolfe’s face and name and life far, far behind.
Her room had been fitted for Western guests. It held a raised bed and windows framed with lush velvet curtains. There was even a television in the corner—bigger and prouder than Henryka’s had been. Yael flicked it on as she prepared for the ball, listening to the stories-in-gray as she freshened her makeup, pinned up her hair.
Unlike Henryka’s, this television had more than a single channel, but every station in the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was airing the same thing: recaps of the race. There were shots from every stretch of road, every checkpoint city. Though Yael had seen similar recaps before, this one was mesmerizing.
It looked so strange, so apart, behind the glass. Like a dramatic play, not the last three weeks she’d just survived. The channel’s narrator detailed the racers’ adventures in rapid Japanese—even the ones she did not know about (Lars had almost been bitten by a snake in the Sahara. Norio had had a fit of panic attacks on the ferry from Sicily to Tunis).
The narrator had only made it to Baghdad by the time Yael was ready to get dressed. Along with an itinerary, she’d been given a gorgeous homongi kimono to wear to the ball. The silk was a bright teal that made Adele Wolfe’s eyes look almost faded. It sported a red lacy pattern that Yael supposed was meant to be roots or branches. To her it looked more like veins.
She drew the window curtains, casting the room into a flickering darkness as she shouldered off her robe. Behind her the television pumped out the tale of the racers’ miraculous, motorcycle-less appearance in New Delhi. (The narrator had clung to the landslide cover story.) There were shots of them running through Holi dust to the finish line. The screen had sucked away all the colors. No more joy, just ash pouring over their foreheads, clinging to their necks and arms.
The kimono fit well when Yael tied it into place. Its sleeves were loose but lengthy enough to cover her marked arm. Though Vlad’s wolf was almost healed, Yael opted for new bandages. A roll of gauze sat on the bed, waiting to be bound over each and every tattoo, but Yael couldn’t bring herself to cover them just yet. She’d removed her dirty bandages before the first bath and it was nice to have the ink out and breathing for a change.
Then there was the matter of weapons. While the kimono’s sleeves were loose, its skirt was floor-length in the most constricting way. Even if she could wear her boots to the ball, it would take too much time to bend down and retrieve the blade there. While the knife and its sheath fit easily around her thigh, there was no way she could reach it. She’d already found a way to conceal her Walther P38 in the silk obi tied around her waist—just a quick snatch and pull away. But Yael felt naked without the blade, so she skinshifted just enough to make Adele’s hair longer, lusher, thicker. She repinned the pale locks into a pile and slid the blade inside, sheath and all.
Easy to hide, easy to reach.
The narrator kept speaking through the dark, telling the story of Hanoi. Yael sat on the edge of the bed, unable to tear her eyes from the screen as the camera panned to Katsuo. Driving through long kilometers of rice paddies. Lazy face and limbs at ease, soaking in the luxury of his long lead.
One of the last shots of him alive.
The camera panned back to Adele Wolfe—hot on the victor’s tail, her lips wrapped tight around her teeth. The look on her face was almost feral. The crouch of her body over the Rikuo was definitely predatory. As if she were gauging the right moment to leap and sink her claws in—
It was easy to see now, from the other side of the glass. From pixels and kilometers and a sobering death away.
She’d gotten lost again. Adrift in a life not her own. Entangled in smiles and histories and secrets and relationships she could not fake. She’d forgotten who she was for a moment. For more than a moment. And Katsuo had paid the price. She’d lost the race because of it.
A light rap on the door brought Yael back into the present. It wasn’t time yet, was it? The ball wasn’t for forty-five more minutes. True—she was armed and dressed, but not ready. She felt too scattered, too dismembered. The roll of gauze still lay on Yael’s bed, but there was no time to wrap her arm. She shoved the bandages into the band of her obi, tugging the left sleeve of her kimono extra low, before answering the knock.
When she slid the door open, it was not Luka she faced, but Felix. She could see Adele’s brother had spent his day similarly to hers, scrubbing away the filth of the road. His hair was trimmed, and his nose had been taped. Instead of leather riding gear he wore a uniform. A brown button-down shirt with party markings in all the right places: Hitler Youth symbol on the lapel, swastika band choking his upper arm. A black necktie draped over his chest.
He looked like a different person in these things. It took Yael a moment to sort his name from his appearance. “Felix—”
He seemed just as
startled at her flowy kimono and the makeup on her face. “So it’s true. You’re going to the ball with Luka Löwe.”
Yael nodded and moved aside to let him into her room. This wasn’t a conversation for the hallway, where servants dashed back and forth and ears listened through too-thin doors.
“I tried to find you this morning, but you weren’t here.” Felix stepped inside. His eyes landed on the screen, where Takeo was giving a breathless interview on board the Kaiten about finding the wreck that was Katsuo—using words like tangle and broken (the same way she felt inside).
Yael shut the door. “I was walking the grounds.”
Adele’s brother didn’t look away from the screen. They were showing the scoreboard from the Kaiten now; the shot was focused on Katsuo’s struck-through name. The narrator had transitioned into a sort of eulogy. Talking about the racer’s early life, achievements, family, love.
All gone now.
“Thank you for giving me your bike.” She could not fake it. Even now. Felix Wolfe was pale against the light of the television. The way he stood, with his fists tight and his eyes hard and the pictures of the world-as-it-was flickering over his face… it was Aaron-Klaus all over again.
Only this time Yael was the one who was leaving, who could not say good-bye.
All these things rooted into her voice, impossible to sift out.
“Thank you for everything.”
He spun around. And Yael knew she’d said too much. Fear crept back into Felix’s face, as thick and full as it had been that night he found her wrecked on the road. The look she imagined his eyes held when Martin crashed on the Nürburgring track, watching death, destruction, loss fold out in slow motion.
“This is the end—isn’t it?” he asked in a way that made Yael suddenly aware of the entire layout of her room. The heavy curtains, perfect for the sheet-tangle move she’d applied in Rome. A bronze lamp by the bed, blunt enough if it came to it…
She really, truly hoped it wouldn’t.
Felix crossed his arms, so that the armband throbbed crimson in place of his heart. “What they want you to do… I’m guessing it’s supposed to happen tonight? At the ball? Isn’t that why you accepted Luka’s invitation?”
The television filled her silence with fresh shots of the live awards ceremony. The one currently taking place somewhere on the palace grounds. The one Yael and the other racers had not been invited to. (Why honor weakness?) Luka stood on the platform, hands tucked behind his back. Mount Fuji rose up in the long distance behind him. Emperor Hirohito stood to his right. And next to him…
Hairs prickled all across Yael’s skin as she watched the Führer—live in black and white. He held two Iron Crosses in his hands. Two SS bodyguards hovered next to him.
Adolf Hitler was here. On the grounds. Within reach.
Yael’s hands itched for her gun.
Felix noticed. He shifted his body to block the screen. So all she could see was his outline.
“If your mission is what I think it is… what you’re about to do.” He picked through these words like a soldier in a minefield. “There’s no coming back from something like that.”
Yael almost smiled when he said this, because he was right. Because there were so many things she had not come back from. Because all those versions of her were scattered across her arm and she was just starting to piece them together again.
“Maybe the world is wrong… but you don’t have to be the one to save it,” Felix said.
“Someone has to do it,” she echoed back.
But he was not Aaron-Klaus. Not even a little. He did not understand. “Maybe. But not you.”
You are going to change things, the ghosts of herself whispered. You, Yael.
“I’ve trained for this, Felix,” she tried to explain. “I can fix things. I can make the world right. I can keep our family together.”
“I wanted to trust you, wanted to help. But now that it’s actually here… you could die, Ad. You could get our whole family killed.” The fear was in Felix’s voice now—fear on fear on fear—as he stepped forward. It made Yael’s legs tense beneath the folds of her kimono. Kept her mind working through the physics of the room.
Everyone is afraid, her fourth wolf growled, even him.
She should not have opened the door. She should not have let him in.
“Felix.” Her voice was low and full of warning.
“Some things are too broken to be fixed.” He took another step when he said this. Because this was a wreck he thought he could stop. Because he would do anything to keep her—no, his sister—safe.
When he launched himself at her, Yael was not surprised. Only sad.
Speed was what she had to rely on. It wasn’t so simple in a kimono, but she managed to deflect his swiping grip. Twirl just out of reach. They’d switched places, so it was his back to the door, hers to the curtains.
“Please, Ad. Even if you succeed, what do you think the Gestapo will do to Mama and Papa? You’ll destroy them.…”
She could’ve told him that there were resistance operatives waiting outside their residence in Frankfurt. Ready to whisk the Wolfes away to a safe house as soon as the deed was done. Explain that their real daughter was safe and not a world-class assassin.
But there was no time. Felix was lunging again. Because he only wanted to restrain his sister, his movements were hesitant, slow, easy to dodge. Yael let him barrel toward the window and its burgundy curtains.
She doubled back, sank her nails into the heavy velvet, and pulled. The curtain rings popped, and the room filled with light again. Felix stumbled under the fabric: blind and confused. Yael worked quickly, pressing him to the floor and wrapping him tight. When she was finished, she folded back the fabric so Felix could breathe.
Yael knew what she had to do. She used her right hand to keep the fabric pinned. (He was already wiggling, struggling like some furious chrysalis.) Her other hand reached into her obi, for the gun.
Felix stopped thrashing, went stiff-still under her. His eyes fixed on her left arm. But it wasn’t the P38 he was staring at. When Yael followed his stare, she could see her wolves. All five of them—unbandaged and running, running, running into the kimono silk gathered at her elbow.
Loose Scheisse sleeves!
Adele’s brother didn’t even look at the gun. He was too mesmerized by the ink. Swirling black beasts clawing up his sister’s skin. “What are those?”
Not what.
Who.
Who, who, who, who, who.
“You should’ve gone home.” Yael felt like crying when she said this. She was working the pistol around in her palm, butt first.
Felix watched her do it. His eyes were so much like Adele’s, full of the same ice and slit and slow-cooked knowledge that something was not right.
“I don’t understand,” he said finally.
“You will,” Yael told him. “And when you do, know that I’m sorry. You’re a good brother.”
She didn’t have the heart to make this pistol whip as hard as the last (or maybe she had too much heart). When the deed was done, she couldn’t bear to look at Felix too much. She unrolled him from the ruined velvet, tore her bedsheets into strips, and made them into ropes. Three around his legs, two around his wrists, one as a gag. Even if Felix woke up before the ball was over, it would take him hours to work himself free.
Once Adele’s brother was secured and hidden under the bed, Yael tried her best to drape the curtain back over its rod, repin her hair, touch up her makeup. Restore things to the way they were before.
Some things are too broken to be fixed.
Was Felix right? About his family? About the world? About… her?
How broken was too broken?
A glimmer of silver caught Yael’s eye. Martin’s pocket watch lay on the floor by the television. It must have slipped out of Felix’s pocket when he was lunging. Yael knelt down and scooped the timepiece into her palm. Felt the cool warp of its metal, the scratchings of a de
ad brother’s name, the watch’s pulse still tick, tick, ticking against her skin. Yael shut her eyes and remembered all of its dozens of shiny parts spread out on the table. Adele’s brother sorting through what looked like an impossible mess with his tweezers. Taking all these pieces, putting them back into place.
The watch in her hand was not pretty, nor perfect, but it was whole. The hour read quarter to six through the cracks in its glass. Soon, very soon, she would be on the television screen.
She had to make herself ready. Whole.
Yael turned down the television’s volume so there was only silence, sat on the bed, and pulled her sleeve back one last time. The wolves. It had been so long since she’d even looked at them, much less traced their forms, said their names. So long that Vlad’s wolf was no longer a wound, but scabbed over. So long because she’d forgotten to remember. She’d gotten so caught up in living.
Miriam’s wolf whispered from their bunk, over a flameless, waxless candle: You must never forget.…
So Yael traced them all. One by one. Life by life. Wolf by wolf.
THEN
LUISEN STREET GERMANIA, THIRD REICH NOVEMBER 1955
Every night, before Yael curled under her sheets (before they became tangled in her frantic, dream-fleeing legs), she stared at her arm. She faced her own skin and the ink the National Socialists had put there. She let the ghosts settle next to her and whisper. And she was not afraid.
But the numbers were starting to wear on her.
She could not erase them. And she could not forget.
Memories and ghosts belonged to her. The numbers didn’t.
She would remember (who they were, who she was), but it would be on her own terms, through her own ink. This was why she went looking for the man on Luisen Street.
He was not at all what she’d expected a black-market tattoo artist to be. He was a delicate man—all willow and blond—who kept his flat clean. It was a small, white-walled space: bare wood floors, sketchbooks in neat piles, charcoals stacked beside them.