Conspiracy of Blood and Smoke (12 page)

“Any theories about why she was killed?” Daniel asked. For once, he wasn’t taking notes. Her heart plummeted as she realized why—in case they were captured, they wouldn’t have papers with them that could drag other people into trouble.

“I’ve no idea.” Delmer closed his notebook. “Maybe a jealous
boyfriend did it. Or a lunatic or someone she looked at the wrong way, who knows. She lived at the Fleischer Rooming House off the Alexanderplatz, but that’s all I was able to ferret out.”

Daniel rose and clasped the man’s hand. “Thanks, Herr Delmer. I’m much obliged.” He hesitated. “We saw something strange on our way here—a policeman and an SA man walking together, as though they were on the same foot beat. Do you know anything about that?”

Delmer sighed. “Germany’s a new world. About two weeks ago, one of Hitler’s ministers began recruiting men from the SA and the SS to work alongside the Berlin police force.” He glanced around the room, but no one was looking at their table. “Be on your guard. The city’s transforming even as we speak.”

So they couldn’t even trust the police. Gretchen thought of the Sturmabteilung and the Schutzstaffel units. Since the Party’s early days, the SA had served as a private army of sorts, providing muscle and protection for Hitler. The racially selective SS was a newer department. She had imagined both divisions remained entrenched within the Party. But now . . .

It was starting. What Hitler had always promised—the Party and Germany were becoming one. The union that she had once thought sounded so perfect. Now it terrified her.

She followed Daniel and Herr Delmer outside. The dry alpine wind pushed through her wool stockings into her skin. She tried not to shiver. “Which of Hitler’s ministers ordered the Party to infiltrate the police?” she asked.

Delmer turned up his collar against the cold. “Hermann Göring.”

He continued talking, but Gretchen pulled back into her thoughts. She remembered Göring, although she hadn’t seen him
in years. He’d been shot in the same gunfight that had killed Papa. Afterward, he and his wife, Karin, had fled to Austria, and later they had moved to her native Sweden. When they’d returned to Germany several years ago, Gretchen hadn’t seen them because they had settled in Berlin. Karin had died, Gretchen recalled, a month or two after she and Daniel had left Munich.

Göring was a vain man, constantly preening in his peacock blue suits, a dazzling sight in a sea of SA brown. And volatile—she still felt the ice of his eyes boring into hers when she’d accidentally knocked a glass knickknack off a side table in his parlor years ago.
Clumsy child
, he’d raged, and Papa had squeezed her shoulder, a silent order to apologize.
I’m sorry
, she had mumbled, and Göring had laughed, ruffling her hair, saying it was only a cheap trinket. Even back then, she’d sensed there was something unsafe about a man whose moods changed with lightning speed. And now he was in a powerful position in Hitler’s cabinet. She couldn’t imagine what he might be planning.

As she turned back to the conversation, she heard Delmer saying, “And remember—you’ll have to move quickly because of the Enabling Act.”

Gretchen glanced at Daniel, but he looked confused, too. “What’s the Enabling Act?” he asked.

“It’s a piece of legislation that Chancellor Hitler has just proposed.” Delmer’s expression was grim. He stepped closer to them, lowering his voice. “Germany’s been operating under a state of emergency since the fire. Hitler says he needs to be able to combat possible future terrorist attacks without any restrictions. If the Enabling Act passes, it shifts legislative powers from the Reichstag to him.”

Gretchen gasped. She understood what that meant: Hitler could act alone. He could pass his own laws without the restraining powers of the Reichstag, which was peopled by members of different political parties.

He could become a dictator.

Her heart clutched. If the Enabling Act was passed and she and Daniel were caught, Hitler could have anything done to them that he wished. He wouldn’t have to bother with the legalities of trials and prison terms. Instead, he could have them tortured for as long as he wanted, perhaps while he watched, before he finally had them killed. They would be entirely at his mercy.

She shot Daniel a panicked look. His face had gone dark. “When’s the next Reichstag session scheduled to start?”

“On the twenty-third. You’ve got twelve days.” Delmer shook his head. “The act will get passed; it’s gained tremendous support within the Reichstag and in the papers. Everybody knows how elderly and ill President Hindenburg is—Chancellor Hitler will take complete control of Germany. You’ll never be able to escape. Even if we publish proof of your innocence in my paper, the Party will merely cook up new charges against you.” He shook Daniel’s hand. “You don’t have much time, Herr Cohen. Good luck to you.”

HERR DELMER NODDED FAREWELL TO THEM AND
melted into the crowds streaming up and down the sidewalks. Blindly, Gretchen reached for Daniel’s hand, squeezing hard when she found it.

“My God,” she breathed. “We have to get out of Germany, while we still can.”

“You should.” Daniel started walking, and she fell in step alongside him. “I have to see this through, Gretchen.” He dipped his head, bringing his lips to her ear. “If I can prove that the National Socialists killed Fräulein Junge, the news could destroy Hitler’s reputation. Maybe President Hindenburg will have him removed from office. His career will be over.”

“But you’ll have to accomplish this in less than two weeks!” Gretchen hissed. “If you don’t find the proof before the Enabling Act passes, then . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to finish.

“Then I’m as good as dead,” Daniel finished for her. His face was white, but calm. “I understand the risk. It’s worth it to me.”

They reached a street corner and stopped, waiting for a break in traffic so they could walk across. From the corner of her eye, Gretchen studied him. There was something inside him, a length of iron that she had not recognized until this moment. It was selflessness, she realized. The absolute certainty that there were things that mattered more than his personal safety and he was willing to die for them.

She didn’t know what to do about this new distance between them—but she knew she would never leave him.

“Then I’m staying, too,” she said. “I’m seeing this through with you to the end.”

He shot her a sharp look. “You could die, too.”

“I know.” Her hands were shaking so badly that the suitcase thudded against her leg over and over. She had to swallow twice before she could speak. “It’s worth it to me, too.”

He must have seen something in her expression that convinced him that she meant what she said because he nodded, interlacing his fingers with hers. “Very well. There’s no turning back now.” He took a deep breath, like a swimmer bracing himself before diving into icy water. “Let’s visit Monika Junge’s old rooming house. It’s possible the other residents know something.”

They crossed the street. In her head, Gretchen heard Hitler’s voice:
A moving target doesn’t get shot
. Grim determination lengthened her strides. Yes, she would remember his advice and use it against him to anticipate his every action. Before, in Munich, she hadn’t known who she was dealing with. Now she understood him, as well as anyone could claim to. He wouldn’t deceive her
again. Whatever he did next, she would be ready.

But she couldn’t stop feeling his eyes burning into her back, although every time she looked behind her, he wasn’t there.

On the eastern end of Berlin, Gretchen and Daniel stepped into a narrow street where the harsh wind cut through their coats. Weak sunlight filtered between the tightly crammed buildings, so the houses stretched long shadows across the snow- and soot-grimed cobblestones.

Here no uniformed National Socialists walked or swastika banners hung from windowsills, and the adults moved slowly, their steps weary as though the years of hunger and spiraling unemployment had left them hollow. Daniel had been right; Berlin
was
like a dozen different cities. But would one, Gretchen wondered, eventually swallow the others?

Children streamed into the streets, laughing and calling to one another. Gretchen almost smiled at two girls wearing identical hair bows; once she and Eva had begged to be dressed alike, too, but their mothers couldn’t afford the extra fabric for new dresses so they’d made do with matching red satin ribbons.

As she walked, she scanned the structures for Monika Junge’s old rooming house. Up ahead, a hand-printed sign had been pasted in a window:
FLEISCHER ROOMS TO LET. LADIES ONLY
. The building looked like the others—a dingy gray facade stretching up four stories, and a heavy wooden door topped by a plaster archway embossed with scrollwork.

Gretchen glanced at Daniel. “Ladies only,” she said, trying to keep her voice light so he wouldn’t hear the nerves in it. “That leaves you out. I’ll inquire about a room, and see what I can learn about Fräulein Junge.”

His face twisted. “Gretchen, I don’t want you going in there alone.”

“I can manage,” she said quickly. If she waited longer, she might lose her nerve. “Watch from across the street.” Sweat had pooled at the base of her spine, making her silk blouse stick to her skin. “I’ll be fine.”

Before she could think herself out of the decision, she hurried to the door. A middle-aged woman in a severe black dress answered the bell. “Yes? How may I help you?” She stubbed out her cigarette in the dirt-filled flowerpot on the front step.

“I’d like to rent a room.”

The woman looked Gretchen up and down, her thin lips curling as though she had tasted something bitter. “Nothing available.”

“But there’s a sign in the window—”

“There’s nothing available for you,” the woman snapped.

Over the lady’s shoulder, Gretchen saw a front hall with plaster walls, stained brown in places, probably from water damage. There was no furniture, not a table or an umbrella stand, just a black telephone sitting on a chair.

What sort of rooming house was this? Her mother’s old boardinghouse in Munich had been shabby, but it had at least attempted to be comfortable, with flowered sofas, wallpaper, framed watercolors.

“We only take girls with references,” the lady said.

Gretchen felt Daniel’s gaze drilling into her back. It would be so easy to run to him. But she had to keep going, if she wanted to help him. She forced a smile. “I must have misunderstood. When I saw Fräulein Junge a few weeks ago, I thought she had said there was a vacancy here.”

“Monika Junge?” The woman raised her eyebrows. “You don’t look like any of Monika’s friends.”

“We weren’t close.” Gretchen’s face felt hot. “I was sorry to hear about her death.”

The woman opened the door wide. “Come in. We can’t be too careful,” she added, leading Gretchen into the front hall. “I’ll show you the room.”

The door banged closed behind them. Walking up the steps felt like climbing a hill in the dark; shadows and frigid air encased the stairwell. As Gretchen followed the landlady, she tried not to think of Daniel standing outside, probably with his fingers drumming on his thigh, a habit he slipped into when he was anxious.

The landlady rattled off the rules as they went up. “You can rent at monthly or weekly rates. Breakfast and supper are provided, but no luncheon. There’s a shared lavatory down the hall, and baths are permitted once a week. Each girl gets her own water basin, a lockbox she can store under her bed, and a supply of candles—we haven’t electricity, you see. When you come and go, you have to sign in and out every time, no exceptions. My name is Frau Fleischer, by the way.”

So far, the regulations sounded ordinary enough. Gretchen relaxed a little.

As they reached the second-floor landing, sunlight straggled through a window, sparkling on a diamond ring on Frau Fleischer’s finger. Gretchen nearly stumbled over the top step. A diamond ring, when Frau Fleischer couldn’t afford electricity. Unease shivered up Gretchen’s spine. There was something strange about this place.

“Here’s your room,” Frau Fleischer said, pushing open a door. Peering in, Gretchen realized for the first time how hard her mother must have worked to hold onto her position as a boardinghouse manager; in Munich, the rooms might have been small boxes, but each resident had had her own.

Eight cots had been jammed into the long, narrow room, with two bureaus shoved against a wall. A single window poured pale winter sunlight across the women lounging on the beds or standing by the gramophone in the corner. They looked about her age, some a bit older. Three of them wore Chinese dressing robes; another lay asleep in bed, her bare shoulders peeking above the blankets, and two more were fully dressed in pleated skirts, woolen cardigans, and knee-high green leather boots. They hovered by the gramophone, arguing over which record to listen to next.

“Play nice, girls. Monika recommended a new guest, so be polite.” Frau Fleischer’s voice cut through the chatter. Her long fingers grasped Gretchen’s arm and pulled her forward. “Supper’s at six. If you’re late, you miss it.”

“What are we having?” the girl who Gretchen had thought was sleeping asked, her eyes still closed.

“Lung soup. And no complaints!” the landlady warned as the girls groaned. “It’s food and it’s hot, and none of you would be eating anything if it wasn’t for me.” She glanced at Gretchen. “You’ll stay in tonight, naturally, and we can settle accounts. If you haven’t had your medical checkup, I can arrange for it first thing tomorrow.”

The door slapped shut behind her. Alone, Gretchen turned to face the girls, who were watching her warily. Maybe this place
was a kind of women’s hostel; she knew that big cities like Berlin had such establishments, a single rung up from shelters for the indigent. But why weren’t any of these girls at work? And why did she need to visit a doctor? Unease clenched her stomach.

Nobody spoke. The record spun around, its handle lifted so no music spilled from the horn-shaped speaker. A pile of blankets on a bed moved, and a black-haired head popped up, its owner yawning. “Who’s this?”

“I’m Gisela,” Gretchen said. She sat down on the only bare bed in the room. It was next to the window, and cold air pushed through the glass, right into her skin. It was obvious why no one else wanted to sleep here. “May I have this bed?”

Silence stretched out. One of the girls went back to the gramophone, snatching the record out so clumsily that the needle scratched across the black grooved surface. At last, a girl in a Chinese dressing gown said, “That was Monika’s. It doesn’t seem right, someone else taking her place.”

“I was friends with her,” Gretchen said. Maybe if she could get them talking about Monika, she’d learn something useful. “I don’t know what happened to her—all I heard is that she died last week.”

For a moment, nobody answered. Some of the girls looked away. One of them sat up in bed, wiping at her eyes with the backs of her hands. “She was shot.” Her voice was bleak. “You’d best start unpacking. There’s a lockbox under the bed for your valuables. Frau Fleischer already took Monika’s things down to the office, so it should be empty. You’ll have to ask her for a key. You can store your clothes in the bureaus.” She reached under her pillow, pulling out a pack of cigarettes, her robe gaping open to
expose collarbones jutting beneath her pale flesh.

Gretchen knelt on the floor to pull the lockbox out from under the bed. It was a gray metal box with a hinged top. She set it on the bed and hesitated. She hated the thought of unpacking her things, for if she needed to get out quickly she’d have to leave them behind. And she couldn’t let any of the girls see the revolver she had rolled up in a blouse—they’d be sure to ask questions.

They were watching her. Probably wondering why she waited. Slowly, she unfastened her suitcase, looking out the window’s smudged glass. Daniel stood on the other side of the street, his bag at his feet, his fingers beating a rapid tattoo on his thigh, as she’d expected. If only she could wave to him, so he’d know she was all right.

She carried the blouses to the nearest bureau. The other girls had gone back to what they’d been doing when she’d come in: sleeping or staring at the ceiling or squabbling about music. She reached for a drawer, but the girl in the Chinese dressing gown appeared beside her and yanked it open.

“Not this one,” she said, and scooped out a handful of something white. As Gretchen watched, the girl placed the paper packets on the nearest bed, the little white squares stark against the navy chenille spread.

All of the girls spun around to watch the redhead open the packets. Nobody spoke or moved; they seemed to be holding their breaths.

The packets were filled with a fine white powder. Gretchen frowned. Headache medicine?

A petite brunette slid off her bed. Instead of dissolving the powder in a water glass, as Gretchen had expected, she leaned
over the packets and inhaled sharply. A ring of white dusted each nostril. She rubbed at her nose and sighed.

Then she opened her eyes. The pupils had grown so large they nearly swallowed the irises. She smiled faintly at Gretchen. “Want some? It’s cocaine,” she added. “It makes you forget everything.”

Gretchen took a step back. “No, thank you.”

The girls shrugged and swarmed onto the bed, snorting the powder and sighing. In the corner, the record skipped in place, the needle caught on one discordant note.

Gretchen eased back to the bed with her armful of blouses and dumped them into her suitcase. She would leave before anyone noticed she was gone. There was no way she could stay here.

As much as she wanted to disagree with everything Hitler said, she couldn’t help remembering his warnings about the dangers of nicotine and alcohol.
Impure substances weaken our blood
, he’d said to her once when she had asked why he didn’t like to drink beer.
Your Aryan blood is the best part of you
, he’d added, cupping her chin in his hands, and she’d nodded, understanding. She was a girl made of blood and muscle and bone. But of the three, only her pure blood separated her from the mongrel races. She had believed she must never taint it; Uncle Dolf had made her promise. A Jew’s touch would infect her with their virus, turning her into a Jew from the inside out.