Conspiracy of Blood and Smoke (30 page)

She raced through another doorway and found that the passage branched into two. This place was a maze! Stifling a cry of frustration, she chose a direction at random and hurried on, the steel plates clunking with every step she took. She found another iron door and picked its lock, then pushed through again, into a place of darkness and silence. The door clicked shut, cutting off the sharp gleam of light from the tunnel. For an instant, she
stood still, listening with all of her might. Nothing. Only unbroken blackness.

She let out a breath of relief. This must be it. She had made it to the Reichstag cellar.

GRETCHEN TURNED ON THE FLASHLIGHT. BY ITS
weak beam, she could see that she was in a narrow passageway. She hesitated, thinking. The moment had come. All she had to do was go up the stairs, find the press report in the Session Chamber, and track down Delmer to give it to him. The morning edition of his English paper would blast the news that the National Socialists had known all along that the fire hadn’t been a Communist conspiracy and had deliberately whipped up the public’s fear so they could pass the Enabling Act—and put dictatorial powers in Hitler’s grasp. Hitler would be ruined, the Party disgraced. She didn’t see how they could overcome the scandal.

As for her, she could flee from Berlin as soon as she gave Delmer the report. There might be enough time for her to sneak over the border using her false papers. But she couldn’t bring herself to care what happened to her. Nothing mattered except
exposing the truth and finishing the work that Daniel had started.

Thinking of him made her hands shake, causing the yellow beam from the flashlight to bounce around the passageway. She couldn’t let herself fall apart now. Resolutely, she wiped her mind blank and began walking, turning, then turning again as the passage seemed to double back on itself. For a sickening instant, she thought of mice in a maze.

But she kept walking until the passage split into two. At the T-shaped intersection, she hesitated, sniffing the air. To the left, it smelled fresher, which meant a door was probably nearby. She set off in that direction.

For several minutes, she walked the passage, hearing nothing but the shuffling of her footsteps. When she rounded a corner, she saw the dark shape of stairs winding up to the first floor. Relief arrowed through her. She wasn’t trapped down here. She rushed up the steps. They seemed to go on forever, and the muscles in her legs burned.

The door at the top of the stairs was shut. She turned off the flashlight, fearing a watchman might be on duty. Then she eased the door open and stepped through.

Here the blackness was so heavy she had to move by feel. As she inched forward, she trailed her hand along the wall. It felt like plaster and had buckled and scorched from the flames’ heat. The air stank of smoke and mildew. Beneath her feet, the carpet felt spongy, as though it had absorbed water from the firemen’s hoses and hadn’t dried out properly.

For a moment, she stood still, listening, but all she heard was the relentless silence. The place seemed empty. She switched
on the flashlight, sweeping its beam around the room she had stepped into.

It was a massive lobby. If any cleanup had been attempted after the fire, she could see no evidence of it: the wood-paneled walls were blackened, and curtains hung in soot-stained shreds. An unlit chandelier hung so precariously from a half-melted chain that she feared it would crash down at any moment. Arrows written in chalk had been scrawled over the walls. The arson investigators’ markings, she guessed, for they must have traced the direction the arsonist and the fires had traveled.

Frowning, she tried to remember the little she knew of the building’s layout, from the articles she’d read about the fire. The Session Chamber was to the left of the lobby.

As she entered the room, she froze in shock. She had assumed the newspaper accounts had exaggerated the damage the blaze had caused—after all, in England she’d read that the Reichstag had burned to the ground, yet the building seemed mainly intact—but this room was a ruin.

The cavernous, high-ceilinged chamber was a tangle of burnt wood. Tables and chairs had been shrunk to spindly skeletal remains, and the walls were warped and blistered from heat and water. The ceiling was gone. Overhead, the sky had turned the pale gray of pewter. She remembered that the Session Chamber’s famous glass dome had saved the building from further destruction: the glass had cracked, then shattered apart, shooting roiling masses of smoke into a sky flickering red from flames. The sudden enormous hole in the ceiling had acted as a natural chimney, sucking fire and smoke upward into the night.

Hopelessness swept over Gretchen as she surveyed the mess.
How could she find the report in this wreck of a room? The task was impossible.

Well, she’d never locate it if she didn’t get started. She ran her hands over the walls, squinting for the white flash of paper concealed behind a loose panel. Snowflakes drifted through the empty ceiling, hitting her shoulders, pressing dampness into her skin and making her shiver.

For several minutes, she worked methodically, finishing one section and moving on to the next. By now the Reichstag session was probably over, the Enabling Act passed, and the deputies on their way out to celebrate. Göring might come into his foyer at any second.

Laws can be repealed,
she promised herself, working faster, yanking down panels, the heat-weakened wood giving easily in her hands. Somewhere behind her, a hissing sound cut through the air. She stopped, trying to identify where it had come from, but all had gone silent again.

She ripped another panel down and stared as a white piece of paper fluttered loose from it and drifted toward the floor. This had to be the report. She let out a half-gasping laugh.
I did it, Daniel
, she thought, tears spurting into her eyes.
We’ve got them, at last
.

Her hands were shaking so badly that the paper crackled as she picked it up. By the glow of the flashlight, she saw that about twenty lines of type filled the page. According to the heading, this was an official press communiqué compiled by a Herr Sommerfeldt. At nine p.m., she read, a fire had been discovered in the Reichstag by a passing civilian, who in turned notified the nearest policemen. When the police brigade entered the Reichstag
minutes later, they found a man running in the Bismarck Hall. He was carrying a Dutch passport and firelighters, small tablets used to spark wood or coal fires. He was taken immediately to the Brandenburg police station.

In blue pencil, someone—obviously Minister Göring—had scribbled all over the report. The words “a single arsonist” had been crossed out and Göring had written over them “ten, perhaps twenty men.” Near the end, he’d added, “Clearly the terrorist attack was the signal for a Communist uprising.” A large
G
that presumably Göring used in lieu of a full signature had been scrawled across the bottom.

All the evidence she needed was right here.

Her heart throbbed against her ribs. Tonight Herr Delmer would wire the story to his paper, and when the morning edition appeared, the truth would come out at last. The German public would be furious at having been duped; there would be an outcry and the Enabling Act would be repealed. Hitler’s career would be over.

Even with tears running down her face, she couldn’t stop smiling as she slipped the paper into her coat pocket.
We did it, Daniel
, she thought.
When they find me, I only hope that somehow I can be with you again.

She picked her way over the debris-covered floor. As she reached the door leading into the lobby, she heard the hissing again. This time she recognized the sound: it was the slithering whisper of shoes on water-logged carpet.

Someone was outside the door.

Blood started pounding so loudly in her ears that she could hear nothing else. She ran from the door, stumbling over piles of
burnt furniture. The far wall had fallen into shadow—she didn’t even know if there was another exit—but she charged toward it, nearly tumbling over a chair lying on its side. She jerked herself upright, gasping at the wrenching in her knee. Behind her, the door burst open.

She looked back. Several men were running toward her. They wore the brown uniforms of the SA. Frantic to get at her gun, she scrabbled at her purse’s clasp and looked up just in time to see a man fling himself at her.

They fell together to the floor. Gretchen landed hard on something that felt like broken chair legs; the impact shoved the air from her chest, and all she could do was wheeze for breath. The man’s face pressed against hers, his stubble rough on her cheek, the scents of linen and tobacco swirling around her.

She pushed at him, but his body lay heavily on hers, his hand closing around her neck. She pulled desperately at his fingers, but his grip didn’t loosen. Her vision narrowed to a pinprick.

“That’s enough,” someone said. He sounded as though he were underwater.

The man released Gretchen’s neck, and her hearing roared back. She heard herself gasping and coughing. Tears smarted her eyes. She rolled onto her hands and knees. Gray patches obscured her vision. Wildly, she ran her hands over the floor, searching for her purse. It had to be here, somewhere.

“Get up,” a voice snapped.

Shakily, she rose. Gray dots receded from her vision, and she saw that an SA man stood in the doorway, staring at her. He was unfamiliar: middle-aged, his expression flat, his eyes icy. One hand held her purse, which he gave to another SA man. Gretchen
tried to ignore the lurch in her stomach. Now they had her gun.

“How did you know I was here?” The words tumbled from her mouth before she could stop them.

“The steel plates in the tunnel,” the man replied. “The porter heard you from his lodge and summoned us. Minister Göring will be very interested to know why a girl sneaked through his tunnel to the Reichstag.”

Two SA men jerked her arms behind her back. Nothing felt real, as though she had split into two selves—the girl standing in the ruined room, and someone else standing to the side, watching. This couldn’t be happening. She had failed. Now nobody would know the truth about the fire, and she would be dead by dawn. She bit the inside of her mouth so she wouldn’t make a sound.

Another SA man patted her down. He grinned when he found the report in her coat pocket and handed it to the man who seemed to be in charge. As he scanned it, his eyebrows lifted. “Well, now we know why you broke in here.” He shoved his face into hers, so close she smelled his tobacco-scented breath. “Who told you where to find this report?”

She said nothing. All of her muscles tensed for the punch she knew was coming.

The man slapped her across the face, so hard that her ears rang. “It was the fireman, wasn’t it? Were you the one who helped him escape? You shot two of my best men! I ought to have you ripped limb from limb right here!”

The ache in her cheek dulled to a steady throb. She pictured Daniel: his lopsided grin before he threw his head back in laughter.
I’m coming to you
, she thought.
I won’t be afraid
.

Faintly, she heard the SA man panting, as though struggling for control.

“Take her out of here,” he said at last. “I’ll get word to Minister Göring.”

She didn’t fight the three men as they marched her outside and down a long a flight of steps. There was no use. They had won.

Two black automobiles were parked in the Königsplatz below, cockeyed, as though their drivers had jerked to a sudden stop. The guards pushed her into the nearest car’s backseat. She sat, sandwiched between two of them, their bodies so close their knees ground into hers.

The driver sped them across the square. When she glanced in the back window, she saw the other car gliding in the opposite direction, carrying the lead SA man on his way to Minister Göring.

A young-looking fellow put his lips to her ear. “Why’d you break in? Are you a filthy Jew?”

His words couldn’t touch her; nothing could now. She stared at her hands clasped in her lap. Somehow they didn’t look like her hands, and she stretched her fingers, noting the way her tendons flexed. Soon she wouldn’t witness the miracle of blood and sinew responding to her thoughts. Soon she wouldn’t feel anything at all. A sob rose in her throat. She swallowed it. She wouldn’t give these men the satisfaction of her fear.

The car coasted to a halt. Gretchen peered through the window at the rows of apartment houses. Her heart seemed to stop for an instant. She recognized this street: It was the Lange Strasse, where the captured trade union building was located.

They weren’t simply going to kill her. They were going to torture her first.

“No!” she gasped as the men took her arms, pulling her outside into the darkened street. She twisted in their arms, but their grips were too strong. “Please!” she cried, even though she hated herself for begging them. A quick, clean kill she could face, but she didn’t want to be reduced to tears and blood until finally she couldn’t stand the pain anymore and told them everything, said anything they wanted her to say, just to make the agony end.

They dragged her up the stairs and into an unlit lobby. Her legs trembled so badly that they almost collapsed beneath her.

“Hurry up!” the men growled at her and pulled her along the corridor until they reached a closed door. One of them opened it and they yanked her down the concrete steps. She squinted in the dimness. A couple of bare lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling flickered in and out of life. She saw a dirt floor, four cinderblock walls, a couple of chairs. In a corner of the room, a man lay huddled into a ball on his side, his face curled into his chest, his hair falling forward and shielding him. Silver handcuffs winked at his wrists and were attached to long chains that had been bolted to the wall.