Conspiracy of Blood and Smoke (31 page)

The man lay still. His dove-gray woolen overcoat was streaked with dirt, his dark hair matted with blood. He had crossed his arms protectively over his chest. One of his hands was twitching.

Gretchen couldn’t move. She knew those fingers and the injury that made them convulse.

It’s impossible
, she thought as the men shoved her so hard that she fell to her knees. As she stared at the man on the floor, scarcely daring to hope, to breathe, one of the SA men strode past
her, bent over the man’s body, and grabbed him by the hair.

“Look, Jew, we’ve brought you company,” the SA man said, laughing.

The man raised his head. Through the tangle of his hair, his eyes met hers and all the air seemed to go out of the room. It was Daniel.

GRETCHEN COULD ONLY STARE AT DANIEL. HE
couldn’t be real. She was imagining him. It was her brain’s way of protecting itself from the horrors to come. Part of her mind registered the cold dirt of the floor under her legs and hands, but the rest had blanked to a cool whiteness. This couldn’t be happening. Daniel couldn’t be alive; Hanfstaengl wouldn’t have lied to her. She was hallucinating.

She drank in the sight of Daniel, though, unable to look away from him. Both of his eyes were bloodshot. One only opened a slit and was surrounded by a purplish-black bruise. Blood had dried on the corner of his mouth. A rust-colored streak stretched from his ear to beneath his collar. Dirt, possibly from having his face shoved into the floor again and again, had left a film of gray on his skin. When he raised his hands to push his hair out of his eyes, the chains around his wrists clanking, two of the fingers
on his left hand hung at awkward angles, the knuckles swollen. They must have been broken.

Shock tightened his face. His eyes burned into hers, but he didn’t say a word.

The room seemed to shrink, gray cinderblock walls pressing in on her until she could no longer breathe.
He’s dead
, she told herself. She couldn’t let herself hope that he was real. Somehow, she had to be dreaming. She was vaguely aware of the SA man holding Daniel’s hair saying something; she saw his mouth moving, but she couldn’t hear what he said over the buzzing in her ears.

The men gripping her arms hauled her upright and marched her across the room. She stood motionless as they fitted handcuffs on her and pulled on the chains linking her restraints to the wall, making sure they held.

The blackness receded, the room sharpening into focus again. Daniel was still there, crouched on the floor, his gaze trained on her face. She shook her head, as if to clear it, but he remained. She curled her hands into fists, letting the fingernails dig into her palms, hoping the pain would break through the fog in her head. His image never wavered. Something seemed to explode under the left side of her ribs, and she let out a choking gasp.

He was real.

Warmth burst in her heart, flooding her rib cage and down her arms and legs until all of her body felt tingling and alive. Tears rose to her eyes, and she smiled so hard she thought her face would crack. She couldn’t form a coherent thought; all she could do was repeat his name in her head, and she opened her mouth to say it out loud.

Daniel shook his head slightly, and she understood at once, biting her lips to keep herself silent. They mustn’t let the SA men figure out that they knew each other. They would use the information against them—taking turns torturing each of them in front of the other until one of them shattered and told them everything.

The men clattered upstairs, leaving her and Daniel alone in the flickering darkness.

They crawled toward each other. The chains tightened, holding them in place, a foot from each other. Gretchen stretched out her hand, desperate to touch him, and he reached for her. The tips of their fingers brushed. The feel of his warm skin, even for an instant, was enough to flood Gretchen’s eyes with tears. He was real, and he was alive, and he was with her.

“Herr Hanfstaengl told me you were dead,” she said hollowly. “Minister Göring ordered you to be shot.”

“I changed his mind.” Daniel’s voice sounded weak. “It doesn’t matter—are you hurt? Did they”—his face twisted—“did they touch you at all?”

“No,” she said quickly, and he let out a shuddering breath, bowing his head.

“I’m so glad you were spared that.” He was crying. “Oh, Gretchen, I’d give anything for you not to be here. I’ve seen them kill two men this week. They took them apart, piece by piece. By the end, they were begging to die, just to be put out of their misery.”

He blurred behind a sheen of her tears. “We’re together,” she managed to say through her clogged throat. “When I thought you were dead, all I wanted was to see you one more time.” Somehow she smiled. “I’m getting my wish.”

“I love you so much.” He looked up. His tears had cut lines through the grime on his cheeks, so she could see the soft skin beneath the dirt. “I’d hoped never to see you again—because that would mean you were safe. What happened? How did you end up here?”

As quickly as she could, she told him the events of the past three days. When she reached the part about freeing Herr Schultz yesterday, she faltered in confusion. Why hadn’t he told her that Daniel had been imprisoned alongside him? The answer came to her before she could ask it: She hadn’t mentioned Daniel to him, and he hadn’t known who she was, so he hadn’t guessed that Daniel was important to her.

While she talked, they remained on their hands and knees, stretching out their right hands so they could press their fingertips together. She closed her eyes, savoring the comforting sensation of his fingers on hers.

After she finished, she opened her eyes to see Daniel gazing at her intently, as though he was memorizing each one of her features. “I wish I’d never met you,” he said through cracked lips. “If it wasn’t for me, you’d still be safe.”

“Don’t you dare say such a thing!” She was suddenly furious. “If we hadn’t met, I would still believe every lie Uncle Dolf told me. I would”—her voice wobbled—“I would have become a monster. You saved me from that.”

Everything in his face seemed to crumple. He lunged toward her, but his chains pulled him back so hard that he lay on the ground for a moment, gathering his strength.

“Thank you,” he said after a moment. “It means the world to hear you say that. I was afraid you’d hate me for bringing you
into danger. And I wouldn’t have blamed you in the least.”

“I could never hate you.” The ludicrousness of her statement struck them at the same time—because she had hated him, just as he’d hated her when they’d first met—and they smiled at each other. Then Gretchen glanced at their surroundings again: dirt floor, solid walls, a bucket in the corner, no sign of food or beds. This was where Daniel had spent the last three days, being beaten and watching men die. The smile slipped from her lips. “How have you managed to survive this long?”

Daniel got up, sitting cross-legged on the ground. “Göring showed up the other day—I’m not sure when, I’ve lost of track of time in this place—and he told the guards to shoot me. Said I was worthless. I made up a crazy story about Fräulein Junge being alive and someone looking like her having been shot instead. I told Göring that Fräulein Junge had been hidden by a rival
Ringverein
. I gave him the name of a fictitious Ring, saying they controlled the Wedding district, and he went off to investigate. Since then, he’s come back a few times, saying I’m a filthy liar and I deserve to be killed immediately, and then I make up more details and he sends his men to look into it further.”

Gretchen remembered how quickly he’d come up with a story when they were leaving the train at Dachau, and she shook her head in admiration. “I don’t know anyone else who can think so fast on his feet.”

He sighed. “I couldn’t make up a tale to get me out of here. Oh, Gretchen, I’m so sorry you’ve wound up in this place. I—” He broke off as the cellar door creaked open and footsteps thundered down the stairs. Three of the SA men were back, their hands on the knives and guns at their belts.

“Get up,” the one in charge growled at Gretchen. Her mouth went as dry as sand.

“Where are you taking her?” Daniel demanded.

Gretchen had thought the man would hit Daniel for asking, but he grinned instead. “The Chancellery. Herr Chancellor Hitler was most curious when Minister Göring told him about the break-in at the Reichstag. He wants to meet this would-be girl thief.”

She closed her eyes as they unlocked her handcuffs. It was going to happen—what she had feared for the past eighteen months. She would have to see Hitler again.

The instant they saw each other, he would recognize her. Of that, she had no doubt. She could already picture his blue eyes blazing in fury as they surveyed her, his old sunshine, the race traitor. She might survive the night, if he wanted to prolong her torture. But she was going to die, and soon. She had become an inconvenience to him, like her father and brother had. What would death be like? The fields of wildflowers and angels her childhood priest had preached about, or a void of blackness and silence? Dear God, she wasn’t ready to find out. Her legs started shaking so badly they threatened to buckle beneath her.

“If you’re taking Gretchen, then you’ll have to take me, too.” Daniel’s firm voice cut into her thoughts and her eyes flew open. He had gotten to his feet and stood, hunched in pain. “I put her up to sneaking into the Reichstag. It’s my fault.”

“No!” Gretchen cried. “It isn’t true!”

“It’s over, Gretchen,” Daniel said gently. “It doesn’t matter if they know who we are, not if they’re taking you to see Hitler.” He gave her a small smile. “I don’t want you to have to go there alone.”

Her eyes filled with tears. Even now, in their final moments, Daniel was thinking of her. “Thank you.”

The men looked at one another and shrugged. “If the boy has a death wish, it’s none of my concern,” the one in charge said. “Bring them both.”

They were led outside to a car. The sun had set long ago, and the sky had turned black. In silence, they drove through the long streets. Gretchen peered around the SA man sitting between her and Daniel, so she could look at him. He smiled a little and mouthed
I love you
. She realized, with a lurch of her heart, that he was saying good-bye to her. She mouthed the words back.

These really were the last minutes of her life. She stared at Daniel, drinking him in, the bruise around his eye, the dried blood at the corners of his mouth, the uncombed knots of his hair. He had never looked better to her. And she knew, with a terrible, burning desperation, that she didn’t want to die. Not now, with Daniel still alive. But there was no way out that she could see. They were trapped.

The car coasted to a stop. On her right, the Chancellery loomed, an enormous slab of pale stone shining in the darkness. The sound of the car doors opening was so loud that she winced. The men took her and Daniel by the arms again, pulling them outside into a courtyard where the wind scraped over her face so hard that tears rose to her eyes.

The men gripping her arms ran toward the building and she was forced to keep pace or be dragged on the ground. They burst inside, but before she could look around to get her bearings, the men were running again, hurrying her and Daniel through a maze of darkened, high-ceilinged rooms. The air was rank with
the odor of stopped-up drains. Beneath her feet, the floors felt soft and rotted.

The men took them upstairs to a long, dimly lit corridor lined with closed doors and told them to stand against the wall. As they waited side by side, Daniel’s hand touched Gretchen’s, the barest brush of his fingers on hers. Soon, she knew, she would never feel his hand again. She was too terrified to make a sound.

One of the men knocked on a door.

“Yes, what is it?” called a voice from within the room.

Hitler
. Gretchen would know that deep, melodic tone anywhere. Her legs buckled and she started sliding down the wall. One of the men jerked her upright so hard that her arm burned. She stared straight ahead with unseeing eyes.

“I’ve brought the Reichstag thief and Herr Cohen to you,” the man called back. “Herr Cohen says he ordered her to break into the Reichstag, so I thought you would want to see them both.” He hesitated, glancing over his shoulder at her and Daniel. “They seem quite devoted to each other, Herr Chancellor Hitler.”

There was a pause. Through the walls separating them, Gretchen imagined Hitler standing up, surprise creasing his forehead, a slender, white hand smoothing the front of his shirt. He must have guessed it was her. He would want a moment to himself, so he could arrange his thoughts and wipe the shock from his face. He would need to be in control of his emotions when she was sent into his office.

Daniel slid down the wall, clutching his left arm, moaning.

“What’s wrong with him?” a guard snapped.

“He’s having a pain attack.” Gretchen strained against her captor’s grasp. “It’s from an old injury. Please let me go to him!”
She saw the confusion in their faces and said, “He’s helpless when he’s like this. Please!”

“He’s a cripple,” one of the guards said. “I saw—we had him stripped to the waist yesterday. His left arm’s deformed. We have nothing to fear from him.”

Daniel slumped to the floor. His closed eyes fluttered, then focused on her. And he winked. Gretchen stilled in bewilderment. What on earth was he up to?

“That’s Fräulein Müller,” Hitler called. The door muffled his voice, so she could not hear the emotion in it. “Send her in alone. I’ll deal with the Jew next.”

“Very good, Herr Chancellor,” the guard said. He opened the door. She swiveled in his grasp, trying to get one final look at Daniel, but the guard shoved her forward. She stumbled into the office. The door clicked shut behind her. She peered into the dimness, her heart racing.

“Hello, Uncle Dolf,” she said.