Conspiracy of Blood and Smoke (7 page)

“I’m here. And I need your help. Please, Eva, I’m begging you.”

Silence hovered over the line. Gretchen gripped the receiver so tightly her fingers started going numb.

“All right.” Eva sounded cautious. “What do you need?”

Gretchen sagged against the wall in relief. “Thank you.” She glanced down the corridor, but nobody was coming. “The SA arrested the reporters from the
Munich Post
this afternoon. I need to know if Daniel Cohen was among them, or if he’s already in jail. He would probably be an important enough prisoner to be housed at the central precinct.”

“Who’s Daniel Cohen?” Eva snapped. “The Jewish boyfriend you never told me about? I had to hear about him from my boss after you disappeared. But I guess we girls must have our secrets,” she added in a changed tone, and Gretchen understood what she
wasn’t saying: Neither of them had been honest with each other about who they had loved. “How the devil am I supposed to find out if he’s been arrested?” Eva demanded. “Do you really think the police would give me that sort of information?”

This was the difficult part. “Not you. But your boss is an important man in the Party. They would tell him.”

“How do I trick Herr Hoffmann into ringing up the police station and asking—never mind,” Eva interrupted herself. “This is something you truly need to know?”

“More than anything.”

Eva blew out a breath; it sounded like a thunderclap over the telephone line. “Very well. I’ll come up with some reason when I ask Herr Hoffmann. Be at the Englischer Garten at half past six at our favorite spot. If I can find out anything, I’ll know it by then.”

She banged down the receiver, leaving Gretchen standing in the corridor, listening to the whistle of the disconnected telephone line. Hoping her friend wouldn’t betray her.

THE SUN WAS SETTING IN A POOL OF ORANGE AND
red when Gretchen reached the Englischer Garten. At the massive park’s entrance, she looked back at the Königinstrasse. The long street stretched out in both directions, the ends falling into shadow. She could barely make out the skinny stone boardinghouse where she used to live. On the front steps, a woman was brushing off the snow with a broom.

Even from a few hundred yards away, Gretchen could tell the woman was short and plump. Not her mother, then. Someone else must run the place now.

The patch of pavement where Gretchen had skipped rope and Reinhard had thrown jacks was empty, and the bedroom window where she had hung red curtains she had sewn herself was now lined with lace draperies. It was as though the Müller family had never lived there, all traces of their lives gone. For a long
moment, Gretchen stared at the house. Inside was Mama’s bedroom, where Mama had showed her how to hem skirts, the two of them laughing together at Gretchen’s uneven first attempt. Her own bedroom on the third floor, where she’d found her cat lying on her pillow, its neck broken. And Reinhard’s room on the floor below, where she’d accused him of killing Striped Peterl to get back at her. Where Reinhard had punched her in the face and thrown her to the floor, and when she’d begged him to stop, she had barely been able to speak around the blood pooling in her mouth.

Trapped air burned in her chest. She hated herself for thinking of her brother again, for letting the memories overwhelm her, just as Alfred had warned.
Reinhard is dead
, she reminded herself. She’d seen his SA commander kill him on Hitler’s orders because, thanks to her investigation into Papa’s death, the Müller family had become an inconvenience. Nothing could bring Reinhard back. He couldn’t hurt her anymore.

That was a lie. He could still hurt her, and she knew it. Every time she thought of him, the familiar, old panic clawed its way up her throat until she was gasping. With a massive effort, she turned away from the boardinghouse, her eyes stinging.
Keep going
, she ordered herself.
Do this for Daniel
. His name forced her legs to move, slowly at first, then faster.

Inside the massive park, the snow-whitened fields were turning blue in the deepening dusk. Gretchen hurried along the curving paths, the back of her neck prickling. At the supper hour, the walkways were crowded with men on their way to their rented rooms or to a beer hall for a cheap meal. She didn’t hear the tweet of police whistles or the rumble of wagons from the
street; perhaps the arrests were over, at least for the day.

Ahead stood a thicket of chestnut trees. Between their trunks, Gretchen saw the sun tipping over the horizon, a blazing ball sinking into black. In the final seconds of daylight, she made out a figure standing within the ring of trees: slender, dressed in a three-quarter-length coat, a cloud of dark blond hair peeking out from under a fashionable porkpie hat. Eva. She had come, just as she had promised. Love for her old friend surged through Gretchen. After everything that had shoved them apart, she had still been able to count on Eva.

There was no one else near the trees; no brown blur of SA uniforms under the leafless branches. Still Gretchen hesitated.
For Daniel
, she told herself and moved off the path, ducking under the low-hanging branches to reach the center of the clearing. Snow crunched under her feet, and Eva whirled at the sound, her eyes wide. Then she smiled and ran forward, flinging her arms around Gretchen. Through the heavy layers of their coats, Gretchen could feel the bones in Eva’s back.

“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again!” Eva pulled away, tears glittering in her eyes. Sobs rose in Gretchen’s chest, and she gripped her friend’s hands. She couldn’t stop staring at her. In the chiseled angles of her face, there was nothing left of the plump girl she had been. “Nobody seemed to know what had happened to you—some people said you must be dead, and Adolf said we weren’t allowed to mention your name again.”

Gretchen froze. “Adolf? You call him Adolf?”

“Of course.” Eva smiled. Tears had cut tracks through the powder on her cheeks, showing the pale skin beneath. “What else would I call my beau?”

Gretchen’s fingers slid from Eva’s. Hitler hadn’t thrown Eva over. They were still dating. She backed away, reaching across her body with her free hand to touch the side of her suitcase, feeling for the bulge of the revolver. Her gaze swept the bare trees. In the dusk, they looked like black skeletons, and on the pathway behind them, a couple of dark shapes ambled along. She recognized the shape of the men’s heads; they wore knitted woolen hats, not peaked SA caps. She was still safe, for the moment. But Hitler’s men might be waiting beyond the swell of the hills. She dropped her bag on the ground and started undoing the buckles, her movements quick and jerky. The revolver was unloaded, but she could fill its chambers with bullets in a matter of seconds.

“What are you doing?” Eva sank to her knees beside Gretchen. “You look ill.”

“Tell me what you’ve learned about Daniel.” She glanced back again. Nothing except trees and a field intersected with empty walking paths. She unfastened the second buckle.

“He wasn’t arrested.” Eva’s voice was matter-of-fact, her gaze steady. Gretchen remembered how Eva twisted her hair around a finger if she was fibbing, like the time she’d sworn to her mother that she and Gretchen hadn’t snitched the cooking brandy from the kitchen.

Eva was telling the truth.

Daniel might still be alive and safe, somewhere. Perhaps it wasn’t too late. “Thank you,” Gretchen said, and she couldn’t stop the hot tears from filling her eyes.

She half rose, scanning her surroundings. No one. Maybe Eva really had come alone. The sky had already turned black, but
no stars had appeared yet. Another few minutes and the darkness would be so complete that she’d be at the mercy of night and whatever it concealed. She had to get away as quickly as she could.

“Did you learn anything else?” she asked Eva, who shook her head.

“Herr Hoffmann telephoned the central station—I made up a ridiculous story about wanting to know about Herr Cohen out of respect for my long friendship with you, and happily I think the boss had been hitting the bottle again because he didn’t seem to find it strange at all. Anyway, loads of reporters from the Socialist and Communist newspapers were rounded up today, but your man wasn’t among them. The policeman said they didn’t have anyone with that name registered as an inmate.”

It was better than she’d let herself hope. Gretchen embraced Eva, quick and hard. “I’ll forever be grateful to you.”

“You’ll always be my friend. Always.” Eva’s breath was warm on Gretchen’s cheek. “But you can’t stay in Munich.” She hesitated. “He still talks about you,” she added softly, looking away from Gretchen, fiddling with her gloves as though she were embarrassed. “I don’t know what happened between you, but he hates you now. I won’t tell anyone you’re back, I promise. But I can’t protect you.”

Chills raced up Gretchen’s spine. Hitler hadn’t forgotten her. Deep down, she’d known he wouldn’t—in his eyes, she had betrayed him too thoroughly to be ignored or cast aside. He might have his men looking for her even now. She knew the strength of his willpower all too well—once he settled upon a goal, nothing would swerve him from it. As long as he lived, he
would want her found and punished. Back in England, she was beyond his control. Here, if the National Socialists found her, she was dead.

In the shadows, Eva’s face was white, her eyes dark as coals. Impulsively, Gretchen snatched her hands. “Come with me. We can leave Munich together.” She almost blurted out that Hitler was dangerous and had killed her father, but stopped herself in time. She must go slowly. Instead, she added, “You have to see what kind of a man Hitler is, if you know how badly he wants to hurt me.”

Eva pulled her hands free. “I can’t.” There was a plaintive note in her voice. “I love him. And nobody understands. Not you, not my parents. They think I ought to be married and having babies. And Adolf keeps me a secret. He’s always saying that he’ll never marry me.

“Never.” Her face twisted. “And I’ve spoiled myself for other men. Nobody will want me now, but it hardly matters because I only want him.”

Revulsion coursed up Gretchen’s throat.
Spoiled
. Eva must have made love with Hitler. Her former second father and her old best friend, lying together, their limbs tangled. Gretchen stared at the black lines of the trees, willing her mind to go blank.

Eva was sobbing. “I know it’s a sin. And I’ve had no one to talk to, not since you’ve been gone.” She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket but didn’t use it, twisting the fabric into a rope instead. “Sometimes I wish I could die rather than go on like this. I tried back in November.”

Her words pulled Gretchen back into the conversation. She gasped. “Eva, you mustn’t—”

Eva raised agonized eyes to Gretchen’s. “My family had gone out for the evening. I stayed in, hoping Adolf would call, but when he didn’t, I—I just lost my head. I took Papa’s Great War pistol from the bedside table and shot myself in the neck.”

Unconsciously, she stroked her throat, as though she could feel the bullet plunging into her skin. “My sister came home early and got me to a doctor. Adolf was so worried when he found out. He was in the midst of a campaigning trip but he rushed back right away. He brought me flowers.”

She gave Gretchen a small smile. “You understand, don’t you? You must, for you’ve known him practically your whole life. He’s different from other men. He believes so completely in himself and his vision for a new Germany, and who am I to stand in his way? I must be grateful for whatever he’s able to give me.”

Gretchen couldn’t help thinking of Geli, Hitler’s half niece. They’d been good friends, too, until the day she’d seen Geli dead on her bedroom floor. Suicide had been the official verdict, but she’d never been able to accept it. Geli had been too alive, too merry to kill herself. And yet here was Eva, fun-loving and vivacious, playing with death, too. What had Hitler done to her friends to change them so drastically?

“You deserve a man who’s proud to be with you,” Gretchen said, “not a man who hides you away—”

“It’s my choice,” Eva interrupted. She raised her chin, as if daring Gretchen to say anything else, but Gretchen was silent. She knew too well how people believed what they wanted to—she had done the same for the first seventeen years of her life.

So she kissed Eva on both of her cheeks, saying, “Thanks. I’ll never forget you.” Then she buckled her suitcase again and
squeezed between the tightly clustered trees toward the pathway leading out of the park and into the darkness covering the city.

In a pocket of copper beeches, she stopped to gather her thoughts. The blackness was heavy between the trees, and she felt hidden from the world. Was Daniel still in Munich? Probably not, as no one seemed to have seen him in days. Which meant there was only one possible place he could be—Berlin. He would be determined to uncover what had really happened to the woman he was supposed to have killed—not only because he wanted to clear his name, but also to prove the National Socialists were murderous thugs.

Somehow, she would have to find him in the capital. She looked at the sky. It was an unrelieved black. Soon the stars would appear, and with them, the night express to Berlin.

And she would be on it.

She took a streetcar to the central train station. Leaning her head against the window, she watched the familiar streets trundle past. A memory tugged at the corners of her mind, begging to be let in. Finally, exhausted, she surrendered to it.

She had recognized those copper beeches in the park. Hitler had taken her and Papa there when she was six, back in the days when the Party was new and its leader was still an obscure politician. They had veered off the path, tramping through the woods where the trees crowded so close she could barely see the pewter sky above.

“Adi, aren’t you afraid to travel without bodyguards?” Papa had asked. “There are some in the city who would like to kill you.”

Uncle Dolf had laughed. “I take every precaution with my life, Müller. Besides, I have a skill few know about.” He had nodded at Gretchen. “Walk ahead of us a bit, my sunshine. I’ll tell you when to stop.”

She had hurried into the clearing, her thin-soled shoes sinking in the snow. When she reached the center of the tree-ringed circle, Uncle Dolf had shouted for her to halt, and she turned to watch them, waiting obediently. The men stood a few dozen yards behind. Papa wore a woolen cap, but Uncle Dolf was bareheaded. He never seemed to feel the cold.

“Throw a snowball high into the air,” Uncle Dolf called as he pulled something small and dark from his waistband. “Pack it tightly!”

Gretchen rolled the snow into a ball and flung it upward as hard as she could. She heard a popping sound. The snowball exploded in a shower of soft powder, raining fine white crystals down on her.

She whirled around.

“Adi!” her father shouted. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Uncle Dolf was smiling and tucking his pistol into his waistband. “I knew exactly what I was doing, Müller. As you can see, I’m an excellent shot. Even better than in our days together during the war.”