Prisoner of Night and Fog (35 page)

Gretchen stared at him.
Feelings. Separate boxes
. The
Günstlingjude
, Hitler’s “favored Jew,” the doctor who had cared for his mother. Crumbling letters and an old newspaper photo. Dead cats and a dislocated shoulder and the men’s positions in the front line. The psychiatric diagnosis that only her father and Uncle Dolf had known about. Papa trailing after Hitler into the beer hall, desperately unhappy, and confiding to Gerlich that his old wartime memories were troubling him. Dying at the front line when he should have been in the rear unit. Only one person would have had the authority to order her father to march with the leaders. The same person who had known about the wartime diagnosis and wanted to shut her father up before he spilled the damaging secret. The man who could seal his hatred for Papa into a box and smile at her for years. Hitler himself.

At last, she knew who had killed her father.

She had to escape. Pushing past Reinhard, she threw the door open and raced into the parlor, staggering to a stop when Hitler appeared in the doorway. He moved like an old man, his shoulders rounded, his steps slow and unsteady, his face pale as paper.

“Gretchen,” he said hoarsely.

She couldn’t look at him; she couldn’t speak or they would guess the truth, that she finally knew what had happened on that November morning eight years ago. She must act ordinary; a few whispered words of condolence and she could be out the door.

“I’m so sorry about Geli—” she began, but Hitler shouted, “
Do not speak her name!
You are not fit to say it!”

Schwarz appeared behind him. “Herr Hitler, you must rest before the police return. We shall explain to them it was a terrible tragedy—that, of course, Fräulein Raubal’s death was an unfortunate accident.”

“Yes, an accident, yes, thank you!” Hitler sobbed, practically falling into Schwarz’s arms. “My beautiful Geli . . .”

Now was her chance. She sidled along the wall, toward the doorway leading to the front hall. Quickly, quietly, so they didn’t notice. Another second and she could run for the door. They wouldn’t dare stop her once she reached the street, she was sure.

A hand clapped over her wrist and jerked her back into the parlor. “Where do you think you’re going?” Reinhard breathed in her ear. “Uncle isn’t done with you. Uncle Dolf,” he said more loudly, “I believe you have my sister to deal with.”

Like a man awaking from a dream, Hitler swiveled out of Schwarz’s awkward embrace. “Yes.” A strange expression Gretchen had never seen before tightened his features. It might have been hurt.

Reinhard released her and walked away, joining the other men at the opposite end of the parlor. She stood alone before Hitler.

“You’re too trusting, Gretchen,” he said. “Everywhere, the Jew disguises himself to seduce pure German maidens. But he cannot transform his true self.”

There was nothing she could say, nothing that he could hear. Shaking, she raised her head so she could look at him—sheet-white and sweating, his eyes bloodshot and focused on the wall instead of her. No, there was one thing she could say to him.

“You’re wrong,” she said.

It was as though a switch had been thrown. He sprang forward. “Someday I shall have gallows upon gallows erected, and the Jews shall hang from them! All save for a few, who I shall keep alive so they may see that their race has been annihilated from the face of the earth.”

His face had flushed. Sweat had turned the strands of hair at his temples from brown to damp black. His eyes, that wild, piercing blue, fastened on her.

She stepped closer to him, so near she could smell his scents of sugar and toothpaste and hair pomade. The other men ranged about the far side of the parlor, Hoffmann, Schwarz, and the chauffeur shuffling their feet, clearly ill at ease, Reinhard perched on a chair’s arm, looking bored. They couldn’t hear her if she spoke quietly.

She looked at Hitler. They were eye to eye.

40

SOFTLY, SHE SAID, “I KNOW WHAT YOU DID TO MY
father.”

“What are you talking about?” Hitler stared at her. A tic pulled at the left side of his face—such a quick motion she nearly missed it.

“You killed him. He knew about the diagnosis you received at the hospital in Pomerania. He brought it up during the auto ride to the beer hall, cautioning you not to let your nerves become too overwrought again. That was why he was so upset that night. Because you were angry with him, and he couldn’t bear your disapproval.”

Her heart hammered against her ribs, so loudly she could scarcely hear her own hushed voice. Hitler continued staring at her, but he didn’t even open his mouth. He was speechless. She hadn’t known it was possible. She rushed on, the words tumbling out.

“You summoned him to the front line—it must have been you because no one else would have had the authority to move him from the back. I don’t think you planned on shooting him, for no one could have predicted you would walk directly into the waiting police.” She grabbed a quick breath, and Hitler remained silent, watching her. Glaring. “Perhaps you wanted your old war comrade near you again. It doesn’t matter. He marched with you until you reached the Residenzstrasse. The street is so narrow that you couldn’t walk together, so he stepped a little in front of the first line. When the bullets started, you saw your chance to eliminate an inconvenience.”

Hitler’s left cheek rippled from the tic. Above the undulating skin, his eyes were stone, as though the parts of his face belonged to different people.

“He was right in front of you,” Gretchen said. She kept her gaze locked on his. “It was easy to shoot him in the back. The force of the bullet made him fall into your path, taking the shots meant for you. The only man who knew you’d fired at my father was Max Scheubner-Richter, because his arm was linked with yours. But in the next second, he was shot, too. He died instantly, and your secret was safe. Everyone said that your shoulder was dislocated when Scheubner-Richter collapsed, pulling you down with him. But he was on your right side. It was your left shoulder that was injured. My father must have grabbed at you when he fell. Perhaps he realized what you had done, and was attacking you. Maybe he was reaching out for help. He seized your left arm, yanking you down with such force that your shoulder was wrenched from its socket. As usual, you were lucky—no one noticed the discrepancy in your story.”

Still Hitler said nothing. The tic had transformed his face, pulling so hard on the skin that she scarcely recognized him. At his sides, his arms hung tensely, the hands convulsing into fists. Behind him, the other men clustered together at the parlor’s far end, talking quietly to one another, obviously unaware of what was happening.

“It was your misfortune that he was credited with saving your life,” Gretchen said. “You had to honor his memory or your followers would wonder why you refused to acknowledge the martyr who protected you. By the time you were released from prison and the ban on your speaking in public had been lifted, the story of my father’s death had grown into legend. I’m certain you realized you could use the story to your advantage and show that you were someone worth dying for. But how it must have galled you, all these years, to pay homage to the man you had murdered.”

His eyes bulged. He stepped forward, his cheek still rippling. “You foolish girl.”

She turned and ran.

“You foul, loathsome liar!” Hitler shouted. She heard his footsteps thudding as he followed her into the front hall. She was moving so fast, she nearly tumbled over the chair in the corner, where he usually kept his cartridge belt and weapons. Her shin banged into the chair’s seat. Empty now. Which meant he was still wearing a whip and a gun. He could kill her right here.

“Somebody, stop her!” Hitler screamed. “Get the Müller girl!”

She spun away from the chair and raced across the front hall. Behind her she heard the whine of Hitler’s whip, drawing free from his belt, and the other men’s shouts and pounding footsteps. She flung open the door.

The tiled staircase spiraled below her. She ran down. She heard the men above her, and risked a glance over her shoulder. Reinhard and the chauffeur were following her. Hitler stood at the stairway landing, clutching his whip, sweat-darkened hair hanging over his forehead, shouting something unintelligible.

She whipped her head around. Down, down into the front lobby. She skidded across the polished floor, arms windmilling, ankles wobbling in high heels. She felt something touch her back—Reinhard, she was sure of it, she could tell by his cologne—and she swung her arm back, connecting hard with something soft and fleshy—she heard his startled gasp—and then she was twisting the door handle and shooting across the front steps, heading into the Prinzregentenstrasse, startling a flock of doves that shot toward the skies in a flutter of wings and cooing voices.

She raced down the street, legs pumping, ignoring the surprised pedestrians leaping out of her way, heading toward the river, running until she thought her lungs would explode, and every time she glanced over her shoulder, she saw Reinhard following her, his face grim with purpose.

Gretchen jumped onto a streetcar as it lurched forward. While she walked down the center aisle, past the seated housewives and children and burghers, she watched through the windows as Reinhard ran closer, shouting and waving his arms.

Don’t stop, don’t stop
, she silently begged the driver, and her legs shook from relief when the car trundled on, picking up speed, leaving Reinhard behind.

She sank onto a seat. Hitler now knew they were enemies. She might die now. And yet she couldn’t regret what she had said. Hitler deserved to know that she had seen through him.

But she wouldn’t be frozen out or ignored, like other National Socialists who had fallen from favor. It would be different for her, Hitler’s adored sunshine. She had committed the worst crime imaginable. She had seen his true self.

The streetcar stopped. She took another, heading north to the Golden Phoenix, where no one would think to look for her and she could telephone Daniel at the newspaper. She didn’t dare go to his office. Not now that Reinhard knew about Daniel and where he worked. It was possible he’d sent an SA comrade to keep a lookout for her at the
Munich Post
building.

Dread sat in her stomach like stones. Through the streetcar’s smeared window, she watched the fine stone houses of the Leopoldstrasse slowly shrink into crumbling two- and three-story structures. Marquee lights, dimmed now in the fading daylight, announced comedians and musical acts and GIRLS! GIRLS! She was almost at the nightclub. Soon she would speak to Daniel, and it would be all right, somehow. She would get out of this city and never return.

She exited the streetcar at its next stop. The Golden Phoenix was nearly deserted. Only half past four—an hour and a half before the day laborers’ quitting time, and far too early for university students to stop by.

Gretchen stood at the bar. The cavernous dance hall’s chandeliers were unlit, and the orchestra stand was empty. A single gas lamp burned above the bar. Nursing their drinks, a few men and women in ancient-looking, patched clothes slumped at the round tables. The bartender wiped a tired-looking dishrag over the counter, watching her.

“What it’ll be?” he asked, draping the rag over his shoulder and speaking around the cigarette hanging from his lips. “You aren’t allowed to stand in here for free, Fräulein.”

“I need to use the telephone—”

“There’s a public exchange box down the street.”

“Please, may I use yours?” Unease dragged cold fingers along her back. This was taking too long. “I promise to pay you for the call—”

Footsteps clicked on the scuffed wooden floor. She spun around. A tall figure was crossing the dimly lit room.
Reinhard
. How had he known where to find her?

She whirled on the bartender. “Is there another way out of here?”

He stubbed the smoldering cigarette out on in an ashtray. “For customers who buy drinks, maybe.”

The restrooms! She could kick out a window and escape that way.

She ran toward the corridor leading to the lavatories. As she seized the doorknob for the women’s restroom an arm whipped around her shoulders, pulling her close. She forced a breath, feeling the smooth, hot skin of Reinhard’s face pressed against hers.

“How did you find me?” she whispered.

His cheek moved on hers as he smiled. “I followed your streetcar in a taxi. It was worth the expense.” He jerked her backward a step, toward the bar. “Hesitate and your Jew dies. Let’s go.”

He couldn’t have gotten to Daniel already. He must be bluffing.

She looked at Reinhard. “You’re lying. You haven’t had enough time to find Daniel.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Calling the Yid by his first name? How cozy. And I didn’t say
I
had him.” His arm tightened around her shoulders. “But Kurt should have, by now.”

Then she was too late to warn Daniel. He might be hurt already or kidnapped, and she had no way to help him. The weight of it nearly pushed her to her knees.

She didn’t fight her brother because there was no choice to make. Together, Reinhard’s arm draped over her shoulders, they walked down the corridor, back into the dance hall. He nudged her into a chair and strode toward the bar.

He passed a few coins to the bartender, his teeth flashing white in his careless grin as the man handed him the telephone receiver from the set hanging on the wall. Gretchen felt a hot spurt of outrage. How easily Reinhard charmed others into doing what he wanted, when her desperation had left the bartender unmoved.

Her legs tensed, wanting to run, but she didn’t move. Her acquiescence might mean Daniel’s life.

Who could her brother be talking to? If only she could make out the shape of his words, but the room was too dim.

Still grinning, he ambled back to her. “Want a drink?”

What was he planning? She couldn’t even guess.

Fear rendered her mute, and she shook her head while Reinhard waved to the bartender, calling for a beer. Silently, clutching her pocketbook so she had something to hold on to, Gretchen watched her brother lift the stein to his lips, the muscles in his throat working as he gulped the drink. He thumped the table, shouting for another, and drank that down just as quickly.