The Project (20 page)

Their only companions on the bus were an old lady with a woolen head scarf and a wicker basket, and two soldiers in dress uniform, who sat at the back of the bus and did not give the Hitler Youths a second glance.

Luke dared not speak and just stared silently out of the grimy, smoke-stained windows at the houses they passed. He recognized some of them. The holiday homes of Martin Bormann, Hitler’s private secretary; Hermann Göring, field
marshal of the Luftwaffe (and Hitler’s second in command); and Albert Speer, the Third Reich’s head architect.

Tiny details from history books now took on a whole new significance.

A horse-drawn cart passed them, going up the hill as they went down. The horse looked young and strong, with big hooves and a shaggy mane. The driver by contrast was a withered old man, who seemed to be disappearing into a thick wool coat. The rear of the cart was packed with wooden crates and tall metallic cylinders that might have held milk.

Luke’s stomach rumbled at that thought, and he realized that they hadn’t eaten for hours.

The Bahnhof was a huge building with massive arched windows on the ground level and tall rectangular windows of crisscrossed panels that stretched up at least two more stories.

In front of the building, the long snout of an anti-aircraft gun pointed at the sky. Three soldiers were manning the gun, although they were currently resting against a wall of sandbags that surrounded it, drinking out of enamel mugs. Luke was aware of the soldiers’ eyes upon them as they approached the Bahnhof. Was there something wrong with their clothes or haircuts? Thankfully, he and Tommy both had short hair, which wasn’t too different from the short back and sides of other youths they saw.

He tried not to look at them.

The soldiers kept their eyes on them but did nothing as Luke and Tommy passed. Luke risked a quick glance back
and saw that the gunners were still sitting, staring at other passersby.

By the main entrance, they passed a large statue of a soldier riding a horse.

Tommy saw Luke looking at it and whispered, “Where’re a roll of toilet paper and duct tape when you need them?”

It was the first and last time Luke laughed that day.

The station was crowded, and at least half of the people seemed to be in a military uniform of some kind. He sat on a railway bench and avoided anyone’s eyes, while Tommy went to book them into a private compartment on the train. They could afford it, and they both agreed it would be safer, as there would be fewer opportunities for Luke to reveal his lack of German.

While he was waiting, a small girl in a thick red wool coat wandered up to him, peering curiously at his bandages. There was fur around her collar and on her mittens. She was clutching a battered rag doll.

“Was ist los mit dir?”
she asked, wide-eyed.

Luke shook his head and pointed to the bandages, hoping that Tommy would be back quickly.

“Was is los mit dir?”
the girl asked again.

Luke looked away, hoping she would lose interest. A young couple on a nearby bench were watching curiously.
What was the girl asking him?
Should he just nod his head? Or shake it? Would either of those give him away? Would doing nothing be a signal to those around him that he was an imposter, a spy, an outsider in this world?

“Was ist los mit dir?”
the girl asked for a third time, and
a man in a leather trench coat standing by the railway track was also now starting to take interest.

Luke shifted forward slightly on the seat, getting ready to make a run for it.

The man in the trench coat took a step in his direction.

Just at that moment, a woman approached, grabbed the girl’s hand with some furious words, and hauled her away with an apologetic glance at Luke.

Luke risked a glance at the man in the leather trench coat to see him smile and wave at someone by the entrance just as Tommy arrived back with the tickets.

A counter near the ticket office sold them thick cheese sandwiches and large red apples that gradually quieted the gurgling coming from Luke’s stomach. They bought extras, stored in a brown paper bag, in case they needed them for the journey.

They had not yet seen Mueller and his thugs, but the train did not leave until midday, so Luke expected them to arrive closer to that time, and he was right.

Luke and Tommy kept a discreet distance, always staying out of sight behind pillars or people as Mueller purchased tickets. Tommy had a coin in his hand and was passing the time with a simple game of flipping and catching it. They tried not to talk, in case someone should overhear them.

At first Tommy and Luke heard just a rumble in the distance and saw what looked like a low, small fog rolling in from the west above the trees. As it got closer, the fog became a dense
cloud, and as the train rounded a long looping bend behind a wall of snow-covered trees, it became clear that they were watching snow flying up from either side of the train.

The train pulled up to the platform at exactly eleven-thirty, the massive brow of a snowplow leading the way. A huge wedge at the bottom of the plow lifted the snow, and a curved shield at the top hurled it out to either side of the train, creating the cloud they had seen.

There was nowhere for the train to turn around, and the tracks ended not far past the station, so Luke figured that there must be another engine at the other end of the train.

They waited for Mueller’s group to board but were not far behind him, wanting to get to their compartment before Mueller was seated.

Mueller and his thugs boarded just one carriage in front of Luke and Tommy. Uncomfortably close, Luke felt, but maybe to their advantage, considering why they were on the train in the first place.

At five minutes before twelve, there was a commotion from the Bahnhof and a heavy black car pulled up outside. A figure emerged from one of the cars and entered the station, followed by an army officer carrying a briefcase. He made his way to the train and glanced up at their carriage as he approached.

The man smiled at Luke sympathetically, perhaps because of the bandages covering Luke’s head, then disappeared into a carriage near the front of the train.

“Who do you think that was?” Tommy asked. “Himmler or Göring?”

“That was … Helmut Fricke,” Luke said, mentally flicking through the pages of one of the books he had seen in the library. “He’s an architect. Works for Albert Speer.”

At exactly twelve, with a roaring, hissing sound and a grinding noise from underneath the train, they began to move. There was an initial jolt, then a growing sensation of speed as the station disappeared past their window, followed by the snow-covered mounds of trees.

In the distance, the beautiful white-capped mountains that watched over Berchtesgaden seemed to watch over Luke and Tommy as well.

Watching over? Or just watching?

In this strange land, full of strange people who spoke a strange language, Luke felt as alien as if he had come down in a spaceship from Mars. The slightest wrong move or overheard comment and they were lost. Captured by the police—or worse, the Gestapo.

Luke had read about a British prisoner of war who escaped and was recaptured when a German police officer noticed him looking the wrong way when crossing the road.

Such a simple thing, but it cost him his freedom.

For Luke and Tommy, every action, every gesture, every word needed to be above suspicion, and in Luke’s case, that meant no words at all when German ears were listening.

Fields, softly blanketed with white, flew past the windows of the carriage. Luke turned to Tommy, and in low voices, they began to make plans.

A
man in a gray uniform pushed open the door of their compartment and spoke rapidly in German.

Luke looked at him blankly, waiting for Tommy to give him a clue.

Tommy spoke back to the man and pulled out his ticket. Luke held up his as well, and the conductor inspected them both before marking them with a thick pen. He handed each of their tickets back and asked Luke something.

Luke began to panic, with no idea what the question was. Tommy remained calm, though, and pointed to the bandages swathed around Luke’s head.

He seemed satisfied with Tommy’s explanation but held out his hand again. Tommy fished inside his coat for his ID papers. Luke handed his over also.

The conductor’s eyes narrowed, and he looked from one to the other, then back again.

Behind him, a man in Gestapo uniform moved up, blocking the doorway.

The conductor seemed confused and was asking rapid-fire questions of Tommy. He answered calmly, although Luke saw he was beginning to sweat.

The dark shape of a pistol in a leather holster made a bulge on the hip of the Gestapo officer.

What was wrong? Something about the photo? Had Gerda made some kind of a mistake when filling in the information?

The Gestapo officer pushed the conductor to one side and stepped forward, snatching the ID papers away from him. The officer’s eyes widened when he saw the shape of the wolf’s hook, and he glanced quickly at Tommy and Luke before letting out a blast of steam at the conductor.

Luke didn’t have to speak German to know that the conductor was getting a good tongue-lashing.

The Gestapo man passed their papers back and retreated with a curt nod and a click of his heels, pulling the door shut behind him.

“What was that all about?” Luke asked softly when he was sure they were out of earshot.

“A lowly conductor does not question Werewolves,” Tommy said.

Their papers were powerful magic, it seemed, in this place and time.

A
rhythmical
thump, thump, thump
came from the rear of the train. It startled Luke, who had been dozing. His first thought was that something was wrong with the train, but they did not slow and, in fact, seemed to accelerate.

He pressed his face to the window, trying to locate the source of the sound.

He could see nothing, so he pushed the sliding window of the carriage open and leaned out and, despite the freezing blast of air, craned his neck around. Tommy did the same beside him.

The train was on a slight curve, and Luke could see back to the rear carriages. Just in front of the rear engine was a low flatbed truck that had been covered with tarpaulins when they boarded. It was not covered now. The thin snouts of twin anti-aircraft guns were pounding away at something unseen in the sky.

Luke scanned the sky, searching for the target. The sky was clear, with occasional patches of cloud, and in one of those patches he saw them. Three aircraft, flying so closely together it was as if their wingtips were joined with string.

Flashes were coming from their wings. They were firing their guns. He idly wondered what they were firing at.

“Get down!” he yelled with sudden realization.

He dived to the floor, rolling underneath the wooden seat. Tommy was a fraction slower but made it just as the window shattered above them and the wooden paneling of the compartment exploded in a series of splintered holes.

Tommy rolled underneath the seat opposite and flattened himself against the wall. The seats would be little protection, Luke realized, looking at the size of the shell holes in the opposite wall.

There was an explosion from near the front of the train, and the entire carriage rocked.

The sound of the aircraft roared over their heads, so close that it seemed they must have just about peeled the top off the train.

The strafing run over, Luke climbed out from underneath the seat. All the glass in the window was gone, and it crunched on the floor beneath his boots. A wintery blast of air hit him in the face.

He found the trio of planes again, far in front of the train, banking as they circled around for another run.

The guns at the rear of the train fired incessantly, and a heavy machine gun had opened up somewhere else. Luke
could see bright tracers weaving a lazy, curving string of pearls toward the fighters.

A tracer wandered onto the fuselage of one of the planes, and it shuddered, smoke pouring out behind it, peeling off from the attack.

“Got him!” Luke shouted, then stopped. Whoever these fighter planes were, British, American, or Russian, they were on his side. He was shouting in English, he suddenly realized, and hoped that no one had heard him over the noise of the train, the guns, and the aircraft engines.

The other two planes continued straight in.

“Here they come again!” Luke said in a frightened whisper, rolling back under the seat.

The carriage shuddered again, but not so close this time, and there were screams, then silence from somewhere behind them.

Luke stood up, a little wobbly on his feet, and searched the sky again, but he could not spot the planes.

Each of the cannon-fire holes in the compartment was big enough to put his fist through, and he wondered how Mueller and his friends were getting on at the front of the train.

Perhaps the aircraft could do the job for them.

Luke couldn’t count on that, though.

The train was slowing now, even as he spotted the planes, circling around for another attack.

“What’s going on?” Tommy asked, peering out the window with him.

Luke risked a look forward, leaning out of the shattered
window. Ahead of them, in the side of a mountain, was the black mouth of a tunnel.

“They’re going to stop the train in the tunnel,” he said to Tommy. “Wait for the fighters to leave.”

Luke crawled back under the seat as the planes lined up for one final run. “This might be our chance,” he said.

I
t was pitch-black inside the tunnel. The train was unlit, running under blackout conditions. Luke could not even see Tommy, who was on the floor on the other side of the compartment.

“Pass me the goggles,” Luke said. “I’m going to see if I can steal the plans.”

“Do you want me to come with you?” Tommy asked, pushing the night-vision goggles across the floor in the darkness. He didn’t sound very enthusiastic.