Conspiracy of Blood and Smoke (3 page)

Her heart started to pound. But instead of sliding to the floor and covering her face with her hands, as she used to do, she stared at herself in the mirror and said the words that she forced herself to say every night. “Adolf Hitler killed Papa.”

Saying them didn’t change anything; Hitler had still gotten
away with murdering her father nine years ago. All because Papa had known that Uncle Dolf had been diagnosed as a psychopath—a diagnosis that Gretchen doubted her father had believed—when they’d recovered at the same military hospital during the Great War. Hitler had been terrified that the information would destroy his burgeoning political career.

And so he’d shot Papa during a street fight between the National Socialists and the state police, gambling that no one would notice in the confusion. As usual, he’d been lucky. It wasn’t until two summers ago, when Gretchen had met Daniel and they had investigated her father’s death, that she’d realized the man she’d adored for years was a criminal.

Now she bit her lip to keep the tears at bay. Saying the truth didn’t change what had happened. But every time she said the words to herself, she felt stronger.

Since the last time she had seen Hitler, he had lost the presidential election, but the National Socialists had continued to surge in the polls, and last month President Hindenburg had appointed Hitler to the chancellorship, the second highest position in the country and his due as head of the largest political party in Germany. He was powerful now, more powerful than in the years she’d known him, except in one crucial way: He didn’t own her anymore.

She changed into her nightdress and snapped off the lamp, plunging the room into a blackness broken only by the slivers of moonlight showing through the curtain. Whatever news had been in Daniel’s telegram, she prayed it had nothing to do with the nightmares of their past.

DANIEL STILL HADN’T TELEPHONED BY THE TIME
Gretchen left for school the next morning, and some of the tension melted from her shoulders. If the news had been dire, he would have told her. Everything must be all right.

When the dismissal bell rang, she slowly put her books in her schoolbag, wishing she didn’t have to leave. Here she always felt normal, surrounded by the simple majesty of science, the smooth logic of mathematics, the precision of Latin. Every question had an answer. Unlike the questions that tormented her about her old life.

As she wove between the girls in the corridor, she caught snatches of their conversations—tonight’s assignment on
The Merchant of Venice
, the French teacher’s too-tight blouse, the sixth-form girl who’d been caught in a pub with a university undergraduate—but the words brushed against her like
butterflies’ wings, soft and barely felt. If only she could giggle and chatter as easily as the other girls. Sometimes forcing a laugh or a lighthearted comment required more energy than she could manage. She wasn’t like her classmates, and she never would be.

It didn’t matter, she told herself as reached the front hall. In a few months, she would graduate and enroll at a university, so she could become a psychoanalyst. More than anything else, she wanted to heal diseased minds. She hadn’t been able to help or change her brother—the whole family had been trapped in the twisting tunnels of Reinhard’s brain, afraid to risk angering him—but she could save others. After seeing the patients at Alfred’s clinic, she now understood that many mentally ill people weren’t violent, unlike her brother. But surely there were more like him, cold and sadistic, who liked torturing family members for sport. She wanted to help them all.

Outside the weak strains of February sunlight touched the bicycle she’d left leaning on the brick building. As she hopped astride, Mary appeared beside her, out of breath, her coat unbuttoned over her blue school uniform.

“Where are you off to?” she asked.

“I’m going to see if Daniel’s home,” Gretchen said. “If he has an evening assignment, he takes an hour or two off in the afternoon to spend with me.”

A grin creased Mary’s round face. “Then I shan’t keep you. But I’ll want all the details tomorrow. Especially how you managed to keep such a gorgeous fellow under wraps for so long. We all knew you had a beau, but I’d no idea he was so splendid! Does he have any friends?”

Gretchen smiled, thinking of the graduate students who lived
in Daniel’s lodging house: hard-bitten, coffee- and gin-swilling young men who were far more interested in garnering top marks and landing high-paying jobs someday in the City than in the proper students at a girls’ school.

“Yes, but they’re not what you’d call your cup of tea.”

“Lucky you, then, for catching such a delicious drink.” Mary paused. “Is he ill? Because of his arm, I mean.” She flushed as Gretchen looked at her. “It’s none of my business, but I couldn’t help noticing.”

“He’s fine,” Gretchen said quickly. There was no way she could tell Mary the truth—that some National Socialists had beaten Daniel right before they’d fled from Munich. Going to a hospital would have been only a temporary reprieve before Hitler’s men found them. By the time they’d reached Switzerland, Daniel had insisted he was much better and they should reserve their dwindling money for false identification papers, not doctors’ fees. The whole time his bruised muscles had swelled, pressing against the skin until the cells died, leaving his arm hanging uselessly by his side. Then the muscles had slowly atrophied, contracting until his arm was little more than blood and bone.

“Oh, so he’ll be getting better, then.” Mary brightened. “That’s a relief!”

“The nerve damage is permanent, I’m afraid,” Gretchen said. Now that she was finally talking about the matter with someone else, the story rushed out. “Alfred took him to a specialist in London last summer. The doctor said Daniel’s lucky to have any use of his arm at all. Some days, his arm feels numb. Other times, it feels as though it’s been set on fire. The pain will come and go for the rest of his life.”

“How dreadful!” Mary put a hand to her mouth. “He must be very brave, to cope with such an awful injury.”

“He’s the bravest person I know.” Gretchen leaned across the bicycle handlebars to squeeze Mary’s hand. She wished they could whisper and giggle about Daniel like ordinary school chums, lying on the rug in Mary’s room, flipping through magazines, half listening to the wireless, talking about boys and whatever came into their heads. Just as she and her old best friend, Eva, used to do.

A lump rose in her throat. She and Eva were lost to each other now, as they must be, and no amount of crying or praying would change that. Swallowing hard, she released Mary’s hand.

“You’re a good friend,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Mary smiled uncertainly. “Are you all right? You look sad.”

Forcing a smile, Gretchen nodded. She was as all right as she ever could be. After bidding Mary good-bye, she pedaled down the narrow street lined with a jumble of stone and stucco buildings, past a couple of housewives pushing prams and some university undergraduates wearing their required long black robes. Overhead, clouds choked the sky, gilding the shop windows and the black automobiles crawling down the avenue with silver.

Daniel lived in a narrow, three-story house on Iffley Road. Gretchen left her bicycle leaning against the front steps and rang the bell. After a moment, the door opened and Daniel’s landlady, a middle-aged woman in a tweed skirt and green sweater set, peered out at her. She didn’t smile, as she usually did.

“Oh, Miss Whitestone, please come in.” She ushered Gretchen into a parlor crowded with old-fashioned furniture and around
a wooden table so wide that Gretchen had to walk sideways to reach the sofa. Daniel often joked that he was afraid to breathe in there or risk breaking one of Mrs. Mitchell’s precious things.

Gretchen folded her hands in her lap, waiting for Mrs. Mitchell to go to the foot of the stairs and call to Daniel to come down, as she usually did. Instead, she went to the desk in the corner, unlocked a drawer, and took out an envelope.

“Mr. Cohen asked me to give you this,” she said, crossing the room and pressing the envelope into Gretchen’s hand. “I’ll give you a moment to read it.”

She strode from the room, leaving Gretchen staring after her in confusion. Daniel had never left a note for her before. She tore open the envelope.

My Gretchen,

Aaron was attacked. He’s in the hospital and the doctors aren’t sure if he’ll survive.

She gasped. She remembered Aaron Pearlman, Daniel’s cousin, so well. He’d let her stay with him and his sister, Ruth, for a night, when she’d had nowhere else to go. She turned back to the letter.

The National Socialists were having a parade through Munich. Apparently, nowadays everyone is supposed to salute as they go past. But Aaron didn’t. Several of the National Socialists left the parade and beat him in the street, while others watched and did nothing. Ruth screamed at them to stop, and they only laughed at her. The doctors say he has massive internal injuries.

I must go back. By the time you read this, I’ll have already left. The men who beat Aaron need to be brought to justice. Don’t worry—I’ll be careful. I’ll use my false papers, and I’ll contact my old colleagues at the
Munich Post
. They have a far-flung network of informants, and if anyone knows who’s responsible, they will. Once I have the men’s names, I’ll give them to Ruth, so she can tell the police. I don’t know if they’ll arrest the guilty men, as there are plenty of National Socialists on the police force. But I’ll have done something, at least. I can’t live with myself if I don’t try.

I will come back to you as soon as I can.

Your Daniel

The paper shook in her hands. Returning to Munich was suicide. Daniel couldn’t hope to sneak back into the city undetected; surely his face was too well known. As the despised Jew who’d dared to fall in love with Hitler’s “sunshine,” he would be hunted down and killed.

She read the letter a second time, as if by seeing the words again she could somehow change their meaning. Daniel had written in German, even though they’d been careful to talk only in English since they’d disembarked from the ship at Dover months ago, tired and hungry and with only nine pounds between them. No possessions, no spare clothes, nothing but each other and the false identification papers they’d paid so much to get. Gretchen’s dry eyes burned. And now Daniel had plunged back into the nightmare.

She got up and stumbled out of the parlor and down the front steps. Her legs were trembling so badly she could barely clamber
onto the bicycle. She pedaled down the road, heading northeast, toward home, all of her movements automatic. Dimly, she heard automobiles gliding past and the rattle of a pram’s wheels on the pavement. Daniel’s letter rustled in her coat pocket.

Somehow she got back to the Whitestones’ house, although she couldn’t remember bicycling there. Moving like an automaton, she went through the parlor, where Julia, the governess, and the boys stopped talking to stare at her. The effort to lift each foot onto the next step seemed like too much, but she managed to get up them and into her room. Then she curled into a ball on her bed and let the tears come.

What if Daniel made a mistake—trusted the wrong person, walked down a street where somebody recognized him, or forgot to respond to his false name, Leopold? There were so many things that could go wrong.

She had to concentrate on the flow of air in and out of her lungs, just so she could breathe. In her mind, she saw Daniel flashing his confident, lopsided grin, and her heart ached. Daniel wasn’t who she had thought she wanted, when they had met. But he was who she needed. Now and always, he was who she needed.

The door opened, but Gretchen just pressed her wet cheek to the bedspread, rounding her shoulders, as if she could pull herself into her own private grief. The mattress dipped as someone sat down next to her.

“What’s happened?” It was Julia’s voice. She smoothed Gretchen’s hair from her face, just as Gretchen used to wish her own mother would do. Gretchen closed her eyes, clinging to the sensation of Julia’s fingers, light and cool on her scalp, and the whole story streamed out.

When she had finished, there was silence for a moment. Then Julia sighed. “He’ll return as quickly as he can. Daniel loves you with his whole heart. Alfred and I knew that from the moment you two showed up on our doorstep.” She laughed a little. “I’ll never forget the sight of you—so pale and skinny and exhausted. It was obvious Daniel was in terrible pain, but he wouldn’t let Alfred inspect his arm until he saw that I’d gotten you something to eat.”

She hesitated. “You’re lucky, Gretchen, to have a young man who places his duty to his family above his own safety and happiness. There aren’t many who would be so brave. He’ll be back before you’ve had time to miss him.”

Shaking her head, Gretchen said nothing. Julia didn’t understand. How could she, when she had never attended a Party rally in the Circus Krone where the hundreds of people in the audience roared,
“Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil!”
or lingered over coffee at Café Heck, listening to Hitler go on and on about his future plans?
I shall do the thing the rest of the world would like to do
, he’d muttered to one of his comrades while she’d traced the wet circle left by her glass on the table, sixteen and bored.
They don’t know how to get rid of the Jews. I will teach them
.

If Hitler found Daniel, he would show him no mercy.

“Rest,” Julia said. “Everything will seem better in the morning.”

But nothing would be different tomorrow; Daniel would still be gone. Gretchen opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling. Beside her, Julia murmured reassuringly and smoothed her hair. They stayed that way for a long time.

Six days dragged past. At breakfast, Gretchen half listened to the wireless and scoured the morning newspapers, reading every article about Germany, searching the tiny print for Daniel’s name without finding it. During the day, she lost herself in her lessons and could almost forget Daniel had left. But then the memory of Daniel’s leaving would crash over her like a wave, pinning her to the ocean floor.

After school, she slumped on the parlor sofa, staring at the same geometry problem, willing her frozen brain to work. Alfred and Julia were listening to the wireless. From the kitchen, Gretchen heard Cook humming as she prepared supper, and thumps and shrieks of laughter drifted downstairs from the nursery. It should have felt like an ordinary afternoon, but everything seemed unfamiliar, the mundane routine transformed by Daniel’s absence.

The tinny voice from the wireless sliced into her thoughts. “Germans are in a state of shock today,” he was saying.

Gretchen bolted upright. “What did he say?”

Julia set down her knitting, concern etched on her face. “Gretchen, are you all right—”

“Shh!” Alfred leaned forward. “We need to hear this.”

The announcer continued in a smooth voice, “At nine o’clock last night, February the twenty-seventh, Berlin was the target of a terrorist attack heard around the world. Person or persons unknown set fire to the Reichstag, the building where the German legislative assembly convene. According to some sources, the fire may be the work of either the Nazis or the Communists, Germany’s two most powerful political parties. For our listeners who don’t follow German politics, the parties are bitter rivals and have battled each other
for supremacy in the Reichstag for the past few years.”