Conspiracy of Blood and Smoke (29 page)

GRETCHEN FORCED HERSELF TO EAT BREAKFAST
the next day. The rolls and cheese tasted like ashes, but she choked them down anyway. She’d be useless if she didn’t keep her strength up.

The Lange Strasse was a quiet street lined with dilapidated brick and stone buildings. A man she passed pointed out the former trade union house to her; it was a three-story structure whose windows looked like black rectangles, empty and unlit.
One front door
, Gretchen thought as she studied it from across the street. Presumably a back door, too, but the front would be her best bet; the back courtyard could be bordered by walls or a fence, making it difficult for her to get in and out. Not that she was concerned about escaping. She already knew that her chances of getting away were low.

For several minutes, she pretended to flip through the
newspaper she’d swiped from the lodging house lobby, studying her surroundings from the corner of her eye. Up and down the avenue, children streamed from their apartment houses, chattering with one another as they headed to school.

A gleaming black automobile coasted to a stop in front of the union building. As Gretchen watched, two men in SA uniforms got out and jogged up the front steps.
Daniel’s killers
. They might not have pulled the trigger, but they worked at this place. They all had blood on their hands.

Her heart felt as though it was being squeezed in someone’s hands, tighter and tighter until she thought it would burst.
Calm down
, she ordered herself. She started to let her mind empty, then stopped. This was one of the concentration tricks Hitler had taught her.
It doesn’t matter
, she thought fiercely. She didn’t care what she had to do, or whose advice she had to take—not as long as she could get revenge. Once again, she forced her mind to go blank, her vision sharpening until all she saw was her target, the two brown-clad backs of the SA officers. She pulled out her weapon.

A group of little boys charged past her, giggling.

Gretchen dropped the revolver into her purse. What the devil was wrong with her? She’d been so carried away that she’d forgotten the street was swarming with schoolchildren. Leaning against a wall, she waited for her pulse to slow. Across the street, the trade union’s front doors closed behind the men. She’d missed her chance. She couldn’t go inside—into a building whose rooms and corridors she didn’t know, with too many places where the men could hide from her.

Cursing to herself, she huddled into her coat and resigned herself to wait.

Over an hour passed before the doors opened again. Gretchen swept the street with her gaze: deserted except for a couple of housewives down the block, gossiping on a building’s front steps. It was time. She pulled out her revolver, hiding her hand between the folds of her coat.

Two SA men emerged from the building. They stood on either side of a man in a dark suit, gripping his arms tightly. Slowly, the three of them started down the steps. The man in the middle moved gingerly, as though he was in pain. He tripped, his head jerking forward and his hat falling off. As he looked up, Gretchen could see his face clearly.

Shock slammed into her. It was the fireman, Heinz Schultz.

Why in heaven’s name was he still alive? She’d been certain that the National Socialists would kill him as soon as he was captured. They would only keep him around if he had something that they wanted. Which meant . . . whatever incriminating secret he knew about the Reichstag fire, he must not have shared it yet with the National Socialists, or he would have been coming out of that building as a corpse.

Her plans unspooled like thread. She could free Herr Schultz and find out his secret. Then she could tell it to Herr Delmer and he’d have it published in his British newspaper, just as Daniel had wanted. Whatever this fireman knew, it must be a threat to the Party’s reputation. Perhaps it would be enough to convince President Hindenburg to order Hitler expelled from office, or would forever disgrace the National Socialists. This would be her revenge, not merely on the men who’d killed Daniel, but on the entire Party. It would be a far better tribute to Daniel. He would be so pleased.

Squinting, she raised her gun and bent her knees slightly, so the Webley’s recoil wouldn’t knock her backward. One of the men’s voices carried to her; he was saying something about his son. Her hands started shaking. They were real people, with families. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t kill them.

She would have to hurt them instead. She aimed. The rest of the world melted away until all she saw was one of the SA men’s hands, raised as he gestured to his companion. She fired.

He screamed and fell to his knees. Clutching his bloody hand in his good one, he moaned, “Help me!”

“What—” the second SA man started to say, turning toward him. Gretchen didn’t hesitate. She aimed at his right knee and squeezed the trigger. His body jerked. Blood instantly seeped through his trouser leg. Screaming, he grabbed at his knee and sank to the ground.

Herr Schultz stood between the two men, looking from one to the other, obviously dazed.

“Run!”
Gretchen shouted at him. “Herr Schultz, come with me right now!”

Limping, he hurried across the street toward her. She snatched a quick impression of him—black hair, dark eyes, tattered suit, a match to the photograph she’d seen in his apartment—and she grabbed his hand, pulling him with her. Together they raced down the street, away from the SA men who were still screaming behind them.

THEY RAN FOR SEVERAL BLOCKS UNTIL SHE SPOTTED
an alley and dragged Schultz into it. He sagged against the stone wall, breathing hard, his gaze never leaving her face.

“Who are you?” he gasped.

“Never mind that.” Gretchen glanced over her shoulder at the mouth of the alley, but no one was walking past; they were alone. “You know something about the Reichstag fire. I need to know what it is.
Now
,” she added when he hesitated and she plunged her hand into her purse for her revolver.

His throat constricted, but his voice was steady. “I nearly died to keep it safe from the Nazis. I’d hardly tell you.”

“I want to use it to destroy them!” She gritted her teeth in frustration. How could she convince him that they were on the same side? “My friends and I went to your apartment. We saw what they did to your brother. We tracked you down to the Kuhle Wampe, but we were too late. They”—the words stuck
in her throat—“they killed my best friend.” It was the strongest description she could think of for Daniel, far better than the weak-sounding “beau,” because he had been her dearest friend, the twin of her heart. “I know what kind of people they are. I
shot
them to free you.”

For a moment, he stared at her. Up close, she saw that he had a black eye and a couple of his teeth were missing. He held himself tightly, as though he was in pain, and both knees of his trousers had holes in them.

The distant wail of sirens cut through the air, but he and Gretchen didn’t move. Then he nodded, as if satisfied. “I hid Göring’s first report on the fire. I haven’t told anyone about it until now.”

Gretchen shot him a suspicious look. “How the devil did you get Göring’s report?”

“I was inspecting the Session Chamber to determine what accelerants had been used when Minister Göring came in with another man. They were arguing about the second man’s press communiqué on the fire.”

“Tell me what they said,” Gretchen demanded. “Every word.”

Schultz took a deep breath. “The man said he had based his report on the official findings of the police and fire brigades, but Göring said it was rubbish. He started writing on the paper, then threw it to the ground and shouted that he would dictate his own report to his secretary and have that distributed to the news agencies instead. As soon as they were gone, I read the report.”

“What did it say?”

“That there was only one arsonist—the Dutchman they captured on the scene.”

Gretchen sucked in a breath. Her suspicions had been
correct—the fire hadn’t been the result of a Communist or National Socialist conspiracy. No wonder Göring and his men were so desperate to silence Herr Schultz. If the report went public, everyone would find out that the National Socialists had known the arson attack had been the act of one deluded individual and the Enabling Act wouldn’t be passed tomorrow, keeping legislative powers out of Hitler’s hands.

She raised her head to gaze at Herr Schultz. Why hadn’t the SA men killed him when he’d been in their custody? Once he was dead, their problems about the fire disappeared with him. Unless the report was still out there somewhere and they needed to get their hands on it. . . .

She grabbed the front of Herr Schultz’s coat. “Where’s the report? Don’t bother lying to me,” she warned as he opened his mouth. “They only would have kept you alive if they needed you to tell them where it is.”

“You’re right,” he said quietly. “I hid it behind the burnt wall panels in the Session Chamber. I didn’t dare take it out of the Reichstag, in case my fire chief ordered us searched to make sure we hadn’t stolen anything. I had the foolish notion that I could retrieve it later and sell it to a news agency. When I returned home from my next night shift and”—he broke off, tears shining in his eyes—“and found my brother murdered, I realized the Nazis had figured out what I’d done. His death was either a mistake or a warning. So I went to the tent camp and prayed they wouldn’t find me.” He wiped at his eyes with dirt-stained fingers. “And, of course, they did.”

Gretchen’s hands fell from his coat. Her pulse pounded in her head, such a rapid rhythm that she felt incredibly light, as
though she were no longer tethered to this world and might float away. Because she knew exactly what she had to do—and how to destroy the National Socialist Party. She would break into the ruined Reichstag, retrieve the paper, and deliver it to Herr Delmer. He would have the truth about the Reichstag fire published in his newspaper, and soon everyone would know that the National Socialists had known all along that the arson had been committed by one person. The only conspiracy had been the Party’s attempt to convince the public that they were in imminent danger from more Communist attacks and whip them into such a panic that they wouldn’t object to the Enabling Act’s passage. They had deliberately misled the public, just as Papa and Hitler had discussed all those years ago at his birthday celebration.

“Thank you,” she said to Herr Schultz. She gave him a couple of bills from her dwindling supply of the Whitestones’ money. “You won’t be able to get over the border without papers, but maybe you can start a new life in another city.”

He stared at the money. “Why are you giving me this?”

She didn’t answer. But she knew she wouldn’t get out of Berlin alive, and money would be worthless to her. Once the report was made public, Herr Hanfstaengl would probably guess she had done it and tell the others about her. As soon as Hitler knew she was in Berlin, he would have every train, bus, and car leaving the city searched. She’d never be able to escape. After they had captured her, they would bring her to him. He would want to see her one last time before they killed her. Part of her didn’t care. Daniel’s death had drained all the color from the world. She didn’t want to lead a gray life, drifting through the years. And she
needed his death to matter. He couldn’t have died in vain. She wouldn’t let that happen.

Another part of her, though, was so terrified that she could barely breathe.
I can handle this
, she told herself. She could face Hitler again, knowing that she had avenged Daniel. He was worth any price.

“You’d better get going,” she finally said, evading Herr Schultz’s question.

“Thank you. A thousand thank-yous, Fräulein.” He kissed her hands.

She watched him leave the alley with dry, aching eyes. Then she slipped out into the street and walked fast, keeping her head down, trying to look like an ordinary girl, hurrying because she was late for school or running errands for her mother, while in the distance police sirens continued to shriek.

Back at the lodging house, Gretchen sat by the window, watching clouds scud across the sky and thinking about ways to break into the Reichstag. When images of the SA men, writhing in agony on the ground, flashed through her mind, she took deep breaths and blanked her thoughts, keeping the memories at bay. She wasn’t sorry, and she would do it again. But she couldn’t help wondering if she was turning into her father. Lashing out and hurting others because she was hurting.

The difference between your father and us is we won’t ever lie to ourselves
, Daniel had said.

Tears surged into her eyes. No, she wouldn’t lie to herself. She had shot those men, and she was glad. If they suffered one-tenth of the pain Daniel must have felt, then it was worth it.

Her thoughts turned back to the Reichstag. Although the building was no longer being used, she imagined that watchmen patrolled it. The best way to get inside was probably through the tunnel that ran from Göring’s palace to the Reichstag cellars. Its doorway was next to the porter’s lodge, she remembered Daniel saying.

How could she sneak onto Göring’s grounds and into the tunnel without being seen? The minister and Hanfstaengl might be home, or the half-dozen servants that surely worked there. Frowning, she paced the small room. She’d crossed it several times before the answer hit her and she almost smiled. Of course! Tomorrow afternoon the Reichstag was scheduled to convene at its temporary location in the Kroll Opera House. Göring, as Reichstag Speaker, would attend and no doubt Hanfstaengl would be at his foreign press office, eagerly awaiting word on the Enabling Act’s passage so he could forward the news on to foreign correspondents. The servants would be busy cleaning, or readying the palace for a dinner party to celebrate the Enabling Act. There would be no better time for her to creep in, undetected.

That night, she got into bed again with Daniel’s shirt in her arms. No matter how many times she buried her nose in his garment, she caught only a whiff of his scent. So much of him was gone, in just two days. Soon she would have nothing left of him but memories.

She felt as though she had a glass ball in her chest, shimmering and fragile, and if she breathed too deeply, she would shatter it. Lying on her side, she took small sips of air, clutching Daniel’s shirt tightly.

Every time she closed her eyes, his image pressed against her lids. Grinning at her in good-natured impatience as they sat in a crowded tearoom, his least favorite place in Oxford because of the fussy lace doilies and what he saw as the tedium of lingering over scones and tea when he would have far preferred to be doing something, anything. His gaze steady on hers as she talked about Thomas Mann’s
The Magic Mountain
, listening without interrupting while they walked in the fields behind the clinic, and whenever she stumbled over her words, unaccustomed to respectful silence from a male, he had encouraged her with a smile. And Daniel as she had seen him last: white-faced, his jaw set, stepping carefully across the sandy lakeshore. She could still feel his hand on her back, shoving her forward, and hear his voice shouting at her to run.

Tears streamed from her eyes. She couldn’t help remembering what he said to her once, when they’d been escaping from Munich all those months ago:
Gretchen, don’t you realize by now I would give up everything to be with you?

He had, she thought as she swiped at her eyes. He had given everything, his very life, for her sake.

Now it was her turn.

She spent the morning in her bedroom, emerging only for breakfast and luncheon at a cheap café and to buy a flashlight at a hardware shop the next block over. The Reichstag was probably kept unlit, since it wasn’t being used, and she couldn’t waste time fumbling in the dark.

When nearby church bells chimed two, she checked her appearance in the tarnished mirror: She looked ordinary in
her black skirt, white blouse, and maroon cardigan—Daniel’s favorite. She slipped on her gray wool coat and exited the room, leaving her and Daniel’s suitcases at the foot of the bed. Whatever happened to her next, she doubted she’d need them. She carried her purse, though, her fully loaded revolver and the lock pick Daniel had bought to break into Frau Fleischer’s office concealed inside.

Everything seemed like a dream: Berliners strolling the streets, chattering cheerfully to one another; automobiles gliding past; streetcars rumbling along. Gretchen felt as though an invisible bubble separated her from everyone, muffling the sounds of their voices and the blare of car horns.

By the time she reached Göring’s palace, the sky had turned to white behind a wall of clouds and the air carried the sharp bite of an approaching snowfall. A long, wide driveway ran past the building, stretching back to the garages and courtyard. There was no sign of anyone. It had to be now. Gretchen raced down the driveway.

On the right, she saw a small outbuilding—the lodge for the porter, she guessed. Praying he was out on his rounds, she darted to a wooden door at the side of his lodge. It was locked, but an instant’s work with her pick solved that problem. She slipped inside, glimpsing a set of steps leading down before the door shut behind her, enclosing her in a pocket of black.

She switched on the flashlight. Its tiny circle of illumination guided her down the steps. At the bottom, she found herself in a long, brick-lined passage. Shining electric lights had been installed along the walls at periodic intervals. Clicking off the flashlight, she started forward.

Something hard and flat shifted under her feet, then fell back into place with a loud clank.

She froze. The floor was lined with loose steel plates. Every step she took would sound deafening.

Keep going
, she told herself. The noise might not carry up the stairs and through the closed door.

She continued walking, the plates thunking underfoot. Each groan of metal clenched her heart. The tunnel seemed to run in a straight line; but underground, without the landmarks of buildings or the sky, it was impossible to tell which direction she traveled or how far she had gone. After a few minutes, she caught sight of a closed door ahead. As she got closer, she realized it was a massive door made of iron.

It was locked, so she fitted the pick into the keyhole, wiggling back and forth until she heard the tumblers click. She pushed the door open, a wave of musty air washing over her.

She walked a short distance before she found another iron door. Again she picked the lock and kept going. Every few minutes, she encountered another locked iron door and wanted to scream with impatience. This was taking too long. She looked at her wristwatch. Almost four o’clock. Had the Reichstag session ended? Was Göring arriving home right now?