Conspiracy of Blood and Smoke (32 page)

A SINGLE TABLE LAMP HAD BEEN LIT, LEAVING
most of the room in shadow. Hitler stood behind a desk. The lamplight gilded him with gold, softening the face she knew so well. He didn’t look at her, but flipped through some papers.

One glance at him was enough to turn her insides to ice. She couldn’t move.
Step closer, don’t show him you’re afraid
, she ordered herself, but she was frozen in place. All she could do was stare at him.

He looked smaller, or perhaps she had grown. He wore the plain brown Party uniform he’d taken to donning regularly during her final months in Munich. Half-moons of sweat darkened his armpits, probably from the effort of making speeches all afternoon during the Reichstag session. Up close, she could see the hollows in his cheeks had begun to fill out. Maybe the years of gorging himself on desserts were catching up with him.

As usual, he had slicked his hair back with pomade, but several strands had worked themselves loose and flopped over his forehead. He smoothed them back, then raised his gaze to meet hers. His eyes reminded her of the sparks flying from the streetcars’ cables, shooting bits of blue fire in the darkness. Under their force, she was powerless to move.

“You will address me as chancellor,” he said in a low, quiet tone. He sounded calm; his face carefully scrubbed clean of emotion. As always, he had hidden himself from her—she could not guess what he was thinking.

Panic wrapped like a band around her chest and pulled tight, blocking off her breathing. Gray spots danced in front of her vision. She was going to pass out, right here, while he watched her with a bored expression. She couldn’t fight him. He was too strong for her. He always had been.

She bowed her head, gulping in air so she didn’t faint. “As you wish, Herr Chancellor Hitler.”

The air was so cold that it pressed through her stockings into her skin. She had to will herself not to shiver. Beneath her feet, the warped floorboards dipped so that she stood off balance. She stepped forward onto a flatter section of floor and raised her head. Hitler was staring at her with undisguised horror.

“Your hair,” he murmured. “It’s turned
brown
. The Jewish virus . . .”

She fought the wild urge to laugh. Naturally Hitler would think she’d been infected by Daniel’s touch. And he would be afraid to touch
her
for fear he would be contaminated, too. The thought gave her pause. Could she use this to her advantage?

Hitler leaned across the desk, glaring. “You’re foolish to have
imagined yourself in love with a Jew. After all that I taught you! Every day pure-blooded Aryans suffer while the inferior parasites thrive. What we have to do is create a new master race of men who, unlike you, won’t allow themselves to be guided by the false morality of pity.”

She barely listened; it was the same tired rhetoric she’d heard for years. Instead she stood meekly, hands clasped in front of her, scanning the room without moving her head. The chamber was so dark that she could only make out the humps of tables and chairs to the side, presumably where Hitler sat with his adjutants or cabinet ministers. His desk was covered with a tidy stack of papers and a tray holding a glass and a bottle of clear liquid, probably his favorite mineral water. Beside it was a silver dish filled with hard candies embossed with swastikas.

Unblinking, Hitler stared at her, waiting for her to speak. Beg for forgiveness, most likely, and start crying. She wanted to shout at him that she’d never ask for his pardon, but when she opened her mouth, she found that she couldn’t say a word. From the corner of her eye, she caught a flicker of movement. With a massive effort, she tore her gaze from Hitler’s. At his side, his right hand clenched into a fist and then relaxed, over and over.

She recognized the gesture—when he was upset, his right hand would contract uncontrollably. He might pretend to be nonchalant in her presence, but now she knew how agitated he truly felt. Was there a way to exploit his emotions to help her and Daniel? She didn’t see how; they could never hope to escape from Hitler and his armed guards. Her thoughts turned to Daniel. Why had he winked at her in the corridor?

The room had gone so silent she could hear Hitler breathing
rapidly. His eyes traced her face as he said, “You’ve grown into such a stubborn, willful girl. What a delight you were when you were a child! Unspoiled and lovely. Now you’ve made a ruin of your life. And all for the love of a
Jew
.”

He spat out the last word and reached for his water glass. As he drank, the muscles in his neck worked. Somehow the sight sickened her. He set the glass down with a thump.

“We can dispense with the formality of the trial that Göring had his heart set on for your Jew,” he said. “Goring will be disappointed, but it can’t be helped.” He smiled to himself when he said Göring’s name, his voice warming. Then his face hardened again. “Your Jew will die tonight. My men will take him down to the coal cellar. The ceiling’s high enough for them to string him up. I’m told that using piano wire instead of rope prolongs the torture, so we’ll be sure to try it. You will watch.”

Her eyes were wet.
Stop crying
, she told herself as Hitler wavered in front of her.
This is the reaction he wants. He’s playing games with you
.

He continued talking, but she barely heard him. Why had he mentioned Göring’s name with such easy affection? It made no sense. Shouldn’t he have been furious with Göring for slipping up and mentioning the fireman to Fräulein Junge? For changing the official press communiqué in Herr Schultz’s presence? The Hitler she’d known would have been enraged, and had Göring dismissed or demoted immediately. Why hadn’t he? What was she missing?

She interrupted his tirade. “Minister Göring has been indiscreet. I’m surprised you’ve tolerated his mistakes.”

“Göring has a valuable talent,” Hitler snapped. “The man
has one of the finest minds in the world when it comes to aerial combat. He has ice in his veins—he’s not afraid to do what needs to be done.”

A chill raced up Gretchen’s spine. She understood: Hitler would need Göring’s aerial abilities if he planned on going to war. All of the speeches she’d listened to over the years, the dinnertime conversations, the chats over tea, everything Hitler had said he would do to make Germany great again had been carefully crafted lies. He didn’t want to pull Germany out of this pit of unemployment, inflation, and crime. He wanted to force her into battle.

Hitler’s daring in telling her something so incriminating bewildered her. As they gazed at each other, his eyes were flat. He didn’t care that he’d spilled one of his secrets, she realized, because he knew there was no one she would be able to tell. Because she was going to die.

She wrapped her arms across her chest, trying to hold herself together. But she would speak. Hitler deserved to know that she’d seen through him.

“That’s why you wanted the Enabling Act passed.” Her voice seemed loud in the hushed room. “So someday you can go to war without needing the Reichstag’s approval. You must believe they’d never consent to another war. And you need Göring to oversee the air force—that’s why you excused his blunders.

“You must have realized quickly that the fire was the act of one person. But the opportunity was too perfect to pass up. It was easy to convince people that the fire was a Communist conspiracy. Once President Hindenburg dies, absolute power can be yours—”

“That’s enough,” Hitler interrupted, sounding eerily calm. “The Enabling Act passed overwhelmingly this afternoon, and I see no reason it should ever be repealed. Unfortunately, it’s quite true that Hindenburg’s health is failing. I’d be surprised if he survives the year.”

He ran a hand down his brown shirt, smoothing imaginary wrinkles. His tic had faded away, his hand had relaxed, the fingers hanging loose and pliant. A smile tugged on his lips. She understood why his irritation had vanished: She was powerless. He had won.

The unfairness of it all nearly choked her. She glared at Hitler, but he was flipping through the papers on his desk again, his expression unconcerned. Nothing ever seemed to touch him. He had ripped her family apart, and he didn’t care. Even more, she suspected he hadn’t noticed what he had done to them. Everything he held turned to ash. And he deserved to know it.

“You destroyed my family,” she ground out between her teeth.

Still, he skimmed through the papers, never looking up. A sudden rage filled her, so red and heavy that she couldn’t contain it. He
would
listen to her.

“You ruined Geli’s life!” she yelled. “You did something to her, I’m sure of it, and that’s why she killed herself.”

Hitler’s head snapped up. “Don’t you dare speak her name,” he said slowly. Only the paper rustling in his trembling hand betrayed his emotion. “You have no right to mention my princess.”

Then he firmed his lips, as though determined to keep inside the words he longed to say. Gretchen slumped in disappointment. The rein he’d always had on his self-control was as tight as
ever. She would die, and he would remain unpunished. Her and Daniel’s deaths would have no meaning. Somehow, that seemed the worst of all. She made a noise deep in her throat but couldn’t say a word.

A thump and a muffled oath sounded from the corridor. Hitler frowned. “What was that?” His hand strayed toward the desk drawer. For a weapon, Gretchen suspected—in the old days in Munich, he’d never left home without his pistol, cartridge belt, and whip, and though he didn’t wear a gun holster tonight, she was certain he had his Walther nearby.

Hitler’s office door shook in its frame, as though something heavy had been thrown against it. Daniel and the guards must be fighting. Suddenly, Gretchen understood why he had winked at her—he’d been pretending to be suffering from a pain attack, so the SA men would let their guards down, and he could take them by surprise. Which meant it was up to her to get out of this room alive and back to him.

“I’m sure it’s just the SA fellows having a bit of fun,” she said, her mind working furiously. If she ran, Hitler would shoot her before she reached the door. How could she get away from him?

Hitler didn’t answer, tapping his fingers on the desk. The tic pulled on his left cheek, his eyes stone above the rippling flesh, just as he had looked the last time she’d seen him. The thought hit her with lightning swiftness: She had escaped from him before by making him so enraged that he lost control. Instead of summoning his nearby adjutants and her brother to deal with her, he’d begun ranting, giving her precious seconds to dash through his apartment’s foyer and fling open the front door.

This was how she could get away before he shot her to
death—she had to infuriate him to the extent that he rushed to attack her, leaving the weapon forgotten in his desk. How could she push him over the edge?

From the corridor, somebody shouted. Hitler jerked open his desk drawer.

As she took a step back, he looked at her sharply. “Don’t move.”

Her heart pounded against her ribs as she raised her hands in surrender. How could she trick him into losing control? The advice he’d given her over the years rushed through her head in a confused jumble. She snatched hold of some of the words:
Hate’s more lasting than dislike
, he’d said to her so many times.
If you can’t be loved, then you ought to be hated, so people will feel strongly about you. Anything’s preferable to indifference
.

Instantly, she knew what to do—she had to pretend that he meant nothing to her. “Herr Chancellor Hitler, all those years we spent together, you thought I cared about you. But I was kind to you because I felt sorry for you—you seemed alone and friendless, without a proper career or family of your own.”

He stilled. Above his undulating cheek, his eyes were as cold as chipped glass.

Her mind flashed back to the story her mother had told her in Dachau, about Hitler’s father teasing him when he found him clad in a bedsheet, after taking off his clothes to wriggle through the window and run away. “Your father must not have loved you either. Didn’t he call you the toga boy?”

His eyes bulged. “Who told you that?” he demanded, rushing around the desk toward her. “You vile child!”

She turned and ran.

“Disgusting Jew lover!” he yelled. Behind her, she heard his footsteps thudding on the floor and the harsh rasp of his breathing. She raced toward the door. On the other side, men shouted and a volley of shots sounded.

“Daniel!” she screamed, her fingertips brushing the doorknob—almost there—she was turning it—

Hands seized her shoulders and spun her around. Hitler glared down at her. Rage had turned his face red, and perspiration had darkened the hair hanging over his forehead from brown to black.

“Don’t you understand who I am?” he shouted. “The hand of Providence has always protected me! Over and over during the Great War, men in my regiment died all around me but I lived—because I was meant to! And now Providence has brought you back to me. I’ll have you killed right now. I’ll take you to the cellar myself!”

Before she could wrench herself free, he drew his hand back and cracked her across the face so hard that her vision went black.