“She’s a young woman with a bunch of virile young men around. Did you always use your best judgment when it was your turn? Make them stop.”

  “Flora, I said mind your tone.”

  Flora growled and shook her head. “To hell with you. If you think you can treat women like something to pillage, you’re fighting on the wrong side, Geraud.”

  Flora moved toward the trio in fast, angry strides. Then she lunged at them.

  Once again, everything happened fast. Her knuckles connected with a fleshy face. Her nails swiped a stubbly cheek. Her shoe busted open a lip. Drops of blood sprayed the wooden floor. Shouts and squeaks of pain erupted from the pile of violence. Someone lost a tooth over it, as Flora felt one crunch under her foot.

  The two men scattered to the winds, holding their freshly bruised faces as they ran.

  When they were gone, Flora stood in the center of the room, and she let the savage, violent instinct retreat back into the shadows. The red hue over her vision dissolved. Her limbs stopped quaking. Her breathing relaxed. Her eyes, still a bit blurred with emotion, turned to the floor.

  The poor girl remained curled up like a possum. Her backbone poked out of her thin blouse, and her shoulders heaved in sobs.

  Flora put a gentle hand on the girl’s waist.

  The girl flinched fiercely. Her terrified eyes fell on Flora, and she saw that her tormentors had fled. With the most pitiful cry in the world, she fell into the arms of her rescuer and bawled her eyes out. Her tears soaked the sleeve of Flora’s filthy shirt.

  Flora cradled the girl’s bloody head into her own clothes, stroking her back to calm her down. Using a filthy handkerchief from her pants pocket, she mopped up the blood and scrubbed the swastika off her face. Then she helped her to her feet.

  Flora leaned to whisper in her ear. “Go home. Pack a suitcase and get the hell out of here.”

  The girl gave a grateful nod and bolted from the room.

  Flora turned her slanted eyes back to Geraud, and her anger found a fresh charge. She reached for one of her last two cigarettes and her lighter. Her hands shook so badly she couldn’t get the desperately needed spark.

  Perhaps afraid of what her fists and boots could accomplish, Geraud quickly offered his own lighter.

  Like a cat, Flora swiped her paw and slapped it from his hands.

  He drew back and rubbed his wrist while his lighter clattered across the floor. “Flora, what the hell has gotten into you?”

  She wrapped her hands around his tired collar and gave him a rough shake that meant business. She put her face right in his. If looks could kill, he would be dead.

  “Listen to me, you son of a bitch. When were you going to tell me my parents were alive?”

  Geraud’s eyes turned to dinner plates.

  Emilia

  CAEN SS/SD AND GESTAPO

  By the time Heyns stomped into the office, Emilia was back at her desk. She had tucked the pistol in her lower drawer and the diamonds into her bosom. She typed a few paragraphs of nonsense with her typewriter while setting her features in deep focus, trying to look too busy to be disturbed.

  Heyns stepped right up to the side of her desk anyway. He stood so close his frigid aura penetrated her protective space. He wiped blood off his hands with a handkerchief already soaked in it.

  Emilia glued her eyes on her fake task. From the corner of her eye, she glimpsed the monster shadow that had engulfed his face. There was an evident disdain there too, which frightened her. He usually reserved that look for the “enemies of the state” he brought in for torture and imprisonment. Before now, he only ever looked at her with friendliness, even respect.

  She supposed he had reason to lose his temper. Reports of paratroopers all over Normandy had reached his desk. He knew it was equally bad if not worse on the coast. The planes kept up their stream over Caen, violence reigned in the streets, and resisters were on the prowl. Heyns had plenty of reasons to teeter on the brink. Yet something darker lurked in that scathing stare.

  Emilia felt pinpricks of a nervous sweat under her hairline, and fear clenched her stomach. Still, she didn’t break her concentration. She couldn’t, because her life now depended on her ability to keep her cool.

  “Emilia.”

  His tone sounded different, like a lethal snake rattle.

  She pretended she didn’t need to be scared. He couldn’t know that she had snooped in his office, but one thing was crystal clear: Something had stoked the flames of his anger, and she would have to absorb that. She got to her feet and raised her eyes to his.

  It took all her energy not to shriek, because that look in his face dripped with evil, pulsated with it. She stared at Heyns, this man she once looked up to, who gave her the shining role in the German Reich she’d always wanted, and paved her a permanent pathway out of Lebensborn.

  Somehow, in the course of this terrible day, the man had become her most dangerous threat.

  But his transformation had probably started well before the shells that morning. The Allied invasion had just blasted away any pretense. Only raw emotion remained, out in the open for the first time. Who would survive was anyone’s guess.

  On legs threatening to give out, Emilia stiffened her back and raised her arm up. “Heil Hitler.”

  He glared in response. “Sit.”

  Emilia complied, but something felt very wrong. Perhaps the escape thoughts in her head had ruptured the energy field around him. Perhaps he now sensed the secret underneath her surface, sniffing out her intentions like the bloodhound he was. Or maybe he had just slid further into the depths of his own hell and wanted to take her with him.

  He certainly looked like hell. His face had turned to gray plywood, and his lips were stretched so thin they almost vanished. He was strung out, and when Heyns was strung out, someone would pay.

  He sat on the edge of her desk and folded his hands in his lap. The interrogation of Emilia Wagner had begun. All that was missing was someone to take the notes.

  “What times we live in, Miss Wagner.”

  “Sir?”

  He wiped a spot of blood off that silver ring. Then he dropped his putrid, stained handkerchief into her waste basket.

  She felt her whole body tighten at the sight of it.

  “I knew your father, you know.”

  Emilia gulped. That was a surprise. If he knew her father, what else did he know? “Did you? I didn’t realize.”

  He forced a smile that failed to brighten his hard features. “He had real charisma in those early days. So rich and powerful. All those fawning, younger party members wanted every little piece of him, especially his beautiful daughter.” Those dry, flaky lips stretched to their limits.

  “Yes, sir. My father is a remarkable man.” Emilia practically choked on the words, but she had to tell him what he wanted to hear.

  His fingers twitched ever so slightly, detecting the rancor. “You think that, do you? Is that why you ran away from home, Emilia?”

  Emilia tried to ignore the painful jab in her gut. Yes, he knew some of her secrets. It was crucial now to determine exactly which ones. She faced the same situation so many of those torture victims wound up in. Heyns was reaching for something, but she wasn’t sure what. If she didn’t know, she couldn’t provide it. There was no way out.

  She took a deep breath and gave it her best. “It … wasn’t that I wanted to leave him, sir. I just found more of a mentor in you.”

  A flicker of something human cracked that stony façade. She thought her answer was right in some form or another … until he spoke again.

  “Or perhaps you just wanted a ticket out of Lebensborn.”

  The heavy, cold weight in Emilia’s stomach dropped to her toes. The quiver returned to her fingers, but she forced herself to hold his gaze. This was a direct challenge, a test of her loyalty. Her life depended on what she said in the next few seconds, on the resolve she showed.

  She opened her mouth to answer, but he reached his claw-like hand out. With the back of it, he stroked her smooth, Aryan cheek. “Why, Emilia? Why not Lebensborn?”

  Her legs began to quiver. “S-sir …”

  “You could have made beautiful babies with strong German men. Certainly stronger men than the boys you dally with around here.” He glared. “Don’t think I don’t know about your exploits. I miss nothing, Emilia. Nothing.”

  Her brain wheels spun so fast they almost tumbled from the tracks. She clamored to say something, anything, but panic froze her. No matter how many alarms went off in her head, her voice remained smothered. Her eyes stayed wide open. The quiver kept up in her fingers, even when she shoved her hands under her thighs.

  “You can tell me, Emilia. Why not Lebensborn?”

  He leaned in close. His hot breath landed on her neck like a blowtorch, and she shrank underneath it. She also shriveled under his hand, which slid from her face and landed on her shoulder, brushing the side of her arm. It felt like spider legs crawling down her uniform.

  “Nothing to say, Emilia, my angel?” He finally withdrew his hand, only so he could look her dead in the eye. “It’s because you saw greater things for yourself, yes?”

  Emilia didn’t know if it was a lifeline, but she still grabbed on with all her might. “Yes … Greater things, sir. Like working for you.”

  He laughed then, a soft cackle of a laugh. “That’s why I took you under my wing, Emilia.”

  “Sir?”

  “When we first met, I saw right through you. Your pretty face couldn’t hide what was in your soul. Because you were me.”

  She shook her head. “I … don’t understand.”

  “You are me, Emilia. Ambitious, tenacious, and strong-willed me. You believed you were destined for greatness, something better than the rest. So did I. You and I, my angel. Both of us heard the call to feed our ambition. To survive. And that’s just what we did, isn’t it? We survived.”

  Emilia struggled to keep her thoughts up with this rabid dog. She could tell he wanted something from her. His eyes practically begged for it. Maybe he wanted her to confess she had dug through his files and stole his things. Yet the desperation in his eyes didn’t match that theory.

  Like the voice of reason in mass chaos, it suddenly hit her. Validation. He wanted his lucky charm to work her magic, to absolve him of what he had done. The countless beatings, roundups, tortures, imprisonments, and executions. He wanted her to say it was all necessary. Paramount to the Reich’s security. A man just doing his job.

  He needed to hear it from her and only her, because their paths were the same. In another life, they both had a fierce craving to be a part of something legendary. Something they believed in, that gleamed gold and red while adorned with flowers and swastikas. A horrible war, extermination camps, and blood-soaked streets were just the temporary, hellish road leading to that far greater thing, the reward they were promised but that was never delivered. Instead, they got a monumental army banging on their door, hanging ropes at the ready. Heyns needed to hear that he had done nothing wrong, that he had just followed orders.

  That’s what he wanted, but Emilia knew better. It was why she had tucked away that pistol and those diamonds poked at her breast. Nothing she said would make their crimes forgivable. She couldn’t help him. It was everyone for themselves now.

  Heyns’s skeletal hand returned to her frail shoulder and locked her in a steel grip. His thumb pressed inches away from the stolen diamonds. He forced her to look into his ice-coated, wild, unhinged eyes. “You know what your father said of these times?”

  Emilia tried to keep steady. “What, sir?”

  “He said survival belongs to those who will reach out and squeeze it from the undeserving. Because we are the master race. Above everything, we must survive.”

  Emilia swallowed hard. Yes, that sounded like her father.

  “So I’m asking you, my angel. What will you do in these times we live in? Will you survive?”

  Emilia struggled not to roll her eyes in agony. In addition to validation, he wanted to know her intentions when push came to shove. And it would come to a big shove very soon. Instead of rifling through her desk drawers, he would rifle through her soul to find out where she stood.

  She mustered up the most sympathetic face in her arsenal. She turned her magical charm to its highest setting, and she leaned in close enough for him to get a whiff of her perfume. The tender smile that had once melted Hitler went to work on Heyns. She placed her warm hand over his.

  As soon as her silky skin touched him, it was as if he had woken up from a drug-induced stupor. He removed his bony fingers from her shoulder and gave her a bob of his head. Then he lumbered into his office and slammed the door behind him.

  Emilia stared straight ahead and felt the storm clouds thicken. Any sanity he had left was rapidly crumbling. If she indeed prized her survival, she would have to take it for herself.

  She would have to take it from Heyns.

  Flora

  CAEN

  Flora occupied a fancy, plush chair that didn’t fit the surroundings in Geraud’s dingy office, kind of like the girl who sat in it. She blew through her last cigarette while Geraud supplied her with a rare bottle of spirits. She dodged his comment that it looked almost empty.

  “Your precious Allies have landed. Shouldn’t you look at that bottle as half full?” she said with a snarl.

  He crossed the room to close and lock the office door. He didn’t do it because he cared about her privacy, and he didn’t give her liquor out of the kindness of his heart. He just wanted to save his own skin, because now he knew the capabilities of her rage. After all this time, Geraud was at last prepared to take her seriously. At least, that’s what the petrified look on his face suggested.

  Once he had buttoned up the office, he went to the corner behind his desk. He poked the tip of his shoe around his tattered Oriental rug. His shoe found the sweet spot, and he flipped the rug over to reveal a barely noticeable cutout in the wood. He pushed away a knot of wood, then twisted a tiny key into a lock and took out a tattered black file case.

  With the case tucked under his arm, he pulled up a lanky wooden chair and sat down across from Flora. He watched her final lifeline dissolve to its nub. He tugged his own cigarettes from his pocket and laid them next to her on the chair.

  She flicked them off. “Like hell that will make up for anything.”

  “Don’t be stubborn, Flora. Bastien is busy. You won’t get any more for a while.”

  Bastien. The name dropped like a heavy stone into the waters of her soul. She managed to pull one more puff from the used-up cigarette butt. Then she smashed it in the ash tray by her feet.

  “He’s dead.”

  Geraud hid his feelings with a crack of his old knuckles. “Where did you hear that?”

  “I saw him at the hospital. Got crushed by his building this morning.”

  Geraud gave her a slow blink that betrayed his surprise. “I’m … sorry.”

  “Are you?”

  He was taken back. “Flora, you know how much I care about my boys.”

  “Just your boys.”

  “Flora …”

  “You ask people to put everything on the line for you and your cause. And how do you repay them? You lie to their face.”

  “It’s not as easy as all that.”

  “Then how hard is it, Geraud? Enlighten me.”

  His knuckles went white and he tried to crack them again. Not a single sound came from them this time, and it further ruffled his calm exterior. “Alright, I’ll level with you. Your mother and father are in a concentration camp in Poland. They arrived there shortly after their arrest. Last I knew, they both were still alive.”

  “When’s the last you knew?”

  “A week or so. Two at most.”

  Flora eyed the cigarettes she had slapped to the floor. She hated taking cigarettes from anyone, especially men. She didn’t want to give them any reason to expect favors from her. Even the ones Bastien gave her were paid for with hard-earned money. However, she made a timid reach for the cigarette box. At the last minute, she yanked her hand back.

  She hit Geraud with a fiery gaze instead. “You going to get to the part about why you kept it from me?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “We’ve got all day.”

  He guffawed. “No, we don’t. This country is falling apart as we speak.”

  “Your lies won’t put it back together again, will they?”

  He ran a hand through his graying hair. “You make me out to be a monster, Flora. You might try thinking that we all just wanted to protect you.”

  “We?”

  He looked her dead in the eyes. No more knuckle cracking or beating around the bush. “You remember your mother had excellent German.”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, the Germans gave her a position in the commandant’s office at the camp. And you know her. She has the ability to charm anyone. The commandant warmed up to her so much he offered to pay her, but she asked for just one thing. Your father’s life. So yes … both are still alive in the camp.”

  Flora’s eyes lost a touch of their fire. That sounded like her mother, alright. She always put the safety of everyone else above her own needs. The reminder of that put a sharp blade of steel into Flora’s shattered heart. How she missed her mother.

  “The position did more than save her life. It gave her access to a cache of information. Things we can use in the Resistance.”

  “Like what?”

  Geraud opened up the file case and handed a stack of papers to her.

  She took them and gave them a scan.

  A lot of it was in code she couldn’t make out. Bastien’s handiwork. It sent another bullet of pain radiating through her.

  Some of the code had been translated by Geraud, and he wrote his notes in the margins. Things about mass murders and gas chambers, and lists of the wounded or killed. He had noted prisoner numbers and surviving family members to contact about their whereabouts.

  That alone was valuable information, but Geraud knew things about the Germans too. He had notes about pending military actions, neighborhoods targeted for Gestapo raids, names of Resistance members in danger of arrest, and Nazi spies who had infiltrated the Resistance. All right there in solid black and white.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26