His Majesty's Hope (20 page)

“I realize that it’s dangerous. But it’s a calculated risk.”

“Which you will not take.”

Who are you to give me orders?
“Look, Gottlieb—I just came from London. Do you realize how horrible things are there? The Luftwaffe’s destroying the city. People have been buried alive. There are children without parents, parents without limbs, homes destroyed, invasion imminent. It’s absolutely desperate.”

“No.”

“Well,” Maggie said in clipped tones, picking up her sandals, “it’s not up to you, is it?”

He rose. “You will be at the pickup point tomorrow night, as planned, for your flight back to London. We will not deviate from the plan.” He stared at her, a muscle in his jaw twitching. His pale face was mottled red with anger.

Maggie yawned, a big yawn, and stretched. “I’m exhausted—I’m going to go to sleep,” she said, closing the bedroom door.

“And you are leaving tomorrow!”

Maggie called through the closed door, “Good night,
Schatzi
.”

Later that night, at the party, more and more champagne was consumed from crystal coupes. The orchestra played a Strauss waltz,
and the guests’ voices rose louder and louder, and the dancing grew wilder as the violins sounded their high notes verging on hysteria.

“Where’s your husband, Clara?” Goebbels asked the blonde as they sat out the dance; his clubfoot made it hard to waltz.

“He went to bed, I think. He’ll be off to Zürich soon, to conduct
Lohengrin.
”

“
Lohengrin
—one of my favorites.”

Clara rested one arm on the back of the settee and leaned closer. “Joseph, what do you know about that girl? The one with the red hair?”

“Oh, Margareta something-or-other? She came with Gottlieb Lehrer.”

“Have they known each other long?”

“I don’t know about that, but they certainly seemed quite infatuated. I believe they met in Rome.” He looked at her quizzically. “Why do you ask, darling?”

Clara smiled and patted his knee. “Let’s just say I’m curious is all. Please have your people run a thorough background check.”

Goebbels looked around. “I think she and young Lehrer left an hour or so ago. If you’d like, I can have my men follow them …”

“No, no—not tonight.” Clara shook her head. “But soon. Monday morning. I just want to make certain everything’s in order. Now come,” she urged, standing and extending her hand, “dance with me. Let’s not waste this gorgeous music.”

Maggie had a restless night, full of half-realized nightmares and memories from the evening before, of spiders with teeth, and sticky webs tangled in her hair. However, the next morning, she woke early, dressed, and put on her hat and gloves. It was Sunday morning, and Gottlieb had left her a note that he had gone to Mass. She grabbed her knitting and hurried down to the square.

There, on a wooden bench, surrounded by hooded crows pecking at her feet, sat the woman Maggie called Madame Defarge, needles clicking away. She nodded to Maggie when she sat down beside her.
“Guten Morgen, gnädiges Fräulein.”

“Guten Morgen, gnädige Frau,”
Maggie replied. She took her knitting out of her bag. She already had a good few inches started in the black wool. Now she called upon her memory of Morse code to alternate knitted stitches with purls and dropped stitches. Translated, it read,
Mission accomplished. Staying in Berlin. Great opportunity. Will know more by Monday night
.

“Excuse me,
Frau,
” Maggie said. “Would you mind taking a look at my knitting? I’m afraid my stitches aren’t as smooth as yours.”

“Of course, dear,” the woman said. “Let me see.”

Maggie handed over the needles and yarn. The woman studied the stitches, then pursed her lips. “Let me show you a different kind of stitch, dear,” she said.

A pair of SS officers in black stopped in front of them. They
doffed their skull-and-crossbones hats to the two women. “Knitting for the soldiers?” asked one.

“Of course,” said Madame Defarge.

“Viel Erfolg!”
said the other. Maggie smiled. What he’d said translated to “Good luck with your work.”
Ha
, she thought.
Good luck indeed
.

The woman finished her row. “Take a look at the stitches, dear.”

Maggie did, reading the knitted code.
“Affirmative,”
it read.

“Thank you,” she said. The older woman pulled out her coded stitches. Maggie did the same with hers. There was no trace of the messages that had been exchanged.

“Any time.” The older woman continued to knit.

“I hope to see you on Tuesday,” Maggie said, putting her knitting away in her bag and rising.
Because by Tuesday I’ll know if I have the job
.

“I hope so, too, dear.”

Elise also woke early. She tiptoed up the servants’ stairs to the attic, to check on Herr Mystery.

He was awake, she saw, lying in the bed, his eyes raised to the early morning sunlight streaming in the high round windows, glass panes tilted to let in fresh air. The only sounds were the occasional coos and wing flaps of a mourning dove, along with the chime of church bells.

“Good morning, Herr Mystery,” she whispered in faintly accented English. “How was your night?” She reached for his wrist and took his pulse. It was strong.

He looked at her but made no reply.

“It’s all right.” She tucked a thermometer between his lips and
checked his IV. “I know you speak English. That’s what tipped me off, by the way—you were talking in your sleep. That’s why you’re here. I thought it was best to get you somewhere safe before you incriminated yourself.”

Herr Mystery blinked. Elise took out the thermometer. “It’s one hundred. Just slightly elevated. We’ll keep an eye on it, but it looks like you beat the infection.” She smiled.

“Where am I?” He spoke the way the British usually spoke German: without any accent, the vowel sounds just a touch too long.

“You’re in Grunewald. A suburb of Berlin. This is my home—the attic of my home, that is. My mother would not be … pleased … to find out we are hosting you, so you must be as quiet as possible. You must stay here, in hiding, until we find somewhere safer for you.”

“You can’t do this,” he said, reverting to English, clearly realizing there was no use in keeping up the pretense. “You could be arrested—killed. Charges of ‘aid and succor to the enemy.’ ”

“Well, you can’t go back to the hospital—you were calling out in your sleep. In
English
. They’d hang you for sure.”

There was an electric silence as each contemplated the enormous risk inherent in the rescue.

“Thank you,” he said finally.

Elise rose to her feet. “You must be starving. Let me get you some breakfast.”

Before she could leave, however, Herr Mystery grasped her small hand, gripping it tightly. “No, really. Thank you.”

They held each other’s gaze for a long moment. “I feel like I know you,” he told her. “But that’s not possible, is it?”

“No,” Elise answered briskly, in her best nurse voice. “I’m quite sure we’ve never met. Now you lie back and rest. I’ll bring
up some rolls and coffee, and also a few books, if you’re up for reading. There’s a chamber pot under the bed, unless you don’t think you can manage …”

“I’ll manage,” he mumbled.

To smooth over his embarrassment, Elise said, “We’ll have you back on your feet in no time.”

“And then what?”

“Well …” She still had to work out the details of her plan. “Let’s cross one bridge at a time, shall we?”

“What’s your name?” he asked, obviously reluctant for her to go.

“Elise Hess. And yours?”

“John,” he replied. “John Sterling.”

Frieda was in Charité’s medical supply room, looking for both morphine and phenobarbital. She took a bottle of each down from the shelves.

Elise came in, looking for insulin. “What do you have there?” she said, looking over Frieda’s shoulder. “
Mein Gott
, that’s enough to kill an ox. What do you need that for?” Her stomach lurched. She grabbed her friend’s arm. “It’s not Dr. Brandt, is it? Has he asked you to … you know …”

“No,” Frieda whispered, her voice shaking. “It’s for Ernst. Ernst has asked me to … help him die.”

“What? You can’t!”

“What choice do I have? If I don’t, he’ll do it himself. Elise, you know that because I’m a nurse, I can do it for him with far less pain than he ever could.”

“No,” Elise insisted. “No. There has to be another way.”

Frieda looked close to death herself, her face drawn. Her eyes were dull and unseeing.

“I need to do something right now,” Elise told her, “but meet me on the roof in ten minutes, all right?”

Frieda gave a reluctant sigh. “All right.”

Satisfied that no one was around, Elise went to the medical records room. But the door was locked. Not just locked but triple padlocked. She said a silent prayer to St. Jude, the patron of lost causes.

Another nurse in gray and white passed. “What happened here?” Elise asked her.

The nurse stopped, frowning. “Another of Dr. Brandt’s rules.”

“But how are we supposed to get to patient files when we need them?”

“There’s a new form—it must be signed by Dr. Brandt before you can be let in. And even then, you’ll be supervised by Nurse Flint.”

“I see,” Elise said. The other nurse walked away.
Great, just great
, Elise thought, realizing that three iron locks would be impossible to pick. She needed to find out where Dr. Brandt kept the keys.

But first, there was Frieda.

Up on the roof of the hospital, in the harsh midday light, Elise and Frieda shared a cigarette.

“Maybe it really is a work camp,” Elise said, inhaling. “Maybe it’s just for the war, and then, after, he’ll be able to come home …”

She stopped, realizing how inane she sounded.

“I know the propaganda films all show the Germans marching unopposed into Poland.” Frieda frowned. “All the Jews looking happy and healthy in their ghettos. Everyone thrilled to be there,
before being shipped off to Madagascar, or whatever final destination they’re talking about this week …” She brushed hot tears from her cheeks. “But do you seriously think that the Nazis, who are willing to murder children—Christian children, Nazi children, for God’s sake—are really going to waste their time and money taking care of
Jews
?”

Elise was silent, remembering the gas chamber at Hadamar. “No,” she said, dropping her cigarette and crushing it under the heel of her shoe. “No, you’re right.” She crossed herself.

“And Ernst would rather kill himself than die at their hands.”

Elise knew that Frieda would know how to administer the correct dosages of morphine and phenobarbital. Ernst could die in his own bed. With dignity. Without pain.

No!
something inside of Elise screamed.
No, we haven’t come to that—not yet, at least
. Not only was suicide a mortal sin but it would somehow signify that they were lost, that Germany was lost, that their humanity was lost.

“Frieda,” Elise said, thinking fast, “telephone Ernst—have him meet us at the hospital after work.”

“But the curfew laws …”

“He’s just going to have to make sure not to get caught.”

“Bastards took our telephone.”

“Then go!” Elise gestured toward the stairwell. “I’ll cover for you. Bring him back here.”

“What then?”

Elise put her arm around her friend. “I have a plan. Now go!”

Elise and Frieda set Ernst up as a corpse for the day, draped in a sheet to hide him, in Charité’s basement morgue. His instructions were to lie as still as possible, hour after hour, until they came to get him.

When it was finally time, the two nurses had him sit in a wheelchair. They made their way to the back entrance, where Father Licht was waiting in his car. It was late afternoon, with sunshine slanting and burning. A hot breeze had picked up. The air smelled of spilled oil and car exhaust.

Two doctors appeared, their white coats flapping around their legs in the wind, red and black bands around their arms. “What’s going on here?” demanded the first one, squat with gray hair and glasses.

“Special day pass,” Elise lied. Frieda looked as though she might faint, while Ernst gritted his teeth.

“On whose orders?” said the other, also gray, but tall and thin, with a beakish nose.

“Dr. Brandt’s,” Elise replied without hesitation.

Father Licht opened the door of the car and stepped out. With his priest’s collar and wide-brimmed
cappello romano
, he carried a quiet authority. “It’s for a special religious service,
Herr Doktors
.”

“Really,” the second doctor said. “And which service would that be?”

“The feast of St. Drithelm.”

“And which church?”

“St. Hedwig’s. I’m the priest there.”

The first doctor turned to Elise. “And who are you?”

“Nurse Aloïsa Herrmann.”

“And where is the patient’s paperwork?”

“Ach du lieber Himmel!”
Frieda said, finally recovering her voice. She clapped one hand to her forehead. “I must have left it back at the nurses’ station. Shall I get it?”

“Nein, nein,”
the first doctor said, waving a careless hand.

“Enjoy your saint’s day,” the other said.

“Thank you,
Herr Doktors,
” Father Licht called, getting back into his car.

Elise and Frieda helped Ernst into the backseat. “No time for a long goodbye,” Elise warned.

Frieda kissed her husband’s lips, then pulled herself away. He leaned back and she raised the blanket up over his head, covering his face. She stepped back, hand over her mouth, as though trying to force down screams. “I love you.”

“I love you, too, darling,” Ernst whispered.

“It’s the only way,” Elise said to her, slamming the door shut and slipping into the passenger seat. “We’ll keep him safe.”

Father Licht turned the key in the ignition, pressed down on the clutch, and shifted into reverse.

“I’ll find you …” Frieda whispered as the car rolled away. Then she doubled over, clutching her abdomen in pain, willing herself not to cry.