The Escape

  For Dan

  Title Page

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Karl Hoffmann kept his back against the brick wall on the south side of the Gethsemane Church. At the other end of the street, headlights from two parked army cars lit up the Nazi checkpoint: half a dozen plainclothes Gestapo agents and a pair of SS men in helmets stopping pedestrian traffic and checking papers. Between the two military vehicles loomed a green minna, sinister and dark. Karl imagined the rough hands of those Gestapo pigs shoving Max inside the truck, pounding on the back door to alert the driver that he could take the prisoner to Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse and throw him in a cell.

  As a surgeon, Karl had become immune to the parade of horrors the war visited upon the citizens of Berlin, but imagining Max a prisoner of the Nazis filled him with teeth-grinding dread. He stepped into a small fenced-in garden at the rear of the church, where linden trees sheltered a pair of wrought-iron benches.

  “Herr Doktor Hoffmann.” The low, polite voice came from the darkness off to his left.

  Karl moved around the side of a tree. There was a slight woman slouching against the trunk. Her eyes were a pair of dull stones peeking out from beneath the short brim of her cloche hat. She reminded Karl of a theatrical tramp from one of Bertolt Brecht’s plays, which he’d grown fond of during the 1920s and early 1930s. Before the Nazis rose to power and outlawed Brecht’s work, of course.

  “Ilse,” he said. “Thank you for meeting me.”

  “You picked a fine night for it.” Ilse lifted a small silver flask to her lips and took a long pull.

  Karl knew that “Ilse” was not this woman’s real name. Where she fit in Berlin’s underground resistance network, he wasn’t entirely sure. It was to Ilse that he had passed the vials of sulfuric acid that Colonel Stauffenberg had used for his bomb fuses. And it was Ilse who had persuaded the communists to make the weekly food drops in the backyard of the Hoffmanns’ safe house.

  She could be a communist. A Jew living on false papers and borrowed time. Or someone like himself: a German doing what she could to resist the Nazis.

  Either way, one telephone call to a switchboard operator, a few coded phrases, and here she was—prompt, reliable Ilse. He wondered what her profession had been in the years before the war.

  “Drink,” she said, holding out the flask. It wasn’t a question. Karl took the flask and poured schnapps down his throat. Instantly, the herbal bite of the alcohol warmed his chest and stomach.

  “Thank you,” he said, returning the flask. “Is it true, what they’re saying about Hitler being alive?”

  “Here’s what I know,” Ilse said. “There were actions planned for tonight. We were set to move against Nazi targets throughout Berlin, once the army began to arrest the SS and Gestapo agents. But we’re standing down, because that hasn’t happened.” She shook her head. “Operation Valkyrie seems to be at a standstill. Whether that is because Hitler survives, or simply because Colonel Stauffenberg is losing control of the situation, we can’t be sure.”

  The schnapps curdled in Karl’s stomach. A cramp like a tight, heavy knot took hold. If the Gestapo and the SS were being neutralized, then maybe Max would have a chance. But if Valkyrie was headed for failure, the Nazis would strike back hard.

  A boy caught firebombing a Hitler Youth building today, of all days, would not be treated leniently.

  Karl clenched his fists as a bolt of white-hot anger surged through him. “How could Stauffenberg have failed? This was our one chance!”

  “Keep your voice down,” Ilse said.

  “I’m sorry,” Karl said, ashamed of his outburst. He pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose. “I’m not myself.”

  That’s an understatement, he thought. Every so often he would find himself marveling at the difference a few months could make. Last winter he had still been the head of the trauma surgery department at the university hospital, a man of steady competence who commanded respect from his colleagues and even from the Nazi administrators who tried to persuade him to join the Party. But just as the summer’s poor diet had taken its toll on his body, the endless days cooped up in the safe house had worn away at his mind. He had always held desperation at bay, but now he could feel a frantic, nervous energy clawing at the edges of his awareness.

  “My son is missing, and I fear he’s been taken.” He couldn’t bring himself to say by the Gestapo. Ilse would know what he meant.

  “We can find out if he’s being held,” she said, “but it will take time. We lost our eyes inside Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, and after today things will be much more difficult.”

  Karl swallowed the lump in his throat. He had always been a practical man, but some part of him had clung to the hope that Ilse could work miracles.

  “He’s twelve years old,” he said.

  “I understand,” Ilse said. “My youngest brother was thirteen.”

  Was, Karl thought. Ilse didn’t have to say anything more.

  “I’m sorry,” Ilse said, reading the pain in his silence. “I didn’t mean—”

  “It’s all right,” Karl said. “I just can’t accept that there’s nothing I can do.”

  “That’s the surgeon in you—always looking for a way to solve the problem. A little incision, a tube here, a snip there—but sometimes, as hard as it is, we have to accept that the best thing to do is nothing at all.”

  “And so I’m to leave my son in the hands of those animals?” He shook his head. “No. There must be something.”

  Ilse sighed. “Perhaps, if you weren’t already a wanted fugitive with false papers, a known member of the Becker Circle, you could find some sympathetic official to plead your case with the Gestapo. But even if you were an upstanding Nazi Party member, it would still be difficult. Since you are an enemy of the Reich, attempting such a thing would be suicide.”

  “I could offer to trade myself for him.”

  “Herr Doktor, we’re speaking of the Gestapo here. They will simply take you both.”

  Karl sighed. “You’re right, Ilse. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I expected of you tonight, of all nights.”

  Ilse put a hand on his shoulder. “What is expected of us tonight is changing by the minute, I’m afraid.”

  “So where does that leave me?”

  “Do you want an honest answer?”

  “I do.”

  “Take your wife, your daughter, and the Vogel girl, and get out of Berlin. I’m sure your son is a tough boy, but the Gestapo will sniff out what they want to know. It won’t take them long to find your safe house.”

  Karl closed his eyes. Ilse was talking about the interrogation of his twelve-year-old son. Perhaps even his torture.

  “It’s not the kind of choice anyone should have to make,” she continued, “and I’m truly sorry, but you do have to make it: your son, or your entire family.”

  He opened his eyes. “I’ve already told Ingrid and the girls to flee if I’m not back by midnight tonight. They know the contacts and the route.”

  “Good. Go home and join them, and don’t wait until midnight. Berlin is no place for you anymore.”

  “I won’t leave the city without Max.”

  There was a long silence. A procession of ve
hicles roared past the church. Karl and Ilse huddled close together, keeping the fat linden trunk between themselves and the street. They watched as a pair of the long, sleek Mercedes cars favored by SS officers turned the corner, followed by another green minna.

  Checkpoints were popping up all over Prenzlauer Berg (and, undoubtedly, all over Berlin), sprouting like some fast-growing, insidious fungus to blanket the city. Ilse was right—the Hoffmanns shouldn’t wait until midnight. If Valkyrie was sputtering into failure, things would get worse by the hour. Still, he tried to hold on to an ember of hope. Perhaps Max was just hiding out somewhere. Even if he was hurt, it would be better than being in the hands of the Gestapo.

  Or perhaps Stauffenberg had succeeded and Hitler truly was dead. There was always a chance!

  Ilse’s soft voice brought him back to reality.

  “You’re a good man who has to make a bad choice. Whatever you decide, do it quickly. Don’t let the Nazis make the choice for you.”

  Karl knew what was coming next. He could hear the farewell coursing through her words, the strain coupled with the steel of bitter resolve forged by years of permanent goodbyes.

  “I’m afraid you won’t be able to contact me again, Herr Doktor Hoffmann.”

  “I understand, Ilse.”

  She clasped his hands in her own, looked him in the eyes, and then she was gone.

  As if in a dream, the headlights came slowly at first, oozing around corners. And then, all at once, Karl was surrounded like an RAF bomber caught in the web of searchlights that swept the sky above the city.

  He had exited the little garden behind the church with no problem. It was only when he turned the corner at the end of the street that the net seemed to close around him. Heart pounding, he backed up against the facade of an apartment block. He was just one more anonymous citizen hurrying home—there was no way the Nazis could have tracked him to the church. And Ilse was highly skilled and very careful.

  But he knew he was being naive. There were a hundred ways even a simple clandestine meeting could go wrong. The Gestapo could be tapping the switchboard he called to signal Ilse. They could have captured and turned a fellow resistance member who knew Ilse’s whereabouts. Or they could have simply assigned a lucky agent to keep an eye on the Gethsemane Church.

  You’re just being paranoid, he told himself. He watched the cars screech to a halt—three Mercedes and a green minna, all of them angled toward the front stoop of a row house across the street from where Karl was standing. Doors opened, and half a dozen SS men trooped out and jogged up the steps. The lead man hammered a fist against the front door.

  “Peter Weigel!” the man yelled. “Open up at once!”

  When Peter Weigel did nothing of the sort, the lead SS man—an Obersturmführer, no doubt—turned and gave a quick wave in the direction of the green minna. The back doors of the vehicle burst open, and a pair of agents in long black leather coats hopped out. The SS men parted to clear a lane to the front door. The two agents carried between them a long metal cylinder, black as oil and shiny in the headlights. Battering ram, Karl thought. They paused at the door, swung the cylinder once, twice, and then smashed the door in.

  Karl allowed himself a moment of relief that the operation wasn’t targeting him, but this was short-lived. He couldn’t help but imagine a similar scene unfolding on the front stoop of the safe house. Karl Hoffmann, open up at once!

  He’d left Ingrid and the girls alone. And he’d failed to find Max or discover anything about his son’s whereabouts. Now he was adrift in a city on lockdown.

  As the SS men poured into the row house with their pistols drawn, Karl moved quickly down the sidewalk. Ilse was right, of course. There was nothing he could do for Max. Getting his wife and the girls out of Berlin had to be his priority.

  Tears came to his eyes. Oh, Maxi. He wasn’t ready to think about his son in some horrible Gestapo interrogation room.

  He would never be ready to think about that.

  As he turned left, the dark streets seemed to haze, as if in a heat shimmer. He felt both light-headed and weak in the knees, abruptly swamped by the past. Max had been a colicky baby, and Karl had worked such odd hours in those days that he often found himself cradling his newborn son and pacing their Neukölln flat in the quiet hours just before dawn. The slightly milky scent of his son’s face wafted down the dark street. Such a perfectly formed memory of the smell! Karl breathed deep. In the distance he could hear Max’s odd little coo—a uniquely precious sound that Ingrid had dubbed his “morning chirp.” Overcome by these visitations, Karl staggered onward a few more steps, then put out an arm to brace himself against the corner of an apartment block.

  Some part of him knew that he was losing his mind, and the levelheaded surgeon within admonished him to move. But the memories were coming faster now, a tidal wave of impressions, sights, and sounds of his son. His eyes blurred with tears. Bright lights cut through the haze, tiny dots in the distance. Karl nearly cried out as he was struck by a vision of his son as he should have been: untouched by endless war, untroubled by bombing raids and wrecked lives, going to school, playing soccer, growing into a fine young man …

  Dear God, get hold of yourself! The voice was a whisper. It had no power to chase away these remarkably clear visions of Max as a well-fed, clean, happy boy, full of life and hope. And Karl didn’t want to chase them away, did he? No. He wanted to live inside this other world—a world where he could keep Max safe like any father should. A world where he hadn’t failed to protect him.

  Karl thought he might be weeping. Light was all around him now, radiant beams swimming in the darkness.

  Run, urged the voice, but it was still only a whisper.

  Dark, brooding, ruined Berlin was a pencil sketch, a smeared background. Before him there was only light—so much light!—and Max as he once was, Max as he should be.

  And then Berlin came rushing back. The apartment blocks asserted themselves, the streets drew themselves in, and the foreground of his vision was once again bricks, cobblestones, blacked-out streetlamps, and—

  Cars.

  A military truck, a green minna, a Mercedes. A parade of Nazi vehicles, coming from everywhere and nowhere, all at once.

  Now the voice was loud and clear: RUN.

  Karl obeyed. His first steps were halting. Then he found his footing. But there were so many cars, all of them screeching to a halt up and down the street. (Which street? Where was he?) Doors opened and shut, and the sidewalks were suddenly full of SS and Gestapo. Karl’s fellow pedestrians looked stunned, squinting into the headlights. An elderly couple put their hands up in surrender.

  He tried to clear his head, but it didn’t make any sense. These checkpoints were so random, so sudden. It occurred to him that the Nazis probably weren’t looking for anyone in particular—they were just unleashing their power and fury in the wake of the attempt on Hitler’s life. Arrest first, ask questions later. Unless, of course, they simply guillotined you.

  If only he could reach the end of the street! But now he was running in full view of the SS men taking positions directly in front of him. Everyone else on the street had stopped. That was the thing to do: reach casually into your pocket, present your papers for inspection, get your stamp, go about your business.

  Karl stopped. He wiped the sweat from his brow.

  It should have been simple. His forged identification was excellent. His composure was usually well kept. But his mind would not cooperate. He relied on the voice to tell him what to do and how to behave.

  Get in line. He waited behind the elderly couple. They shuffled along. Just ahead, an SS man stood guard, raking the queue of trapped pedestrians with his eyes. His gaze settled on Karl. Next to the SS man, a short, stocky Gestapo agent in a long leather coat—despite the summer heat—made impatient hand gestures.

  Papers, please.

  Ahead of Karl, the old man rummaged inside a battered old satchel. He came up with a wooden figurine. Karl blinked. It was
a knight on horseback. One of Max’s wooden figurines. He rubbed his eyes, and the figurine hazed away. The old man presented his identification booklet to the Gestapo agent.

  There had never been a wooden knight. Only papers. Karl took a deep breath. There, borne on the faint breeze, was the smell of his newborn son, lingering …

  And then he was standing in front of the Gestapo agent.

  “Papers, please,” the agent said. His nose looked like it had been broken and reset. A fracture of the ethmoid bone, Karl’s mind told him dully.

  The SS man prodded him in the shoulder. “Produce your papers!”

  Karl nodded. “Of course,” he said, reaching into his pocket and handing over the forged booklet. The cover was printed with a swastika inside a circle, clutched in the talons of an eagle. There was a prominent letter A for Aryan, which marked him as an acceptable non-Jewish citizen of the Reich.

  The Gestapo agent took it from his clammy grip. He opened the booklet. Inside was a real photograph of Karl Hoffmann. He was identified as “Wilhelm Fischer,” born 1901, son of Otto and Agatha Fischer.

  “Herr Fischer,” the Gestapo agent said. He glanced from the photograph to Karl’s face, then narrowed his eyes. “Getting some exercise this evening?”

  Karl knew that sweat was beading on his upper lip, and he was most likely red-faced with exertion.

  “Just running late, I’m afraid,” he said.

  “For what?”

  “For an appointment.”

  “With whom?”

  “A client. In Weissensee.” He flashed a quick smile. “I’m an appraiser of antiques, and with so many items of great value coming into our possession from the territories of our expanding Reich, I’m very busy. As you can imagine.”

  He relaxed a little. The “Wilhelm Fischer” cover story flowed easily, and he spoke without hesitation. He held the Gestapo agent’s gaze. The man’s eyes were cold gray pools.

  “You meet clients at night?”

  Karl’s smile turned rueful. “Between you and me—more than I’d like. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for their business, but some of my wealthier clients can be … rather demanding.”