The Execution Read online

  The two boys stepped back to flank the doorway, a pair of hulking shadows in the dim light.

  Heinrich came forward. He was wearing a crisp, spotless uniform, but there was a smudge of dark soot on his face.

  Claus von Stauffenberg would say something cavalier, something like I heard you had a fire. I hope your clubhouse is okay.

  But right now, Max could barely picture the colonel, much less imitate his calm, collected demeanor. He could barely think of anything at all. His fear was black smog seeping into the room, wreathing his neck, slithering into his nose, burning his eyes …

  He couldn’t believe this was actually happening.

  Heinrich leaned forward. Max flinched as the boy’s face came very close to his own. Then Heinrich sniffed the bump on the side of Max’s forehead.

  “Smells like Jew blood.” He frowned and thought for a moment. “Or maybe Gypsy. I get the two stenches confused.” He straightened up and folded his arms. “So what is it? Jew? Gypsy? One of the subhuman Slavic races?”

  Max looked away and stared at the wall. Heinrich grabbed his chin and turned his head so that their eyes met.

  “Here’s how this is going to work. I ask a question, you give me an answer. Otherwise, it goes very badly for you. Now.” He let go of Max’s chin. Max didn’t dare look away. But then Heinrich clasped his hands behind his back and walked around behind the chair. Max’s body tensed up. Not being able to see what Heinrich was doing was so much worse.

  “What are you?” Heinrich said.

  Max choked out a single word: “German.”

  “Ah,” Heinrich said. “You see, that makes me very sad. Because the Jews, the Gypsies, the Russian dogs—they can’t help what they are. But you are Aryan! You have the best blood in the world. And still you choose to fight your own kind, when we only have your best interests at heart. That”—he emphasized the word, made it bounce around the cellar’s walls—“makes you a lower form of life than even those subhumans.” His breath came hot in Max’s ear. “Because you had a choice. And you chose to tear down what we’ve built. Do you think that was the right choice?”

  Max clamped his lips shut.

  “Do you?” Heinrich screamed.

  Max felt his body begin to tremble. His heart hammered in his chest. He could feel Heinrich’s looming presence at his back. Then, very slowly, the blade of his father’s knife slid into view in front of his eyes. He lost control of himself and began to squirm and strain against the ropes. One of the heavyset boys laughed.

  “Never mind that,” Heinrich said. “Let’s get down to business.” The tip of the blade was so close to Max’s left pupil that his eyelashes would brush against it if he dared to blink. “I want to know about the Red Dragons. I want the names of everyone in your group.”

  The knife vanished from sight. Max let out a long breath. Heinrich walked around the chair, returning to his place in front of Max. He knelt down, placed the knife on the floor at his side, and gently removed Max’s left shoe. Then he picked up the knife and held the blade to Max’s big toe.

  Max screamed.

  “I don’t want to do this,” Heinrich said. “Just tell me what I want to know, and I’ll let you keep your toes.”

  “There’s a hundred people in the Red Dragons!” Max blurted out. “I don’t know their names, I swear!”

  Heinrich sighed. He stood up, placed the tip of the knife alongside Max’s cheek, and flicked his wrist. The sharp, stinging pain brought tears to Max’s eyes.

  “I’m going to give you some time to think,” Heinrich said. “Then I’m going to come back and start with your toes. If you keep lying to me, I’m going to take your fingers, too.”

  He sheathed the knife, turned his back, and stomped up the stairs. The other boys followed, closing the door behind them, leaving Max tied up and bleeding in the dark.

  JULY 20, 1944

  In the belly of the Heinkel courier aircraft, Stauffenberg tried to stay calm and focused. The first two phases of the plot had gone—miraculously—according to plan.

  As soon as General Fellgiebel had given the order to activate Valkyrie, Haeften pulled up to the signals shelter in his staff car. Stauffenberg ran out and hopped in. On their way to the first checkpoint, they drove as close as they could to the map room. The scene was chaotic. Acrid smoke billowed from the wreckage, officers were being carried out on stretchers, and klaxon sirens were blaring across the Wolf’s Lair.

  The map room itself had been blown apart. To Stauffenberg, it looked as if it had suffered a mortar attack. The structure was gutted, and the remnants of its walls and roof littered the grounds.

  “No one could have survived that,” Stauffenberg said to Haeften as they sped past without attracting attention—just one more cog in the machinery of the bombing’s frantic aftermath.

  They had been waved through the first two checkpoints by SS officers who recognized Stauffenberg. The outer checkpoint was manned by a stubborn sergeant-major who insisted upon authorization from the Wolf’s Lair before he would let them pass. But after Stauffenberg got out of the car and personally phoned the aide-de-camp of the compound, the final barrier was lifted. Haeften sped to the airfield.

  The Führer is dead, Stauffenberg repeated to himself again and again. There was still so much work to be done if Valkyrie was to succeed, and yet—

  The Führer is dead.

  The man who brought evil fire down upon the summer fields of Europe had finally—and in a single instant—been wiped out.

  He contemplated that for a moment, allowed himself a brief surge of triumph, then turned his thoughts to the work ahead of him. His brother Berthold and the other high-level coconspirators were waiting for him in the General Army Office at the Bendlerblock in Berlin. Now that Valkyrie was underway, it was crucial for soldiers loyal to the conspiracy to seal off the Bendlerblock to protect the nerve center of the operation from the Nazis.

  Buckled into a seat across the Heinkel’s cabin, which hummed and rattled with engine noise, Haeften looked pale. Stauffenberg shot him a reassuring smile, but the tension on the man’s face brought to mind a stubborn truth: While the plane was in the air, he had no way of contacting his fellow plotters. He had to trust that they were proceeding according to General Fellgiebel’s instructions. But until he was safely inside his office at the Bendlerblock, telephone in hand, he knew he would feel profoundly uneasy.

  Three hours later, the plane touched down at an aerodrome just south of Berlin.

  As his staff car wound through the streets, headed for the center of the city, Stauffenberg was relieved to find Berlin in a relative state of calm. That meant that Fellgiebel had succeeded in cutting off the Wolf’s Lair from the outside world. If news of the assassination had already leaked, then Berlin would be under lockdown by the SS and Nazi checkpoints would be clogging the streets.

  “Another mark in our favor,” Stauffenberg said to Haeften as he pulled up to the stately office building that stretched from the Tiergarten to the Landwehr Canal.

  Inside, the men made their way down winding corridors to Stauffenberg’s office. Waiting for them was Stauffenberg’s superior, General Friedrich Olbricht. It was Olbricht who had come up with the Valkyrie plan in the first place and recruited Stauffenberg to his office.

  Stauffenberg greeted him warmly, but Olbricht looked grim. He rose from his chair.

  “I’ve just heard from General Fellgiebel. The Führer lives.”

  Kat Vogel tapped out a fractured rhythm on her kneecaps. She barely realized she was moving her hands at all. Tension, sorrow, and fear drove the beat, while a grave sense of regret distorted the timing. It was jazz played by a band of maniacs as they walked off a cliff.

  The radio was on, the German broadcasters’ droning voices the background accompaniment.

  The lyrics were provided by Ingrid and Karl Hoffmann. Gerta sat silently next to Kat, withdrawn, puffy-eyed, as sleepless as the rest of them.

  “Tell it to me again,” Ingrid Hoffmann said
.

  “We saw him run down to the other end of the street,” Kat said. “When he lured the guard away, we threw the first bomb. And then we heard the footsteps of all the boys running at us. We left the other bombs where they were and got out of there.”

  “You’re sure you didn’t see him get taken by those boys?” Karl Hoffmann said. His deep-set eyes looked impossibly weary.

  “I’m sure,” Kat said, reassuring Max’s father for the hundredth time.

  “Then where is he?” Ingrid said. “He’s always come home before when he’s gotten into a little trouble. Remember his first dead drop, when he thought he was being watched? Even then, he was back in a few hours. Now he’s been gone all night and almost another whole day!” She rose from her seat. “I can’t stand this waiting anymore, Karl.”

  “Nor can I,” Karl Hoffmann said.

  “I bet he’s hiding out somewhere,” Gerta said.

  “Or maybe he …” Kat trailed off. She was trying to be helpful, but she couldn’t think of where Max could possibly be. She thought he must have been captured by Heinrich and the Hitler Youth, but she couldn’t bring herself to dash his parents’ hopes.

  She recalled the way those boys had tormented Gerhard in the community garden. They had hurt him badly—and he was one of their own. What would they do to a boy like Max?

  “I’m going to look for him,” Ingrid said.

  “I’m coming, too,” Gerta said.

  “Me too,” Kat said.

  “You’ve done enough!” Ingrid snapped at her.

  Kat felt her face flush. She looked down at the floor. Max’s mother was right. It had been all her fault from the moment she threw the first rock at the Hitler Youth. She had been overcome by an urge to hurt those boys, and it had robbed her of her ability to think clearly.

  “Ingrid,” Karl said.

  “Karl,” Ingrid said miserably.

  “Kat, it’s not your fault,” Karl said.

  Ingrid sighed. She put one hand on Kat’s shoulder and one on Gerta’s. “I’m sorry. I’m to blame for this, not you. It’s just that being here, in this place”—she glanced around the safe house sitting room in disgust—“has made me forget myself.” She turned to Karl. “The last thing you said when we left our home, about how we’re a family no matter where we live …” She shook her head. Kat was astonished to see tears spring to Ingrid Hoffmann’s eyes. She had never seen her cry before. “This place changed something in me.”

  Gerta stood up and embraced her mother. “No, Mutti, we should have listened to you.”

  Ingrid held her tightly. “My little girl.”

  “And we shouldn’t have come back here without him.”

  Kat felt Gerta’s words land like an accusation. Her fingers and thumbs danced with hummingbird speed along the sides of her knees.

  “I can’t sit inside this house anymore,” Karl announced.

  “Let me come with you,” Kat pleaded.

  Karl pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and then paused, listening. He turned the radio volume up.

  “… has survived an attempt on his life,” the broadcaster said. “I repeat: This is a special report. We have just received word that the Führer has survived an attempt on his life. Earlier today, an unknown assassin or group of assassins attempted to murder our Führer with what we believe to be a single bomb placed in a briefing room.”

  Karl’s hand went to his mouth, then to a forelock of his hair. He shook his head in disbelief.

  “My God,” Ingrid said.

  “The Führer is expected to address the German people later tonight,” the broadcaster continued. “For now, let us be thankful that this cowardly attack has failed.”

  “Stauffenberg would have seen it through to the end,” Karl said. “He would never have let Hitler survive.”

  “The Nazis are lying,” Ingrid said. “They’re stalling for time.”

  “No matter what happened, if the military is trying to activate Valkyrie,” Karl said, “then the city will soon be at war with itself. The army will fight the SS for control.”

  “Then what about Max?” Gerta said.

  “I don’t know,” Karl said. He ran a hand through his hair. “There’s no way to know, unless …”

  He went to the stairs and took them three at a time. Kat listened to him rush down the hall to his bedroom. A moment later, he came back down, looking bewildered.

  “Ingrid,” he said. “My trench knife is missing.” He frowned, then turned to Kat.

  “I didn’t take it, I swear!” she said.

  “Neither did I,” Gerta said.

  “You don’t think Max … ,” Ingrid said.

  Karl took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “All right,” he said. He crossed the room and sat down on the sofa. “Listen to me. I’m going to find him.”

  Everyone began to speak at once. Karl put up a hand and waited for the room to quiet down. Kat clasped her hands in her lap to keep from tapping out a jittery rhythm.

  “I’m going alone,” he said, “and that’s the end of it.” He turned to Ingrid. “If I’m not back by midnight, take the girls and go. Don’t wait any longer. You know what to do.”

  “Karl,” she whispered. He stood up and they embraced. For what seemed like a full minute they held each other. Then Karl knelt down and pulled Gerta close.

  “I will come back,” he said, kissing her on the forehead.

  “I love you, Papa,” she said.

  “I love you, too. I’m going to bring back your brother,” he said. Then he took Kat by the shoulders and looked her in the eyes. She held his gaze.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “You have nothing to be sorry for. Your father would be proud of you. I’ll see you soon.”

  With that, Karl Hoffmann put on his hat and left the house.

  JULY 20, 1944

  Stauffenberg refused to believe that the Führer was alive. Nobody could have survived that blast. He had seen the wreckage of the map room with his own eyes.

  Besides, Valkyrie was already in motion. Commands to begin the takeover had been sent out across the Reich. Paris, Vienna, and Prague had their orders. Urgent messages had been sent to Munich, Hamburg, Nuremburg, and dozens more key positions throughout Germany.

  And now all of the conspirators were making frantic calls to the Bendlerblock office. Stauffenberg was personally answering them all, urging his comrades to stay the course.

  “Yes. I was there, at the Wolf’s Lair, and I am telling you—what you are hearing from the Nazi high command is nothing but propaganda. The Führer is dead. The SS and the Gestapo are to be arrested and their offices placed under military control. You have the full support of the Wehrmacht!”

  While Stauffenberg took call after call, Olbricht and Haeften bustled in and out of his office with reports.

  The news was not good. No one had dealt with Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda, and Nazi broadcasts had not been silenced as planned. Reports were being transmitted across Germany, assuring civilians and soldiers alike that the Führer was alive and well.

  In Berlin, the commander of the city garrison refused, at the last minute, to order his troops to seal off the Bendlerblock. The conspirators were completely unprotected.

  As night fell, gunfire erupted in the corridors of the General Army Office.

  The SS had arrived.

  Stauffenberg hung up the phone. He rose from his desk and looked from Olbricht to Haeften. Shouting in the hallways grew louder. There was another volley of gunfire. Someone screamed. A single shot silenced his cries.

  “It has been an honor to serve with you gentlemen,” Stauffenberg said, drawing his pistol. An eerie calm settled over him. For the first time in many months, he felt at peace. He no longer had to shoulder a vast conspiracy, or coordinate efforts across a multitude of cities. He had done what he could to topple the Nazis. His only hope was that his actions would inspire others to pick up where he left off.

  “Perha
ps there is still a way out for you.” He pointed to the back door of his office. “The inner corridors may not yet be overrun. Find my brother Berthold and—”

  “No.” Haeften shook his head. “I began this with you. I will see it through to the end.”

  Olbricht drew his own pistol. “I suggest we pay a visit to General Fromm’s office. I should like a word with him before this is finished.”

  General Friedrich Fromm commanded the Reserve Army. Though he had not pledged his full support, he had allowed the conspiracy to take root under his nose and had done nothing to stop it. He was the type of man who played both sides—reluctant to turn against the Nazis, but equally reluctant to distance himself fully from the plot to kill Hitler, just in case it succeeded.

  Today, with the news that Hitler had survived, and Operation Valkyrie gradually appearing more and more hopeless, Fromm had announced that the conspirators had committed high treason.

  They could no longer count on the troops of the Reserve Army.

  Olbricht opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. Haeften and Stauffenberg followed. They moved down the corridor past the offices of men whom Stauffenberg had worked alongside for the past year. How strange it was to be hurrying with his gun drawn through a place where he had cheerfully gone about his business, asking after his fellow officers’ wives and children, sharing a laugh on the way home after a long day.

  The first shot came from behind them.

  Stauffenberg whirled around, raised his pistol, and fired. The SS trooper at the other end of the hall ducked behind a bend in the corridor. A moment later, one of the office doors in the middle of the hall burst open and a pair of SS men fired at the three conspirators.

  Stauffenberg felt a vicious tug in his shoulder. The impact of the bullet spun his body, and the gun that was perilously gripped in his three fingers clattered to the floor.

  “Run,” Haeften said, returning fire.