The Escape Read online

  “I can imagine.”

  “They’re accustomed to a certain standard of service, so”—he shrugged—“when they call, I come scurrying across the city.”

  The Gestapo agent gave a sympathetic sigh. “I suppose we’ve all got our masters.”

  Karl’s pulse began to return to normal. This was just a routine interaction. Nothing out of the ordinary. Any second now, this man would stamp his booklet and send him on his way.

  “Your wife must be quite irritated when you get called out so abruptly,” the agent said.

  Karl laughed. “I suppose she would be, if I had one.”

  “Ah. A bachelor and an appraiser of priceless antiques for our most distinguished citizens.” The Gestapo agent glanced at the SS man, whose scowl seemed carved into his face. “Where did we go wrong in life, eh, Schulze?”

  The SS man grunted.

  The Gestapo agent smiled at Karl. “You must have quite a few pretty fräuleins stashed away around the city.”

  Karl pretended to be slightly bashful. “Oh, I do okay in that regard.”

  The Gestapo agent’s smile broadened, showing his perfect white teeth. “As understanding as she may be about your working hours, surely your wife draws the line at the pretty fräuleins.”

  Karl blinked. “I don’t—”

  “Ah, but of course you would keep them a secret!”

  Karl shook his head. “I already told you, I’m not married.”

  The Gestapo agent waggled a finger and tut-tutted. “Herr Fischer, I’m disappointed in you.”

  Karl tried to keep his voice steady. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The Gestapo agent glanced at the SS man and smirked. “Herr Fischer, my friend. You’re wearing a wedding ring.”

  Karl stared at his hand as if seeing it for the first time. His throat felt like it was closing. It had been years since he had removed his ring for any reason. It was simply a part of him, an extension of his skin. It hadn’t occurred to him that “Wilhelm Fischer” wouldn’t wear a ring.

  “My Hannah, er, passed on, back in thirty-eight.” He swallowed.

  The Gestapo agent made a face of exaggerated sympathy. “How tragic! I’m so sorry to hear of poor Hannah’s passing. How touching that you still wear your wedding ring as a tribute to your undying love.”

  Karl watched in despair as the Gestapo agent pocketed the “Wilhelm Fischer” ID booklet.

  “This has been most interesting, Herr Fischer. I look forward to continuing our conversation at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse.”

  Karl opened his mouth to protest, but before he could speak, Schulze took him roughly by the arm and marched him to the green minna.

  “Papers, please,” said the Gestapo agent to whoever was next in line behind Karl.

  Another SS man opened the back doors of the boxy vehicle. Green minnas were tall, narrow trucks, and the oddness of their shape added to the feeling that to enter one was to enter a weird and unsettling new world. Inside, it was very dark. Karl could just make out two iron benches that ran the length of the interior from the rear doors to the partition that separated the prisoners’ section from the driver’s seat.

  Schulze gave him a shove with a forearm across his back, and Karl staggered up the single step into the green minna.

  “Sit,” Schulze commanded. Numb with fear, Karl obeyed. What else could he do? As soon as he sat down, the second SS man clapped a metal ring around his left ankle and tightened it with a clickclickclick. The leg iron was attached by a chain to the bench.

  It wasn’t until the doors shut and he was alone in the dark that Karl was struck by the smell. It brought him back to the hospital’s emergency room in the wake of a bombing attack: sour sweat, foul excretions, and behind it all the thick rusty odor of spilled blood.

  He closed his eyes and focused his thoughts on Ingrid and the girls. Silently, he willed them out of the safe house. Go now, my loves.

  He didn’t know how long he would last in one of the Gestapo’s interrogation rooms. He would try to stay strong, but what Ilse said was true: The Gestapo would find out what they wanted to know.

  Everybody had their breaking point.

  The Gestapo agent’s name was Baumann. He sat in a chair across from Karl Hoffmann in a small windowless room in the bowels of “Alex”—the Gestapo prison at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. Without his hat and long leather coat to give his body a more angular shape, Baumann looked like he had been assembled from round lumps of clay. The muscles of his arms strained against his sleeves.

  Karl had treated plenty of men like Baumann in the hospital. Street fighters and beer-hall brawlers. Men whose Saturday nights weren’t complete without a bit of violence.

  The only surprise was Baumann’s perfect teeth, which made for an odd complement to his broken nose. Karl wondered if the Gestapo paid for its agents to have cosmetic dental work. He tried to quell his fear with small diversions—Baumann’s teeth, a patch of peeling gray paint above the door, a chip in the corner of the table—but it was like trying to focus on a pretty sunset while your boat sank into the ocean. A laughable distraction.

  Baumann set the “Wilhelm Fischer” ID booklet on the table between them. He opened it up and tapped the photograph.

  “Who is this man, I wonder.” He frowned. Then he looked up at Karl. “Any idea?”

  Karl sat silently. Baumann regarded him without blinking. Then he picked up the ID booklet and pretended to study it in minute detail, as if he hadn’t done so already.

  “This is very good, you know. Much better than the junk we used to see back in forty-one and forty-two.” He rubbed the corner of the paper between his thumb and forefinger. “The card stock is genuine.” He examined the large red A printed on the cover. “The stamps appear to be real, too. You know what this reminds me of?”

  Karl stared straight ahead.

  “There was an industrialist—a tire manufacturer, I believe, though I could be mistaken. A certain Herr Trott.”

  Baumann paused. Karl struggled to keep his face perfectly composed, but his heart began to pound.

  “Anyway,” Baumann continued, “this Herr Trott churned out hundreds of fake identification cards in the basement of one of his factories. He had a whole printing operation squirreled away down there. And the work he was doing was magnificent. Excellent forgeries. Thoroughly impressive stuff. I have one framed in my office.” Baumann chuckled and tossed the ID booklet back down on the table. “We guillotined Herr Trott in April.” He frowned, deep in thought. “Or did we hang him with piano wire?” He shrugged. “We didn’t waste a bullet on him, that’s for sure.”

  Karl shifted in his seat. His throat was dry, his lips cracked. His last sip of water had been … when? Back at the safe house. How long ago was that? How long had he been in Gestapo custody? There was no way to tell time in this place, with no clocks or natural light. He hoped that Ingrid and the girls were long gone.

  “I’m going to ask you some questions,” Baumann said. “And I want you to keep in mind that I already know the answers. Why, then, you may be wondering, do I bother asking you? Perhaps you should consider that before you reply. Consider it very carefully. Now.” He tapped the ink-scrawled “Wilhelm Fischer.” “What is your real name?”

  Karl pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose and then sat with his hands clasped in his lap.

  Baumann sighed. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. “I’m going to be honest with you. It’s been a very long day. I’m sure you’ve heard the news about our Führer, may he live a thousand years. Because of that business, I’m afraid it’s going to be a long night, a long day tomorrow, and then another long night. So let’s skip the cat-and-mouse game and the sly evasions, and go straight to the part where you break. Does that sound good, Herr Doktor Hoffmann?”

  At the sound of his name, Karl jolted in his chair. Baumann laughed.

  “Our Swiss friend inside your Becker Circle, Hans Meier, gave us your name months a
go, of course. And the university hospital keeps meticulous records of its staff. Your photograph has been on all of our desks since the winter, but you yourself have been a ghost.” He shook his head. “I never expected you to walk into my checkpoint, but here we are. You know, the war is funny this way. My cousin wrote me a letter from Normandy. He’s in the Second Panzer. He did a little schooling in Paris before the war and stayed in this little garret along the Seine. All very picturesque. He used to prowl the cafés and bistros in the company of his landlord’s son, a young man named Laurent. Skip ahead to a few weeks ago, and my cousin tells me his unit is about to execute a few French partisans, when he realizes that one of them is his old pal Laurent! Out of all the little no-name French villages in the entire country, Laurent is hiding weapons for the French resistance in the one my cousin just happens to pass through. My cousin gave him a cigarette and a bit of brandy before he shot him. So you see, stranger things have happened.”

  Karl eyed the door behind Baumann. He wondered how many twisting hallways, how many sentries, how many locked gates, were between this cell and his son. Max could be right next door, and he would never know.

  Baumann pursed his lips. He checked his wristwatch. “All right, Herr Doktor Hoffmann. Let’s cut to the chase, as the Americans say. Here is what I will offer you. Tell us where your family is hiding. We will go there, and we will very gently take your wife and children into our custody. They will be sent to a camp—a soft camp. They won’t be worked to the bone or gassed. They will simply be relocated until the war is finished. And best of all, you will know exactly where they are, and they will know that you are alive and well. You may exchange letters. How does that sound to you?”

  Karl remained silent.

  Baumann nodded. “I thought so. Let me describe the alternative for you. Continue to sit here in such brave and noble silence, and we will employ extreme interrogation methods. We are very good. You will talk. Our guests always talk in the end. When we find your wife and children this way, we will not be so gentle.” Baumann leaned forward. “And, Herr Doktor Hoffmann, consider this very carefully—you will never know what’s happened to them. Are they alive? Dead? In a camp in Poland? In a prison here in Berlin? Of course they will wonder the same about you. Is that the kind of father you wish to be? One who puts his family through an ordeal like that?”

  Karl’s mind whirled and spun. Was the location of the safe house one of the questions that Baumann already knew the answer to? If the Gestapo already knew about the house in Prenzlauer Berg, then it wouldn’t matter if Karl talked. The walls of the room seemed to heave in and out as if they were breathing. It was very hot. Karl closed his eyes. It would be better for everyone if he told Baumann what he wanted to know, what he probably already knew. But surely it was a trick—Baumann was a Gestapo agent! There was no reason to trust him. Baumann’s threat—you will never know what’s happened to them—lodged in his mind like a splinter. He couldn’t ignore it. Yet he couldn’t just sit here silently, or he would be tortured. He had to tell this man something. But what?

  He willed Ingrid and the girls to be far away from the safe house. Then he opened his eyes. Baumann sat across from him, arms folded across his chest.

  Waiting.

  Max opened the cigar box where he kept the wooden miniatures that Uncle Friedrich had carved. He sifted through them until he came up with the knight on horseback. Then he placed the box on top of the pile of French theater programs—a gift to a future occupant of the safe house.

  It occurred to him that the next person inside this room would probably be a Gestapo agent. The idea of some Nazi’s hands all over the only keepsakes he’d brought from the villa in Dahlem made him sick, but there was nothing he could do about it now. Mutti had told him to pack only the bare necessities—a change of clothes, a few crumbly biscuits, a canteen for water. Everywhere he went, he shed pieces of the past. He stuffed the knight into his knapsack, took one last look at the tiny room, and headed downstairs.

  Mutti, Gerta, and Kat were gathered in the living room with their bags packed. Papa’s absence was heavy and ominous, like a strange new piece of furniture you could only see out of the corner of your eye.

  “Can’t we give him another hour?” Max said. He was convinced that as soon as they left the house, Papa would come home, and they would miss each other by minutes. That was simply how things went. Rotten luck lay over them all like a diseased blanket. He still couldn’t believe that the Führer had lived. Did that mean that Stauffenberg was dead? Gone forever like Frau Becker, Herr Trott, General Vogel …

  “It’s already half past midnight,” Mutti said. “We should be on our way.”

  Gerta plopped down on the couch. “I don’t feel right, Mutti.”

  “Listen to me,” Mutti said. “We’re leaving the only city we’ve ever called home. Nothing’s going to feel right about that. But we’re going to stick together, and we’re going to get through this. I promise you.”

  “No, Mutti,” Gerta said, and Max noticed that his sister looked alarmingly pale. Strands of her wheat-colored hair were plastered to her damp forehead. “I mean I feel sick.”

  Mutti placed the back of her hand against Gerta’s cheek, then her forehead. “Stomach? Throat?”

  Gerta groaned. “I think it was those tomatoes we ate. They didn’t look right.”

  “I ate those, too,” Kat said.

  “You’ve got a slight fever,” Mutti said, gently but firmly, “which you’re just going to have to deal with. When we get to the next safe house, you can rest.”

  “Uh-oh,” Kat said, prodding her stomach.

  “If they didn’t look right, why did you eat them?” Mutti asked.

  “Because we were hungry,” Kat said.

  “And none of our food ever looks right anyway,” Gerta said.

  “When we get to Switzerland, we’ll have a feast,” Mutti said. “I promise. Now stand up and follow me. Stay close, keep your mouths shut, and if you have to throw up … do it quietly.”

  “I don’t even know which tomatoes you’re talking about,” Max said.

  Three sharp taps on the back door made them all freeze. Max’s heart leaped—Papa! But then he realized that Papa would have no reason to knock. He would simply use his key.

  Mutti swore. “Out the front!” she said. “Quickly!”

  “Karl!” the voice at the back door called out, followed by three more knocks. There was something familiar about the voice.

  Halfway to the front door, Mutti paused, listening.

  “Ingrid!” the voice called.

  She was across the living room and down the back hallway before Max realized who it was. He glanced at his sister and watched the same realization dawn on her pale, sweaty face. He listened to the back door open and close.

  “Why aren’t we running?” Kat said.

  “Remember that shadow we told you about?” Max said.

  Mutti came back into the living room, trailed by a tall man in a black leather jacket that hung to his ankles—the telltale sign of a Gestapo agent. His gaunt, hollow-eyed face was bisected by an ugly scar that ran from his forehead, across his nose, and down his cheek to his jaw. He wore black gloves and carried a small leather valise.

  Kat gasped.

  He had lost weight, and the scar was new, but the man was unmistakably—

  “Albert!” Max cried out.

  “Hello, Max,” he said with a brisk nod. “Gerta. Lovely to see you again.” Then, to Kat: “And you must be the famous Vogel girl. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  He turned to Mutti. “Ilse contacted me. She met with Karl earlier tonight.”

  Mutti grabbed the sleeve of Albert’s jacket. “Then he’s all right?”

  “He was out looking for this one.” Albert pointed at Max. “And now it seems they’ve switched places. If Karl’s not here, then I’m afraid you know as much as I do about where he might be.”

  Max caught Gerta’s eye. There was a greenish tint to her face
.

  Mutti dropped Albert’s sleeve, folded her arms, and glanced at the clock on the wall.

  “Ilse was concerned,” Albert said. “And so am I. This place is no longer safe.”

  “We were waiting for Papa,” Max said.

  “I know,” Albert said. “But now you must go.”

  “We were just leaving,” Mutti said. “We’re headed to the Klugers’ for the night, and then—”

  “Change of plans,” Albert said. “The Klugers have been compromised. I’m taking you to Potsdam.”

  “Potsdam?” Mutti said. “Do the trains even run there anymore?”

  Potsdam was a city about twenty kilometers southwest of Berlin. Max had been there once, before the war. Papa had taken Mutti, Max, and Gerta out on Fahrlander See in a rowboat that had sprung a leak. They had all rowed like mad to make it back to shore, sitting in a steadily rising pool of water.

  “Don’t worry about the trains,” Albert said. “I’m driving.”

  Mutti hesitated. “If the Klugers have been compromised, then what of the Swiss route?”

  “I’m afraid it’s closed,” Albert said. “But there is another way.”

  “To Switzerland?” Mutti said.

  “Well,” Albert said. “Not exactly. You’ll be going somewhat … farther.”

  “Albert,” Mutti said.

  “You’re going to Spain.”

  As they followed Albert out the back door, through the yard, and down the alley behind the safe house, Max thought of the long black Mercedes in which Albert had chauffeured Frau Becker and the Hoffmanns. It was a fine car, and despite the circumstances, Max looked forward to seeing it again.

  What he saw at the end of the alley was a green minna. Motioning for the Hoffmanns to stay back, Albert stepped out of the alley, looked both ways, and then quickly opened the back doors of the sinister vehicle.

  “I’m not getting inside that thing,” Kat announced, crossing her arms.

  “Keep your voice down,” Mutti said, “and get in.”

  Albert went to the front of the truck and settled into the driver’s seat.