The Execution Read online

  “What are they doing?” Gerta asked.

  “It’s some kind of patrol,” Kat said.

  Max watched the boys pass by in solemn procession. The torchlight flickered across their faces, giving their features an otherworldly cast. Papa said that boys from the Hitler Youth were already manning the heavy guns of Berlin’s flak towers, and that when the Allies reached Berlin, Hitler would force the boys to fight in the streets. So many would die in a pointless, last-ditch defense of the city.

  If only Hitler had been blown up back in February at the fashion show, Max thought bitterly. Perhaps then, instead of cowering in the dark and waiting for a bunch of grim-faced Nazi boys to pass by, Max would be sleeping peacefully in his bed in the villa in Dahlem, safe in the knowledge that the war was over.

  Next to him, he heard Kat scrabbling in the dirt.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Watch this,” she said. Max sensed a blur of motion.

  Suddenly, the boy bringing up the rear of the Hitler Youth patrol spun on his heels with a yelp and swatted the empty air. Something clattered to the ground at his feet.

  A rock.

  Max sucked in his breath. Kat had just thrown a rock at the Hitler Youth!

  The boy leading the patrol stopped and held up a hand. The others halted behind him. He walked back along the row, carrying his torch, until he reached the last boy—squat, pudgy, dark-haired. In the flickering light, Max could see the boy rubbing his shoulder, squinting uncertainly at his leader through thick spectacles.

  “What is it?” the leader said.

  “I—I don’t know, Heinrich,” the boy said. “Something hit me.”

  “What hit you?” Heinrich brought the torch closer to the boy’s chubby face, and the boy winced at the heat of the flame. “Out with it, Gerhard.”

  Gerhard swallowed. “I guess it was nothing.”

  “Was it something, or was it nothing? Make up your mind. There’s no place for wishy-washy thinking in the Midnight Hunters.”

  Midnight Hunters? Max thought. It seemed as though this boy, Heinrich, had formed his own special squad of Hitler Youth. That explained the nighttime patrol. Max doubted a torchlit procession down the street in the middle of the night was an official Hitler Youth outing.

  The boy next to Gerhard snickered. “Maybe a bird flew into your fat behind.”

  “There’s no birds out this late,” Gerhard said.

  “A bat, then.”

  The other boys chimed in.

  “A whole family of bats.”

  “A British bomber.”

  “The entire Luftwaffe.”

  “Shut up!” Heinrich said, and the chatter ceased.

  He turned back to Gerhard. “Get hold of yourself, soldier.”

  Gerhard clicked his heels together miserably. “Yes, sir.”

  Heinrich glared at the boy for a moment longer, then stalked back up to the front of the procession and beckoned for them to follow. It wasn’t until the patrol had turned a corner and moved out of sight that Max felt safe enough to stand up.

  “Are you trying to get us killed?” he hissed at Kat. “We’re supposed to be out getting some air, not throwing rocks at the Hitler Youth!”

  “It was just a little pebble,” Kat said, smirking. “Calm down.”

  “I am calm!”

  Gerta laughed. “Sure, Maxi. Calm as a flak burst. Have you tried listening to the trees breathe? It’s very relaxing.”

  Max knew his sister would take Kat’s side. She was probably kicking herself for not thinking of throwing a rock first.

  “It’s not funny!” Max said. It had been his idea to take Kat outside the safe house, and he felt responsible for her safety. “We’re outnumbered, and nobody knows we’re out here. If those boys caught us—”

  “I thought you were supposed to be some kind of fearless resistance fighter,” Kat said, folding her arms.

  “Leave him alone, Kat,” Gerta said.

  “No, seriously—isn’t that the whole reason my father’s dead,” Kat said, “and my mother’s in a camp?”

  “Shhhh!” Gerta said.

  “Don’t tell me to shhhh!” Kat said. “I thought I was moving in with a family of fighters, but all I see is a bunch of people sitting around a smelly old house while the Hitler Youth walk up and down the streets like they own the city.”

  “We did our part,” Max said.

  “Well, good for you,” Kat said. “Now I’m going to do mine.”

  Max sighed. “Okay, but … throwing rocks is stupid.”

  “I see,” Kat said. “And what do you suggest?”

  “We have to be smart,” Gerta said. “We can’t fight them physically. They’ll kill us.”

  “We have to be like Albert,” Max said.

  Kat frowned. “Who’s Albert?”

  “A shadow,” Max said.

  On the way home Max felt light and free, propelled by the promise of action. Claus von Stauffenberg would approve. The tall officer would not let this gang of Hitler Youth—the Midnight Hunters—own the streets of his neighborhood.

  Fighting them with fists and rocks would be suicide. But there were plenty of other ways to make their lives miserable.

  His mind raced with thoughts of sabotage—laxatives in their food, itching powder in their shiny boots, all manner of vermin loosed upon their headquarters …

  Tomorrow, they would begin to plan. Tomorrow, they would have a purpose.

  Frau Becker might be dead, but the spirit of resistance lived on in them.

  In the alley behind the safe house, he glanced up at the neighbor’s window. The blue-tinted light had been turned off. The house was dark. In a few hours, dawn would break over the city, and Max was looking forward to being fast asleep by then.

  Gerta opened the gate in the back fence and held it ajar for Max and Kat to creep into the yard. She shut it behind her with a soft click.

  Max was picking his way through the brambles when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

  “Wait,” Kat whispered. “I’m not ready to go inside yet. Just a few more minutes. Please.”

  That was fine with Max. It might be some time before they managed to sneak out again, and he intended to enjoy every last second in the open air.

  They paused near the back door to the safe house. Gerta bent to pick at the weeds. Kat raised her eyes to the sliver of moon. Max lost himself in thoughts of the future. He had been mired in the past for so long, shuffling numbly through his days, that getting excited about tomorrow was jarring. Now that the Allies had landed, he could even glimpse the end of the war—distant, yes, but not out of reach. Then his life would be filled with the promise of endless tomorrows. As the years passed and he grew up, those months he spent pacing back and forth in the sweaty flat in Prenzlauer Berg would be nothing more than a half-remembered dream.

  When the gate in the back fence swung open behind them, his first thought was that Gerta hadn’t latched it properly.

  Then the dark shape of a man entered the backyard and shut the gate behind him, as silently as Gerta had, and began to step lightly through the brambles. He was heading straight for them.

  There was nowhere to go. They were trapped in the small, overgrown, fenced-in yard.

  Max took a single step back toward the house. Dry leaves crunched beneath his shoe.

  The intruder froze. He was barely visible in the moonlight, a silhouette outlined in the palest glow.

  Then the moonlight glinted off something in his hand.

  It was the long silver blade of a fearsome knife.

  The Gestapo had found them at last. There would be a green minna parked out front. More agents surrounding the house. In a matter of seconds they would kick in the door and rush into the flat, dragging Mutti and Papa from their bed.

  “Who are you?” the man demanded in a low but insistent whisper.

  Max was flooded with relief at the sound of the familiar voice. “Papa!” he whispered in reply.

  The blade vani
shed into the darkness. The man came forward. “Max!” Up close, Max could just barely make out his father’s face. Papa was wearing a black fedora with the brim pulled low.

  Papa carries a knife, Max thought. A big one. After all the family had been through with the Becker Circle, Max thought there were no more secrets between the Hoffmanns.

  Of course, Max had just snuck out without telling anyone. And it looked like Papa had done the very same thing.

  In Berlin, keeping secrets was a hard habit to break.

  “Hi, Papa,” Gerta said.

  “Gerta,” Papa whispered. “Kat. I see you’re all in this together. Whatever this is. Come—let’s talk inside.”

  Colonel Stauffenberg is alive,” Papa said. “As far as we can tell, he wasn’t betrayed. On the contrary, it appears that he will soon be promoted to chief of staff of the Reserve Army. Operation Valkyrie is still very much in motion.”

  They were huddled around the small kitchen table, four sets of eyes catching the light from the room’s lone bulb.

  Max elbowed Gerta. “Told you.” He turned to Papa. “Is that who you were outside meeting with just now? Colonel Stauffenberg?”

  He imagined the two men furtively ducking into an alley or striding past one another and exchanging a briefcase without slowing down.

  Papa shook his head. “No, Maxi. It’s far too dangerous for him to do that. We have reports that Hitler has grown so paranoid that he rarely leaves his residence at the Berghof. His suspicion knows no bounds, and we can’t take unnecessary risks—not when Colonel Stauffenberg is so close to carrying out the assassination.”

  “Then—he’s going to do it himself?” Gerta said.

  “Yes,” Papa said. “He has come to believe that it is too great a responsibility to entrust to anyone else.”

  Max’s throat went dry. He thought again of the fashion show plot. The young lieutenant was going to strap himself with a bomb and explode it while he stood close to the Führer.

  Killing Hitler was a suicide mission.

  Stauffenberg would not live to see Valkyrie through. He would be killed along with Hitler, and leave the rest of the plot—neutralizing the SS, taking control of the government, making peace with the Allies—to his fellow conspirators.

  “There has to be somebody else who can do it,” Max said.

  “Colonel Stauffenberg has access to Hitler’s inner circle,” Papa explained. “He’s a man with an impeccable reputation, respected by the high command. There is no one else who can get close enough.”

  Max wondered if Stauffenberg had a family. Was it an agonizing decision for a man like that, to sacrifice his life? Or was he so bound by his duty to eliminate the Nazis’ grip on Germany that he never doubted himself?

  “How do you know all this?” Gerta said.

  “You were meeting with Albert just now,” Max guessed. “Or the princess.”

  “I’m afraid not,” Papa said. “I suspect the princess has fled Berlin. As for Albert, who knows? The man is an expert at not being seen. I know as much as you do of his whereabouts.”

  “So you were just enjoying the night air,” Kat said, “like us.”

  No one spoke for a moment. Max half expected Papa to simply agree and move on, keeping the purpose of his late-night errand to himself.

  “Not exactly,” Papa said. He placed a small wooden box on the table, setting it down very gently. “I was meeting an old friend from the hospital.” He lifted the lid of the box. “He gave me these.”

  Inside the box were six long glass vials shaped like miniature hourglasses. Max reached across the table to examine one of the curious items. Papa’s hand darted out to grab his wrist.

  “Careful! You don’t want to touch them.” He paused. “I don’t want to touch them. They’re filled with sulfuric acid.”

  Papa released his wrist. Max put his hands safely in his lap. “Oh,” he said. “Right. Sulfuric acid.”

  No one spoke for a moment. The vials looked perfectly harmless, six little glass containers nestled snugly in the leather that lined the box. Each one was filled with clear liquid.

  Papa was staring at them like he couldn’t quite believe what he’d just brought into the house.

  “Papa,” Max said.

  “Hmm?” Papa blinked and wiped his spectacles on his shirt.

  “Why do you have six vials of sulfuric acid?”

  “Ah,” Papa said, replacing his spectacles. Max studied his father’s face. Months of idleness had infected Karl Hoffmann with an absentmindedness he’d never possessed while he was working long days and nights at the hospital. “They will act as timers.”

  “Like … clocks?” Kat said. She began tapping out a soft waltz on her kneecaps.

  “Not exactly.” Papa took off his hat, set it on the table, and rubbed his temples. “I’m sorry. It’s been a very long night.” He looked at Max, Gerta, and Kat in turn. “Timers for the fuses. They’ll arm the bombs that Colonel Stauffenberg uses to blow up Adolf Hitler.” He pointed at the skinny, tapered midsection of one of the vials. “Once the glass is broken, here, the acid will begin to eat through the detonation wire. When it severs the wire completely … kaboom. No more Führer.”

  And no more Stauffenberg, Max thought.

  “How long does it take to blow up, after the glass is broken?” Gerta asked.

  “They tell me it takes ten minutes,” Papa said. “Though I understand it is far from precise.”

  “So he could plant the bomb and still have time to get away,” Max said.

  “Yes,” Papa said. “But I believe that Colonel Stauffenberg will do whatever it takes to ensure that the assassination succeeds. And if that forces him to hold the bomb until the very last second, then that is what he will do.”

  “When’s he going to do it?” Max said.

  “The bombs will be ready by the end of the week. Then it will depend on when the colonel gets invited to a conference with the Führer. He has no control over these invitations, so he must be ready to act at a moment’s notice. I doubt we will know the day in advance.”

  Max tried to imagine what it would be like to wait around for the moment when you were summoned to meet with Adolf Hitler, knowing that you would be carrying a hidden bomb.

  Max’s chest felt tight. The kitchen was very small, the walls too close together and creeping closer. The lamp receded to a distant pinprick of blue light. Papa was suddenly very far away.

  His thoughts veered abruptly to Uncle Friedrich, vaporized by a Soviet rocket attack thousands of kilometers from home.

  The tiny speck of lamplight burned brighter, bursting into a corona of blue flame—an explosion from a briefcase bomb, a howling Katyusha rocket, a four-thousand-pounder dropped from the belly of an Avro Lancaster …

  “Max.” The voice was far away. Fire swirled in the oceanic depths of an unblinking eye—the eye of an old woman buried in the ruins of a bomb shelter, the eye of Claus von Stauffenberg, the eye of the world …

  “Max.” Louder now. Papa’s hand shook his shoulder. “Breathe, Max.”

  After a few measured breaths, the flames died away and the shape of the kitchen emerged from Max’s vision. His heart was pounding. Gerta and Kat were watching him, their eyes wide with alarm.

  “That’s it,” Papa said. “You’re safe here.”

  Max wiped sweat from his brow. “I’m sorry, everybody.”

  “It’s okay,” Gerta said.

  “I think it’s time we all got some sleep,” Papa said. “We can talk more in the morning.”

  As he was trudging upstairs to his room, Max realized that nobody had thought to ask Papa about the knife.

  The next week did nothing to reassure Kat that the Allies would reach Berlin anytime soon. The news from the BBC was all about how the Allies were “linking up the beaches.” On D-Day, Max had imagined troops storming a single beach stretching endlessly in both directions along the French coast. But the invasion force had actually landed on five distinct beaches, code-named Utah,
Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword. Once the beachheads were secured, and German troops painstakingly dislodged from their Atlantic Wall, the Allies’ work had barely begun.

  Meanwhile, the Germans were throwing their elite SS Panzer divisions into the fray, engaging the Allies in fierce battles for the inland French towns of Caen and Bayeux.

  The Normandy front seemed poised to descend into a vicious deadlock. British Cromwell tanks were no match for German Tigers. On the other hand, Allied air power was virtually unchallenged.

  Paratroopers, bombs, and artillery shells rained down on western France.

  Prisoners on both sides were executed.

  French civilians died.

  German radio gleefully reported atrocities committed by the bloodthirsty Allies. RAF bombing attacks flattened French villages occupied by Germans. The towns of Villers-Bocage and Tilly-sur-Seulles were practically vaporized.

  Allied radio urged the French resistance to rise up.

  Max wondered what the Allies knew of the resistance in Berlin. As he pondered this, he realized that his own view of the resistance was limited to the Becker Circle and Stauffenberg’s plot.

  He thought of Papa and his vials of acid, which he had passed along to the communist underground, who would in turn pass them along to someone else in the resistance. Like this, the deadly fuses would make their way to Stauffenberg—the key ingredient for his briefcase bomb.

  Max wished there was an exact date assigned to the assassination. Then he could fix the day in his mind instead of waking up in the middle of the night wondering if Stauffenberg was boarding a plane to the Berghof at that very moment.

  While they waited, Max, Gerta, and Kat began to form their plan to take on the Hitler Youth of Prenzlauer Berg.

  “We need a name,” Max said one afternoon, lounging in his room. It was the middle of June. The radio was on downstairs. There had been a new development from the Germans—it turned out that there actually was a secret “vengeance weapon,” the V-1 “buzz bomb,” a sort of robotic rocket that could be launched from sites in France to strike at the heart of London. The first V-1s had just exploded in the British capital.