The Execution Read online

  Max and Gerta took off, heading east on Stargader Strasse, past the Gethsemane Church, where the old saint raised a stone hand to bless the night. Max felt like he could run for hours. Adrenaline surged through his veins. After a while, the footsteps faded behind him, then vanished altogether.

  When they regrouped in the overgrown backyard of the safe house, their exhilaration made it nearly impossible to keep quiet.

  That night, it was a long time before Max fell asleep. He thought of Heinrich and the rest of the boys returning from patrol to find the window of their hunting lodge smashed. He wished he could be a fly on the wall when the boys discovered the brick with the dragon attached.

  The Red Dragons would have to be more careful and less impulsive now that the Midnight Hunters knew there was a resistance group operating in Prenzlauer Berg. Max and Gerta would have to rein in Kat before she got them killed. But tonight, he had to admit he was glad that she had simply decided to act. He would never forget what it felt like to send that beer stein crashing through the window.

  In the moment before he finally drifted off, Max thought that Claus von Stauffenberg would approve.

  Max found the bottle of absinthe in the very back of one of the kitchen cupboards, left by some previous resident—perhaps the collector of the theater programs. He knew his parents wouldn’t miss the bottle. On the rare occasions Mutti and Papa touched alcohol, it was during Sunday dinner with Uncle Friedrich, or one of the holiday parties they threw for Papa’s friends from the hospital.

  No one was coming to dinner in the safe house, so the absinthe bottle just sat there gathering dust—until tonight.

  It was two nights after the Red Dragons’ glass-shattering raid on the hunting lodge. In France, the Americans were fighting to take the town of Saint-Lô and open up the breakout route all the way to Paris. In the east, the Soviets were pushing the Wehrmacht back toward Germany. The Red Army had already liberated Minsk, and just today, word came over the radio that Vilnius had fallen. Poland was now in striking distance. At this rate, Max thought, the Soviets would reach Berlin before the Allies could fight their way through France.

  In Prenzlauer Berg, Max and Gerta were crouched in the grass at the edge of the garden. Max held the stoppered absinthe bottle close to his chest. Kat was at the other end of the garden, keeping an eye out for the Midnight Hunters.

  “Does she ever talk about her father with you?” Max asked.

  Gerta was silent for a moment. “A little. Why?”

  “It’s just strange, how we knew General Vogel from Frau Becker’s sitting room, but he must have been so different around Kat.”

  “She loved him. A lot.”

  “Do you think we’ll make it through the war? Our whole family, I mean?”

  “Max.” Gerta sounded weary. “Where is this coming from?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just that one day Kat had both her parents, and the next day they were both gone.”

  “Listen to me.” Gerta squeezed his hand. “Colonel Stauffenberg is going to kill Hitler any day now. And then everything’s going to be different. You’ll see.”

  They fell silent at a sudden rustling in the underbrush. A moment later, Kat slid into the grass beside them, breathing hard.

  “They’re two or three blocks away, on their usual route. I say go.”

  Max glanced up the street. He thought he could just make out a pinprick of orange light floating in the darkness—Heinrich’s torch.

  He took a deep breath and ran across the street, splashing absinthe onto the pavement in a ragged line as he went. When he reached the other side, he retraced his steps, applying a second coat of the potent liquor. As the fumes rose up around him, the aroma of sweet licorice seemed to wreath his head.

  He paused briefly in the middle of the street to lay a Red Dragon card down in front of the spilled liquid, then retreated to the shelter of the trees at the edge of the garden.

  “Your turn, fire girl,” he said, setting the empty bottle down in the dirt. Up the road, the torch was much closer, and he could make out Heinrich’s face along with hints of the brown-uniformed boys at his back.

  His sister held up the little book of matches that Mutti used to light candles around the house. She flicked one of the matches against the strike pad. Nothing happened.

  “This one’s a dud,” she said, tossing the match aside and taking another from the packet.

  She struck the second match. Still nothing.

  Max could hear the one-two, one-two of the Midnight Hunters’ boots. “Come on, Gerta.”

  “I’m trying,” she hissed. “You two take off. I’ll meet up with you back at the house.”

  “Not in a million years,” Kat said. “I want to see this.”

  Gerta struck a third match. This time, a tiny flame sprouted from its head. Carefully, she touched the flame to the edge of the spilled absinthe.

  Bright green fire leaped from the pavement and snaked across the road, skating along the trail of spilled liquor. It was beautiful, Max thought. He wished he had the skill to pour the absinthe in the shape of a dragon, but it was too dark for that, and there wasn’t much time. A wall of flame would have to do.

  Of course, the “wall” was only about ankle-high, but absinthe was all they had. Next time they wanted to light a fire—a real dragon fire—they’d have to find some fuel.

  As the patrol came into full view, the problem with their plan became apparent. In order to see Heinrich’s reaction, they would have to remain huddled in the darkness at the edge of the garden—and the wall of flame pointed directly to their hiding spot. They might as well have painted a phosphorescent arrow—Red Dragons this way!

  The Hitler Youth boys were close enough now for Max to see the puzzlement on Heinrich’s face. There was something different about his uniform, too. A moment later Max realized what it was: the pistol holstered at his side.

  “We have to go now,” Max said as Heinrich called for a halt, then knelt down to examine the card lying in the road at the foot of the flames.

  In the darkness, Max could just barely make out the curious look on Kat’s face—a sort of openmouthed, trancelike eagerness.

  “Kat!” Gerta hissed.

  Too late. The rock pelted Heinrich in the belly. He doubled over. The two heavyset boys rushed to his side.

  Max, Gerta, and Kat took off running, heading deeper into the community garden, churning up dry leaves and mulch. There was no time to be stealthy—they had to melt into the night, fast. They were moving through the tall grass just beyond the trees when Heinrich’s enraged shouting began. “Don’t let them get away!”

  Max thought of the pistol on the Hitler Youth leader’s hip. What did it feel like to get shot? Was it a fiery, piercing pain, or more like a paralyzing blow from a brickbat?

  He did not intend to find out.

  A quick glance over his shoulder revealed light from several torches bobbing madly as the boys dashed through the trees in pursuit.

  “I thought we said no more rocks!” Gerta said.

  “I couldn’t help it, I swear,” Kat said. “It was like something just took over my body.”

  Suddenly, a sharp blow to Max’s side sent him sprawling in the dirt. I’ve been shot! he thought—but he hadn’t heard the report of a pistol.

  The air rushed from his lungs. The darkness seemed to slide around him, punctuated by star-bright flares. Stunned, he rolled over onto his back and tried to get his bearings. At the same time, he prodded his aching ribs.

  He quickly determined that he wasn’t bleeding. That was good. So what had taken him down? He sat up and found that he was surrounded by looming skeletal structures.

  The tomato plants! He had sprinted full speed into one of the wooden cages that held the sad plants above the ground.

  Ahead of him, Kat and Gerta had vanished into the night, heading toward the northern edge of the garden, which spilled out into the district of Pankow. They must not have realized that Max had gone down.
r />   He glanced back toward the road. The wall of absinthe-flame was obscured by the trees, but the torches of the boys were much closer now, a constellation of floating fire stretched across the darkness. No electric torches for the Midnight Hunters—they pursued like a mob out of an old fairy tale, brandishing their flaming sticks.

  “You want fire?” came Heinrich’s ragged cry. “I’ll give you fire!”

  One of the torches arced high into the air. Still dazed, Max pushed himself to his feet and staggered onward. He was moving stiffly, and the pain in his side radiated across his back. He risked a glance over his shoulder. The thrown torch had landed squarely in one of the tomato plant shelters, and the brittle vines were crackling with flames.

  He felt horribly exposed. In a moment, the rapidly spreading fire would light up the garden, and there would be no more melting into the night. There were a dozen Hitler Youth boys and one Max Hoffmann. And Heinrich had a gun.

  “There he is!” Heinrich shouted. Max wasn’t moving quickly enough, and his legs wouldn’t obey his commands to go faster.

  His mind grasped at absurd hopes—Albert swooping out of the shadows to scoop him up and take him to safety. Stauffenberg appearing between Max and the Hitler Youth, drawing a pistol of his own. A sudden air-raid siren splitting the night.

  Of course, he was alone. Nobody was coming to help—not the resistance, not the RAF bombers. Even Gerta and Kat were too far away now.

  He was going to have to save himself. Up ahead, the grass gave way to the sidewalk and street that bordered the garden’s northern edge. Across the street, the ruins of bombed-out apartment blocks filtered the night sky through bare and forlorn windows.

  He hit the sidewalk at full speed, forcing his aching body into a runner’s form. The safe house was southeast of here, but he didn’t dare risk heading in that direction—he knew he would be dangerously exposed on the empty streets. Instead, he stayed the course, sprinting due north toward the ruins. He burst through a doorless frame and found himself in the wreckage of a small sitting room. Great chunks of fallen brick had collapsed the sofa and table. Above his head, the ceiling was pocked with massive holes. The shattered facade of the outer wall gave him a view across the street and into the garden. He ducked down and raised his eyes to peer through a crack.

  The fire had spread along the dry summer grass, turning the figures of the Hitler Youth into hazy silhouettes. He watched Heinrich leave the garden, cross the road, and draw his pistol. The boy’s bright eyes scanned the ruins.

  “They’ve got to be in there,” he called to his fellow Midnight Hunters as they joined him, brandishing torches of their own.

  Max’s heart sank. His hiding place was obvious. He hoped Kat and Gerta were far away from here. At least then, the Midnight Hunters wouldn’t get all three of them.

  He had no choice but to work his way deeper into the apartment and hope the whole precarious structure didn’t come tumbling down on his head. Quickly, quietly, he turned away from the cracked facade and picked his way toward the back of the sitting room.

  “Come out, come out, little dragons …” Heinrich’s voice had a singsong lilt. He’s enjoying this, Max thought, ducking through a half-collapsed doorjamb and into a small bedroom. By now, his eyes had adjusted, and he could make out the shape of a charred and twisted crib.

  “I know you’re just a bunch of little kids,” Heinrich called out. “You think this is playtime? This is war.”

  Amid the wreckage, it was impossible to tell how close Heinrich was getting. Keep moving, Max thought. One of the bedroom walls was a hollow mess of plaster and load-bearing beams. He found the widest hole and began to slip through it to the room on the other side—and knocked loose a chunk of plaster with his elbow. In the silent ruins, it might as well have been a linden tree crashing to the ground.

  Max heard a muffled shout—“He’s back there!”—and dove the rest of the way through the wall, nearly crying out as the corner of a beam poked his bruised rib. He had come to a dining room whose fallen chandelier had scattered bits of crystal along the floor. It was like walking on marbles. Max knew that he could find himself trapped in any of these rooms, cornered like an animal for the Midnight Hunters to toy with. But he had to keep going. His plan was to emerge from the back of the wreckage and vanish into the winding streets of Pankow. Then, when it was safe, he would double back and make his way home.

  The problem was, there was no way to navigate the ruins, and he had completely lost his bearings. For all he knew, he would climb through the next broken wall and pop out into the street in front of the community garden in Prenzlauer Berg.

  A loud crash came from somewhere nearby, followed by a muffled curse. He imagined those two heavyset boys trying to slip through narrow spaces. Maybe they would get stuck and seal off the route from the rest of the Hitler Youth.

  That was unlikely, but he had to hope for something.

  The dining room gave way to a corridor littered with debris, and Max scampered over piles of brick without his feet ever touching the floor. It occurred to him that he might be walking on top of buried corpses.

  The corridor took him past a smashed toilet, the jagged shards of a bathtub, and a sink that was intact but lying on its side, detached from the wall. The porcelain gave off an eerie glow. Max stopped, dumbfounded. The porcelain seemed almost alive, as the faint glow brightened to an orange fire that swam across its smooth surface.

  It was the reflection of torchlight. He crouched down next to a fallen wall. For a moment, he couldn’t tell where the real light was coming from, and dizziness washed over him. It was like being in the mirrored fun house of the carnival whose tents used to sprout like brightly colored mushrooms on the banks of the Spree in summers before the war.

  Then Heinrich stepped into view. Max peeked out of a tiny space between bricks. The boy was holding his pistol casually at his side, frowning intently as he moved the torch to send light into different corners of the room. Max made himself as small as he could as the light played along his hiding place. What would he do if Heinrich discovered him here? Would he try to rush the older boy, knock the pistol from his hand, at least give himself a fighting chance?

  No. The risk of getting shot was too great. He knew that he wasn’t brave enough to do it. He would simply give himself up.

  If he had Papa’s knife, things would be different.

  He imagined he could feel its cool grip in his hand, metal rings shielding his knuckles.

  The light seemed to creep into his hiding place, clawing at the shadows. Was Heinrich moving closer?

  Max held his breath. His ribs throbbed.

  And then the light receded. He waited a moment, then picked his head up and peered through the gap in the bricks.

  Heinrich was gone.

  Was it a trick?

  He had to take the chance. He couldn’t stay here all night. Being careful not to dislodge any bricks or send a shard of porcelain skittering into the wall, Max crept from the ruined bathroom. Beyond it was another collapsed hallway, open to the night sky. Max expected Heinrich’s arm to dart out of the blackness at any moment. His ears were attuned to the slightest sounds. He heard the Hitler Youth boys moving about the apartment block, but their footsteps sounded muffled and distant.

  Suddenly, the corridor became more rubble than hallway. There was always a between place like this, where the structure simply accepted its destruction. Max found himself looking out upon the streets of Pankow.

  He crept to the very edge of the corridor and glanced from side to side. No torches in sight.

  Quickly, he moved through the tall grass of what had once been neatly fenced-off yards attached to the block’s ground-floor flats.

  He looked behind him. There, amid the ruins, torchlight appeared through gaps in the walls, then abruptly vanished as the boys conducted their slow search of the apartment block. It looked like fireflies trapped in a sunken city.

  Max crossed the road and turned a corner. The next
time he glanced back, there was nothing but darkness. He ducked into a narrow alley and waited for a few minutes, keeping his eyes on the street. When he was satisfied that no one had followed him, he left the alley and headed home—dizzy, bruised, and exhausted, but alive.

  JULY 15, 1944

  The noonday sun did nothing to dispel the gloom of the Wolf’s Lair. Seated at a table beneath an austere pine tree, Claus von Stauffenberg pushed the remnants of a late breakfast around his plate. He felt a creeping desolation in his bones. Even the sun is repulsed by this place, he thought, glancing around the drab, melancholy camp of concrete huts and bunkers hidden deep in Poland’s Masurian woods. The atmosphere was one of eerie, tense quiet. It could be a peaceful place—it probably was, once—but the endless SS checkpoints, all those secret passwords and searching eyes, gave visitors the feeling that they were constantly being watched.

  This was simply an extension of the Führer’s paranoia. He had taken to wearing a bulletproof waistcoat and metal-plated cap, and Stauffenberg had heard a report that several men were garrisoned here with the sole purpose of tasting Hitler’s food in case it had been poisoned.

  The Valkyrie plotters believed that Hitler had gotten wind of the conspiracy. There could be no more delays. Even without Himmler or Göring present in the briefing room, Stauffenberg had resolved to plant the bomb. Taking out the Nazi high command had proved too lofty a goal. The assassination was now solely focused on the Führer. Any other high-ranking Nazi officials would be a bonus.

  Even if he weren’t eating breakfast with a bomb in the briefcase at his side, Stauffenberg thought he would still be swamped by a feeling of growing dread. His stomach knotted, and he gave up on the plate of eggs and sausages.

  Freedom can only be won by action, he said to himself. The simple words had become a mantra between Stauffenberg and his brother Berthold. All the poetry he had quoted to rally his aristocratic friends to his cause, the high-minded principles he had cited in defense of assassination as a necessary tactic to save millions of lives—all of it had sloughed off like dead skin as the stark reality of his role became fixed in his mind. Now he thought in the blunt phrases of his more proletarian colleagues.