The Escape Read online

  With one last look back at Albert—and Louis standing watch—Max followed the princess out of the factory archway and into the brightness of Noisy-le-Sec.

  “Stay close,” the princess called back over her shoulder. “And when you see me dismount, be quick to do the same—we’ll have to walk our bikes over some of the rubble.”

  As soon as they left the loading dock, the princess led them down a narrow street past ruined facades painted with symbols that resembled the Christian cross with an extra horizontal line: ☨.

  “What’s that?” Max asked the princess.

  “The cross of Lorraine,” she said. “The symbol of the French resistance. Kids like you paint them faster than the Germans can get rid of them.”

  The princess slid expertly to a halt and dismounted to walk her bike over a low stone wall that had crumbled out into the street. Here, an old man was sweeping a little area in front of a ragged apartment block. He tipped his hat at the princess and Mutti, then continued with his strange, futile task.

  Max walked his bike through the wreckage and hopped back on when the street was clear. They traveled through Noisy-le-Sec until they came to the edge of the deserted train yard, far to the west of where they’d encountered it on the way in. Here, there was no bombed-out station, just rows of forlorn tracks to nowhere, pitted with holes. It looked as if a giant child had torn up his toy railroad in a fit of rage. A black-winged bird perched atop one track that had been twisted into a crooked spire.

  They crossed a bridge over the yard, which deposited them onto a long, straight avenue that ran alongside a fetid canal. Small boats lashed to posts bobbed in the listless current. There was more bicycle traffic here, most of it headed in the same direction—men and women hunched over their handlebars, zipping past Max and his family. The smell of sewage drifted up from the water, and Max tried to hold his breath. But the canal and the road just kept on going. Eventually he was forced to gasp for air and abandoned that idea. Finally, they veered away from the canal, and the ruins of Noisy-le-Sec were behind them.

  Sweat stung his eyes, and he swiped a hand across his brow. It was very hot. Perhaps it was just his imagination, but the heat felt thicker here than in Berlin. His bag clung wetly to his back as he pedaled hard to keep up with his sister. She was a much better cyclist than he was, it turned out.

  Gradually, everything began to seem bigger. The road widened, the cobblestones grew smoother, and the traffic picked up so that Max began to feel hemmed in. If he kicked a leg out to one side, he could send another cyclist sprawling and probably start a massive pileup. Grand, undamaged buildings lined the streets, and snatches of city life fluttered past Max’s face like ribbons on the wind—shouts, laughter, music.

  They came to the edge of a park, where the street split into cobblestone lanes and small canals cut through the greenery in neat tributaries.

  Here, he caught his first glimpse of the occupying force: a row of parked Wehrmacht trucks with canvas coverings. Outside the trucks, soldiers in uniform milled about. They looked to be on the older side, and Max remembered Albert telling him that the youngest and strongest had already been sent east to fight the Russians.

  To Max’s surprise, the princess led them right past the Germans. A group of what appeared to be street urchins in dirty clothes were huddled together in front of one of the trucks. Max caught the eye of a boy about his age as he passed, and then the boy looked away. The kids didn’t appear to be miserable or scared, but they weren’t smiling, either. He wondered if these were some of the kids who painted the cross of Lorraine on the sides of buildings.

  They turned into the park, where bicycle traffic thinned out a bit, and followed a wide canal past amusement booths and a carousel that, to Max’s astonishment, was actually running.

  This was a very strange enemy occupation.

  A few minutes later, they reached a place where two canals crossed. The princess dismounted on a small footbridge. A beautiful apartment building curved along the water, following the natural bulge of the canal. With its balconies and its smooth whitewashed stone, it looked as if it thumbed its nose at the very idea of war. Alongside the canal were wrought-iron lampposts looming above the pedestrians and cyclists weaving across an expansive plaza. There was not a car in sight. A few German officers strolled along the banks of the canal, but they didn’t seem to be intent on bothering anyone.

  The princess turned to face the Hoffmanns and Kat.

  “Welcome to occupied Paris. Don’t let its pretty face deceive you. Those of us who fight the Nazis here still die for it, just like in Berlin. And just like in Berlin, most people don’t fight them at all.”

  The safe house was in the Pigalle neighborhood in northern Paris, a short ride from where they’d entered the city. Pigalle’s narrow lanes and small open squares were choked with Parisians on bikes and on foot. The district was a mixture of somber middle-class apartments and strips of bars, bistros, and clubs that seemed to be doing a brisk business in the middle of the afternoon. At many of the outdoor tables, groups of German officers and enlisted men drank coffee and read newspapers. Max felt oddly dislocated. He had expected the occupied city to feel more oppressed, with beaten-down, defeated citizens slinking around in the shadows. But Paris seemed like it was being shared by the French and the Germans.

  Unlike Berlin, it was spectacularly intact. There were no streets cratered with holes or buildings half-collapsed by bombs. Max didn’t see a single fire brigade rushing to put out the latest inferno or pump air into the rubble of a shelter for the nearly dead to breathe.

  Following the princess, Max walked his bike past a building with a stunning red windmill perched on top of it. The sign said MOULIN ROUGE, and posters in both French and German advertised cabaret shows with dancers in outrageous costumes. In fact, there were so many German signs—street signs, store awnings, posters of captured resistance members, propaganda featuring noble illustrations of Hitler—that Max thought he could actually navigate Paris. It was as if the occupying army had simply moved in, nudged the Frenchness of the place aside without wholly replacing it, and injected bits of Germany in the gaps.

  They skirted the edge of a vast cemetery crowded with mausoleums, tiny houses, and statues. Then they turned down a winding street. A stray cat the color of marmalade slunk up against his leg and then vanished into a basement window. Halfway down the street was an archway cut into the center of an apartment building. Next to the archway was a door marked CONCIERGE. As the princess approached, the door flew open and a short, matronly woman with gray hair pulled back into a severe bun regarded her with arms crossed.

  The princess greeted her pleasantly, and the woman glared back for a moment. Then she beckoned for the princess to come over. They had a hushed conversation, and then the princess led Max and the others through the archway into a small, neglected courtyard. Dry brown plants wilted in flowerpots, and vines grew unchecked up the walls and across the cobblestones. A rusty table sat baking in the sun.

  “Madame Agee is the nerve center of this building,” the princess said.

  “She doesn’t seem very friendly,” Kat remarked.

  The princess walked her bicycle to a shaded brick alcove. There were several other bikes there already.

  “Concierges like Madame Agee are required to report all new tenants to the Germans,” the princess explained. Max watched as she deftly removed a small tube from a clip on her crossbar—a hand pump for bike tires. “She might not be a ray of sunshine, but she tolerates our presence here and even warns us if the Germans are poking around the neighborhood.”

  She unscrewed a little cap on the bike pump, slid out a tightly rolled piece of paper, and then replaced the pump on the crossbar. Max, Gerta, Kat, and Mutti leaned their bikes against the wall of the alcove and followed the princess inside the building. A zigzagging staircase took them up three floors. Savory cooking smells wafted down the hall. Max wondered if food here was as tightly rationed as in Berlin. It was strange to experi
ence this parallel world of Nazi rule—a vast, teeming city that wasn’t Berlin—and then to imagine similar occupations playing out all over Europe, in Amsterdam, Brussels, Vienna …

  The princess paused at a door, inserted a massive key in the lock, and led them into a two-room apartment that smelled of potent chemicals. The front room was neatly furnished with a small round table, a set of cushioned chairs, a sofa, a handsome desk, and a gilt-framed mirror that looked as though it weighed a ton. The princess went directly to the back room, and Max followed her inside.

  Two teenagers, a boy and a girl a few years older than Max and Gerta, sat at a long table that held two machines about the size of typewriters. Max watched as the girl fed a sheet of paper into her machine and turned a hand crank. The paper slid through the machine, squeezed beneath a roller, and came out the other side freshly inked.

  “Mimeographs,” Mutti said.

  “Yes,” the princess said. “We print one of the resistance newspapers here. It’s not as sophisticated as Herr Trott’s old operation, but we make do.”

  She approached the table and handed the rolled-up paper to the boy.

  “Merci,” he said. Then he unrolled the paper and carefully wrapped it around the roller on his machine.

  “It’s a stencil,” Gerta said with authority.

  “Sure, Miss Mimeograph,” Kat said.

  “It is!”

  “Girls,” Mutti said.

  Max eyed a stack of finished “newspapers” on a small end table near the door. The print was tiny, and the papers consisted of a single sheet folded in half to create four small pages. He recognized the words in the bold headline: RISE UP.

  “Go ahead and take one,” the princess said. Max grabbed one of the papers. Beneath the headline, there was a drawing of several people in old-time clothes standing atop a barricade of rubble on a Paris street corner, waving a tattered flag.

  “The French Revolution,” the princess said. “Nice touch, right? Come on—I’ll show you where you’ll be staying the night.”

  In the front room, she went to the fireplace and pulled on the upper left corner of the mantel. Like the false bookshelf in the old sisters’ sitting room, the mantel swung open. Behind it, the bricks of the “chimney” formed a staircase. As Max followed the princess inside, the stairs became so steep that he had to use his hands to grip the steps above his head and climb as if he were on a rock wall. He lost the light completely for a moment, but then the princess pushed open a square door for them to crawl through. Max found himself in a cramped and gloomy warren of low-ceilinged rooms.

  “We’re up under the eaves of the building,” the princess said. “At one time these were servants’ quarters.” She led them through an open door into a slightly larger room with several cots pushed up against the walls. The single window was covered by a thin sheet. “Then they were rented to students. Now Madame Agee is letting us use them for a little while before we pick up and move someplace else.”

  The humid air trapped at the very top of the building reminded Max of the Berlin safe house, where—incredibly—they were all still living until a few days ago. How long had it been since the attempt on Hitler’s life? Five days? Six? He had lost track. And now here they were in occupied Paris, hiding out in another stifling room while Papa was back in Berlin, Albert was bleeding on the dirty floor of a shoe factory, and Princess Marie Vasiliev was secreting mimeograph stencils in a bicycle pump for the French resistance.

  His head spinning, Max let his bag fall to the floor and sat down heavily on the nearest cot.

  “I’m going to scrounge up some food for you,” the princess said. “Rationing’s not much better than in Berlin, but I know a guy who knows a guy. Sit tight.”

  With that, the princess left the room beneath the eaves. Mutti went to the window and peeked out around the edge of the sheet.

  “Your father and I came to Paris once, before you were born,” she said. “Your father was still in medical school—my God, it’s so long ago now.” She moved away from the window and ran a finger absently along the top of a battered old dresser. “We came to see the museums, but I remember it was springtime, and every day we’d stroll on the banks of the river, just to be outside …” She smiled, lost in the memory. “I don’t think we saw a single painting the whole time we were here.” She went to the cot she had chosen and busied herself with the contents of her bag, spreading her clothes on the cot, shaking out and then refolding her garments.

  Max scanned the resistance newspaper. He found that he could translate about half of the main article, which he read with mounting excitement.

  “Hey, this is asking citizens of Paris to start fighting the Nazis,” he said.

  Kat snorted. “A little late for that, don’t you think?”

  “Wait till I tell you why,” Max said, looking around the room, savoring the moment.

  “Out with it, Maxi,” Gerta said.

  He tapped the newspaper. “It says the Allies are almost here. It says they could be in Paris in a week!”

  A week is a bit of an exaggeration,” the princess admitted. She had returned a few hours later with a small basket of fresh fruit to find the Hoffmanns eager to talk to her about the article’s claims. “It’s probably going to be more like a month. Or two.”

  “But they’re definitely coming!” Kat said.

  “We certainly hope so,” the princess said. “Of course”—she hesitated—“there’s a chance they’ll just go around.”

  “Go around?” Gerta said, selecting a ripe apple from the basket.

  The princess sighed and sat down on a cot. “It’s a complicated situation here. The Germans are under Hitler’s orders not to destroy anything. He wants Paris to be the jewel of the Reich. And the Allies won’t touch it, either—the only bombs that fall on Paris are complete accidents. So nobody’s really sure if the Allies are going to bother with the city at all. They could always just march around it, head for Berlin, and wait for the Germans in Paris to surrender when it’s clear that Hitler’s been defeated.” She paused. “Or they could send a thousand American tanks into Paris to take it back street by street. The resistance is hoping to send a message to the Allies by rising up—we’re here, we’re armed, we’re going to fight alongside you.”

  Max considered this for a moment. He looked at his sister, then met Kat’s eyes, where he noticed a familiar gleam. He hadn’t seen that look on her face since they’d formed the Red Dragons, and he felt a surge of excitement, as if he’d just launched a rock through the Hitler Youth headquarters’ window.

  “We could stay in Paris,” Max said, turning to his mother.

  “That’s what I was thinking!” Kat said. “If the Allies are going to be here soon—”

  “Absolutely not,” Mutti said firmly. “We don’t even know if they’re coming. And if they do, the fighting will be block by block and house by house. Paris is not a safe place for us to be.” She looked pointedly at the princess. “It would be foolish to stay here.”

  “Wise words,” the princess said. “The coming weeks could be devastating ones for Paris. Hitler will be desperate with the Allies on Germany’s doorstep. There are rumors that he’s going to order Paris burned to the ground if the Wehrmacht is forced to retreat from the city.”

  Max imagined the glorious French capital flattened into ash and rubble, like Hamburg and Frankfurt, all on the orders of one frightened, cornered man. He leaped from his cot in frustration.

  “Why didn’t Colonel Stauffenberg just shoot him!?” he fumed. “Then none of this would have happened, we’d still be in Berlin, and Papa would be with us.”

  “Max,” the princess said, “none of us knows what really happened at the Wolf’s Lair. We may never know how old Adolf survived the bomb. But we do know that Colonel Stauffenberg was the only one of us who was in a position to kill Hitler. For a man like that, both capable and willing …” She shook her head. “I trust that he did everything in his power.”

  Max felt chaste
ned. “I’m sorry. You’re right.” He thought for a moment. “I’m just sick of feeling like I’m hiding and running away when other people are still fighting. It’s not what Colonel Stauffenberg would want.”

  “Colonel Stauffenberg would want you to live,” Mutti said.

  “I’m staying in Paris,” Kat announced abruptly.

  “Kat Vogel!” Mutti said. “Your father—”

  “Is dead,” Kat interjected. “And my mother’s in Ravensbrück. So I’m going to tell the Allies in person that they’d better be going there, to the camp, to get the prisoners out.” She turned to the princess. “I’m staying.”

  The princess raised an eyebrow. Mutti folded her arms. “Kat,” she said, “I’m responsible for your safety. I can’t pass that responsibility on to someone else.”

  “I’m a good fighter,” Kat said to the princess.

  “It’s true,” Gerta said. “Just give her a rock.”

  “We could always use an extra pair of hands,” the princess said hesitantly. “The resistance isn’t in the business of turning down volunteers.”

  Max expected his mother to argue. Instead, she went again to the window and peeked out at the courtyard with her arms crossed. “I consider you part of this family now,” she said after a moment. “But tell me, Kat—if I forbid it, if I insist that you come with us to Spain, will you simply run off and join the French resistance?”

  “Probably,” Kat said, biting into an apple.

  Mutti sighed and turned back to the room. “Then if Marie thinks she can accommodate you …”

  “I’ll watch out for her, Ingrid.”

  Max watched curiously as his sister rummaged through her pack and came up with a crumpled piece of paper. At first he thought it was one of Petra’s folded creations, but then she handed the paper to Kat, who smoothed it out and grinned.

  It was the calling card of the Red Dragons.

  “For the establishment of the Paris branch of Berlin’s famous Hitler Youth hunters,” Gerta said.