Conspiracy

by Andy Marino

  Gerta put her hands on her hips and glared at Max. “What on earth did you tell them?” She looked at Mutti. “It went perfectly fine! Don’t listen to Max. He was afraid of the cave troll in the basement up until last year.”

  Papa frowned. “What cave troll?”

  “Exactly,” Gerta said.

  “I’m sorry,” Mutti said. “I’m just not comfortable with this. You got away clean this time; there’s no need to push your luck any further.”

  “But Frau Becker—” Gerta protested.

  “Will have to find another pair of couriers,” Mutti said. “Now, Max, go take your bath before the water gets cold.”

  Max trudged up the stairs. Gerta’s eyes burned into his back.

  In the bathroom, he shut the door, undressed, sank into the warm water, and closed his eyes. He should have just kept his mouth shut, he thought. That was probably a good rule for a spy to take to heart.

  Later that night, Max knocked on Gerta’s bedroom door.

  “Go away!” came the voice from inside.

  “Come on,” Max said. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Not interested!”

  Max opened the door anyway. His sister was sitting on her bed, flipping listlessly through one of the American movie magazines her school friends traded among themselves. Max knew the magazine would be several months old, but it wasn’t like anybody in Berlin could actually see American films, anyway. So it didn’t really matter.

  “You got a problem with your ears?” she said without looking up from the magazine.

  Max shut the door behind him. “Gerta, I’m sorry, okay?”

  She tossed the magazine aside and lay back to stare at the ceiling. “We finally got our chance to help fight the Nazis—to do something that actually makes a difference—and you got us kicked off the job after one day.”

  “All I did was tell Mutti and Papa the truth. I thought I saw—”

  “You didn’t see anything! Your mind was playing tricks.”

  “Maybe you’re right, but this is serious, Gerta! I couldn’t just lead him back to our house!”

  “Shhh!” Gerta said, sitting up.

  Max lowered his voice. “I was scared, okay? I was really scared.”

  Gerta took a deep breath and let it out. “I know. I’m not mad at you for that, Maxi. I was just happy to be doing something.”

  “So was I,” Max said. He hesitated. He knew that he could change both of their lives with what he was about to say. He sat down on the bed and lowered his voice even further. “That’s why I think we should go back.”

  Gerta frowned. “To Altensteinstrasse?”

  “To Frau Becker’s house,” Max said. “Just us, I mean. Without telling Mutti and Papa.”

  Gerta’s eyes flashed with excitement. “You think she’ll give us another dead drop to do?”

  Max shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”

  “We can go after school tomorrow,” Gerta said. “Mutti will be out at the market and Papa will be at the hospital. They’ll never know if we’re not home on time.”

  “Okay,” Max said. “Then let’s do it.” He turned to leave.

  “Max?” Gerta said. “One more thing. Out there on the street? I was scared, too.”

  Max reached up, grabbed the brass gargoyle’s pointy nose, and slammed the knocker against Frau Becker’s door in the same way he’d seen Papa do: two quick raps, then two at longer intervals.

  A moment later, the door swung open and Albert greeted them.

  “Hoffmanns!” He peered beyond Max and Gerta. “Well, half of you, anyway.” He stepped aside and beckoned for them to come in.

  “Is Frau Becker here?” Gerta asked as they stepped into the front hall.

  “I should say so!” Albert exclaimed as he collected their coats. “Why, she hasn’t set foot outside this house since the war started. Says she doesn’t want to see her beloved Berlin until the last Nazi flag is lowered. I keep telling her, you might want to take a look-see sooner rather than later, because at this rate, there won’t be much Berlin left when it’s all over. But once that woman sets her mind to something …” He shook his head and disappeared into the cloakroom.

  Max and Gerta stood among the portraits in silence until Albert returned a moment later to lead them through the red-velvet curtain and into the sitting room. Frau Becker was in her wicker chair, using a magnifying glass to read from a massive leather-bound book.

  Albert cleared his throat, and she looked up.

  “Ah,” she said, as if she’d been expecting them all along. “There you are. Just in time for afternoon tea.” She closed the book with a thud and waved away a cloud of dust that puffed up to wreathe her head. “Albert, do we have any of that wonderful baumkuchen left?”

  “I believe we do.”

  “Three slices, then, please.”

  “Right away.” Albert disappeared behind the curtain.

  “Frau Becker, we don’t have time to sit and have a snack,” Gerta said. Max elbowed her in the arm. They could at least bring the cake with them!

  “Nonsense,” Frau Becker said. “Your father’s shift at the hospital won’t end until after ten, and I’m afraid your mother will be in for some long lines at the shops today. I hear they’ve all but run out of potatoes.”

  Max blinked. According to Albert, Frau Becker never left her house—he doubted very much if she ever left her armchair—and yet she seemed to know everything that went on in Berlin.

  “Please,” she said, gesturing grandly toward the sofa. Max and Gerta sat down. Frau Becker hefted the enormous book with a grunt and set it on the table at her side. The title was embossed with gold leaf: The Napoleonic Wars.

  “Your little errand was a smashing success,” Frau Becker said. “Because of you two, a family that had been hidden away in an attic can move about more freely, and use ration cards instead of relying on the leftovers from their host’s table.”

  “That’s actually what we came to talk to you about,” Max said.

  “Your parents are squeamish about your new job,” Frau Becker said. “They think the danger is too great.”

  Max’s mouth dropped open. Was Frau Becker reading their minds? His eyes scanned the sitting room, searching for a crystal ball or some other evidence of sorcery. It didn’t seem too far-fetched that an old aristocratic family might have dabbled in witchcraft …

  “Here you go,” Albert said, setting up a tray table. He was balancing three small plates on his arm, and one by one he transferred them to the table. It wasn’t until he began pouring tea from a white ceramic pot that Max noticed with a start that Albert’s appearance had changed dramatically.

  “You have two arms!” he blurted out. This afternoon was getting stranger and stranger.

  Albert chuckled. “That I do, my friend. Both in good working order.”

  Max studied the servant’s face. There was something different about that, too—he sported a thin mustache, the lines in his forehead were deeper, and his cheeks seemed fuller, giving the impression of an older, heavier man.

  “I rely on Albert for many different errands, requiring many different skills,” Frau Becker explained. “It is safer for him, and for me, if the authorities don’t often see the same man in the same places.”

  “What about the French machine gun,” Gerta said, “at the Somme?”

  “Must’ve just missed me,” Albert said.

  He winked at Max and left the room, moving with a slight limp that Max was certain he had not been afflicted with a moment ago.

  Max felt like he was dreaming. Events he could only partially understand were swirling feverishly around him, and every time he grasped at something solid, it slithered out of his hands. Everything in Frau Becker’s house—the velvet curtain, the portraits in the hall, the plush carpet, the slices of cake, Frau Becker herself—seemed to belong to a very mysterious and grown-up place.

  More than ever, he wanted to be a part of something that transported him away from the dru
dgery of the raids, the meager rations, the air-raid shelter. How strange that escaping the eternal sameness of the war meant playing an even greater part in it.

  “We came to ask you for another job,” Max said.

  Frau Becker peered at him through narrowed eyes. “All right. Here’s a job for you. Can you find my hat? The one the princess kindly gave to me? I seem to have misplaced it.”

  “Frau Becker—we want to do another dead drop,” Gerta said.

  “Oh, I know what you mean.” Frau Becker waved her hand dismissively. “I’m not entirely without my wits, girl.” She sighed. “Sneaking around under the noses of the Gestapo is hard enough—now you want to pull the wool over your parents’ eyes, too? They aren’t fools, you know.”

  “They won’t find out,” Gerta insisted. Max didn’t know how his sister could be so confident—there were a million ways for this to go wrong. But he kept his mouth shut.

  “See that they don’t,” Frau Becker said. “The notion of Ingrid Hoffmann on my bad side does give me a slight pause.”

  “But—” Gerta protested.

  Frau Becker held up a hand. “I said slight. The resistance needs you. Albert will give you a fresh packet of documents on your way out. The drop will be along the Messelstrasse at the southern edge of Messelpark, tomorrow night. Is that satisfactory?”

  Max looked at his sister. His mouth was dry. Tomorrow night was much sooner than he’d anticipated! A new job had seemed like a distant proposition, something he could worry about in a week or two.

  “Perfect,” Gerta said.

  “Fabulous,” Frau Becker said. “Now eat your cake.”

  When Max and Gerta crept out of their beds just before midnight, they could tell right away that their father was sound asleep—his snoring sounded like a jet engine. Their mother was the problem—she could be sleeping contentedly at her husband’s side, or reading quietly by the bedside lamp, kept awake by his ungodly snoring. Their parents kept their bedroom door closed, so there was no way to sneak a peek.

  Max hoped that Mutti wasn’t feeling restless. Sometimes, if Papa’s snoring drove her to the brink of madness, she would go downstairs to read in the living room. Many times, Max had awakened in the middle of the night and gone quietly down to the kitchen for a glass of water, only to find his mother dozing with a book open in her lap and the blue-tinted lamp casting its eerie glow.

  Tonight, thankfully, the house was dark and Mutti was nowhere to be seen.

  Wordlessly, Max followed Gerta across the living room. They walked on stocking feet to mute their footsteps, only putting on their heavy boots when they reached the front door. Max patted the pocket of his overcoat to make sure he had the piece of chalk. In his head, he repeated the coded phrase to himself: Karsten, I am well and staying with Belinda.

  Gerta put her hand on the doorknob. At the same time, a floorboard creaked, and she froze. Max noticed that the snoring had ceased. Papa was awake! His heart pounding, he stood perfectly still at his sister’s side, listening. A moment later, the toilet flushed. There was more creaking, and then the squeaks of the mattress springs as Papa settled back into bed. Almost immediately, the snoring resumed.

  Carefully, Gerta opened the front door. Max was struck by the absurd fear that the frigid blast of cold air would find its way upstairs and wake his parents. But there was no going back now. He followed Gerta out to the front stoop, and then watched with his heart in his throat as she shut the door as quietly as she could.

  Outside, Dahlem was silent and still. A thin, wintry drizzle hung in the air—more icy mist than snowfall. In the sky above the city, ice crystals sparkled in the searchlights that brushed the undersides of the clouds. A few windows in their neighborhood leaked dim blue light, but the streets themselves were dark, the sidewalks empty. Streetlamps had not been lit for years, since the blackout rules began. A few blocks from home, they finally risked a whispered conversation.

  “You sure you know the way?” Max said.

  “For the hundredth time, yes,” Gerta hissed. She was a much better navigator than he was. Messelpark wasn’t far from where they lived—about a twenty-minute walk—but Max lost his bearings easily in the pitch-black night. He couldn’t even see the street signs.

  Silently, he calculated how long they would be gone. Twenty minutes out, twenty minutes back, plus a few minutes to find a good spot to chalk the coded message and hide the documents so that the Jewish underground could pick them up. If it all went well, they would only be missing from their beds for forty-five minutes. What were the chances that Mutti would get up and check on them in that narrow window of time?

  “If they notice we’re gone, do you think they’ll call the police?” Max said.

  They turned a corner and walked briskly up the street where they had helped the ostarbeiters clear the rubble from the raid in late November, back when Herr Siewert had invited him to join the Hitler Youth. Max remembered the telephone, hopelessly buried and ringing endlessly, as someone frantically tried to reach a relative or friend who would never answer.

  “I don’t know,” Gerta said. “Don’t think about it. Focus on what we’re doing.”

  But Max couldn’t help it. Seemingly out of his control, his thoughts bloomed into paranoia. Explaining to Mutti and Papa what they were doing sneaking around in the middle of the night was one thing, but explaining it to the police was quite another. There were plenty of policemen who would not hesitate to report anything suspicious to the Gestapo.

  They took a sharp left and plunged suddenly into an even deeper darkness. It was as if the lid of the night had come down fully, blotting out the searchlights and the sky.

  Max’s breath caught in his throat. He felt like he was walking through a void.

  “It’s just the netting,” Gerta said. “Relax.”

  Max let out his breath. To confuse RAF bombers, Berlin’s air defense teams had strung camouflage netting along various streets. That way, the layout of the city would not correspond to the way it looked on maps, confusing pilots searching for specific targets from the air.

  Max had no idea if it worked or not. With or without netting, planes came, bombs fell, houses crumbled, people died.

  He reached out and held his sister’s arm. Together, they moved through the darkness.

  Franz Siewert was freezing. The problem was his hands—his fingers were always numb, even inside their woolen mittens. He stuck them deeper into the pockets of his overcoat as he leaned against a sturdy oak at the edge of Messelpark.

  The very day he received the Gestapo intelligence report about the resistance group, Siewert had put together a small vigilante squad of eight trusted friends from the beer hall—loyal Nazis, all of them. He could never hope to monitor all of Dahlem on his own, but with a team at his disposal, they could cover more ground and keep their eyes peeled for subversive activity. Even if one of his associates caught the couriers, Siewert could still take most of the credit. After all, he was the leader.

  Then, earlier today, he received another memo on Gestapo letterhead. An urgent situation had developed: Another document drop was in the works—and it was happening tonight, near Messelpark.

  Siewert had sent his associates fanning out across Dahlem, while he assigned himself the area of the drop. He was going to apprehend the criminals single-handedly and deliver them to the Gestapo personally. It wouldn’t be long before Heinrich Himmler knew the name Franz Siewert.

  He rolled the wet, unlit cigar from one side of his mouth to the other, keeping an eye on the buildings across from the park, several of which had been hit in a bombing raid last week. At the same time, his thoughts drifted toward the warm bath that awaited him at the end of the night. As blockwart he was exempt from the weekends-only bath rule.

  Movement across the street caught his eye. Just another pedestrian hurrying home after a late-night shift, probably. Even at this quiet hour, in this frigid weather, scattered citizens roamed the streets. It sometimes amazed him that everyone hadn’
t already packed up and left Berlin a ghost town. There had been evacuations, especially of women and children, but an astonishing number of Berliners chose to stay and endure the war in the heart of the Reich. If, heaven forbid, the Soviets or the Americans ever reached the city, Berliners would fight them to the last man. Siewert swelled with pride at the glory of it all: Germans digging in and defending their homeland to the death.

  Siewert brought his attention back to the matter at hand. There was something odd about the figure across the street. It seemed, suddenly, to split into two. He rubbed his eyes—surely the night was playing tricks on him. But then the second figure darted across Messelstrasse—a dark coat, the white of an eye—heading straight for him! Quietly, he slid behind the tree and observed. The figure halted about twenty paces from his hiding place, at the edge of the park where the lawn met the sidewalk. Siewert’s heart began to pound. Oh, yes. This was good. This was some kind of subversive activity. Upstanding, law-abiding Germans didn’t skulk in the shadows of Messelpark after midnight.

  The figure was very short—a child, perhaps. Siewert watched as they knelt down in the grass and began to dig. How curious. He stepped out from behind the tree. His target seemed wholly absorbed and did not look up.

  Siewert put his hand on the baton that dangled from a loop in his belt.

  This was going to be fun.

  Max had just finished chalking the ruins when he heard his sister scream—an abrupt shriek that sent his heart up into his throat. Across the street, the edge of the park was lost in a sea of blackness. All he could do was dart off in the direction of her voice. It was hard enough to see at night in a blacked-out city, but the park, like the street beneath the camouflage netting, was a sightless void. He might as well be blindfolded. He stumbled when he hit the sidewalk on the other side and barely kept himself from tumbling.