From the Ashes

by Sandra Saidak

  CHAPTER 32

  “Well,” said Adolf. “What does one say in a situation like this? Congratulations on your promotion, I suppose, are in order. When we met a few months ago in Poland, you were an Infantry Officer. Now I see…”

  “Shut up!” Heydrich’s voice reached a dangerously high note. Adolf might be able to learn a lot about the man’s weaknesses if he survived the next few minutes.

  “I was then, as I am now,” Josef continued, “a high ranking member of the Department of Political Security. A position which often requires complex undercover work. And never more so than now.”

  Adolf said nothing, but eyed the open cell door and empty corridor beyond with interest.

  “I have disabled the monitoring devices in this cell,” said Heydrich. “They’ll go on again automatically when the door slams shut. I can be gone for perhaps ten minutes without arousing suspicion, so let’s get down to business.”

  “Which is…?”

  “Saving the Reich.”

  “Yes, I’ve already spoken with Dr. Von…”

  “I don’t mean that old fool and his hare-brained schemes! Although the broadcast is a good idea, the fools still loyal to the Führer only want you to do it to keep him in power. As if we’d be safer with him in charge than with you!”

  Adolf was beginning to understand. “But that’s not what you want.”

  “Of course not! I’ve kowtowed to that heap of decaying flesh long enough. And so have quite a few other good men. Young and strong like tempered steel, and ready to take our places as leaders of the new Reich.”

  “And you’re telling this because…?”

  “Because that wreck of a Führer has finally proven himself useful to us—for the first and last time. By setting up this broadcast for you tomorrow, he’s given us the perfect opportunity to launch a precision strike. Everything is in place, but for weeks we’ve worried over how to pull it off in a single blow.”

  Heydrich slid a folded piece of paper from his sleeve and gave it to Adolf. “This is your speech for tomorrow, dear boy. Since our Führer has so kindly arranged to have the entire world watching, it will be you Adolf, who will have the honor of setting it all in motion. Don’t read it now, there’ll be time for that when you’re alone. And don’t worry about what it says.”

  Adolf ignored Heydrich and scanned the brief message. “My God, who wrote this crap?” he muttered without looking up. “You’d have to be as demented as the Führer himself to think this says anything at all. And don’t you think codes like ‘the monkey howls at midnight’ are going to be obvious to anyone over the age of six?”

  Heydrich grabbed the paper and slammed it onto the gleaming metal desk beside the cot. “I don’t expect someone like you to see the artistry of it, Adolf. Just read it. Oration has always been your one strong point.”

  Adolf smiled. “Yes, of course, Josef, but what’s my motivation? Is this the part where you offer me a place of power in your glorious new Reich? Or are you going to use the old line about sparing the lives of my family? You should know Von Dymler’s already offered both.”

  Heydrich smiled back, far too confidently for Adolf’s taste. “Your family has been dangled before you far too often as it is. And you and I could no more work together on building a new world than we could breathe in the vacuum of space.

  “But I have something of yours that no one else in this snake pit can offer you. Something that means a great deal to you. Come and see.”

  He led Adolf to the monitoring station at the end of the corridor. The central screen allowed the guard on duty to look into any cell on the block. Heydrich flicked a switch, and Adolf found himself looking at a tight angled shot of Ilsa.

  Three years in the underground had schooled Adolf in keeping his face a mask of calm when control was called for, but he knew a gasp escaped him. He knew because of the way it echoed in the empty silence—and by Heydrich’s smirk of triumph.

  “No one but me even knows who she is,” he was saying. “I intercepted her the day she was captured. She’s listed only as Hilda Kraus, terrorist, with great powers of persuasion over men, hence the isolation. According to official records, that annoying woman known as ‘The Valkyrie’ is now dead. Killed by me, as a matter of fact.

  “So it will be a simple matter for me to return your missgeburt whore to you in exchange for your cooperation. I’ve grown rather tired of her myself.”

  Adolf gritted his teeth. That might not even be Ilsa, he reminded himself. A picture on a screen proves nothing.

  “I’ll admit I was disappointed,” Heydrich continued. “After all the stories told of her fierceness, she didn’t even put up a fight when I fucked her. She just lay there like a corpse. Or maybe she learned that from you?”

  Adolf looked Heydrich in the eye, his face betraying nothing. “Come now, Josef. You have lots of experience with partners who would rather be dead than with you—like all of them, for example. Just as they would all prefer you as a corpse.”

  Heydrich grinned. “Maybe not all of them. Why don’t you ask your sister Leisl.”

  Adolf remained still, though his body shook. “Are you sure you want to play all your cards right now?” he asked. “Pushing a victim too far often results in the sudden death of the tormentor—as I believe several of your relatives have already discovered.”

  The blow hit home, and now it was Heydrich who struggled for control, while Adolf thought frantically for a way out. The first rule was to stay in control. Ilsa—if it was indeed Ilsa—had already demonstrated her ability to choose her battles. She wouldn’t fight Heydrich in a skirmish she had no chance of winning. Adolf knew he had to do the same. The time for killing Heydrich would come later.

  But it took all of Adolf’s control not to leap at him right then and there.

  “The picture looks real enough,” said Adolf. “But they always do on screen, don’t they? You might even have had her here a few days ago. But until I have positive proof, I will assume she’s dead, and you’ll get no cooperation from me. Funny how desperately you seem to need it.”

  Heydrich dragged Adolf out of the cell and slammed the door shut. “Of course I wouldn’t expect you to cooperate without proof,” he said, and the change in his tone told Adolf that the monitoring devices were back on. “Come with me.”

  Adolf followed Heydrich through impressive security doors and down a flight of stairs into a much more dungeon-like row of cells. These too were empty save one. Heydrich stopped beside the occupied cell and keyed a code into the panel on the door.

  The door swung open, and inside, on the same cot he had seen upstairs on the monitor, was Ilsa. Her eyes widened a little when she saw him, but other than that showed no reaction.

  “I’ll give you a few minutes to reminisce,” said Heydrich. “But remember, we are short on time.” Heydrich pushed Adolf into the cell and shut the door.

  For a few moments, Adolf stood frozen, half expecting Ilsa to be shot before his eyes, to amuse one of the many sadists who ran this place. An even worse nightmare was that she could have been turned; that she was simply the next weapon in the campaign for Adolf’s soul. He was, he realized, a fool to have worried about that one.

  “Did you get back to base with it?” she asked, calling his mind back to recent history.

  “Yes. But there was no reason for the rush. It doesn’t distinguish between races. It just kills.”

  Ilsa nodded. “I suspected as much.”

  “You always were the practical one.”

  “That remains to be seen.” Ilsa looked pained. “Rumor has it that you turned yourself in.”

  “It’s true. They made me an offer I didn’t refuse.” He waited for her look of horror; of recrimination or betrayal, but none came.

  “I think there’s a purpose in your being here, Adolf. I don’t know how I know, but you did the right thing.”

  “I dared to believe that. Once. But then I spent a night praying to a god who never answered.”

 
Ilsa smiled. “I’m glad you prayed, anyway.”

  “Ilsa, are you a Jew? Truly and in your heart?”

  “Adolf, I became a Jew a long time ago. Several times, actually. I’ve lost my faith and found it again so often I’m starting to think I’m deciduous.”

  Adolf grinned at the image of Ilsa as a tree that lost everything each winter, only to bloom again in the spring. “I envy you,” he said.

  “You have nothing to envy, Adolf. You were chosen by God to save the world. That before all else. Only after that are you my husband and my greatest love.”

  He wanted to bask in the moment; to let nothing but their deaths interrupt it. But there was something he had to ask, and right then he didn’t care who heard.

  “Those poisonings at the meat packing plants were very… effective. Ilsa, did you—“

  “No. No, that wasn’t me. But I did know about it. And it’s just barely possible that I could have stopped it. And I didn’t. Do you find that unforgivable?”

  Adolf’s breath whooshed out in a sigh of relief that struck him as comical even then. “Everyone I know wants to give a medal to whoever did it! They couldn’t understand why I might feel differently. How I might not want to be married to someone who killed indiscriminately on a massive scale—as long as it was for the cause! I’m not sure I understand it myself. But I’m very glad you didn’t do it, Ilsa.”

  “I wasn’t so glad about it when they captured me.” She shook her head. “Those kosher laws. I started that whole campaign as a way to differentiate us from them. I thought if I could get people to see themselves as separate from the Party, yet part of something just as real; give them a culture—“

  “Then maybe they would find the strength to make changes,” said Adolf. “In themselves—and in the world around them.” Ilsa nodded. “It worked, you know.”

  “Oh yes, I know. It worked so well that I wasn’t the only one to see the possibilities. I thought about poisoning the pork long before the men who finally did it—as you well know. And, if I’d gone ahead and done it my way, we’d have had double the death toll—and nearly all of it within the military.”

  “So why didn’t you?”

  “Because of you. I thought about the innocent who would die along with the guilty. Even on a military base, there are secretaries, clerks, whores, wives, and children who never asked to be there. People who get groped and slapped around and treated like dirt by the men who really do deserve to die. And I discovered that I didn’t care. That I could live with a little innocent blood on my conscience.

  “And then I thought about you, and I knew that you couldn’t. That even if it would have guaranteed victory for the revolution, you would never agree to it. Because every life is precious to you. And I wanted to be like you in that way, even if I couldn’t feel all the things you feel.”

  Adolf marveled. “How could you want to be like me? Since this whole mess started, all I’ve ever wanted is to be like you! To be worthy of you. Your courage, your strength. I’ve met plenty of brave people, Ilsa, but no one who just refuses to give in to fear like you. I can preach and make suggestions, but you can reach inside the whole corrupt empire and rip out its heart with your bare hands.”

  Ilsa laughed. “And I’ve lived with people who really have ripped out hearts—both literally and figuratively. I’ll tell you, they’re not the kind of people you’d want running the government after you win. And for a time, I was one of them.

  “But you, Adolf! Do you know what people say about you? That you win followers by loving the hate out of them! That one on one, you could sway anyone up to the Führer himself!”

  “People need their heroes, sure,” said Adolf. “This year they chose me. But look where I’ve brought us.”

  “Somehow, Adolf, I think that where you’ve brought us is exactly where we need to be.”

  “What, choosing between global destruction and Nazi dictatorship?”

  Ilsa shook her head. “No. I don’t think it’s as bad as that. Sure, I’d hate to see life on earth end, but even that wouldn’t be forever. Nature would try again. And I’m sure we’d all wish Her better luck next time around.

  “But as for the Thousand Year Reich?” Ilsa smiled, and her blue eyes shone with the zeal that Adolf remembered well. “That’s over. These pathetic players may not know it yet, but they’re already dead.”

  “But if we can’t replace it with something better, it’s not much of a victory,” said Adolf.

  “It’s the biggest victory for the Jews since the first Purim. Think about it.”

  “I guess there’s something to be said for poetic justice.” He sighed. “Funny how everything gets down to irony and poison. The Party poisons the world, the rebels poison the pork. In just the five months since Elijah starting showing up at Passover seders, those nine plagues have been felt more and more.”

  Ilsa nodded. “Since I came here I’ve heard more and more about people dying from minor illnesses, because their bodies just can’t fight back anymore.”

  Adolf tried to remember more of what the scientists had been saying before he left. “The waters are reaching the point where they can truly be called poisoned. And another major river caught fire while we were in Russia.”

  “Trichinosis was the basis for the poison that was used on the pork,” Ilsa said. “Fevers and bleeding guts were part of the symptoms. Somehow, it makes me feel better to imagine that the meat poisoning was ordained by God.”

  “And I would have trouble worshipping a god who sanctioned something like that.”

  Ilsa fell silent. “What about leprosy and boils?” she asked after a while. “I haven’t heard of an increase there, and they’d be pretty noticeable.”

  Adolf sat up. “They’re here!” he whispered. “In the Führer. I’ve seen him—“

  “Boils and leprosy invading the body of the divinely appointed Führer?” Ilsa began to laugh. “If I could just see that with my own eyes, I could die a happy woman.”

  “I don’t want you to die at all, Ilsa!” Adolf suddenly gave in to his emotions. “There are quite a few people I want to see dead—some I hope to kill with my own hands—but not you!”

  “Shhh.” She took him in her arms, crooning to him as if he were a child.

  “I’m sorry I let you down, Ilsa,” he murmured into the gray prison uniform that covered her breasts. “If I’d killed Heydrich back in school when I’d had the chance…”

  “Heydrich isn’t important,” she said with almost no trace of bitterness. “Soon, he will be forgotten.”

  “I want to make love to you.”

  “So do I. Does the fact that we’re being monitored bother you?”

  “A little. That, and the fact that tomorrow morning, I’m going to get in front of a bunch of cameras, and tell the whole world that Judaism was just a silly joke, and the revolution was a silly mistake. And living under a Nazi yoke is just peachy, really.”

  Ilsa gripped his hands. “Say whatever you have to say, Adolf. You won’t betray the cause or the faith, even if you think that’s what you’re doing.” She stared into his eyes. “Remember their own words to you, and know that they have sealed their own fate. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Adolf understood well enough that the cell was bugged and that Ilsa was trying to tell him something important; something she could not say directly. But he was too tired for spy games.

  She read the exhaustion in his eyes, and his need for a few moments peace. “It’s all right,” she whispered. “Just know that I love you. Let’s seal it with a kiss.” She kissed him then, with a taste like fire and honey.

  At that point, they were interrupted by the noise of heavy booted guards marching in unison, and the screech of the door swinging open. A guard strode into the cell. Five more waited behind him in the hallway. Heydrich was nowhere to be seen.

  “Herr Goebbels, you must come now to your own cell,” said the leader. “I am told you are to be well rested for your great speech tomorrow.�
�� He leered at Ilsa. “Surely your charming friend will wear you out if you stay here.”

  Adolf took a last look at Ilsa, wishing he had time to say with his eyes all he could never put into words.

  “Goodbye, my love,” he said.

  “God watch over you,” she whispered.

  Then he was being hustled down a corridor, the door to Ilsa’s cell clanging shut behind him.

  Adolf was returned to the cell he had been in just minutes before. A typewriter now sat on the desk, with a stack of clean white paper beside it. He found the speech Heydrich had written for him on the bottom of the stack—and probably typed on the same machine, in case anyone bothered to examine it too closely. On a tray beside the bed was a hearty meal of beef barley soup and fresh bread.

  “You are asked to begin work on your speech before retiring,” said the guard. “If you need anything else, call me.”

  Adolf sat on the bed and didn’t move for a full ten minutes while he considered his situation. Finally, for lack of a better idea, he gave in to his now nagging hunger and devoured the bread and soup. Then he gave in to the crushing depression that had been waiting for him since he first arrived in this complex.

  Adolf stretched out on the cot—the most comfortable one he had slept on in years—and hoped the food was poisoned.

  CHAPTER 33

  Disappointed, but not all that surprised to find himself still alive, Adolf awoke the next morning. He felt fine, having experienced no ill effects from the food, water or air in the cell. His brain was not muddled or confused, for which he was grateful. If his mind remained clear, his personality unaffected, perhaps he could still think his way out of this situation.

  Yeah, right.

  Guards came for him at seven a.m. and proceeded to bathe, groom and dress him without any mention of breakfast. This time, his uniform was a full dress version of yesterday’s: gray wool trousers, gray jacket with gold piping, and a black collar with scarlet tabs. A gorget hung with a golden chain tried valiantly to remind anyone looking that the wearer’s ancestors were once Teutonic Knights.