by Alan Gratz
So much for the easy way. I shook my head and waved my troops inside.
The pool hall erupted into an uproar of shouts, screams, shattering glass, and breaking wood. It was almost over by the time I got inside with my troops. The place was a wreck—broken bottles, snapped pool cues, and bloodied patrons everywhere. Fritz was overseeing the arrest of a group of boys and girls just a few years older than we were, while the other Hitler Youth thugs were doing their best to punish the kids they’d captured before turning them over to the Gestapo. I saw one of the Hitler Youth boys using a broken chair leg to beat the limp form of a boy who was slumped unconscious over one of the pool tables, and I grabbed Fritz by the shoulder to show him.
“Horst!” Fritz cried, and I realized to my surprise that’s who was doing the beating. Donkey-faced Horst, our former Jungvolk leader. The boy who’d made Fritz fight me during the initiation test.
Fritz marched over to Horst, and Horst froze. There was actually a look of fear in his eyes. Fear of Fritz. Everyone had acted weird around Fritz—and me—after our boxing match. But Horst couldn’t really be afraid of Fritz, could he? Then I realized—he wasn’t afraid of Fritz. He was afraid of the uniform. We were SRD now. Junior Gestapo. These uniforms and these silly silver gorgets carried the power to send Horst to a concentration camp.
Horst took a step back and lowered the chair leg.
Fritz stared at him, and I saw a bead of sweat run from Horst’s hairline down to his chin.
“Carry on,” Fritz said at last.
Horst blinked, and then smiled his horsey smile. He raised the chair leg to hit the prone boy again.
“No, don’t!” I said. “Take him into protective custody.”
Horst frowned at me, but he obeyed me. I wore an SRD uniform too. He tossed the chair leg away and hauled the boy outside to the waiting truck.
“You’re too soft,” Fritz told me.
“Fritz, we don’t even know if that boy is a Pirate or not!”
“He’s in a pool hall smoking cigarettes and listening to American music during the day instead of participating in the Hitler Youth. That’s crime enough.”
I wanted to remind him that he had a box of American books at home, but SS-Obersturmführer Trumbauer appeared beside us, and I clammed up.
“You were so quick to volunteer,” he told Fritz, “and so quick into the fray. We should call you Quex.” Quex was shorthand for the German word for “quicksilver.” To call someone Quex meant they were quick. But there was much more to the nickname than just speed. That was the nickname of Herbert Norkus—the boy whose blood was supposedly soaked into the Blood Banner we’d taken our oath on. To call Fritz “Quex” was like comparing him to one of the most famous Hitler Youth ever, a fact that wasn’t lost on Fritz. I don’t know how it was possible, but Fritz looked about three inches taller right then.
“I’m putting together a special team, Brendler,” SS-Obersturmführer Trumbauer told Fritz. “And I think you would be a perfect fit. Report to me tomorrow instead of going to your regular SRD duties.”
“Yes, sir! Heil Hitler!” Fritz cried, giving Trumbauer an enthusiastic Nazi salute. I fought hard not to show my disgust.
“Nice job, Quex!” the SRD boys told Fritz as they filed out.
“Surrender or die!”
“Good one, Quex.”
“Did you hear that?” Fritz asked me as we walked out together. “The SS-Obersturmführer wants me for a special team! He called me Quex!”
“Yeah, um, Fritz? Didn’t Herbert Norkus die young?” I reminded him.
“He died a hero,” Fritz said, missing my point entirely.
The Edelweiss Pirates were quiet for the next few days. But one morning as I walked to school I saw that more graffitied edelweiss had bloomed among the red, white, and black Nazi flags on the bombed-out walls of Berlin.
The Hitler Youth had won a battle against the Edelweiss Pirates, but the war against them wasn’t over. Neither was the real war. It was late February, the hardest part of the winter, and Germany was now fighting on three fronts—east, west, and south—and none was going well. Rationing was tight, new winter clothes were scarce, and four inches of snow had fallen on the city overnight. It was like even nature was against the Nazis. The Führer weather had definitely run out.
But no one said so, of course. No one said much of anything. They kept their collars turned up and their hats down and their scarves wrapped tight around their faces, hiding from each other as they passed on the street.
But people still knew to cross the street before they walked past me. It was the uniform. No one wanted to be caught doing the wrong thing, and no one was ever really sure what the wrong thing might be.
I climbed the steps to Fritz’s house and knocked on the door, stamping my feet to try to keep them warm. The door finally opened, but it wasn’t Fritz. It was his little sister, Lina. She was dressed in her BDM uniform and ready for school.
“Is Fritz home?” I asked.
Lina just stared at me.
“Can I come in? It’s cold out here.”
Lina closed the door on me.
My breath came out in a gray cloud as I huffed. For days now, I hadn’t been able to catch Fritz at home, which meant I’d gone days without a glimpse at the blueprints for Projekt 1065. All I needed was a few more minutes with the last page, and I’d have them all! But whatever special SRD team Trumbauer had put Fritz on was eating up all his free time.
The door opened again, and Lina was dressed in her winter coat and carrying her rucksack.
“No Fritz?” I asked.
Lina shut the door behind her and locked it, then turned and waited.
“Do you ever speak?” I asked her.
Lina just stared at me.
I threw up my hands. “Okay. Let’s go,” I told her. “It’s too cold to talk anyway.”
We walked to school in silence. I dropped Lina off at her classroom and went to mine. Fritz wasn’t there, either. Where was he? What was he up to?
I reached into my rucksack and took out the essay we’d been assigned the day before—“Ten Ways to Have Fun Doing More with Less.” I walked over and put it in the growing stack on Herr Professor Doktor Major Melcher’s desk.
His desk was what the Germans would call a Kuddelmuddel. It means “a mess.” Chaos. Disorganization. Herr Professor Doktor Major Melcher’s desk looked as if he’d taken his top drawer and overturned it on the surface. It was covered in paper clips and pencils and rubber bands and scribbled notes.
The items reminded me of the game I’d been playing with Simon every night, Kim’s Game. I took a moment before Herr Professor Doktor Major Melcher got there to practice it again. I studied each item on the desk in turn, trying to memorize everything about it. Not just what was there, but what position it was in, what its meaning might be (the pencils were all chewed at the top—Herr Professor Doktor Major Melcher was nervous about something), and if anything was written on them.
One of the little slips of paper buried in the Kuddelmuddel on his desk said, “REGRET TO INFORM YOU YOUR S—” but I couldn’t read the rest. I gave a German Look around to see if anybody was watching. They weren’t.
I pulled the paper out and read it, and all at once I understood why Herr Professor Doktor Major Melcher had stopped hiding how much he hated the Nazis.
The paper on Melcher’s desk was a telegram from the Nazi High Command. It was dated several weeks ago—just after the German defeat at Stalingrad. Under Herr Professor Doktor Major Melcher’s name and home address, it said:
REGRET TO INFORM YOU YOUR SON UNTEROFFIZIER JÜRGEN MELCHER KILLED IN GLORIOUS SERVICE TO FATHERLAND ON 1ST FEBRUARY DURING STRATEGIC WITHDRAWAL OF FORCES FROM STALINGRAD. HEIL HITLER.
So that explained it. Why Herr Professor Doktor Major Melcher had been so angry these past weeks. Why he’d been letting his doubts about Hitler and the war creep into his lessons. His son had died at Stalingrad. “Strategic withdrawal.” Ha. Just like “protective cu
stody,” “strategic withdrawal” was code. It meant “we ran away like cowards.” Sergeant Jürgen Melcher had died running from the Russians with the Sixth Army the day before the rest of his comrades just gave up and surrendered.
Fritz finally showed up for class, talking and laughing with another SRD boy named Max.
I called Fritz over. “Take a look. I found something that explains why Herr Professor Doktor Major Melcher has been so touchy lately.”
“He’s been touchy because he’s a doddering old man who serves no purpose to the war effort,” Fritz said.
I recoiled a bit from the strength of Fritz’s reaction. He’d never been so hateful before.
“We have no use for these clever monks in their quiet cells,” Max said, spouting overblown propaganda from our weekly meetings. “The future will not be won with essays and tests. It will be won with fists and steel!”
Fritz nodded in sour agreement.
“No, listen,” I tried to tell them, but Herr Professor Doktor Major Melcher walked in just then. I dropped the telegram and hurried away to my desk.
“Sit down and shut up, you brats,” Melcher said.
Fritz slid into the seat beside mine. Ever since we’d put on the SRD uniforms, no one had tried to make him sit elsewhere. He sat ramrod straight, eyes forward. He didn’t seem to want to talk to me at all these days, and less than a month ago, he’d been following me around like a puppy.
“Fritz, what have you been up to these past few days?” I whispered. “You’re never at home in the mornings or after school, and you don’t come to the Hitler Youth meetings anymore. What is this special team Trumbauer put you on?”
“It’s a … a science team,” Fritz said.
In the desk behind Fritz, Max snickered like he was in on the joke. And “science team” had to be a joke. The only “science” Hitler Youth ever learned was how to tell a Jew from an Aryan and how to calculate the money wasted taking care of mentally handicapped people. I waited for Fritz to tell me the truth, but that appeared to be all he was going to say about it. I smoldered. What was up with Fritz all of a sudden? It was as though we suddenly weren’t friends anymore.
Herr Professor Doktor Major Melcher walked up and down the rows of desks, handing back graded papers. He put one on Fritz’s desk.
Fritz reached down slowly and flicked it away. The paper fluttered off his desk and landed on the floor at Herr Professor Doktor Major Melcher’s feet.
“Pick that up at once!” Melcher said.
“No,” said Fritz. “You pick it up.”
The room got deathly quiet, and a cold pit opened up in my stomach. Fritz didn’t know what had happened to Melcher’s son. He was going to push him too far.
Herr Professor Doktor Major Melcher’s face reddened. “I will do no such thing! Pick that paper up at once, young man, or I will mark this incident down in your Nazi Party record book!”
Fritz slowly got up from his desk. The entire room was silent, watching.
“No,” Fritz said again. His voice was cool. Collected. The direct opposite of Herr Professor Doktor Major Melcher’s nervous spluttering. “I told you once to pick it up,” Fritz said. “I won’t tell you again.”
I couldn’t believe Fritz. What was he doing? Herr Professor Doktor Major Melcher shook like he was about to explode. He raised a hand to give Fritz a sharp blow with the back of his hand, but suddenly Max stood up behind Fritz. Then the two other SRD boys in the room. The junior Gestapo, all staring with cold, dead eyes at Herr Professor Doktor Major Melcher. Melcher stood frozen, hand still raised, eyes bulging in a mix of indignation and horror. Fritz glanced at me. I was the only SRD boy not standing, not challenging Melcher.
I stood up. I had to. I couldn’t sit while the other SRD boys stood. Otherwise I ran the risk of blowing my cover.
Herr Professor Doktor Major Melcher’s bushy eyebrows knitted together in anger and he opened his mouth to say something, but what we heard instead was the howl of the air raid siren. The Americans were at it again. We had to get to the shelters.
Fritz stepped away from his desk, deliberately walking, not running, past Herr Professor Doktor Major Melcher to the door. The other Hitler Youth boys did the same, filing past him in a silent procession of unexpressed violence. Melcher stood rooted to the spot, looking suddenly much more frail and old than his actual years.
I let out the breath I didn’t know I’d been holding and ran to my air raid station. Whatever it was Fritz was doing before and after school for the SRD with Max, it was changing him. He was harder now. Colder. Meaner. He never would have talked back to Herr Professor Doktor Major Melcher like that before. And he never would have lied to me.
And if Fritz wasn’t going to tell me the truth about what he was doing for SS-Obersturmführer Trumbauer, I was just going to have to find out on my own.
“You haven’t been able to get back into Fritz’s house?” Ma asked.
We all sat together later that night in Da’s study—me, my parents, and Simon. The servants had been sent home for the night, but even so, the study door was locked and the radio was on in the background in case anyone outside stopped to listen in. It was playing a speech by Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister.
“No,” I said wearily. I had gotten up before dawn, been to school, worked through two air raids, gone on SRD patrol, and come home after dark. I was beat. “He’s been put on some special team by SS-Obersturmführer Trumbauer. They’re up to something. I just don’t know what.” I told them all about Fritz’s absences and his reference to the “science team.”
“I agree it’s not a science team,” Da said. “Definitely suspicious.”
“They’re obviously up to no good,” Simon said. “London will be very interested to hear all about it, I’m sure, whatever it is. Something to keep investigating after I’m gone.”
“After you’re gone?” I said. The plan had always been to get Simon out of Berlin, back to England. But the way he’d said it, like he already knew he was leaving, and soon … I looked back and forth between him and my mother.
“It’s all set, Michael,” Ma said. “He leaves tomorrow night.”
“Tomorrow night?”
My heart leaped into my throat. For as hard as I’d worked to steal jet fighter plans and send them back to England with Simon, I realized suddenly that I didn’t really want him to go.
“But—Projekt 1065. The jet fighter plans. We’re not finished,” I said lamely, looking for any excuse I could to keep him here. Yes, I had painstakingly memorized and redrawn eleven pages of schematics with Simon over the last couple of weeks, but there was still one page left to memorize. One page that had no pictures, but was full of math—and math was to engineers what violence was to the Nazis. It was their lifeblood. What made everything possible. We needed that last page.
Simon smiled regretfully. “I suppose if you can’t set eyes on it by tomorrow night, we’ll have to do without and hope the rest is enough for the RAF’s engineers to understand. But I’ve just got to get home, Michael.”
I saw at once how selfish I was being. How much Simon hated being cooped up in that little closet all day. Never getting outside. Never seeing the sun. Away from his friends and family. Away from Mary. Constantly in danger of being discovered and killed. Or worse.
Simon was leaving tomorrow night, whether I liked it or not.
“And none too soon,” Ma said. “We’ve got something else to worry about.”
“A coded message we intercepted,” Da said. “About an assassination the Nazis are planning.”
“What? When? Against whom?” Simon asked.
“We don’t know,” said Ma. “We only just saw a reference to it. I’ve asked the wife of the Gestapo chief out to lunch tomorrow, hoping to pick something up from her. She likes to talk when she’s had a few glasses of wine.”
“And I’m meeting for an interview tomorrow with a reporter I know from the Völkischer Beobachter, the Nazi newspaper,” Da said. “Som
etimes I’m able to exchange information with him. Off the record, of course.”
“But the long and the short of it, Michael, is that we need Simon to move on so we can move on,” Ma said. “We’ve got to get back to the mission. Find out whatever we can about this assassination and try to warn London before it happens.”
I nodded. I had one day to get inside Fritz’s house and see the last page of Projekt 1065. One day before Simon was gone from Berlin for good.
I went straight to Fritz’s house early the next morning, hoping to catch him before he left for whatever the “science team” was, but he was already gone. I had to get inside that house before the end of the day! Silent, bug-eyed Lina was there, of course, and with a sigh I walked her to school again.
I found Fritz after I’d dropped his sister off at her classroom. He stood outside our school building, huddled together with Max and a dozen more SRD boys—some of whom weren’t even in our class. I felt my breathing quicken. Something was up.
“Michael! There you are,” Fritz said. “Where have you been?”
“Walking your sister to school,” I said, a little testily. “Where have you been?”
“Rounding up the boys,” Fritz said, indicating the other SRD boys with a nod. His eyes were alive with mischief, the way they had been before the raid on the Edelweiss Pirates. “We’re going to get rid of the old relic once and for all.”
“What old relic?”
“Melcher!” Fritz said. “I’ve brought the whole SRD in on it.”
Was this what Fritz and Max had been disappearing to work on all this time? Some plan to get rid of Herr Professor Doktor Major Melcher?
“Listen, Melcher’s been a jerk lately, but he’s been through a lot,” I told them. “His son died at Stalingrad. I saw the telegram.”
“Everybody lost somebody at Stalingrad,” Fritz said.
