by Alan Gratz
Da and Ma had understood, had told me it wasn’t my fault. That they had expected too much of me. But that only made it worse. I wanted to be able to handle whatever they asked me to do, and more. I wanted to be better than everybody thought I was. I wanted them to think of me as an adult, not a kid who couldn’t cut it.
“Hendrik Goldsmit. Hendrik Goldsmit,” Ma said, pacing the floor. She was as worried as I was that Simon had been captured, but she had turned her nervous energy to the problem of the lead I’d brought home. The one thing I’d done right all night. “Goldsmit’s a physicist. Dutch. Got out of the Netherlands right before Hitler invaded. He works for the Americans now, on their atomic bomb project.”
“What’s an atomic bomb?” I asked.
Ma shook her head. “Some kind of … superbomb. I’ve only heard rumors. It may not even be possible. But if it is, it’ll change everything. Even more than that jet fighter.”
I shrank farther into my chair at the mention of the jet fighter plans, which might be in the hands of the Nazis right now. Along with Simon.
“The real question,” said Ma, “is how in the world the Nazis think they can assassinate Goldsmit when he’s in some secret military laboratory in the States.”
“Here! I knew I’d read his name recently,” Da said. He’d been combing through old issues of the Nazi newspapers he’d saved and had finally found the article he’d been looking for. “There’s a science conference in the Swiss Alps in two days’ time, and Goldsmit’s supposed to be there.”
Ma grabbed up the newspaper and read the article.
“But … why would an Allied scientist come to Switzerland in the middle of the war?” I asked.
“Exchange of ideas, progress of science,” Da suggested.
“Operation Paperclip,” Ma said under her breath.
“Operation what?” I said.
“Paperclip. A secret Allied operation to recruit—or kidnap, if necessary—Nazi scientists. He must be coming here to recruit someone at the conference!”
“He should be perfectly safe,” Da said. “The Germans would never strike inside Switzerland’s borders. It would violate their neutrality.”
Ma snorted. “The Nazis don’t care a fig for neutrality. Just ask Denmark. The only reason the Nazis don’t attack Switzerland is because tanks don’t go up mountains.”
Switzerland had declared its neutrality right at the start of the war, just like Spain and Sweden. And Ireland. But tiny Switzerland was right on Germany’s southern border, wedged in between Occupied France and Fascist Italy. Germany had left Switzerland alone for now, going around the Alps instead of through them. They probably figured Switzerland would just give in when Germany took over the rest of the world.
“In any event,” Ma said, “the Swiss aren’t about to let any German soldiers in.”
“Which is why the Nazis are sending children,” Da said with disgust.
“The science team,” I said.
“It’s brilliant,” Ma said. “The Swiss will let them right in, and then they can assassinate Goldsmit.”
“We have to get word to British Intelligence,” I said.
“The conference is in two days,” Ma said. “We can’t possibly get a message out in time. By the time London gets our diplomatic packet, Goldsmit will already be at the conference—and it will take even longer to get word to him or anybody else who can help.”
“Best I could do is call up London and just tell them,” Da said. “But you know as well as I do that the phones are bugged. The Gestapo would be on us before we could make it out the front door.”
“But—we can’t just let them kill him!” I said. After being the one to discover who the Nazis were planning to assassinate, I didn’t want what I’d learned from Max to mean nothing after all.
The phone rang, and I jumped.
It had to be someone calling about Simon.
Da snatched the phone receiver up and listened.
“Yes, she’s right here,” he said, and handed the phone to my mother.
“Yes?” she said in German. “I see. I see. Yes, it’s all right. You can deliver the wine another time, then. Yes. Thanks.” She set the receiver down and took a deep breath. “Simon didn’t make the riverboat that was to take him to Oranienburg,” Ma said, decoding her conversation for us. “He must have been captured.”
Simon’s ship had literally sailed without him. My stomach folded in on itself, and tears sprang to my eyes. I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t just because I liked Simon, thought of him like a brother. It was because it was my fault he’d been captured. If the shrapnel hadn’t hit Max. If the Edelweiss Pirates hadn’t attacked. If I hadn’t stopped to help Fritz. I replayed the whole night in my head, trying to make it come out differently each time. But every time it was the same. Every time I ended up in that alleyway alone, hands on my knees, tears in my eyes, blood on my hands.
Ma put a hand on my shoulder. I was about to fall into her arms, cry into her shoulder the way I had when I was a little boy and fell and scraped my knee. But before she could put her arms around me, the air raid sirens howled again. It was the Americans’ turn to bomb us.
I stood wearily from my chair and dragged a bloodstained sleeve across my eyes. I had an AA gun to man.
“No, Michael!” Da said. “You can’t go out again! Not after last night. You need rest. A bath. Bed.”
“I have to,” I told him. “They’ll notice if I’m gone. They’ll report me.”
“Then let them report you! We should never have brought him here with us,” Da told Ma. “He’s too young. The war’s been too hard on him. We should have left him in Ireland.”
“No!” I said. “No! I can do this! I just—I just messed up last night. I’m sorry. I have to go.”
I staggered out the back door, mostly so I wouldn’t have to leave with my parents and the staff through the front door and let them see me cry.
I wanted to be here, in Berlin, working as a spy. Helping the Allies. If I’d stayed back home in Ireland, I would just be in school, maybe helping collect rubber and paper and metal for the war effort. I wouldn’t be helping the Allies bomb factories or steal secret jet fighter plans.
But now they weren’t going to get the plans. The blueprints for Projekt 1065 had been lost with Simon. Unless I could reconstruct them. Redraw them from memory. Words and numbers and images flashed by in my head. Could I do it? Could I remember all of it? I didn’t know if I could without Simon.
A dark figure lunged at me from the shadows in the alley behind the embassy. I started to cry out, but the man slapped a hand over my mouth. I looked up at him, and my eyes went wide.
It was Simon!
Simon looked shrunken and pale. He bent over double at the waist, a hand wrapped around his stomach like he’d eaten a bad bratwurst. I immediately turned him toward the back door and helped him climb the stairs. The staff had already cleared out because of the air raid. That’s why Simon had waited until then to come back to the house. I led him to the little hidden closet at the back of Da’s office, signaled for him to wait (as if he could go anywhere), and ran to catch my parents before they went down into the bunker. I was so giddy I was practically hopping. I couldn’t believe it—Simon was alive! I hadn’t gotten him captured by the Gestapo after all.
“Da! Ma!” I cried. The staff was with them, and everybody stopped to find out what was wrong. I panted from my run, trying to think how to tell them Simon was back without alerting the staff.
“That—that wine you were trying to have delivered,” I said, remembering the coded conversation Ma had had with her contact on the phone. “It made it after all. They left it at the back door.”
Da and Ma shared a startled look.
“I’ll see to it,” said Mrs. Keller, the housekeeper.
“No, no!” Da said. “No, I forbid any of the staff to risk their lives over a case of wine, no matter how expensive it is. Get to the bunkers. Michael and I’ll see to it.”
Mrs
. Keller and the others protested, but Da sent them away. Ma gave us a hopeful look before going with the staff to make sure none of them came back. Da and I rushed back to the secret closet, where Simon lay slumped against the bookcases.
“Good God, are we happy to see you,” Da said. “What happened?”
Simon told us how he’d waited at the rendezvous point for me past our meeting time, and my ears burned hot with shame. I started to apologize, but Simon held up a hand.
“I heard a patrol coming, so I decided to try to make it on my own. I’d studied the maps. I thought I could do it. I made it halfway across the city, but at some point I must have made a wrong turn. I was supposed to be on Friedrichstrasse, but instead, I somehow ended up on Einbahnstrasse. I doubled back, trying to find Friedrichstrasse, and that’s when they spotted me.”
Da and I glanced at each other, and I wondered which of us was going to be the first to tell him.
“What?” Simon asked.
“That probably was Friedrichstrasse,” Da told him.
“No! I’m telling you, the sign said, Einbahnstrasse.”
“Einbahnstrasse means ‘one-way street,’ ” I explained. “That was Friedrichstrasse. You just saw the sign that said it was one way, not the sign with the street name on it.”
Simon closed his eyes and thunked his head back against the bookshelves. “Well. I suppose I should have learned a little more German while I was holed up here, shouldn’t I?”
Simon told us a Hitler Youth patrol had spotted him, and when he didn’t heed their calls they chased him through the streets.
“Almost lost them,” he said. “But one of the boys stayed on my tail. Cornered me in an alley. He couldn’t have been more than ten years old. I had my pistol, but I’m afraid I didn’t have it in me to shoot him. He was just a boy. He didn’t have any similar reservations about using his dagger on me, though.”
Simon pulled his hand away from his stomach. His shirt and hand were covered with blood.
“Good God! Why didn’t you say something?” Da said, and he went for the alcohol and bandages.
“What about the plans?” I asked Simon.
He pulled them out from inside his shirt. “A little bloody, but still intact, I think,” he said.
I sighed with relief. Simon was alive, and the plans were safe. His ship may have sailed, but Ma could arrange another one in time.
Da came back with the medical kit. Bombs began to fall outside, shaking the books on the shelves.
“Ah,” Simon said as Da bandaged him. “They’re playing my song.”
“I have to get to the bunker, or someone from the staff will come looking for me,” Da said.
“I’ll be fine with Michael,” Simon replied. “I can talk him through patching me up.”
“We’re glad you’re still alive,” Da said, shaking Simon’s hand.
“So am I, as it happens,” said Simon.
Da left, and Simon peeled back his torn and bloody shirt. I paled.
“Simon, I’m so sorry,” I told him. Tears sprang to my eyes. “I should have been there. I shouldn’t have—”
Simon put up a hand. “I’ve never once been part of a covert action that went according to plan,” he said. He waved his hand to encompass himself and the little closet he was hidden in. “Case in point: how I got here in the first place. I’m sure you would have been there if you could.”
Simon showed me how to clean his wound, which he bore with gritted teeth.
“We figured out who’s going to be assassinated,” I said to distract him. I told him all about Goldsmit and the science conference, Fritz and the so-called science team.
“It’s your little friend who’s going to be doing the assassinating?” Simon said.
I nodded. “And there’s no time to get word back to London. The conference is in two days.”
“Which means you’ve got to get on that science team,” Simon said. “You have to go to Switzerland and stop it yourself.”
I froze. “What? Me, join the science team? But—but how?”
“You said this boy, Max, he was a part of the team, but he was killed.”
I felt the blood drain out of my head and my skin crawl as I saw it again, the shrapnel falling, slicing into Max, the blood, the guts …
“Yes,” I said quietly. “He was killed.”
“So there’s an opening on the team,” Simon said.
Yes. Yes! Simon was right! With Max dead, they would be looking to replace him on the team.
“That’s true,” I told Simon, breathless. “And Max said he was on the team because he could speak English!”
“Which you do almost as well as an Englishman,” Simon said, poking a little fun to disguise his discomfort.
I nodded. I could do this. I could join the science team with Fritz. And I didn’t know how yet, but I could stop whatever it was they were planning. I had to. No matter what Simon said, it was my fault he hadn’t made it out of Berlin. My fault he’d been stabbed by a Hitler Youth boy on patrol. My fault he was cooped up again in the secret closet in my father’s study.
I was going to prove that he and my parents could trust me the next time they needed me.
I just had to get onto that team.
I heard the pok-pok-pok of the antiaircraft guns. My troop would already be at their stations.
“They may already be choosing a replacement!” I said. “I have to get to my AA gun.”
“Go,” Simon told me. “Go—I’ll be fine. Just do whatever it takes to get yourself on that team!”
I spent the entire air raid reciting English limericks.
“There once was a farmer from Leeds, who swallowed a packet of seeds,” I sang as I hauled ammunition to the AA gun. “It soon came to pass he was covered with grass, but has all the tomatoes he needs!”
The other boys stared at me as though I was insane. My jokes were bombing more than the airplanes overhead. I had to admit, they might have gone over better if any of them understood English. I carried on undaunted.
“There once was a man from Nantucket, who kept all his cash in a bucket. But his daughter named Nan ran away with a man, and as for the bucket, Nantucket!”
I laughed at my own joke, which got me more stares.
“Wait. Here’s another,” I said, handing off another round for the 88. “A funny old bird is the pelican. His beak can hold more than his belly can. He can take in his beak enough food for a week, but I don’t know how the helican!”
Fritz pulled me aside. “What are you doing?” he asked me in German.
What I was doing was trying to remind SS-Obersturmführer Trumbauer that I was fluent in English, in case he had forgotten. The SS man was there, overseeing our AA gun. But I couldn’t explain that to Fritz. I just went back to work.
Dozens more limericks and Englishman, Scotsman, and Irishman jokes later, the air raid was over. We had survived round two with the Allied bombers.
I had just started to sing “Danny Boy” for everybody when SS-Obersturmführer Trumbauer had us line up for our orders.
“Sir, yes, sir!” I said in English, and I gave my most enthusiastic salute. “Heil Hitler!”
Trumbauer nodded at me. Fritz looked at me strangely.
“It’s time to march,” Trumbauer said. “We will only go to the bridge and back, so we are not too far away should there be another air raid.”
“Sir?” Fritz said. “Am I excused to work on our special SRD training?”
Special assassination training, he meant. I knew that now.
“Yes, of course, Quex,” SS-Obersturmführer Trumbauer said. “And we need to select a replacement for Max after he died for Germany, don’t we?”
I licked my lips. Here we go, I thought. My chance to join the science team.
“Train well, Fritz!” I said in English. I pretended to catch myself, and smacked my forehead. “I’m sorry!” I said in German. “Sometimes I forget and just say things in English. It is my first language, after all.”
Fritz gave me another confused look. I admit, I was being pretty obvious about it. But I didn’t want Trumbauer to pass me over.
Trumbauer walked down the line toward me. I stood tall. Stuck out my chest.
And the SS man walked right past me.
“Horst Fortner, step forward,” SS-Obersturmführer Trumbauer said. “You have been selected for an elite SRD mission.”
Horst? Horst? The donkey-faced ogre from our Jungvolk group? How in the world could he be selected for the science team over me? He didn’t know a word of English, and he was proud of it!
Horst jumped out of the line and threw his arm into the air in a fervent Nazi salute. “Thank you, SS-Obersturmführer Trumbauer! I would die for the Fatherland!”
“I know you would, Horst,” Trumbauer said with an appreciative nod. “Please join Fritz. He will show you to the training ground.”
“Heil Hitler!” Horst yelled, and Trumbauer returned the salute.
“Are—are you sure you don’t want me instead?” I blurted out in German. Fritz turned with a frown, as if I was being a fool to speak out when I wasn’t supposed to. I probably was. But I needed to join that team.
“I am quite confident in the choice I have made, Mr. O’Shaunessey,” SS-Obersturmführer Trumbauer said icily. Fritz gave me a quick shake of the head and turned back to Trumbauer, waiting to be dismissed. I cursed inwardly. How was I going to get on that science team?
“Just be sure that the two of you are back this afternoon,” SS-Obersturmführer Trumbauer told them. “We have been invited to a very special event.” Whatever it was, it was so special he swelled with joy. Trumbauer was practically glowing. I wondered if the Nazis had finally gotten so desperate they were going to give us tanks and turn us loose on the Allies.
But no, it was worse. Much, much worse.
“This afternoon—” SS-Obersturmführer Trumbauer told us, “this afternoon, we have the great and glorious honor of hearing the Führer speak to us in person!”
