by Alan Gratz
“There isn’t an avalanche,” I told him. “That was just to get everybody into the basement so they could blow you up with a bomb!”
“Good God,” Goldsmit said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Wait here.” I ran for the place where I’d tucked the plans for Projekt 1065. I was getting out of here with Goldsmit and the jet fighter plans. I was going to get more medals than Ottmar and Erhard could even dream about.
I was just imagining Winston Churchill, the British prime minister, pinning the Victoria Cross on my shirt when I pulled the stone from the wall and froze.
The Projekt 1065 plans were gone.
The hole was empty.
I checked again. Had I found the wrong stone? No. This was the right place. This was the right stone.
The jet fighter plans were gone. But how? If the stone had fallen out and the plans had blown away, the stone would be on the ground, not stuck back in the hole. Which meant someone had come along behind me, pulled out the stone, taken the plans, and put the stone back where I’d left it. And there was only one person I could think of who’d done it.
Fritz.
He had seen me pull the plans out of my shirt. That’s what he’d been talking to Ottmar about in the lobby of the resort. Ottmar might have sent him out to look for Goldsmit, but he’d also sent him to see what I’d stuck in the wall. My heart sank. They’d known since we left our hotel room that I was a traitor. That’s how Ottmar had known to switch suitcases. To send the bomb with Fritz. They knew I’d lose Fritz as soon as I could and run to tell on Ottmar and Erhard, while Fritz ran free to finish the assassination.
An icy chill swept through me. Fritz knew I’d betrayed him. Not just today, but all along. When he looked at what I’d hidden in the wall, he would have known at once what they were. He would know why I’d come over to his house all those times, why I’d joined the SRD with him, why I’d pretended to be his friend. He would know it was all to steal the jet fighter plans out from under his nose and hand them over to the Allies.
Fritz was still out there with the bomb, and he was mad as hell.
“We have to get out of here,” I told Goldsmit, pushing him toward the cable car station. “Now.”
Another tram was just reaching the station. A few people were on it, and we pushed past them to get on board. I caught a glimpse of the long, long drop down the mountainside as I put Goldsmit in a seat, and I almost blacked out right then and there. It was only the adrenaline coursing through my system that kept me awake. I grabbed for one of the hand straps that hung from the ceiling and wrapped myself around one of the poles. I wanted to close my eyes, to sink to the floor and pass out, but I couldn’t. Fritz might come running for the tram any second now, suitcase bomb in hand. I had to protect Goldsmit. Had to get him to safety. Eyes fluttering, I unsnapped the Hitler Youth dagger on my belt and hugged the pole, willing myself to stay awake, to stay on my feet.
When you fell down, it was over.
“Did you hear the one about the Englishman, the Irishman, and the Scotsman who were all staying at the world’s tallest hotel?” I asked Goldsmit without turning around.
“Um, no. I can’t say I have,” Goldsmit said.
The glass doors to the tram slid shut, and the cable car moved away from the station. We’d made it. “I’ll tell you later,” I said, and I gave in and slumped to the ground at last.
Something big and heavy thumped on the roof of the cable car, and I jerked awake. The metal blade of a dagger was sticking through the roof, keeping whoever had jabbed it there from sliding off the top of the car. The dagger had words on it. From where I sat, pooled helplessly on the floor, I could read them:
BLOOD AND HONOR!
Fritz was on the roof of the cable car.
A brown suitcase dipped below the edge of the roof. I could see it through the window. Fritz’s head peeked through the window upside down. He saw me, saw Professor Goldsmit, and then he and the suitcase disappeared again.
Fritz was on the roof of the cable car, and he had the suitcase bomb.
He had waited for us. He knew I’d go for Professor Goldsmit and try to get him out of the resort. Fritz had waited for us on top of the cable car station, watched us get on board. Separated us from the others so he could kill us.
Professor Goldsmit stood and went to the window, trying to see up top. “What’s going on? Who was that boy?”
“He’s—he’s one of the ones sent to kill you,” I said. I closed my eyes and fought off my nausea. I wished Goldsmit would sit down. He was making the cabin rock. “His name is Fritz. He has a bomb.”
“A bomb! But if he blows us up, he’ll die too.”
“He doesn’t care,” I told him. “He was born to die for Germany.” I’d said it sarcastically, but I realized suddenly that it was true. Fritz believed all that stuff about sacrificing himself for the Fatherland. For Hitler. He would do it. He would fulfill the Hitler Youth motto: Live faithfully, fight bravely, and die laughing.
Goldsmit fretted around the cabin like a caged chicken. “But we’re trapped in here! It’s a forty-minute ride to the bottom!”
And the bomb had a fifteen-minute timer. I knew the score. We were in trouble.
We were going to die.
“We have to get up there!” Goldsmit said. “We have to stop him! He’ll blow us all up!”
I nodded. He was right. But I couldn’t be the one to do it.
Goldsmit didn’t wait for me to help him. He tried the doors first, but those were locked tight, of course. They didn’t want anybody accidentally opening them and falling to their death. He tried the windows next, and managed to get one of them open. He did all this while I lay curled around one of the poles in the middle of the cabin, fighting desperately not to black out.
“I opened a window, but I can’t fit!” Goldsmit said. “You could, though.”
I would have laughed if I wasn’t afraid I would throw up. “I’ll fall. I’ll die,” I told him.
“Young man, listen to me,” Goldsmit said. “He has a bomb, and if he’s as crazy as you say he is, he’ll use it. One way or the other, you’re going to die. We both are. Wouldn’t you rather die fighting?”
“I’m such a good driver, I stay as far away from cliffs as I can,” I told him, remembering my joke. Goldsmit didn’t understand. But I knew Simon would. And I also knew Simon would be telling me to get up, to confront my fear. Simon had died fighting rather than be led quietly to his death, and he’d want me to do the same.
I pulled myself up the pole to my knees. I kept my eyes on the floor.
“Did you hear the one about the Englishman, the Irishman, the Scotsman, and the Welshman who were riding in a hot-air balloon?”
“I—no,” Goldsmit said. “Is this really a time for jokes?”
I pulled myself to my feet. “The balloon was about to crash into a mountain,” I went on. “So the pilot says to them, ‘We need to lose more weight to get clear. One of you has to jump.’ ” I took a step across the cabin, going from one pole to the other. “So the Scotsman—the Scotsman, he says, ‘I do this for the glory of Scotland!’ and he jumps out of the basket.” I let go of the pole and grabbed hold of the window. Goldsmit was right—it was just big enough for me to climb through.
Outside, a white-and-brown mountain peak sailed by. The tram rumbled as it went over one of the pylons that supported the cable, and I swallowed hard.
“But the balloon wasn’t high enough yet. ‘We need to lose more weight!’ the pilot says. So the Welshman says, ‘I do this for the glory of Wales!’ and jumps out of the balloon to his death.”
“I don’t understand how any of this—” Goldsmit started to say, but I held up a hand to quiet him. I steadied my breathing and stepped up onto the bench below the window.
“ ‘We need to lose the weight of just one more person, and we’ll make it!’ the pilot says.” I reached outside the window. Felt the cold mountain air humming by. Found a ledge on the roof to pull myself up on. “So the
Irishman, he says, ‘I do this for the glory of old Ireland!’ and he picks up the Englishman and throws him over the side.”
I looked back at Goldsmit. He was frowning as though he didn’t understand.
“For the glory of old Ireland,” I said, and I hauled myself up and out the window.
Wind whipped my hair into my face. The metal ledge of the roof was cold and hard under my fingers. Bit into my skin. I worked my feet onto the windowsill and raised my head. I couldn’t see the roof because I had my eyes squeezed shut. I should probably open them at some point if I plan on actually climbing on top of the cable car, I realized. But right then, I was just fine with them closed. I was just fine standing here on top of the window, not looking.
But I didn’t have time for this. Fritz was up there, with a bomb.
Did you hear the one about … did you hear the one about …
I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t focus. I lost control of my breathing, started hyperventilating. If I didn’t move soon, I was going to fall. I was going to fall, and Fritz was going to blow Professor Goldsmit into the atoms he liked to study.
You have to open your eyes, Michael. There’s no other way to do it.
I opened my eyes. All I saw was the white painted top of the aerial tram, curving up and away from me, blue sky beyond. Good. This was good. I could do this. I could do this. Just don’t look down, I told myself. Don’t look down. Don’t look down.
I looked down.
Fir trees. Giant fir trees. And the tops of them were far below me. I could see all the way down them, all the way to the snowy forest floor.
The earth shrank away from me and came screaming at me at the same time. My brain detached from the rest of my body, floated away, and I was outside myself again, watching my body go slack, watching my hands let go, watching my feet slide off the windowsill.
Watching myself fall.
A hand grabbed mine. Held on like a pit bull. Pulled me up over the edge, until I lay dazed and addled in the middle of the cable car’s roof, Fritz panting beside me.
Fritz. Fritz had saved me from falling.
“That’s two,” Fritz said. Two times he had saved me from falling. Two times he had saved my life. “Why do I keep saving you?” Fritz asked me.
I wondered the same thing. The metal roof under me made my skin crawl. Or maybe it was how exposed I was up here on the roof, the wind a living thing that pushed at me, nudged me, trying to throw off my balance. Trying to push me over the side.
When you fell down, it was over.
I dragged myself to the arm that connected the center of the roof to the thick metal cables higher above us. It was too big to wrap my arms around, but I put my back to it, taking a little shelter from the wind.
Fritz stood in the middle of the roof, the wind pushing and pulling at his clothes. The suitcase lay on its side between his feet. He looked like Hitler’s man-god up here, Zeus standing atop Mount Olympus, a lightning bolt in his hand. Right at this moment, Fritz ruled the world. The only world that mattered to the two of us.
“I’m impressed!” Fritz said. “I know how hard it was for you to do that! You’re learning to overcome your fear! That’s good!”
“That which doesn’t destroy us—” I said, my voice weak, almost carried away on the wind.
“—makes us stronger! Yes!” Fritz said. The cable car rumbled past another pylon, and Fritz rode the lurching tram like an old sailor standing his ground in a storm. “You did that for me, Michael. You made me stronger. You taught me how to fight back. Maybe that’s why I keep saving you. Because you saved me.”
“Made you into a monster, you mean.”
Fritz frowned. “Is the wolf a monster for eating the rabbit? Is the hawk a monster for eating the mouse? All life is struggle, Michael. He who wants to live should fight for himself. He who doesn’t fight doesn’t deserve to live.”
“Might makes right,” I said.
“Yes! Exactly!” Fritz said. “This is the law of nature. This is why Germany will win!”
Slowly, I felt myself coming back to life, felt my arms and legs and head as though they were all attached to my brain again, not separate things floating away from each other. My chest still heaved from the panic of falling, but it was settling down, slowing. I had to get control. I had to be here for this. As wrong as Fritz was about everything else, he was right about one thing: If I didn’t fight for myself now, I wasn’t going to live.
“Fritz—Fritz, listen to me. You’re not a monster. I know it. That’s why you separated us from the rest of the guests at the resort, so you wouldn’t kill all those innocent people. You don’t have to kill Professor Goldsmit. You don’t have to kill me. You don’t have to kill yourself. There’s another way out of all this. You don’t have to start that timer.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Michael. I don’t think you understand,” Fritz said. “I already did.”
My body sank. If Fritz had already started the timer, we had only minutes left. Maybe seconds. How long ago had he turned it on? How long had it taken me to climb out that window? For him to pull me up on the roof? How long had I been lying here just talking to him? I had to do something!
“I should be mad at you, you know,” Fritz said calmly, as if he hadn’t just told me the bomb between his feet was ticking down to our deaths. He pulled a packet of papers from inside his shirt and held them up for me to see.
The plans for Projekt 1065.
“All that time, you weren’t really my friend,” Fritz said. “You were just using me.”
“It was like that at first,” I told him. “But I really did become your friend. I still am.”
Fritz shook his head. “No, you’re not my friend.” He waved the jet fighter plans at me. “You’re the enemy. And I beat you!”
Fritz ripped the packet of papers open and the wind tore them away. They disappeared over the side, lost forever in the Alpine forest below. All that work, gone with the wind. The gaping pit in my stomach grew wider. Now the Allies would never match the Germans in the air. The war would end before Goldsmit or anybody else could build an atomic bomb.
“I should be mad at you, but I’m not,” Fritz said. “I respect you for what you did. You’re fighting for what you believe in! There’s honor in that, even if you’re wrong.”
“There’s honor in kicking that suitcase over the side too,” I told him. “There’s honor in a fair fight, in not killing your enemies when they can’t fight back. Not murdering them.”
Fritz smiled and spread his arms wide, swaying a little in the wind. “If you want to kick this suitcase over the side, come do it.”
He was teasing me. He knew I wouldn’t do it. Knew I couldn’t do it. He was just going to stand there taunting me until the bomb went off because my fear of heights had paralyzed me.
But that was the old Michael. The Michael who thought all this was a game.
This was the Michael who knew it was real.
I pulled myself up on the arm of the cable car, drew my Hitler Youth dagger from its sheath, and took a step toward him, ready to fight.
The look of easy victory on Fritz’s face faltered. He hadn’t expected me to actually get up. He took a frightened step back, then remembered we were on top of a cable car. He did the German Look over his shoulder to get his bearings, planted his feet again, and drew his dagger. With his other hand, he picked up the suitcase with the bomb in it. He wasn’t just going to let me kick it off the roof. If I wanted to throw it over the side, I was going to have to take it from him.
Fine. Then that’s what I would do.
The tram rumbled onto another one of the support pylons, and I used that moment to charge him. I swiped at him with my dagger. He jerked back out of the way and threw the suitcase in between us like a shield. The suitcase was heavy, though, too heavy to hold up for long. His arm dropped, and in the opening I gave him a quick jab with my left fist, punching him square in the nose. He staggered a step back and dropped his dagger. It rattled across the
rooftop and fell over the side.
Fritz’s eyes filled with fear. I’d taught him how to fight, but he still wasn’t good enough to beat me.
I lunged at him with the dagger. He threw the suitcase up again, holding it with both hands. Shunk! My dagger sank four inches into the suitcase, slicing right through the leather case and into the machinery inside.
We froze—me still holding the knife, Fritz still holding the suitcase—waiting for the bomb to explode.
Time unfroze. I yanked the knife out, and Fritz reared back with the suitcase to knock me off my feet.
Fritz swung. I swung.
I ducked. Fritz didn’t.
The dagger caught him in the arm, tearing a long gash through fabric and skin. Blood sprayed from the tip of my dagger as it cut clean through, and Fritz screamed and clapped a hand to his arm.
The hand that had been holding the suitcase.
It clattered to the roof, slid down the curve, and caught on the ledge.
Fritz and I gave each other the same startled look, then dove for the suitcase at the same time. We hit the roof with a thump, and the suitcase bounced over the side and plummeted into the snowpack far below.
“No. No!” Fritz screamed. He turned and started beating wildly on me with his fists the way he had that first day he’d fought back in the classroom, not really hurting me so much as disorienting me. I dropped my dagger, and Fritz snatched it up before it slid away. He climbed to his feet.
“I’ll just climb down there and kill him myself!” Fritz told me. “You can come after me if you want. But this time I’m not going to save you when you fall!”
THOOM.
The suitcase bomb detonated far below us, the shock waves so strong I could feel them all the way up here. It didn’t do anything but surprise us. Sober us.
Or so we thought.
At first it sounded like thunder, like the creaking of a metal swing on the playground. Then it turned into a low rumble, like a plane flying high overhead. And then ten planes. And then a hundred planes. And then a waterfall, a never-ending torrent. And then we saw what it was.
