Orphan Monster Spy

by Matt Killeen

  “You’ve said it yourself. You’re not a Jew, not really. It’s just acting. You can act, can’t you?”

  “‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players,’” Sarah said in English, holding her hands up in surrender.

  The Captain smiled despite himself. “How do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Shakespeare. English. Accent recognition. Any of it.”

  “When the laws changed in nineteen thirty-four, my mother wasn’t allowed onstage anymore and couldn’t work. We’d lost all our money in the crash, so she schooled me herself. Languages, accents, acting, listening to records of speeches, nothing really useful . . . but she was the truly gifted one. Polish, Czech, English, French, Dutch, even Russian. She was amazing. I was eight or nine before I realized that most people only speak one or two languages. In the end, it was all she could do to . . .” Sarah stopped, feeling hot behind the eyes, like she had just given something away. She plowed on. “I didn’t have friends. I had books. We had a library in the house in Berlin and nothing else to do.”

  “What about your father?”

  “I don’t know anything about my father,” she said hurriedly. “He left a lot of military books. Different eras, the Chinese, the Hindus . . . every culture seems to love killing. Do you believe you can know people from their library, Captain Floyd?”

  “I don’t know. Who am I?”

  “A liar and a trickster.”

  “Correct.” He nodded and slowly smiled.

  * * *

  • • •

  Preparations.

  Sarah woke as the box room door flew open. By the time she had opened her eyes, rough hands had pulled her by the arms from the cot and thrown her into a corner. She hit the walls, a jumble of arms and legs, collapsing onto the carpet.

  A powerful light shone in her face, and it stung her eyes. She covered them, but flashes of red still danced in the darkness of her fingers.

  “What is your name?” The voice dripped with menace.

  “What . . .” she mumbled, disorientated.

  “Your name,” screamed the intruder.

  “S . . . sula. Ursula Haller,” Sarah managed.

  The light went out, and before she could open her eyes again, the door closed, leaving her alone in the darkness.

  * * *

  • • •

  Diagrams and plans.

  “I don’t really understand.” Sarah shook her head at the notes and arrows.

  “You don’t really need to.”

  Sarah sucked at her teeth and tried a different tack. “All right, this bomb . . . Lise Meitner’s Pampelmusebombe, the Grapefruit Bomb that Schäfer is making. Why are you—why are we—why is it important for Germany? There have always been bigger and bigger bombs.”

  “Not like this,” the Captain said with great intensity, gesturing to emphasize his words. “One little bomb could destroy a city. Instantly. Can you imagine that?”

  She still couldn’t. She couldn’t envisage any bomb, for that matter. Then she remembered the flash and heat of the Captain’s improvised explosion at the station. Something about the memory made her want to recoil from it. “No. Not really.”

  “Look at it this way. If you flattened half of London, or Paris, and you forget about the dead,” the Captain continued, seemingly pulling the ideas together as he spoke, “there’d be, what? A million injured people? How would you treat them? There aren’t enough hospitals. How would you put out the fires of thousands of homes? The country would collapse in a day.”

  Sarah thought about this, the lines for the doctor after Kristallnacht, when the storm troopers wrecked the Jewish neighborhoods. Still, the idea was too fantastic, like something from an H. G. Wells novel—Martians tramping over shattered London in their three-legged machines.

  “But a whole city? All at once? With the buildings, the people, the women and children . . . No one would do that. How could anyone?”

  The Captain seemed as if he was trying to remember what he was saying. Then he stood. “Let me show you something.”

  From his secret office and shelves of incriminating books, he brought out a French magazine, Cahiers d’Art. He stood in front of Sarah and flicked through it as he spoke. “I was in Spain, two years ago, during their civil war. On the one side, the Republicans—”

  “The communists?”

  “The elected government,” replied the Captain with irritation. “On the other, the Nationalists. A fascist military rebellion. Just a year in, things were not going well for the Republicans. The Nationalists could call on the Luftwaffe, the German air force, and that was decisive.”

  “Why?” Sarah didn’t look up. He was leaving things out as usual.

  “Why what?”

  “Why were you in Spain? What were you doing, exactly?”

  The Captain rolled his eyes. “I was there on business. I found myself in a town in the Basque Country, about thirty kilometers behind the front lines. There were no Republican troops stationed there, so it was a safe place to hole up for a while.”

  He found what he was looking for and handed the open journal to Sarah. She didn’t recognize the painting on the pages, but the strange, angular, chopped-up style reminded her of Picasso. Unlike the jumbled, colorful, and cheerful musicians and dancers from her mother’s books, though, this piece was painfully monochrome—gray, black, dirty white—and flat, like bits of newspaper pasted onto a board. It could have been drawn by a child, but that made the images more unsettling. Order had broken down, and chaos had torn the canvas into stark pieces. The screaming horses were people, the people were bulls, crying or dying, crushed under hoof and foot. A building burned, a crying mother cradled a dead child, twisted, shrieking. Panic, pain, fear, and grief. As her eyes moved from terrible image to terrible image, the Captain talked, his voice emotionless at first.

  “It was Monday. Because of the war, it wasn’t officially market day, but the farmers had to sell their produce and the townspeople needed to buy food, so the main square was full anyway. Refugees from the fighting resting, gathered around their few belongings. A few soldiers, who were probably deserters. Late that afternoon, the church bells rang, signaling an air raid. Everyone crowded into the refugios, little more than cellars, but no one was worried. Why would the Nationalists attack a town of civilians?

  “But they did.” He grew less objective, more involved, more moved. “One plane came over and dropped its bomb load right in the center of town. Everybody scrambled out of their shelters and ran to help. People under rubble, trapped in burning buildings, no one knew what to do. Farmers and priests pulling at the bricks with bare hands . . . So, after a few minutes of this, a whole squadron of the Luftwaffe—Italians, Condor Legion, whatever—flew over and emptied everything they had onto the town. Chaos. People tried to get back into the shelters, but the refuges were destroyed by the first attack. Flames, dust, noise. With nowhere to go, the people ran for the fields. A stampede, the small and the weak were trodden on . . .”

  The Captain’s voice sounded strained. After a moment he continued. “As they ran away, waves of fighter planes swooped down and strafed them with bullets and grenades. Men, women, children . . . chased into the crops and slaughtered like grouse on a hunt.”

  “That’s . . . horrible,” Sarah murmured, conscious of how inadequate the words were.

  “That’s nothing.” His voice was full of derision. “The planes had hardly gone, just ten or twenty minutes of crying and screaming and trying to stop the blood with your hands, staring at the jagged shapes of smoking buildings, when we heard the low hum. Bombers, moving across the sky in threes, carving lines across the town for two and a half hours. Explosives shattered and flattened the buildings. Firebombs rained down like confetti, setting everything they touched alight. Animals ran burning and screaming through the streets. Me
n lit up like torches staggered among the wreckage, beyond help. When they were done, the town was gone. A skeleton was all that remained, filled with sixteen hundred corpses and nine hundred maimed, ruined people.”

  “Why did they do that?” Sarah felt sick. “Why would anyone do that?”

  “To terrorize the Basques by destroying their capital. To block the Republican retreat. To test out their new bombing technique. Maybe they were trying to hit the bridge outside town and got lost. It doesn’t matter why. What matters is they wanted to do it, so they did. It’s that simple. If it fits their purpose, they will do it.” He tapped the painting. “That was just twenty-two tons of explosive. Professor Meitner thinks Schäfer’s bomb would be more powerful than five hundred tons of dynamite. One bomb. The people who did this, who murdered these people, wiped this town from the map. If they could destroy Paris or London with one bomb? They wouldn’t hesitate.”

  There was silence. Sarah looked at the painting one last time and closed the magazine, sealed the horrors away inside. Something else bothered her.

  “Twenty-two tons of explosive. Exactly twenty-two tons. How do you know that?”

  The Captain had his back turned to her. His shoulders twitched and then were still. “I sold them the bombs,” he said.

  * * *

  • • •

  Preparations.

  It was 4:00 a.m. when the Captain kicked the door open and shone a powerful flashlight on the camp bed.

  It was empty.

  From a dark corner behind him came a voice. “I’m bored now. I think we’re ready.”

  The Captain nodded. “Good night, Ursula,” he said as he closed the door.

  “Good night, Onkel.”

  EIGHT

  October 4, 1939

  “BUT I DON’T like other children,” she complained. “They don’t like me. That’s the flaw in your little plan.”

  “Then be someone who does like children. Be someone who is likable.”

  “I might as well wish I could fly.”

  “Just concentrate on snotty self-confidence. That you can do.”

  She pulled a face.

  “It’s just school,” he added in a more conciliatory tone.

  Sarah hadn’t gone to school. At the start it was a choice. Her mother thought she was too good, too special, too important to mix with children of die Arbeiterklasse. It was only later that she wasn’t allowed to mix with other children. The irony of this was not lost on Sarah. First she had tutors and a governess, then as the money started to run out, her mother taught Sarah herself. This began as an occasional treat and in well-organized and thoughtful sessions, but as her mother’s own work seeped away, Sarah’s education became incessant and frustratingly random. History came from thick Moroccan-bound and dusty tomes on ancient battles, geography from maps of lost empires, and the many, many languages from her mother’s acidic tongue.

  And acting. Endless, day and night, unceasing. How to deceive, convince, emote, and project. How to focus attention and lose it on demand. How to be someone else until she didn’t know where she ended and the performance began. Sarah began to realize that she was being trained for a career on the stage that she would never have, to play roles in countries she wouldn’t travel to, for people who would never see her. A sense of absence had pricked at the skin under her eyes and at the bridge of her nose. She knew that being with others would make it go away.

  She had loathed her loneliness and loathed it now. It was a sign of weakness.

  NPEA Rothenstadt was a gothic monstrosity: part castle, part mansion, the diseased imagining of Count Dracula and Dr. Frankenstein in the depths of the forest. It would have been comical in the sunshine without the massive flag of the Third Reich draped over the entrance. It dripped genuine menace. As the Captain’s car approached it down the tree-lined avenue, the towers seemed to reach up into the sky like claws, the red flag a tongue. Sarah’s impression that she was walking into the jaws of a sleeping beast was unshakable.

  Use the fear. Fear is an energy. Break it up and build something new.

  The car purred into position outside the door. “You get in. You ingratiate yourself”—Sarah opened her mouth, but the Captain silenced her by holding up a hand—“with the target by whatever means necessary. Other than that, enjoy yourself.”

  “I don’t enjoy myself,” she said coldly.

  “Then pretend to enjoy yourself.” He gestured to the school. “Shall we?”

  * * *

  • • •

  After the brightness of the day, the entrance hall was a gloomy cave of dark wood paneling and grand staircases, murky portraits and unlit candles. The ceiling stretched up and vanished into darkness that hung like a low rain cloud. Despite the veneer of splendor, the prevailing smell was carbolic soap and boiled cabbage. In the center of this hallway stood a single tall girl of about sixteen in the uniform of the BDM. She was lit by one shaft of bright sunlight that fell from an unseen window far above, and her braided blonde hair shone. Her polished shoes stood exactly within a white square, Sarah noticed, like the work of a meticulous chess player.

  “Heil Hitler.” She saluted, and after Sarah raised a cursory arm, she looked at the Captain and waited.

  A clock tocked in the silence. After what seemed like too long, he replied, “Indeed. Heil.”

  “Herr Haller?”

  “Yes.”

  “You will follow me, please.” She marched away. The Captain turned to Sarah. The corners of his mouth flickered, and a fire danced in his eyes for just a moment. “Shall we?”

  Sarah raised her eyebrows in admonition and waited for him to move. She made a small gesture with her hand, and he strode quickly after the girl. Their footsteps clacked and reverberated in the brown darkness.

  “Herr Bauer wishes to apologize for the lighting. Preparations for tonight’s vigil require it.” Hers was a voice accustomed to being obeyed.

  “Then why is he apologizing?” the Captain replied. The girl took a misstep but recovered quickly, her cold expression reasserting itself over the sudden fluster.

  “Herr Bauer is obligated on occasion to make allowances for outsiders.”

  The Captain pulled a face like he had been slapped and flashed a grin at Sarah. Stop it, she thought. No, she reconsidered. He’s being Herr Haller.

  Who are you being?

  A shocked and nervous little girl.

  You stop it.

  “Wait, please,” said the girl, and she walked the last few meters to a large oak door alone.

  The Captain placed a finger on the small of Sarah’s back and tapped gently. “Curtain. Break a leg.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Sarah knew better than to judge by appearances. Young and old, tall and short, ugly and beautiful, fit and crippled—Sarah knew them to be equally capable of goodness, or in her experience, equally vicious and horrible. The headmaster, Bauer, was fat. But despite herself, Sarah found him unbearably so.

  He was not comfortably plump or slightly overfed, not jolly, round, nor chubby as some people can be, but excruciatingly bulbous. It was a fatness that looked like it came from a deliberate, sustained, and highly disciplined overconsumption that had no hint of pleasure in it. The unceasing sense of hunger that had been a feature of the last few years yawned to life inside Sarah, and she knew instantly that she loathed this man. She tried to picture the quantities of food necessary for such an experiment, but here her imagination failed her. The tiny little girl inside her howled and stamped her feet at the injustice, at the waste.

  A line of sweat was gathering on Herr Bauer’s top lip as he glared at Sarah over his steepled fingers. She had no desire to make eye contact and instead watched the uniformed officer behind him. He, in turn, was absurdly thin, little more than a skeleton covered in skin. The contrast couldn’t have been more pronounced. He
was staring straight ahead with such conviction that Sarah was tempted to glance around to see what she was missing. The silence dragged on, and she became intensely aware of her hands. Should they be together? No, they should be loose to indicate calm. Don’t move them, dumme Schlampe. The headmaster sighed heavily.

  “Herr Haller. We appreciate and respect your desire to have your . . . niece . . . admitted to this school. We acknowledge the implied compliment. However, I cannot see any reason why we should accommodate you.”

  Sarah frowned. This was supposed to be the easy bit. It hadn’t occurred to her that they might simply not want her.

  Don’t let it show, remember who you’re supposed to be.

  “Herr Bauer, this is . . . awkward.” The Captain sat back and looked away as if collecting himself. “Your school came recommended at the highest level. I was only yesterday talking to Herr Bormann—”

  The headmaster raised a hand and interrupted. “Herr Haller, spare me your party connections, your wife’s salon guest list, and family connections to the Führer. Everyone who wants to send his daughter here claims special status in the new order on the flimsiest of evidence. Do you know how many brothers Hermann Göring must have if everything I’ve heard in this room is true?”

  “He has nine siblings. I imagine that makes for quite an extended family, Herr Bauer,” the Captain answered.

  Herr Bauer opened his hands and made a dismissive gesture. “My point remains, I invite everyone to make that angry telephone call to his powerful friends, should those friends actually exist. This school is exclusively for the cream of the next generation of German women. Your niece’s provenance is basic at best.” He fingered the papers on his desk with indifference. “Your importance to the Reich is equally nebulous. I’m sure”—he rolled his eyes theatrically—“that you have been blessed financially and your munificence would be boundless, but it isn’t about that, is it? It’s about purity, intelligence and brilliance, strength and power. Exactly what does your frankly undersized niece have to offer us?”