Orphan Monster Spy

by Matt Killeen

  “You’re very well-informed.”

  “I go to the right parties.”

  “This would be easier if you fed yourself,” Sarah remarked, giving up on the last few trails at the bottom of the can.

  “I can’t move my arm right now.”

  She reached out and touched his arm gently. Then she took it between her thumb and forefinger, repositioning it. He blanched and turned his head away.

  “Not better, then,” she murmured, peeling his coat away from his dressing.

  “Give it time,” he said.

  She touched the skin next to the wound. “This is . . . warm. Is that normal?”

  “Means it’s getting better.”

  Despite Sarah’s experience, she could not tell when he was lying. He might just be tired, or he might be a professional liar.

  “Cookies, then. You can put those in your own mouth. The best weevils the Reich has to offer.” She offered a napkin of powdery beige mush. “So, tell me more about the bomb. Is that going to be ready for spring?”

  “No, but sooner than I imagined.” He picked out a weevil, then another, before giving up. “A few months ago, I thought a bomb like this was . . . going to need several tons of uranium. Too big to use. That’s why Schäfer had a Zeppelin refitted to carry it.”

  “Ah, that’s where I came in.” She immediately recoiled from the memory of that day and began to pack up the picnic.

  “But now Professor Meitner thinks they’ll need just a few kilograms. A bomb you could drop from a plane . . . or even carry.”

  “You’d want to fly away very fast.”

  “I have a friend at Siemens. He says they’re working on planes without pilots. Rockets. You know what a rocket is?”

  “Fireworks.” She almost laughed.

  “Oh, so much bigger than that . . .” He winced. “I need to rest. You should go back.”

  Sarah didn’t think he looked too good. “How is the book?”

  “Ideal, thank you. I found a perfect use for the Führer’s prose.”

  “Oh really?”

  “Like the revolutionary Soft-Tuff ScotTissue Towel: no lint, no tear, no waste. It set a new standard for softness and absorbency, yet was amazingly stronger in service . . .”

  * * *

  • • •

  The stick hit the wood with a crack. Sarah’s eyes snapped open, and she jerked into a sitting position. She looked dead ahead, aware that a trail of dribble was running under her chin from a crusty deposit on the corner of her mouth.

  “Were you sleeping?” Fräulein Langefeld growled. “Were you actually so impertinent that you’d fall asleep in my lesson?”

  The room was beyond silent. Even the clock seemed to have stopped ticking. The floorboards were embarrassed to creak as Langefeld readjusted her weight.

  Lie? Silence? Apology?

  “Sorry, Fräulein.”

  The stick struck the desk again. “No one said you could speak, kleine Hure.”

  Silence.

  To her horror, Sarah began to shake. Her veins seemed to be filling up with fire.

  Do not cry.

  It might work . . .

  Not with her.

  “Stand,” Langefeld commanded. Sarah stood, her chair shrieking and clunking into the desk behind her. Without the desk Sarah felt defenseless. The teacher disappeared from view, counting time with the rod against the floor.

  “Who thinks it’s acceptable to doze during my classes? Liebrich?”

  “No, Fräulein.”

  “Posipal?”

  “No, Fräulein.”

  “Mauser?”

  “Erm . . . no,” quavered a little voice.

  “What?”

  Sarah closed her eyes. No . . .

  “No, Fräulein,” the Mouse said, her panic audible.

  “Do you agree with Haller? You think we should all have a Schlummer in my lesson?”

  Sarah watched Langefeld towering over the Mouse’s desk. Only the girl’s quivering legs were visible.

  Sarah looked to the front again and kicked her chair so it made another shriek. She heard Langefeld turn behind her.

  “You’re a bad influence, Haller. You’ve got a stinking little Polack like the Mouse all confused. I won’t have it.”

  The pain across the back of her legs was like touching a hot stove. It lapped up and down her thighs like boiling bathwater. A low groan escaped from Sarah’s mouth to fill the space left by the cry she smothered.

  She’d been doing this for four days? Five?

  “You can stand for the rest of the lesson. That should keep you awake.” Langefeld came into view as she walked back to the front of the class. In Sarah’s head, unbidden, she saw herself swinging a rock at the teacher’s head.

  TWENTY-TWO

  “YOU SMELL BAD.”

  “Well, this hotel room is missing many modern conveniences.”

  “Shall I call housekeeping for you?”

  “I don’t have any change for . . . the tip.”

  Sarah approached the Captain with the candle. He was sitting up, but he was rimed in sweat. Little wisps of heat seemed to be leeching away from him in the winter air.

  “Well, this is our last sea-view room,” Sarah burbled with faux jollity.

  “You can barely see it at this distance. I’ll report you to the Board of Trade . . .”

  “That’s a very British-sounding organization, Herr Haller. Wherever did you ever hear of such a thing?”

  He smiled, but in slow motion. Something was very wrong. The smell wasn’t wet straw. It wasn’t human or horse dung. Not sweat or urine.

  “Just leave the tray on the table, please.”

  “Some water first, I think.”

  He was hot to the touch and gulped down the water.

  “Let’s see your wound,” she asked.

  “No, let’s not.” His reply was too quick, and the effort made him cough.

  She lifted his coat lapel and pushed the shirt away from his shoulder. The dressing was stained and wet. This was the source of the smell: a stench like meat starting to rot. She began to unwind the bandage, slowly at first but increasingly quickly as something greenish white oozed from under the gauze. The last piece slid away. She swallowed hard, gagging.

  “It’s infected,” she whispered. She could feel something leaking out of the box and coiling round it.

  “Now she’s a doctor, too.”

  “We should have taken the bullet out.” The panic took ahold, its tail rattling.

  “Hindsight is a wonderful thing.”

  The panic slithered up her neck. “What do we do?”

  “Oh, Sarah of Elsengrund, not even you can stop an infection.” He said this gently and without malice.

  She seized on the loose emotion and squeezed. “We have to do something . . . I can take you to a doctor . . .” She was gabbling, not thinking. She looked down at him, prone and pale. “I could bring one here.”

  “You don’t think the Sicherheitspolizei haven’t been looking for someone with a hole and an SS round in them?”

  “So what if they know? It’s better than dying here!”

  “Don’t be naïve,” he snapped. “You’ve seen what these people do.” He sagged and took hold of her hand with his good arm. “What they do to the innocent. What do you think would happen to me, an enemy, a spy? I’d be lucky if they shot me in the face to start with. Besides . . .” He squeezed her hand. “You need a way out, and I have to buy you time.”

  Sarah felt the world fracture and fall away in pieces around her. She was the little girl waiting for her father to visit as her mother sobbed. She stood next to her mother’s Mercedes, the only person she loved in the world inside, with a hole where the back of her head should be. She heard the dogs coming for her across the broken
glass . . .

  No.

  She jumped to her feet, as if doused with a bucket of water.

  “No. No, you’re not. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “We played the game. We lost. Call this a tactical withdrawal.”

  Her head shook slowly from side to side. “No. What do you need? What would a doctor do?” she demanded.

  “Sarah . . .”

  “What would he do?” she screamed.

  “He’d clean the wound, maybe take out the bullet, but you’d need prontosil or some other kind of sulfonamide to kill the infection.”

  “Where will I find sulfonamide?” She seized on this and dug her nails into her palms.

  “Jesus, girl, listen to yourself!” he shouted.

  “A doctor? An Apotheke? In town? If you don’t tell me, I’ll just look for it . . .”

  “You need to get back to Berlin,” he began again, more calmly. “Take the money from my coat pocket . . .”

  “No!”

  “It’s just enough, as long as you don’t eat . . .” He kept talking.

  “No. Are you not hearing me?”

  “Have the concierge let you into the apartment . . .”

  Sarah covered her ears as she left.

  * * *

  • • •

  There was enough moon to paint everything with a silver brush. The leaves shimmered, and the grass was like finely woven silk.

  Sarah sat on the fence and watched her breath curl away, wondering how something so beautiful could exist while everything else was rotting, fetid as the Captain’s gunshot wound. She had places to be, things to look for, sleep to catch up on, but she simply couldn’t move. She wasn’t even comfortable there. The wood bit into legs still tender from the stick. She let the pain happen, felt its contours and peaks, holding onto it, controlling it.

  The way out was right there, in the barn. All she had to do was walk back and take it. Ahead of her, more danger, more pain, a scenic train ride through a warped and twisted amusement park, all fear and no end. To go back to Rothenstadt, to find the town and steal supplies, all with no guarantee of anything but a corpse at the end? She sat on the fence, doing neither, as if she could sit there forever.

  A distant whinnying carried through the dark. Sarah couldn’t see it, but she knew it was her horse. You didn’t leave me, it seemed to say.

  You were a diversion.

  No, you waited when you could have run. They’d lost you.

  Sarah wondered. Could she have left it? Any more than she could leave the Captain? Or the Mouse? Could she leave something as lost and vulnerable as herself?

  The horse whinnied again.

  You’re welcome, it said.

  * * *

  • • •

  The doctor’s office was leather-bound, padded, varnished. Old but expensive. The front door was heavy, and the hall smelled of privilege. A well-dressed woman with graying temples shuffled paperwork behind an antique desk under the watchful eye of the Führer on the wall behind her.

  “Excuse me, madam. I’ve been sent by NPEA Rothenstadt to pick up some medicines and supplies.” She was flawlessly polite and formal. She had considered borrowing the Ice Queen’s bullying arrogance, but one look at the receptionist dissuaded her.

  “That’s rather irregular. Why didn’t they call?” She was stern, organized, irritated.

  Yes, why didn’t they call, dumme Schlampe?

  Sarah had to make her want rid of this Napola girl by giving her what she wanted.

  “Oh, I think they’re in something of a rush. They wanted to make sure they received everything today.”

  “Is there an emergency?”

  The lie spilt out easily but lay on the floor around her feet, ready to be tripped over. “Well, there’s a girl who scratched her leg up pretty badly a week or so ago. I think it’s gone a bit . . . schmutzig.” Sarah made a face. “The nurse wanted some . . . prontosil?” The woman looked blankly at her. “Suff . . . sulf . . . sulfano . . .”

  “Sulfonamide.”

  “Oh yes, that’s it.” Sarah beamed.

  “Expensive.”

  “They said to invoice the school, and they’ll pay by return.”

  “That’s what they always say.” The woman rolled her eyes. “And Frau Klose sent you?”

  Trap.

  “The nurse? I don’t know her name. She didn’t send me personally. Fräulein Langefeld sent me.”

  “You have a list?”

  “No, I memorized it.”

  The woman seemed to make up her mind. “Come with me . . . What was your name?”

  “Liebrich. Marta Liebrich.” Sarah hoped to be long gone before they asked her dorm leader any questions, but she could feel the deceptions piling up. Maybe she should have just come in through the window?

  The woman led Sarah through a windowless corridor and asked her to wait on a bench in a small wood-paneled room. Sarah had the uneasy sensation of being cornered. Were they calling the school right now? Would they find Liebrich safe and sound in the dormitory? Would they call attendance and discover Haller was the one gone? She could talk her way out of anything, but she couldn’t do much in here. She needed to know what was happening on the other side of the door.

  Breathe.

  They’ve got me. How will I ever explain this? What am I doing?

  There was a deep click, and the door swung slowly open. In the doorway stood the school’s nurse.

  “The girl with bleeding eyes,” she said, blocking the door.

  “Oh, Frau Klose,” stammered Sarah. “I . . .”

  Say something. Talk your way out of this then.

  “You’re not Liebrich. She’s the Schlafsaalführerin in the Third Year, the one that’s getting fat. You’re Haller.”

  Cry. Start crying.

  Shut up.

  “Yes—that’s right—but I came in her place. I didn’t want to get her in trouble.”

  Frau Klose made a dismissive noise with her lips. “Gówno prawda—and I asked for sulfa drugs, did I?”

  “Fräulein Langefeld told me—”

  “That stupid debil wouldn’t know a medicine if she could beat on it with a stick. Stop lying to me,” she snarled.

  Cry, cry now.

  “I’m not—”

  Frau Klose grunted, grabbed Sarah by the wrist, and, with an excruciating tug, dragged her down the corridor.

  “No, that hurts . . . stop,” Sarah cried, the desired tears welling up.

  The nurse flung open another door and manhandled Sarah into an examination room. In the time it took Sarah to regain her balance, the only door was closed and locked. Frau Klose folded her large arms, her whole stance dripping with distaste. “Talk.”

  Sarah let a tear slide down her cheek.

  Frau Klose tutted. “That won’t work on me,” she jeered. “You people don’t have feelings.”

  She knows. She knows that you’re Jewish. That’s why she gave you a hard time.

  So why didn’t she report me?

  Think, dumme Schlampe.

  The tiled floor was too slippery to run past her. The objects on the shelves were too far away. She felt the couch behind her: bolted to the floor.

  No, think.

  “Well? Shall I just call the school and let them find out what’s going on?”

  “No—” Sarah spluttered. Too fast.

  “What are you little dziwki up to?” Her loathing turned into an appalled curiosity. “Stealing drugs now? You don’t have enough of everything?”

  Dziwki . . .

  “I need some for a friend,” Sarah said desperately.

  “You don’t have friends. You’re parasites.”

  She knows! She thinks you’re a Jewish parasite, what else could she mean?

  No. Think.<
br />
  “She’s . . .”

  Dziwki. Debil. Gówno prawda. Klose.

  Like sunshine from behind a cloud, she realized where the nurse was from.

  “He’s hurt,” Sarah whispered in broken Polish. “Needs sulfonamide. Or going to die.”

  After a brief moment of surprise, the nurse recovered, but something in her demeanor altered. “Who?”

  “A friend,” whispered Sarah firmly. Think now. “He is a . . .” She switched back into German. “A poacher? Kłusownik? He needed food. They shot him.”

  “Poor place, this. Nobody has a full belly all the time.” She was unconvinced. “They don’t all steal.”

  “He’s very hungry,” she finished weakly.

  “He’s Jewish?”

  Sarah couldn’t help reacting and struggled to create the right response. “No,” she began.

  The nurse raised a hand. “Fine. Have it your way.”

  She walked over to the shelves and began pulling boxes and objects into a leather bag. Sarah was uncertain what had just happened.

  “Is the bullet out?” Klose had a knife in her hand.

  “No.”

  The nurse dropped the scalpel and a bottle of something into the bag.

  Sarah couldn’t reconcile the nurse’s mood with her sudden, unexpected victory. The flickers of hope seemed misplaced, but it did look like she was getting help. Then her curiosity got the better of her. “You’re Polish?”

  Klose wheeled and for a moment seemed like she would strike Sarah. Then she laughed bitterly. “No, girl, I’m German. Or I was. Now I’m a second-class German, a German that Germany doesn’t want anymore, thanks to people like you.” She closed the bag. “Are you ready?”

  “Ready for what?”

  “To take me to your poacher.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Everything looked different in daylight. The barn looked fragile and horribly exposed. Treading the same paths seemed reckless. To bring another person, fatal.

  “You were lucky to find this place when you did. In spring this barn would be crawling with lambs and farmhands.” Frau Klose didn’t sound impressed. She looked around. “Where exactly would he have been poaching?”