Blood for Blood

by Ryan Graudin

  “Anything can happen,” one of the Reichssender hosts had said, “when racers are desperate enough.”

  This was exactly what the real Felix, watching from the tiny family room in Frankfurt, feared. He knew he should keep his promise to Adele, stay inside just a little longer. But his nerves were getting the better of him, and he just couldn’t. Three weeks of watching, waiting, not knowing whether his sister was dead on the road had worn Felix thin. He needed a distraction that wasn’t the Reichssender, so he’d come at the loneliest hour to the loneliest place, where only the crows might see him. Where only the dead might hear…

  Though it was not May 2, Felix kept to the other tradition of his annual vigil: talking. He sat by Martin’s grave and told his brother about every Wolfe and the year they’d had. There was Mama’s sadness—shut-door days that piled into themselves—and long pre–Axis Tour hours in the garage with Papa, who could no longer hold a wrench like he used to. In the wake of Adele’s departure, both symptoms had grown worse. Neither of his parents would look at the television screen, for fear of flash-forward ghosts, though every night at supper, Papa asked for news of Adele’s standings. His voice was quiet, his eyes crinkled with pride.

  Felix—tender-treading ambassador that he was—offered his parents the highly edited version. He left out the sudden drop in Adele’s time on the road from Hanoi to Shanghai. Georg Rust’s ruined life and severed leg were definitely not mentioned.…

  All these things he saved for Martin. “She’s somewhere in Japan now, second only to Victor Löwe.”

  Anything can happen.…

  Felix needed to keep talking, stay distracted, not think about it. But the only Wolfe left to talk about was Felix himself. And—as it happened every year—when Felix reached his own story, he never knew what to say. He supposed if Martin really could hear him (somehow, somewhere), then his brother knew everything already.

  In fact, he was probably watching Adele now. Seeing everything Felix couldn’t.

  “Keep her safe.” It was not the dead’s job, but Felix tasked it anyway. His words climbed up into air, sky, nothing.

  Not even the wind answered.

  II

  Japan in the springtime was breathtaking. Its skies wiped clear of clouds and roads lined with flowering cherry trees, pink and white blossoms dusting the pavement like snow.

  The Axis Tour of 1955 marked Luka Löwe’s fourth drive down this very stretch of asphalt. But it was the first time he’d really noticed the beauty of the trees. Maybe this was because he was going a touch slower than normal, keeping pace with the racer beside him.

  Felix Wolfe. This was how the rest of the competitors (and officials and the Reichssender) knew him. But—as Luka had discovered so abruptly in a washroom at the Rome checkpoint—he was a she. Adele was her name, and a beautiful one at that. It rolled off the tongue so easily, and Luka loved saying it. He couldn’t, mostly, because of Adele’s secret (the one he swore to keep), but at night, when it was just the two of them camped out under the stars, he said it as often as he could: Adeleadeleadele. Until his tongue was tired and the sound of the name lost all meaning.

  But it was still beautiful.

  Beautiful name. Beautiful girl. Beautiful world full of cherry trees.

  Luka was not driving as fast as he had during the previous years, but something inside him felt like it was flying. The joy of getting a red bicycle times ten. Ever since discovering Adele’s secret and agreeing to keep it, ever since forging an alliance with her, this emotion had been building inside him. Up, up, up, to the point of bursting.

  He couldn’t not feel it. He tried everything he could not to show it, but it was almost impossible to stop the twitch of his mouth—smiles the mere thought of Adele conjured. Whenever Luka sat down in front of the Reichssender cameras, though, he imagined his father was watching. That kept the filmed grins to a minimum.

  There were no cameras on this stretch of road. Hardly any other racers either. (Most had stopped for rations over an hour earlier.) Nothing to stop him from grinning ear to ear like a sloppy drunk as he rode alongside this girl, who was so very different from any of the fräuleins he’d known in Hamburg.

  Adele revved her engine just enough to pull a few meters ahead, one hand free, gesturing to the side of the road. Then she slowed her Zündapp to a halt, parking it in a fairy-tale landscape of spent cherry blossoms.

  He didn’t need to break, but a deep part of Luka wanted to. They were on the outskirts of Osaka, a little over five hundred kilometers from the finish line—hours away after weeks of riding—and he was far enough ahead of the other racers that a short pit stop would do no harm. Even Adele was a good ten minutes behind him in cumulative time. Luka would have to part ways with her soon, pulling ahead just enough to make sure his entrance into Tokyo was a triumphant one.

  Everything would change, once he won. The Reichssender would be all over him, and Adele Wolfe would be forced to melt silently back into her Frankfurt life. It might be weeks, months before he’d see her again, which was why Luka decided to pump his brakes.

  He parked his own Zündapp just a meter from the road, unclipping his helmet and uncramping his legs. Adele stretched her svelte frame as she hopped off her motorcycle, removed her own helmet, and gave her short Hitler Youth hair a shake. Luka couldn’t help but stare (beautiful girl, moonstruck thoughts) and wonder how he’d ever thought those bold cheekbones and comet-trail eyebrows belonged to a boy.

  Adele caught him staring and grinned at him through her racing goggles. The smile was contagious. Luka couldn’t help but return it.

  “You wanted to stop and smell the sakura?” he asked.

  “They are pretty.” Her gloved fingers reached up to the nearest branch, twisting a flower free. Its petals quivered as she held them up to her nose. Inhaled. “Not much of a smell, though.”

  Luka watched the blossom, so close to her lips, and wished he could be in its place.…

  Adele blew an extra-hard breath out, which sent the cherry blossom tumbling to the ground. “You got any of that jerky left? All I have are protein bars.”

  Luka knew he did, somewhere in the depths of his panniers. He turned to unbuckle them.

  “I could use a little extra fuel before Tokyo,” Adele explained.

  Tokyo. If Luka shut his eyes, he could feel it: the cheering crowds and smooth tarmac. The ripple of his Zündapp’s wheels as he rolled over the finish line, repeated his triumph of 1953.

  Luka Löwe. Double victor. Hero of the Third Reich. Tough as leather, hard as steel. Worthy.

  He was so busy imagining this scene, digging through his possessions for the jerky packet, that he didn’t give a second thought to the footsteps behind him—SMASH. PAIN. Bluuuuuuuuuuur.

  BLACK.

  When Luka woke, the cherry tree branches smeared above him: a windless pink haze. His temple throbbed, and when his hand ventured to the back of his skull, there was a stinging that made him string together several non-mother-approved words. The fingertips returned weeping red.

  He hadn’t known a head could hurt this much.

  When Luka finally stood, the spinning above him moved into his stomach. And back up again. He was still wiping bile from his lips when he found himself looking for Adele. (Was she okay? Had she been attacked, too?) But there was no fräulein behind him. No motorcycle either. Just tender-colored blossoms, crushed by the tread of Adele’s tires. Luka stood still for several minutes, taking in the emptiness of the roadside. Trying not to move. Trying not to vomit again.

  He hadn’t known a heart could hurt this much.

  III

  Yael crouched in the barn loft, body pressed to a hay bale. Knife in hand. Still, still as she eyed her target: felt fedora and black trench coat. There was a five-meter drop and a two-meter leap between them. Enough to put even her hardened muscles to the test. She edged as quietly as she could to the ledge, her blade curved downward.

  —BE SILENT BE SWIFT BE SOARING—

  She
jumped.

  It was a full leap, calculated to exact degrees of strength and distance. Yael landed a breath away from the coattails, knees unlocked and forgiving. The knife kept moving as the rest of her stopped, plunging deep into the fabric. One, two, three quick strokes to her target’s vitals: kidney, liver, heart.

  The dummy fell face-first. Straw innards poking from the holes she’d put there. Yael gave its gut a sharp, rustling kick and looked over at Vlad. Her trainer leaned against the cow stall, arms crossed. His face was as stony as he’d taught hers to be.

  “It was a good jump,” he grunted. “You hit all the right marks. Technically flawless.”

  “But?” Yael could sense the word coming—in the brevity of his sentences, the clip of his stance—so she decided to preempt it.

  Vlad stepped forward. “Straw is just straw. Blood is a different matter.”

  Yael sheathed her blade and looked down at the dummy, trying to imagine the different matter spilling out at her feet. “You think I’ll freeze up? I’ve seen blood before.”

  (Blood, too much blood. Rivers, floods, and seas of blood.)

  “I know.” Her trainer’s voice went soft.

  “I won’t hesitate, when it comes to it.” Yael’s eyes lingered on the swastika badge Vlad had pinned onto the dummy’s coat for effect. “You’ve trained me too well for that.”

  And he had. Vlad was a master at killing—he’d done it time and time again over the course of two wars and three decades for two different governments. During her three years on his farm, the ex-operative had taught Yael everything he knew about the art. Shooting, stabbing, strangling. The last thing she expected him to say was this: “Don’t be so eager. It’s no easy thing, killing a person.”

  “The National Socialists have no problem with it,” Yael said, voice harsh with blood thoughts. The ones she tried, so very hard, not to dwell on. The ones that always caught up with her anyway.

  “Do you really want to be like them?”

  Vlad’s question stung almost as much as the blows he’d dealt her in their first-year sparring sessions. It took all of Yael’s training not to flinch or bristle or yell at her trainer for asking something like this. For even thinking something like this.

  Like them. She was not like them. She was never like them. Wasn’t that why there were numbers on her arm? Wasn’t that why she was fighting?

  Yael gestured down at the dummy instead. “Then why teach me any of this?”

  Late-morning sunlight slanted through the barn walls’ gaps, filled in the faults and scarps of Vlad’s features as he knelt down, propped the dummy up. “Because this land is ruled by National Socialists. And you, Yael, were never meant to be a sheep.”

  She knew that. She’d known that ever since she cracked open Henryka’s encyclopedia to the entry on Valkyries. Winged shield maidens. Powerful warriors who did not die, but were bearers of death. Who stood in the smoke and ruin of men’s battles and chose the living from the damned.

  Those were the women Yael wanted to be like.

  “You’re one of my best students, and you are going to be an even better operative. I’m only telling you this because I wish it was something my trainer had told me. Living by the sword catches up to you. One way or another.” Vlad’s good eye tightened; his empty eye socket (the scar he never talked about) twitched alongside. “All these skills I’ve taught you—they’re burdens. Not gifts. Taking a life takes something from you. When you choose to kill, make sure it is for the right reasons. Make sure the decision is something you can live with.”

  Yael didn’t know what to say, so she merely nodded. Vlad nodded back and pointed to the hayloft: “Again.”

  Wisdom imparted. Death made heavy. That was that.

  That should have been that. But Vlad’s words kept tumbling inside Yael. Jump after jump. Stab after stab. They stayed with her through evening chores and their supper of bread and stew. They lingered above her as she lay awake in her bunk, nursing the day’s collection of bruises and burning muscles.

  Taking a life takes something from you.

  Do you really want to be like them?

  But Vlad’s were not the only words standing watch. There were heavier ones. Spoken by the dead, a boy who’d once slept in this very bunk.

  Someone has to do it. Step up and change things. Kill the bastard.

  She’d come here, to the farm, to learn of life/knives/bullets/death because of what Aaron-Klaus had said. Her friend, her martyr, was right. How else would this terrible kingdom of death fall unless someone stepped forward? Put an end to it.

  But Vlad was right, too. Death was not her ally. Yael needed rules to set her apart from the National Socialists. Guidelines that would keep her akin to the Valkyrie.

  It took some hours of lost sleep (Yael knew she’d pay for it during her morning run), but she finally drew up a plan.

  No innocents.

  Those who tried to stop her would be stopped.

  Those who had information she needed and refused to give it to her would be hurt.

  Everyone she fought would be weighed against these rules. All except one. Because Yael already knew that when she came face-to-face with the Führer, she would kill him.

  It was a choice she would live with.

  PART III

  LAND OF ASHES

  CHAPTER 29

  “Papers, please.”

  The SS-Schütze who rapped on the window and held out his hand did not look particularly suspicious. Why would he? Two small blond women in a rusted farm truck overloaded with potatoes was the least-threatening thing he’d seen all week.

  Yael knew their situation could change in a heartbeat. One wrong word, one too-loud whimper from Felix, one slip of her sweater sleeve, one smudge of her makeup, and all would fall apart. She was careful to—KEEP SMILING MOVE SLOW—as she rolled down the glass and reached into her sweater for her alias’s papers, fingers brushing the TT-33’s cold metal.

  “Of course.” She handed the documents over.

  There was an SS-Schütze at Miriam’s window as well, combing through her papers. Two more manned the traffic blockade. Yael could see another in the rearview mirror, circling the truck bed. He’d already cut open one of the potato sacks and was impaling the rest with his knife. Stab, stab, sharp, sick sounds.

  The man reading Yael’s false papers frowned. For a moment she feared she’d given him the wrong set (wrong face, wrong name, wrong birthplace, wrong, wrong, wrong), but all he said was, “There’s been a lot of fighting going on. Two young fräuleins traveling alone—it’s not safe.”

  “We haven’t come far.”

  Not Yael’s first lie or her biggest, but still untrue. The odometer had slotted new numbers into place close to three thousand times since departing Molotov. Nearly seventy-five hours had passed. Seventy-five agonizing hours of constant, trade-off driving on Yael’s and Miriam’s part. All go, little sleep. Felix and Luka hadn’t fared much better. The boys were just as jostled as their potato cargo. The drive should have been faster—under average circumstances, the trip would’ve taken only two days.

  But nothing about this journey was normal. Muddy back roads, strings of refugees, countless detours, battles unfolding… With Henryka’s instructions, Miriam’s map of back roads, and a bit of luck, they’d managed to avoid the larger cities, where bullets were still flying. Some of the smaller towns were unavoidable, most draped in the same chaos that had befallen Molotov: burnt buildings, smoke hazing the streets. Ruin reigned. Results varied. In some towns, their vehicle was ushered through, waved past smoldering swastika banners by resistance fighters. In others, it was stopped with a “Halt!” and a “Heil Hitler!”

  Checkpoint after checkpoint. Lie after lie. They’d crawled out of the Muscovy territories and were now deep in the central Reich, where all the checkpoints belonged to SS, who were scrambling to maintain some semblance of order in this turbulent landscape.

  Here discovery meant death.

  “These roads
are dangerous,” said the soldier examining Yael’s papers. “Most of the uprisings have been quelled, but there’s some fighters unaccounted for. Just yesterday a unit was ambushed not twenty kilometers away.”

  So the resistance here wasn’t completely crushed. Still fighting, despite the dismal reports Henryka had received about the region. This thought made Yael’s smile less of a strain to hold.

  “You’re not going to Germania, are you?” The SS-Schütze jerked his chin at the line of vehicles stacked up behind them. Many were crammed with families and their earthly possessions: stacks upon stacks of suitcases weighted down with heirlooms. One car had a basket of live poultry pressed against its back window. “A lot of people from the territories are heading toward the capital, thinking it’s safe. But I hear it’s like the Battle of Moscow all over again. Nasty street fighting. You don’t want to get caught in the middle of it.”

  “We won’t be on the road much longer,” Yael told him. A true statement. The safe house Henryka had pointed them toward was less than an hour away. The farm would serve as their base for the first portion of the mission. A place for the boys to hide while Miriam and Yael… completed their pit stop.

  “We’re transporting potatoes for my uncle,” Yael rattled off the story they’d told at the last ten checkpoints. “Prices are high because the fighting has delayed shipments.”

  The frown stayed on the SS-Schütze’s face. Yael gripped the steering wheel, kept smiling, and fought the growing fear that something was about to go wrong.

  Miriam leaned over. She was just as skilled as Yael at playing the role of innocent Reichling. Her long yellow braid tapped the gearshift. Her eyelashes—just as yellow, not nearly as long—fluttered. “If you could point us to where we might be able to buy some gasoline, we’d be grateful.”

  The soldier shut Yael’s fake papers, slipping them back through the window.