Conspiracy of Blood and Smoke

by Anne Blankman

  Daniel led her toward the right. The room was crowded with round tables and wrought-iron chairs. Men sipped coffee and scribbled or sketched in notebooks. Women with faces powdered white and lips colored scarlet wrote and drew, too.

  Lady artists and writers, Gretchen realized, unable to stop herself from staring. She’d never seen such people before in her own country. When she was little and lived in the Schwabing district, she’d wanted to walk home from school past the sidewalk cafés, so she could see the city’s painters and sculptors sipping coffee and talking about art. But Papa had forbidden it, saying those people were degenerates.

  A dark-haired, broad-faced man of about thirty stood when they approached his table. He wore a plain three-piece suit. Beneath his beetle brows, his eyes were sharp. “I didn’t think I would see you again, Herr Cohen.” He shook Daniel’s hand, his expression cautious. “I heard about the opposition papers being shut down in Munich. It’s the devil of a business.” He glanced at Gretchen.

  “This is Gisela Schröder,” Daniel said, giving the name on her false papers.

  “Tom Delmer.” He bowed slightly to Gretchen and gestured at the chairs.

  They ordered lunch: schnitzel with potato salad, beet salad, and two slices of rye bread for Daniel, a couple of open-faced sandwiches spread with minced pork, onions, and peppers for her and Delmer, and coffee for all of them.

  Delmer leaned across the table toward them, speaking impeccable German. “You asked on the telephone about Monika Junge. I can’t tell you much. She was killed the day after the Reichstag fire, so naturally her death was eclipsed by that.”

  “You were on the scene of the fire yourself, weren’t you?” Daniel went silent as the waitress clunked down their plates and bustled off.

  Gretchen ate quickly, scanning the other customers. They all seemed absorbed in their own conversations or notebooks.

  “Yes,” Delmer replied, “I was at the fire. I was milling about outside with the other reporters when I spotted Hitler’s motorcar arrive.” His dark eyes watched them over his cup’s rim. “I joined his retinue and got into the Reichstag that way. It was quite a chaotic scene, as I’m sure you can imagine, and the story’s only grown stranger—the police arrested three Bulgarian Communists here in Berlin yesterday. They’d already arrested a Reichstag deputy, too, a Communist, and a half-blind Dutchman. They’re saying all of them are involved in a Communist conspiracy, which a lot of people think is a pack of lies.”

  His words gave Gretchen pause. Something about the fire sounded familiar—as though she had lived through this before. But that was impossible, wasn’t it? She had felt the same way when she’d first heard about the fire on the radio, when she was sitting with Alfred and Julia. It didn’t make any sense. Shaking off the sensation of déjà vu, she concentrated on what Delmer was saying.

  “Hitler’s clamoring for the supposed arsonists to be hanged,” he continued. “A foolish thing to do, since it only reminds everyone he’s an Austrian outsider.”

  Gretchen understood: In Germany the sole method of execution was decapitation. Unbidden, a picture rose in her mind: Daniel, his arms fastened behind his back, being led to the guillotine, where a straw basket waited to catch his severed head. Panic tightened her throat. They had to find a way to prove his innocence, no matter what happened between them.

  “I didn’t kill that woman,” Daniel whispered urgently to Delmer. “If I can get the evidence to you, will you publish it in your paper in England?”

  Delmer looked Daniel straight in the face. “Yes. It’ll go on the front page, I promise you that. But I can’t write the article without definitive proof—you’re a reporter, you know the rules. No theories, no suppositions. Just facts.”

  A muscle tightened in Daniel’s jaw. “I may have been a hack for the past year, but I still know how to report the news. I’ll get you the story.”

  “Good.” Delmer opened a small spiral-bound notebook. “Speaking of facts, here’s what I’ve found out. Fräulein Monika Junge died on the night of February twenty-eighth. She was a prostitute and quite young, only twenty. She was walking along the Tauentzienstrasse, just beyond the Kaiser Wilhelm Church, at about half past nine when a car pulled up beside her. According to witnesses, a man jumped out of the backseat and called her name. When she turned, he shot her in the head. He got back in and the car raced off. She was dead before she hit the ground.”

  “Any theories about why she was killed?” Daniel asked. For once, he wasn’t taking notes. Her heart plummeted as she realized why—in case they were captured, they wouldn’t have papers with them that could drag other people into trouble.

  “I’ve no idea.” Delmer closed his notebook. “Maybe a jealous boyfriend did it. Or a lunatic or someone she looked at the wrong way, who knows. She lived at the Fleischer Rooming House off the Alexanderplatz, but that’s all I was able to ferret out.”

  Daniel rose and clasped the man’s hand. “Thanks, Herr Delmer. I’m much obliged.” He hesitated. “We saw something strange on our way here—a policeman and an SA man walking together, as though they were on the same foot beat. Do you know anything about that?”

  Delmer sighed. “Germany’s a new world. About two weeks ago, one of Hitler’s ministers began recruiting men from the SA and the SS to work alongside the Berlin police force.” He glanced around the room, but no one was looking at their table. “Be on your guard. The city’s transforming even as we speak.”

  So they couldn’t even trust the police. Gretchen thought of the Sturmabteilung and the Schutzstaffel units. Since the Party’s early days, the SA had served as a private army of sorts, providing muscle and protection for Hitler. The racially selective SS was a newer department. She had imagined both divisions remained entrenched within the Party. But now . . .

  It was starting. What Hitler had always promised—the Party and Germany were becoming one. The union that she had once thought sounded so perfect. Now it terrified her.

  She followed Daniel and Herr Delmer outside. The dry alpine wind pushed through her wool stockings into her skin. She tried not to shiver. “Which of Hitler’s ministers ordered the Party to infiltrate the police?” she asked.

  Delmer turned up his collar against the cold. “Hermann Göring.”

  He continued talking, but Gretchen pulled back into her thoughts. She remembered Göring, although she hadn’t seen him in years. He’d been shot in the same gunfight that had killed Papa. Afterward, he and his wife, Karin, had fled to Austria, and later they had moved to her native Sweden. When they’d returned to Germany several years ago, Gretchen hadn’t seen them because they had settled in Berlin. Karin had died, Gretchen recalled, a month or two after she and Daniel had left Munich.

  Göring was a vain man, constantly preening in his peacock blue suits, a dazzling sight in a sea of SA brown. And volatile—she still felt the ice of his eyes boring into hers when she’d accidentally knocked a glass knickknack off a side table in his parlor years ago. Clumsy child, he’d raged, and Papa had squeezed her shoulder, a silent order to apologize. I’m sorry, she had mumbled, and Göring had laughed, ruffling her hair, saying it was only a cheap trinket. Even back then, she’d sensed there was something unsafe about a man whose moods changed with lightning speed. And now he was in a powerful position in Hitler’s cabinet. She couldn’t imagine what he might be planning.

  As she turned back to the conversation, she heard Delmer saying, “And remember—you’ll have to move quickly because of the Enabling Act.”

  Gretchen glanced at Daniel, but he looked confused, too. “What’s the Enabling Act?” he asked.

  “It’s a piece of legislation that Chancellor Hitler has just proposed.” Delmer’s expression was grim. He stepped closer to them, lowering his voice. “Germany’s been operating under a state of emergency since the fire. Hitler says he needs to be able to combat possible future terrorist attacks without any restrictions. If the Enabling Act passes, it shifts legislative powers from the Reichstag to him.”r />
  Gretchen gasped. She understood what that meant: Hitler could act alone. He could pass his own laws without the restraining powers of the Reichstag, which was peopled by members of different political parties.

  He could become a dictator.

  Her heart clutched. If the Enabling Act was passed and she and Daniel were caught, Hitler could have anything done to them that he wished. He wouldn’t have to bother with the legalities of trials and prison terms. Instead, he could have them tortured for as long as he wanted, perhaps while he watched, before he finally had them killed. They would be entirely at his mercy.

  She shot Daniel a panicked look. His face had gone dark. “When’s the next Reichstag session scheduled to start?”

  “On the twenty-third. You’ve got twelve days.” Delmer shook his head. “The act will get passed; it’s gained tremendous support within the Reichstag and in the papers. Everybody knows how elderly and ill President Hindenburg is—Chancellor Hitler will take complete control of Germany. You’ll never be able to escape. Even if we publish proof of your innocence in my paper, the Party will merely cook up new charges against you.” He shook Daniel’s hand. “You don’t have much time, Herr Cohen. Good luck to you.”

  13

  HERR DELMER NODDED FAREWELL TO THEM AND melted into the crowds streaming up and down the sidewalks. Blindly, Gretchen reached for Daniel’s hand, squeezing hard when she found it.

  “My God,” she breathed. “We have to get out of Germany, while we still can.”

  “You should.” Daniel started walking, and she fell in step alongside him. “I have to see this through, Gretchen.” He dipped his head, bringing his lips to her ear. “If I can prove that the National Socialists killed Fräulein Junge, the news could destroy Hitler’s reputation. Maybe President Hindenburg will have him removed from office. His career will be over.”

  “But you’ll have to accomplish this in less than two weeks!” Gretchen hissed. “If you don’t find the proof before the Enabling Act passes, then . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to finish.

  “Then I’m as good as dead,” Daniel finished for her. His face was white, but calm. “I understand the risk. It’s worth it to me.”

  They reached a street corner and stopped, waiting for a break in traffic so they could walk across. From the corner of her eye, Gretchen studied him. There was something inside him, a length of iron that she had not recognized until this moment. It was selflessness, she realized. The absolute certainty that there were things that mattered more than his personal safety and he was willing to die for them.

  She didn’t know what to do about this new distance between them—but she knew she would never leave him.

  “Then I’m staying, too,” she said. “I’m seeing this through with you to the end.”

  He shot her a sharp look. “You could die, too.”

  “I know.” Her hands were shaking so badly that the suitcase thudded against her leg over and over. She had to swallow twice before she could speak. “It’s worth it to me, too.”

  He must have seen something in her expression that convinced him that she meant what she said because he nodded, interlacing his fingers with hers. “Very well. There’s no turning back now.” He took a deep breath, like a swimmer bracing himself before diving into icy water. “Let’s visit Monika Junge’s old rooming house. It’s possible the other residents know something.”

  They crossed the street. In her head, Gretchen heard Hitler’s voice: A moving target doesn’t get shot. Grim determination lengthened her strides. Yes, she would remember his advice and use it against him to anticipate his every action. Before, in Munich, she hadn’t known who she was dealing with. Now she understood him, as well as anyone could claim to. He wouldn’t deceive her again. Whatever he did next, she would be ready.

  But she couldn’t stop feeling his eyes burning into her back, although every time she looked behind her, he wasn’t there.

  On the eastern end of Berlin, Gretchen and Daniel stepped into a narrow street where the harsh wind cut through their coats. Weak sunlight filtered between the tightly crammed buildings, so the houses stretched long shadows across the snow- and soot-grimed cobblestones.

  Here no uniformed National Socialists walked or swastika banners hung from windowsills, and the adults moved slowly, their steps weary as though the years of hunger and spiraling unemployment had left them hollow. Daniel had been right; Berlin was like a dozen different cities. But would one, Gretchen wondered, eventually swallow the others?

  Children streamed into the streets, laughing and calling to one another. Gretchen almost smiled at two girls wearing identical hair bows; once she and Eva had begged to be dressed alike, too, but their mothers couldn’t afford the extra fabric for new dresses so they’d made do with matching red satin ribbons.

  As she walked, she scanned the structures for Monika Junge’s old rooming house. Up ahead, a hand-printed sign had been pasted in a window: FLEISCHER ROOMS TO LET. LADIES ONLY. The building looked like the others—a dingy gray facade stretching up four stories, and a heavy wooden door topped by a plaster archway embossed with scrollwork.

  Gretchen glanced at Daniel. “Ladies only,” she said, trying to keep her voice light so he wouldn’t hear the nerves in it. “That leaves you out. I’ll inquire about a room, and see what I can learn about Fräulein Junge.”

  His face twisted. “Gretchen, I don’t want you going in there alone.”

  “I can manage,” she said quickly. If she waited longer, she might lose her nerve. “Watch from across the street.” Sweat had pooled at the base of her spine, making her silk blouse stick to her skin. “I’ll be fine.”

  Before she could think herself out of the decision, she hurried to the door. A middle-aged woman in a severe black dress answered the bell. “Yes? How may I help you?” She stubbed out her cigarette in the dirt-filled flowerpot on the front step.

  “I’d like to rent a room.”

  The woman looked Gretchen up and down, her thin lips curling as though she had tasted something bitter. “Nothing available.”

  “But there’s a sign in the window—”

  “There’s nothing available for you,” the woman snapped.

  Over the lady’s shoulder, Gretchen saw a front hall with plaster walls, stained brown in places, probably from water damage. There was no furniture, not a table or an umbrella stand, just a black telephone sitting on a chair.

  What sort of rooming house was this? Her mother’s old boardinghouse in Munich had been shabby, but it had at least attempted to be comfortable, with flowered sofas, wallpaper, framed watercolors.

  “We only take girls with references,” the lady said.

  Gretchen felt Daniel’s gaze drilling into her back. It would be so easy to run to him. But she had to keep going, if she wanted to help him. She forced a smile. “I must have misunderstood. When I saw Fräulein Junge a few weeks ago, I thought she had said there was a vacancy here.”

  “Monika Junge?” The woman raised her eyebrows. “You don’t look like any of Monika’s friends.”

  “We weren’t close.” Gretchen’s face felt hot. “I was sorry to hear about her death.”

  The woman opened the door wide. “Come in. We can’t be too careful,” she added, leading Gretchen into the front hall. “I’ll show you the room.”

  The door banged closed behind them. Walking up the steps felt like climbing a hill in the dark; shadows and frigid air encased the stairwell. As Gretchen followed the landlady, she tried not to think of Daniel standing outside, probably with his fingers drumming on his thigh, a habit he slipped into when he was anxious.

  The landlady rattled off the rules as they went up. “You can rent at monthly or weekly rates. Breakfast and supper are provided, but no luncheon. There’s a shared lavatory down the hall, and baths are permitted once a week. Each girl gets her own water basin, a lockbox she can store under her bed, and a supply of candles—we haven’t electricity, you see. When you come and go, you have to sign in a
nd out every time, no exceptions. My name is Frau Fleischer, by the way.”

  So far, the regulations sounded ordinary enough. Gretchen relaxed a little.

  As they reached the second-floor landing, sunlight straggled through a window, sparkling on a diamond ring on Frau Fleischer’s finger. Gretchen nearly stumbled over the top step. A diamond ring, when Frau Fleischer couldn’t afford electricity. Unease shivered up Gretchen’s spine. There was something strange about this place.

  “Here’s your room,” Frau Fleischer said, pushing open a door. Peering in, Gretchen realized for the first time how hard her mother must have worked to hold onto her position as a boardinghouse manager; in Munich, the rooms might have been small boxes, but each resident had had her own.

  Eight cots had been jammed into the long, narrow room, with two bureaus shoved against a wall. A single window poured pale winter sunlight across the women lounging on the beds or standing by the gramophone in the corner. They looked about her age, some a bit older. Three of them wore Chinese dressing robes; another lay asleep in bed, her bare shoulders peeking above the blankets, and two more were fully dressed in pleated skirts, woolen cardigans, and knee-high green leather boots. They hovered by the gramophone, arguing over which record to listen to next.

  “Play nice, girls. Monika recommended a new guest, so be polite.” Frau Fleischer’s voice cut through the chatter. Her long fingers grasped Gretchen’s arm and pulled her forward. “Supper’s at six. If you’re late, you miss it.”

  “What are we having?” the girl who Gretchen had thought was sleeping asked, her eyes still closed.

  “Lung soup. And no complaints!” the landlady warned as the girls groaned. “It’s food and it’s hot, and none of you would be eating anything if it wasn’t for me.” She glanced at Gretchen. “You’ll stay in tonight, naturally, and we can settle accounts. If you haven’t had your medical checkup, I can arrange for it first thing tomorrow.”