Now, Audrey shifted her shoulders. “And what have you told them about Vogt’s death? Don’t they have questions?”
“They had no difficulty believing the story we fed the police. Vogt was such an ass, no one has particularly missed him inside the administration. Meanwhile, the police are out halfheartedly chasing the phantom assailants we conjured. Leave them to me. I do not believe it will be a problem.”
She had no choice but to trust him. This was either the best idea she’d had or the worst. Either way, it kept her mind from lingering on Ilse’s baffled face when Audrey had confessed her feelings. They’d tiptoed around each other since then, neither of them mentioning it, and their conversations had been surface-level. It made Audrey feel as though she were falling away from herself.
But she didn’t have time to dwell on it further as the other members of the resistance cell arrived. Claus, Ludwig, and Aldous each eyed Audrey with interest as they entered the room, but said nothing.
Once they were all settled with drinks, Friedrich stood, cleared his throat. “As you all know, this is Audrey James, my housekeeper. And she has approached me with a proposal to join our outfit.”
She studied them with a new curiosity, eager to know more about this group of men who were risking their careers and their very lives to resist the Führer.
“Hello,” she said, smiling.
“Nice to meet you more, uh, officially? Truthfully?” Claus said, cocking his head to one side on his thick neck.
“Audrey, Claus Von Holten,” Friedrich said. “He works in weaponry in the military training office. You know Ludwig Thurman,” he continued. “He’s from the military operations office of the SS.”
Ludwig directed a curt nod at Audrey from over near the sideboard, though he said nothing. He took a large gulp from his rocks glass.
“And Aldous Stoltz.” Friedrich nodded to the weedy man on the opposite end of the divan. Audrey had rarely heard him speak at their poker nights. “He’s, well… what would you say you are, Al?”
The man shrugged. “The kinder term is ‘conscientious objector,’ I think. We’re deemed cowards for not entering military service. But I’m lame from a bout of polio when I was a child, so they wouldn’t have me anyway. People like me are a threat to ‘national health,’ according to Goebbels. I figure I’ll be next once they’ve ejected all the Jews and homosexuals.”
Audrey’s jaw clenched at the word. How did the government even know who was a homosexual?
“So I thought it necessary to do what I could,” Aldous was saying. “My motivation isn’t entirely altruistic, Fräulein. You’ll have to forgive me.”
“And then there was Vogt, of course, whom you knew,” Ludwig said in a booming voice. “He would have been able to keep providing us intelligence from within Hitler’s own office, if the moron hadn’t gotten himself beaten to death.” He took another swig of his drink. “Probably fucked the wrong man’s wife this time.”
“Lud, language around the lady, yeah?” Friedrich said.
Audrey winced at Ludwig, hoping it would pass for a sympathetic frown.
Claus sat forward, broad shoulders rolling in. “So, Fred tells us you can contribute some particular skills to our little organization here.”
Audrey nodded. “I do hope so.”
“And what exactly is it that you can bring to the table?”
Four sets of acute male eyes bored into her own.
She straightened. “For one thing, I’m fluent in both English and German, and I’m a performer. A trained one. A good one,” she added with confidence. “And I’m a woman, which means I go unnoticed.” She summarized the arguments she had made to Friedrich.
“How much did you learn whilst serving up bread and beer, Fräulein?” Claus asked.
She could tell by the set of his face that he was genuinely curious. “Enough to know what you were doing and ask Friedrich if I could join. In addition to listening in, I can flirt my way into places where I’m not supposed to be,” she said, glancing around at them all. “Can any of you say the same?”
Claus chuckled.
“My concern, Fräulein James,” Ludwig began in his deep voice, shifting his massive weight from one foot to the other, “is what your set of skills adds up to.”
“What do you mean?”
“In my line of work, I would have serious concerns about someone who can speak multiple languages, who acts and lies to get himself into or out of sticky situations, and who possesses a proclivity for passing unnoticed. You are describing a spy.”
She felt pinned under his sharp gaze. “I’m not—”
“You are speaking to a group of exceptionally observant men. You may have underestimated us.”
“Ludwig, we have been over this,” Friedrich said sharply. “I told you, she—”
“Are you a fool?” Ludwig shot back. His eyes flashed with anger and something else, something sinister. “Did you bed her? Is that how she convinced you of her innocence?”
Audrey’s cheeks burned at the insinuation. She glanced at Friedrich, then back to Ludwig.
“You’re right,” she said, doing her best to match the intensity of his distrustful glare. “I am not precisely who he says I am.” She could feel Friedrich’s eyes on her, but ploughed on. “I was not Ira Kaplan’s accountancy secretary.” The men stared back at her with confused faces, and she realized they didn’t recognize his name. “He is the dead man whose furniture you now sit on,” she snapped. “Whose crystal you drink from. He was murdered in the street.” She needed to offer Ludwig a clearer truth to dispel his doubt, but she would not tell them about Ilse. A half-truth would have to suffice. “I was in this house when Friedrich and Vogt arrived because I am a friend of the family. I was living here when Kaplan was killed and his family taken. I grieve the loss of my friends, and I do not want others to suffer the same fate. That is why I want to join you.”
The room was silent for a moment. Audrey swallowed the lick of fear that flicked in her throat.
“And when did you learn this?” Ludwig asked Friedrich, ignoring Audrey.
“Not long after Vogt died, I suppose it was,” he said, offhand.
“Did he know the truth of her as well?”
“No.”
“How did you find out?”
