Claus!” Friedrich shouted, opening his door.
“Get him back here!” Ludwig bellowed. “Get him back! Let it go off!”
Friedrich tore after Claus.
“Friedrich!” Audrey screamed, then, without thinking, followed.
How much time was left on the bomb? She glanced at her watch. Two minutes, if that? She jogged toward the parked motorcade, slipping a little on the snow. She stopped twenty feet away. She could see the faces of the children clearly now, some still smiling, others watching the commotion playing out behind them as Claus argued with one of the security team. Friedrich approached at a forced walk, hailed the original guard, drawing his attention away from Claus, who hit the ground and disappeared under the vehicle. Audrey inched closer, her own pulse thudding in her ears. A woman walked in front of her, hand in hand with two young children.
“Get out of here!” Audrey yelled at her. “Get your children out of here, go! Run!”
The woman’s face crumpled in alarm and confusion. “Excuse me?”
Audrey shoved her shoulder and she lurched forward. One of the children nearly tripped. “Go!” Audrey cried, grey eyes wide as they bored into the woman’s.
She hurried off as shouting started near the motorcade. Friedrich was arguing with the guards. The children were staring at him, turned away from the camera and the photographer, who looked on, puzzled.
Less than one minute.
“There’s a bomb under the car!” Friedrich said, his hands in the air in surrender. “Let him get it!” He indicated Claus’s exposed boots.
But they didn’t. Claus was dragged out, swearing and kicking. His face was red and wild-eyed as he grappled with the officers. His hat was knocked to the ground and his sandy hair fell sweaty over his forehead. Their hands were all over him. A gun was being drawn.
“Run!” he screamed at Friedrich. “Run!”
Friedrich hesitated only a moment, then turned. He flew toward Audrey, coattails lifting on the wind, boots pounding the frosty ground. Then he had her hand, and they were sprinting to the car.
Some of the children were crying, upset by the disturbance. Audrey would remember the sound for the rest of her life. She would hear it in the middle of the night, wake in bed drenched in sweat, knowing those voices would be frozen in delicate youth forever.
A shot cracked through the air, and Friedrich cried out and tripped. Another shot. People in the surrounding streets were shrieking now. A few more stumbled steps. Blood streaking the snow beneath their feet. And then they were back in the car and it started to move. Audrey registered Ludwig’s voice throwing questions at them, but all she could focus on was holding her scarf against the wound in Friedrich’s thigh as he gripped her shoulder.
And then she felt it. The car shook with a force stronger than anything she’d ever experienced. The explosion was inside her stomach, her chest, her throat. She thought her eardrums might blow out, and ducked her head instinctively, still pressing her scarf into Friedrich’s leg. He was breathing heavily, eyes closed. Audrey began to sob as Ludwig sped onto the motorway and out of Hanover, away from the scene of the crime. Away from Claus’s untimely death and the unnecessary, unintended deaths of all those children.
Away from the best chance they would ever have to kill Adolf Hitler.
They arrived back in Berlin in the early afternoon. The drive felt agonizingly long as Audrey fretted over Friedrich, who drifted in and out of consciousness. Finally, Ludwig pulled up outside the Kaplans’ house. Praying none of the neighbours were watching, Audrey helped Friedrich out of the car, steadying him against her on the pavement. Ludwig came round to help so Audrey could unlock the front door.
Ludwig staggered up the steps, bearing Friedrich’s weight, and they tripped over the threshold and into the kitchen, where they dumped Friedrich into a chair.
“Christ!” he hissed as they extended his leg and propped it on the table. “Fuck!”
His pant leg was soaked and shining red. Blood was smeared across the floor. Audrey spun round and bolted back to the foyer. It wouldn’t do for anyone passing the house to see a trail of blood leading up to the front door. She spotted three footprints in the slush of the street. With her foot, she shuffled snow over the red prints. It was good enough for now, anyway. She darted inside.
Friedrich had stopped grumbling and was slumped in the chair, pale and breathing heavily. Ludwig was rolling up his pant leg to get a better look at the wound. Audrey felt her insides jerk at the sight of the mangled skin and blood.
“There’s so much blood, Ludwig. We have to take him to a hospital. We must.”
Ludwig shook his head. “We can’t. A member of the SS with a serious bullet wound? They will make inquiries that we cannot answer. And by now, news will be spreading. Witnesses will know the guards fired shots at a retreating man and woman moments before the bomb went off. They will be looking for people with bullet wounds. Hospitals don’t get those every day.”
“Then what do we do?” Audrey tried to master her own panic.
Ludwig stepped back. “Friedrich knew what he was getting into.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we all knew the risk we were assuming with this mission,” he said. “We knew what could happen, what would likely happen. We were all prepared to pay the price. Claus knew that. Fred did too.” He moved farther from the table, as though Friedrich had something catching that he was keen to avoid.
“Don’t talk about him like he’s dead already!” Audrey snapped.
Friedrich’s skin was ashen, his eyes closed. Audrey knew that what Ludwig said was true; they couldn’t take him to the hospital, or they would all be found out and executed. But he needed medical care, a doctor who could be paid off, or—
Ilse.
Her mind darted its way through a silent maze of strategy.
“You’re right,” she told Ludwig. “Go. Just go. It’s better that we not be found together right now, anyway. I’ll tend to him the best I can and if he dies, we’ll figure it out then. Telephone Aldous, and I’ll call you later with an update. Go, Thurman. Don’t be seen leaving.”
His moustache quivered at being told what to do by a woman, and Audrey in particular, but she was long past caring.
He swept from the room without so much as a backward glance. She barely waited until the door slammed shut before thundering up the stairs to Ilse, nearly hitting her when she flung open the bedroom door. Ilse was standing there in a state of agitation.
She pulled Audrey into a crushing hug. “What’s happened? Did you kill him?”
Behind her, Audrey spied Daniel asleep in the crib. “No,” she replied, dragging Ilse out into the hallway.
Ilse’s lip began to tremble. “Well is everyone all right? I heard Ludwig, and—”
“Friedrich has been shot.”
