Chapter 31
Audrey
BERLIN, GERMANY | MAY 1939
She was dreaming of the children. They were running about, ten feet beneath her whilst she sat on the edge of a massive grave, smiling as she watched them play among a sea of dead bodies. But somehow it was not a gruesome scene; they played with the spirits of the others, who knew now that they were not alone. Audrey felt a pull, or perhaps a push, her own longing nudging her in the back. She should join them. It’s what she deserved. Her shoe fell off, tumbling down and down into the endless grave.
A small boy with eyes like a robin’s egg looked up at her perched on the edge of the pit, her bare foot dangling a little below the other as she prepared to jump in.
“It’s nearly time,” he called, his little voice echoing in the grey sky above her.
A girl appeared beside him. She looked just like Ilse had when she was that age. “Audrey,” she said.
Audrey tried to answer, but couldn’t.
“Audrey. Audrey!”
She was teetering over the edge now. Then something pulled her back and her eyes fluttered open. There was no grey sky above her, just the white ceiling of her bedroom and Ilse’s worried face.
“Audrey.”
Her heart was beating in time to a woodpecker. She blinked quickly to clear the images of the children. They always lingered for a while after she woke. She pushed herself upright. “Is it morning?”
“Not quite,” Ilse said. “You were moaning again, and it woke me.”
“I’m sorry.” Audrey ran a hand over her clammy forehead. “I’m sorry.”
It had been a month since the disaster in Hanover, and the faces of the children had haunted her ever since. It was her punishment, she figured, since no one had yet come after their cell. The papers had called it a terrible tragedy, reporting that the gas tank of Hitler’s car somehow malfunctioned, causing the explosion. Automobile and combustion experts attested to the car’s volatility.
“The Ministry of Public Enlightenment is populated with highly skilled storytellers,” Friedrich had told her. “Anything becomes true to the masses if they want it to be. Resistance is bad for optics and morale. It is far better for everyone to assume he has unanimous support, is universally adored.” But behind closed doors, Friedrich said, Hitler was demanding that a head roll.
Friedrich had recovered well from his wound, and without infection, thanks to Ilse’s skilled ministrations and aftercare. He had taken some time off work—allegedly to visit his sister Gisela in Vienna—to let his leg heal without questions from anyone in his office. There was a quiet internal investigation happening, he said, and was trying his best to redirect their efforts toward a ghost cell in Moscow.
The resistance group had disbanded. Claus, who had not been seen nor heard from by his supervisor or wife, was now wanted under suspicion of desertion. Aldous visited from time to time to share a drink with Friedrich, but Ludwig had disappeared from their lives entirely. He hadn’t even checked in on Friedrich in the days following his injury, which Audrey found cruel, but privately she didn’t mind if she never saw his face again.
“All you all right?” Ilse asked, knowing she wasn’t.
Audrey shook her head. “Friedrich keeps saying it’s over.”
“I know.”
“It’ll never be over.”
“I know.”
The house was quiet. Daniel was still asleep.
Audrey sat up in bed and seized the bedcovers pooled around her. “I just don’t know what happens now,” she said. “I don’t know what to do.”
Ilse’s brow furrowed in concern. “I think you should talk to Friedrich.”
“About what?”
“About what’s next. It’s clear you can’t go on like this.”
Audrey hung her head, swallowed. “I don’t really know why I’m still going in to work. I feel like we’ve reached the end of this. With Claus and Ludwig gone, and what we did…”
Sabotaging the Third Reich provided profound meaning, but the role of Ada Jakob exhausted her. She was ready to hang up the costume. She didn’t have the thirst for action that she’d had when she asked to join the Red Orchestra. They had the blood of children and their own comrade on their hands now. The cards were dealt, the hand was bad, and it was a wise person who recognized when it was time to fold.
She supposed she could look into taking up her studies again, finishing her program at the konservatorium. It had been a dream for so long, and she still played when she could, but the aspirations she’d had seemed adolescent now. Frivolous. She’d changed as everything else had, hardened and matured.
Ilse squeezed her shoulder. “Daniel will be up soon. Go talk to Friedrich.”
Audrey bathed, dressed, and twisted her messy hair up into a bun in an attempt to tame it, then found Friedrich in the lounge off Ira’s study, newspaper in hand. Audrey averted her eyes from the paper, allowing them to land instead on the crease in Friedrich’s high forehead. Despite the SS’s instructions and the Ministry of Public Enlightenment’s efforts to cover up the truth of the explosion, the death of the children and several SS personnel meant it was still headline news. Audrey had been avoiding the papers at home and the office as much as she could, but spotted a headline the previous week about the planned funerals for the children. She’d had to dart into the toilets at work to vomit, dodging Frau Schulze’s scrutinizing glare.
Audrey sat down on the couch. “With Claus and Ludwig gone,” she began, “I’m not sure what our cell can accomplish. Where do we go from here?”
Friedrich nodded. “Ilse came down a while ago, told me you needed to talk.” He sighed. “I’ve thought of little else lately, to be honest. Besides the pain in my bloody leg.” He shifted it with a wince. “It took years to establish my relationships with Ludwig, Claus, and Vogt. I’ve been giving some consideration to poking around at a couple of other men I know in government and the Wehrmacht, see whether I might find new like-minded comrades for us, but I am walking a fine line here. I’ve been trying to throw off the investigation as best I can, but I can only do so much without rousing suspicion or being fired for not doing my job properly. And not doing your job properly in this administration is dangerous. They believe everyone has a slavish devotion to Hitler and the regime. How well you do your job is equated to your love for the Führer. Subpar performance is suspect.”
They were quiet for a while as the mantel clock ticked, their thoughts drifting outside the walls of the Kaplan home to the grey marble offices of the SS headquarters and the Department of Property Reclamation, the decrees that would continue to come, restricting and ending life for Germany’s Jews. As always, Audrey’s thoughts came back to the Opera House. The car. The bomb and the blood. Her heart ached for all of it. It was all too big, too merciless.
“Do you think maybe we’re looking at this wrong, at this point?” she asked quietly.
Friedrich seemed to rouse from his own reverie. “How do you mean?”
Audrey cast her eyes down at her fingers. “Instead of trying to create change on a grand scale, should we focus on what’s right in front of us?” She looked up at him. “Maybe staying safe now, not taking risks, can ensure three Jews remain safe, including the person we both love.” Her eyes were shining with a hopeful sorrow. “If we can’t save the rest of them…”
