“The interrogator, Graf, kept asking me if I played the piano,” she said, tears stinging her eyes. “I said yes, and then he asked me what I’d sent back to my conductor, I—”
Friedrich swore.
“What?”
He seemed reluctant to answer.
“What?”
“He didn’t mean it directly. Counterintelligence refers to radio transmitters as pianists. Their radios are pianos, their leaders are conductors. It’s code.”
She was hollow inside.
“He crushed my fingers,” she said, her voice breaking.
Friedrich had no response. Some echoes sounded down the hall, and Audrey realized they hadn’t much time left. The knowledge seeped like acid into her bloodstream. She felt it course from her chest down to her toes. She began to pace.
“They’ve told me I’ll be tried by a judge,” she said. “He’ll find me guilty, won’t he?”
Friedrich’s eyes lowered. “Yes. I suspect it will be a farce.”
She stopped. “And a death sentence will follow?”
“Most likely.”
She knew it, Graf had said it. It made sense. But somehow hearing the words fall from Friedrich’s mouth crystallized the reality in her mind. She struggled to absorb it. This had all happened so fast.
“I brought you your coat,” Friedrich said, and only as he handed it to her did she notice that it was hers slung over his arm, not his own. She took it from him, slowly, with dawning realization. She ran her hand over the front pocket, felt the shallow lump of the cyanide button.
“It’s going to get cold later,” he said quietly. “You may find you want it.”
She cleared her burning throat. “I need you to promise me again—”
“I will,” he said immediately. “You have my word, Audrey. I will take care of Ilse as long as and in every way that she will allow.” His eyes were wet. “But I cannot help but feel it should be me in this cell. I got you into this. I was prepared to pay the price.”
Audrey looked down at the broken hands that had once created something beautiful out of nothing, filling rooms with soaring music. “I’ve known for a while that if it came to it, I would be the black boar. Because you’re the one she needs, the one she wants.” She forced a weak smile. “And because I would do anything for her.” A tear slid down her cheek, so salty it stung. Her mind ran ahead of her into the shining years beyond, the ones she would never see, where Ilse would grow older and more beautiful and maybe, perhaps, reunite with Ruth and Ephraim. “Please tell her, again, that I love her,” Audrey said. Her heart was beating for both of them.
Friedrich embraced her once more then, and she whispered in his ear. “The last thing I shall do for her is die.”
Chapter 33
Audrey
BERLIN, GERMANY | MAY 1939
Ada Jakob.”
The morning after Friedrich’s visit, Audrey heard the name called from inside the courtroom. She had grown so accustomed to it, taken on the mantle of the character she’d created to fool Weber. And now Ada was going to die right alongside her after sharing some half-life existence that, in the end, caused nothing but death.
Two guards guided her into the courtroom, hands gripping her arms. They needn’t have bothered; her legs and hands were bound, her fingers hot and throbbing. She couldn’t have opened a door to flee if she’d even had the chance.
The courtroom wasn’t grand; the few rows of benches on either side of the aisle were empty but for two clerks whose necks were bowed, scribbling notes, and a young, besuited man with a briefcase near the front of the room.
They shuffled down the short aisle to where the judge sat at his desk on a platform. The guards released their hold on her, and she stood, facing the judge, preparing for the blade to fall.
“Where is counsel for the accused?” the judge asked, glancing up from his notes through small spectacles.
“Here, your honour.” The young man with the briefcase raised a vague hand.
Audrey had never seen him before. No one told her she had a barrister to represent her. Hope flared for a fraction of a second, then she realized he was merely a prop for the stage, and a harsh laugh escaped her. The judge fixed her in his gaze. His eyes were bright blue, sharp, and she could tell this was a man who could see right through people. Good. She was exhausted by pretending to be someone else, anyway.
“Guten Morgen, mein Herr,” she said, meeting his eye.
“Guten Morgen, Fräulein Jakob,” he replied. There was a long moment where he continued to observe her, grey brows furrowed above a straight nose. He took in her dirty dress, her overall disheveled appearance, and the amused expression on her face. Then he glanced at the pages in his hands. “You are charged with crimes against the state, Ada Jakob. How do you answer these charges?”
The whole time she’d sat in that jail cell, all through the night, of all the things that went through her mind, her answer to the charges hadn’t been one of them. She had figured this entire process would be a sham, just as Friedrich had warned her—and it clearly was. There was only one outcome. All she could preserve now was her integrity.
She loosened her shoulders. “Not guilty, mein Herr. Not guilty.”
The guard to her right shifted his feet.
“Do you understand why you are here?” the judge asked.
He must have seen the flicker of mirth pass across her face, because he frowned in confusion.
“Truth be told, not entirely, sir,” she said.
