“You have not been duly informed of the crime of which you are accused?”
Audrey scoffed. “I have been informed, yes.”
He rested his hands on the desk. “I must say, I find it difficult to believe that a woman of your intellectual comportment would be capable of the machinations presented in the evidence before me.” He addressed the two guards. “What has this woman’s behaviour been like during her time in custody?”
They exchanged a glance. “Much like this, your honour,” one answered.
He nodded. “Fräulein Jakob, the sentence for such a crime against the Reich is death by firing squad.”
Audrey’s heart skipped. She was exhausted, heartbroken. But one thing she did know was that there was no point in allowing them to see her fear. Not now. She twitched her chin a fraction higher. “Yes, sir. I understand. Thank you, mein Herr.”
The judge tilted his head. “Did you hear what I said, Fräulein?”
“Yes, sir. Thank you.”
“Do you understand the fate that awaits you? You have twice thanked me for telling you that you are about to be executed.”
“Yes, sir.” She imagined they wasted no time in dispatching traitors. She might only have hours remaining in her life. But after so much uncertainty, perhaps it was a welcome sense of finality. The fight was done. She had lost. And Ilse would live. “When will the execution take place?” she asked.
He shifted in his large, high-backed chair. “They are conducted just after sundown.”
She pressed her bound wrist into the outer pocket of her coat, felt the cyanide button. She wouldn’t die with her body riddled with Nazi bullets, and that knowledge satisfied her.
She bowed to the judge. “Thank you, sir.”
He set her file aside. “That is not the… typical reaction to such news, I must say. Are you deranged, Ada Jakob? Are you meant to be in an institution?” He looked to the guards again, as though seeking confirmation of his suspicion.
Audrey considered the question, wondering whether he might be right. She probably was mad to have stayed in Berlin whilst her father urged her to return to England. She could not contemplate her life without Ilse, and because of that, she would now face death without her. Love, after all, made people do mad things. She blinked hard, determined not to allow weakness to own her final hours.
The judge tapped the tip of his middle finger on the desk. “I am going to be plain with you, Fräulein Jakob: you are a most peculiar case. I have never seen such blatant disregard for the prospect of impending execution, nor such courage from a woman, in any capacity, and that—along with your general demeanour—leads me to seriously call into question your sanity.”
Audrey waited.
“In addition, I have never been forced to hand down a death sentence to a woman, in all my years on this bench. I am, frankly, disinclined to besmirch that record.” He sat up a little straighter. “Ada Jakob, I hereby sentence you to life imprisonment. You will be transported to the prison at Vechta forthwith.” He slammed his gavel in a resigned sort of way. “Next case.”
Audrey and the other prisoners shuffled along in a single file, heads bent against the wind, for ten minutes toward a compound she could just make out against the sky. She looked up, eyes watering in the chilly air, to see a large, looming building surrounded by a wrought-iron fence. Lights in the dozen or so windows punctured the dark stone.
The journey to Vechta had taken hours. Hours in which Audrey alternated between studying her fellow prisoners and staring down at her own shoes, doing her best to tune out the aching throb of her fingers. She was still wearing her coat, which was fortunate, as the train was draftier than a country barn and chilled by damp. But she had moved the cyanide pill to the sole of her shoe.
After her sentencing, she’d been returned to her cell for the night with nothing to do but think—and plan, still in disbelief that she was not dead in some unmarked traitor’s grave on the outskirts of Berlin. She’d assumed her coat would be taken from her when she was forced into some sort of institutional garb, so in her cell, she pulled off one of her shoes, peeled up the sole with her unbroken left index finger, and slid the cyanide pill beneath. Escaping a death sentence had given her some small shred of hope to cling to, that she might yet have a life somewhere ahead of her. But keeping the pill allowed her to maintain some shadow of control. She could still choose to end her life if and when she wanted to.
The guards led them now into an inner courtyard, a reprieve from the bitter wind, and Audrey took in her surroundings. The main building was set up in a square formation, with the courtyard in the centre. Iron bars secured all the windows. The group stopped outside an open door with a plaque overhead that read HEADMISTRESS’S OFFICE. Audrey raised an eyebrow. They must have converted a girls’ school into a prison. The tentacles of the Reich had crept and stretched and wrapped their sinewy limbs around all of Germany’s institutions. They took what they wanted, and few had the power or ability to resist. Those who did were sent here.
The women shivered in the cold, waiting.
After another few minutes, they were brought into the building to their left, which housed what Audrey presumed were classrooms in a previous life. They stood in line in the silent hallway as each woman was shunted forward into one of the rooms, emerging minutes later dressed in the same stiff grey dress and sweater, carrying a folded blanket. Many had tears in their eyes, whilst those who had already accepted their fate wore dead expressions.
When Audrey reached the front of the line, the guard beside her uncuffed her wrists, and she exhaled gratefully as a bruise bloomed in the dim light.
“Next,” a voice called from inside the room. A middle-aged woman was standing beside a table piled with clothes and folded blankets, a clipboard in hand. “Name.”
“Ada Jakob,” she answered.
The woman referred to her list. “Jakob, Jakob… here you are.” Sizing Audrey up, she selected a long dress and sweater from one of the piles. “Take off your clothes and put these on.”
Audrey hesitated, then chose her words carefully. “Do you give me shoes too?”
“Why, what’s wrong with the ones you’ve got?” the woman barked.
“Nothing. They’re fine.” Audrey slid them off, then stripped off her old clothes, tugging on the new dress and sweater. They were bulky but fit. She slipped her shoes back on quickly. “What do I—”
“Give me your old clothes,” the woman said, hands extended. Audrey scooped them up and passed them to her. “Here’s your blanket. Guard!” she called. “Cellblock D. Cell four. Bunk one,” the woman told him. “Next!”
The guard gave Audrey a shove in the shoulder. “Walk.”
They moved down the dimly lit hallway into the next wing of the prison toward Cellblock D. The polished wood floors that would have felt homey when the building was a dormitory seemed incongruous now with the prison. Audrey tried to note any exits on her way by, but saw none. The guard stopped in front of a cell. As he unlocked it, the jangling of the keys echoing down the corridor, Audrey saw a shadow move through the tiny window in the door.
The guard pushed her inside. “It’s already lights-out, so no talking.” Then he left, locking the door again behind him.
Audrey stood in front of her new cellmate: a curious, haughty woman with a pale face.
“I’m Ada,” she said, then wondered why. It had become so automatic.
The woman tapped her long fingernail on the wall as she stared at Audrey. “What are you in for?” she finally asked.
Her voice was deeper than Audrey expected. A stage voice, she thought. A voice accustomed to people listening to it, obeying it. Audrey considered her answer for a moment. There was little point in lying.
“My name is actually Audrey James. I was arrested for my activity in a resistance cell in Berlin. We tried to kill Hitler.”
