The household knows Alice is not where she is supposed to be.
Of course she has no way of actually knowing that. But it’s what her gut is screaming at her.
She could stop here. She could come back later, pick the whole ridiculous lock again. Or she can take her chances. Continue. Maybe get caught. Hopefully succeed.
Succeed, she decides.
Alice heaves the vault’s knob to the right and yanks open the heavy door, cursing the groaning noise the movement makes. She steps into the dark vault.
The camera won’t work without light. She pats the wall until she finds a switch. The sudden brightness of the room is blinding. The vault’s contents are even more so.
An entire wall is lined with stacks upon stacks of gold bars. Head shaking in disbelief, she walks toward them, unable to stop herself from reaching out. As if burned, she yanks back her hand. Each bar is imprinted with the unmistakable swastika of the Third Reich. Seeing the disgusting emblem fortifies her resolve to do what needs to be done.
She scans the rest of the room. Paintings. Large packages wrapped in heavy brown paper. Another wall of neatly stacked and neatly numbered boxes. The vault has little room to move around, but she maneuvers to one of the numbered boxes.
It could be booby-trapped. But she risks slowly lifting the lid.
“Oh, Hans,” she murmurs, her heart dropping. Inside is a mess of jewelry—rings, bracelets, necklaces, tie tacks, buttons, studs. At the end of a heavy gold chain is the—also unmistakable—Star of David.
“Why?” she whispers.
Why can’t Hans understand that possessing these is wrong?
Until this moment, she still had a sliver of hope that she’d find nothing incriminating in his vault. That hope is gone.
She fishes in her robe pocket for her camera, snapping a shot of the boxes’ contents. But it’s Hans’s ledger, ripe with every one of his transactions, that Linden wants from her.
The ledger is in plain sight on one of the shelves.
Inside, German names and columns of figures paint an undeniable story of Hans’s enterprise.
She flips the pages to find only deposits, no withdrawals. Just line after line, in Hans’s precise handwriting, of detailed lists of valuables and the numbered box in which it can be located.
The amount of stolen family heirlooms in this very room is sickening. And what of those families? Where are they now? What happened to them after the Nazis ransacked their homes?
“I’m sorry, Hans, but you are guilty by association.”
Alice photographs the first page. Then the second. Third. Fourth. Her heart races with each click, imagining the sound vibrating through the house. If Hans wasn’t already awake, he is now. If Brunner wasn’t already onto her, he is now . . .
There’s no talking her way out of this if she’s caught in Hans’s vault.
She flips a page. Click. Footsteps above her. She fumbles the camera, her hands trembling. Flip. Click. Flip. Footsteps. She pauses. Click. Flip. Click. Alice can’t remember the last time she breathed. In total, she captures twenty pages.
How is it there are still so, so many more?
“I’m a very wealthy man, darling, and getting wealthier all the time.”
That’s why.
What she has should be enough to nail the Nazis—and Hans. She wishes this moment didn’t feel so bittersweet. She just found the evidence to incriminate the Nazis who took her husband and her future from her, after all. But she can’t help mourning another future she’s only just begun to experience, one that has made her genuinely hopeful again.
Alice’s throat is thick as she eases out the vault’s opening, closes the door as quietly as she can, and slips through the wood door she picked open, scooping up her tools along the way. As if she’d never been there. Slowly, she climbs the stairs, pausing every few steps to listen.
“Miss Marble,” she hears in the Swiss accent of the staff.
Alice curses but then retreats down the steps, racing to the wine cellar to grab whatever bottle is closest. She runs now, not bothering to be quiet. She can still get upstairs. She can still pretend she only came for wine. She can still wake up beside Hans one last time. She can still give Franz Regenbogen the film. Then get the hell out of dodge.
“Miss Marble!”
Alice takes the stairs two at a time, barreling through the door. “Yes? I’m here. Hello?”
The maid is in the hallway, a hand flying to her chest. “Miss Marble, there you are.”
“Alice!” Hans calls from somewhere upstairs.
Brunner appears. “Where have you been? Mr. Steinmetz—”
Alice holds up the wine.
But Brunner’s not looking at the bottle. His eyes are wide, shocked, confused. When she raised her arm, her robe shifted. Now her shoulder holster—her gun plainly in sight—may as well have flashing lights on it.
“I can explain—”
“Sir, come quickly!” Brunner yells.
Muted footsteps sound upstairs on the carpet runner.
This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. Not at all. Alice was going to leave a note. She’d lie through her teeth in it, but at least she’d try to soften the blow of leaving Hans a second time.
Now, what choice does she have . . . other than to flee?
Alice throws down the wine, red liquid and glass flying everywhere.
And she runs.
She runs for the door, her robe behind her like a cape. Alice heaves open the heavy door and stumbles outside. Thank the Lord, Hans’s Mercedes still sits under the portico in the glow of the lamps. The keys will be in it; they always are until one of the servants moves it to the garage.
“Alice!” she hears at her back. “Wait!”
Her stomach turns at the confusion and hurt in Hans’s voice. Seeing the confusion and hurt on his face is even worse when she spares a final look back.
“I’m sorry,” she tries to say, but her words only come out strangled. She’s sobbing by the time she yanks open the car door, slips inside, finds the keys in the ignition.
Alice hates cars. She has ever since her dad’s accident. Even more after the army kid drove her off the road. Hated cars with a passion when that drunk driver ran into her, causing her miscarriage.
She hates that, soon, she’s going faster than she’s ever gone before. Down the winding drive. Through the open gate at the bottom. Along the highway that’ll lead to Geneva—and Franz Regenbogen.
A glass of wine be damned, Alice’s body feels completely sober, on high alert, both hands firmly gripping the wheel. She blinks away her tears. On her right, the mountain is an impenetrable wall. On her left, the roadside falls off into nothing but darkness. It’s too much like Panama.
Alice slows, knowing there’s very little margin for error on these narrow, winding roads. Only the sport car’s two pinpricks of light guide her way. She slams her palm against the wheel, furious that everything has gone so wrong.
Maybe it’s cowardly of her, but she’d been hoping to slip away without seeing the pain on his face. But either way—if she’d had the opportunity to write the false letter or not—she’d have broken his heart.
Alice is over being a spy. She tugs the gun free from the holster and throws it on the passenger seat. A flash of light catches her eyes. There, in the rearview, she sees it. There’s a car coming up behind her.
She wants to believe it’s a coincidence, but it’s too late and the car is gaining on her too quickly for that.
It has to be Hans.
She pushes harder on the accelerator, fully accepting the fact she’s a coward. Alice’s head whips to the side as she reads a street sign her headlights caught.
Geneva 10k
Six miles.
It’ll be a miracle if she doesn’t drive herself off the road. She throws the wheel left and right, turn after turn. Whenever the road straightens, she floors the gas.
Hans doesn’t seem to take his foot off the accelerator at all.
His headlights are so close now they are blinding whenever she looks in the rearview mirror.
Alice curses, evaluates. Maybe she should stop. There’s no way she’ll be able to outrun him. And what is she going to do, bring him straight to Franz’s door? Confess that she took photographs that’ll incriminate him?
Hans pulls up beside her.
“Hans!” she yells as they go around a dangerous turn side by side. “You’re going to kill us!”
Not that he can hear her.
Alice risks a glance at him, her brow immediately furrowing. It’s not Hans. It can’t be him. She knows every angle of his face. The man is motioning for her to pull over. Alice glances whenever she can, searching for any recognition through the darkness.
“Jones?” she questions herself. Colonel Linden didn’t mention Captain Jones coming to Switzerland. In fact, he said the opposite. But once her mind accepts it’s him, here, in Geneva, she’s certain of it.
He’s still motioning for her to pull over.
“Okay, okay,” she says, taking her foot off the gas. Jones wouldn’t be her first pick to come to her rescue. She’d take just about anyone over him, in fact. But she’s more than happy to unload the film on him. She’s mostly relieved it’s not Hans.
Not yet, at least.
Another pinprick of light appears in her rearview mirror.
She slams on her brakes, her tires spinning out, the car nearly going over the edge. Her knees are wobbling as she falls from the Mercedes, already calling to Jones, “I have the film!”
“That’s a good girl,” Jones call back.
Alice fights the urge to get back in the car and try her luck without Jones. She’s never liked him. But he’ll have to do. “Take me to the airport!” she yells, starting toward him.
“There’s been a change of plans.”
“What do you mean?” Frantic, she points toward the approaching car. “Hans is almost here.”
“That’s not Hans.”
“What?”
“Give me the film.”
Jones’s delivery has never been the best. Pompous-sounding. Thick with innuendos. But this time it’s a demand. It’s cold. It doesn’t sound like they’re on the same team.
“No,” she says instinctively, taking a step backward, laying a hand over the pocket of her robe. An expletive slips free when she realizes she’s all but drawn Jones a map showing where the camera is.
“Stop wasting time on that bitch!” someone shouts.
Alice startles.
She hadn’t realized anyone else was in Jones’s car. But now that her eyes have fully adjusted to the darkness, she sees the shadow of another man.
“Who’s that?” she shouts at Jones. Better yet—“Who are you?”
The slimiest of smiles appears on his face.
A double agent, that’s who he is. Not working with her and Colonel Linden, but against them.
And he’s charging at her.
Alice turns to run but trips. She lands hard on the ground. In a heartbeat, Jones is on top of her, trying to flip her, trying to get the film. She slams back her elbow, exactly like she’s been taught, connecting with Jones’s face, and she scrambles to her feet when his weight rolls off her.
Alice makes it two steps before she’s whipped backward, Jones catching the tie of her robe. One shoulder, then the other slips out of the thick cotton as she struggles to free herself. She realizes too late the camera goes with the robe. She makes a play for grabbing it, but Jones is faster, yanking the robe fully under an arm while pulling his gun with his other hand.
Alice goes to do the same, but her holster is empty, illuminated by the second car that’s quickly approaching.
“Just shoot her,” Jones’s partner yells.
She stares at the weapon. The hairs on her neck rise.
He’ll do it. He’ll pull the trigger. She can see it in his eyes.
Tires screech. A shot rings out from the new car.
Alice is still standing, the bullet not meant for her; Jones is ducking for cover.
Adrenaline kicking in, Alice turns. She runs.
Another shot is fired.
Alice is still running.
Another shot.
Still running.
A third shot.
Searing pain shoots through her body, and the ground rises up to meet her.