It was well into evening when Yael was summoned back to the front room. The place was even more cluttered than before; several newspaper stacks had been shoved aside to accommodate the Soviets’ radio unit, along with its operators. The pile of papers next to the Enigma machine had grown fivefold, all covered in Miriam’s handwriting: Henryka’s back-and-forth negotiations with Novosibirsk. Yael was too far away to see what they said.
The aimless/fidgety/lost feeling tailed Yael as she entered the room. She had no idea where to stand, and it didn’t help that all seven Soviet officers were staring her down in that nerveless way of theirs. Yael’s eyes were quick to seek Miriam’s. Her friend stood by the piano, hands folded, face firm as she nodded.
Be brave, that gold gaze seemed to say. Anything is possible.
Comrade Commander Chekov was the first to speak. “Have a seat, Comrade Volchitsa.”
Comrade. Not prisoner. Yael took note of this as she sat down on Luka’s old Das Reich dais. The newspapers sagged under her weight.
Once she was settled, Chekov continued talking. “As you can see, we’ve been in contact with Novosibirsk and Germania, trying to decide on a course of action that would be beneficial for both contingents. It took some negotiating, but we’ve agreed on a solution.
“You and Comrade Mnogolikiy are to return to Germania and assassinate Adolf Hitler.”
The room went silent. Yael realized that the television had been switched off. The electronic Führer was gone, and so was the buzz, buzz, hate of his words. Yael saw herself reflected in the screen: a girl cramped down by the shock of this announcement. The circuitousness of it.
Again. They wanted her to kill Adolf Hitler again.
“The resistance’s main obstacle to victory is the desertion of its Wehrmacht fighters,” Chekov went on. “If the Führer were eliminated, as originally planned, the Führereid would be lifted, and General Reiniger’s forces would grow. Not only this, but your resistance friends have Hermann Göring in custody. He’s second-in-command in the National Socialist Party, Hitler’s natural successor. Once the real Hitler is dead, Göring will be forced to announce his resignation and appoint Reiniger in his place, a position he could claim with the Wehrmacht’s full support. The National Socialist government would be dismantled from there. Novosibirsk’s claim on the Muscovy territories would remain unthreatened.
“All this is in the transcripts if you wish to see them,” Chekov added, gesturing toward the Enigma papers littered at the piano leg’s base.
Yael didn’t need to read the notes. This might not be the verdict she’d expected, but it made sense. Novosibirsk would only sacrifice one of its soldiers (as opposed to thousands upon thousands). Erwin Reiniger’s transition into power would be seamless, backed by the full weight of the Wehrmacht. Even the SS would be rattled.…
Hitler’s survival changes things.
So change it back.
It wasn’t helplessness that filled Yael’s veins, weighing her down as she stared darkly through the television glass. Not this time. No—what rose through her blood was the wolf-fierce, the Valkyrie-calling, the clang of her iron voice:
—ALL OVER AGAIN TAKE THE SHOT KILL THE REAL BASTARD HIS DEATH CAN END THIS—
“Yael?” It was only after Miriam spoke that Yael realized she’d been staring at the screen, wordless, for a while now.
“We need to make sure we kill the right Hitler, the real Hitler. We know now that the Führer’s been using skinshifter decoys for public appearances. He wasn’t shot in the ballroom. He probably wasn’t even shot in the Grosser Platz.” The thought of Aaron-Klaus firing those four shots (all for nothing) tore through Yael’s every word. “If we manage to infiltrate the Führerbunker, we’re probably only going to get one shot at killing the man himself. We need to be one hundred percent certain our target is the genuine artifact. Not a skinshifter.”
“You’re absolutely right.” Miriam nodded. “Which is why we need to retrieve as much information as we possibly can on Hitler’s face-changer decoys before we go forward with any assassination plans.”
“But where would we…” Yael’s mouth went dry, and there was a burning under her skin not so unlike the one those needles had placed there over a decade ago. How are you feeling? she could hear Dr. Geyer asking through his too-stretched smile. Instead of listening to the girl’s answer, he flipped through the notes of his clipboard: all of Yael’s suffering reduced to letters and dates.
She knew exactly where they’d find information on the Führer’s decoys. In the heart of the red lands, where the train tracks ended and the stacks of smoke began, behind layers and layers of barbed-wire gates, along the path lined with poplar trees, inside the building made of neatly stacked bricks, down the hall, and into the office where the Angel of Death had been laboring all these years, waiting for her to return.
There. The place she did not want to go again.
Miriam had come to this conclusion as well. “If anyone knows the details of Hitler’s face-changing substitutes, it will be Dr. Engel Geyer.” She stated this in her military voice: bulletproof, every emotion bouncing off it. “Henryka looked through her records. The doctor is still working in the camp.”
Of course he was still there, cutting children open with no remorse, and oh, how Yael’s blood boiled to think of it!
“Once you and Comrade Mnogolikiy gather all the intelligence you need on the other face-changers, you’ll return to the resistance’s headquarters and use the resources there to sort out the final details of the assassination,” Chekov told Yael. “I trust we have your full cooperation?”
—CHANGE THINGS HOPE HOPE FIGHT—
Boil, boil, up and over, hot-froth anger, spilling into Yael’s words.
“When do we leave?” she asked.