Yael’s first mission had taken an entire year of planning: The intricacies of racing across Europe, Africa, and Asia to assassinate the Führer had been ironed out over months. Drawing up the details of this new mission had been reduced to a mere thirty-six hours.
Forging citizenship papers was easier than ever with Molotov’s Reich office at their disposal. All it took were a few minutes of typing and a few photographs cut out of old identity papers and pasted into the new ones. Yael and Miriam created aliases for every territory they planned on passing. A collection of faces, names, birth dates, and hometowns that would be plausible for any area where a patrol might stop them.
Getting the boys through the Muscovy territories and the central Reich undetected was a different matter. Adding Felix and Luka to their roster made things infinitely harder. Miriam opposed the addition—vocally, vehemently—but Yael stood her ground. Even though Miriam insisted the boys would be safe in Molotov, Yael could not get the sight of the executed soldiers out of her head. Piled mountain high. Weeping blood in streams. If she left the boys here, she would not rest easy.
Besides, Yael had a promise to keep.
Luka wasn’t quite as immediately recognizable with his face half covered in beard, but even facial hair couldn’t disguise that he was the double victor. Poster boy. Wanted the Reich over.
Felix’s face wasn’t that far behind in notoriety, and even after eight razorless days, it looked as hairless as before.
A solution to the boys’ very recognizable, very unchangeable appearances presented itself in the form of a truck. It was the sort of vehicle you didn’t look twice at: body pocked with rust flecks from harsh taiga winters, meant for transporting crops and other goods between cities. It had also been used by Molotov’s resistance cell to transport less legal packages (and people) in a hollow compartment beneath the truck bed’s boards. The space was shallow, and smelled overwhelmingly of engine grease. It was a testament to how much Felix wanted to get back to his family that he was willing to hide in the space.
When Luka saw the truck’s cracked windshield, he made a face. When he saw the compartment he’d have to share with Felix, he groaned. “And I thought the ZIS-5 ride was rough.”
“You can stay here if you want,” Yael told him.
Luka raised his eyebrows. “You trying to get rid of me, Fräulein?”
“It’s going to be dangerous.” Crossing 3,300 kilometers through war-strung territory with only a rusted truck and a few pages of papers was insanity. Not to mention their…“pit stop”… as Yael had come to think of the first portion of their mission. Stealing the identities of female overseers, walking back inside death’s jaws, and prying out a few teeth…
More than dangerous.
Deadly.
Too many things could go wrong. Would, if statistics had any say in the matter. Luka was smart. The boy must’ve known this, but all he did was shrug. “Staying here with a bunch of soldiers who want to shoot me on sight doesn’t seem much safer. Besides, someone has to keep sticking Herr Wolfe full of morphine so he doesn’t scream again.”
Sensible reasoning aside, Yael was happy that Luka was coming. She’d grown used to the victor’s company. His deflective remarks, his sneers, all those faint, shimmering threads of emotions kept snapping and restringing between them.
“I’m sure you’ll be a wonderful nurse.” She bit back a smile.
It was a good thing Felix was acrophobic instead of claustrophobic. Miriam insisted they fit as many munitions as they could into the gaps—just in case. Both boys lying together in the hidden compartment was a tight squeeze. Shoulder to shoulder inside a nest of rifles, pistols, and boxes of bullets swaddled in a waterproof tarp. The sight was unsettling.
Even more unsettling was when Yael had to slide the wood paneling shut, drawing a dark, dark shadow over the boys’ bodies. She hesitated at the very last moment, letting her stare linger with the light. Both boys met it.
Felix nodded.
Luka winked.
They filled the truck bed with sacks of potatoes. By the time the transport was fully loaded, it bowed a few extra centimeters from the weight. Yael eyed its worn tires, hoping they’d be able to handle the muddy back roads she and Miriam would be favoring. Herr Förstner assured her they would.
“Ten years and this beauty hasn’t failed us. She’d carry you all the way to the heart of Germania and back if you wanted.” He gave the truck a solid pound with his fist.
Luka thumped back in double time.
Miriam stood by the cab door. She hadn’t changed faces yet, but she already looked like a different person. Her Soviet uniform was gone, replaced by Mary Janes and hosiery and a fine knit sweater. Clothes more suited to a Lebensraum bride. Yael, too, was wearing a skirt, fighting the scratch of the stockings against her leg. The outfit Irmgard had scrounged up for her was far from comfortable, but at least it was lumpy enough to conceal the old TT-33 pistol Miriam had given her. There was makeup, too—skin-colored powder dashed all over Yael’s ebbing bruises. She was the picture of Aryan health.
“Are you ready?” asked her third wolf in the flesh.
Ready? It was the same question Kasper had posed to Yael in the van outside Adele’s building. She’d laughed at the operative and said More than before plunging into the victor’s flat.
Yael was not laughing now. Her own sweater sleeves hung a little too far down her arm, tickling her knuckles; other wolf memories prickled beneath them. Mama, Babushka, Aaron-Klaus. She did not know if she was ready to return to these outside of Vlad’s exercises. Enduring nightmares was so different from stepping back into the past. Foot to stone. Heart to hurt.
Yet it was not just the dead and their memories who depended on her, but the living. The Wolfe who needed his family. The general who needed an army. Countless countries that needed to be reborn.
Because of these, Yael hitched up her skirt and climbed into the cab of the truck.
She was not ready, but she was going.
She was going back to the beginning to find an end.
She was going to find the Führer. The real Führer.
She was going to finish what she’d started.