CHAPTER 48

I am not going to die.

But Miriam knew she might, at the end of Baasch’s countdown. Simple process of elimination told her this. He needed Kasper’s and Johann’s voices. He needed Adele’s face. The Wolfe boy was too full of easy information to shoot. Yael, thank the fates, had escaped.

Miriam and Brigitte were the outliers, and unless Kasper talked, one of them was going to catch a bullet. She’d already taken one to the shoulder today—which was more than enough. There were smarter ways to go about this situation. If Baasch needed Kasper’s voice, that was what Miriam would give him: “I’ll do it. I’ll operate the radio.”

The officer did not lower his gun. His signet ring shimmered. “I didn’t ask you.”

“I’m a face-changer.” Miriam dropped her voice into a gravelly imitation of Kasper’s. It worked well enough. The operative’s voice was already hoarse from days of nonstop talking. “They won’t be able to tell the difference between my voice and his over the radio. That’s all you need, right? A convincing lie?”

Baasch’s lips twitched. Miriam couldn’t tell if the motion signaled disappointment or pleasure. The expression might be hard to read, but the man wasn’t. She’d known many like him: ruthless creatures who enjoyed watching their prey dance before they devoured it.

The trick to dealing with them?

Be the prey and dance, dance until they licked their lips.

Then strike.

Pretending to be prey was not difficult. Miriam was a wounded Jewish woman—all properties that discounted her in the SS-Standartenführer’s mind.

“Just how many lab rats did Dr. Geyer let loose?” The officer tutted, then nodded to the radio stool. “Very well. Take a seat.

“Gag the others,” he ordered his men. “We don’t want them making any unnecessary fuss. And someone else tie up this inmate’s wound. We don’t need her bleeding out midmessage.”

The loss of blood had made Miriam dizzy. She swayed her way to the communications station. Kasper called her some colorful words just before the gag silenced him, but Miriam pretended to be deaf to his insults. She also pretended that passing the traitorous Wolfe boy didn’t boil her insides down to their linings. She should’ve known he was the leak, should’ve questioned his motives further, should’ve never let the wretch out of her sight. Not that it mattered now. He was going to the same guillotine they were if Miriam couldn’t pull this off.…

She wasn’t even fully sure what this was as she sat down to the radio, wincing. One of the soldiers began patching up her wound and not gently.

“What should I say?” Miriam kept her eyes down, scanning the room as she did so. Thumbtacks, two stiffening bodies, a dashed typewriter, the television (which had somehow survived the firefight) still flickering behind the desk… none of these things would help. The SS-Standartenführer’s men were sacking the place, ripping books from shelves, and tossing documents they didn’t need to the floor.

The whole process was making an awful lot of noise.

“Tell them the headquarters were overlooked and all inhabitants are safe,” Baasch said. “Then we’ll ask for an update on Reiniger’s positions.”

“I wouldn’t dive straight into that,” Miriam advised. “Let them volunteer the information. If you want to establish a longer repertoire, then the conversation needs to flow at a natural pace.”

It was only when the SS-Standartenführer’s stare narrowed that Miriam realized she’d lapsed back into her commander tone. Abrasive syllables had become old habit when she was confronted with men and uniforms.

“I am in charge of this exchange.” Baasch’s words danced on toothpoint. “I dictate the message.”

So he did. A dutiful soldier spelled out the message on the back of one of Henryka’s discarded files and typed it through the cipher. Miriam recited the encoded letters in Kasper’s husky voice, letting her finger linger on the transmission button as many seconds as she dared, hoping that ears on the other end might catch snippets of the SS’s office sacking.

The process felt life-drudgingly slow. Minutes passed as their message was ironed out, a response cobbled, jumbled, recited back, put through the cipher.

THE WOLVES OF WAR ARE GATHERING.

“The wolves of war are gathering?” Baasch read it aloud. “What does that mean?”

It could mean a number of things. Perhaps the pause between the initial transmission and Baasch’s response had been too lengthy. Or maybe Miriam’s warning had been received, caught in the smack of a jackboot or the crash of a book.

“It’s a pass code,” Miriam told the officer, recalling Yael’s frantic yell to resistance fighters the night before. “They want us to verify our identities.”

The SS-Standartenführer’s lips set. (Angry or resigned? Impossible to tell.) He walked over to where Felix Wolfe knelt, pale hair dripping into a paler, sweat-sopped face. The boy flinched at every one of the SS officer’s steps. Miriam had to remind herself she didn’t feel sorry for him.

“What’s the response?”

“Something—” Felix gasped when Baasch jerked the wadded cloth from his mouth. “Something about r-rotting songs and bones! I don’t remember the exact wording.”

Miriam did. They sing the song of rotten bones crooned through her memory. Rotten, rotten. This was all rotten. And if they could make it clear to the resistance that their communications had been seized without the SS knowing…

“‘Their song of bones is rotten,’” Miriam told the SS-Standartenführer. “That’s the counterphrase.”

Kasper’s cheek twitched against his gag. Brigitte and Johann maintained their stonewall stares. Well-trained, all of them. None of the SS had bothered securing their limbs yet. Why would they, when the operatives were stripped of weapons and so clearly outnumbered? Pistols to their skulls were enough.

“Is that it?” Baasch asked Felix. “You swear on your sister’s life that’s it?”

Play, play. Watch the prey dance.

If the Wolfe boy went any paler, he’d be invisible. He nodded. “Yes, yes. That’s it!”

It was a groveling answer, so convincing that Miriam couldn’t tell if he was lying for their sake or if he truly believed the response was accurate. So convincing that Baasch swallowed it whole.

“Send it,” ordered the SS-Standartenführer.

THEIR SONG OF BONES IS ROTTEN.