The warning of rotten bones had been sent.
Felix knelt on the floor, kneecaps slowly breaking against concrete as he listened to Miriam imitate Kasper’s voice. The mimicry sounded so close to the truth, it filled Felix with agonizing doubt. It would’ve been simple for SS-Standartenführer Baasch to put a doppelgänger on the phone. Had Felix ever talked to his father?
He would’ve asked, except he’d been gagged again. Tongue-tied to keep the resistance from finding out what they already knew: Their map room was compromised. Baasch’s men seemed determined to strip the place, but the task proved arduous. The number of papers they found stuffed in filing cabinets and wedged in gaps between bookshelves seemed miraculous. Pages multiplied before their very eyes. Rosters, blueprints, notes on operations, forged passbooks, transcripts of the 1955 Axis Tour, maps… it was a fire-hazard collection of information—enough to burn the resistance down to the roots.
SS-Standartenführer Baasch took all of it in with a strange sort of glee. No doubt the officer was envisioning the promotion he’d garner from this: SS-Oberführer Baasch. Gorget patches on his collar threaded with not one but two silver oak leaves each.
Whenever Baasch’s men showed him a new document with a new name, the SS-Standartenführer’s eyes glinted brighter: steel, sterling, titanium. “Excellent. Set it aside to present at the People’s Court.”
The pile grew. Miriam continued the radio exchange. Felix’s knees kept aching, breaking. Henryka’s hair had faded from pink to rust, stiffened curls clawing at him. So many had died, were dying, because of Felix’s words, and he couldn’t undo it. He wondered if his yes, yes lie would make a difference at all. Maybe now General Reiniger wouldn’t walk into the rattrap. Maybe—
“What’s that?” One of the men raiding Henryka’s desk paused, caught by the glow of the television. The Führer sat on-screen, and this time he wasn’t alone.
Yael hadn’t just escaped… she’d made it to the Reichssender studios! Felix couldn’t see her wolves, but he could place the face as hers. The anger was hers, too—blazing alongside her gun as she pressed it to Adolf Hitler’s temple. The pistol that edged Felix’s own skull slackened, his guard transfixed. The man by the desk twisted the volume knob, and the entire map room froze: eyes open, ears listening, unable to pull away as the truth unfolded from the speakers. A drama that was so very obviously not scripted. Yael, Reichsführer Himmler, Luka, whoever the man in the chair was… all of them were made of emotion so real it seeped through the Reichssender, cramped the map room.
Confusion: “Wait, the Führer’s dead?”
Fear: “Is this true, Standartenführer? Did you know?”
Anyone staring at the SS-Standartenführer would realize he hadn’t. Baasch’s skin had gone waxy—glistening pale. His handkerchief hung limp at his side, stained with Luger oil.
Luka was listing the victims: flesh and memory versions of the paper under Baasch’s hat. Felix waited for Anne Weisskopf’s name to be spoken. The loss inside him kept piling—vertebrae shattered, finger bones lost, gravestone past and guillotine future, ghost woman and her ghost curls, all those names and still not Anne’s—higher and higher, turning into something HOT.
The room exploded.
Sometime during the broadcast, Miriam had unplugged the radio headset, wrapped its cord around her hands in the style of a garrote. She drew this around her guard’s throat, lining the life out of him.
The resistance operatives moved as one. Brigitte snatched a pencil from her hair—bun tumbling free as she lodged the writing utensil into the nearest SS leg. Kasper grabbed the gun near his head, diverted its shot at the guard who loomed over Adele. Johann’s move mirrored this—just as fast, just as fluid.
All this happened before most of Baasch’s men could tear their eyes from the television. The operatives were outnumbered, three to one, but their willingness to die, their need to live, was equal to the SS’s confusion.
Felix had fought before, but never like this: tooth and claw, your life or his, his, his. The room blurred and sharpened all at once. Trapped moments sped by: Brigitte managed to pull down a bookshelf for cover; Miriam abandoned her garrote for a gun; papers flew off Henryka’s desk as SS fell behind it.
The odds kept shifting. Four to one when Johann was shot in the sternum, fell, did not get up. Two to one after the SS took a wave of bullets and the Wolfes joined the fray. Felix’s hits were far less powerful than Kasper’s, but they were effective. He even used his bandaged hand, striking with cornered animal rage. Again and again and again. Until he couldn’t tell if the red on his knuckles was from within or from the face of the SS-Schütze he was beating.
The fight evened. One to one. SS-Standartenführer Baasch’s handkerchief fell to the floor as the officer made a graceless retreat for the exit.
NO.
It wasn’t desperation to survive that drove Felix to his feet. It wasn’t anger or vengeance that made him lunge after the SS-Standartenführer. The HEAT inside was a different beast, unleashed.
For the first time since Felix had met the SS-Standartenführer, he wasn’t trapped. Now they met on Felix’s terms: shoulder to spine to concrete. They hit the floor together.
What had he done? Something a yes, yes could not undo. Something Felix could never take back, though this didn’t stop him from trying. He used both fists: the broken and the breaker.
Baasch wasn’t a slight man, nor was he one to lie back and take a beating. Their fight was more than even; it was vicious. Crush below, claw above. The SS-Standartenführer’s punches caught Felix in the jaw, ribs, chest, anywhere he could reach. Felix didn’t even try to avoid the blows.
“Did you—ever have—my—parents?” Iron edged his words, and he was bloody, all bloody, and Baasch’s face was drowning under his fists, but Felix didn’t care. “Answer—me!”
The SS-Standartenführer’s mouth gaped: broken teeth, airless answer. There were too many ricochets ringing through the map room to hear it.
“LOUDER!” Felix roared. Only now did he realize that the SS officer’s hits had stopped. Baasch was beaten, but it did nothing. The coals kept searing Felix’s chest. His right hand was a torch, hurt worse than ever.
Pain mossed over Baasch’s eyes. He drew a breath.
“Your—” was the only word he managed before his skull opened. The hole was small, only 9mm, but it was large enough for death to worm through, claiming the SS-Standartenführer for its own.
These eyes were dead. Hindsight proof that the SS-Standartenführer had had at least a glimmer of a soul, however hardened. Felix turned to find Miriam only a few steps behind him, still holding the gun. The soul in her eyes was overflowing—lightning bright and luminous.
Miriam aimed the pistol at his heart.
Felix didn’t throw up his hands, the way Baasch’s surviving men were doing under Brigitte’s and Kasper’s guns. He did not try to plead or beg. He’d done what he had to, and now it was time for him to pay.
Felix stared back at Miriam—blue eyes to blazing—and nodded.
Adele ran to her brother, lodging herself in front of him. She faced Miriam. “No! Please! I told—I told Felix to do it! He was only trying to protect me! Baasch was going to kill our family.”
The gun didn’t move.
Neither did Adele.
“Ad,” Felix whispered, “get out of the way.”
“NO!” his sister spit, with every ounce of stubborn, angry love in her body. “No! This isn’t right! Baasch forced you—”
“I still made the call,” he said, hoarse. “I still chose.”
A hush had fallen over the map room, allowing for new noises from above: gunshots, heavy machinery churning against asphalt. So that was why reinforcement SS hadn’t come. They were engaged in another fight. Had Reiniger’s men managed to rally back for the block so quickly? It seemed unlikely.… But then, who was on the other side of the battle?
Miriam heard the sounds as well. She waited another beat. Artillery rumbled. Adele stood in front of her brother. Arms outstretched, as if another few lengths of flesh and bone might protect him.
“Get out.”
What? Felix couldn’t believe what Miriam had just said.
“Take your sister and go!” Miriam waved her Luger at the main door. “If I see you again, Herr Wolfe, you’re a dead man.”
This time, Felix believed her.
Adele hooked her arm around her brother, pulled him off Baasch’s corpse. They walked into the cellar together. The SS-Standartenführer’s two remaining men followed: stripped of their weapons, dazed with their intact lives. The door locked shut behind them, sealing Miriam and the other two operatives in with a mound of corpses.
Why was it that this side felt more like a tomb?