Prisoner of Night and Fog Read online

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  HarperCollins Publishers

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  courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers

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  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  Dedication

  To Mike, who knows why

  Contents

  Cover

  Disclaimer

  Title

  Dedication

  Part One: A Girl of Wax

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part Two: The Great Magician

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Part Three: In Desperate Defiance

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Part Four: The Infernal Machine

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

  Select Bibliography for Prisoner of Night and Fog

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  PART ONE

  A GIRL OF WAX

  Nothing is more enjoyable than educating a young thing—a girl of eighteen or twenty, as pliable as wax.

  —Adolf Hitler

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  1

  GRETCHEN MÜLLER PEERED THROUGH THE CAR’S rain-spotted windshield. Up ahead, a man was crossing the street, so far away he was little more than a child’s cut-out stick figure of spindly legs and arms and head. She could tell from his broad-brimmed hat and long coat that he was a member of the Hasidic sect.

  “Look at the Jew,” her brother, Reinhard, said. He and his friend Kurt started snickering. Gretchen ignored them and glanced at her best friend sitting beside her in the back. Lights from passing buildings flashed over Eva’s powdered face and the lipstick tube she was opening.

  “You needn’t fuss with your appearance for Uncle Dolf.” Gretchen smiled. “You know how he always says he’s a man of the common people.”

  Eva reddened her lips with a quick, practiced sweep of her hand. “Yes, but he’s so fascinating. I want to look my best for him.”

  Gretchen understood. Adolf Hitler might be an old family friend to her, but to Eva, he seemed glamorous and mysterious, the most famous man in Munich. Although Uncle Dolf had never held an elected office—for serving as a mere Reichstag deputy would be beneath him, and local politics didn’t interest him—he had set his sights on the Chancellery itself, and was campaigning for the presidency. Lately, politics had kept him so busy that his invitation to share dessert and coffee with him was a rare treat.

  The car jerked to the left.

  “What are you doing?” Gretchen cried.

  The engine growled, a sure sign that Kurt had punched the accelerator. The tires skidded across the rain-drenched cobblestones, and Gretchen gripped the front seat so she wouldn’t slide into Eva.

  Yellow beams from the car’s headlamps cut through the darkness, illuminating the Jew for an instant, making his face ghostly as he stood still, staring in shock as the car shot toward him. His mouth opened in a scream, and, dimly, Gretchen heard herself screaming, too, begging Kurt to stop.

  The Daimler-Benz careened in the other direction, its back end fishtailing. The abrupt movement shoved Gretchen against Eva so hard she lost her breath. They were going too fast—they were going to fly over the curb and plow into a group of ladies in front of a clothing shop—and then there was a harsh grinding of gears and the brakes slammed so hard, she and Eva were thrown back in their seats. The car stopped.

  For an instant, no one moved. The engine ticked as it cooled down, a tiny sound in the silence. Gretchen took a deep breath, trying to slow her frantic heartbeat. Then the boys slithered out and started to run, their jackboots thumping on the ground. A small piece of her wanted to cheer them on—after all, Uncle Dolf had explained to her many times how Jews were subhumans, determined to destroy her and other pure-blooded Germans—but part of her hesitated. The man’s face had been so frightened.

  “I wish they wouldn’t bother with him.” Eva pouted. “Now we’ll be late.”

  Being late was the least of their problems if Reinhard and Kurt started a street brawl. Through the windshield, Gretchen watched the boys launch themselves at the Jew. He barely had time to cry out before they seized his arms and began dragging him toward the alley.

  Gretchen scrambled out of the automobile. She knew her brother too well to doubt what would happen next. Just as she knew how furious Hitler would be if Reinhard started a street fight. Uncle Dolf was always complaining that Party members had been branded as a group of brawlers. Dozens of times he had said that if the National Socialists wished to make any electoral progress, they must appear law-abiding. For Uncle Dolf’s sake, she had to stop her brother.

  The wet cobblestones, slick from the recent rainfalls, slipped beneath her feet, but the breeze was dry and it carried the sounds of the boys’ shouts. “Filthy Jew!”

  From the back seat, Eva sobbed. “Don’t leave me alone!”

  “I need to stop them.”

  Gretchen slammed the car door shut. Dusk had fallen early, painting the jumble of brick and stone buildings along the avenue with stripes of blue and black. Electric streetlamps broke apart the descending darkness, throwing small white circles on the Müncheners walking along the sidewalk—burghers in fine suits strolling to restaurants for a fancy meal, day laborers in stained jackets and patched trousers trudging to beer halls, office girls in flounced frocks striding to their rented rooms, all with their heads down, faces turned away, so they didn’t have to watch the two boys pushing the Jew toward the yawning gap between the stone buildings.
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br />   Exhaustion slumped their shoulders, and hunger hollowed their cheeks. Rampant unemployment and inflation and starvation had weakened them—that’s what Uncle Dolf would say. Germans had become so wrapped up in their tiny lives, in trying to survive by any means they could, that they didn’t see the danger creeping closer. This was how the Jew triumphed, a sewer rat slipping into a barrel of apples and spoiling them all, without anyone noticing until the first rancid bite.

  Gretchen exhaled a shaky breath. The Jew was her eternal enemy. Those words had guided her heart for twelve years, thanks to her honorary “uncle” Dolf. She owed him so much. He had taught her about art and music, all the things that her father hadn’t understood and her mother found dull. In gratitude to him, she had to prevent Reinhard from damaging the Party’s reputation with another street fight.

  The Jew’s heels slapped on the cobblestones as Reinhard and Kurt pulled him closer to the alley. Nobody looked toward the struggling boys. Across the Brienner Strasse, a group of men opened the Carleton Tea Room’s door, letting out a stream of soft lamplight. They wore the plain brown uniform of the SA—the Sturmabteilung, or storm troopers—the same division within the National Socialist Party to which Reinhard and his friends belonged.

  There would be no help from that quarter. If she called out, they would run across the avenue, their fists raised and ready.

  “Please!” the Jew screamed. The long, harsh sound pushed against her ears, so hard that she wanted to clap her hands over them and block the cries out. What could she do? SA men across the street, and inside the café, Uncle Dolf probably sat with his chauffeur, eating strawberry tarts and waiting for her and the others with growing impatience because he wanted to leave for a musical at the Kammerspiele. She couldn’t go to him, not when asking for his assistance would expose Reinhard’s part in a street beating, and Mama wanted the Müller family to remain above reproach.

  She had to stop the boys.

  Her feet smacked into the pavement as she ran into the alley. It was lined with stone, and so dark she had to blink several times for her eyes to adjust. Rubbish bins leaned against a wall, and they were probably stuffed with kitchen waste, judging from the rank stink assailing her nose. And there, at the far end, her brother and Kurt leaned over the man.

  He lay on the ground. Between the boys’ legs, she caught sight of him: a sliver of his face, pale and smooth; an eye, dark and wide; and the corner of a mouth, red and moving as he shouted, “Stop!”

  A cry hurled itself from Gretchen’s throat before she could snatch it back. “Don’t hurt him!”

  She froze. What had she done? She had meant to tell the boys to stop their foolish behavior, that Uncle Dolf would be angry—not defend a Jew. But the pain in the man’s voice had been more than she could bear.

  Reinhard paused. In the shadows, he was a column of darkness, like Kurt, but she recognized the hard line of his shoulders and his massive six-foot-tall frame as it slowly unfolded from its crouching position. Only eighteen, just a year older than her, and he was already a solid wall of muscle. He moved toward her, into the rectangle of light thrown from a window two stories above.

  Gretchen’s mouth went dry as sand. When she looked at him, she might have been looking at a male reflection of herself, as they had been when they were young children: white-blond hair, cornflower-blue eyes, fair skin, all of the features their Uncle Dolf praised as Aryan. While her hair had darkened to honey and her eyes had deepened to navy, however, Reinhard’s appearance had stayed the same. He hadn’t changed. He had only gotten bigger.

  “Go back to the car,” Reinhard said. “And make Eva shut her mouth.”

  Gretchen glanced back. The automobile sat across the avenue, parked cockeyed from its sliding stop. In the back seat, Eva rocked back and forth. Probably crying, but so quietly they couldn’t hear. One small blessing, at least. Reinhard detested tears. A few passersby glanced at the car, then shrugged and went on.

  “She’ll be fine,” Gretchen said. She had to speak now, before she lost her nerve. “Reinhard, you shouldn’t do this. You know how angry Uncle Dolf would be if he knew—”

  His laughter cut into her words. “Kurt! Gretchen thinks the Führer will be angry if he finds out what we’re doing.”

  Kurt laughed, too. “We’re defending ourselves, Gretchen. Didn’t you see this subhuman walking across the street, right in front of us? Why, I did all I could to avoid hitting the fellow!” He leaned down and grabbed a fistful of the Jew’s hair, yanking hard so that the man had to look up. Resignation had stamped itself onto his pale oval face. The slumped set of his mouth told Gretchen that he knew he had no chance of getting away.

  “You ought to let him alone,” Gretchen said. Inside, she was shaking, but her voice sounded calm to her ears. “This behavior is exactly the sort that Uncle Dolf says makes the SA look like a bunch of brutes.”

  Reinhard glanced at her, his eyes blank and emotionless. Sometime during the fight, he had taken off his suit jacket. Suspenders formed dark slashes against his white shirt. He had rolled up the sleeves, and she could see the muscular ridges of his forearms.

  Familiar knots tied in her stomach. Reinhard wouldn’t touch her, she knew; he never did. What he did was far worse. And she was disobeying him, in front of his friend.

  She should go back to the car. But his eyes fastened on hers with such intensity that she couldn’t rip her gaze away. He was younger than she had thought, about twenty-five to her seventeen, and his face looked soft, the chin roughened by a few patches of stubble, as though he couldn’t grow a proper beard. He wore the black clothes of the traditional Hasidic Jew: thick trousers, long flapping coat, yarmulke pinned to his brown hair.

  His lips moved silently. Please.

  How could she refuse him, when he lay on the ground, so broken and quiet? How could she walk back to the automobile, knowing the boys’ fists were quickly cracking him into pieces? How could she pretend he was incapable of true feelings, when she had heard him cry out in pain? But he could be pretending. Uncle Dolf always said the Jew assumed whatever disguise suited his purposes best. Especially a victim, if it permitted him to escape.

  And yet, the slowness with which the Jew hung his head, clearly giving up on her help, made her decision for her. “Let him alone. Uncle Dolf is waiting for us, and he’ll be annoyed if we’re late.”

  “Waiting for us fellows, you mean,” Reinhard said. “I think you and Eva have shown you’re quite incapable of handling an evening out on the town.”

  With one hand, he grabbed the Jew by the coat and jerked him into a sitting position. Then he plowed his other fist into the man’s face.

  “Stop!” Gretchen screamed. The ease with which Reinhard hit him sickened her. She had never seen a street beating before, and hadn’t known it could be so brutal.

  With one swift motion, Reinhard wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her against him. Through the layers of their clothes, she felt heat rolling off him, pushing into her skin. His familiar scent of cheap cologne and cigarettes clogged her nostrils. Each breath she inhaled, she breathed in more of him. Her stomach roiled.

  “I told you,” he whispered into her ear, “to go back to the car.”

  “What’s the matter here?” A stern male voice boomed down the alley.

  Reinhard released her. Gretchen staggered sideways before she slapped a hand against the stone wall for balance. Peering into the alley was a man in a dark green uniform. Lamplight glinted off the metal insignia on his helmet. She sagged with relief. A state policeman.

  A small crowd had gathered behind the officer. Some of the men stood on tiptoe, trying to look over the policeman’s shoulders.

  “Nothing is wrong,” Reinhard said. “A misunderstanding, that’s all.”

  “Get along, then,” said the policeman. He shrugged. “And look smart about it.”

  Reinhard and Kurt ambled out of the alley. Gretchen watched them head across the street, toward the café. She could guess what would hap
pen next: The boys would strut to Hitler’s table, Reinhard dropping into a chair and smiling away Uncle Dolf’s annoyance at their lateness, then casually saying Gretchen and Eva couldn’t come. Uncle Dolf would sigh with irritation until Reinhard asked him about one of his favorite topics, music or painting or used cars, and Uncle Dolf would start talking, a shower of words, until he had completely forgotten about the two girls who were supposed to complete their table tonight.

  It was better that way. The fewer people who knew what had happened in the alley, the better. What had she been thinking, defending a Jew? She must be going mad.

  But she hadn’t been able to stop herself. There must be no more death in the streets. Not after what had happened to her father.

  A picture rose in her mind: Papa, facedown on the ground, blood reddening the cobblestones. He had died only a few miles from here, his body pierced by policemen’s bullets.

  Faintly, she heard someone wheezing for air, and realized it was herself. She stared at the wall, memorizing the pattern of the stones and lines of mortar, until Papa’s image slipped away.

  The Jewish man limped toward her. He had cupped his hand around his nose. Through his fingers, she saw blood trickling over his lips, onto his chin.

  “Is it broken?” she asked.

  “No, I don’t think so.” His voice sounded light and cool, like softly falling snow. “Thank you. A thousand thank-yous, Fräulein.”

  She didn’t know what to say. Gratitude from a Jew was a poisoned gift, Uncle Dolf had told her. They smiled in your face and slid a knife between your ribs. And yet this man looked at her with such clear, thankful eyes. “You’d better get home,” she said at last.

  On the Brienner Strasse, he limped away in the direction opposite the one her brother and Kurt had taken. By now, the crowd had scattered. All except a lone man, watching her. He stood beyond the streetlamp’s illumination, so he remained in shadow.

  “You’re not at all like the others,” he said. The voice was young and quick, with the sharp accent of a Berliner. Not a man, but a boy, perhaps her age or a little older. She wished she could see him. “Are you, Fräulein Müller?”