‘They took your parents. I’m sorry.’
‘Herr . . . Herr Schäffer?’
‘Yes, and you’re little Gavi Wolf. Do you need money?’
‘No—’
‘All you can do is get away. Survive. Here.’ He pressed a book into her hands. ‘Carry this.’
It was battered from much reading.
‘I can’t.’
The title was stark: Mein Kampf.
‘Carry it, read it on the bus or train, nod as if you’re agreeing with it. You have papers that declare you’re Aryan?’
‘Sort of.’
Her Swiss cantonal ID showed her religion as None. But the German passport, in an inner pocket of her coat, could kill her.
‘Go.’
Herr Schäffer walked on. She wanted to call him back, but knew it was dangerous for both of them. If he could recognize her after all this time, what about the other neighbours?
Without destination, she forced herself into motion.
It was some unknown time later when a guttural male voice said something. She looked up, saw the elegant length of Unter den Linden stretching before her, the eponymous trees making twin perspective lines; and she saw the grey-uniformed soldier with his hand out. Behind him, two more soldiers stood, watching the subdued passers-by.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Your papers, Fräulein.’
The ID shook as she produced it.
‘Swiss?’
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t sound Swiss to me.’
‘My family moved—’
Her brain swirled with the effort of trying to construct a convincing fiction. She was dead, and nothing could save her. That knowledge seeped through her, and her shoulders slumped.
Suddenly a beautiful blonde woman was standing there, smiling above her red-fox collar. A small dog was at her heel.
‘Soldier, this lady is a good Aryan. I have travelled with her in person.’
‘And you are—?’
But she was already showing her papers.
‘Ma’am?’ His eyes widened, then he slammed his bootheels together. ‘Sieg Heil!’
‘Likewise.’ She returned the salute. ‘Be vigilant.’
‘Yes, Frau Göbbels.’
‘Nice to see one of our own,’ she said to Gavriela. ‘You have a husband?’
‘A . . . a fiancée, Lucas.’ It was the first name she thought of. ‘He’s serving in, er, I think he’s in Poland right now.’
‘Ah. Good.’ Magda Göbbels tugged her dog’s lead. ‘Come along, Rufus.’
Then she continued along Unter den Linden without looking back.
‘Thank you.’ Gavriela looked down once more as she shuffled away. ‘Thanks.’
Earlier, during the train journey, she had been heartened by how easy it was to cross the border. Now she understood what she had failed to register: it was getting out that was impossible.
Mother. Father.
And for the sake of survival, there were things she should not think of, could not allow herself to dwell on.
I love you . . .
Her Swiss ID was correct in that she had no religion, therefore no belief in heaven.
But there was a hell, and proof was all around her.
At the same moment, several hundred kilometres to the east, Dmitri Shtemenko stood on a broad grey plaza. In front of him stood the forbidding pile of Moscow University, its spire rearing towards a secular heaven, its red star dull in daylight, requiring darkness for its full glory, when its internal lights would transform it into the state’s blood-red eye staring down upon the grateful proletariat.
But Dmitri would not be here to see it, not tonight. In his coat pocket he carried the train ticket that would take him away from the city that he had - somehow - grown to feel part of. He also had a gift, from his former tutor, Dr Lande: a Japanese-Russian dictionary, which would see much use in his new assignment.
He nodded, then turned away. Things would be different in Tokyo.
Don’t think about the food.
That brought back not just memories of the village, of the shame they shared, but also a more recent event: burying the human fingers he could not bring himself to eat or destroy, his little trophies that he kept either because of or in spite of the darkness - he never knew which.
Just don’t think.
Now he faced the round sweep of the city, while below him, at the bottom of the arcing slope, rolled the turgid grey waters of the Moscow River. He took a deep breath of chill air, then made his way down to the stately bridge, and began the long walk across.
Moscow was Paris writ large, its grand boulevards laid out in a spiderweb configuration, while the intelligence services headquarters were the watchful spider, lurking off-centre in her web. It was a strong city, an impregnable city, in a country whose vastness remained unrecognized by so much of the world.
But suddenly, Dmitri was glad to be leaving.
The train station was heaving with a mass of people, thousands crushed together, refugees whose eyes were wide with the only thought a civilized person could produce: It’s a mistake, and someone will work it out, and fix it.
Because the real world could not produce this crowd who were paying for the privilege of travelling in cattle-cars, their yellow cloth stars granting them the right to climb aboard, and Gavriela did not wait around to hear the platform guard’s whistle, nor the chuff of steam and piston as the engine got underway.
She stumbled back towards the city streets.
But it was behind the station that everything fell apart.
‘You’re one of them.’
‘No—’
‘And you know the penalties for not wearing the star.’
There were three of them, dressed in suits and overcoat, one with a truncheon, another with brass gleaming across his gloved knuckles, while the third was already unbuttoning his flies as they pulled her into an alleyway.
‘Might as well get some use out of it,’ he said.
‘It better not squeal.’ One of the others was pulling a cloth from his pocket. ‘Put this in your mouth, darling.’
‘I’ve something else to put in its mouth.’
‘Ach, Mannfred. All right.’
‘Who gets first dip?’
A punch exploded against her eye socket, and suddenly she was lying on her back, knees akimbo and her skirt up, hard paving beneath her. Someone’s hand hooked deeply into her face and twisted, torqueing her nose and cheekbone hard against stone, the pain immense, her head about to fracture, while strong hands tore her panties away with a distant ripping sound.
No.
There was nothing she could do to prevent what was happening.
Help me.
She yelled, but only in her mind.
Help me!
Roger pauses in the escape tunnel, his skin layered in greasy sweat, his stomach sick, needing to get away before peacekeepers investigate beneath the house, knowing that Alisha could be in danger, but the voice he hears is not hers, not Alisha’s, but another from the distant past and dreams, calling across centuries—
‘Help me!’
The thoughts are of violence and this is madness. He’s eaten nothing and his world has lurched into awfulness. Call it delusion.
‘I . . . I can’t.’
He drops to his knees and finally throws up.
There was pain inside her, incredible waves of sickening intrusion, and she cried out yet again.
HELP ME!
Ulfr snaps awake. Beside him, Brandr does likewise, the warhound alert as his master.
All around are snoring warriors, deep in drunken slumber, for the carousing lasted many—