A Shadow in Moscow, page 4
At least that’s what I’ve always been taught. But here everything’s different. So different I can’t even say what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s true, and what’s illusion. I’ve loved every moment and yet I miss my home. I crave all the freedoms here, but I feel safe within the strictures there. I’m enamored by all the colors and yet I miss grey. How this can all be true I have no idea. It simply is.
I couldn’t tell Mr. Olivers any of this. It hardly made sense to me. But I didn’t need to. As he sat watching me, his expression changed. Whatever he saw bothered him and a furrow wrinkled his brow right above his nose. All the lines on his forehead moved horizontally, formed over time by surprise or skepticism. This was a new vertical line, a deep trench created by me.
“Don’t answer.” He held out a hand. “Perhaps we can talk about this another time. You head home, work, and we might reconnect in the future.”
“Why?” A surprising sense of desperation washed over me.
Mr. Olivers sighed, as if I’d missed something and he felt disappointed at having to explain it to me.
“That’s just it,” he finally answered. “The why. It matters most in my business. Everything stands on that foundation. I’ll turn away a top scorer, the most perfect-on-paper candidate imaginable, if the why, their intangible motivation and driving force, doesn’t settle well in my gut. With you I’m intrigued. Your answers reveal far more than I think you realize. But your why isn’t defined. Your emotions haven’t caught up with your intellect . . . You’re homesick.”
“Of course I miss my family.”
He pushed to stand and extended his hand to shake our goodbye. “It’s not about your family. You cling to the belief that you can find what you need in the Soviet Union. I want to talk when you finally realize you can’t.”
Four
Ingrid
Vienna
July 23, 1944
Ingrid mastered the “game.” She became a model pupil and, for the next two months, continued working at the Third Reich’s Economic and Administrative Office with such diligence and dedication, her boss promoted her. No longer given notes to summarize after the meetings, she sat in the meetings. Silently stationed by the door, her pen flying to keep up with the cacophony of raised voices and frayed nerves, Ingrid witnessed the Nazi machine break down.
While requisitions for munitions and troops were written, filed, and executed at the usual pace, a heaviness pervaded the office and a tense desperation gripped her boss, Bereichsleiter Albrecht. He no longer spoke; he barked. He no longer walked; he strode. His clothes were growing increasingly wrinkled, rumpled, and voluminous—he was losing weight. And no one could miss the proliferation of anti-Nazi propaganda and increasing defiance in the streets.
Soon, under Adam’s tutelage, she stretched her skills further, recognizing that these hasty redeployments of troops and supplies to one front held consequences for other sectors. She connected the dots, made calculated guesses, and advised Adam and Martin on the best distribution of British resources.
She also came to accept her new living situation. Because she was unable to return home even for a few pieces of clothing, as Obersturmbannführer Skorzeny moved his family into her home within hours of her parents’ arrests, Adam and Martin gathered clothes and necessities from their networks of contacts and friends. Within a day, she became a member of their little family, and no one in their building questioned it.
My two brothers, Ingrid mused as she watched them lean over a map in their small living room marking coordinates. Adam worked for British intelligence and ran sabotage networks across the country at night. And his work wasn’t going well. Sustained and organized resistance, she gathered from his fits of pique, spread like fire throughout France but had not caught even the smallest spark in Austria. Martin, an American, parachute-dropped into the city the year before. On loan to the British, he worked a wireless transmitter and was a master at fading into the background and winding his way undetected through the city morass like a shadow. Generous with his knowledge, he taught Ingrid not only how to clean and fix his transmitter but how to fade away when necessary.
“Don’t reach out to friends. Let them assume you were arrested with your parents.”
“If someone you recognize does notice you, cough and duck away. Into a doorway. A shop. People shy away from sickness.”
“Become the quiet mouse of a woman everyone believes you to be.”
After playing on that particular insecurity, he would pull her close, muss her hair, poke her in the ribs, and do anything else he could to make her laugh and forget her pain and worries, as only a brother could.
Adam assumed the role of a more distant brother. He taught her to make notes with symbols rather than words, to remember small details with great accuracy, and to decipher a handful of codes from memory. He coached her in “situational awareness”—the ability to assess how a room felt and note who was in charge, who was nervous, and what was being said beneath the words spoken. He taught her how to trust her instincts and take her thinking and observations beyond what was said into the realm of how it might be employed and even accurately guess what might happen next. But gone were the glint in his eye and the half smile that had once danced at the edge of his mouth, along with any and all affection.
For a while the memory of their kiss was enough for Ingrid. She pulled it out each night in the quiet, safe minutes before sleep and relived what might have been. But after two months, its memory was fading, and she was afraid she would soon lose it—and Adam—completely. Earlier tonight she feared she might have accomplished just that. She had pushed him too far.
As she cleared the table, he had commented, “I remember my first dinner at your house. Your mother made that soup . . . Is it wrong to say I enjoyed yours more?”
“Never.” Ingrid turned from the sink. “But Mutti was an excellent cook.”
Adam stretched his hand toward her. But rather than take his offered hand and draw him close and try to look to the future rather than to the past, she dragged Adam’s attention back to what he believed to be his greatest failure.
“You said you’d tell me . . . I haven’t forgotten. What exactly did Mutti do for you?”
Adam’s hand dropped into his lap. “She met with me every morning after one of her dinner parties. She was so gifted, Ingrid, at not only learning and remembering details but interpreting what they meant as well.”
Mutti’s dinner parties. Ingrid closed her eyes. Shame wrapped its mantle around her, covering her ubiquitous sorrow.
From the day of the Anschluss, Marie von Alton said that a good table and a generous hand with the wine might save them. She encouraged her husband, the head of the University’s liberal arts curriculum, to reach out to the Nazi officers and invite them to dinner. She wanted their home to be a haven in which society could discuss culture, art, literature, and the superiority of the Führer’s ideas.
Ingrid had seethed at her mother’s betrayal and turned her face away as Marie welcomed Reichsführer-SS Himmler into their home for her first dinner party in 1938, as well as when she hosted Obersturmbannführer Skorzeny for her last, a beautiful four-course affair just nights before her death.
“How can you bring them here? How can you laugh with them and cook for them?” Ingrid had raged at her mother one night over two years ago.
“Duc in altum,” Mutti obliquely replied. “The rewards more than compensate for my pain.”
Ingrid knew the phrase—her mother had said it before. It was Latin for “push into the deep.” But it was a nonanswer and Ingrid continued to rage. “You have to want more than for our home to be safe. You take their gifts. Think what this makes you. Makes us.”
Rather than capitulate or make excuses, Marie’s face mottled. A petite woman, barely taller than her daughter, Marie rushed forward, and with one hand clamped around Ingrid’s arm, she ground out words with slow precision. “Never question me. You know nothing of this.”
After that, Ingrid didn’t question her mother, but she watched. And she discovered things she had not noticed before. Marie didn’t drink at her parties but offered her guests wine with a heavy hand. Ingrid also noticed her mother’s subtle, soft, and probing questions, and that her laughter tripped across octaves but never reached her eyes. She also noted how quickly her mother banked any flashes of fear that shot across her eyes. It was a skill Ingrid herself had not mastered.
Now Ingrid understood. It was precisely because she had not mastered that skill, and so many others, that she was held at arm’s length. Perhaps that was one reason among many, she thought, for while her father faithfully taught Nazi ideology at the University by day, he worked most diligently at night, creating exit visas and managing safe houses. And her mother worked equally as hard, wielding her hospitality like a weapon within their home, threading through the delicious courses of foods rarely available—“Personally sought out and requested just for your pleasure”—and wines—“The last of our private cellar, saved for this occasion.” She fed and charmed the wolves. She lulled them into loquacity.
“She was good, really good.” Adam shook his head in wonder. “By the end of a dinner, your mother understood how her guests thought, what they did, and most important, what they were likely to do next. She often learned of plans or made the most extraordinarily accurate predictions of orders, raids, and troop movements before they happened.”
“Did you get them caught?” Ingrid’s question carried no accusation.
Adam scrubbed at his eyes and Ingrid’s heart sank. It was the second time she’d noticed that gesture. She saw in it the burden he carried.
“I pray not, but I can’t guarantee it. Any network can have leaks spring up, and I’m not so arrogant anymore to think ours is immune.” He dropped his head, no longer able to sustain eye contact. “I’m sorry, Ingrid. Maybe.”
“It’s almost over.” Martin raised his head from the map, drawing Ingrid back from memory to their living room.
“Then I can quit? I hate working for those monsters. I hate pretending. I hate being something I’m not. It’s splitting my head.” Ingrid gripped her book so tightly the binding bent. She placed it in her lap, aware her tension and innermost thoughts were on display and they were not to her credit.
After all, she didn’t hate working for the Nazis, as it gave her access to work against the Nazis. What she hated was that only two men in the whole world knew that—only two. Her pride bristled within her, and she wanted to bridge the gulf between the shame of what she appeared and the truth of what she was.
Adam and Martin stared at her.
“I just want this over.” She ended her sentence on a sigh.
“Not long now . . . Don’t lose hope.” Martin’s flat-voweled American accent made her smile. Even speaking German, he couldn’t hide it, and his sentence embodied everything she loved about him—his endless optimism and his belief in both absolute right and a good man’s ability to get it done.
Adam scoffed. “Not so fast. Three years of work and we’ve only managed passive grumbling within the resistance. We don’t have mass, we don’t have military support . . . The Nazis are still firmly in charge, you two, and wounded animals fight more viciously than healthy or angry ones. We have to be more careful now than ever.”
Martin smirked with what Adam called “Yankee arrogance,” but he shot Ingrid a warning nonetheless. He might posture, his raised brow said, but he agreed with Adam and she’d better as well.
So the next day, Ingrid went to work early and stayed late. She then searched the markets for meat on her way home, as she did each evening, and found little to buy. She finally returned to the apartment building with a few worn root vegetables and trudged up the stairs. Only to stop on the third-floor landing.
Someone had called her name.
Glancing around, Ingrid found herself face-to-face with Frau Möller. Ingrid knew who she was—Adam had made her memorize everyone’s name and apartment number. He said people were less likely to turn on you if you greeted them with a personal salutation. But Ingrid had never met this woman. In fact, she’d been told to avoid the occupant of apartment 3H, as her son was a committed and newly minted soldier within the Wehrmacht.
“May I help you, Frau Möller?” Ingrid fashioned a bland expression as her mind raced through her fictional cover, trying to recall each detail to satisfy the woman’s curiosity if questions arose.
Frau Möller moved closer. “The Allies are moving in.”
“Where did you hear that?” Ingrid blanched, reminding herself that Ingrid Bauer, widow of a Wehrmacht officer herself, would not like this news. She added an impatient barb to her voice. “Why would you tell me this?”
The older woman stumbled back into her apartment.
A still, small voice told Ingrid to let her go. She silenced it. “Please, wait.” Ingrid stepped forward and pressed her hand against the door just as it clicked shut. She whispered against the wood. “Please . . . Are you sure?”
Frau Möller cracked the door again. “My son is in the Wehrmacht, like your husband was, Frau Bauer.” She nodded to Ingrid in mutual understanding before adding, “He is a good boy.”
The older woman paused for the briefest moment, and Ingrid got the impression she was either to bristle at an unspoken comparison or to accept that Frau Möller knew more than she was saying.
Ingrid’s neighbor continued. “They have been warned and are making preparations. He wants me to leave as the bombings will start and come nightly now.”
“Thank you,” Ingrid whispered as the door shut again.
She raced up the stairs. “Adam . . . Martin . . . ,” she called through their apartment, expecting to find either or both. No one was home. She packed a bag and started to prepare dinner.
It was over an hour before Martin arrived. Harried and pale, he darted his eyes first to her small bag standing sentinel by the central table, then to her. “You’re packed?”
Ingrid grinned. “Almost is closer than we thought. Frau Möller said the Allies are coming tonight.”
“Hurry.” Martin picked up her bag with one hand and shooed Ingrid out the door with the other. “We need to get you to safety.”
“You can’t go outside. You—”
Martin shook his head and continued to maneuver her down the stairs at an ever-faster pace. The building felt empty and quiet, and they saw no one as they descended the five flights.
At the front door he stepped into her. “You need to go quickly. They won’t sound the sirens tonight because they can be used as beacons. Red Army planes have already been spotted to the east.” He looked up. “It’s the Soviets and it’ll start anytime now.”
“What about you and Adam?” As Ingrid spoke she realized word had gotten out. People flooded from nearby buildings. She tipped toward the street before Martin’s hand steadied her.
“Soon . . . There’s still work to do.” Martin tilted his head across the street to the Kirche St. Elisabeth, the basement of which formed their neighborhood’s shelter. “Go.”
His steadying hand gave a quick shove. Ingrid stumbled and the crowd swept her into its current toward the church. She was almost a full block away when she heard it. A high-pitched whistling, like air shooting from a balloon.
The next moment she felt the world shatter and go dark.
* * *
Ingrid blinked. The bright light seared and split her head. She moaned and turned away.
“Can you hear me?” A woman’s voice, gentle and soothing, spoke through the glare. “She’s waking up.” Her voice shifted from conciliatory to directive. “Call the doctor.”
A moment later, a firm, cold hand pressed against Ingrid’s forehead. “Slowly now. You’ve had quite a time of it.”
“A what?” Ingrid’s tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She tried to raise her hand to touch her temple and ease the pain in her head, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t make the connection from thought to action, so she let herself drift toward darkness again.
“They say you flew over forty feet when the blast hit. You are lucky to be alive.”
Ingrid heard the words. They poured over her like water, nothing sticking, nothing congealing. As darkness closed in, she felt the evening, the street, the stones flying, a woman’s scream, and Martin . . .
Clarity came with a gasp.
“Nurse.” The man’s voice cut above her. “Get her brother.”
The chaos calmed. It was going to be okay. Martin was here. He was alive. She felt his hand touch her shoulder. Her other shoulder, she noted, was encased in something rigid. She opened her eyes.
Adam leaned down and kissed her forehead. He spoke with lips pressed against her skin. “Lie still while the doctor finishes. Then we’ll talk.”
Cold hands poked at her a moment longer, then vanished, along with everyone except Adam, whose firm grip on her shoulder was the only thing that kept her from crying out. As the door shut, Ingrid tried to push herself up and Adam away.
His hand spread to her collarbone. She could feel his warmth above the edge of the hospital gown. “Don’t. You’ve been badly hurt. The nurse said your left shoulder separated and your collarbone broke. You also have a fractured pelvis, broken ribs, and a serious concussion. Ingrid, I’m so sor—”
“He’s gone, isn’t he?” Ingrid turned her head side to side despite the pain. Her brain crashed about within her skull untethered. She was untethered.
Adam held firm. “He was right there. He didn’t suffer, Ingrid, and to say he knew the risks doesn’t help, but he did. He always knew. Your father, your mother, Martin, me . . . We’ve all known from the very beginning.”
“Stop. Don’t say that to me. You risk your lives and you die. For what? It’s all still coming apart. You’ve accomplished nothing. Nothing but the pointless deaths of good people. People I loved.” Ingrid closed her eyes and shifted onto her side, away from Adam. The world felt kinder and safer behind dark lids.
