She was enormously curious about this house. If she were up higher she might be able to peek over the wall. There was a low branch in almost full foliage that hung over the bin. Dared she try and get to it from the top of the bin and then into the tree? If she could, she would have an excellent vantage point and be camouflaged by its leaves. She was atop the bin in two seconds and in another three had swung herself onto the branch—as easily as jumping onto the balance beam for gymnastics. She decided to climb higher, to the leafiest part of the tree.
Nimble as a lemur, she ascended the tree. Then, tucked into this green cubbyhole between alley and sky, Alice peeked over the adjoining fences that separated the backyards of the houses from the alley. She was peering down on a lovely terraced garden. Tulips were in bloom, and there was a small pond that flashed with goldfish swimming. Pots spilled with pansies and ivy, and honeysuckle blossoms clambered up a trellis. On another trellis was a cascade of frothy tiny white flowers. It was a fairyland. She could almost imagine that she had been transported back to England, to Misselthwaite and to her favorite book, The Secret Garden. How she had loved that book, and the garden that Mary and Dickon brought back to life, and Colin, Mary’s sickly cousin, who Mary also brought back to life in her own way.
She now saw a corpulent woman lumber across the garden of the whipped-cream house with two large bags of garbage. The woman pushed through the back gate. Setting the bags down, she removed the bin’s lid. Alice saw her head jerk slightly; then she leaned forward and peered deeper into the bin.
“Was ist das?” she heard the woman mutter as she drew out the bag of cookies.
No . . . no . . . no . . . , Alice thought. The woman took out a cookie, looked at it, then bit into it.
“Ummm,” she hummed, and licked her lips. “Warum sollte jemand einen Keks wegwerfen, der noch völlig in Ordnung ist?” Why would someone throw away a perfectly good cookie?
“Because,” Alice mumbled to herself, “someone else is starving near here.” The shadow!
Alice knew it, and she was determined to feed that shadow.
At just that moment, she heard a slight rustle in the tree across from her. She gasped as she saw the dark eyes of a painfully thin boy peering directly at her. He put a finger to his lips and then vanished. Colin? she wondered. From The Secret Garden?
Ten
Happy Birthday, Dear Führer!
On the day of the Jungmädel competition, Alice woke up with a start. That scent again! Had she been dreaming? Could dreams have scents? It was not real. She knew this. For there was another scent that seeped up now from the garage below. There had been a big motor oil spill the evening before, and a thick carpet of sawdust had been laid down to soak it up. The pungent wood odor mixed with that of the oil was distinct and permeated their living quarters. No way could Laurel Bright cut through that odor. Since that day nearly three weeks ago, she’d successfully banished any distracting thoughts of that strange scent she’d encountered in the bakery and convinced herself that it been a product of her imagination.
Perhaps, she reasoned, she had felt such deep remorse over the harsh words she had spoken to her sister, Louise, that it was in some way connected to that. Maybe she wanted to apologize. The times they had made up in the past after squabbling were always so nice. They would think of something fun to do—almost like a celebration. They’d go out for ice cream or their mum would lend them money for a cream tea or to go to the cinema. That must be what she was feeling when she smelled that fragrance. It was nothing more than wishful thinking.
She heard a cannon go off outside. April 20, Adolf Hitler’s birthday and the official start of his birthday celebration. She had to get dressed quickly, for she would be marching in the parade as a competitor in the Jungmädel events.
There were tanks and flyovers by at least three units of fighter planes. Thousands of goose-stepping soldiers followed by more than a dozen Jungmädel competitors, as well as the older girls from the Bund Deutscher Mädel of the German Girls’ League. These athletic events were held all over Berlin. The events that Alice would be competing in were at a stadium called the Little Handelsblatt, in the Mitte district of Berlin.
And three hours later she swung onto the balance beam dressed in her black shorts and white sleeveless T-shirt with the emblazoned Nazi Eagle. She hadn’t planned to compete in this exercise, but when Elske Meyers sprained her ankle, Fräulein Grauber had begged her to compete. She had said she would, though track was more her strength than gymnastics.
“Do both, Ute. There are ten days until the games. You can practice. I’ll stay after school and coach you. I’ll get you excused from music during the day. You are just as good as Elske. Maybe even better. Please, Ute, do it. Do it for me. . . . No! Do it for the Führer, like a good Jungmädel!”
Alice had nodded and agreed, for the Führer. This was what one did as a Rasa. One lied, one acted, one performed for God, king, and country—England, not Germany. And no one would ever suspect. Because she, Alice Winfield, was a member of the most skilled intelligence service on earth. And so now, at the Little Handelsblatt stadium, she sprinted out from the bench and lofted herself in one smooth leap onto the balance beam.
For the past two weeks, though, she had been able to think of nothing else but the shadow boy. Every day she had managed to drop off food. She was careful to make sure that the housemaid had finished filling up the bin and would not be coming out. But just last night the bin had been empty, and she was uncertain what to do. She had brought a baked potato and a slice of cake, neatly tied up in a cloth. She didn’t want to put it in the empty bin for fear the housemaid would find it. So instead she put it in another house’s trash bin that was already full. She sensed that the shadow boy was watching. She certainly hoped he was.
She planned to go back there as soon as she was free from the competition. But that would be another few hours. She must push such thoughts out of her mind and concentrate now. She walked forward on tiptoes, then back. She pivoted and then suddenly exploded into a split leap, followed by a scissor leap. She finished with a series of handsprings, culminating in a backflip with a twist.
She did not win, but she placed second. With a first in the track events, she was likely to be eligible to become a candidate for Highest Service to the Reich, or Höchster Dienst am Reich. HDR, as such girls were called. This was not the same, however, as being a Fount of Life girl. Only girls from the older division were eligible for that, thank god! Alice thought. Of course, her parents would never permit her to do that, even if she were old enough. These girls were selected because of their perfect racial hygiene for the Lebensborn program. The aim of the program was to increase the birth rate of Aryan children for the nation. The government provided financial support to unmarried women at the maternity homes.
But as an HDR girl—well, an infinite number of possibilities would open up, and it would help her mission to win the RP, the Reich Praktikum. And then she could come closer to the inner circles of the Reich itself. Her mother was now in the typists’ pool and had already cracked a low-level code often embedded in what might appear to be a casual memo.
It was what her mum called the Danke Code. It seemed that in a scattering of ordinary letters, one officer at the OKW was often thanking another for remembering his wife’s birthday or sending a fruit basket or tickets to the opera. But it was really a code for troop movements or messages about U-boats often dispatched across the Atlantic Ocean toward the northeast coast of Maine. It had nothing to do with flowers or opera tickets. It was invaluable intelligence.