Alice tried to drag herself to her knees. But she collapsed again, and now she actually did vomit. Well, at least I have an alibi, she thought as she looked at her own puke on the paving stones. I really was sick, Frau Bender. I told you so.
For the next hour, all was chaos. She had no idea if Wotan had escaped. A plane was to be waiting for him to take him back to Berlin. She knew she must remain. Anyone who fled would immediately be suspected as a co-conspirator.
A few hours later, some maids who had stolen away from the Führer’s private quarters returned giggling to the kitchen.
“You should have seen him!” Anya exclaimed to another who had been in his private quarters with the medical team. “He was absolutely elated. And showing off his wounds to Mussolini as his doctor treated him. ‘I am immortal, invulnerable,’ he kept saying.”
Within another hour the compound was buzzing. There was one name on everyone’s lips. “Stauffenberg!”
“He got through the checkpoints. . . . How he did, no one knows, but he did.”
“The phone call was a ruse. The secretary who delivered the message for him to come for the call is a wreck. She’s in much worse shape than the Führer.”
By 6:30 that evening, Goebbels was on the radio confirming Hitler’s survival and announcing that a violent attempt to overthrow the government had failed. And by midnight of that same evening, Stauffenberg, his aide, Haeften, and two others of the Valkyrie operation were led in front of a pile of sand in the courtyard of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, where they faced a ten-man firing squad. It was said that when the shots rang out, Stauffenberg shouted, “Long live holy Germany!”
Twenty-Five
The Winfields Carry On
When she returned to Berlin three days later, Alice found her parents in a state of disbelief. Yet never for one second did they betray themselves. Still, there was a dimmed light in her father’s eyes and a certain set to her mother’s mouth. Nevertheless, the Winfields would carry on as they always had. Her parents had been through a lot in their lives, but never a war quite like this. Were they perhaps regretting having brought their youngest daughter into this? It only made her more resolute to carry on.
The Russians were advancing steadily from the east and had just delivered the biggest defeat to the German army. Hundreds of thousands of German troops were dead, wounded or missing. The Red Army was now closing in on Rumania. But most frightening of all was that since the execution of Stauffenberg, thousands of other Germans had been charged as opponents of the Reich. And yet no one ever suspected the girl whose face none could remember, who had been in the target zone of the attempt, in a puddle of her own vomit.
Wotan was gone, but Alice was clearly expected to continue her work. A sweet paper had found its way to her within minutes of her arrival in Berlin. She had not even had to go to the drop spot to get it. Alice was told that her monitoring of the Führer’s mental condition had become more vital than ever. She dutifully continued her work, spending a few days and nights every week in the Führerbunker, where new apartments had been added for the elite members of the Reich. The Goebbelses had moved in with their six children, and so had Göring and Bormann.
Alice’s job was to help out at luncheon and dinner parties, and to be part of any performances—of which there were several. There were troops of Werewolf in the bunker now, including the handsome one, Fritz. He’d become quite the heartthrob of the young ladies who worked as secretaries or tasters in the Führerbunker. He was a flirtatious fellow. And he had a manner of tossing his head so that his silver-blond hair appeared to shimmer. Alice even caught Eva Braun tipping her head coquettishly when she spoke to him. Luckily the Führer seemed oblivious.
Thankfully, Alice was not of the age to interest him. Somehow, though, this made her think of Stefan Bacik, the Polish pilot who had first delivered her to her mission. Those burning green eyes! And the crinkly lines radiating out from them when he smiled. Empathy. That was the word that came to her when he smiled. The smile wasn’t flirtatious at all, as with this fellow Fritz. It was something completely different. It said, “I want to understand you. You are someone of worth.” She couldn’t help but wonder if Stefan ever thought of her—wondered if she was dead or alive or, maybe worse, captured and sent to a concentration camp with the seven thousand others who had been rounded up after the assassination attempt.
School would not be starting until the fall, and during the day there was time to visit with David and resume her search for that face that had appeared in the crowd on the day she left for the Berghof.
David seemed better to her. He reported that the house was often empty except for the one servant, and he found it easy to pilfer food when no one was home. She wanted to tell David that she had seen Colonel Schmelling in the Führerbunker. But she couldn’t tell him. It would lead to too many questions. Perhaps she could say something vague—to let him know that many of the highest officials were now residing in the Führerbunker. Even that seemed risky to Alice. It might make him too bold and lead him to take risks he shouldn’t. For now he seemed okay at least—not fine, still painfully thin and he did cough a lot, but getting by.
He was nevertheless curious about Alice. But of course, he only knew her as Ute, and so she had to make up a whole fabricated history of herself. A very idyllic one. Summers in Norway, where her mother had relatives. Skiing in Kitzbühel. In this scenario, her father was a businessman and her mother a secretary for a company that made glass. She had an older sister who had moved away and gotten married and now had a baby. It was when she said the word “baby,” that tears welled in her eyes.
What would a baby of Louise’s look like? Alice had just about given up on hunting for her sister. Although there was a difference of almost six years, she and Louise had shared a lot, a lot more than most sisters because of their peculiar situation, their destiny. And now Louise had rejected all that. Just thrown it all over, their history as a family, their relationship as sisters.
Alice now realized that she had been angry all these months since Louise had her surgery. And then to top things off, Louise had changed the spelling of her name to Louisa—so pretentious. But Alice wasn’t angry anymore. She was sad. Just plain sad.
“Ute?” David said. “Are you . . . about to cry?”
She blinked and felt a tear slide down her face. “Oh no . . . not really. I . . . I just feel bad that we haven’t seen the baby in so long. All because of this stupid war.”
“Your sister’s baby?”
“Yes, that’s the only one.” She gave a sort of huff like a chopped-off chuckle. “Maybe there’ll be more.” She paused. “If her husband returns.”
“What’s the baby’s name?”
“Uh . . .” Should she make it a girl or boy? “Uh, it’s Herman.”
“I have an uncle Herman. We called him Hymie.” David paused.
“Uh . . . I’m not sure . . . er . . . he’s pretty young, so we just call him Herman for now.”
“Herman for now is okay, just fine.” He put out his hand and patted Alice’s, as if to reassure her.
In that moment Alice knew two things: she knew that David knew she was lying, and she knew that she must find her sister in Berlin, no matter how long it took. She was convinced now that she had seen her.