Chapter Twenty-One

Ava had never known the office to be so tense. The silence was almost impossible to bear, all of them with their heads down, getting on with their work while everything around them seemed to be in a state of chaos. Hanna had been right, those involved had believed their plan to be a success, and Colonel von Stauffenberg, a man who had been friends with her father for many years – and someone Ava would have least expected to be involved – had flown back to Berlin thinking he would be able to take control. They'd even begun to arrest some of the SS men, but it had only been a matter of hours before the uprising they'd planned was defeated. She'd typed the papers herself – there were a handful of high-level colonels and lieutenants who'd already faced the firing squad for what they'd done.

Her father walked from Goebbels' office just then, accompanied by Lieutenant Schw?germann, and Ava noticed how pale his face was as he changed direction and came towards her. She found herself holding her breath, seeing the strain around his eyes, hoping that he wasn't about to have one of his episodes, especially when Hanna wasn't near to assist him.

‘Sorry for all the extra work today, ladies,' he said, smiling as all the women looked up at him, before coming around to Ava's side of the desk.

‘Is everything all right?' she asked, not hiding her concern. Everyone was worried; it was all any one was whispering about in the bathrooms now that the news was out.

‘Everything is fine. There is a lot of activity, that is all.'

He smiled and leaned down over her, reaching for her pen, which she'd placed beside her typewriter. She watched as he turned the piece of paper over, kissing her cheek as he always did, perhaps so that no one noticed what he was doing, before standing and squeezing her shoulder, the same way he had when he'd broken the news to her about Noah.

And that was when she read what he'd written.

RUN.

Ava quickly turned the piece of paper over, her breathing shallow as she watched him walk from the room as if nothing had happened, as if he hadn't just written that one terrifying word on the letter she'd just typed.

She fixed her smile, deliberately making her actions as unhurried as possible as she reached for her bag, deciding to leave her coat so it wasn't obvious that she was leaving the building. She would walk to the bathroom, and instead of going in she would dart down the stairs and run. Just stay calm. Don't let anyone know anything is wrong. Keep smiling and walk as slowly as you can.

But that was almost impossible, given that she didn't know who she was running from. All she knew for certain was that her father wouldn't have written that word unless he needed her out of that building immediately. Someone was coming for her, or for him, or perhaps even both of them. He'd warned her, he'd told her that if they were found out, the SS would come for every member of their family, and all she could think about was that she and her father were the only ones who knew it was about to happen.

As Ava turned to step out from behind her desk, she heard boots on the stairs and, echoing up through the building, the unmistakable blare of an air raid siren. The first long drone sounded as all the women leapt to their feet and grabbed their coats and bags.

‘Ava, your coat!' Greta called, thrusting it at her, giving her a strange look when she saw that she was holding her bag, as if wondering where she might have been going. ‘Quickly!'

Ava shrugged into her coat, her bag held tightly under her arm as she ran with the other secretaries down the stairs as quickly as they could. Everyone else from the building was hurrying with them, all heading down to the basement that they used as a bunker, to avoid having to race down the road to the public shelter. But as the crowd continued on, Ava darted out to the side, making a run for the front door.

She only hoped that her father had been able to use the diversion to his advantage and had disappeared into the street as well.

Ava didn't stop running until she reached the road, looking both ways before crossing and heading directly for their apartment. She would go there and wait, hide in the basement perhaps if she made it in time, and figure out what to do. Her father would come for her, he would tell her what to do, he would have a plan to get them all to safety.

But as the siren continued to scream, the sound filling her ears in a way that was impossible to block out, and the far-off explosion of a bomb falling made the concrete rumble beneath her feet, Ava stopped running. She stood across the road from her apartment building, holding on to a lamp post to steady herself as she looked at the two black Mercedes parked outside, blocking the street. There were two SS men stationed by the door, their expressions formidable, standing guard. She could only imagine that there were more of them upstairs, looking for her or her father. Perhaps he had managed to get away, and that was why they'd gone there to look for him, or maybe they were wanting to arrest her entire family. Maybe they had orders to take them all.

She looked back and saw a haze of smoke or perhaps dust in the air, the type that told her a building had been reduced to rubble as the sound of planes flying low almost drowned out the siren.

Ava knew that she should go to the nearest shelter, knew she should find a way to stay safe. But when she looked across the road one last time at the men standing there, she also knew that the only way she was going to be safe was to get as far away from them as she could.

And so she did what her father had told her to do. Ava ran, as fast as she was able, her heels clacking on the deserted city road, her bag thumping against her hip. Then she turned right down the next road. She would never forgive herself if she left without warning Eliana, because for all she knew they were looking for her, too.

She'd turned her back on her once, and would never forgive herself if she did it again.