Chapter Twenty

FOUR NAZI GUARDS exchange lewd smiles as they assess me from head to toe while checking the Irina papers. It is obvious to all who I am: one of the handpicked Polish women brought to the club as décor and dessert; dolled up to keep the officers happy and, in turn, off their low-level backs. Satisfied with my identification, the guards step aside and I sluice forward between them. I can practically feel the heat of their desire pummel my back, hear their carnal thoughts: One day she will be in my bed. I tilt my head, tighten the belt of my explosive coat, and keep my eyes fortified against their stares.

Sorry, boys, that day will never arrive.

When I enter, Anna is behind a podium—the hostess—greeting the guests and herding the escorts into a corner. I do a double take. Understated, practical Anna has morphed into a bombshell, an exquisite belle of the ball, in a long, sylphlike, pale-blue silk gown complemented by a sheer cream-colored scarf wrapped loosely around her neck. Her gold-spun hair pulled back into a perfect knot radiates beneath the gleaming tea lights above her. Her pearl drop earrings shimmer and her lips are shaded a deep, provocative crimson. She looks nothing like the distraught operative of several hours earlier who had just lost her cousin in a fire. This version of Anna belongs onstage or twirling atop a music box. She sees me and her face remains blank, showing no recognition. Several of the Nazis address her flirtatiously and with familiarity. This is clearly not her first day on the job. Smuggler, maid, lady of the night. This woman is a chameleon, a better actress than all of us.

“Follow me,” she says coldly, gesturing me over to the other extravagantly dressed women huddled together in the corner. Several men loitering in the reception area stare at the lineup of beauties with unabashed hunger in their eyes. I observe the young women as I walk over to join them—seductresses of Warsaw doing what they must do to survive. We all have our roles. And for now, I’m one of them.

“Excuse me... may I stop quickly in the ladies’ room?” I inquire softly of Anna, but loud enough for the other women to overhear, knowing that she is waiting for me to ask this question.

“These are things that should have been taken care of before you arrived,” Anna snaps, motioning with her head inside the club. “The gentlemen are waiting.” She then ignores me and surveys each of the half dozen women in front of her one by one. “First, everyone, hand me your coats and wraps. They will be here in the reception area under my watch, waiting for you when you leave.” She takes all the women’s coats and mine last, eyeballing me as though still irritated by my bathroom question. She then points to the lovely young brunette in a red silk dress standing next to me. “You, go to table one. And you and you, table two in the corner by the stage. The others, go to the third table to the right of the stage. I will be there shortly to make formal introductions.” She glances at me with a raised brow. “Let’s make this quick.”

I walk behind Anna. She even moves differently here, struts through the club as though she owns it. I am fully aware of all eyes turning to get a better glimpse of us as we zigzag toward the back, to the bathroom. I’m careful to keep my gaze down, not wanting to be recognized, especially by the baron. Anna is mindful not to walk anywhere near his table—table one, of course.

“Hurry,” she whispers under her breath when we arrive at the bathroom. “Flush the toilet, wait one more minute, and then you will go out the back door.” She motions to the dark wooden mahogany doors in the distance.

“What about those guards?” I ask nervously, seeing the stalwart backs of their uniforms. There are three of them.

“Leave it to me.”

When I emerge from the bathroom, Anna leads me to the back exit. She speaks to the guards in perfect Polish-accented German. “This woman must be removed from the premises now. Unfortunately, she is”—she clears her throat to showcase her distaste and lowers her voice—“on her period. And you know that will simply not work this evening for our esteemed guests. Please escort her discreetly to the street without anyone’s notice. Danke sch?n.”

The guards’ eyes widen with comprehension and revulsion, and I want to laugh aloud. Nazis and their irrational fear of anything impure. I’m out the door and ushered to a side street in less than thirty seconds. Brilliant, Anna, just brilliant.

THE DRIVER’S FACEis expressionless when I approach the car. “Mission accomplished?” he asks when I get inside.

“Yes,” I say, my voice breathless. “But will Anna get out safely? And how will we get the baron? And what about those other women?”

Lukas runs his hands through his close-cropped hair. “Anna knows what she’s doing.”

This explains nothing, as usual. Thirty minutes later, I see the baron exiting the club alone, Heil Hitlering the guards standing at the entrance. He adjusts his white bow tie, glancing up and down the street as though expecting someone. My hands ball into fists against the leather seat. From this far away he looks so much like Stach, minus the birthmark. Film-star dashing with his wavy blondish-graying hair, thick brooding brows, and athletic shoulders, prominent cheekbones, and piercing azure eyes—a man who had been unfairly gifted yet chose to bathe in a sea of cruelty and manipulation.

He glances back at the club, pulls out a cigarette, checks his watch. My mouth drops open when Anna walks out the entrance a few minutes later, hips swaying with a sexy, self-assured smile. She loops her arm through the baron’s, too comfortably, as though this isn’t their first rendezvous. What is happening here? Is this for show? A trap?

I reach my hand under the seat, carefully remove the gun from the compartment, and keep it low to the floor, prepared for anything.

As they walk in our direction, Anna’s gown shimmers beneath the streetlights, her silky scarf billows behind her in the breeze. She throws her head back with laughter as though the baron has said something amusing, and my stomach turns. Then, suddenly, like a rebuke from heaven, the sky explodes. A ferocious boom shakes the car, and Anna and the baron fall to the ground. The baron stumbles as he tries to get up, helps Anna to her feet. She lifts her dress, peels off her high heels, and together, they break into a run. I sit bolt upright.

“What are you doing? Get down, damn it!” the driver barks at me. “Hide under the blanket, now!”

From my vantage point on the back seat floor, with the blanket lifted slightly, I see the flames fanning the car window, a twisted mural of orange, charcoal, and black smoke, and then I hear a secondary round of reverberating blasts coming from the direction of the Nazi club. I let out a loud gasp. The coat was loaded, but that loaded? Anna must have planted more explosives. Excitement rips through my body. I did this. Nazis being blown to smithereens, getting exactly what they deserve. Finally. Then my heart sinks, and I envision the other images. The ladies of the night trapped inside. The smiley brunette in the sparkly red dress covered in blood. The collateral damage of killing Nazis... Don’t think about that now. Focus, breathe. Think of Zelda, Aleksander, Eryk. If the resistance can do this on the outside—the Aryan side—then we sure as hell can fight back from inside. We, too, can take those monsters by surprise, inflict real unexpected damage. Death—theirs—not ours, for once.

The driver rolls down his window and calls out in Polish: “Anna, Anna—over here! Do you need help? Come, get in quick!” He acts as though he is a concerned friend who happened to be driving in the area at the exact time of the explosion.

“Can you help my friend too?” she shouts back breathlessly, her voice fighting to be heard above the mayhem.

Her friend? Please be acting.

I clutch the pistol tightly to my chest. What if she’s the mole? What if I am being set up? What if Lukas, the baron, and Anna are working together? No, I tell myself, recalling her tears earlier. I must trust her. She is all I’ve got.

“Get in quickly!” the driver responds. My skin prickles with anticipation and fear.

“Sit in front,” I hear Anna tell the baron.

The baron quickly enters the vehicle, swearing in Polish, demanding the driver take him straight to the head of police. As Lukas drives away from the explosion, Anna makes eye contact with me on the back seat floor, her dirty feet placed lightly on top of my scrunched legs. She quickly removes her silk scarf, wraps the ends tightly around her hands, reaches over to the front seat, and strangles the unsuspecting baron from behind, using the top of the seat as leverage to pin him down. “Irina, now!” she orders as he begins to kick and scream and fight her.

I don’t hesitate. I get up off the back seat floor and shoot the baron in the thigh. I could easily have killed him. But we want him to live. That’s the plan. I heave a sigh of relief. Anna has not betrayed me. The goal is to get information, find out if Stach is still alive. The baron howls from the bullet wound, struggles to remove the scarf compressing his throat, his eyes bulging with understanding that this car ride and the explosion were premeditated.

I lean forward, ensuring he glimpses my face, as I press the muzzle of the gun to his temple. His skin goes pale, and his forehead breaks out in tiny beads of sweat. I can’t help but smile. If only Stach could see this right now.

“We are going to kill my father, Bina,” Stach told me that day in his office. “No one else understands the history like you do. All I want is to make him accountable for his crimes and see my face when we do.”

Now it’s just me, Stach. My face that he will see. This is for both of us.

“Remember me?” I ask the baron, relishing the haughty sound of my voice. I jab the dark barrel of the pistol even harder while Anna tightens the reins around his neck, maneuvering his head as though he were a horse. He begins to choke and cough simultaneously, a crackling wet symphonic sound.

“You’re alive,” he manages.

I smile broadly. “Yes, unfortunately for you, still here.” I shoot him in his other leg to make my point, as the driver whizzes through side streets. Blood is everywhere. The baron is wounded but not dead yet. No one flinches. I look at Anna. She nods. This is where this must happen. Right here, right now.

She forcibly maneuvers the baron’s head in my direction. His eyes are terrified; a vein protrudes like a lightning bolt from his forehead.

“Bina Blonski,” he spits out with what little strength he has left. I ignore the name reveal, but I can tell the other two are taking note.

I stare into his hateful eyes. “You destroyed your son, murdered the man he loved, killed so many people I loved.” Bitterness fills my mouth. “You were a Nazi even before they took Poland.”

“I—” he manages.

I reach over and slap his face; his cloudy pupils roll back. “Shut up.” I am Zelda now. My eyes glisten as my mentor’s tough-as-nails spirit claims my voice, now commanding and frighteningly potent. This man has haunted my life, my dreams, and I need answers. “Where is Stach? Is he still alive?”

I nod at Anna, who loosens the reins so he can speak. He coughs uncontrollably, and then he laughs. Laughs! Amid his impending death. It is the same sick, sardonic sound of my nightmares, coming from the back of his throat and emitted like a gargle. But here, in the car, so close, that vile sound echoes from one car door to the next, from Anna to the driver, until it overtakes me. I can’t help it. I lose my resolve as a suppressed memory surfaces like a genie let out of a bottle, and I can’t seem to stop it.

I WAS TWELVEyears old, in school that day, not feeling well. The school nurse decided to send me home. She tried contacting my mother to pick me up, but there was no response. And my father was away on business. So I walked home, which was relatively close, six blocks away, in the middle of the day, alone.

Standing in the foyer of our palatial home, I called out for my mother. No answer. Our maid looked away when I asked where she was. So did the butler. I ran upstairs, feeling hot and clammy, calling out her name repeatedly, but still no response. When I stood at my parents’ bedroom door, I turned the knob, but it was locked. I heard a mix of voices coming from inside the room. My mother and a man’s deep baritone. A voice that wasn’t my father’s. And then I heard the man’s hearty laughter. I froze, certain it was Pawel, my father’s assistant. How could she do this to my father? Barely able to breathe and flushed with fever, I ran into my room across the long hallway and stood behind the door, but opened it a crack, watched and waited.

Finally, the man tiptoed out of the bedroom, holding his shoes and carrying his jacket. My eyes were glued open. Only it wasn’t Pawel. I cast a veiled glance just to confirm, but my brain couldn’t absorb what it was seeing, and then I blacked out.

Years later, when the Nazis pummeled down our door and pistol-whipped my father to death, I saw Stach’s father standing cross-armed in the arched doorway of our dining room, my mother crying out to him—calling him by his first name—begging him to make the Nazis stop hurting my father. But the baron ignored her. The very last words my father heard as he cried out my mother’s name were my mother calling out that man’s name.

I knew then, and I know now.

“It wasn’t Pawel,” I whisper hoarsely from the back seat, the gun still aimed at the baron’s head. “It was you.” The words barely form. His eyes up close are the same almond shape and shade as Stach’s, changing from blue to green like a Siberian husky’s. Like my own. I swallow back the bile forming in my throat. I wave the gun at him, feeling the burn rising in my face. “You despised Jews, destroyed us, and yet you were in love with my Jewish mother.”

“She chose him,” he spits out.

I don’t look at Anna, but feel the intensity of her surprised gaze upon me, and I don’t even want to know what the driver is thinking.

Him.A punishing affirmation. My father. My mother chose my father because it was expected of her—a Jew must marry a Jew—but secretly she loved this ruthless villain. How long did the affair go on? From the beginning? Before that? The rage inside me intensifies, hitting a boiling point until it has nowhere to go, filling my head with smoke, debris, and darkness, until there is no difference between what is going on inside the vehicle and outside. I feel the repressed memory snake along my throat, like the pale-blue scarf tightening once again around the baron’s neck. It was him in her bed. His blond wavy hair splayed on my father’s pillow. Him. Lucky my mother is dead or I would kill her too.

The baron’s voice rattles with one last solitary breath. “You’re my...”

I shoot him in the face before that word can make its way out. Before the ugly, inconceivable truth rears its head in front of witnesses. I won’t allow it. Won’t admit to it. Won’t hear of it. Never! His arrogant royal blood splatters the same color red as a peasant’s across the windshield, on the driver, and on me. Anna screams. This was not the plan. I’m frozen, dead silent.

The driver accelerates. Wherever he is headed, I don’t know, don’t care, can’t feel anything except for the reverberating heat of the pistol burning against my hand.

I was specific with Stach that day in his office when he told me we were going to murder his father and he needed my help. I said I must have a Browning P35—that it was symbolic. “Symbolic of what?” he asked. The Browning was the same make used to bludgeon my beloved father, the man who raised me, cherished me, laughed with me, told me I could become anything I wanted to be.

The Browning falls limply into my lap. I could have been anything, but now I’m this.

THE DRIVER STOPSthe car two streets away from my apartment, where the night began, by the park. In the distance, I see the swings, the slide, a sandbox. I look at Anna quizzically. Why are we back here? I thought that I couldn’t return to the apartment because it was too dangerous. The baron’s slumped-over blood-soaked body is now covered by the blanket I was using. Ambulances are swarming the nearby hospital. Anna tells Lukas, “Are you crazy? It’s not safe there. Let’s go. Irina is not getting out, especially now.”

“Nowhere is safe,” he responds, eyeing me with a sharp squint in the rearview mirror. “But she needs to get out immediately otherwise we’re not safe either. I can’t be here, Anna. You know I can’t be in the middle of this.” He glances out the blood-splattered window, turns to me with those crazy eyes. “You need to go. Anna and I must get rid of the body and this car and figure out next steps.”

“Damn it, Lukas, her dress is covered in blood. She can’t go anywhere looking like that.”

He lets out a hard sigh. “You’re right. We will get rid of the body and then come back for her. If we are pulled over like this, at least we can say we happened to be driving near the bombing, tried to save this man by bringing him to the hospital. Our papers are rock solid. Hers are not. And more importantly, there is a manhunt for her.” His eyes wax empathic. “I’m sorry, Irina. You’ve done stellar work tonight. Hide behind the apartment building. Over there, behind those large garbage bins. We will come back for you in an hour or so, after we take care of this.”

“And if you don’t come back?” I ask, which is the more likely scenario.

“I’m coming back for you, I promise.” Lukas reaches inside his coat pocket, hands me several large bills. “If something happens unexpectedly, there are smugglers roaming the park.” He gestures out his window. “Use this to get help. Keep the gun, Irina, but get out. Now. You must.”

I glance at Anna, who nods, squeezes my arm. Lukas is right. I am the weak link. I don’t hesitate. I jump out of the car, then walk without looking back, hearing the screech of wheels as the car careens away with the only two people left on the Aryan side who can help me.