Chapter Forty

DRESSED IN COSTUME as Leni Riefenstahl, I have never felt more like Bina Blonski than I do right now, watching my home—the ghetto scenery—razed to the ground. Müller would not rest until every detail was exact, as it once was. The studio set even smells like death. It is so realistic that it is unbearable.

This is the final scene, the one Müller can’t wait to film. The Nazi victory over the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. We left our Pennsylvania location and are now back at the Flagstone Studio lot to film it, and for good reason. We needed fake weaponry and enough explosives to create the realistic finale that Müller demanded. The studio has all the goods stored in its armory. Stan did a superb job convincing Müller to film the final scene here, on our home turf. The key was letting Müller think it was his own brilliant idea.

The Great Synagogue of Warsaw constructed behind me is a precise replica of the real one, and it begins to gut me. Müller, that bastard, got every physical detail right for his grand finale, except for one thing: the twin five-foot-high brass candelabras perched at the entrance that had been saved by the rabbi and smuggled out of Warsaw before the Nazis destroyed the synagogue. Müller was determined that history be his version of history. He didn’t want to showcase any Jewish victory, even the smallest of triumphs. He intended to stage the fall of one thousand years of vibrant Jewry in Poland in one giant explosion. Hence, those symbolic candelabras would be blown up with the rest of the synagogue in Müller’s film.

Leathered up, Müller prances around the set like a sleek black panther. “Bina,” he instructs. “Stand still, with your back facing that.” That. He points to the synagogue. “I want this shot to be a powerful yet artsy silhouette. Leni wasn’t physically there at this final moment. Doesn’t matter. Her vision was with us until the end, and that’s what counts. We only get one take, so do it right!” He plants himself in front of me. “The ghetto is burning. Picture Leni Riefenstahl standing in the forefront, and then”—Müller scurries past me to peer into the camera frame, pushes aside the cinematographer, then looks up at me—“think Statue of Liberty. Hold your hands out wide. Show the magnificent triumph in your face, a goddess bearing witness to the Führer’s greatest victory. Do it now!” he commands.

I do exactly what Müller tells me, but I am envisioning my own interpretation of what’s about to happen on set—not his.

“Yes, yes, exactly that.” He clasps his hands together, glances up from the camera. His eyes are wild. “We are almost ready. This last scene will be filled with a legion of Nazi heroes, standing behind S.S. Gruppenführer Jürgen Stroop. Truly miraculous.”

Müller’s expression changes instantly with violent force. “Mika!” he shouts. “Are all the Jews off set—except for Bina Blonski? No Jews are allowed for the victory scene. It must be authentic. Where is goddamn Stan Moss?”

“Off set,” Mika confirms, eyeing her clipboard and checkmarking it.

“Where’s that Jewish spy from Flagstone?”

“Back in his office. A fake emergency that I called in.” Checkmark.

“And Connie?”

I hold my breath. Mika’s cornflower-blue eyes bore into his. “She is prepared, Michael. We all are. Everything was ready to go last night exactly as you asked. It will be a lovely surprise for the cast and crew.” She smiles seductively.

A lovely surprise indeed, I think. I try to decelerate my pounding heart, but the beats only seem to grow louder and faster.

MüLLER CALLS FORa thirty-minute break before the final scene so that he can collect himself. He wants to check once again that every detail is accurate. I planned for this too. So did Mika. I saw the thirty-minute break noted on her clipboard schedule when I broke into Wardrobe last night.

I head to my trailer, and Connie is there inside.

“You’re here?” she says with surprise. She didn’t know about the break.

“It is my trailer.”

My heart aches as we face off. She has betrayed me, but still. It’s Connie. Five years by my side. A woman I once called friend. No matter what she’s done, I’ve got to give her a way out—one last gesture. Anything to save her from herself.

“Connie,” I say softly, desperately searching her face for remnants of the old Connie.

“Yes.” Icy, contemptuous eyes return the volley.

“Don’t go back on that set. Take the rest of the afternoon off.”

“The afternoon off? Why would I do that? I have responsibilities here,” she snaps. Her newly platinum-blond hair is styled in a side braid like Mika’s today, only much shorter. She is wearing a short skirt and a bright floral blouse with a double strand of pearls, just like Mika. “I want to be here for the finale.”

No, you don’t.

“You seem to have made friends on set. I understand,” I say, hoping for a breakthrough, for any connection. “But perhaps they are not the best influence on you.”

“What do you mean?” she asks, hands placed firmly on hips.

“I mean Paul.”

Her face turns a thousand colors.

“You used to tell me things, Con. We used to share details about our lives. We were friends, confidantes. What’s going on? You can tell me.” Don’t do this. You are better than this. Better than them. I move in closer, and she backs away as if I’m contaminated and then stops moving.

New Connie is here.

She points a manicured finger at me for the first time ever. “Don’t tell me who is a good influence or not. It’s really none of your business.” Her hazel eyes blacken. “None of your goddamn business!” She corrects herself, practically shouting. I am taken aback. I have never heard her raise her voice or swear before. She is always calm, a problem solver; nothing rattles her. A rarity. In this high-stress business, everything rattles everyone.

“My private life remains private, and all mine,” she continues. “This movie is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I’m leaving you after this shoot. I’m going to assist Michael and Mika and be part of their new studio. Consider this goodbye.” She takes the pitcher of iced tea off the small corner table and dumps it out in front of me, smiling at the puddle flooding my shoes and the floating lemon wedges. She swipes her hands and walks toward the door.

“Five years, Connie,” I call after her. She stops in her tracks, turns.

“And now I’m free.” She exits my trailer and stomps down the two steps and out of my life.

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Connie walks onto our set like a Pan Am stewardess holding a tray filled with dozens of shots of schnapps. Müller stands by Paul. Mika is on his other side. And Agnes from Wardrobe is adjusting something on Paul’s uniform. They all smile at Connie, who is blushing from all the attention. I’m sick to my stomach. But now, it’s out of my hands. Connie made her bed.

“Lock it up. Quiet on the set!” Mika barks.

“Paul,” Müller says to his leading man, loud enough for everyone to hear, “this is the defining moment of Jürgen Stroop’s Warsaw campaign.” He pulls out a tattered olive-green notebook. “What I’m about to read to you is straight from Stroop’s own diary, recounting the exact moment after they blew up that on May sixteenth, 1943. Simply legendary.” He points to the synagogue structure behind him. “Now listen.”

“Quiet on the set!” Mika cries out. The most irritating human on the planet. I will not be sorry to see her go for good.

Müller takes a deep inhale, adding to the dramatics. The set is silent. “What a marvelous sight it was,” he recites in German. “A fantastic piece of theater. My staff and I stood at a distance. I held the electrical device that would detonate all the charges simultaneously. I glanced over at my brave officers and men, tired and dirty, silhouetted against the glow of burning buildings. After prolonging the suspense for a moment, I shouted, ‘Heil Hitler’ and pressed the button. With a thunderous, deafening bang and a rainbow burst of colors, the fiery explosion soared toward the clouds, an unforgettable tribute to our triumph over the Jews. The Warsaw Ghetto was no more. The will of Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler had been done.”

Müller snaps shut the book, hands it to Mika, then walks over to Paul, uncomfortably close, practically body to body. “This, Paul, will be the most important ‘Heil Hitler’ of your career. It will set everything I have planned for us in motion.” He then nods at Connie, who proceeds to walk toward him with the schnapps, slowly, carefully, like a bride to her groom.

“Thank you.” Müller winks at her. “Bring the drinks in there and wait for us.” He gestures to the synagogue, then turns to the cast and crew. Only his people are still on set. Anyone connected to Stan or Flagstone has been dismissed. “We are all going inside that to toast to our first feature film here on American soil. Toast to a magnificent day in our history: to Leni Riefenstahl, the Führer, Goebbels, Stroop, and for me personally, I will raise a glass to my brother, Lukas Müller.” He looks at me and smiles the family’s sickly signature grin. “Now get the fuck off my set, Bina Blonski. Your job here is done. I want to be Jew-free for this milestone in cinematic history.”

As I turn to go, Müller’s parting words whip at my back. “By the way, Lukas is alive and very, very well.”

I walk out and must restrain myself from skipping. Lukas Müller is alive. Thank you for the confirmation. Because in about thirty minutes, Michael Müller, you won’t be.

“Music!” I hear Mika shout out. Suddenly, Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll plays from surround-sound speakers, hailing straight from Auschwitz.

I quickly make my way off set, and one by one, Müller’s people file past me as if I don’t exist, their hypnotic gazes focused on only one person: Michael Müller, the Hollywood Hitler.

I pick up my pace and pray Stan is ready, knowing with every inch of me that he is. I can just hear him now: Let’s give those bastards the ending that they deserve.

When I get to the parking lot, I stand next to my car, lean against it, observing the impressive dome of the Great Synagogue protruding from the set. I picture Müller and his followers ensconced inside, downing their celebratory schnapps, toasting themselves. Their last drink is filled with the poison that I shot directly into each of the bottles’ corks last night, bottles that Connie had stored in Agnes’s Wardrobe trailer, per Mika’s instructions. I picture Müller at center stage, giving a rousing tribute to the longevity of the Third Reich and the new day dawning for Reich cinema. They will struggle together, cast and crew, gasping for breath, clutching their throats, screaming for help that won’t come. Finally, they will tumble to the ground, a pileup of costumed Nazis and their megalomaniac director. My heart rises with the image, then drops with a hard plunk. And Connie.

And then, the insurance.

On cue, I hear the massive explosion and look up to see the dome blowing off the synagogue. It pops off into the air, just as Jürgen Stroop had described it. This time, it is my doing. Instantly, the sky becomes a black hole, bursting with flames, debris, and smoldering chaos. This time, the unheeded screams are not ours. They are theirs. Nazis leveled to the ground inside that—one of the most important synagogues in history.

Dropping to my knees, I peer up at the inky sky smothered in smoke, filled with a spectacle of stars that somehow manage to burst through the shadowy haze. I smile back at Zelda and the others standing and clapping. Yes, I poisoned them and blew them up—leaving nothing to chance. The Nazi victory film is destroyed along with its fanatical creators. It’s over. And the young Bina Blonski, who lives and fights within me, rises to take her final bow before the only audience that has ever mattered.