Hitler's Secret (9 page)

Leni made it to the main building in a few minutes. She squatted down in the shadows, catching her breath, waiting for her heart to slow and listening all the while. But there was not a sound.

She stole along the west side of the building until she located the window of the girl’s room on the fourth floor. She took off her pack and opened it, removing a small canvas holdall she had prepared earlier. It held all the equipment she would need. Then she took out the gray novice’s robe and pulled it over her own clothes. It was still a bit damp and smelled of the woodsmoke. She tied it around her waist with a thick cord and wondered how anyone managed to wear such a thing all day during the summer.

She closed the pack and stashed it against the wall, directly underneath the girl’s window. Then she turned and made her
way back the way she had come, keeping close to the wall, her eyesight now well adjusted to the gloom. When she reached the northeast side of the building she found that the door to the kitchen was locked. She would have to go in through the main door of the chapel, which she had been told was never locked.

It was at that moment that she saw the small window to the larder was open. It had a thin mesh screen over it to keep out the flies and mosquitoes. Leni drew her knife and neatly cut the screen away. Then she pulled herself up and through the window.

Once inside, she hurried into the kitchen. The place was quiet and immaculately tidy. Rows of pots and pans hung around the wall on hooks, and the long oak table was scrubbed clean.

It was a short walk down a stone corridor to the laundry. There Leni quickly found a pile of freshly laundered sheets, folded but waiting to be ironed and starched. She grabbed four.

Ten minutes later, she was padding silently down another stone corridor on the third floor of the building in her socks. She held her shoes in one hand, the small canvas holdall in the other, and the sheets tucked under the same arm. She halted at the end of the corridor, as she had on the first two floors, and listened. Still nothing. She took the staircase on the right-hand side. The convent was a warren. For a moment or two she wondered if she was going in the right direction and felt a flash
of panic, then she pushed the thought aside and kept going. The stone floor was cold through her socks. As she reached the top of the stairs, a blinding white light snapped on.

“Who is that? And why are you not in your room?” The woman’s voice was hard, indignant, the flashlight beam flashing along the walls and floor, seeking her out.

Leni turned tail and fled back down the stairs. She heard the clatter of shoes on the stones behind her.

“Come back at once!” the woman ordered.

Leni reached the bottom of the staircase and looked about frantically. In the gloom she could just make out a wooden door set into the wall opposite. She dashed across and pulled it open. It was a tiny cupboard, filled with a collection of mops and pails. As the flashlight beam cut through the darkness behind her, she managed to squeeze inside and pull the door shut. Through a crack in the door’s panels she saw the light flashing up and down the empty corridor. She held her breath, wedged her shoes under her left arm, then used her right hand to slide her knife out from the sheath strapped to her leg. Her hand was shaking so badly she struggled to grip it. She sucked in her breath and held it. Would she actually kill a nun? Or anyone, for that matter? She fought to suppress the scream that threatened to burst from her mouth. Then the footsteps receded down the corridor and she remembered to breathe again, gasping for air.

She sat inside the cupboard for five full minutes, then
gingerly opened the door and stepped out. The icy stone floor was now pleasantly cooling. Her whole body was burning and sweat was running down her back. She ran back up the staircase, as silent as a ghost.

She found the storeroom on the fourth floor just where the map had positioned it. She stepped inside the small, windowless space and for the next twenty minutes or so, using her knife, carefully shredded the bedsheets into long strips that she knotted together. It seemed to take forever and by the time she’d finished she was perspiring even more, but when the convent’s clock struck midnight she was ready. She slung the homemade rope over her shoulder and stepped into the corridor. As she passed each door she checked the small wooden nameplate beside it, painted in simple Gothic script with the name of the occupant: Sister Ellen, Sister Agnes, Sister Rosa … At last she found what she was looking for.

Outside the door at the end, the nameplate was blank. The girl with no name.

Leni pressed her ear to the door and listened. She couldn’t hear anything through the inch of oak. Perhaps there was no one inside after all. Perhaps this whole thing was a wild-goose chase. Perhaps she could stop now and just run back to Otto and go home.

She knew that wasn’t an option. She eased the iron door-ring counterclockwise, and felt the latch lift on the inside. She stepped in.

It was a small, narrow cell. There was a mullioned window at the end, a table and chair beneath it. A small wardrobe was on the right and a single cot bed on the left.

Asleep in the bed was a young girl. Angelika. She lay on her back, her brown hair splayed out around her head. She had broad regular features with full cheeks. Leni knew she was nine, but she looked younger as she slept.

Leni shivered. The sweat was now clammy under her clothes. But it wasn’t just that, she realized. It was the room itself, so cold and spartan, that made her shiver. There was nothing to suggest it was a little girl’s room — no teddy or dolls, no toys, no colorful pictures on the wall like in Leni’s old bedroom in Vienna. She’d even had her own gramophone player. Here, there were just a few prayer books on the table beneath the window.

Leni was about to gently wake the girl when she heard footsteps in the corridor. She stood absolutely still, listening. The footsteps came closer and closer and closer. Then they stopped. Right outside the door.

Leni threw herself under the bed, pushing aside a chamber pot, just as the door opened and a flashlight beam cut through the darkness. Leni squeezed herself against the wall under the bed and watched a pair of black shoes march across the room and stop directly in front of her face. The bedsprings creaked as the nun shook the sleeping girl roughly.

“You may fool the others, young lady, but you don’t fool me, I know you’re not really asleep!” It was the same nun who had chased after Leni, her voice harsh and cross.

The girl sat up sleepily. “I don’t understand, Sister Margareta.” She spoke with a soft Bavarian accent. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about little girls sneaking around after lights out. In the kitchens again, weren’t you, you greedy little pig!”

“No, I wasn’t, I swear to God.”

“How dare you take the Lord’s name in vain? A whole bottle of milk, emptied just like that.” She was filled with righteous indignation.

Leni’s mind was racing, on the edge of panic. She had to do something, and fast. Before Sister Margareta ruined everything.

“I think the mother superior should hear about this …”

Oh, no … she wasn’t going to march her downstairs now, was she?

“Please, I haven’t done anything wrong.” The girl was pleading now.

“Oh, spare me your lies! And no breakfast for you. No breakfast for little thieves. Do you hear me?”

As quietly as she could, Leni put her hand into her holdall and found the metal flask. She unscrewed the top and carefully poured some of the clear liquid inside onto a thick gauze pad. It was ether mixed with chloroform.

“May the Lord forgive your wickedness. Come along now!” The nun’s feet suddenly stopped moving. “What’s that strange smell?”

Leni made her move, sliding out of the bed in one fluid movement.

Sister Margareta stared down at her in utter shock. “What mischief is this?” she gasped.

Leni leaped to her feet and threw herself against the nun, slamming her against the opposite wall. At the same time, she clamped the drug-soaked pad over her nose and mouth.

Sister Margareta was short and slight, not much bigger than Leni and certainly not as strong. The nun struggled, trying to pull the pad away, but within twenty seconds she slid to the ground unconscious. Leni rushed to the door, closing it carefully. Then she snapped off Sister Margareta’s flashlight, plunging the room back into semidarkness.

Angelika had shrunk back into the corner of the bed, her arms around her knees. She had gone very pale, and her breathing was shallow. But she hadn’t screamed. That was good. Leni put her finger to her lips, and the girl nodded.

“Please don’t scream, Angelika,” Leni whispered.

Angelika stared. “How do you know my name?” she whispered back.

“I’ll explain everything in a minute, but first I have to fix Sister Margareta.”

Leni took a moment to think. Everything she was doing was new to her and no amount of training could help. She made a short list in her head:
nun
,
rope
,
escape
. Then she took out her knife, lifted the homemade rope over her head and dropped it on the floor. She found one end of it and cut off a few short lengths.

“Will you help me?” she asked the girl.

Angelika stared at Leni uncertainly, then glanced down at her tormentor on the stone floor. She scrambled off the bed.

“What do you want me to do?” she said.

“Lift her feet for me, please.”

The girl hesitated, then lifted Sister Margareta’s feet off the ground. Leni quickly tied the nun’s ankles together, removed the pad from the nun’s mouth and rolled her over so she was lying on her stomach. She pulled her arms behind her back and tied them together, too. Then she and Angelika rolled her onto her back again, and Leni fashioned a gag with a strip of sheet.

Angelika watched Leni work. “We’re in a lot of trouble,” she said.

“No, it’s going to be all right,” soothed Leni. “Help me get her into the bed, Angelika.”

With a supreme effort they managed to heave the nun off the ground, with Leni at the shoulders and Angelika at the feet, and half dragged, half lifted her onto the bed. Leni pulled the blanket up over her head.

“You’re strong,” she said, and saw the girl smile in the darkness.

“Who are you?” Angelika asked.

“My name is Leni. Leni Fischer.”

“Oh,” said Angelika, then seemed to realize it was a silly question. “What are you doing here?” That was a better one.

Leni climbed up onto the table, then leaned forward and opened the window. It was a good twenty yards down. She hoped she had enough rope. She looked back at the girl staring up at her from the floor.

“What’s it look like? I’ve come to rescue you.”

“Rescue me?”

Leni made a loop at one end of the rope and then carefully placed it over the iron handle of the window’s lock. She played out the rest of the rope to the ground below, and gave a tug on the loop to check it was secure.

“That’s right. Well, not exactly rescue you, but get you away from here. Get you to Switzerland.”

“Why?” said Angelika. She sounded very confused, as well she might.

“Well …” Leni didn’t want to get bogged down with explanations. Any moment now, the door could open, and they’d be captured. The consequences of that didn’t bear thinking about. “Look, please trust me. It’s for your own good, I promise.”

The girl was frowning now. Leni felt a terrible panic rising in her chest.

“I know this is all strange and a shock, but I’m really here to help you. Please say you’ll come with me.”

The seconds were turning into minutes, and time was running out. Leni tried to keep her voice level.

“I promise I’ll explain everything more clearly, but right now we need to go.”

Angelika finally reacted to the urgency in Leni’s voice and glanced towards the door, clearly thinking about angry nuns.

“Now. We have a boat waiting.”

Leni could see the girl was struggling to make a decision. She weighed the anesthetic-soaked pad she was still holding in her hand. Any more delay and she’d be forced to drug the girl and try to lower her down on the rope. That would be a nightmare.

Angelika looked at Leni, then at Sister Margareta lying in the bed, and finally at the stone floor, the bare walls. “I don’t want to stay here. I hate it,” she said simply.

“Then take my hand, Angelika, take it now.”

Angelika reached out and Leni pulled her up onto the table. Angelika grasped the rope.

“You think you can climb down?”

Angelika swung her legs out over the window ledge. “Climbing trees is all I get to do around here. It got me three days in detention last month,” she said, and with that she dropped out of the window. Leni looked at the pad in her hand, hesitated for a moment, then moved swiftly back to the nun.
She pulled the blanket back from her face and placed the pad over the nun’s nose and mouth. It would definitely keep her out till the morning. She ran back to the window.

Outside, at the bottom, Angelika was waiting for Leni as she dropped the last few feet to the ground. She grabbed the homemade rope and flicked it, setting off a rolling motion that traveled upwards. After a minute or so, she felt the rope free itself of the window catch and fall into a pile beside her. She scooped it up, looping it into a coil and swinging it over her head. All set.

“I bet you know this place like the back of your hand?” she said to the girl.

Angelika smiled at her in the moonlight. “Specially at night,” she whispered back. “When I’m thirsty.”

“But you didn’t drink that milk,” Leni said.

“No, not this time,” said Angelika, then she frowned. “But how do you know?”

“Because I did!” said Leni.

Angelika’s smile became even wider then, and she grasped Leni’s hand.