Saving Amelie (8 page)

Shouldering her purse and hefting bags, Rachel set her jaw and a steady pace in the opposite direction. She’d missed the afternoon coffee hour, but if she caught the streetcar, she might just make it back to the hotel in time to ask for a light supper.
Maybe I can convince them to make a good cup of tea—a strong cup of tea.
The headache building behind her eyes seemed intent on lodging.

She rounded the corner just as the trolley pulled to a stop at the end of the block. Walking quickly, she raised her arm to signal she was coming, but the conductor ignored her. Two people stepped up
into the car. The trolley bell dinged. She jogged faster, calling out. Still ten steps behind, the car pulled away from the curb.

A stitch in her side and a stone in her shoe, she dropped her packages to the corner bench and swore. There was nothing to do but wait for the next car.
Unchivalrous—that’s what they are!

She retrieved the pebble from her shoe and straightened the seam in her stocking. When she stood, she saw the black van parked halfway down the block—the vehicle Jason had been so taken with, or one very much like it.

But Jason Young was nowhere in sight. Curious, she strolled across the side street to get a better view.

A line of children, perhaps ages three through ten or eleven, filed down the sidewalk, the last one exiting the doorway of a two-story brick building. A man in a white coat led them behind the van, and a woman in a black dress herded the children forward. But there was something about the children. . . . Some were stiff and stilted in their gait. Their arms didn’t swing in rhythm with their stride, or if they did, it was exaggerated. One tall girl, clutching the shoulder of the child before her, was obviously blind.

A very small boy with a moon-round face, flattened in the front, stumbled and fell. Rachel was too far away to hear what he said as he cried out, but the woman at the end of the line hurried forward and jerked the boy to his feet, shook him soundly, and pushed him back into line. The boy stumbled forward, catching his scraped arm to his chest. The woman happened to glance Rachel’s way. Their eyes connected. Grim, she turned quickly away.

Rachel knew she shouldn’t intervene in Berlin’s affairs, but the woman was rougher than was called for, surely. It must be some kind of institution.

Kristine’s words came back to her:
“They are going to rid Germany of every genetically imperfect man, woman, and child.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Rachel whispered. But the memory of
Kristine’s urgency remained. Rachel returned to her packages across the street, still watching, anticipating that the line of children would emerge on that side of the van. But they didn’t. They’d disappeared. Shortly, the white-coated man rounded the vehicle and climbed in the front passenger seat. As soon as he did, the driver pulled away, toward Rachel’s end of the street. She stepped back onto the curb.

The children must have climbed into the back of the van. There was nowhere else for them to have gone.

The van pulled to the intersection, passing Rachel, pausing for traffic, and turned left.

Windows painted black—the children can’t see out, and I can’t see them.

Rachel’s heart began to pound.
“They’ll put them in vans and drive them round, gassing them as they go.”

“There’s some other explanation,” she said aloud.

The woman in the black dress was already stepping through the doorway of the brick building. A trolley pulled to a stop near the curb. Rachel looked up into the face of the conductor. He waited for her to enter, to hand him her coins. But she stepped back, shaking her head.

Rachel harnessed her shoulder bag and, leaving her parcels on the bench, headed quickly for the brick building—before she could think it through, before she could change her mind.

The sign, small and white with gold letters, read,
Schmidt-Veiling Institut
. She thumped the brass door knocker beneath it. No one came, so she thumped it again, louder this time. She waited, but still no one came. Not accustomed to being ignored, frightened now by her imaginings, she banged it loudly, continually. At last the door flew open and the woman in the dark dress emerged, her face flush with . . . with . . . with what? Anger? Fear? Suspicion? Rachel couldn’t tell.

“The children,” Rachel stammered in English. She saw the woman’s fear change to contempt and switched to German. “
Die Kinder
—where have they gone? What’s happened to them?”

The woman tried to shut the door, but Rachel pushed her foot through it and forced her way into the dark foyer. “Tell me.”

“And who are you? What is your business here?”

Rachel’s theatre training kicked in, as though she’d deliberately summoned it. “My cousin brought her daughter here. I demand to know what you’ve done with the children.”

The woman paled as Rachel spoke. “They are sleeping. It is afternoon nap time. That is all. Tell your cousin to call before she comes to visit.”

“The ones I saw getting into the van—the black van, just now.”

The woman’s eyes grew unnaturally bright. She looked over her shoulder, then back again. “They—they are being . . .” She hesitated barely a moment. “Taken for treatment.”

“What kind of treatment?”

“That is up to the doctor, what they need. What each one needs.” She stepped forward, urging Rachel backward, toward the door. “You will excuse us, Fräulein. We have work to do.”

Rachel nearly gave way, uncertain, knowing she couldn’t truly be sure, couldn’t prove anything. But a mournful wail filtered through the hallway, reaching her ears as she stepped away. “Who is crying? Who is that?”

“Children cry often, Fräulein. In a house as large as this it is only common. You must go now.”

“That was not a child!”

The woman’s frustration erupted. “It is Frau Heppfner. If you must know, her only son has been sent to the front. She is a good German, but she is frightened for him.” She pushed Rachel through the open doorway. “Now you must go.”

From behind the shrubbery covering the corner of the street, Jason watched Rachel step from the orphanage. He had a good idea about
what had happened to the children; he’d been tipped off to expect as much. But he’d no idea what role Rachel Kramer played. He’d expected her to be coldhearted and pretty much an ostrich, hiding her head in the sand about things that impacted anyone other than herself. He hadn’t expected that she might be in some way linked to Hitler’s nightmare.

He shoved his camera deep into his coat pocket and followed, several steps behind, to the corner.

She walked slowly. When she turned, looking lost and troubled, he knew for certain she wasn’t part of the horror he’d just witnessed, and his heart pricked for her.

“Miss Kramer?” He reached for her arm. She pulled away, staring at his hands, then up into his face, as if she didn’t know him. He stepped closer. “Rachel? Are you all right?”

Jason pulled her to the bench amid her jumble of packages and bags, some of which had been rifled and emptied. She lifted a torn brown wrapper.

“You can’t trust anybody.” He tried to make light.

But she looked up with tears in her eyes. “No. No, you can’t.”

“Do you want to tell me what happened back there?”

She slumped against the bench back.

“What did that woman say to you?”

Rachel stared straight ahead. It was getting to be a habit with her. Jason thought that if he waved his hand in front of her face now, she might not notice.

“She said that the children have gone for treatment—what each one needs, what the doctor thinks each one needs.”

“Did she say when they’re coming back?”

Tears welled in her eyes and fell down her cheeks, making her look vulnerable, almost childlike. She shook her head slowly, finally whispering, “I don’t think they’re coming back.”

She knows—but how?
“Is this part of your father’s research?”

She looked at him, her eyes regaining focus. “What?”

“You know what they’re doing in the van, don’t you? Did your father tell you?”

She cringed. “He’s got nothing to do with that! He works to make the world a better place, not—not that!”

He leaned closer, wishing he could shield her, knowing he mustn’t. “This is where eugenics leads, Miss Kramer. This has been the end goal all along—to rid the world of the disabled, the elderly, the politically expendable, and any race or group of people Hitler deems unacceptable.”

“No,” she nearly whimpered. “It’s not the same.”

Jason sat back, and though he wanted to shake her into reality, he also pitied her. “If you believe that, you’ve bought into the lie. There’s nothing I can do to help you if you won’t open your eyes.” He pulled a card from his coat pocket. “Here’s my number. Call me anytime, day or night, if you want to talk. They’ll know where to find me.” He hesitated. “Let me walk you back to your hotel. Tonight’s the first blackout. You don’t want to be out alone.”

“No, thank you. It’s not far. I can manage very well.”

“That’s not a good idea, Miss Kra—”

“I can manage!”

He stood, rebuked but undecided. He hated leaving her there distraught, especially with the gathering dusk and impending blackout. But she was arrogant, even in her misery. He’d have to wait around the corner, follow her, make sure she made it safely back.

He knew she was thoroughly frightened. Yet he also knew that she and the whole world needed to be terrified. There was no other way to wake them up, to force their hands.

7

S
UNDAY
DAWNED
CLEAR
AND
SUNNY
,
a perfect late-summer morning caressed in breezes—the kind of day meant for boating on the Spree or picnics and ambling along the Tiergarten’s shaded pathways.

But Rachel had not left the hotel since she’d returned from her ordeal Friday night with the van and Jason Young. Traipsing back to her hotel in the darkness, hearing footsteps echo off the pavement around her but unable to see anyone in the blackout, hearing hushed whispers—every whispered voice equally afraid—had been more than enough of Berlin for her.

Besides, she was intent on staying by the phone in case her father called. She gathered all the frightening news she could stomach through Reich-approved radio stations and through her chambermaid.

“I heard Herr Hitler with my own ears, over the loudspeaker in Wilhelmplatz this noon!” the girl had insisted. “At eleven o’clock Britain declared war against us! But our Führer let them have it—lambasted those warmongering British and those capitalist Jews!”

Rachel’s stomach churned.

“There’s a new decree. Listening to foreign broadcasts is
verboten
. The Führer doesn’t want us discouraged by foreign propaganda, like in the last war. Too many women wrote their husbands at the front about what they’d heard of the war, and about the harsh rationing and such—
meine Mutter
told me how it was. It brought our soldiers low, and they gave up the fight too soon. It was all Bolshevik Jew
lies behind it, you know, meant to destroy morale.” The girl spoke knowingly while she snapped pillow slips and shook the eiderdown. “
Meine Mutter
says it’s why we suffered the humiliation of Versailles. The Führer says we needn’t have lost at all. But thanks to him, we’re stronger now. We’ll not listen to the lies this time, and we’re to report those that do.”

“You’ve no idea what war will mean,” Rachel tried to persuade her.

“We don’t want war, but we’ll not lose to those that force it upon us!”

Berlin women sewed cloth bags. Men and boys packed them with sand, slamming them by the hundreds against the bases of houses, intent on breaking the impact of explosions. Government stations distributed gas masks—to Aryan residents—but did not evacuate women and children.

Rachel dared hope Hitler’s boast that the British and French planes would never breach the city’s lines was true. And then she wondered if she should regret that, if she should hope instead for the crazies to be blasted from the Reichstag.

Lists of blackout regulations were posted in the newspapers. Only the whitewashed curbs helped navigate the darkened streets.

But Rachel was done going out after dark. Even the theatres, which still opened their doors, could not compel her. She was packed, ready to leave for the US the moment her father returned from Frankfurt. The only person she’d telephoned since she’d witnessed the van of children being driven away was Kristine. She’d phoned her on Saturday, intending to say she would do whatever she could for Amelie, but hung up without speaking when Gerhardt answered the phone.

If Gerhardt is back early, why isn’t Father?

Rachel paced the carpeted floor of the sitting room between her father’s bedchamber and her own Sunday morning and afternoon. Rehearsing her lines over and over—what she would ask him, what
she could say while shielding Kristine and Amelie. He couldn’t possibly be part of this madness. He would know what to do. And they must leave right away—before they couldn’t.