Conspiracy of Blood and Smoke by Anne Blankman Read Free Book Online Page A

and empty. The sound of shuffling papers pulled her to an open door.
    The room had been ransacked. Gretchen stopped short in shock. Desk drawers yawned open drunkenly, their contents strewn across the floor: books, pens, paper clips, loose sheets torn from spiral notebooks, the sort Daniel used when jotting notes for a story. Chairs lay on their sides. Pots of paste had been flung onto the ground, leaving a mess of cracked glass and congealed white glue.
    Fritz Gerlich crouched in the middle of the room, gathering papers into a tidy stack. He looked as she had remembered: a slight figure with dark hair combed back from an oval face and thoughtful eyes behind wire-rimmed spectacles. In his plain navy suit he reminded her of a schoolmaster.
    Sighing, he tried to fit together ripped pieces of paper, then shook his head. When she stepped forward, her shoes clicking on the wooden floor, he looked up. “May I help you, Fräulein?”
    Her new hair color was a better disguise than she’d anticipated. She tipped her hat back, so he could see her face. “Herr Gerlich, it’s me—Gretchen Müller.”
    “My God,” he murmured, crossing himself. Hastily, he got to his feet and hurried to close the door. “What on earth are you doing here? You shouldn’t be in Munich,” he said before she could reply. “It’s far too dangerous for you.”
    “I had to come after I saw the telegram you sent to the Oxford Mail .” Nerves had tightened her voice into something she scarcely recognized. Through the window, she heard more shouts from the street and the tinkle of glass shattering. Perhaps someone else’s office was getting destroyed. “Do you know what’s happened to Daniel?”
    Gerlich leaned against the door, his expression solemn. “No. I haven’t seen him in over a week.” He sighed. “Herr Cohen’s cousin had died before he’d arrived, and the boy’s sister had already returned to their parents’ house. Herr Cohen was most distraught.”
    Aaron . Gretchen could still see him, standing in the shabby parlor he’d shared with Daniel and Ruth. Watching her cautiously, for as a Jew he must have been afraid to say much infront of her. But he hadn’t turned her away. He’d let her stay with them. And now he must already be underground, buried by sunset as Jewish tradition demanded, slowly turning to earth himself. She couldn’t fathom how devastated Daniel must be.
    Behind his glasses, Gerlich’s eyes met hers. “I saw Herr Cohen a few days after he arrived here, when he stopped by my home. He had been beaten. Some Nazis had spotted him on the street and attacked him. They knew who he was. They’d taken his money and papers. I gave him enough money for a room for the night, but it was all I could spare. A couple of days afterward, there was an announcement in several of the Party-sponsored newspapers that he was wanted by the Berlin police for murder. They claim he killed a young woman named Monika Junge. I’ve asked around, but there’s been no word of him since.”
    Gretchen clasped her hands tightly together so she wouldn’t fly apart. Her suspicions were true, then: The National Socialists had seen Daniel and were after him. In her mind, she saw him crouching on the ground, arms over his head as SA men surrounded him, kicking and lashing with truncheons. Through the tangle of jackboots, she saw his dark eyes closing in pain as they pummeled him, a line of blood trickling from his hairline to his chin. A sick feeling twisted her stomach.
    “You have no idea where he might be now?”
    Gerlich shook his head. “I wish there was more I could tell you, Fräulein. I sent the telegram to Herr Cohen’s editor because I wanted his friends in England to know what had happened. I never intended for you to come back . . . especially on such a day as this.” He knelt on the floor, his knees popping from the effort, and started gathering torn papers again.
    “What do you mean? What’s happening?” She glanced around the