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

wrecked room; she’d forgotten about it in her desperation to learn about Daniel. It was easy to guess who had ordered the vandalism: There was no one in Munich whom Hitler hated more than Gerlich. They had openly despised each other for years.
    “The city is under attack.” Gerlich rubbed his forehead, as if in pain. “SA groups have been pillaging businesses all day. Several men came this morning. They were quite effective, as you can see.” He waved a hand at the garbage-littered floor.
    “How can they hope to get away with it?” She was bewildered. After the disastrous street shoot-out in which Papa had died, Hitler had pledged that the Party must appear as a respectable organization. They beat or killed their opponents, but only if there wasn’t a chance of getting caught.
    Gerlich picked up an overturned wastebasket. “The National Socialists took over the city’s police force today.” He sounded weary. “Did you know Heinrich Himmler?”
    She remembered him well: pudding-faced, spectacled, soft-spoken, with a smile always twitching his lips. He was the head of the Schutzstaffel, the Party’s racially selective unit. Once she’d worked in the office adjacent to his at the Braunes Haus, the National Socialists’ Munich headquarters. She nodded, filled with dread.
    Gerlich set a handful of pens on his desk. “Today he was appointed Munich’s acting police chief.”
    Then what Hitler had always promised would happen: The Party and all branches of the government were becoming one. His plans, uttered casually over drinks at Café Heck or spaghetti suppers at his apartment, rushed back to her. He’d said he wouldstart with the police, for whoever controlled the prisons and punishments controlled the people. The Gleichschaltung , he called it. Coordination, the period of time when the National Socialists would bring everyone in the Fatherland into line. It was meant to be a complete revolution redefining the whole of society until it matched Hitler’s vision.
    Her breath was coming too fast. With the police force under the National Socialists’ control, she couldn’t depend on them for help. She thought of Daniel’s old colleagues at the Munich Post . They’d cared about him. Surely they would help her find him, if they could. She had to get to their office straightaway.
    “I must go,” she said to Gerlich. She clasped his hand in gratitude. “Thank you for sending the telegram. I owe you a debt I can never repay.”
    Concern was etched in every line in his face. “I’m afraid you have little to thank me for. I’ve only brought you into danger and—” He broke off as somewhere a door groaned open and shut. “What was that?”
    He rushed across the room and leaned his head on the wall, listening. His face had become a mask of terror. “They’re coming back!” he whispered.
    Boots tramped outside in the lobby. Motionless, Gretchen listened to the sound divide into separate footsteps. Easily a half dozen. And coming closer.
    “Is there another way out of here?” she demanded, but Gerlich shook his head.
    She ran to the door and opened it a crack. A group of SA men, their expressions grim with purpose, strode across the lobby. Walking in the lead was an extremely short man missing an arm.
    Instantly, she knew who he must be—Max Amann, the head of the Eher Verlag, the National Socialist publishing business. There was no one else in the Party who looked like that. Perhaps he wouldn’t know who she was. They might have seen each other at minor Party events—parties and speeches and dinners, she couldn’t remember now—but that would have been a few years ago, when she looked much younger. Maybe he would believe she was Gisela Schröder, the girl on her false papers, and let her go. Gently, she eased the door shut.
    “It’s Amann,” she said.
    Beside her, Gerlich paled. “He’s come to arrest me. For years, he’s sworn to put me in jail himself, if he got the chance. Nothing else would