He actually had the keys on him. The three brass keys were around Professor Schäfer’s neck, under his shirt and slick with his blood. The blood was everywhere – soaked into his clothes, into the carpet, on the bed, on Sarah’s hands, feet and clothes. The room looked like an abattoir.
Sarah picked up the still warm revolver and pointed it at the back of her neck. It was just about plausible, if unlikely. She wiped it clean of their fingerprints with her nightdress and placed it in the Professor’s hand. She had seen this at the cinema. She hoped that it wasn’t Elsa who had loaded it, because she couldn’t open it to remove any prints on the bullets.
None of this will matter if you don’t get a move on.
Sarah had a window in which she could act with total impunity. What had looked impossible was now possible. If she was quick enough.
She dragged on her riding clothes but left the nightdress on, as her coat was missing and the night was a bitterly cold one. Before she left the room she turned and looked at the grotesque rag doll next to the bed.
She could feel that a vast caustic weight had been added to her shoulders and knew that at some point she was going to have to find a way to carry it. But not now. She dragged the feelings to the box and didn’t even try to lock them away – there were just too many and they were too large.
The pill Elsa had given her had raised her thinking above the fog of confusion and sleep, making everything seem clear and precise. She ran down the corridors and stairs, trying to maintain the splintered map of the building in her head. Some of the halls were lit, some were in darkness and several times Sarah had to feel her way to a door that she hoped was there. Twice she thought she was lost, only for a gloomy corner to reveal the way. Trust yourself, trust yourself, she chanted more in hope than expectation.
Finally she found the corridor to the greenhouse, the staggered pools of light, empty guard chair and steel door. She had no idea how long she’d been searching – or how much longer she had left to work.
If she survived this, she decided, the Captain was going to buy her a watch.
She broke the keys from the ring and worked through them, starting with the bottom lock. It all seemed to take an age to figure out and even when she’d unlocked the door, it swung open with comical sloth. The stairs beyond it were completely dark once again, so Sarah held onto the banister and followed the machine sounds down.
What are you doing? What exactly is your plan?
I’m going to make it all go away.
Sarah quickened her pace. Was Elsa already with the guards? Were they already heading for the house? Whatever she was going to do, she needed to do it quickly.
Her foot hit the ground. The lights must be nearby, no more than a few paces from the bottom of the staircase. Where were they? As she felt her way back to the bottom step and along the wall, she examined her shattered memory of the night before. Trust yourself, trust yourself, she chanted over and over.
She was about to check the other side of the stairs when her fingers found a small handle. With relief she pulled it up, expecting the lights to flicker on.
The room filled with an ear-splitting ringing. The surprise made Sarah scream. Red lights came on all over the greenhouse. She had pulled the fire alarm. Above it was the light switch.
Brilliant work, dumme Schlampe. If they weren’t coming for you before, they’re coming now.
She tried to turn off the alarm, but it made no difference, so she left it. She’d just have to be quicker.
As she turned on the lights, she saw a glass-fronted box fixed to the wall, nearby. Looking inside, she smiled, grabbing hold of the top and kicking the front out with her boot. The glass shattered into fragments and she reached in. The axe was heavy, but she could carry it, even if the weight hurt her wrist.
She looked at the machines squatting massively among the dead vegetation. Her plan revolved around one half-remembered phrase – I’ve used the greenhouse’s natural gas heating system to create electricity right here – but the hundreds of pipes and cables that tangled around them looked anonymous. Daunting. Impossible.
Think. It was an old system. It must be the oldest pipework coming into the greenhouse.
Sarah skirted the edge of the glass walls, which had been whitewashed against unwanted attention. Finding dusty, empty pipe holders, she followed them, hoping she’d find the original source of the missing pipes.
You might be following them the wrong way round. Tick-tock.
Trust yourself.
One huge machine looked different from the others. It was hot to the touch, smelled of burning, and rumbled. Sarah ran around it looking for the oldest pipe, the one that fed the monster. The alarm bells howled their warning about the little girl and her axe.
Out of the ground came one old, painted metal pipe that was topped with a giant valve. Connected to this was a new and shining steel duct that snaked into the generator. There was even a whiff of gas escaping from the seal. The beautiful logic that had brought her to this place filled her with the urge to laugh.
Putting the axe on the floor, she started to undo the butterfly screws round the connection. They were well-oiled so they slipped off easily. As each screw dropped onto the floor, the smell of gas grew stronger. Finally the ducting came loose and the gas roared out of the valve. Sarah was nearly blown over by it and was made light-headed. Holding her breath, she retrieved her axe and made for the lab, the starving generator shuddering behind her.
Had she had more time, she would have tried disabling the individual machines. But with the alarm summoning the guards, she would have to be more creative. She slid the heavy laboratory door to one side and turned on the lights. The bomb squatted in all its obscene majesty on its red steel throne, flaunting its inner workings. The mathematics of horror.
There will be a flash so bright and hot that anyone within a kilometre of the explosion will simply disappear. Everything within two kilometres will burst into flames…
Sarah did not lack for an imagination. She watched this horror unfold across the Berlin she knew, the Brandenburger Tor to Potsdamer Platz gone and everything and everyone from the zoo to Alexanderplatz on fire. Sarah started to feel ill again. She had to make this go away.
She ran over to the workbench. The Professor’s notebook sat on top of a pile of technical drawings next to his pipe and lighter. Folding up as many of the drawings as she could, she crammed them into the notebook before stuffing it into the waistband of her jodhpurs. Then she took the lighter and lit the corner of the remaining papers, watching them blacken and curl and spread. This was her matchbook and cigarette.
The bomb sat and mocked her. She assessed the design, trying to remember what Professor Schäfer had said. One fragment remained, clear as day: If it fired now it would…fizzle. Like a powerful explosive…
There had to be a way of activating it and there had to be a way of getting to safety afterwards – otherwise, who would arm it? A plane would need enough time to fly away. She pictured the sparkling fuse of a comedy movie bomb as the comedian tried to get rid of it. She scanned the electrics, looking for something recognizable, seeing only an egg-noodle dish of wires.
Then she spotted the disc. It had tiny graduations marked into its surface, like a clock…like a clockwork egg timer. There was a screwdriver groove in the centre. She rotated it with a fingernail, and clicked it to its maximum limit. She had no way of knowing how long that would be.
What if he’s finished it? What if it goes off properly?
Then it’ll all be gone. Won’t it?
Sarah realized that she might not make it.
She feared being captured or exposed, living as a prisoner, hunger and pain, but death? Sarah had little, no, nothing to lose. Maybe the Captain would mourn her, but she suspected a successful mission meant more to him. She thought of the husk of a girl that Elsa Schäfer had become and she realized, for the first time, that there were things worse than dying.
She felt lighter. The bomb, the little girl trying to detonate it, the Reich, the war, the predatory men and the vicious teachers, the innocent young soldiers, the workbench beginning to catch light behind her…it was all absurd. A long joke awaiting a punchline.
Give them a punchline.
She found a ribbon on the bomb that read Remove before flight. She pulled at it and a long pin came loose, freeing a switch, which she pressed. Then she noticed what looked like a small car battery that hadn’t been connected, next to cables that ended with bare copper wire. She’d started up a car before, so she began to attach them.
The shock threw her backwards, like a kick in the chest from a horse. She hit the concrete floor and lay trembling. That would be an ignominious end, she thought. Not at all worthy of the effort she’d gone to. No, she wanted a better punchline than that. She climbed to her feet, breathless, and looked into the bomb. She nearly missed it over all the noise, but the egg timer inside the bomb was making a whirring sound. It didn’t seem to be moving – or was it? She watched and watched until she was sure.
Any more reasons to stick around, dumme Schlampe? Run.
There was a flash and a wave of heat like someone had flung open an oven door. The fire from the workbench had spread to a shelf of chemicals. Each container was exploding and spreading its burning contents across the lab. It was deeply satisfying for Sarah, who couldn’t have asked for a better fire, but it was definitely time to go.
She ran for the greenhouse, but as soon as she was out of the lab she was met with a thick wall of gas. Too much, too soon, too near the fire. She couldn’t run through it, holding her breath. She felt a trap closing round her. No, not like this.
He’d have a fire escape, wouldn’t he?
She looked back into the lab and spotted a small white door in a corner that she’d overlooked. She retreated into the burning lab and carefully pushed the steel door closed, expecting it to spark any second.
What if that’s a cupboard, dumme Schlampe?
It says AUSGANG on it.
You’re lucky.
The room was filling up with smoke, and as she ran to the white door, holding her breath, tears streamed from her eyes. Behind the white door was a short corridor and a second door. The air was cool and clear with a cold draught. She was nearly out. This was going to work. She had done it. Little Sarah had, against the odds, carried out her mission. She barrelled down the corridor, seized on the handle and turned it.
This door didn’t open.
She rattled the handle desperately as the smell of burning slowly filled the air. Her throat caught and she tried to swallow down the irritation. She leaned back and kicked the door. The wood splintered, but it held. Sarah coughed, a long, hacking, dry heave, and it took her a few seconds to inhale. She was an animal in a trap. She wanted to howl and cry and scratch and hit things, to throw her body against the door.
Think, dumme Schlampe!
There was no key hung nearby. It wasn’t in the lock on the other side and she had nothing to pick the lock with. She couldn’t go back. Looking down the corridor, she could barely see the open white door to the laboratory at the far end. Holding her breath, she ran back and slammed it shut against the smoke. Then she turned around.
The exit door was maybe a few centimetres thick. Sarah decided she wasn’t going to die on this side of it. She powered into a sprint and, closing her eyes, she crashed screaming, shoulder-first, into it.
She bounced off the wood and landed on the ground, pain surging through her shoulder. The air was clearer here, so she stayed down on the painted concrete as the black smoke rippled across the ceiling.
All her fearlessness began to ebb away like the retreating tide. Whatever Elsa had given her, its effects were drifting off, leaving a scared little girl behind.
Mutti, she thought.
What are you doing?
I don’t know any more. I thought I wasn’t afraid of death…
Then why are you lying on the floor?
Because there’s no way out.
Didn’t you have an axe, darling?
Sarah sat bolt upright. Dumme Schlampe!
She got onto all fours, gulped down some clean air from the floor and then, crouching, ran back to the lab.
The lab was now pitch-black and hot as a furnace. She could only keep her eyes open for a moment at a time, so she moved blindly, adjusting her direction every so often as she got off track. The pressure in her lungs grew. She was still maybe half the distance from the bomb when the urge to exhale rose, a primal need that she could barely fight.
Just get to the axe.
She allowed a little air to escape through her nose and that seemed to placate it temporarily.
She bumped into the bomb a few seconds later, burning her arm and falling to the floor. She scoured the floor around the bomb with her hands, her eyes tightly shut. The bomb, the gas, the smoke, the guards, the fire and now her own body – everything was conspiring against her. There are so many ways this could end, she thought. Just keep putting one hand in front of the other. Commit to the move.
The hot floor was becoming painful to the touch. Exhale. Sweat drenched her clothes and began to drip, sizzling, onto the concrete. The air hurt her skin. She was being cooked, like a chicken. Not much further now. Commit to the move.
She touched something that was searing hot and she snatched her arm back. Exhale. Casting her hand behind it she found the wooden shaft, but it was too warm to hold. She tore at her bandage, unwrapping it from her wrist. She wound the material around her hand so when she lifted the axe it no longer hurt her fingers.
Breathe out. Her skin felt tight. Her head throbbed as pressure built up behind her nose. She rounded the bomb and opened her eyes to find the door. They stung like someone had rubbed pepper into them, so she closed them immediately. Breathe out now. She tried to run, but she was losing her balance. Her limbs ached. Her skin was blistering. The pressure in her chest grew until it was all she could think about, the pain that seemed to start in the very centre of her head and was pushing out through her eyes…
She breathed out noisily and immediately inhaled.
The air seared her throat and she choked. She fell forward…and through the door. She crawled the last metre and kicked it closed against the blaze. Turning on her stomach, she breathed what little fresh air there was from the centimetre above the concrete. She coughed violently but felt the clean air reach her lungs.
Made it.
No, last lap. Get up.
She pushed herself forward like a centipede, resting, breathing, recovering, before the final effort.
At the door, she took a series of sooty breaths and tried to open her eyes. They still stung, but she could make out the frame and the lock. She climbed to her feet, her lungs already screaming.
She’d never swung an axe before. The first try hit the wall and tore away a hefty section of plaster. The second hit the door in the middle and tried to eat the blade. After wrestling the axe back into her hands, Sarah knew she had maybe two strikes left before weakness or smoke overcame her. She went for accuracy rather than power and hit the lock dead centre. The door splintered, cracked and, with one last kick, it swung open. Frozen fresh air poured into the corridor from the outside and Sarah took a deep, cold and painful breath.
Now. Now, I’ve made it.
“Are you all right?”
Standing in front of her was Stern.