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Kraus? What did Kraus know—what had he said ? Had Christian slipped up? Had his aide followed him one night when he didn’t know? But even if he had, how would he know that , that particular tidbit?

His throat closed off. He had a cousin, didn’t he? At the University of Berlin. A cousin studying “something with books.” A cousin who could have been in Christian’s classes—or his father’s. A cousin who had perhaps asked questions for Kraus?

“Oberstleutnant?” Josef’s voice, muffled by the door, did a remarkably good job of stumbling over the German syllables, as if he had a French tongue which was unused to so many consonants.

When he opened the door, bafflement lined his haggard face.

“I apologize,” he said then, in halting, awkward German. “My German bad. French?”

Christian opened his mouth, ready to volunteer as a translator. To preserve whatever bit of the facade was left.

Before he could breathe a word, Ackermann shoved against the door so quickly, so forcefully that it sent Josef sprawling, his head cracking against the end table.

“Ackermann!” Christian meant to push past the soldiers, but they were already spilling inside, sidearms in their hands—because Ackermann had drawn his and was now leveling it at Josef’s chest.

“Try again, old man,” Ackermann growled. “We know very well that you are no Frenchman. You are Josef Horowitz, a German Jew.”

Josef’s nostrils flared at the word Jude —something he’d have understood these days even if he were French, given that all French Jews’ citizenship had been revoked, that as of two weeks ago, no Jew in Paris was allowed to work.

He pointed to the wall—to the crucifix. “Catholic.” Holding that hand up, he reached the other for his neck and pulled out the medal he always wore—St. Michael, the Archangel. “Katholisch.”

Christian edged closer, trying to get between Ackermann and Josef. “Ackermann, calm down. You have the wrong man. And even if you didn’t, Josef Horowitz is just a professor. You don’t need a gun—”

“No.” Ackermann moved neither his aim nor his eyes from Josef.

“If he’s Horowitz—which he is —then he’s here in Paris under falsified documents in an attempt to defraud the Nazi government, which makes him at best stupid and at worst a spy.

And if I find that you knew he was here under falsified documents and didn’t turn him in immediately, do you know what that makes you , Bauer?

A coconspirator. Unger—cover the sonderführer . ”

Cover him? What did that...never mind. Before his mind could finish forming the question, one of the four soldiers swung his pistol to point at Christian, an unreadable look in his eyes.

Christian raised his arms. So much I could teach you, if only you’d listen.

Josef swallowed, his larynx bobbing around the bright silver chain still held in his fingers. Even now, he didn’t so much as glance at Christian. Didn’t glance at the closed door that likely led to Felix’s room. Didn’t crumple into wild begging.

Christian felt about to. “He is an old man, and look at him—he’s sick. He’s no threat to—”

“You are no better than that ridiculous woman professor, claiming that dissidence is no threat . It is the greatest threat! We let one Jew get away with claiming a heritage that isn’t his, thinking that he can escape his grandfather’s blood, that it doesn’t label him as the swine he is, and they will all try it.

Subhuman chattel, moving among us, mocking us! ”

“I am not saying not to question him.” Calm.

Stay calm. Defuse the situation. Easing himself to a place at Josef’s feet so as to partially block him from Ackermann, he turned to face his superior, even though it meant the barrel of the gun all but pressed into his chest. Authority—claim the authority.

Don’t show him any weakness. “I am only saying to put away the gun . First of all, you’re wrong about a lot of things you’re assuming.

And even if you weren’t—do you think one old man is going to put up a fight?

Stop drooling at the thought of violence like a dog over a bone and bring him in so I can do my job. ”

“Your job?” Ackermann pressed the gun to his chest. He could have sworn it burned straight through his uniform, his shirt, his heart.

“What is that, exactly? Goebbels’s orders never quite made sense to me.

You’re to deal with the garbage books. All right.

And you’re to find all the traitor writers and Jews—and then what?

You interview them. You put their name on a list—and what ?

They ought to be sent back to Germany! We know who they are, we know what they’ve done, the treason they’ve written.

They ought to be sent straight to a prison camp—”

“And since when does an oberstleutnant get to decide that?” He gripped his fear, twisted it, turned it into indignation.

“Will you question Berlin? Your own general? Fine. Then send your questions up the channel—but I intend to follow my orders, and nowhere have they told me to threaten old men and wave guns in their faces. We are a civilized people, Ackermann—act like it!”

He expected the snap of anger. He expected the push and had already braced for it. What he didn’t expect was the low snarl—“Jew-loving traitor!”—or the movement of the other soldiers, who seemed to surge in response to Ackermann’s rage.

Guns, so many guns pointed at him. At his godfather. So many bullets that could tear through flesh or through walls.

What if Felix was in the room behind the closed door? The one called Unger was pointing his weapon in that direction. It could pass right through the flimsy barrier. Right into his hiding, quaking, brave little boy.

He had to calm them down, all of them. Say whatever he must. Turn himself in, if it kept their weapons silent and still. God?

Behind him, he heard a shift. No, Josef—no. Stay still! A faint, “I will come.” The pop of knees taking an old man’s weight.

Lost, lost in the explosion from Ackermann’s lips. “Traitor!”

Did he mean Josef this time? Christian again? His gaze seemed to encompass both and neither.

Christian shifted to keep himself between the Nazis and faithful Josef, hands still out at his sides. “Gentlemen—”

Lost. Lost in the thunder, in the fire. It pierced his eardrums—from the left? Right? Straight ahead? It was everywhere, everywhere . Just like the fire that was eating through him. Roaring, all of it. Deafening.

“No!” Josef. Josef’s voice, shouting over the thunder. “No—I’m coming. Stay back— stay back !”

But they didn’t. The world was a blur of gray shirts. And then white ceilings. Thunder and then echoes and always the fire, fire, fire, and then...the cool blessed kiss of night.

A gunshot! Corinne pressed her hand over Felix’s good ear, pulling him down another step, toward the courtyard, even while everything within her screamed to run back up those stairs and into Josef’s flat and try to do something.

“Vati.” He didn’t shout it, this trembling little boy with the wide, wide eye. He just dug his fingers into her shoulders and whispered it like a prayer in her ear. “Vati.”

“Vati’s fine.” Her voice shook over the syllables—a prayer in God’s ear. “Shh.”

“Stay back,” Josef screamed. “Stay back!”

She knew it was a command for her, not for the Nazis in his flat. And she knew that if Felix weren’t clutched in her arms, she’d disobey the command in a heartbeat.

“A warning shot.” The words whispered out of their own volition. Her arms tightened around the little boy. “It was probably just a warning shot. Grandpapa is fine. Vati is fine.”

Nothing was fine. There was shouting, scuffling, words she couldn’t make out. Then, finally, the slamming of a door, punctuating one roared command: “Leave him!”

Leave him. Who were they leaving? Not Josef—he still shouted from the corridor, his words echoing toward the courtyard through some open door or window, that same demand to stay back repeated over and again, louder and louder.

Fainter and fainter.

“Tante?”

“Shh.” She bent her knees, put Felix on his feet, his overnight bag with him.

Brushed his curls back from his face, then did it again for her own comfort.

She met his one good eye. “Stay here a moment, m?uschen . All right? Stay pressed against the wall here, behind this plant. Just for a minute. I’m going to peek inside, but I’ll be right back. All right?”

Tears crowded the blue of his iris. But Felix gripped the enormous planter and crouched down beside it.

“Good boy.” Though she darted a suspicious look toward the other people who poked their heads out, they all seemed more alarmed at the gunshot than anything. No one had a look about them that said they were responsible for the Nazis coming in.

But then, what would that even look like?

How would she know? She was no Oncle Georges, not even a Hugo, able to read people in a glance.

She was just a professor playing at spymaster, collecting information that meant nothing from students too willing to put themselves at risk while she stayed safely in Paris.

A woman who’d lived most of her life in a classroom.

A woman who had spent her life on words but had never had to shed her blood to defend them.

No words could change the picture she saw when she slipped back in through Josef’s back door, though, through the kitchen, and peeked into the living room.

Furniture, overturned. A potted plant, spilling earth onto the white floor.

Red seeping, creeping, pooling under the still form. Male legs—male legs clad in a Nazi officer’s uniform.

“O God...O, Lord God...” She could find no other words to pray as she scurried into the room, tripping over her own horror.