Wolf by Wolf by Graudin Ryan

Author:Graudin,Ryan [Graudin,Ryan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 2015-10-01T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 19

THEN

THE FOURTH WOLF: AARON-KLAUS PART 2 SPRING 1952

The beer hall basement was a lonely place without Aaron-Klaus. Most days it was just she and Henryka. The contacts who came through never stayed for long. A dinner or two, some talk of distant red-mapped places, and they were off. They never said where, but after they left Henryka always switched the numbered thumbtacks around on her map. P5 to Paris. T11 to London. A32 to Cairo. The numbers hopped like pieces in an intricate game of Stern-Halma. Over former borders, crossing paths, a dance of pinholes through Henryka’s wall.

Yael studied as much as she could. Every subject in every language Henryka could get her hands on. The card table buckled under the weight of all her books. The corner radio was replaced with a television screen. (The novelty!) It, too, was always on.

Red still soaked the world.

Months passed, rolling through years.

1950… 1951… 1952…

Calculus was just as hard as Aaron-Klaus had always groaned it was. Measuring change with numbers and symbols cramped Yael’s fingers. Spun her brain. Yael usually got lost in the equations, chewing on her pencil as she tried to make sense of them.

She nearly bit through the soft wood when she heard his voice drifting from the hall.

“It’s been six years since the Great Victory. What have we been doing this whole time? Skulking in basements. Scuttling messages back and forth. Hoping every day not to get caught.”

Aaron-Klaus was back! But he sounded different. There was a depth in his voice—a rage she’d heard only in hints and jags before, now beached. A leviathan of emotion: whole and rotting.

This kept Yael sitting in her chair, pencil jammed between her teeth. Listening.

“We’re building the necessary framework for a putsch. We’re getting closer.” Reiniger was back, too. It had been months since Yael last saw him. A snowy Christmas Eve. He’d brought her a parcel full of sweaters and scarves. When he left, Henryka had placed his pin (A1) in Rome. It had jumped around a lot since then—Paris, London, Tripoli.

“NOTHING HAS CHANGED! Everything has gotten worse. We’ve forgotten Valkyrie—”

“The world isn’t ready, Klaus.” Reiniger’s voice was commander cool. “Operation Valkyrie was drafted for a smaller, more concentrated Reich. In the event of the Führer’s death, a military emergency would be declared, and the Territorial Reserve Army would secure all government operations. A putsch was difficult enough to accomplish when the Reich was contained in Europe. But the New Order has grown. There are too many variables now. We must continue to build our network of allies and unite the various resistances. This is what you’ve been trained to do.”

So that was Valkyrie. Not a woman of war—bearer of life and death—but a military protocol. Still, the picture stayed in Yael’s head. She’d flipped to it so many times that the encyclopedia’s spine had a permanent trench.

“And when will the time be right?” Aaron-Klaus kept shouting, but in a terrible, hushed kind of way. “The longer we wait, the more people die.

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