Renata chuckled and turned to Magda. “Come on. We’re up here.”
Up here? Somewhere else in the woods a branch cracked. Renata pushed Magda forward into a steep muddy ravine. She saw nothing but more woods as she slipped on wet rocks and debris. Her feet were wet again. Magda cursed beneath her breath.
“Now you sound like a partisan.” Renata chuckled. She pushed past Magda and scrambled over the edge to her left. Then she counted her steps up to twelve. They reached a patch of thick underbrush. Renata bent on her knees and moved most of it out of the way before lifting something upward from the ground. A trap door.
“What?” Renata cocked her head in the dark. “This is why it’s called the Underground, no?” She lowered herself down the pitch-black hole.
“Ladder’s right here,” Renata called up.
Magda wiggled her foot until it landed on something solid. When she stepped off the last rung, she finally saw light at the end of a narrow tunnel. Renata moved toward it, and Magda hurried after her. They reached a well-lit subterranean bunker.
Four men looked up. Aleš was in front of a typewriter. He nodded at Magda brusquely and continued hammering away at the keys. Davide, wearing headphones on his head, tapped code away at a radio transmitter. The other two men acknowledged Magda with suspicious looks.
“Hey, this is nice.” Renata moved to their side of the table. She picked up what looked like a flare gun. She waved it in Magda’s direction. “This is the Godmother.”
Magda turned around and looked behind her.
Renata laughed. “You’re the Godmother, you silly goose. That’s what we call you down here.”
They did? Why hadn’t anyone told her she had a nom de guerre?
Aleš yanked the paper out of the typewriter and handed it to Renata, who read it.
Wide eyed, Renata lifted the paper in the air. “What’s this?”
Davide pulled off his headphones and grinned. “Stalingrad is surrounded. The Soviets have trapped the Germans in about fifty square miles. Artillery, tanks, trucks, equipment included.”
Renata whooped and Aleš laughed. The others chuckled. Except Magda.
Renata danced over to her. “The Soviets are pushing back! This might be it!”
Magda smiled uncertainly. “Are we winning?”
Aleš hugged Magda briefly to him. “If we means anyone but the Germans, then yes, for now. It’s always only for now.” He looked at her and brushed something off her shoulder. “How are you doing? Glad you made it safely.”
She tried to smile bravely.
He turned to the other two men. The one with high arched brows and a long nose wore a turtleneck sweater. His hair was dark brown and messy, and his eyes were light and quick. The other one had a shorn head, like Aleš, but was not bald. He wore a priest’s cassock and a red bandana around his neck. He had freckles across the bridge of his nose and ears that stuck out. Both looked dead serious.
“This is Karol Procházka,” Aleš said to the first. “And his friend Yanko.”
Magda nodded at the two men who had escaped the train.
Karol raised his eyebrows, and his mouth turned up a little. He had the kind of mouth where the ends were always turned up, always prepared to smile.
“It’s time for us to go do the watch,” Yanko said suddenly. “Come on.”
Magda stepped aside to let them through, but Karol stopped before her. “So you’re the one who stole Hitler’s bicycle,” he said.
Magda’s eyes widened. “What do you mean? I didn’t—”
Yanko smacked Karol’s arm and ducked into the tunnel.
Karol grinned widely. “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you later.” And he disappeared into the tunnel after his friend.
Renata was at a small cooker, steam coming out of a tin pot. She poured the hot water over tea leaves and unscrewed a bottle of Becherovka. Jakob’s tea, Magda guessed.
“What did he mean about Hitler’s bicycle?” Magda asked her.
Renata snorted. “Nothing. It’s stupid. We told them about the day you dumped the Hitler youth’s bicycle into the river. Next day, Yanko says, looking really perplexed, ‘But what was Hitler doing in that little town?’ He’d missed the fact that we’d said youth’s bicycle. Well, Karol wouldn’t let it go. He kept making Yanko imagine Hitler riding around in a pair of lederhosen, visiting his protectorate on a bicycling tour. It went on for days, Karol making up an entire agenda for the Führer’s tourist spots of the day.”
Magda cupped a hand over her mouth. “That’s sort of funny.”
Renata raised her teacup to her lips. Then she tilted her head back and laughed aloud. “Imagine that! The Führer on a bicycling holiday! Pedaling across the Charles Bridge in tight little lederhosen!”
Her hair chopped off, the stolen and tailored Wehrmacht uniform cinched around her waist, there was only one more thing to do. Karol Procházka was wrapping the bandage around Magda’s head. Aleš was in his commanding officer stance, watching the progress of disguising Magda into an injured soldier on leave.
“You’re to only get the medicine,” Aleš said. “Do nothing else, you hear?”
“What’s going to happen when I come back with the medicine?”
Aleš dropped his head. “The only thing we can do is try and get it to them as a food parcel. That’s all. Renata is working on the details of that.”
Magda nodded.
Karol stepped back and examined her face. Yanko and he had made it look as if her head wound was on the right side of her face. No suspicion that something had happened on the left cheek. Karol held up a compact mirror, and Magda examined herself.
The crooked nose, the scar along her eye were still there. Wasn’t that enough to give her away? She looked up.
“It’s good,” Karol said. “It’s enough to get you through the gate. The Koenigs are not there. This will go off without a hitch. Just keep yourself together.”
Magda peered in the mirror again. She looked like the least put-together person on the planet. She willed her legs to get her up and stand straight. “I’m ready.”
Out through
