The woman pulled the child to her. “Criminals. They’re to be hung. Traitors to the Reich.” She hurried past Magda after casting her one last suspicious glance.
Along the square, the Germans had positioned several sirens and speakers for broadcasting messages. They crackled and echoed across the square. “Citizens of the Third Reich! Our great nation has been threatened and sabotaged by partisans!”
Magda halted again. A haggard man looked twice at her. The next business was a café. The customers inside were rising, looking through the windows and slowly seeping out onto the streets. At the end of the café, one window looked only upon the coffee bar and a sideboard with a pile of newspapers stacked on it. Magda laid the bag of medicines on the windowsill and leaned in close to peer at her reflection. She clearly saw black and red spots seeping through the bandage and onto the wimple. The gelatin was melting!
“Dear God,” she breathed.
Behind her own reflection, she saw the reflection of the gallows and movement. The crowd was growing thicker and moving toward the Reichskanzlei. Police were directing them all to the front. Magda followed the arcade, holding her hand alongside her face but afraid to actually touch it. She was closer to the gallows now, and she could see that the prisoners were being led up the side stairs.
Two men, and a third dressed in a black cassock. Father Gabriel! Her heart froze when she saw the two women behind him. Oh God. She knew them all!
A shop bell clanged violently. Magda registered the tobacco sign. A man—the boxer’s physique clearly outlined by the long black leather coat—stepped out of the door with another officer.
“It’s an early Christmas present for me,” Richard Koenig announced. “There’s still twelve days left though. That last one could make someone very rich.”
He stopped not four feet before Magda in the arcade. He held a cigar and bent over the lighter his companion held for him. Magda stood glued to her spot. The Obersturmbannführer puffed at the cigar several times, then lifted his chin and exhaled. He glanced in Magda’s direction.
She was dead. Her body drained of all its blood. She saw flashes of her life: the dawn sky in Voštiny, Radek’s kiss, her mother’s hug, her brother’s dance when he discovered he had a son, the threshing of wheat, the German motorcade, the laughter at the Taubers’ table, Renata and she whooping at the bottom of the stairs, Samuel in her arms, the birthmark on his right wrist, the crack of a fist against her face, Frau Koenig’s sneer, Robert’s cry when Magda cut him, the deer, Walter—
“Sister?” Koenig, eyes narrowed, turned to face her.
Magda blinked. She raised her arm before her face, bent at the elbow, and made the sign of the cross. The voice on the speakers crackled across the square.
Her gesture was not something that Father Gabriel had taught her. It was something she had seen him do. “Bless you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”
Koenig removed the cigar from his mouth and gave her a slow, steady sneer. “Save that for the women and men up there.” He jabbed the cigar in the direction of the gallows. “They’re the ones in need of salvation today.”
Magda allowed a quick glance.
Koenig frowned at her, clicked his heels together, and lifted his hand. “Heil Hitler!”
With the cigar stuck back in his mouth, he crossed the road and strode toward the gallows. The crowd was eerily silent. His heels rang dully on the cobblestones. The speakers crackled again.
“Jana Neuhaus! Father Gabriel Svoboda! Jakob Navotný! Yanko Grünwald! And Eva Černý!”
Magda opened her mouth. No air came. She fell back against the arcade’s column outside the tobacco shop, unable to go closer and unable to tear her eyes away from that platform.
There were only four nooses. They tied Yanko’s arms to one of the posts. The shot—like a single, stifled firecracker—sent Yanko’s head backward, then it dropped forward. There was an “oh” from the gathered crowd. The Gestapo slipped the nooses on the remaining four.
Magda balled her hands into fists as the noose came over Jana’s neck. She punched her stomach when Eva offered up her head. All stood still, hands bound behind their backs, waiting as the last verdict was read. And then the earth beneath them dropped. The ropes jerked upward, then down, and then stretched taut and stilled.
Magda faced the column, needing it to propel her away, to help her finally run. Before her, a poster. The face: hers. The reward for her capture: six thousand Reichsmark.
13
December 1942
Magda ran through the snow-encrusted fields, sliding and slipping over the uneven terrain. She twisted her ankle in the too-big jackboots. She ripped the nun’s headpiece off her head and unraveled the bandage, the makeup and mask gelled to the inside. She dropped to her knees, howled at the sky above her. The sound of vehicles on the road beyond made her dive flat against the ground.
She turned her head. Trucks were moving up the road, heading for Radobýl Mountain. She saw the soldiers inside the cab, then lined up on benches behind the folded-back flaps. One was pointing a rifle around and making jerking motions. Magda turned her face into the dirt.
The woods were way ahead of her. Above, the sky was bright blue. The sun was sinking, casting shadows her way, stretching claw-like fingers toward her. She shivered against the ground, the sob building upward, her stomach heaving it all out into one long scream into the frozen earth. She pounded her fists. Jana! Gabriel! Jakob! Yanko! Eva! Eva! But then—she hiccuped—where was Samuel? What would she tell the Taubers?
Her sobs came to an abrupt halt. She stared at the crystals of snow and ice before her
