A Change of Regime

The first thing he did was wash the blood off his hands.  The red-tinged water trickling rapidly down the drain should have raised strong emotions in him – revenge, joy, or even just satisfaction – but he felt none of those things.  Instead he was preoccupied by a memory of how he had, long ago, washed his hands early every morning after returning from that horrible factory where he had been forced to work all night.  Fetid fumes and mind-numbing exhaustion momentarily clouded his thoughts and his hands burned with remembered pain.

Five years, he thought, five years since he had been marched into the Vogel house by Karl and presented to Elspeth as her life-long servant.  Well, Karl had been right – it had been a lifetime.  Just not Peter’s.

Peter shook his head in anger at the distraction.  There was no time for such nonsense!  He had to get Zosia and the child to safety before the police were alerted.  He turned off the water and, drying his hands en route, went to the nursery.  Zosia stood ready, a bag of supplies slung over her shoulder, the sleeping Magdalena in her arms.  Peter motioned to her and together they went down the steps to the front door.  He kissed her, whispering, “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

They did not waste time on any further words.  Peter opened the door, scanned the street and then ushered Zosia out.  He stood there, in the dim light of the Vogel’s hallway, watching as Zosia trod down the front path, holding the child close to her breast.  She turned left at the street and walked the short distance along the road to the waiting taxi.  As she climbed inside, he carefully shut the front door and breathed a prayer into the darkness.  There was still no sound from upstairs, Elspeth was keeping her word, waiting in silence next to a corpse.

He pulled a small tube out of his pocket and went to the hall mirror.  He quickly spread the cream over his face and hands, then pulling out another tube, he squeezed a white substance onto his palms and ran his hands through his hair.  The white settled unevenly, leaving streaks of brown here and there.  He spent a few seconds getting the color right, combing his hair into an appropriate style and checking the back with a hand-held mirror, then he pulled out a bushy white moustache and carefully pressed it onto his upper lip.

He went into the kitchen and fixed a narrow, old-fashioned tie around his neck, grabbed the vest and the hunter-style sports jacket which he had left there, shrugged them on, and then put his coat over top of the ensemble.  He pulled a hat on, then reached into the coat’s pockets and exchanged one set of papers for another, placing the current set in his breast pocket and tucking the old set into a deep, buttoned pocket.  He unfolded a pair of bifocals, put those on, slung a small travel bag over his shoulder, then hunching his shoulders slightly, he walked out the back door.  He felt the cream on his face and hands drying as he strode through the back garden, and he squeezed his eyes shut, frowned, smiled and moved his face as he had been taught, in order to establish wrinkles in the appropriate places.  By the time he walked out the back gate and into the alley, he had aged a good thirty-five years.

He glanced at his watch as he turned off the alley onto a side street.  This was the most dangerous part: he was near the scene of the crime, it was a godawful hour and he would be recognized as a stranger by any wandering patrols.  A restless guest of a neighbor was what they had settled on, a father-in-law driven to walk the streets at night by his unsettled sleep.  He reached into his pocket and fingered his papers nervously; it would be better if they were not checked at all.  If Elspeth kept her word, he would have about half an hour to put some distance between himself and the house.  It would not be enough to get him out of Berlin – the city was too large, the exits too easily closed, the hour too unusual – but still it was more than he had banked on.

He had never expected it to be easy to leave Berlin after carrying out such a brazen crime, but he had not mentioned this concern to his colleagues.   He had simply taken what he felt were the necessary precautions for their safety.  If he was taken, then he would be beyond any help, and anyone associated with him would be lost as well.  That was the reason he had insisted on making his way out of the city without help, that was the reason that Zosia had taken Madzia off alone.  She would meet Tadek in a car some miles away, they would travel as a family with three other children, one of whom was Peter and Zosia’s own daughter Irena, and with luck, the family group would not run into any trouble.  The family of six with the tall, lean, dark-haired father would obviously have no connection to the infamous traitor and a kidnapped child.  No connection at all.

Peter spared a mental thank-you to his friend Kamil who had allowed his two children to be used in such a manner and to Tadek for the risk he was taking.  He felt fairly sure that Zosia and the children would get through to safety; what he wasn’t sure of was whether or not he’d be able to escape Berlin once the alarm had been raised.  Would the Führer be informed?  What would happen to him if they caught him?  The questions raised themselves without emotion.  The strange coldness he had felt when he had looked at Karl’s dead body remained with him as he contemplated his own possible fate.  It didn’t seem to matter, as long as he knew Zosia and the children were safe.

He reached the main street and turned to walk along it.  So far so good, there was even some traffic on the road.  He walked past