Jenny Plague-Bringer(103)

“Is she?” Ward asked. “Or are you trying to cover your own ass?”

“We didn’t make a mistake,” he said. He looked at Esmeralda. “This is the right guy.”

“Thank you, gentlemen. Your response is noted. I think we’re done here,” Ward told them.

The dead Pashtun was wheeled away, and the two visiting intelligence officers left.

“He sold teapots, huh?” Ward asked her.

“Teapots.” Esmeralda shrugged.

“Guess they aren’t sending the high-value targets for our tests.” Ward shook his head, chuckling as he left the lab. Guards in black uniforms escorted Esmeralda away, down the elevator, and back to her room in what they called the cellblock. She sat on her bed as the steel door of her cell clanged shut. She was cooperating now, but was still treated like a prisoner because they knew she didn’t want to be here.

Esmeralda shuddered as the dark, fearful feeling washed over her again, more strongly ever before. Goosebumps rose all over her. Every shadow and shape in her concrete cell suddenly seemed threatening, as if it were all stage dressing concealing a dark, dangerous evil.

She tried to push back the tide of dark feelings, but they overwhelmed her, drowning her. She felt a flood of memories of another life, like when she touched a person who had died, but somehow these were her own memories.

She stood in the lab again, looking at a different body, a middle-aged man with a long beard. There were scientists in white coats again, as well as uniformed men with red patches and swastikas on their sleeves. She knew that she was terrified of them, especially their leader, a man with dark red and gray hair and evil green eyes. Kranzler.

“Go ahead, Evelina,” said a balding, fat man with neck beard. Dr. Wichtmann. “Tell us what you see.”

She took a breath and reached out, touching the dead man’s cold, stiff shoulder. She told Wichtmann about the last months of the man’s life—he was a rabbi who’d spoken against the National Socialists, and even published pamphlets against them. This was the reason he was dead.

“He was involved in a plot against the state,” one of the men in black uniforms said. “We want to know details—time, place, the kind of bombs they will use. All you can tell us.”

Evelina concentrated for several minutes, trying to find what they wanted. Then, slowly, she shook her head.

“There is nothing,” she told them, in her hesitant German. “Writing and speaking, yes, bombs, no.”

One of the uniformed men exploded, shouting at Kranzler, speaking too fast for Evelina to follow. Though she did catch the words “filthy Slav,” clearly referring to her.

“Evelina,” Kranzler growled as he approached her. “You must tell us about any conspiracies. You cannot protect anyone.”

“I am protecting no one, only telling the truth. If there was terrorism, he was not involved.”

“We are talking about plots for the future!” shouted the S.S. officer who’d called her a filthy Slav. He must have been the one who’d captured the man. “Not events that have already passed.”

Evelina shrugged. “This man was involved in no such plots.”

“What about the larger Jewish conspiracy?” the officer asked. “The banks? The gold?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she replied.

“Look again!”

She sighed and touched the dead man for another minute. “I don’t see what you’re talking about. Gold? Banks?” She shook her head.

“You lying dirty whore!” the officer shouted. “Kranzler, she is a fraud. She is of no use to us.”

“Evelina, this is your last chance,” Kranzler said. “No more lying to protect the Jews.”

“I am not lying!” This was the first time Evelina had raised her voice, or done anything but whisper, nod, and cooperate.

“She is a dirty animal and should be tied up!” the S.S. man yelled. “She speaks nothing but lies.”

“Evelina, tell us about the Jewish plots!” Kranzler said.

“There are no plots! Why are you all too stupid to understand that?” Evelina shouted back at them. She immediately regretted her words—they were sure to get her in trouble—but it was too late to take them back.

“Guards,” Kranzler snarled, “Let her spend a night in the cellblock. Perhaps that will convince her to stop protecting Jewish conspirators.”

S.S. men seized her and carried her out of the lab. She didn’t struggle as they brought her down to the floor beneath the dormitory hall, to a guard station with two armed guards. One of them opened the steel door to the cellblock, and they escorted her to a concrete cell and locked her inside.