The Wolves of Berlin

"Every part of the church is holy."

She looked at her hand. There was no wound from the broken glass. Even the werewolf's blood had dripped off of her without leaving a stain.

Madeline's body reverted to that of a woman. Not the crazed, starved half-beast she'd been a moment ago, but a real, recognizably human person. She looked small and frail in death. Her expression was not peaceful. Bethanie put her hand on Madeline's chest and detected no breath or heartbeat. She tried to close the corpse's eyes, but they wouldn't stay shut. Bethanie was tired. She lay on the church floor, with her head pillowed on the dead woman. It seemed a respectful gesture.

It's over, she thought. The candles were burning down, and she thought how pretty they looked. She also thought that it was wrong to kill someone and end up with no blood on your hands. She felt she should cry, but wasn't sure if she actually did. Maybe just thinking it was good enough.

***

She woke up in the dark. It was hard to move. For a fleeting second she thought she was in a coffin but then realized there were other people here, which made her think it was a jail cell instead. Only by listening for some minute to a whispering voice did she come to understand that this was a safe house. In fact, she was still in the church. Bethanie cognized this information slowly, and when it finally clicked she allowed herself however much relief as was appropriate under the circumstances. Rather than any of a half dozen arguably more pertinent questions, the first thing she said was to the voice was, "Who are you?"

A pause. "Since I've never actually asked you, this is as good a time as any: Do you have any sins to confess?"

She threw her arms around the Jesuit. There was just enough room. It turned out he'd been hiding here the entire time she'd confronted Madeline, who of course had come to the church to kill him, probably following his scent every night since he'd first encountered her. The Jesuit said Bethanie had been awake when he moved her, but she didn't remember it. She chided him for taking the risk of exposing himself to bring her here. He bore the criticism without comment. She was startled to learn that more than a day had passed; she'd regained consciousness several times but always drifted away again. The men nearest the door in here, who could hear the chiming of a clock outside and dutifully relayed the time back to the others.

Fabien's instincts had been right: The Germans had made a big move and raided a dozen other circuits across the city besides their print shop. The other men in this closet were themselves all that was left of their own circuits, the few who slipped through the net. How long they could all remain here was a subject of debate amongst them. Bethanie and the Jesuit talked quietly. "How do you feel?" he said.

"I don't really know. How is someone supposed to feel after that?"

"Gratified, maybe. You proved me wrong. You did your duty. What more can anyone hope for?"

"Peace," Bethanie said, and shuddered. She wished there was more light, so she could stop imagining she saw Madeline's dead eyes in the dark.

Time passed. A commotion sprung up when a man whispered "Good God!" He'd discovered a sensitive communique in the pocket of his jacket that he feared had been lost and fallen into the hands of the Germans. Through the slim light of the crack under the door he uncoded it over the course of an hour. Bethanie listened, curious, as he painstakingly deciphered the encrypted phrases one letter at a time. The first line read:

"The die is cast."

It meant nothing to the man who had actually received a message, but someone else recognized it, along with the phrase that followed: "It is hot in Suez."

It was another minute before Bethanie realized what the men were all saying. "This is it," they repeated. It was the, the long-anticipated and all-important signal: The Allies were on the move. Invasion was imminent. Even now, on the other side of the channel, it was happening.

Bethanie reminded herself to breathe. Some argued skepticism: Were they sure it was right? The messenger assured them was no question; every single anti-German group in France would be trading the same signal back and forth right now and putting the wheels of the SOE plans into motion: Operation Verte, to sabotage the railroads and stop the movement of German reinforcements to the beaches; Operation Pourpre, to cut the German's long-distance phone lines; Operation Bleu, to destroy the hydroelectric power lines; Operation Toirtois, to block off the roads to the beaches. It was all happening, right now.

Debate ceased. Everyone was in agreement: They were leaving. They had jobs to do. Stiff, hurt, and still exhausted, Bethanie stood too. When the Jesuit went to help her, she let him.

"We don't have to do this," he said. "You've done enough."

"We've all done enough, many times over."

"You've done more."

"And none of it will matter if we fail now."

Part of her really did want to stop. She quashed it. There was nowhere else to go and nothing else to do in any case. The voice on the radio was right: The die had been cast.

June 6, 1944, Paris:

80 days until liberation.

***

Dietrich Von Choltitz was appointed military governor of Paris on August 1, 1944. He surrendered the city to the Allies on August 25, later claiming he disobeyed orders to destroy it. Some historians dispute this. He spent two years in a prison camp in Mississippi and eventually returned to Paris in 1956.

Though arrested after the print shop raid, Lucienne Gueznnec was smuggled from the hospital by nuns acting as ant-German agents. Her account of the events informed this story.

Pierre "Colonel Fabien" Georges was killed by a land mine in Alsace in 1944. The Paris metro station where he assassinated a German officer now bears his name.

"Tomas" remained in France after the war, taking a job in the new government and raising a family. He spoke of his wartime activities only under assumed names to select journalists and historians.

Father Michel Riquet was arrested in 1944 and sent to Dachau, but survived long enough to be rescued by the US Seventh Army the next year. Returning to Paris, he gave a sermon at Notre Dame Cathedral while still wearing his camp uniform. He is credited with helping over 500 Allied personnel escape from occupied territories.

Official Reich records indicate that Jean Fontenoy volunteered for a collaborator's corps, transferred to Berlin, and died fighting a few blocks from Hitler's bunker. Madeline Fontenoy's official cause of death is an airplane accident in 1937. Wartime records are notoriously unreliable, though.

Bethanie Chastel immigrated to the United States in 1956, bringing three sons with her. She never married or revealed their paternity, so each of her children received the Chastel name. And everything that came with it.