I sat up next to him and pulled the quilt to my chest. "I might."

Boris's look told me how insane my thoughts and plans were. I lay down beside him without another word. Whatever happened, we still had tonight.

The next morning, Boris's side of the bed was empty and cold. It had been the most wonderful night in my memory, and I ran over it in my mind while I washed and dressed in one of my own dresses from my suitcase. I repacked my belongings, including my green scarf and Winnetou the bear.

Frau Inge was downstairs when I came down with my suitcase.

"Good day," she said. "Herr Krause left orders that I prepare you breakfast."

The way she said orders left little doubt about how she felt about it.

I ate a quick breakfast and called a taxi. The million-dollar ruby was turning me into a profligate.

Frau Inge helped me carry my suitcase out through the yard. "Leaving so soon?"

"One never knows, Frau Inge," I said, suppressing a smile. "I might be back before you know it."

30.

I took the taxi to Herr Klein's and picked up the ruby buttons. I borrowed a needle and thread to sew them on Winnetou's eyes. Herr Klein shook his head, as if not convinced that this was a safe way to transport jewels.

When I got to Wilhelm's, he looked pale and drawn, but better than the day before.

"You're glowing," he said. "There's a man." A mischievous smile crossed his haunted face.

"Is that the only reason a woman can look happy?"

"It's the only reason I could look that happy," Wilhelm said. "But keep your secrets. We have work to do."

He led me to his bathroom and made me sit on his toilet. "I'll have to cut your hair, but I think I can use some for a mustache."

"Whatever it takes." I wondered how Boris would react to me with a man's haircut. Bad enough that my breasts were bound flat.

As Wilhelm cut my hair, he groaned at my sparse eyebrows. "Mascara will help," he said. "But they're so delicate."

"I don't pluck them," I said.

"How unwomanly." He ran his hand expertly through my hair and clipped. Tufts of hair fell onto my shoulders and the floor. I tried not to think about it.

"The hair is done." He walked out the bathroom door. "Don't move and especially don't look in the mirror."

I did not want to see myself as a man, so followed his advice. This reminded me of the days when Ernst would insist on helping me with makeup before I went on dates, after Walter died. My many first dates. There were few second dates.

Wilhelm returned with a small blue pot. "Spirit gum." He dipped his hand in the paste and ran it above my upper lip. It smelled like rubber cement. He took a pinch of hair and applied it, strand by strand, sticking it into the spirit gum. When finished, he trimmed it delicately.

"Now the mirror!"

Ernst stared back at me from the mirror. Ernst as he might have looked with a more masculine haircut and a mustache. I was shorter and my features more delicate, but I could easily pass for a boy in my early twenties, except for my dress. When my eyes met Wilhelm's in the mirror, his too were full of tears.

"You look so much like him." Wilhelm straightened my hair. "I never saw it until now."

I forced a smile on my face. "Nor did I. You are a miracle worker, Wilhelm."

He coughed, and we both pulled ourselves together.

"I helped out during school productions," he said. "And Ernst taught me much about makeup, although mostly he went from boy to girl, not the other way around."

I stared at myself in disbelief. I was a man. I straightened my shoulders and grimaced at the mirror.

Wilhelm held up a black sock.

I raised my eyebrows.

"Your equipment, monsieur." He stuffed the sock with other socks and helped me tape it to the inside of my right thigh, on top of my underwear.

"I feel well endowed." I looked down at the sock. "And that sock looks happy."

"It's not all about size, you naughty boy."

He helped me tie the bandage tighter across my breasts. It hurt my wounded side, and I hoped it wouldn't bleed.

Wilhelm helped me into a thin undershirt and a too-large Nazi uniform. Even Mother would not have recognized me. It was disquieting, but also liberating.

I tucked the forged letter into my breast pocket.

We rode to the party in silence. We parked behind a familiar form in a black Mercedes watching the door to the El Dorado. Boris! My heart leaped and my eyes filled with tears as I hurried across the street to the club.

"Helmut," Wilhelm said. "Don't cry like a woman."

"Jawohl." I pushed open the club door for him.

I handed my suitcase to the coat-check boy. He did not recognize me from the other night. "Thank you, Fraulein," I said, in a deep voice.

"You are most welcome." The coat-check boy fluttered his eyelashes at me.

"Try not to talk," Wilhelm whispered out of the side of his mouth as we passed through the red curtains and into the club.

The room was full of black and brown uniforms of the Sturm Abteilung, the Schutz Staffel, and regular Nazis. I had never been in a place with so many men before. The lone woman serving drinks was probably in drag.

When Wilhelm shepherded me to the bar and ordered two whiskeys Oliver's eyes widened, but he said nothing. Did he recognize me? I turned my back to him.

"Are all these men attracted to other men?" I whispered to Wilhelm.

"I wish." He laughed. "Many of the SA men are, especially the ones clustered around Rohm. Most of the SS are not. You never know about the regular Nazis."

I took a manly gulp of whiskey and glanced around to find Anton. He sat at a small round table next to Ernst Rohm. He clutched a white El Dorado balloon and looked thoroughly lost. I longed to sweep him up in my arms and carry him away. He sat with the military bearing drilled into the children of officers, but his eyes were far away. I did not see another child anywhere.

"Not much of a party for children," I whispered to Wilhelm.

"I'll ask Rohm to dance," Wilhelm said. "Then you can talk to Anton."

Wilhelm walked across the room to Rohm, his head held high and his face an expressionless mask.

As soon as they were safely out on the dance floor, I hurried to Anton's side. He looked as pale as the day I met him, as remote as the little boy who climbed into my wardrobe and closed the door, ready to wait quietly until his mother's workday ended.

I touched his shoulder.

"Hello, sir," he said politely. He looked up at me, but I could tell that he did not recognize me.

"Indian greetings, Anton," I whispered. "It's Hannah."

Anton gasped. "Are you dead?"

"Alive but camouflaged," I said. "I had to sneak into this encampment to see you."

He wrapped his arms around me and hugged as hard as his tiny body could. I gritted my teeth against the pain in my side and hugged him back.

"I wanted you to be alive," he said. "Winnetou saved you."

"He did," I said. I pried his wiry arms off me. "Anton, I don't have much time. Are you well?"

"My father hit me when I told him I was an Indian." Anton's lip trembled. It looked swollen. Had Rohm hit him in the face? "He says Indians are dirty."

"Do you want to stay with him?" I glanced over my shoulder at Rohm. He had not noticed us. "I would not ask like this, but I have no time, and no choice. But think it through quickly."

He shook his head immediately. "I want to go with you."

"I don't know where we're going, yet. And there may be danger."

"The brave can trust his chief." He stuck his small hand in mine. "And you are not only my chief. You are my mother too."

I opened my mouth to correct him, as I had so many times before. Instead I said, "I am your mother, in all ways that matter."

Across the room, Rohm turned toward us and beckoned to Anton.

"Go to your father now."

"No." Anton's grip on my hand tightened.

"Listen carefully, these are orders," I said. "Go to your father now. As soon as he is not watching you, go out the front door, but walk slowly so no one is alarmed."

"I will not spook the deer." Anton let go of my hand and clasped his hands together in his lap.

"Do you remember Herr Krause's automobile?"

He nodded.

"It is across the street. Herr Krause is in the front seat. Get in the backseat and lie down on the floor. I will come for you."

Anton nodded.

"Now go to your father."

Wilhelm hurried over to me while Rohm lifted Anton and introduced him to a group of black-uniformed SS officers.

"You have assured him that you are well. Now go. It is not safe." Wilhelm drew a red silk handkerchief out of his breast pocket and wiped sweat from his forehead.

"I won't leave without Anton."

Wilhelm paled and tucked the handkerchief back in his pocket. "Rohm will hunt you if you take him."

"Anton wants to go."

"Nowhere in Germany will be safe."

"Anton wants to go."

Wilhelm's eyes widened, and I turned. There was Ernst Rohm, walking toward us. "You have not introduced this little pigeon, Wilhelm," he said, beaming. "A terrible oversight."

"Captain Rohm, may I present Helmut Fischer?"

Fish and fowl. "How do you do?" I kept my voice low and rough.

"Better now." Rohm took my hand and led me to the dance floor. "Do you waltz, pigeon?"

I raised my hands into position.

"Good, you know the girl's part," he said. "So many men have only learned the boy's part and we can't both be dancing that."

"I can dance many ways."

Rohm pulled me closer to him, roughly. "I bet you can."

I traced his thick pink scar with my eyes, trying not to stare at his badly mended nose. He smelled like the love letters he'd sent Ernst. I tried to imagine him dripping cologne onto the pages. Had Ernst actually loved this man?

As if reading my thoughts, he said, "You look much like someone I once knew. Someone who meant a great deal to me."

"Should I be him?" Behind his head Anton marched toward the door, looking neither right nor left.

Rohm leaned in and kissed me. His kiss was confident and cruel, and his arms tightened around me like iron bands. Pain shot down from my wound, and my knees buckled. Anton disappeared from my vision.