"I will let you go today," Rohm continued. He reached one hand up and ran it through my short hair. I gritted my teeth. "With an escort. He will help you to retrieve those letters. You will marry me. You will give me one week for the photographers. I want a wedding, with a bride in a white dress. And I want a honeymoon on the North Sea. After that you may live separately from me."

I slumped.

"If I need you again, for publicity purposes, I will call, and you will come. In return, you and Anton can live where you choose."

He tilted my face and stared at me with his hard blue eyes. "If you publish those letters, you destroy all three of us. I will find you and kill you. Do I have your word?"

"You do." I pushed the words out of my mouth like vomit.

"Dress and go retrieve those letters," he said. "My men will follow you. There are more men than you know. And more than you can evade."

He leaned forward and kissed me. I knew he was wishing I was Ernst. And pretending that I was. His mouth ground against mine, and I tasted blood. His or mine. Or both.

31.

I wiped Rohm's kiss off my mouth and dressed with shaking hands while he watched. He'd forgotten the ruby ring. The ruby ring that would buy me a new identity and freedom. I would not publish the letters. On that I would keep my word. But I would not marry him and chain myself and Anton to him forever. We would escape from Germany and run so far and so fast that he would never find us. I would never go back into a dark room with Rohm. Not for love, money, or safety.

My suitcase, containing two precious rubies and all of my money and clothes, rested by the front door. I picked it up and hurried across the street, hoping I was not too late. I noticed that Boris had removed the numbered plates from his car. A sensible precaution. Boris had a talent for undercover work. He had unexpected depths.

A man in SA uniform stood next to the Mercedes. I assumed he must have searched the suitcase and found the train tickets to Hamburg I'd purchased earlier in the day. I hoped he'd been worried enough about me finding out that he'd repacked everything carefully.

He tipped his hat at me. "Fraulein Vogel," he said. "I am to follow you and bring you back."

I nodded to him.

I checked to see that Anton was lying safely across the backseat before I slid into the front seat. Boris looked at me in shock. I remembered that I was dressed as a boy.

"Thank you for coming," I said through lips swollen from Rohm's kiss.

"You are full of surprises." Boris put the automobile in gear. He drove for a moment before saying, "Maybe someday we can drive somewhere like normal people."

"We will be followed." I looked out the back window. "By the man who was standing next to the car."

Boris looked in his rearview mirror. "Two of them," he said. "But their car is not as powerful as mine."

I kept watch as Boris accelerated. "They are still following us."

"No one follows me." Boris began to speed in earnest. The car engine groaned with delight at being let loose to run. Anton laughed in the backseat. I closed my eyes.

Boris cut the wheel sharply to the right and careened the wrong way down a one-way street. A car honked at us, but Boris drove up onto the sidewalk. Metal screeched on the bottom of the car. I held on to the dash and hoped that we escaped our pursuers before we ran into something or someone.

I looked back. The other car was having trouble maneuvering around the car that had honked at us.

Boris yanked the wheel to the left. I feared the car might roll over. I gasped when my wounded side slammed against the door.

Anton's head popped up out of the back. "Stay down, Anton," I said, and he disappeared behind the seat.

Boris accelerated and made for a main road. I glanced back. Our pursuers were no longer in sight.

"They're gone," I said.

"Let's put a little more distance between us." Boris shot past a white-gloved policeman, who waved his hands and blew his whistle at us.

Anton glanced back at the policeman. He and Boris laughed together.

"You are enjoying this," I said to Boris.

"What's wrong with that?" Boris asked. "I've never had a chance to enjoy this car as much as I should."

"Faster!" screamed Anton, and Boris obliged.

I ripped off my Nazi shirt, emptied the pockets, and flung the shirt out the window. I rubbed spirit gum and hair off my upper lip.

Boris slowed. "I think we are not being followed anymore."

I pulled off my trousers and threw them after the shirt.

"Somehow, this isn't how I thought I'd see you naked again." Boris looked down at me with a grin.

"We haven't much time."

Boris raised an eyebrow. "You have another appointment?"

"I'd hoped not." I bit my lip. "But I do."

"What's our destination?"

I gave him Sarah's address while pulling on a dress and stockings from my suitcase, glad to be a woman again. As I'd hoped, my suitcase had been rifled through. I'd known what Rohm's men would do the instant Rohm said my name in the dark room. They knew the suitcase contained a set of tickets to Hamburg. I smiled, thinking of them staking out the train station.

At Sarah's apartment I retrieved a set of plane tickets, a forged visa for England, and two forged passports from her mailbox where I had hidden them earlier that day. I checked the clock in Sarah's apartment. We barely had enough time to get where we needed to go.

Again Boris drove like a madman, and not much later we parked at Tempelhof Airport.

"Thank you." My hand stroked my suitcase. Inside were false papers I'd had created at Tegel prison that morning, for twenty packs of cigarettes and three gold pieces. No one knew about them but me and Herr Silbert, the forger. Anton and I would have to leave England before Rohm found us there. I was not certain where we would go.

Rohm would not think I had money for plane fare. I hoped that he would waste time looking in Hamburg because of the tickets I'd planted in the suitcase. I'd known his men would search it.

Boris reached in the backseat and brought back a cloche hat. "It's Trudi's, but I know she won't miss it. Your hair looks terrible."

"I thought it rather dashing." I put the hat on and looked in the mirror. I looked like a woman again. A woman with no breasts.

"Maybe if I were that sort." Boris's lips smiled, but his brown eyes were sad.

I ran my hand along his close-shaven jaw. "I am grateful you're not."

"Call me when you arrive, so I know you're safe." He paused and nervously licked his lips. I leaned over and kissed him once, lightly. I did not dare kiss him too long, because I could not be tempted to stay. "I'll be in London in August, for a finance conference."

"I could meet you, if we're there." My heart sunk. We would not stay long in London.

"If you're not there, I'll be at another conference in New York in December."

I smiled. "You are a world traveler."

Boris reached an arm around the nape of my neck and kissed me slowly and gently. It hurt, because of the damage that Rohm had done to my mouth, but I did not want him to stop. "Hannah," Boris said in surprise. "Your lips are bleeding."

I looked into his worried eyes. "It's a long story."

Anton climbed into the front seat. "I like stories."

Boris moved over to his side of the seat.

I handed Anton Winnetou the bear. "He missed you."

Anton grabbed the bear and hugged him. "What is wrong with his eyes?"

"They see magical things," I told him. "Take good care of them."

Anton nodded gravely.

Boris looked down at Anton, who held the bear and stared at us suspiciously. "I have a gift for you, brave little man." He pulled a brown-wrapped parcel from the backseat. "I'd hoped you could open it at my house."

I bit my lip, and Boris cleared his throat. "Open it on the plane," I said. "We do not have time to open it now."

We trotted across the tarmac, Boris on one side, holding my hand and my suitcase, and Anton on the other, clutching my free hand. How I wished that I could hold on to both of them. I squeezed Boris's hand, the one that I would have to let go of.

"Do you need money?" Boris asked. "For traveling?"

I shook my head. "We are well provided for."

When we reached the stairs that led to the plane Boris kissed me for the last time, long and slow, blotting out any trace of Rohm. I never wanted him to stop, but eventually I pulled back.

He ran one hand down my cheek.

"If things had been different." I traced my finger across his lips. "I would have stayed."

"If things had been different," he answered. "I would have insisted."

"But things are not different."

"Will you ever be able to come back to Germany?"

"I suspect Rohm won't give up on his son easily."

Boris nodded. "I could not give up on my child easily either."

I stepped out of his arms. "Nor can I."

Boris sighed. "I don't expect you to."

"Excuse me, miss," said a burly man in coveralls. "I have to roll away the stairs now. You must get on if you're taking this flight."

I nodded and turned toward the stairs so that Boris would not see me cry. I clutched the handrail and climbed the stairs. I had to get through this.

At the top of the stairs, I turned around. Boris lifted one hand. I waved back through eyes blurred with tears. I might very well never see him again, and there was no chance that we would ever have a life together. It felt like losing Walter all over again.

Anton jumped up and down and waved his red silk handkerchief. "Until our trails cross again," he called.

Wind tore the handkerchief out of Anton's hand, and he cried out.

"It's gone," I said, as he turned to go down the stairs.

"But it's the last thing you gave me, before-"

"It won't be the last thing anymore, I promise."

Anton looked uncertain as I pulled him into the plane. "You are safe now," I told him. "We are safe, and we will have many years together."

As the door to the plane closed, I hoped that I had told him the truth.

The engine noise changed to a high-pitched whine, and I realized, for the first time, that I was afraid of flying. I clutched the arms of my seat. Soon I would be leaving the ground. I would be leaving behind all that was familiar in my life with a small boy I barely knew.

Anton, unaware, plastered his face against the window to watch the ground rushing by. We rose into the clouds, away from Berlin, away from Boris and the life I might have had with him, and away from Rohm, at least for now. I wondered how long we could stay ahead of Rohm, if he tried to find us.

After a few minutes of watching clouds, Anton unwrapped his gift from Boris. All three volumes of the Winnetou series by Karl May. I covered our laps with my peacock-green scarf and settled down to read him the first volume, the one he knew by heart.

Glossary Abitur. German equivalent of a high school diploma.

absinthe. Bitter alcoholic drink made with wormwood that was banned in Europe and the United States because it was said to cause insanity. It is now legal again in some parts of the United States and Europe.

Alexanderplatz. Central police station for Berlin through World War II. Also called the Alex.

Bahnhof. Train station or subway station.

Berliner weisse. Pale wheat beer made in Berlin. It is usually mixed with a shot of raspberry or woodruff syrup.

Berolina. Tour company in Berlin.

El Dorado. Gay bar in Berlin that was popular during the 1920s and early 1930s, closed by the Nazis, and reopened in the 1990s.

Ernst Rohm. Early member of the National Socialist party and close friend to Adolf Hitler, often credited with being the man most responsible for bringing Hitler to power in the early days. Openly gay.