Page 30 of Beehive

The whole place smelled musty, an odd combination of abandoned building and elderly couple.

I had no clue where the Jews who owned the place had gone.

In reality, they’d likely been taken on a train to a work camp a year or two before the city fell. They might return any day. Parents with squirming children might walk through the door at any moment, eager to reclaim their old lives, no longer fearful of the Reich’s attitudes toward their lineage.

In my heart, I knew the truth was far darker.

Still, grateful for a place to hide from those who might cause me harm, I settled into the daily routine of false mustaches, fake glasses, and mending soles for my new masters.

With the Allies battering at our door, and the Reich teetering on collapse, it was a wonder that Sergei and I remained in contact, but we did. Messages would arrive, slid beneath my door, the same door I swore no Soviet knew belonged to me. Twice, as I sat in a café around the corner, a young man in a serving uniform deposited a cocktail napkin on my table. Perplexed at how stiff the paper was, I opened it to find a note, coded in the language only Sergei and I used.

My Russian spy and his sneaky red ways were beyond astonishing.

That our bond lived through the darkest of days was even more so.

It was on that bond I gambled my future.

“I have something our uncle would very much like kept private. Help me, and he will love you dearly. Should I die before receiving safe passage and a new life, the Keeper’s knowledge will become known to the world. Others control the clock. We must move quickly.”

Those were the first words I ever penned on a cocktail napkin.

The same server who had appeared in the café twice in all the time I’d lived nearby magically reappeared a day after I left a mark on the street sign that stood only yards from the café’s window. He didn’t make eye contact. He didn’t speak. He simply removed my glass and the napkin on which it rested and vanished into the ether.

A few months later, our beloved café was destroyed, one of many to die beneath the hailstorm of Allied bombs. The sign on which we left our mark was little more than scrap littering the equally devastated street. I was certain any hope of surviving the coming Soviet retribution lay among the rubble.

More months passed.

The war ended.

The Soviets became governors of the sector, and my home became a vassal of the Soviet state. I had never dreamed of living on Russian soil or earning a steady income as a cobbler; but, as it turned out, Soviets were quite particular about having well-maintained boots.

The Russian winter gave one a unique perspective on such things, I supposed.

Still, there was no reply to my napkin blackmail, no acknowledgement, nothing.

Had my note even made it through?

Had the server or spy or courier—or whatever he was—been killed before he could deliver my missive?

Had the Soviets received the note and grown angry at my attempted extortion?

That last thought rattled me to the core. No sane man would poke the bear. No one with any desire to live would make an enemy of Stalin and his henchmen.

Had I done just that?

Had I survived one cataclysm only to hurl myself headlong into another?

I lay on my bed staring up at the ceiling. It was well past curfew, so the streets were dark and quiet, almost eerily so. My eyes flitted about the room, landing on the wooden statue of the rabbi reading his book. All I had was the film, my carved friend, and the slender hope that the Soviets were as omnipotent as I had come to believe.

A large vehicle, likely a Russian tank, rolled by. The entire city block vibrated with its passing. Debris dribbled from my decrepit ceiling.

Paper slid across the wooden floor, scooted with obvious force from the other side. Someone had picked the lock on the downstairs door, crossed the cobbler’s shop, picked the inner door’s locks, climbed the stairs, and delivered a message.

They could’ve entered my apartment. They could have kicked in the door. They could have—

I bolted upright and dove to retrieve the missive. When I read the one word scrawled on the folded paper, my heart stopped.

“Run.”

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