The Darkest Hour(29)

“If I tell you, I want to discuss my going to England.”

I decide to humor him. “You’ve been agreeable so far. We can talk.” Because “talk” is just that. I won’t be agreeing to anything. “But first, what’s Operation Zerfall?”

“It’s best to show you.” He rises from his crate and reaches underneath a pile of blankets to grab a thick folder, and he presents it to me like he’s holding the key to Berlin itself.

“What’s this?”

“Evidence.”

I toss him a bored expression, but my pulse thrums as I open the folder. Inside, I find stack upon stack of paperwork that’s filled with numbers and graphs, all of it speckled with mud, which probably came from Dorner’s getaway out of Germany. I turn the pages until I find one with text—and I see that it’s written in German. Merde. My own German might be good enough to eavesdrop on the soldiers standing on a Parisian street corner, but it’s nowhere near good enough to read this. I’ll have to wait to find a translator before I can decipher it.

Dorner must see my frustration. “Turn toward the back. There are photographs.”

True enough, when I reach the end of the pile, I find dozens of photos waiting for me there. My fingers go cold touching them. I expected to find aerial pictures of Nazi bomber targets or photos of a terrible weapon that the Germans have concocted—isn’t that what Zerfall must be? Instead, I find hospital patients surrounded by a team of nurses. The patients’ arms and legs have been strapped against their cots; and their hair has been shaved off. Some of them are even missing eyes or entire limbs. But that isn’t why I’m grimacing.

It’s the look on their faces.

It’s how their mouths are splayed open in silent screams.

I want to look away, but I make myself continue. With each new photo, my gut tightens more. How many people did the Nazis conduct their “testing” on? What was the purpose of all these gruesome experiments?

“The patients were mostly war criminals,” Dorner murmurs, as if that should lessen the blow.

I frown. War criminals could mean anything to the Germans: downed Allied airmen, Resistance members, soldiers like Theo. Civilians, even, who’ve displeased the Nazis in some way.

“I wasn’t in charge of finding the subjects,” Dorner says quietly.

“Is that the excuse you use to comfort yourself?” His response doesn’t inspire any sympathy from me. I continue looking through the photos. I don’t think they can get any worse until I come upon the very last one.

“Mother Mary,” I whisper.

While the previous photos featured solely men, the one before me now is of a young girl. Her hair hasn’t been shorn like the others. It’s tied in a tight braid that hangs limply down her back. Her dark eyes stare up at me, tears falling out of them.

I squint at the photo. No, those aren’t tears. They’re too dark.

It’s blood.

I slam the folder shut.

“Es war alles so schrecklich,” Dorner says, slipping into German. It’s all so terrible. The innocent student that he introduced himself as has been with replaced with the trembling boy in front of me now. Had he been putting on a brave face before? That question recedes from my thoughts, however, as the image of the little girl haunts me.

“What happened to her?” I ask. Rage surges inside me. “To all of them?”

“Zerfall.”

I shake my head. “Zerfall is a military operation.”

“In a way, yes.” His throat is dry as he searches for words. “The laboratory and the research we conducted, it was all for one purpose …”

The folder weighs heavy in my hands as I piece together everything he has told me. His studies in pathology. The photos of live subjects. The mouths frozen with screams. It’s so clear to me now. Operation Zerfall isn’t a ground invasion or an airstrike or anything else that Major Harken had imagined. It’s much worse than that.

Zerfall is a plague.





The folder tumbles from my lap and spills around my shoes, the photographs landing in a horrific ring around the chair. Dorner leaps up to collect it all, but I don’t move to help him. It’s hard enough to breathe, much less lift a finger.

So this is what Hitler has in store for the Allies: millions infected, millions bleeding, millions dead. Knowing the Nazis’ taste for killing, they might just succeed. How can the Allies fight a disease with our bullets and tanks?

The rage multiplies in my heart, a burning furnace that makes me want to smash everything in this room, Dorner included. He may have turned his back on these experiments, but he did play a hand in bringing about Zerfall. If it weren’t for Major Harken’s orders, I’d be putting my skills to good use and strangling the life out of Dorner this very minute.

But what if Dorner is lying?

That question rises at the back of my mind, and I clutch my fingers around it. There’s the possibility that Dorner could be spinning a magnificent yarn for a free ticket to England. He could be a Nazi agent sent to France to gain my trust and admittance onto British soil. It wouldn’t be the first time the Germans have tried to infiltrate the Allies, but why would they give Dorner such an outlandish cover? The Germans are smarter than that. Far smarter.

I wish I could get Harken’s input—and where’s Sabine when I need her? She should’ve arrived by now. I stare at Dorner’s folder, and I know that there isn’t time to waste. Whether Dorner is telling the truth or whether he’s a German spy, I need to get to the bottom of all this. My work here is far from over.