Night Angels(93)

“Go, go! Get out of here!” Fengshan shouted, waving his hand, and realized that she couldn’t hear him or the gunshot. He picked up his pace and dove to the hallway, but a force behind him threw him against a round table with a marble top. He lost his balance and stumbled.

But Miss Schnitzler finally saw him and the swarm of SS men surging in the hallway. She pivoted, sprinted to the other end of the hallway, turned to the right, and magically disappeared. There must be a staircase leading to the basement or the back door. She must know the layout of the hotel very well; Fengshan prayed that she had escaped.

He turned to Eichmann, surrounded by his men holding guns near room 1004. It was rather chaotic there, with the officers, hotel staff, and women in golden dresses, and in a shocking moment, the Nazi rose and stood, his hand over his bleeding shoulder.

Words could not describe Fengshan’s disappointment. Miss Schnitzler had risked her life for this scoundrel.

Another gunshot came from somewhere in the hallway, startling him, but he couldn’t see through the crowd.

Then the people parted around Eichmann, and Fengshan felt his knees weaken—Miss Schnitzler had appeared, clutched by two SS officers, a gun under her chin. When she came closer to Eichmann, she cursed. A fist was thrust into her stomach, and she doubled over, her golden wig falling on the floor.

“A Jew!”

The hallway boiled with profanities, threats, and curses, and Miss Schnitzler’s screams—“I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you!”

“How dare you, you Jewish whore.” Eichmann grabbed a revolver from one of his men and fired.

Blood spurted on her shoulder. She dropped to the ground.

“Stop!” Fengshan pushed through the crowd. She had lost her entire family; she had disappeared but returned; she had risked her own life in exchange for a scoundrel’s.

Eichmann threw his head toward him, his eyes murderous. “Herr Consul General, do you know this woman? She tried to kill me!”

“Stop. That’s enough,” Fengshan said. There was a splash of blood on her scarred face, but she was pleading with him to leave her alone. But Miss Schnitzler. It was not worth it.

“This whore is trying to kill me! No, no. This is hardly enough. This will not stop. She must be eliminated, and all of her kind will be eliminated! I swear I will squeeze every single ounce of strength from their bodies and extract the last drop of blood from their veins; after that is done, I’ll incinerate them, and the earth won’t show a trace of their existence. I’ll kill them all, all of them.” He thrust his head at his minions. “Kill her.”

A salvo of gunshots exploded in the hallway.





CHAPTER 63


GRACE


The sound of gunshots continued in the hotel.

I froze in the taxi, fear surging through me. That could be Lola; no, that couldn’t be Lola. I willed the taxi to go faster; the hotel, a giant broken tooth, glaring, right in front of me. When the taxi stopped, I almost rolled out, threw myself into my wheelchair, and flew to the entrance lined with black Mercedes and carriages and motorcycles.

But the guard, shouting nonsensical German, thrust his rifle to my face and barred me from entering. Back and forth, back and forth, I wheeled in front of the building. Those gunshots had nothing to do with Lola. She would come out, and in her loud voice, she would cry out to me, “Grace!”

For an endless moment, the chilly Viennese air was devoid of her voice, and inside the lobby there was no violin concerto, no human voices, no gunshots, only the globes of lights, the bulbous eyes of a beast, threatening, gnawing at my heart. I saw who I was, a weakling, miles away from Fengshan, from his faith and his beliefs. And he had been right; I should have listened to him.

A pandemonium, suddenly. Armies of officers in uniforms, men in black suits and bow ties, and women in long tasseled dresses and velvet gowns swarmed behind the glass doors, surging past me. None of them was Lola.

Still, I wheeled back and forth, back and forth, craning my neck. When the tide of human bodies slowed, thinned, and then stopped, through the dizzy light behind the glass door, I saw that uniformed hotel workers were carelessly scrubbing at a trail of red, flowing from the hallway to the stairs in the lobby.

Fengshan appeared in his black overcoat, his movements slow, his head lowered, as if he were saying a prayer.

“Fengshan?”

He looked up, and for a moment it seemed he was having a hard time comprehending. Then he came to me, his face a mask of darkness. “It’s cold here. Let’s go back to the consulate.”

“I . . . I . . . Lola . . . Did you . . .”

The look in his eyes made me wince, and I rubbed my hands on the handle of my wheelchair. He was going to tell me something, but I wished he wouldn’t say it.

He said, “You’re too late.”





CHAPTER 64


FENGSHAN


In his dark office, he sat on the sofa, without taking off his coat or hat. It was good to be encapsulated in the space of silence, of darkness, of grief. A light, a life, had been extinguished in front of him, and he had been unable to stop it.

The phone rang. It must be Ambassador Chen.

He got up but went to the bathroom. In front of the sink, he took off his coat and hat, splashed water on his face, and stared at himself in the mirror. His nose was red, his eyes bloodshot, a red speck wedged in the corner of his eye. His face was that of a scarred old man.