Another knock echoed in the room.
Kato didn’t move. He sat on the floor, cradling his dead counterpart. Ty rose and stepped quickly to the peephole and looked through.
Penny stood in the hallway, glancing back at the two Gestapo officers nearby. They were talking into their radios, but Ty couldn’t make out the words. Had they heard the fight inside the room? Probably. But why was Penny here?
He turned to Kato. “Should I answer it?” “No.”
Through the peephole, he watched Penny knock again.
A few seconds later, one of the Gestapo officers walked over and spoke to her in German. Ty thought he was telling her to leave, and apparently, he had. Penny walked down the hall, then hesitated.
She stepped to Nora’s door and knocked.
Ty turned to Kato, who was still staring down at his counterpart, seeming in a state of shock.
“She’s at Nora’s door,” Ty hissed.
“Just…” Kato shook his head. “Get rid of her. Lead her away if you have to.”
Ty went through the door to Nora’s room and closed it behind him.
He opened the outer door to Nora’s room, just a crack, cognizant of the Gestapo men watching down the hall. One cocked his head when he saw Ty.
“Hi,” Penny said, seeming nervous. “Hi.”
She leaned to the right, trying to see into the room. “Am I interrupting?” “No,” Ty said, too quickly, awkwardly. “Not at all.”
Penny bit her lip. “I was going to go for another walk. I was just… I was wondering if you might want to join me? The ceremony is in a few hours, and it’s probably my last break.”
Ty nodded. “Sure. Okay.”
He slipped through the door and closed it quickly behind him.
The Gestapo officer squinted at him. Ty thought he was going to ask a question, but Penny turned away from them and strode off, Ty close behind. He expected the officer to call out. But he didn’t.
In his mind, Ty arranged the questions he wanted to ask Penny. He needed to find out where the missiles were controlled. This might be his last chance.
“So where are we going?” he asked as they descended the large metal staircase.
Ty thought she seemed nervous when she answered, “I thought we might visit the primates again.”
*
Kato laid his dead counterpart out on the floor.
“Maria,” he whispered. “I need you to make me look exactly like him.
Right now.”
Maria blinked hard twice, as if the words had snapped her out of a trance. “The makeup is in Nora’s room. I’ll get it.”
To Nora, Kato said, “Help me get his clothes off.”
Kato unbuckled the SD officer’s belt and threaded it out of the loops and removed the gun as Nora began unbuttoning his uniform.
Another knock came from the door, a pounding this time, far less delicate than Penny’s soft raps.
Kato dropped the SD uniform and rushed to the peephole. One of the Gestapo agents stood there, leaning toward the glass eye to try to peer in.
Kato covered it with his thumb and cleared his throat. Mentally, he tried to modulate his voice to match his counterpart’s. His German would likely sound different from the other man’s. Saying a lot would be a risk.
“What!” he shouted in German, infusing the world with annoyance. “Everything okay?”
“Ja!” he yelled, hoping the sharp response would make the Gestapo officer back off.
He peered in the peephole and watched as the man paused, looked back at his colleague, and shrugged. They mumbled to each other, but Kato couldn’t make out the words. The man wandered away from the door, still talking quietly with the other Gestapo agent.
Kato returned to his dead counterpart and finished undressing him and jerked the Sicherheitsdienst uniform on. He stuffed the dead man in the closet and fidgeted while Maria smeared makeup on the scar on his face and the new bruises from the fight. When she was done, she glanced between the corpse and Kato.
“We have a problem.” “What?”
“Your hair is slightly shorter than his.”
Kato put his counterpart’s hat on. “It’s close enough.” “What are you going to do now?” Nora asked.
“I need to find your counterpart.”
“Ty took a walk with Penny this morning. There’s an SD building near here. She’s probably there. If not, you might find the location in the files in the building.” Nora grabbed the notepad on the bedside table and quickly drew a crude map to the SD building. “It’s here.”
Kato nodded. “Okay. Sure. What could go wrong?”
*
Ty could tell something was off about Penny. She wasn’t like she’d been this morning—upbeat and reflective. She was guarded now. Hesitant in her responses.
“Everything all right?” he asked as they strolled along the path. “Yes,” she said, a little too quickly.
Behind them, the red-brick building of the power plant loomed, the late-afternoon sun already behind it. Around them, trains full of cargo and personnel rolled on the tracks and trams ferried more attendees about the sprawling base.
“Did I say something wrong this morning?” Penny picked up the pace. “Not at all.”
“Why are we going back to the primate building?”
Penny didn’t slow. Or make eye contact. “I thought you liked it.” “I did.”
She swallowed. “Good.”
Ty’s instincts told him to turn back, but how would that look? What could he do?
Penny pulled the door to the building open and held a hand out to Ty.
He stepped inside, bracing himself, but it was the same entry room he had seen before. The guard was even the same. And he was still drinking coffee and looking tired. He barely glanced at them before waving them on. Penny opened the door to the animal wing and Ty stepped through,
focused ahead on the pens, which looked the same.
“Don’t move,” a man said. He spoke English with a German accent. Ty froze. He heard the door close behind him.
Penny shuffled around him, keeping her distance, tears welling in her eyes.
On the other side, a Gestapo agent sidestepped into view. His eyes were hard, and he held a pistol that was trained on Ty.
“Get inside the pen. Don’t try anything. I will shoot you.” Ty stepped slowly toward the cell. “You have me mistaken.”
“Do not bother lying. We have already checked your identity. The person you’re impersonating is in Brazil right now, at a Covenant consulate.”
To Penny, the Gestapo officer said, “Inform Dr. Klein that we have a security breach. We need to notify Miss Santos as well. Have them send someone to her room to search it.”
