When Nora had finished putting on her wig and makeup, she sat on the bed next to her counterpart, an arm around her, comforting the woman. She wasn’t sure what to say. It seemed her counterpart didn’t either. They simply sat in silence.
For Nora, seeing her double had been more jarring than she imagined.
But the revelation of who Nora was—the idea that she was from another universe—had completely rattled this world’s Nora Brown.
Nora was wondering what to say to the woman when she heard the door to her room fly open. Nora rose and walked over, peering through the connecting door into her room, where a towering Gestapo agent strode in, gun drawn, two more troops behind him, also raking their guns left and right. The lead man pointed his gun at Nora through the doorway.
“Don’t move.”
Another Gestapo agent opened the door to the bathroom and charged in, gun first. The third man went through the connecting door into Ty and Kato’s room and began searching it, ignoring Nora and her counterpart. For now, the wig and makeup she was wearing were working. Nora wondered how long that would last.
The Gestapo agent took a step toward the closet. Nora drew a breath in.
The man held his gun in one hand and with the other, jerked the closet door open. Nora hoped he would stop at the sight of the crumpled pile of sheets.
If so, she might still get out of this. She had done nothing wrong.
The man reached out, fingers closing around the sheet, and pulled it toward him, revealing Kato’s dead counterpart, lying with his back against the wall, skin ashen and rubbery, dressed in a white tank top and underwear.
The man spun and pointed his gun directly at Nora as he took out a radio and began barking orders into it. When he was done, he called through the doorway.
Helen Klein strode into the room. She cast a glance at Kato’s dead counterpart lying in the closet. Recognition seemed to dawn on her face. She turned and glowered at Nora.
“Who are you?”
Nora stared at the woman she had known all of her life—her best friend’s mother, the lady next door who had been like a second mother to her. Here, in this world, she appeared so similar, but the differences were there too— subtle but important.
Nora wasn’t sure what to say. Helen didn’t ask another question. She stepped forward, scrutinizing Nora. She reached out, grabbed the wig, and ripped it off.
*
Kato marched down the corridor toward the double doors to the Bunkerwarte control room. They were giant iron slabs that loomed like the gateway to an impenetrable bunker.
Kato stopped at the doors and swiped his wristband on the magnetic pad. The light flashed red. His counterpart clearly didn’t have access to this room.
He was at a dead end.
Kato wished Ty was there with him. He would likely have some brilliant idea to get inside.
Since Ty wasn’t there, and Kato’s adrenaline-fueled mind couldn’t come up with any bright ideas, he did the only thing that seemed obvious to him: he raised a fist and knocked on the door.
He heard a mechanical whirring and looked up to see a camera panning toward him.
“Why are you here?” a voice asked. “I need to get inside.”
“Why?”
Kato noted a few things. They hadn’t addressed him by his rank. And there were voices in the background—shouting. His every instinct told him
to flee. But he couldn’t. This was his last chance to stop the launch. He had to try—he knew if he lived through this, he would regret it if he didn’t.
“I have information you need.” “Regarding?”
“The launch. Open up.”
In the corridor behind him, Kato heard boots pounding the concrete floor.
He pivoted toward the sound.
Over the speaker, the voice switched to English with a heavy German accent. “Remove your sidearm from the holster and lay it on the ground. Do it now, or we will shoot you.”
In the distance, the troops were growing closer. He wasn’t going to be able to shoot his way out of this one.
Kato drew the gun and set it at his feet. “Now kick it away.”
The pistol clattered across the concrete floor, into a wall.
A dozen SS soldiers turned the corner, pouring into the corridor, submachine guns trained on Kato.
The iron doors parted and slowly drew into the wall. The control room was quite large, with at least ten stations where men and women were hunched over their computers. Kato counted eight armed SS troops gathered just inside the door, guns held at the ready.
Kato realized the truth then. He’d never had a chance of getting inside the control room. And even if he had gotten inside the room, he wouldn’t have gotten through the security and been able to alter the launch.
It hit Kato then how futile the mission had been.
As the hope drained out of him, an officer with a rank directly above his counterpart stepped forward. The Standartenführer sneered at Kato. “Whoever you are, you have killed a Reich Europa Sturmbannführer. For that, you will pay a heavy price. For a very long time.”
