The agony in my head is worse than it’s ever been. He knew. He knew from the moment I found them at the wall; he knew when he made me play chess during my first roll call; he knew the entire time.

“When I went to Block 11 to locate them, one family spoke German, asked to stay together, and kept glancing around as if something were missing. I had a feeling they were the ones you’d been looking for, and your mother all but confirmed my suspicions when she approached me and started carrying on about the little ones. You favored one another so much in your desperation. And now, thanks to you, I have no doubts I was correct.”

Even if he expects me to respond, I can’t. I wish I’d never met Fritzsch on the arrival platform that day. I wish I’d stayed with my family . . .

Fritzsch stands and gestures for me to join him. “Let’s take a walk to the courtyard. I’ll show you exactly how it happened. Naked in the rain, a single shot each from the same pistol I have here. First the little boy, then the little girl, but I wasn’t watching them. I was watching your parents, listening to the sound your mother made when the children fell—”

He’s interrupted by a shriek, an unearthly shriek that formulates a word and emerges from my own throat.

“Stop!”

“There, that’s almost how your mother sounded,” Fritzsch says with a laugh. “Didn’t I say you’re all the same? The little brats died quickly, and then it was just your parents, standing in their blood.”

The shriek comes again, and I press both hands to the acute thudding in my head. “Stop, please stop . . .”

“That’s why you came, isn’t it? To hear how I killed those Polacks? Or would you rather go to Block 11 and visit Cell 18, where we watched your priest friend die?” His voice rises into the crazed bellow I know so well. He slams both hands on the table, rattling the chess pieces before leaning toward me, and I wither beneath him and curl into myself while his words berate me and everything inside me swirls into a chaotic frenzy. “Shall I continue, or should we take a walk? Which will it be, 16671? Go on, tell me what you want.”

Words fail me, despite everything I want to say, despite how I fight to conjure something, anything, but all I see are my family’s bodies in the truck and the needle piercing Father Kolbe’s arm, and the images aren’t chased away until I close my fingers around the cold, hard metal in my pocket, spring to my feet, and aim my pistol at Fritzsch’s chest.

Chapter 23

Birkenau, 9 February 1943