Kreutzer pressed a hand to the small of her back, lower than was really necessary, to guide her toward an examination room. But Ilse kept her smile firmly in place. She’d grown up dreaming of a life on the silver screen, her face three stories tall as she played the Valkyrie, the mistress, the schemer, the star. Unfortunately, the war had rather limited the roles available to her. If the good National Socialist secretary was what she had to play to undermine the Third Reich, if that was what it took to stop all this tasteless, maudlin nationalism, this useless, isolationist paranoia, well, she was open to performing in a select intimate venue to further the resisters’ cause.

This is not the way things are meant to be, her mother’s friends whispered over the years, as their country shifted around them, becoming more and more garish like the German Expressionist set pieces of the film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. They kept saying it, that it was abnormal, but if that were so, then why did they all seem to inhabit the asylum while the abnormal ones, the Caligaris, ruled over them? It was all too normal, the true essence of Völkisch to be tyrannical, hateful, warring. Ilse accepted her abnormality. She would use it to her advantage.

For though she’d never known a different life, she couldn’t help but feel nauseated by it. The pang deep in her chest when her neighbors and friends threw rocks at the Jews as they were taken away. The embarrassment that forced her to avert her eyes when someone picked a fight with an elderly yellow-starred woman on the streetcar. The shame down in her marrow every time the news broadcasts crowed over another swath of London destroyed, another nation trampled over.

Yes. This was the way to win the war—not with outright disobedience, violence, and discord. Ilse would win the war by standing up straight, doing her job, but knowing, deep down, the righteousness of her purpose. In her heart, she knew she didn’t mean it when she went along with the Nazis’ plans. She was good. She could be goodness in the dark.

“The masks, Ilse.” Kreutzer held out a hand expectantly as they reached his laboratory’s outer chamber. Ilse handed one over before strapping hers on, as well. Too often, the masks meant they would be conducting autopsies. But Kreutzer’s research was so strange, so wide-ranging, it was useless for her to make any guesses.

They entered the room, where a metal crate rested on the examining table, roughly six feet in length. Ilse steeled her stomach as Kreutzer unfastened the crate.