Excerpt of A Night of Long Knives

Wind rustled in grass browned by the drought plaguing Europe. Unseasonable heat and a parched smell invaded the gondola. The Graf Zeppelin’s massive shadow stole over tidy Swiss houses, streets, and fields. I wiped my palms on my thin cotton dress, sweating as much from fear as heat. I had not been so near Germany since I fled three years before, after kidnapping the purported only son of Ernst Röhm.

Röhm was Chief of Staff of the storm troopers and commanded thirty times more men than Hindenburg, the president of Germany. Yet reports of homosexuality dogged him. Doubts the small boy squirming in front of me could quash. Anton provided final proof of Röhm’s virility.

“Good day, Frau Zinsli,” said Señor Santana. Like everyone else in the past three years, he used the name on my forged Swiss passport. I had left my real name, Hannah Vogel, behind. Except for brief visits to London to meet my lover, Boris, I had not had a true conversation with an adult I trusted in more than one thousand days.