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His mind began to swim at the possibilities—the collegial atmosphere, the medical breakthroughs.
    It had to be a mistake.
    “Am I the only one?” he said, thinking of his team, Linden and Frau Reiner.
    “So far,” Schnell said, and held out his hand. After a moment’s hesitation, Frank gave the telegram back to him.
    “You seem surprised,” said Schnell, and then after a pause, “I wasn’t.”
    The generosity in his tone sounded genuine. Frank rubbed his throbbing hands.
    “Ever modest!” said Schnell. “We’ll have an armed escort for you,” he added. “Are you a good shot?”
    Frank shifted on the bed. “I trained,” he said, and his eyes fell on Schnell’s shining boots. “But I’m not—”
    “I learned to shoot when I was seven years old,” Schnell said, and described holding the giant gun while his father walked him through the steps of loading, aiming, firing, and swearing on his life to protect his mother and sisters.
    “Once I had to stop a thief,” Schnell said. “I blasted out his knee in the dark.” He touched the Celtic cross pinned exactly halfway up his torso. “So I blast him with a bullet and he starts screaming,” he said. “I drop the gun and light the lamp.”
    Frank shook his head. What would he tell Liesl?
    “And what do you know, it was our neighbor,” Schnell said in a wondering voice. “Our next-door neighbor.”
    “It’s been a long day,” Frank said, and pressed his fists to his eyes, but Schnell went on, describing how his mother burst in and started weeping, and the neighbor screamed in pain as the police came and took him away.
    With his eyes closed, Frank’s mind spun, imagining what would happen if he wrote home about the news. A summons to Berlin . He imagined Liesl’s frown as she scanned the letter. Someone must have noticed the work I’ve done here . But Berlin! The last stronghold of the Reich. Escaping Weimar would be far easier when the Red Army came.
    Schnell’s cough snapped Frank back into the room with the peeling yellow paint.
    “Strange thing was, I knew it was him before I saw his face in the firelight,” the captain said. His cheeks were so bright they pulsed.
    Frank had to look away. He grunted. “Smart kid.”
    The siren sounded again outside and the captain glanced out the window.
    “We had to become soldiers so young, didn’t we?” Schnell murmured, and again he appeared to be waiting for some acknowledgment: Yes, on the thousand nights when my father did not come home, I lay in my bed and imagined I was him in France. And yes, I shot those bastards, shot them all dead. Now my own sons are aiming into the same dark and firing .
    “We did what we had to do,” Frank said finally.
    “That’s exactly so.” Schnell sounded pleased. He slapped the doorjamb. “Have a good sleep.”
    Frank said good-bye and listened to the boots receding. Yet instead of lying back, he raised his eyes to the glass, the crowded yard. More boys from the Volkssturm. The only thing the hospital had not run out of in the past month was razor blades. The patients were all tooyoung to need them. They came from the front full of heady, agonized optimism, their chatter filling the white-painted rooms. They came with fever, frostbite, and festering wounds but were everlastingly grateful to be hauled out of reach of the Russians. Better to die among their own than to have their balls ripped off, their eyes gouged out with spoons.
    Germany was retreating, drawing all its resources back to the capital. And he was a resource. He was a resource. But he was also a husband and father.
    Frank pulled the rucksack back out, tipping open its dark mouth.
    Another ambulance drove into the yard, carving black tracks in the snow and mud. An orderly threw its doors open. Frank watched as the wounded unloaded, some hopping down, some easing to the bumper and sliding off. Others were carried.
    The last came out on a stretcher, his body limp, his face engulfed in bandages. It