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I started to cry again—tears of exhaustion and relief and fear.
“I’m a mess,” I choked out.
“Even a mess, my love. You are beautiful. I’ve missed you so much,” he whispered.
“I miss you too,” I whispered back.
There was no need to whisper. We were only saying what a husband and wife would be expected to say after two months apart. But there was every need to whisper, because this was a moment just between him and me. It was far too precious to be shared with anyone else.
Later, lying under the covers, I resisted the pull of sleep, determined to make the most of every second with Jürgen. I pulled the blankets over our heads and snuggled as close to Jürgen as my belly would allow.
“The rockets really are huge flying bombs now, aren’t they?” I whispered.
“They have no intention of a space mission,” he admitted.
“When did you realize that?”
“Around the same time we tried to run away.”
“Oh.”
“A space mission would be the work of visionaries. It is well evident by now that these men are not that.”
“What went wrong today?” I whispered.
“Are you really interested?”
“I am,” I said, throat tight. “I’m sorry. I’ve underestimated your work so badly, Jürgen. I underestimatedyou.”
I started to cry, and his arm contracted around me.
“Sofie, it’s okay. Truly,” he whispered, his breath hot on my ear. “My love, even Otto underestimates this technology sometimes. We’ve made decades’ worth of progress in just a few short years. It’s okay that you’re not up-to-date with every detail. There is so much secrecy, Sofie. I wouldn’t always tell you even if you asked.”
“I feel like we’re living completely different lives.”
“It can’t be helped.”
“What went wrong today?”
“Technical problems too complex to explain to you when we are both this tired.”
“Can you fix the problems?”
“Yes. It is only a matter of time.”
A sudden vision of that immense crater on the island flashed before my eyes.
“Shouldyou fix them?”
“We’ve spent a fortune on the program but still don’t have a model that can be mass-produced. This series of launches was supposed to show the top brass that we’d turned that around. The pressure is growing.”
“Why would they even want to mass-produce bombs right now?”
“My love, you are smart enough to know the answer to that.”
I found myself suffocating, so I pulled the blankets off our faces and drew in some deep breaths. Jürgen did the same. When my lungs no longer felt as though they were bursting, we returned to the blankets and I whispered, “They want to go to war?”
“A man like Hitler always wants war. He wants power and land, and no one is going to give those things to him. At some point, he’ll try to take them.”
