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The girl nodded, uncertain.

“I should like to call you Geli. And you may call me Herr Wolf.”

Hitler fed the girl cake and poured her a cup of peppermint tea. She consumed the food as if she hadn’t eaten in days. He looked away, finding her manners unladylike, but she was only fifteen years old, after all.

She was young, but she understood. She had lived on the streets long enough. She knew the thirty marks Stempfle had paid her did not come for free.

“You understand what we’ll be doing?” he asked her.

She slowly nodded, avoiding eye contact.

He brought her into the bedroom. The tarp was already placed on the floor. The girl eyed it with suspicion.

“Please remove your clothes, Geli,” he said, recognizing a tremble in his voice but feeling aroused all the same at the familiar line—words he had not uttered in over a year.

Hitler undressed to his underwear. He lay down flat on the tarp.

“I am ready, Geli,” he said.

Helga walked over to him as he lay on his back. She turned around so her back was to him, straddling him. She squatted down, her rear end very near his face.

Hitler was fully aroused, his breathing quickening, his heartbeat spiking, heat surging through his body.

“Now, Geli,” he said. “Give me what I so richly deserve.”

55

Bauer residence

Oberföhring

“TOM. TOM, WAKE UP.”

Bauer awoke with a start, nearly spilling out of the chair he had set next to the children’s bunk beds in their room. He looked up with hazy eyes at Amalie, dressed in a pink sleeping gown, who stroked the beard on his face.

“You fell asleep.”

Despite his complete lack of vocal talent, each night Bauer sang to his children, now six and seven years old, until they fell asleep. He had little in terms of repertoire, so he relied on the traditional lullabies his mother used to sing to him: “Weißt du, wieviel Sternlein stehen,” “Guten Abend, gute Nacht!,” “Der Mond ist aufgegangen.” He joked that the kids would feign sleep just so he’d stop singing.

Amalie took his hand and led him to the bedroom. “You’re not getting enough sleep.”

“I know.” Bauer felt shaky on his feet. He tried to go to bed as soon as the kids were down in the evening but rarely managed. Getting up at 1:00 a.m. to make it back to Osteria Bavaria for the night shift was taking a toll on him both physically and mentally.

“This can’t continue,” she said. “You’ve been doing this for a year. It’s too much. It’s breaking you.”

Bauer looked at his wife. It was taking a toll on her as well, the dark circles under her eyes.

He rarely compared himself to his father, who’d worked over thirty years in the quarry, fulfilling what he considered the most vital function of a father—providing for the family—but was either too tired or too drunk after working to then spend any meaningful time with his children. Bauer had been determined to be a more involved father. And he had been. He’d helped the kids with schoolwork and music lessons (violin for Maxine, piano for Ridley). He’d wrestled and played games and listened to radio shows with them. He had helped get them dressed in the morning and ready for bed at night.

But over this last year, he’d begun disappearing from their lives. If he even made it home by dinner, he would often nod off from lack of sleep, and was at his second job before the kids woke in the morning.

“I know what you’re doing with these men, whatever you call them—the Ten Patriots?—is important,” Amalie said.

“That’s just a silly name,” he said. “But yes, it’s important.”

“Your kids are important, too, Tom.”

Bauer ran a hand over his bald head, feeling the whiskery nubbles. “Who do you think I’m doing this for, Am? I don’t want Max and Ridley being treated like second-class citizens. I don’t want them to feel ashamed of the religion they follow. I don’t want them spat on and ridiculed—”