The Bookkeeper: A Serialized Novel, Page 52
Two women, separated by decades; one a Mossad agent, the other a prisoner in a concentration camp, and bound together by one man: the Bookkeeper.
“I’ve heard,” the woman replied, “that the rockets can shoot from France, over the water, and into England. I don’t know if that is true or not.” The woman said this with so little emotion in her voice that it frightened The woman sounded more as if she were talking about planting flowers in a garden than some weapon that could kill innocent people from a great distance. If all this was true, maybe the Nazis were not in danger of losing the war after all; maybe her faint hope of escaping with her life was just a fairy tale. She needed to find a way to escape from this hell, because the end of the war certainly wasn’t going to save her. She threw herself into the work in an attempt to block the thoughts from her mind. It was repetitive and mindless, but it allowed her to let her thoughts drift free. Without Uta noticing her mentor slipped away.
At the end of the day, after assembling so many rockets she had lost track, she paused and looked around. During the day a small pile of gunpowder had collected in one corner of her table. Now she took the opportunity to scrape it along the table, to the edge and, without knowing why precisely, into her left hand. With her right thumb, she pulled her belt out and let the powder drip underneath. She tightened her belt down and then returned to work.
The woman with the cart made one final round through the factory floor, collecting the last of the work. When she arrived at Uta’s table, three completed shells stood upright and waiting. The woman collected them off the table without a second look. Behind the cart, as if on cue, a guard arrived to escort Uta back out of the factory. Before she followed behind him, she patted her belt, feeling the lump of gunpowder stashed away. It was not such a good hiding place, if another prisoner or guard brushed too closely by her the belt would loosen enough to release its cargo, but for now it would have to do.
Outside the factory, the guards arranged them in lines once more. While most of the prisoners were still milling around Uta took the opportunity to slip up next to Johanna and Mala, who had already managed to find each other. Once they were in formation their gray clad supervisors began the count again, only this time they didn’t bother with dragging it out.
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Or my serialized novel in three parts:
Dark Thoughts Book 1: Hearing Voices
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