When the moon rises over Berlin

      In the frosty air Holly Austin was standing for about ten minutes, maybe more. When she had gone beyond the last village, Holly decided to take a break; she had only a few dozen metres to walk, then she could cross the Danish border illegally and sail to England by sneaking onto a ship, unless, of course, she would be found first.       A feeling of loneliness, mingled with bitterness, filled her heart. Holly Austin wondered how her friends had been killed. For example, Ingrid… Did she know they were coming for her or not? Was her death easy or cruel? Did she think of Holly, Arthur or her brother?       The events of yesterday were still swirling around in Holly’s head. She left the hotel where they were staying two hours later. The sun was just beginning to rise over the city. Holly, taking trams without a ticket, passed almost the whole city. Next, taking a ticket to Hamburg with her last money, she travelled in the third carriage, changed the train to a small village and rode quietly. When she got out, it was almost evening, Holly had to move on her own, she could not be found. After all, they should have been looking for her, right?       The snow crunched under her feet, leaving footprints, it was getting colder, the wind whipped her. It was getting harder and harder to walk, but the only thing to do was to cross the border.       Holly looked at the watch Wilhelm had given her for her fifteenth birthday. He seemed attractive to Holly. He was killed the same way as they killed Ingrid, ruthlessly and mercilessly. Maybe he did not fight back at all when he died. Holly remembered how he had liked to have long conversations about death and the Greek philosophers, as Ingrid later explained to her, but for Holly, Rousseau and the Greek philosophers were all the same: very distant and abstract. She never understood either Ingrid or Wilhelm, who were so rushing to go to the bookshops. They mattered a great deal for Wilhelm; but she did not care.       He also liked to state how happy they would all be after death, he never stopped talking, claiming that true bliss and happiness only came after death as people did not need to take stupid conclusions and laws with them. The girl smirked, remembering his words at that moment. Yes, could she be in the same near-death conditions now?       Holly looked at the checkpoint from afar and figured out how she could get through. On the one hand, there were not many soldiers outside, on the other hand, she had nothing to bite the wire that lied low to the ground. She could not climb over, the fence was too high for her, but she vaguely remembered Arthur telling her that he had escaped from Germany that way in 1933, after he had returned to his motherland Germany. Maybe they had repaired it, of course, but she had to try.       She moved towards the point in small steps, Holly did not understand how, but she turned her head and realised it was dark outside. She lied down in a snowdrift, hoping she would blend in with the snow, the floodlights were on full blast, illuminating all areas without missing a millimetre of snow. Holly slowly creeped along. As she crawled up to the point, she shook herself off and stood up, peering through the iron gates at the fencing. She made sure the fencing was intact and no hole was there. She curses to herself, realising that she was stuck here forever. Before Holly could do anything about it, something cold and hard, like the muzzle of a gun, hit her in the back of the head. Of course, she had not realised that the guards were not only upstairs, but also downstairs.       “Hands up!”, the soldier commanded and Holly moved, pushed forward by the gun in her back towards the other soldier.       “What have you got there?”, shouted the soldier.       “Oh, here’s a girl, apparently a fugitive or maybe a foreigner,” the soldier spoke up. Holly realised that it was her only chance to survive now. To pretend to be a foreigner. Although it was dangerous for her, but being a German who had escaped a few years ago because of a grand theft was even worse for her. The police would probably collect her data.       “Okay, take her, we’ll sort it out now.”       Holly walked in silence, all the while holding her hands above her head. How could she have been so reckless? It was all her emotionality and her fondness for memories; she had never been known for a sober and sharp mind.       In the room they put her at a table and started asking her for her first and last name. She spoke in English, repeating that she did not understand them, until she saw her photo behind the glass. This did not escape the border guards and, turning round to look at the wall portrait and compare, one of them smiled predatorily and said that now they would take her where she needed to go.       They rang the first Gestapo office, saying they had a fugitive here who spoke English. The Gestapo, judging by the tone of voice, was interested. They said they would be right over. Holly exhaled slowly, realising that, of course, they had found her. At that moment she did not know what was worse: being killed by the man, who had killed Ingrid and Wilhelm, or by the Gestapo. They would do everything to get every word out of her.       The last thing Holly saw was the cold snowflakes falling on her head and cheeks. She was walking with two Gestapo officers. Turning round, she saw Ingrid and Wilhelm, along with Arthur. They were seeing her off.