Putsch

I kick the door in.

Wood cracks, hinges scream, and the stench of beer and sweat rushes out like a hot fog. For a second, nobody moves—just a hundred stunned faces under a yellow haze of gaslight—and then the shouting starts.

“Everybody down! Down!”

“Hands where we can see them!”

“Für Deutschland!”

I don’t know who fires the first shot into the ceiling, but it echoes like thunder and sends papers flying. The room erupts into noise. Chairs scrape. Men stumble. A glass stein crashes to the floor beside me, frothing like it’s bleeding.

I can barely hear myself think. But I find him—him—standing on the table near the back, one boot planted in a puddle of spilled lager, one hand raised like he’s Moses parting the Red Sea.

Adolf Hitler.