Chapter Twelve - Resistance
Chapter Twelve Resistance June 1942 Hotel Metropole (Gestapo Headquarters) In this chapter, the girls are sent to work at the headquarters of the Vienna Gestapo, the largest branch in the Greater Reich, and Bekka is emancipated, going to live with Hilda in a women's boarding house that serves government and SS employees. Hilda's boss in the Detective Branch is very personable, but Bekka's - the Commandant of the Headquarters - dislikes her on sight. Bekka is charged with programming the Lorenz machine, the encryption device used by the Reich high command, several categories of complexity above the Enigma, which was generally used. In reading through recent messages, she finds a reference to Otto in Washington DC in the United States. Sending him a message, she receives in return the charge to send him all information and is given contacts in the resistance in Vienna. We discover the only row Otto ever had with his mother was over whether to charge into Vienna and t...