Free Nightfall Over Shanghai by Daniel Kalla

school.

    â€œLook at
that.
” Herschel pointed to a radio that was perched on an old blanket in the middle of the clearing.
    Hannah had seen wirelesses in homes in the ghetto, but what distinguished this piece of equipment was its mouthpiece transmitter. It was one thing to listen to the banned Voice of America broadcasts but a far more serious offence to transmit over the radio. She knew that the Japanese would consider it tantamount to espionage, a crime that always ended in execution.
    Avi jabbed a finger again in Herschel’s face. “Not a damn soul, you understand me, Zunder? Not a damn soul.”
    Freddy pushed away Avi’s hand. “Of course they’re not going to tell anyone. They are part of this now. Aren’t you?”
    His tone sent shivers down Hannah’s spine.
    â€œIs it real, Freddy?” Herschel asked in awe. “Can you really transmit messages with it?”
    Freddy nodded. “To about fifty miles away, give or take.”
    â€œWhere did you get it, Freddy?” Herschel asked.
    â€œIt was lying around home,” he said vaguely.
    Hannah had heard rumours that the Herzbergs had recently been smuggling more than just cigarettes into the ghetto. Word was they were sneaking everything from kosher wine to typewriters past the guards at the ghetto checkpoints. The Herzbergs, like the Adlers, had been banned from leaving the ghetto after Freddy’s father was caught fencing jewellery in Frenchtown. Hannah had no idea who their new couriers were, but she didn’t doubt the rumours. After all, Freddy wore new clothes to school and, even more remarkably, always seemed to carry a lunch.
    â€œWhat are you going to do with it?” Hannah asked.
    â€œIt’s hard for me to slip out of the ghetto these days.” Freddy chuckled. “But I’ve still got friends all over Shanghai.”

    â€œYou mean you would use it like a telephone?” Herschel asked incredulously. “Isn’t that dangerous?”
    Avi snickered. “When was the last time you had any kind of reliable telephone service in this rotten town, Zunder?”
    Ignoring Avi, Hannah turned to Freddy. “Is it really worth the risk?”
    â€œSure, why not?” Flashing another devil-may-care smile, he was the picture of teenaged bravado. “Besides, Banana, don’t you think I’d make a dashing spy?”

CHAPTER 9
    Ach
, you could drop Franz into the heart of a volcano, and he would make it out without so much as a singe.” Ernst swirled a cigarette over his head to punctuate his point.
    It was a game attempt to make light, but Sunny could see that his jocularity was forced. Since she had arrived, Ernst hadn’t stopped smoking or pacing the cramped living room, brushing past the canvases that leaned against almost every square inch of the apartment’s lower wall space.
    In contrast, Simon Lehrer couldn’t have been less animated. He stood at the lone dirt-streaked window, arms hanging limply at his sides and his gaze fixed on the street below. Sunny had first met the gregarious New Yorker before the war, when he was establishing the hospital for refugees. He had always seemed so carefree and youthful, someone who could find humour and joy in any situation. Even on her recent visits, he had been full of optimism at the prospect of a Japanese defeat and about his plans to whisk his family home to New York. But today he looked so different, as though the year of being a fugitive, kept apart from his wife and young son, had shrunk him, not only physically—his shoulders were now stooped and his face sunken, accentuatinghis hawk nose—but also in manner, which was unusually subdued.
    â€œWell?” Ernst shook the cigarette demandingly at Sunny.
    She inhaled the oil-paint fumes and cigarette smoke. “Well, what?”
    â€œHow are we going to bring Franz home?”
    â€œBring him home?” Sunny echoed in disbelief.
    Ernst tossed