Opening
Simon’s capture shatters Michael’s fragile cover and forces him into the most brutal performance of his life. The story pivots from the horrors of Berlin to the icy heights of Switzerland, where a “youth experiment” masks an assassination plot—and Michael has never been more alone or more essential.
What Happens
Chapter 81: Go to the Devil
In the tunnel after Lieutenant Simon Cohen’s capture, SS-Obersturmführer Trumbauer interrogates Michael O'Shaunessey about his parents. Michael recites the rehearsed lie—he doesn’t know where they are—while Trumbauer sends soldiers to hunt them. Then Trumbauer drags Michael into the light and tells Simon that Michael betrayed him and his own parents. Simon’s voice breaks as he asks if it’s true. To save the mission, Michael steps forward and condemns Simon as an enemy of the state, a Jew, and declares, “I belong to Hitler now,” a chilling embodiment of his Moral Compromise and the Cost of War.
A guard clubs Simon. Michael fights tears while Simon, reading the situation, asks whether Michael knows the joke about the Englishman, the Irishman, and the Scotsman at a firing squad. Before Michael can answer, Simon delivers the punchline—then explodes into motion, slamming a guard and sprinting down the tunnel. Gunfire cuts him down instantly. Michael understands the choice: Simon engineers “suicide by Nazi” to protect Projekt 1065 and Michael, a final act of Courage, Fear, and Confronting Weakness.
When Trumbauer notices Michael’s tears, Michael lies that he’s crying because his parents “threw their lives away for filth.” The performance works. Admiring Michael’s apparent devotion to The Corrupting Influence of Ideology, Trumbauer invites him onto a special youth assassination team—recommended by Fritz Brendler. Michael accepts, thinking he has already given “anything and everything.”
Chapter 82: That Which Doesn’t Destroy Us
The scene shifts to the Swiss Alps. Michael, Fritz, Ottmar, and Erhard ride a swaying cable car toward the Edelweiss resort while Michael’s fear of heights crushes his lungs and turns his skin green. A concerned passenger stares; Fritz smoothly covers for him, a small mercy that complicates their Friendship and Betrayal. Michael tries to steady himself by remembering one of Simon’s jokes, but the memory only sharpens the image of Simon collapsing under bullets.
The car lurches. Fritz offers a brittle comfort—“That which doesn’t destroy us makes us stronger”—but grief and dread make the words meaningless. Michael nods anyway, staying in character as a fervent Hitler Youth while the car climbs toward the resort and their “experiment.”
Chapter 83: An Acrophobe’s Worst Nightmare
The Edelweiss resort clings to the mountainside like a dare. Michael is relieved to stand on solid ground—until he sees Swiss soldiers funneling guests through a security checkpoint, patting down bodies and rifling bags. His stomach drops.
Two problems punch through his panic. First, the assassination team must be smuggling a weapon; discovery would doom their mission and, paradoxically, save Professor Goldsmit—rendering Simon’s and his parents’ sacrifices meaningless. Second, Michael still has the Projekt 1065 blueprints taped around his waist. A routine pat-down will expose him as a spy not only to the Swiss but to Fritz, Ottmar, and Erhard. He needs to ditch the plans before he reaches the guards.
Chapter 84: What Are You Doing?
With the line inching forward, Michael scans for any escape. A low stone wall borders the cable car station and plaza. He mutters that he’ll be right back and slips behind it, feigning nausea while his fingers search for a loose rock. He pries out a stone and pulls the packet of papers from under his shirt.
“What are you doing?” Fritz’s voice hits like a push toward the cliff. Michael jams the plans back under his shirt, hunches, and gasps that he’s about to throw up and didn’t want to do it in front of everyone. Fritz accepts the explanation and walks away. Heart hammering, Michael stashes the blueprints deep in the hole and wedges the stone back—leaving it slightly askew so he can find it again—then rejoins the line.
Chapter 85: Women and Children Make Terrific Spies
The boys reach the front. To Michael’s shock, the Swiss guard waves them through—no pat-down, no bag search. Only then does Michael understand: they are let through because they are children. He remembers what Megan O'Shaunessey (Ma) taught him: the underestimated are the best spies, a clean demonstration of Deception and Espionage.
Horrified that their Hitler Youth daggers and other weapons remain untouched, Michael moves to warn another guard. Ottmar clamps a hand on him and steers him inside. Asserting command, Ottmar dispatches Fritz on an errand, blocks Michael from approaching security, and snaps, “No wandering.” The team heads to their room to set up their “experiment.” The assassination plot is officially in motion.
Character Development
Michael’s voice hardens even as his grief grows. Simon’s death severs his last tether to safety, leaving him to navigate enemies, allies, and the yawning drop beneath both.
- Michael O'Shaunessey: Performs his most ruthless deception, publicly denouncing Simon to protect the mission; stashes the Projekt 1065 plans under extreme pressure; understands how being a child makes him both invisible and deadly.
- Lieutenant Simon Cohen: Chooses a controlled death to shield the mission and Michael, completing his arc as a brave, selfless protector.
- Fritz Brendler: Recommends Michael for a murder squad yet covers for his acrophobia; his kindness and fanaticism coexist uneasily.
- SS-Obersturmführer Trumbauer: Revels in cruelty and rewards ideological obedience, embodying the regime’s sadism.
- Ottmar: Steps fully into leadership—decisive, watchful, and dangerous—as he corrals the team and accelerates the plan.
Themes & Symbols
Michael’s public denunciation crystallizes the price of survival under tyranny: he keeps the mission alive by killing a piece of himself. That moment—and his calculated lie about his parents—makes visible the machinery of indoctrination, where cruelty masquerades as strength and loyalty. Simon’s sprint into gunfire reframes courage as lucid sacrifice, not fearlessness.
The Alps sharpen the novel’s psychological edges. The Edelweiss resort, perched on a cliff, mirrors Michael’s precarious position: an elegant venue hiding a violent purpose. Underestimation becomes a weapon. Swiss guards wave the boys through, proving Ma’s lesson that invisibility—children, women, the “harmless”—is the most effective disguise. Even Simon’s joke is a symbol of agency under oppression: gallows humor that foreshadows his decision to decide how he dies.
Key Quotes
“I belong to Hitler now.”
Michael’s line slices Simon’s trust and secures Michael’s cover in one breath. It dramatizes the central moral trade-off: to save lives and the mission, he must sound like the monster he is fighting.
“That which doesn’t destroy us makes us stronger.”
Offered by Fritz as comfort, the cliché rings hollow beside real grief and fear. The scene exposes the emptiness of slogans compared to the lived cost of indoctrination and war.
“What are you doing?”
Fritz’s sudden question turns a routine hiding spot into a life-or-death improvisation. The moment crystallizes Michael’s peril: one slip, and he dies not as a spy caught by enemies, but as a “friend” exposed by a comrade.
“No wandering.”
Ottmar’s command locks down the team and the plot. Control and surveillance tighten; personal impulses—like Michael’s urge to warn the guards—are crushed beneath the mission.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters close the Berlin arc with Simon’s heroic death and propel the story into its Swiss endgame. Michael’s induction into the assassination squad marks a shift from covert intelligence to active prevention, raising the stakes from secrets to lives. The Swiss failure to search the boys erases any hope of easy intervention: the plot moves forward because the world refuses to see children as dangerous. Alone now, Michael must exploit that blindness to stop the killing—or become part of it.