“I cannot wait ‘til I get caught, Mr. Sholl.”
He is a fool, thought Sholl, who threw up his hands and sunk back into an armchair that swayed under his weight. There was a point where mischief became reckless and doing something deemed grossly illegal turned dangerous.
“I will not let you damn this school with your treason,” Sholl said, disregarding manners.

A coarse laugh rumbled from Leipelt as he rested his elbows on the mahogany desk; his hands came together as if he were praying. He should, Sholl thought.
“I've thought many things of you, Gregori, but rude hasn't been one of them.” The headmaster’s eyes rested on the professor. Sholl could not meet his gaze; his eyes flicked from the fireplace, to the grand windows overlooking the campus and the autumn countryside through a veil of condensation, and back to Leipelt, if only for a moment. “Come now, join me for a drink.” Leipelt retrieved a crystal bottle of brandy from under the desk and filled two glasses generously.

“Thank you, headmaster, but I—”

“My position has many advantages, Gregori,” Leipelt said, “And forcing people to drink with me is one of them. Drink.”

The professor nodded to his superior and sipped the antique drink. Leipelt touched his only to sniff his glass as if some great connoisseur of esteemed taste before putting it down again. Sholl’s eyes sharpened, annoyed.

“As you were saying, you will not let me damn this school.”

“Yes,” Sholl confirmed.

“Well, I ask you this, professor . . . if you saw a shipwreck, what would you do?”

Gregori Sholl did not answer. He had never seen a shipwreck—he had never seen the ocean, even—and he didn’t plan on it. Nor did he plan on engaging in Leipelt’s games. The old man cocked his head, like a curious child, awaiting Sholl’s response.

“Ich konnte nicht sagen,” Sholl finally said. “And I do not see what a shipwreck has to do with anything, much less your treason.”

“I disagree, professor. I think we are watching a shipwreck in the making, you and I. One much greater than the Titanic, and captained by our dear Führer, no less. So I ask you again, Gregori, what will you do?”

Sholl kept a hand on his tie as he bent to retrieve a slim black briefcase, to be sure that the tie would not wrinkle. He laid the case on his lap and slipped the two switches. The top popped up and Sholl gingerly held the cold grip of a revolver. He cast aside the case and laid the butt of the gun on the desk with a thunk, his finger on the trigger.

“I would not expect a history professor to keep a gun on him,” Leipelt said frowning. “But I am not surprised.”

“I require the list, headmaster,” the gunman said, finding his manners—if not a little late.

“I daresay I won’t give it to you.” Leipelt’s hand took his untouched brandy, shifting it gingerly with between his slender fingers, before relinquishing it.

“The Gestapo is coming, you must know this, a student on campus alerted the authorities,” Sholl said rather urgently. “You could do nothing better than to give me the list.”

“Ah, but it couldn’t do anything worse.”

“The list! The names of the Jews you’ve let stay. Had you just expelled them as commanded, headmaster, we—they—”

“They deserve no such thing,” Leipelt said.

“The Gestapo will be here within minutes. Give me the list and they won’t—”

“Do you take me for a fool?”

“Der liste, schulleiter, der liste!”

Leipelt glanced out the windows to the courtyard, then around his office. “Tell me that you have a passion for Hitler’s cause, Gregori, that you believe the Jews to be damned, and that you believe it with all your being. I should hope that you aren’t doing this because you know you will replace me once I am dead.”

Sholl did not respond. He would not have the headmaster guilt him. He was doing what he must. “They shall find the list once they are here. If it is not given to them they will tear the school apart and punish every student!”

“Do not lie—you care not for the University. You wish to give it to the Gestapo yourself. So be it.” His hand fumbled under his desk as a drawer popped open and files were revealed. He delicately lifted three papers out of the drawer and placed them upon the desk. They contained a hundred or so names.

Sholl glanced over the papers. “God willing, each of these students will be expelled so that they may haunt this school no longer,” he said.

Leipelt’s faded blue eyes—so much brighter in his youth—fell. “God willing, each of these students’ names will be burned into the epitaph of your grave, Gregori, so that they may haunt you.”

Shouting came from the hall.

“I must kill you now,” said Sholl.

“I know.”

“But I will wait until they arrive so that they may see me do it.”

“I would expect no less of you.”

Sholl lay back a little deeper in his chair and glanced over his shoulder to the door. The voices in the hall were waxing. Leipelt’s hand fumbled to his pocket; Sholl did not see this.

The gun was cocked with a click.

“I should like one last drink,” Leipelt said.

“Fine.” Sholl twisted his head toward the door and then back again. He watched Leipelt’s hand fumble toward the glass.

It tipped.

The dark alcohol spilled across the desk, reaching the papers.

Crack!

A bullet seared Leipelt’s shoulder and shattered the window behind him. The yelps of students below in the courtyard could be heard from the headmaster’s office. Sholl cocked the revolver again, but Leipelt was quick. From his pocket his produced a match and struck it on the desk’s rough engravings. Sholl’s eyes shot up, meeting Leipelt’s. There was a faint twitch in the corner of the old man’s face as his hand swept the top of the desk.

Crack!

The top of the desk burst into flames. Sholl’s hand shot into the fire trying to retrieve the blackened papers, but as his fingers reached them the last remnants of legible words curled up. Sholl screamed.

Crack! Crack!

Leipelt fell from the hole where the window once stood down to the courtyard where a fusillade of screams rose to the office. The door burst open. Two Gestapo agents dressed in uniform appeared. “Töten den verräter!”

“I’m not—”

Crack!