Fourteen

She was right back in the moment.

The cold Vienna sky was red with flames, and they were huddled breathless against a line of low bushes, Jack with his Argus camera, Billie with her notebook and her keen eye, recording every detail. All around them was the violent crashing of glass and crackling of fire, shocking shouts and screams as mobs of civilians and SS soldiers gleefully smashed windows along the street and torched the shops within. All over the city it was the same, ferocious mobs spontaneously joining together—or was it planned, Billie wondered? She’d entered the synagogue briefly, moving with the crowd, Jack at her side, the two of them following the activity when it first began, and, seeing the smashing of the pews and the curtain of the ark torn to pieces, they’d retreated once the mob lit fires and the synagogue had filled with smoke. Now hidden outside, obscured by the row of bushes across the street, they watched as a German soldier in those high leather boots kicked a man of about sixty to the ground just a few feet from where they were hidden. He was in his nightshirt and held his hands aloft, pleading and unarmed, and with horror they watched helplessly, soundlessly, as the man was set upon by angry Austrians, men no fewer than twenty in number, who took turns to viciously kick and stomp, cheered on by the soldier, reducing what had moments before been a human man, wailing and crying out for help, into something Billie had not seen before, something broken and bloody, shattered and pushed into the cobblestones on which they’d stood only minutes before.

She closed her eyes.

Open them. Open your eyes.

Something woke Billie Walker with a start, long before the usual time, long before it was decent for a Sunday morning. It was still dark and the birds were resting their songs. Only the faintest sunlight came into her room. Yet she’d needed to wake. Was it something in her dream? She’d been dreaming of Kristallnacht again, she realized. The Night of Broken Glass.

Billie was no morning person, and on this particular morning her head was heavy, so heavy. Somewhere far off in her mind suspicions were continuing to form about just how tired she was, just how tired she’d been. She could hold her liquor. It wasn’t like her to collapse into bed or, conversely, to wake with the dawn. Through the heaviness she detected something out of place, some shift. Breath held, she listened, still prone. Not a sound. Not a movement or creaking floorboard. Something else. She swiveled her head. Her bedroom door had been ajar when her eyes had closed, but the angle was different now, by a few degrees. She grabbed her Colt and sat up, holding it out in front of her. The movement brought a most unpleasant throb to her temples, and, involuntarily, her eyes closed again.

Something . . .

When she forced her eyes open seconds later she found herself awake. A startlingly sober kind of awake, with freight trains running across her nerves. She was not alone. A man was on the floor next to her bed.

With a jump she was up on bare feet, standing over him in her wrinkled slip with her little gun poised in her hands, her finger positioned lightly over the trigger. She was momentarily confused, then lowered the Colt to her side.

Con Zervos, still very much dead, was sprawled on the Persian rug.