VANDERLOOS SAT IN his plane, talking into his iPhone. The conversation was succinct.
“It must look like an accident.” He paused. “I believe you’re qualified to take care of this.” Pause. “The money’s been wired to your Belize account.
“Take. Him. Out.” He tapped the red dot and ended the call. Then he looked out the window. They were just over the Sahara, the orange-red sand melting at the horizon to the blue sky.
He had never gone rogue before now. But Doug Roberts’ eradication in The Honor Room shook him. No matter what Tarnhelm might be capable of, he had never been on the ground to see it. It was always a memo slipped innocuously to him at cocktail hour or diagramed on a PowerPoint. Death had always had the cleansing factor of distance. Now it was at his doorstep.
He couldn’t stop thinking of Roberts, the shrill, soul-clawing screams, and then the silence, the unbearable silence. Nor could he forget that the gems Roberts had skimmed were part of his own criminal take of the mining concern. Roberts hadn’t known their origin, thank God. But Vanderloos didn’t need Portier to go digging. Connections were fatal.
He now had to take matters into his own hands. There was no way he was going to pay the price Roberts had. They didn’t know the Blood Eagle had been sold to Heydrich decades ago by a family diamond concern in South Africa. The fact that it had been his family’s mine was not something he was going to pay for. It had all happened way before his birth; he’d had nothing to do with it. But if that Maguire was even hinting the Blood Eagle might be found and connections were made, he could not take the risk. He sure as hell wasn’t going the way of Roberts when someone on the board—no doubt Rikhardsson, the Aryan scum—decided to dig for nefarious deeds.
No. No. Nope. He was not waiting around for that scenario. He was in the business of paranoia. The best way to make yourself secure was to get rid of the security problem and that was Stag Maguire. Vanderloos didn’t give a shit about a long-forgotten weapon. South Africa was far enough away from Europe and the arms race for now. And, of course, there was also the very real security of the fact that this weapon had not come to light in all the years since. It very likely did not even exist. But in the meantime, Portier was going to use the entire organization to extract information from Maguire, including anything he might have on the Blood Eagle.
Vanderloos wasn’t going to wait around for that. The only solution was to take out Maguire and shut him up for good. Let the pieces fall where they may. He wasn’t going to go down like Roberts.
No. No. Nope.
Stag sat in the Lobby Bar, waiting and drinking. It was after eleven. He’d returned to his room at the Adlon and found everything as he’d left it. Tarnhelm had to have sifted through his room several times while he’d been gone. But the real question that nagged him: if Red Riding Hood found him, Tarnhelm had to know where he was, so why the hell had they kept their distance?
The answer had to be they were biding their time, studying him, figuring how to best extract his information. He swallowed his fear and paranoia with every sip of whiskey.
He looked around, seeing the usual suspects: business associates having nightcaps and going through their tablets, an older couple enjoying a bottle of the familiar orange label of Veuve Cliquot. Nothing out of the ordinary. But no little Red Riding Hood.
He perused the news on his iPad. The headlines led with a Tarnhelm executive’s private plane that was missing over the Baltic. Terrorism was suspect given the sensitivity of Mr. Roberts’ work with private contractors in Iraq, the article said. Wreckage of the plane, remnants of a small explosive device, and the pilot’s body were all found. Roberts, however, was feeding the fishes. No body. The usual groups were being held accountable. More than one had already claimed responsibility.
Knowing Tarnhelm, there was more to the story than that. But right now, that was not his circus, not his monkey. Instead, he took the diary from the Ziploc bag and flipped to the page he’d last been deciphering.
I did not plan to be a U-boat. I did not expect to survive at all. The Gestapo told this criminal Jew that she would have to report to the Freibourg Clinic for Racial Hygiene. I was one of the lucky ones, I was told. Because of my blond hair and blue eyes, I was to be allowed to remain and simply receive “treatment.” A new experiment was being tried as a cure for my tainted blood. A series of X-ray treatments were prescribed. Painless at first.
But then the bleeding began. The terrible, unending flow. They were most pleased how quickly it started. Then my hair began to fall out. Not entirely. I was blessed with an overabundance of hair, and I was able to pin and pad what I had left after I went to ground.
You never knew that you did this to me, did you? But you were a hair-puller, weren’t you, my darling? When you would fall on top of me, I would lay there beneath you, pretending to revel in your caress, all the while seeing my hair, my precious, precious hair, intertwined in your fingers, tickling my breast, mocking every effort of mine to stay upon this earth.
How did I become a U-boat, you ask?
I dutifully went for my treatments until one day the nurse who greeted me decided to take mercy upon me. Or perhaps she was simply resentful of her betters at that moment and decided to rebel. She announced to me in her best Bund Deutscher Mädel voice that the treatments were being discontinued. The powers that be at Tiergartenstrasse 4 had decided the process was taking too long to be effective. New plans were being developed. I was no longer required to return.
Then she did the most astonishing thing.
She whispered as I was leaving, “Don’t go home.”
Numb, I left the doctor’s and took exile on the trolley bus. I traveled for miles, it seemed, unsure of my destiny. Those were the days before rationing. Traveling then in a crowded trolley was still pleasant, before ersatz soap made every soul stink and ersatz butter made every body flatulent. No, to ride the streetcar then was to see happy productive people, to smell perfume and tobacco, and hear laughter. But none of that comforted me then. I was terrified and I rode for hours trying desperately to think of what to do. But where does one go when you are an ersatz human?
I went to make my plea to Wilfred Israel. He could not get me out. But to my relief, he was able to supply me with new papers. I was now a real German again, with papers going back to my great grandparents. With them, I took a job as my new Aryan self as a hatcheck girl at the Scala. And that is where I met you, my lover.
That is where I met you.
Stag rubbed his eyes and looked around. He was chasing mist, he told himself. First the haunting Isolda, then Red Riding Hood with her pale blue gloves and matching stare.
He threw some bills on the table and packed up. Heading to the elevator, he half-expected to see her standing at the concierge, or ensconced by the elephant fountain in her vintage suit. But she was nowhere.
He barely looked at the two special agents sent to watch him at the Adlon. It was imperative, Troost told him, that nobody know he was being watched. Now one agent sat in the Lobby Bar, studiously nursing a Coke, while the other nonchalantly rode in the elevator with him, making sure to observe him as he headed to his room, cardkey in hand.
He unlocked the door and heard the comforting sound of Sinatra being played on his sound system. Turndown service had prepared his room. He dropped his cardkey in the entrance.
And there she was.
Waiting for him in the beige deco chair, like a spectre greeting the dead at the entrance to a crypt.
For a long moment, he said nothing, simply stared at her. The hair had risen at the back of his neck. The only comfort he had was the fact that she’d had plenty of opportunity to take him out before now. If she hadn’t, it meant that she, too, was out for information. But for whom? He was going to find out.
“How did you get in here?” Captain Obvious. Sometimes he truly wondered how a little guy like him was going to survive against Tarnhelm.
She looked to the bed. Draped there was a maid’s smock with the Adlon logo. She must’ve slid by Interpol dressed as the help.
Easy to ignore the powerless, he thought.
He noted how calm she appeared, her legs crossed and slung to the side, one hand resting lightly on a silenced Walther PPK that was casually placed on the table next to her, the other hand cradling the fresh white rose that had been left in a bud vase next to his bed at turndown.
“Who the fuck are you?” He saw no point in vacillating. “And why are you interested in me?”
“You’re an interesting man, Mr. Maguire,” she answered, her accent cultured, painfully neutral. British, perhaps, with a trace of Eastern Europe. “Truthfully, you interest me, regardless.”
“Regardless of Tarnhelm?” he shot back.
“Regardless.”
“You’ve attracted some interest too,” he said. “Interpol asked about you.”
She didn’t look surprised. The intelligence in her eyes was only eclipsed by her cynicism. He took note of the worn vintage suit she wore this time, different than the last, but somehow the same. The deconstruction of it struck him. It jarringly reminded him of the aged clothing you would find on a corpse, but she was hardly corpse-like with her fine symmetrical features, her pink cheeks, and her curves beneath the lines of the suit. No, she was very much alive. Not some cold, dead shell that could harm no one. This woman breathed threat like an intoxicating perfume.
He thought about Je Reviens—I come back. Briefly, he believed in spirits.
“They told me you assassinated a NATO official for Tarnhelm.” Stag cut to the chase. “Then why the hell haven’t you put a bullet in me?”
“Killing you right now goes against their purpose. They want to know what information you have, Mr. Maguire. They will go to great lengths to find out.”
He met her eye. “What I have is mine alone.”
“You’ve rattled cages,” she said. “They will use all means. Means you can’t even guess at.”
He thought of Harry’s gruesome death. “I’m getting good at guessing.”
“Mr. Portier would like you to not have to guess.”
“I’ll be happy to have a nice long discussion with Portier.”
She shook her head. “You won’t have a long one.”
“He’ll see me dead first, I imagine?”
“After he gets his information, you will be a dead man.” A brief empathy crossed her face. “Your wife would have probably preferred you retire with your money to some beautiful palazzo in Ibiza, Mr. Maguire, than martyr yourself for a dubious cause. I wonder if this is not the hill to die on.”
“Yeah?” He shifted in his seat and wondered briefly if he should introduce the P83 right now. “What’s the hill you would die on?”
The wariness lowered for a moment. Then she spoke with matter-of-factness. “There is only one hill. I have a child.”
“I don’t.”
“No.”
She knew about Holly’s pregnancy, too. He had to give it to Tarnhelm, they were thorough.
“How did they get Harry?”
“Ice needle, I imagine.” She stroked the silencer on the PPK with the fresh white rose.
“That’s why we couldn’t find a wound on him. The needle goes in and melts. Poison?”
She nodded. “Probably Micotil, a bovine antibiotic. Difficult to detect and causes heart failure in humans. It has a two-pronged hit. If the patient makes it to the hospital, the standard dose of epinephrine just speeds it along.”
He nodded. He hurt for Harry.
“Mr. Maguire—you’re only one man. You cannot fight Tarnhelm. Tell me what you know, and perhaps I can get them to call off the chase.”
“Bullshit. They murdered Harry. They’re never going to call it off on me.”
She conceded the point by pursing her lips. “If you tell me what it is you know—”
“Why don’t we start by you telling me what you know, such as what this big bad company is so afraid of?”
She looked at him with a grudging admiration. “You can’t threaten Tarnhelm. You’re not big enough. I know this very, very well.”
“Maybe not, but I can go for all the collateral damage I can.”
He swore she almost smiled.
“May I bring Mr. Portier a message? He’s anxious to hear from you,” she said.
“Tell him I’ll be calling him to meet with me as soon as I’m good and ready.” He gestured to the PPK. “Are we done?” he asked.
“I doubt it.”
She stood.
He instinctively stepped back. “What’s your stake in this? Money? Power? Or are you fucking Portier?” He waited for the reply.
“Good evening.” She handed him the white rose.
When she left, he swore he’d just seen a ghost.