STAG MAGUIRE’S ACTIONS were suicidal, Angelika mused as she ended the session with Portier. Maguire was taking on way too much. While his audacity was impressive, there was no doubt in her mind they would kill him. Tarnhelm was now on the hook for twenty-five million. Portier told her they were paying it to buy time.
Now it was up to her.
She didn’t relish going forward. It was a tangle, for Maguire, for her. Her first assessment of Maguire as he walked past her in the Pariserplatz was that he was singularly unimpressive. His only distinction was he had a strange gait, stiff, like a propping horse. Maguire was a bit taller than average perhaps, his face clean-shaven, but his eyes possessed a certain wildness. When they looked around, they were a little too open, showing a sliver too much white. She remembered the last time she’d seen eyes like that. They belonged to a terrified Syrian mother trying to protect her child. They were the eyes of the hunted.
Inexplicably, Maguire had checked into the St. Regis in Bali. Luc had made some disparaging comment about Maguire already attempting to live like the nouveau-riche. Angelika wasn’t buying it. Maguire was no self-indulgent fool. It took more than a nice hotel to impress him. He was in Bali for another reason. He wasn’t taking a vacation now.
It was doubtful, however, that the weapon was in Indonesia. But his trip to the Königssee bothered her. It was a likely place for a Nazi secret. If Heydrich had a weapon that he wanted to keep to himself for strategic purposes, a nice salt mine was the place for it. It was logical that it had been moved there, secretly.
A car downstairs waited to take her to the plane that would take her to Bali. She didn’t know what her next move would be, but she did know Maguire was not staying at the Regis.
But for her, he would not be hard to find.
I wore your most spectacular diamond ring today. Everyone thought it was a ruby and a tiny one at that!But those who knew spoke of us in whispers, recounting the terrific fight you had with Goering over winning this ugly red stone. It looks like a small sparkling drop of blood on my finger. I didn’t know diamonds came in every color. You even told me of green ones tainted by uranium. You said when you win this war you will buy me two green diamonds, one for each ear, in order to look at them when we make love.
How like you to associate the beautiful things in life, Shubert and violin, your love for the rare and the beautiful, with that which is pure, and never see how they in themselves don’t translate goodness.
There is only Death and the Maiden in your world.
No meaningful grey. Only black and white. And red.
Sadler’s limo took the George Washington Memorial Parkway out of Reagan National Airport. He was almost home. All they had to do was cross the Potomac at the Beltway, and once in Maryland, head to River Road.
He opened the window of the limo and smelled the air. The Good Old USA never smelled so clean. To the left, was the spring green scent of the golf course at Avenel, and to the right, once they put Potomac Village behind them, he could just catch a whiff of horse manure. His thousand-acre farm and a good old-fashioned gallop through the sod fields would erase Zurich and uranium and that fucking Frenchman from his mind.
His phone rang. He wanted to throw it out the window and make the driver run over it again and again.
“What have you got?”
“There’s a blackout on his information. No one knows.”
Sadler angered. “Someone knows. His doctor knows.”
“There’s nothing. He has us locked out.”
“Good.”
“Good?” came the voice on the other end.
“Yes. If he doesn’t want us to know, it means it’s bad. Portier’s days as head of Tarnhelm are numbered.”
“Perhaps. Or he’s just fucking with us. That’s been known to happen in this organization.”
Sadler grunted and ended the call. The fieldstone gates of the compound were coming up to the left. He suddenly realized he’d never been happier to be home in the good ol’ USA.
I want to tell you about my first kiss.
His name was Miki Bloch. Ah, that name! I still feel dreamy thinking it. He was tall and handsome. He was, perhaps, fourteen. We shared realshule in Berlin. My whole school day was devoted to getting a glimpse of him. He, of course, did not know I existed.
I was eleven. A nothing. A child.
But he, he was my lord and savior! I would daydream about holding hands with him and walking through the Tiergarten on blustery days when he would take off his coat and wrap me in it because I was littler than he, and a lady. How I ached to be noticed! But I was invisible. I met his mother once while waiting in line for my father to pick me up. She was short and fat and, to think of it now, homely, but a truly beautiful woman, if the truth were told! She was always laughing, always happy to know you, always kind. I was grateful she spoke to me. I was Nobody, and here was Miki Bloch’s mother telling me how she had just baked some berlinerkranser, and if she’d known she’d be waiting with such a nice young girl, she’d have brought some for me!
I was beside myself with joy. Every day when she should see me in line after that, she would wave and call out my name. How delightful she was… Then one day, I was in the schoolyard, bouncing my rubber ball, and Miki Bloch walked by. I was so shocked by his sudden appearance, all I could do was grip my ball and back away, into a flower bed where I fell right on my bottom. Utter ruin! He laughed at me, but then came over to ask if I could use some help getting up. I nodded, and he bent down.
The most amazing thing happened then. He bent close to take my hand and I acted as if I was no longer myself, but a fiery princess overcome by a magic spell. I pressed my mouth on his and closed my eyes.
Then the worst. No magic kiss, no fairy tale. He drew back as if I’d just slapped him. Horror came over his expression. He pulled me up and walked away in embarrassment.
I died of mortification. It was the defining moment of my first walk into womanhood, and I was crushed.
I wish I could meet him again. I wish we could drink martinis at Harry’s and laugh about our innocence, perhaps even hold hands now as friends. If he was still the boy I remember, perhaps I could daydream of being his wife, of seeing to his dinner and his socks, with great domesticity and tenderness.
I bought a smock today in the market. I use old men’s shirts from the rag merchant since I go through so many. Painting is messy. I brought the shirt home, and as I handed it to my maid to wash, I noticed the black threads on the left shirtfront. They were still there, sewn into the white cotton. The shape of a Star of David. Another Jew who does not need his shirt.
You said to me today in your oddly high-pitched voice that you were sending a diamond over to the apartment until things settled down in Berlin. I dared not question what is unsettled in Berlin. But you told me I am to stay home, for my own sake.
The Gestapo has such talents for torture. So I think of Hans, and Miki Bloch, and the man who does not need his shirt.
I wonder when I shall become the woman who does not need her dress.