THERE WAS NO pomp and circumstance for the meeting in Potomac. No black SUVs and limos, no mic-wearing men in suits. Just a lone figure in a chauffeur-driven Ford, pulling into the circular drive with all the status of an Uber arrival.
But Sadler made sure he waited for this man at the door. While he did not look as if he was due the status of diplomacy, the man was the Surrogate himself. In fact, if you saw him on the street, with his handsome, youthful face and crisp blue blazer, you’d dismiss him as a baby lawyer—just another Damien all grown up from The Omen and now working for an investment bank. But, like Hitler’s crippled dwarf of propaganda, what you might dismiss could be fatal.
When the two men settled in his office, Sadler waited for him to be the first to speak.
“As we discussed, he invested heavily in a billionaire’s suburb outside of Moscow. Every oligarch has a place in his Sputnik Luxe in Barvikha. Every. Oligarch,” he said with meaning.
“How heavily?” Sadler asked.
“Fifty.”
Sadler knew this meant billion. Fifty billion.
“They’re calling in his loans. He’s terrified. He won’t eat; he won’t drink. He’s convinced they’re going to sneak polonium in his Diet Coke, and you know how he feels about his hair. Fuck. If he loses that …”
This, Sadler thought, from the man who once pointed at his head and told the world, “I have a very, very good brain. The best brain.” Like he wanted to be rewarded with a cookie.
“He’s going to need diapers soon, he’s so freaked out,” the Surrogate said.
“The man just has to put his name on everything, doesn’t he?” Sadler commented acidly.
“No US banks would do business with him. He had no choice but to chum up with the Russians. Then, after he orchestrated the deal with Rosneft, he flooded the oil market, and Tesla sealed his doom with their new battery. Now this over-the-top suburb is being abandoned like rats off a sinking ship. The default rate is breathtaking.”
“Therefore in order to pay the loans …”
“He wants total destruction of the community. It’s the only way to get the insurer Allianz to pay him—and more importantly, to pay off his loans.”
“We can guarantee total destruction. Certainly.”
“It needs to look like Daesh. Act of God. All that stuff. Or Allianz won’t pay.”
“Of course.”
The Surrogate paused. “You know we’re not looking for a lot of casualties here. Just property destruction.”
“Complete property destruction is impossible without collateral casualties. Certainly, we could destroy a compound or two safely, but an entire suburb? With plausible deniability? No.”
“What do you suggest?”
“We have a unique opportunity on the horizon. May I get you a drink and explain it to you? I think this is just what your man is looking for.” Sadler rose and went to the bar to make the drinks.
Angelika Aradi took a seat at the bar. Below her sandaled feet, a beautiful spotted cat shark slid by beneath the glass floor. The Bali Orchid was a spectacular tiny resort with private over-the-water bungalows and the best chefs from four continents. Maguire picked well. She would have to remember the place. She ordered a gin and tonic.
She bet that he would stay in the hotel instead of taking a tuk-tuk into Kuta. He was nothing but problems for her. First and foremost, he was not a dupe. Lonely men subject to flattery were easy prey, particularly for a woman, but Maguire was a different species. To get to him, you had to get to his mind first. All of which was proving far more difficult than anyone imagined.
She thought of Portier’s expression when they’d last Skyped. She’d never seen him as angry and frustrated as he was then. Maguire was getting the best of everyone.
A Chinese man walked by her and said in Mandarin, “Pillow lace,” referring to her blond hair. She took a deep sip of her drink, and pondered the world’s fascination for hair. It was nothing but a mass of dead strands, and yet men went mad for it, the blond kind especially, and Asian men in particular.
But there was only one color of hair that she cared about. Nothing made her think of her duty more than seeing hair—or rather the stark lack of it—on her four-year-old’s head. When Genevieve had been desperately sick, she’d read to her over and over again, The Velveteen Rabbit. Until you were used and worn and loved, you cannot be Real. Angelika looked down at the fraying of the white cuff of her linen suit. It was why she was drawn to vintage. The clothes had become Real after all this time. Each moth hole, each deconstructed lapel, told a story. And now, after the ordeal of Genevieve’s sickness, she and her daughter had their story. They had become Real.
Angelika was wild about the thick dark brown locks that now covered her child’s head. No fraying or deconstruction there any longer.
But there was a limit to it. Like the world itself, you could not pull the stuffing from the Velveteen Rabbit, leave it like an abandoned cicada shell, and expect it to revive.
Her only choice in this life was to stay focused on hair. She would calm her nerves with gin and her daughter’s fine health, and she would tread this tightrope for now, letting Tarnhelm know she would do her duty.
You have sent your bomb into hiding. What schemes are you working on? Are you hiding it from the Führer or the Wehrmacht? Or both? You give me no clues, so I wait here, hoping my messages get through. But with all your diamonds surrounding me, I fear I will be unable to do anything until the end.
As much as I want to live, I no longer dream it’s possible. The Jews are not long for this earth, and as one of them, I think it is my fate to join them. I suspect I have been seen by a Jew catcher and identified. Many U-boats when they get rounded up by the Gestapo turn Jew catcher. One can never predict who will stick by his fellow man and who will be traitor. Or did you intercept one of my letters to Shulte? I don’t know and no longer have the luxury to care. I have no delusions about your sudden coolness.
I want you and the world to know one thing at the end: Even though there was no hope or dignity to my situation, I created those things anyway. It was my intention to pick this horrible book and write upon it. I pray my words break the words printed inside, and that my words may live and tower above the madness that is rich upon every printed page.
People will wonder in the future why we Jews did not fight more when we were staring down the barrel of a gun or standing in the shadow of the gas chamber. It is because we have looked into the eyes of man whose soul is so dark and deep, we no longer wish to remain within his vision. It tells us things about our own humanity we did not wish to know. And when one is naked and broken, there is no longer any ability to deny it. It is a disease of the human heart. It has nothing to do with Germans and Jews. Until we as humans stand up and say, “I will not do this,” then it will happen again. And again.
In the end, I tell you, my evil Hangman, my Butcher of Prague, my Blond Beast, the joke is on you. For it is purest salvation to remove one’s clothes and stand peacefully in line that we may escape that stare. Death is preferable. A mercy like none other.
I will go peacefully too. For I understand the horror of that stare well by now. In my dying moment, I shall cling to the memory of my parents. And to that shadow figure of hope, my unrequited love, the man who never arrived; the man who does not need his shirt. Perhaps in the end I will finally have a clear vision of the children that were never to be. I don’t know if what I have done has helped the survival of the Jews, but in the end, this fight is not about the Jews anyway. It is for the survival of the human soul. There is still good inside me, in spite of all that I’ve been through. It is smaller now, but brilliant and less fragile. Truly and sincerely earned. My last words will be, “I will NOT do this.” And while this warrior will go meekly toward her demise, the good inside her proves she did not concede defeat. And that will be enough.