“STAG, WE’VE GOT to get the board to meet with you,” Duffy said. “Tarnhelm doesn’t want your evidence to appear. It would connect them to the bomb, to Heydrich, to the resurrected SD. Perhaps they’ll be anxious to get that loose end tied up.”
“They can spin the bad PR. They don’t need me for anything other than to up their body count.”
“If we could get the board, their chain of command might be interrupted,” said the admiral.
“I’d like nothing more than to orchestrate another board meeting. Hell, I’ve been planning to orchestrate another meeting all along. They owe me money,” Stag snorted. “But I can’t think of a way to get them to meet me now. Perhaps if they thought there was another bomb …”
Duffy stared. The admiral stared.
Stag shrugged. “No, there’s no second bomb that I know about.”
“They don’t know that.” The admiral motioned to his aide. “If we can put together the evidence for a second bomb, perhaps they’ll take the meeting.”
“Maybe.” Stag thought of the broken wall and closet in the apartment. With all Tarnhelm’s obsessive need to keep the apartment intact as possible, they overlooked the obvious omission. Tunnel vision always has a terrible blind spot. “They know I have more information than they do. That apartment they’ve been keeping connects them to Heydrich. The bomb connects them to the SD.”
“Contact them. We’ll provide the deza. Tarnhelm is an information and security service. They’re most afraid of what they don’t know.”
Stag nodded. “Sure. No problem. I’ve got my ticket to Bali now.”
“Bali? Why the hell are you dragging this to Bali?” the admiral demanded.
“I like it in Bali,” Stag offered obliquely. “Besides, Bali’s not a target by anyone on this list. They may actually meet me if I go there.”
“Plan your meeting. Maybe they’ll sit on this bomb long enough for us to get a bead on its whereabouts.” Duffy looked down at his phone.
The encryption read: In Zug.
“Our agent is back in the fold,” Duffy said with some relief in his voice. “Now we’ll wait for them to do their work.”
Or her work, Stag thought, his mind on the bomb, and that hole in Angelika’s sweater that needed golden repair.
Stag arrived in Berlin by NATO plane. He slipped quietly back into the Airbnb apartment he and Jake had left, all the while on edge, waiting to see if Tarnhelm would respond to his request. Waiting to see if the news crawl reported a horrific nuclear incident …
The apartment felt like he’d been there a lifetime ago instead of a couple of days. After the autopsy was completed, Jake’s body would be sent back to his daughter in Wuttke, no questions answered, many, many questions asked. The daughter would collect it, never knowing the events that had cascaded since that night at Gerde’s and the fateful fluttering of that white silk.
He looked down at his phone. A text had arrived. It was now time for a most important meeting.
Stag and Kronbauer were the only mourners in attendance at the grave in the old Dorotheenstadt Cemetery. Isolda’s coffin was lowered into the ground as a rabbi read a prayer. Each man in turn took a shovel of earth and poured it on top of the wooden lid.
Kronbauer was the first to speak. “The local chevra kadisha was willing to prepare the body. But without further divulgences, I had no way to get her into Weißensee, the Jewish cemetery. I can’t prove she was a Jew. I can’t even prove that was her real name.”
He looked down at the tombstone already to be placed.
It said:
Isolda Varrick
Never Forgotten
“How have you been able to hide her from Tarnhelm?” Stag asked.
Kronbauer snorted. “I’ve done everything I can. The wall has been repaired to exacting specifications, but one can never be sure what they know. They are masters at information control. And they know about everything, it seems.”
Stag looked down at the tombstone. He thought of Harry, wondering what he would have made of this strange adventure he’d been on since his death. He would have taken Isolda’s demise hard. The look into the mirror of his ancestry would have been a lot for him. Maybe it was best Harry was gone. A tender mercy.
Kronbauer swept his hand at the old graves. “But here, here she is in good company. Those of the Resistance are all around: Bonhoeffer and Dohnanyi have memorials here, and many of the failed 20 July 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler are buried here. They were shot by the SS in a park just down the way.”
“I’m surprised there was room. The place looks full.”
“It is full. This is my family plot you see here.”
Stag finally saw the names on the graves alongside Isolda.
“That one there?” Kronbauer pointed to the grave beside her. “He was my grandfather. Her mausebär.”
“He was SD. She was a Jew. Is it right that he should be next to her?”
Kronbauer’s shoulders seemed to carry the weight of the world. “He was in love with her. And in the end, I believe, he grappled with salvation. Perhaps, if she can view her placement here as less than an insult than a plea for mercy, she may redeem him.” He stared at his grandfather’s grave for a long time. “You know, they say the past no longer exists. But that is not true. The past is a maze, and we are stuck in it.”
He then began in German the Lutheran version of the Old Testament Priestly Blessing:
The Lord bless you and keep you;
The Lord make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.
“And give you peace,” Stag repeated, his heart heavy with thoughts of the past. And now, the future.