Kurt settled the last of Erika’s suitcases in the trunk of the car, paused, and looked down at the compartment’s contents. There were four cases made of battered cardboard and vinyl, two for Erika and two for Ferret. Little enough to show for a pair of lives. Kurt shut the lid with a solid thunk and felt a curtain come down inside himself.
His attention fastened on a newly erected billboard that towered above the road and the colonel’s shabby cottage. It proclaimed in giant letters and bright colors the wonders of a certain washing powder. He smiled without humor, compared the capitalist slogan with those of his Communist days. The colors and words were different, but the intent was more or less the same as far as he could see—to convince the unbeliever that something was true. Were they lies? Kurt kicked at the icy ground, remembered a lesson from his early training—the easiest lie to sell was the one wrapped in a covering of truth.
“We’re Building the Germany of Our Dreams.” That one had been a favorite during his teen years. For a time it had been plastered almost everywhere. The propagandists had slapped it across acres of buildings. They had competed over who could erect the largest billboard, all in red and white and fiercely, angrily proud. Then had come “There Is One Germany and We Are All Working for Her Development.” As prophetic a statement as he had ever heard, although perhaps not in the form the propagandists had intended. The year before the Wall fell it had been, “Our Ambition Is a Strong and Unified Socialist Germany.” Take out the word socialist, and the ambition had come true.
Ferret scuttled from the cottage. He nodded to the colonel leaning against the doorpost and said something Kurt could not hear. The colonel made no response. Ferret turned with a minute shrug and hurried down the muddy path. A battered overstuffed briefcase was clasped up close to his chest like a child with a favorite toy.
Ferret approached the car, stopped, and peered up at Kurt through the over-thick lenses. “You know the plan,” Ferret said. It was not a question.
“We have gone over it a dozen times,” Kurt replied. “More.”
“At this stage, I prefer repetition to mistakes.” Bundled within his oversized coat, Ferret looked more than ever like a bespectacled mole. “You will stay here—”
“And await your word,” Kurt interrupted, boredom fighting for place with irritation. “You will call if the amber is found.”
“When,” Ferret corrected. “When the amber is found, and when the agreement is made. Until that moment, you will not allow the colonel out of your sight.”
“Then I shall contact the Schwerin lawyer as we discussed, and then travel to Poland.” Kurt cast a sideways glance back to where the old man hunched in the house’s shallow doorway, out of the bitter dawn breeze. The colonel’s shanty stooped and swayed beneath its burdens of neglect and age.
Kurt watched the Ferret bundle himself into the passenger’s seat. He shut the door, nodded a farewell. Then he turned to where Erika waited by the hood of her car, the little plastic taxi sign now permanently removed. He said, “The final departure.”
“I never thought this day would come,” she replied. “After Birgit found the man, I still could not believe it was real. Even now I wonder.”
“That was her name?” Kurt asked. “Birgit?”
Erika had a momentary start, then saw his smile. “You made a joke.”
“A poor one.”
“It does not matter what you know now. We shall not return.”
“No,” Kurt agreed. “Any regrets?”
She looked out over the icy landscape, admitted, “Some.”
“I was not necessarily speaking of the departure,” Kurt said.
“Nor I.” Erika’s gaze returned to him. “Some nights I wonder if anything will ever come of all this.”
“Nights are the time for me to wonder how it will be to live the life of an alien.”
It was Erika’s turn to smile. “We have been that since the Wall’s collapse. It is our fate. The place we choose to reside no longer matters.”
He walked her around to the driver’s side, opened the door, said, “I also find myself wondering about our new residence.”
“Where do you think we shall go?”
Kurt pointed with his chin toward the waiting Ferret. “He likes Argentina. They’ve fifty years of experience in burying German records.”
“Nazi records, you mean.”
He did not deny it. “Ferret and I, we had contact with them once. Trying to get hold of old documents in another treasure hunt.”
“They did not help, did they?”
Kurt shook his head. “We kept the contact, though. The man let us know he could be used for buying other papers.”
“He said that?”
“Passports, drivers’ licenses, even birth certificates if the price was right.” Kurt lifted his eyes to tree boughs slumped beneath their loads of snow and ice. “At the time, of course, we saw no need for such things—”
“And never thought you would,” Erika finished, a wry bite to her words.
“And I suppose you had perfect vision when it came to such events.”
Her good humor remained. “Naturally. That is why I’m here.”
He subsided. “I suppose Buenos Aires would be an acceptable place to have been born.”
“Now that our own homeland is no longer,” Erika agreed, climbing in and starting the car. She reached for the door, said, “You know, I think I might just learn to like being rich.”