Nest of the Monarch

by Kay Kenyon

  Rauschning returned to claim his spot, as Peter from the Times began a story of the parties that were de rigueur in Istanbul, as proof of which someone named George Bennet had had to be carted home from a party in a wheelbarrow.

  By midnight Kim was making her excuses and bidding the table goodnight. She thanked Rachel for including her. Offers of rides sprang up, but she had begun to relish a quiet taxi back to Tiergartenstrasse 44.

  At the curb, the words came around again in orbit. Don’t let your heart lead you. It could have been advice straight from Julian, the type of thing a father would say to a daughter, and not what the head office would say to a male agent. In any case, whether Julian had been brought in to account for her or not, she had miscalculated. Still, she felt that Hannah should at least be interviewed.

  Kim’s mistake had been to suggest asylum; that had been rash, perhaps. London’s rebuke about her supposed emotionality suggested that she had not yet proven her operational judgment to them. It was her first foreign posting; she’d have to watch her step.

  But a thought nagged. Linz had said the authorities hunted her because she had protested the treatment of her family and other Jews. She wondered if that was the part the Office didn’t like, that she was Jewish. Otherwise why had the idea of extraction been so summarily dismissed? It might suggest a prejudice in the ranks of SIS against Jews. She could not believe it of her father, but the higher-ups?

  She had been standing at curbside for ten minutes without seeing a taxi. Just when she decided to return to the table to accept a ride, Captain Nagel emerged and looked down the street, nodding at a line of parked cars. Distracted. Well, his wife had left with another man.

  A low-slung black car with an arrow hood ornament pulled up to the curb. The driver hopped out, opening the door for the captain.

  Nagel turned to Kim. “Here, Frau Reed. You will get in.”

  Kim looked at the open car door. “I’m sure it’s not on your way.”

  Still, the door open, Nagel waiting. She approached, looking at the restaurant for a last-minute reprieve.

  He waited, expressionless. The gold-threaded insignia on his collar glinted. A bird with a bald head, a long neck. A vulture.

  Nothing left but to join him. “Danke, Captain Nagel. Very good of you.”

  Once they were settled in the car he murmured to the driver, “Tiergartenstrasse vierundvierzig.” Tiergartenstrasse number 44. They pulled away from the curb. So he knew her address.

  The car sped out of the little neighborhood with its smart shops and eateries. In two turns they entered a cramped residential street, darker despite the occasional gaslight standard. Nagel sat in shadow, black uniform against the black glass, the dark upholstery.

  “I hope I won’t put you too far out of your way.”

  Silence. No response to the niceties, then. “How do you know where I live?” She didn’t turn to look at him. In the dark there would be no point.

  “I do not forget details.” In heavily accented English. The car sped down a side street, the neighborhood shabbier now, with old five-story apartment buildings. On the front stairs, boxes and sacks, possibly garbage. “I notice your husband does not come with you so late at night. This despite that you have been on honeymoon after your marriage twenty-seven days ago.”

  How very specific. She had been noticed here after all. “I am used to my independence, though.” As is your wife, Captain.

  “A city that is new to you, a new husband. All very convenient. Perhaps rushed?”

  High alert kicked in. It was one thing if the Gestapo checked on foreign diplomats, but quite another if the SS took an interest. Schutzstaffel. Fanatically ideological, brutal. “It does feel rather exciting. I have always wanted to see Berlin.”

  As a light rain fell, sequins of light glittered and streaked on the side windows. They crossed a bridge into a neighborhood of stucco homes with ornamental balconies.

  “I notice,” Nagel suddenly said, “that you have an interest in my wife.”

  “I don’t think so. We have just met.”

  “At the embassy you are sitting with her in the salon. Then at table as well.” His voice lacked inflection. Perhaps he did not care; this was his way of making conversation.

  She wanted to say that Sonja had chosen to sit with her both times, but he must already know this.

  He went on. “And again, tonight, ja?”

  With some effort, she kept her voice chatty and casual. “Not really. I didn’t know she was at the restaurant.”

  Her fingers were clutching her bag rather hard, and she relaxed them. The man was exceedingly peculiar.

  “You are not English like your husband, but American,” he murmured.

  “Yes. I was vacationing in Portugal when I met him.”

  The car passed under the S-Bahn as a train clattered overhead. “I know this.”

  “You do not forget details.” The light riposte fell dead.

  They were on a major street—the Hohenzollern? She tried to remember if she had taken it getting to the restaurant. She began to wish for some landmarks. Where, in fact, were they headed?

  “Or perhaps it is Air Minister Göring?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Air Minister Hermann Göring.”

  “I did hear you, but I don’t know why you think I am interested in him.” Did he think that she was spying on Göring through his mistress?

  If so, they might well not be heading to the Tiergartenstrasse.

  “My husband has meetings with party officials. I, of course, do not.” She keenly felt how tenuous was the protection of the consulate when she was in an unmarked car with a Nazi who might have peculiar ideas of his authority.

  She didn’t recognize the smaller street they had just turned onto. “Are you saying, Captain, that I should not speak to your wife? I would like to be clear.”

  “Sonja!” he growled. And with that utterance, he slammed his fist down on the seat in front of him. It shuddered under the crushing blow and sagged, remaining crooked. A sprinkling of dust settled to the floor. The driver did not react. Venomously, Nagel said again, “Sonja. . .” and looked like he might ram his fist through the window.

  Kim held her breath. They rode in silence for a few minutes as she tried to calm herself. Now she was desperate to identify the buildings they were passing, or the streets. Overhead, the S-Bahn passed in and out of view, over and over.

  At last Nagel’s surprisingly modulated voice came to her. “You admire your American leader, Herr Roosevelt?”

  It was a shock to find his demeanor had snapped back to modulated. Kim found her voice. “Well. I live in England now.”

  “I know this. But you have esteem for him.”

  She feared another outburst and tried to soothe it over. “One respects the leaders of government, or one tries, Captain.”

  He snorted. “Despite that he is a crippled man. His body, failing him.”

  At last she recognized where they were, on the boulevard Kurfürstendamm, full of people, normal people, on the sidewalks, in motorcars. They passed the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church with its steep spires. The path home, surely.

  “So?” he persisted.

  “I do admire him. Many people do not. I take it you do not.”

  “Admire?” Now, in the light from the headlights of the many vehicles, she saw that he was smiling, his mouth wide. It was a gaping grin that she had never before seen on a person’s face. Strange was not the word for him. Mad?

  “My life . . . ,” he began, pausing so long she did have to look over at him. He was not smiling, so that his face relaxed into a more normal aspect, his hair slicked back from his high forehead, a few strands curling at his neck.

  “My life,” he went on, “it is in service of the monarch.”

  She paused. “The Führer, do you mean?”

  The car pulled in front of the familiar wrought-iron fence. Number 44. “I said.”

  But you didn’t say Führer, sh
e thought. The driver came to open her door, leaving the car running.

  “Thank you so much for the lift, Captain Nagel.” She was pleased to hear her voice steady and smooth.

  He nodded to her, and they made eye contact for the first time that evening. His gaze was even and blank, as though for him this had all been quite routine.

  “A very great pleasure,” he said without intonation. Someone must have taught him phrases he could use so as not to utterly offend and appall.

  When she stepped out of the car, the driver shut the door and returned to his place behind the wheel.

  Standing on the pavement in front of the house, she took in a long, deep breath. The air, silken and pure from the rain. As the car sped away, she clicked open the gate and entered the portico, shaken.

  And also deep in thought. Monarch, that word again. My life in service to the monarch. In a spike of excitement, she considered that it might be a word he very much wished to hide. A spill.

  Albert opened the door as though he had been waiting.

  12

  THE AERIE, BAVARIAN ALPS

  FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 27. The blankets held Irina in a suffocating embrace. “Devils! Devils!” she cried, but as her face was covered with dusty brocade, it came out only as a wooly scream. Finally waking, she gasped for breath, fighting with the covers that held her arms pinned to her sides. “Damn you forever!”

  “Your Majesty . . .”

  A broad, flushed face stooped over her, trying to push her back into the sea of covers. Irina thrashed in protest.

  “Your Majesty, you dream. It is nothing but a dream.”

  With one final heave, Irina pushed the coverlet from her sweating body. Cool air flowed over her hands and feet. She could breathe again. Light pierced the room from the bedside lamp where Polina hovered.

  It was the Aerie, her refuge.

  “Your Majesty, shall I—”

  “Be silent.” The terrors of the dream. Always the filthy pillow over her face, the shouts, the smell of gunpowder, the soldiers tearing at her underclothes.

  The nightgown stuck to her hot skin. She began peeling out of it, with Polina tsk-tsking, but helping. “Get me a dress and cloak.”

  “The middle of the night, Majesty . . .”

  “Do it, you old fool.” The emotions of the dream clung to her. Only one thing helped on nights like this. Evgeny Feodorovich. He would help her banish the dream, the power of the stinking soldiers, what they did, over and over.

  She was halfway out the back door of the chalet before Polina had found her own cloak and rushed up, preparing to accompany her. Irina turned to Polina. “No. I go alone.”

  “But Majesty, the—”

  “—the middle of the night. Yes, yes, so you have said. Stay with Kolya.” Polina had been the chambermaid to her aunt, the Grand Duchess Tatiana Nazarova, and for Aunt Tanya’s sake—she who had starved to death in a Bolshevik prison—Irina had taken on Polina. Another link to the times before. Some days she wished that the nagging creature had never found her way to Germany.

  She emerged into the garden, cold and smelling of wet earth. By the sallow light of the quarter moon she padded her way past the frost-blackened vegetable garden with its small storage shed, the bird feeder on its pole, crusted with snow. Thirty meters farther on, the gun emplacements with machine guns aimed at the road. In the plaza, a sentry recognized her, coming to attention. The guards had seen her take this path before, of a night, the path to the cabins.

  The cold swirled around her, under her gown and cloak, down her neck, but she relished it. Holy Mother of Christ, how she abhorred confinement and the deathly, gagging heat.

  Up the rise of the little path she saw smoke drifting from Evgeny’s chimney.

  He waited for her under the deeply sloping eaves of his front door. Her heart lifted to see, once again, how he foresaw things; that she was approaching at this dark hour. She joined him at the little porch.

  “You knew.”

  “As always, Irinuska.” Evgeny’s gnarled hand pushed open the door, and they entered. A fire groaned and spit in the fireplace. It was a stark and simple cabin by her standards, but they had lived in filth and hovel and muddy field. This was like a palace to him.

  Throwing off her cloak, she sat in the chair he reserved for her.

  He brought tea laced with vodka and placed the steaming cup in her hand. Taking nothing himself, he sat in the wingback chair, facing her. He wore the formal dress of the old days, with waistcoat, a jacket with broad lapels, and a cravat. “No one sleeps tonight,” he said.

  “What, no one?” She smiled, warming to his presence, to the beloved sound of Russian words.

  He looked up to the rafters, squinting. His voice was very soft. “Owls and mice. Can you hear them flapping? Skittering?”

  She hoped he was not going to have one of his spells, where he saw impossible things, or spoke of true things, but in riddles. “Is this what you hear, Evgeny Feodorovich? Do you hear owls?”

  “Da, Irinuska. The owl. He sweeps down, his shadow falling across the prey below. On the staircase.”

  What staircase? What owl? She let it pass. If it was important, he would speak of owls again.

  He sat back, gazing at her, scratching his white beard. The firelight made deep shadows of his face, but she did not need to see his features, so familiar they were to her.

  Evgeny Feodorovich had been her protector through the fallen days, the fallen years. He had foreseen when the soldiers would come, and so they had slipped away just ahead of them. He had safely led her from one hovel to the next, one sunken, stinking village to the next, one starved farmyard to the next, and on through nine winters of Russia. Except once. His vision was not perfect.

  Still, in those days he had protected her with his forward vision. Now she no longer needed protection from the Reds, but merely—oh, merely!—a glimpse of a happy future. Or if her future could not be happy, then Kolya’s future. So that she could sleep.

  “Tell me something, Evgeny. Something of comfort.” Something that would expunge memory that had clung to her over the years: the sight of ugly faces rocking over her, rocking . . . “If you do not, I cannot sleep. I think of the fallen days. And the . . .”

  “Yes. The pillow.”

  She held his gaze. He knew how it was with her.

  “On Saturday, you said . . .”

  He stood, suddenly agitated. “I say what I see! And then it is gone.” He paced the room, throwing open the curtains and peering out. “I cannot remember what I say, and I cannot repeat for you like a schoolmaster.”

  “But you do remember some things you have seen. You do.”

  He darted a look into the shadowy corners, his brow furrowing deeply. “They scratch and scramble. The mice. Dirty, scrambling things.”

  Ah, Evgeny, my friend. It was sad to see his mind in this condition. The doctors said it was a dotage of the very old, senility. True, he was eighty-six years old, but it was terrible to see his sharp mind so enfeebled. Every time they had a good conversation, she hoped it meant he had regained his faculties, but he faded in and out. She sighed. “And that is all you have to say, about mice and owls?”

  “It is everything. The owl looking down from his perch, he will stoop and kill. But the tsarevich—”

  “Kolya?” She leaned forward. She must know if he saw Kolya’s future. “Yes, Evgeny. The tsarevich?”

  A knock at the door.

  “My son . . . ,” she pleaded. “What do you see?”

  Evgeny’s eyes rolled far up, his eyelids fluttering with the effort of foretelling. “He is there. He takes his prey.”

  What did he mean? “Kolya is victorious?”

  The knock again.

  Evgeny snarled, “Open the door. Maybe it is the old tsar, come to take away your crown.”

  Oh, that he would say such a thing to her. But it was not Evgeny at his best. “Enter!” Irina called.

  The door opened; Stefan stood on the threshold. “Forgi
ve me if I intrude, Your Majesty.”

  “Stefan,” Irina said, relieved to see her adjutant, now that Evgeny had turned cruel. She rose.

  Evgeny muttered, “Stefan is not his name. A man should have his own name.”

  She gathered her cloak and Stefan came forward to put it around her shoulders. “Evgeny Feodorovich is tired,” she said. “We shall leave him.”

  Stefan nodded a bow and led her from the room. At the little stoop, the cold wrapped her in a numbing embrace and she drew up the hood of her cloak. As they walked down the path with its cabins and stunted fir trees, Evgeny threw open his door and shouted after them. “The owl!”

  Yes, I hear you, my friend. The owl.

  She and Stefan walked in silence toward the plaza. His cane thunked on the icy pavement with every step, reminding her that she should not have been the cause of this long walk to the cabins. Even after seven months, his leg was still healing.

  “Evgeny Feodorovich does not like your name,” Irina said.

  “It only matters that you prefer it.”

  She looked up at his remarkable profile. “I like Stefan. It is more Russian.”

  “It is good that one of the names my parents gave me pleases you.”

  He pleased her on many levels. On all levels, except one. For his service, she had bestowed on him an honorary knighthood, the Order of Stanislaw, which Hitler allowed. Some in Hitler’s service did not like the trappings of nobility. It mattered only to be loyal to the Führer. But blood did matter. It was why she was the successor to the Russian throne, and after her, Nikolai. She did not know the name of her son’s father, one of the Cossack brigands who had forced her, but she had named Nikolai for the old tsar. Her blood made him royal.

  “I did not think you were here, Stefan. You had gone to Berlin.”

  “I arrived late and could not pay my respects.”

  “You did not find her?”

  “No.”

  The street-fighter woman who had booby-trapped his motor vehicle. And oh, his terrible injury. Worse, it was not even in service, in battle, but at the hands of a Jew. It could not go unavenged.

  In the gaslit plaza, they walked past the booth that formed the entrance to the lift in its five-hundred-foot shaft. Guards at this post saluted them.