by Kay Kenyon
Watching the new generation rise up.
Julian found himself in the atrium, donning his wool coat, brushed dry, soon to take another drubbing from the London weather.
Unfurling his umbrella on the steps, he considered whether to get a cab home or walk to a pub.
A pub, then.
BERLIN
THAT AFTERNOON. Hannah squinted into the mirror, satisfied that she didn’t recognize herself.
Her hair, chopped short. Eyebrows drawn heavily in, dark slashes over her shaded eyelids. Glasses that she had bought at a street market. The world was blurry seen through this pair, but not as bad as some. The trick in disguises was not so much looking different than you normally did, but in looking ordinary.
Putting the glasses in her pocket for now, she checked her shopping list. Sturdy boots and an alpine ski jacket. Heavy wool pants and socks. Ski gloves and hat. It would be a challenge to buy these things as well as a truck with the cash that Fivel had given her. She would have to shop carefully. The stashes of money in the Oberman Group hideouts would by now be in Nazi hands.
Of the Oberman Group, only she and Fivel were left of those willing to fight openly. After Franz, Micha, Leib, and presumably Zev died, the others had melted away. Maybe they were right to disappear. She remembered the terror: the sudden crash through the kitchen door, the guns flashing. Armed resistance was over, at least for their merry band of Jews in Berlin. Perhaps there were other groups. If there were, she wished them luck.
And now, getting to the Aerie. From Tolzried, she must go the long way around to the lake in the forest.
One more expense she must undertake: her ticket to Miesbach. Two way, for appearances, for her cover of a skiing holiday at a local lodge where skis could be rented.
She was prepared for the worst, that the English would not send a plane. Did they believe that she was a catalyst? Would they risk the possibility of losing a Talent like hers? It was impossible to know how they thought or what they thought.
If the British did not show up, then she and Kim must use the service road, a road that was sometimes used for ice fishing at the lake. But it must be a sturdy truck, and at the right price in Miesbach. If they escaped cleanly, they would be miles away before the SS could hope to catch them on the main highway. If something went wrong and they didn’t have an hour or so head start, they would be captured. Then they must kill a few Nazis before killing themselves. She didn’t know if Kim would be able to do it, but Hannah would make sure Kim was dead before she turned the gun on herself. There were worse ways to die. Such as how Zev had no doubt died under questioning.
So many dead. And worst of all, her father . . . and on the flickering screen the terrible face of the vulture, Lieutenant Becht, with the scar bisecting the right side of his face.
Staring at herself in the mirror, she saw a face with no reaction. The dead did not need her sympathy, only justice. She would not call it revenge, a word used when people wished to shame you for bringing down consequences on villains.
What she was doing was not wrong. What was wrong: the people of her country allowing criminals to head government and managing to feel righteous about it.
The top buttons of her coat were missing. A scarf looped around her neck closed the gap. She pulled a knit cap on, recounted and folded the last of the money into a sock, and stuffed it in her pocket.
Yesterday, after feeding the real Nora Copeland in the basement hideaway, she had told Fivel where to go to release the American. He would do so the day after Christmas. Hannah would have preferred eliminating her but she had promised Kim the woman would go free.
She wondered what Kim was doing at this moment. If she had passed the intake interview. If she had made contact with Tannhäuser. How she was handling that unnatural state of brightness that seemed to be the condition of those who accepted a catalyst ’s touch. Whether she would be too unnerved by the strange landscape of her own mind.
Kim would not lose her courage. The time for cowardice had been on the way to the train station to meet her Nazi contact. Before she met Luther, Kim could have bought a ticket to anywhere.
Not that this was the reason Hannah had followed them and watched them board the right train. But on the other hand, no sense going to the lake for nothing.
39
THE AERIE
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 20. It was her third day in the compound, and SS Lieutenant Voegler was going over the floor plan of the American embassy in Paris. Kim tried to pay attention, but her thoughts were on Captain Adler. She’d spent a sleepless night worrying about him. He was not happy to have her here. He was afraid.
“You are listening, Copeland?” Voegler, a thin man with a monocle, went back to the diagram of the embassy’s first floor, where she would be placed as a receptionist. A spy.
A notebook at her side contained the backup, the legend, for yet another new identity that she would assume. It had been arranged that she would be rapidly promoted to offices where she would come into contact with high-level officials. She would have social interaction. Very social, if possible. They would spill intelligence to her. Kim learned that the US embassy had a Nazi mole, one who could arrange a job for her.
She was pretending to concentrate on this tutorial, but her mind was elsewhere. Evgeny said there would be blood, her blood. Adler had said the old man was senile. Why should she worry about an old White Russian whose mind was gone?
“Perhaps you did not sleep well last night?” Voegler’s right eye, where he wore the monocle, looked larger than the left. She had an unsettling fancy that the eye with the monocle might discern more, might see past her deceptions. A bizarre notion; she carefully reined herself in.
“Please excuse me, Lieutenant. I am paying attention.”
He collected his papers; his face reflected a thwarted efficiency. “Come back tomorrow. Memorize the notebook, ja?”
“Ja, Lieutenant. I will do a good job tomorrow.” He dismissed her.
In the hallway, the commotion of the operational offices, the corridor full of uniforms. Two SS, watchful, left off a conversation and watched her as she passed. Businesslike, she kept her head down, clutching her notebook, striding for the door. She nodded at two men she had seen walking down from the men’s barracks this morning. No fraternizing. The clatter of typewriters issued from offices. Beyond, in the great dining hall, there came a deep drone of many voices.
The Nachkommen taking luncheon.
Pushing through the doors into the officer’s mess, she was hit by the strong smell of charred meat. Over one hundred men in uniform sat at tables. In their signature black they looked like crows settled over carrion. Despite herself, her mouth watered.
The Nachkommen talked among themselves, or some of them did. Not all these souls were beyond camaraderie; many were newly uplifted and did not yet have the characteristic distortions or social ineptitude. Here and there, faces turned to her, as though her steps were loud to their ears, her passing a bright spot of movement claiming instinctual attention.
There were more of them than she had thought. She quickly counted one table and multiplied: 136. And that was just the officer corp. Then there were the civilian Progeny. She couldn’t judge those numbers, since they ate in shifts. And some might already be at posts, having been augmented too recently to bear it again.
She thought of the Nachkommenschaft spreading out into the target countries. Hannah had said it was Russia, France, Poland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Belgium. Not England? Kim had asked. Hitler did not believe England would honor its treaties; no need to subdue them, not yet. On the Continent, the Nachkommenschaft would infiltrate all levels of government and the military, act as relentless assassins, enforce pro-Nazi ideas with physical and—Hannah had said—spiritual terror.
Looking at the assemblage of distorted beings ingesting their lunch, Kim knew how little it would take to instill that terror.
A man sitting close to the aisle looked up at her with sudden interest. His face
, a profound oval created by the lengthening of his forehead and chin. Despite having all the features of a man, he did not appear quite human. He looked exactly like the ghoul from Treptow. But she knew it could not be that man. It came to her that eventually all the Nachkommen looked like the same person, distilled down to the rarified essence of powers beyond human.
She was glad to make it into the hallway off the civilian dining room. The droning behind her diminished. She found herself in need of a deep breath. Took it. She passed the small civilian dining room. Empty for now.
As Kim passed the kitchen, she noted that Erika was nowhere in sight. Erika might not expect her to be done so early, or at least was not lurking in wait for her. Wrapped sandwiches lay on the pass-through counter, and she took one, planning to eat it in her room rather than risk another encounter with Evgeny.
Outside, workers were clearing ice from the concrete path, breaking it up with the blunt ends of shovels and pushing it to the side. The day had clouded over, dulling the chill of yesterday. It was cold, but not frigid. She decided to have her sandwich by the frozen fire pond. Even as cold as it was, it could be pleasant if she ate fast.
Sitting on a log, she buttoned her heavy jacket to her chin and picked up the top slice of bread, taking a look, hoping for ham. Egg salad. She set the sandwich in its wrapper aside. Blessedly empty of thought, she sat in the middle of this high mountain Nazi outpost, gazing at the pond’s ice lid. Yesterday’s wind had scoured the surface to silvery blue. At the far end, a hut stood with pipes extending into the water underneath the ice. Finally she ate her sandwich, since there would be nothing more until five.
How satisfying it was that the operation had gone so well to this point! But that train of thought could be dangerous. She was learning to be on guard for that pronounced sense of infallibility that was likely a Nachkommenschaft mind-set. But now there was just one more thing she had to do and then she would go home and face the music. The displeasure of the Office.
For now, her thoughts turned to the purification ceremony. An hour beforehand she would slice open the sanitary pad and layer the powder on her face and hands. Then she would stand in line and submit to the tsarina. For another augmentation. The effects would fade in time. But while she was in this nest of Nazis, she must temper her confidence. It could all spin out of control so easily.
Stuffing the wrapping paper in her coat pocket, she trudged through ankle-deep snow toward the path to the barracks.
As she began her walk up the hill, she heard a shout, and then laughter. A young boy was running from the woods on the path, waving a white paper and letting out whoops of joy. A man hurried after him. “Your Highness, walk please!”
The boy dashed down the path, and still thirty yards from Kim, he took a spectacular spill. His feet went flying out from beneath him, and as he fell, she heard the report of a gun and felt a bite in her shoulder. She sprawled backward in the snow, knocking her head against a rock.
She stared up at the sky, stunned. White sky. The sun, a yellow hole. The sound of voices far away. The snow, a nice cushion. She closed her eyes against the pain in her head, behind her eyes.
Boots came close, and someone knelt beside her.
“Is she dead?” In French.
“Non.” There was an SS officer bending over her. He said something in German to her.
“I am American.” Oh, was she supposed to admit that? Her thoughts, slow and cold.
The SS officer opened up her jacket and pulled it back. He turned to someone and spoke in French about shooting people.
“I help you now to sit up. You can do so?”
“I . . . think.”
With help, she managed to sit up. In front of her, a boy in a heavy pea coat topped by a Russian navy cap. He carried a target sheet full of holes. Her mind got traction, then. The tsarina’s boy.
Where she had lain, a smear of blood on the snow.
The officer helped her to her feet. By now there were several other soldiers as well as Erika standing nearby. The boy—Nikolai, she remembered—was bundled off, and two soldiers helped her up the walkway to the barracks.
In her room. A commotion about the bullet having passed through her jacket and plowing through a little of the muscle in her shoulder. Erika had a bandage and ointment to apply, and gradually the room emptied. She was allowed to lie for a few minutes in peace and quiet.
Soon an SS officer came in and examined her wound. Then he held a finger in front of her eyes and asked her what her name was and when she was born. To her horror, she started to give them her real birthdate. She caught herself, mumbling in confusion. After removing her temporary bandage, the doctor reapplied another, and sent Hilde off for a glass of juice. The officer left, leaving her with the prediction that she would live but should be more careful around the gun range.
Ah, so the story was changing. Her fault. Tsars did not make mistakes.
When the juice arrived, she thought it tasted like vinegar. “Please, Hilde, you can have it.”
Hilde said no, she couldn’t think of having the juice, but when Kim insisted, she looked at Kim with newfound devotion. The drink was soon gone. Erika stood to one side pursing her lips, wondering if this was against the rules. She decided it could be let go, perhaps because the future king of Russia had almost killed her roommate.
Hilde shook her head in disgust. “Running with a gun,” she whispered to Kim, her newfound friend.
But all Kim could think of was this is what Evgeny had seen. The one in uniform who would kill her. The boy in the naval cap. A slight turn of her body and he would have done so. She laughed to herself, a little ripple of sound in her chest. Evgeny had almost been right.
Hilde looked at her in perplexity. “You almost died!”
“I know.” She looked up at Hilde. “I’m not giggling a lot, am I?”
The woman shook her head, throwing a confused look at Erika, who shrugged.
She was awakened from a nap by loud voices in the room. Out the window she saw that dusk was coming on.
An SS guard said that she had to come with him. Immediately.
“But it was not her fault!” Hilde said.
Her right arm hurt from shoulder to elbow. She got up and reached for her jacket. The guard saw that it had blood on it. He snapped his fingers at Hilde, who handed over her own jacket.
Then they were almost goose-stepping down the path, the guard holding her left arm firmly so she wouldn’t fall. “Could we please go slower, Corporal?” she asked in German. You had to push back a little or, like Erika, they took you for prey.
“Nein.”
The clouds hung lower now, and the air smelled of woodsmoke from the officers’ cabins on the other side of the compound. In the plaza, the lights had come on, downward-facing lamps, perhaps to make it harder to see from the air.
As they crossed the plaza, a roar came from near the Great Hall. The corporal stopped for a moment, looking at a sudden commotion.
Two men were fighting outside the front entrance of the hall. One man, with all the markings of a Nachkomme, charged forward, bodily lifting the other man. He hurled him against the porch railing. Then, with a snarl, he lunged forward, pouncing on the prostrate man. Other SS moved in to stop the fight.
The corporal hurried her onward, whispering in contempt, “Verrückte!”
Madmen. From the sanatorium she knew that the word verrückt meant insane. As they walked, he said, in English, “We have orders to respect them, but all we feel is disgust.”
So the regular SS did not much care for the Progeny. She smirked. Very likely he had not meant to say so.
As they approached the booth that housed the lift, fear spiked through her. Were they sending her home?
But they passed the lift entrance. He brought her to the porch of the chateau. This was a surprise. Why here?
A guard at the door, submachine gun pointing down. Her stomach clenched. Annakova’s quarters.
A plump servant answered the knoc
k and led them inside. They were in a hallway of gleaming wood paneling. The smell of furniture polish and, as they passed the kitchen, of dog food. They entered a great room with a canted ceiling and tall windows giving out onto the leaden sky.
Seated by a fireplace, an elegant woman in a creamy rose dress. Irina Dimitrievna Annakova. Standing at her side, the boy who had shot her. The tsarevich. A small puppy played with a rubber toy on the fireplace hearth.
On the table in front of the divan, a pearl-handled revolver.
An SS lieutenant stood off to one side. He nodded to the corporal, who left the room.
Annakova lifted her hand a few inches and flexed her fingers, summoning Kim. She walked forward. Not knowing what else to do, she curtsied. “Your Highness.”
The SS man said, “You should say ‘Your Majesty.’ ”
“Your Majesty.”
Annakova was a handsome woman, forty-five or fifty years old. Or she was in her thirties and aging fast, as Hannah had said was the case with active catalysts. Her thick dark hair, pulled back in rolled braids. Precise curls at her forehead. A long satin gown, with a shawl neckline. A brown lace overcoat. As though it were still 1917.
“You are Nora Copeland,” Annakova said in heavily accented English. “This is my son, His Imperial Highness Nikolai Ivanovich.”
Turning to the boy, Kim curtsied again. “Your Highness.”
He wore a dark uniform with epaulets. He nodded stiffly to her. There was an awkward silence that Kim knew not to break.
Nikolai said, in better English than his mother, “Miss Copeland, please accept my apology for my mistake in shooting and wounding you today. I am heartily sorry for it.”
Kim took a deep breath. What did you say when a prince apologized to you? “I accept your gracious apology, Your Highness.” She so hoped she was up to this new situation, since she had cracked her head solidly when she fell. She glanced at the little pearl-handled revolver. “It did not hurt very much.”