by Nina Berry
The tip of the cigarette glowed orange, and Emma exhaled a plume of smoke, aiming it out the window, but keeping her hand on Pagan’s. Her skin was clammy. She cleared her throat nervously. She was so sweet, so scared. Pagan felt a hundred years old in comparison. But then she’d been taught to flirt with everyone since she was a child.
Pagan clicked the lighter closed, briefly enclosed Emma’s fingers in her own and then slid her hand from under the other girl’s with a little smile. How’s that for flirting?
But Emma was staring at the lighter. “Is that the symbol for East Germany on your Zippo?”
“Oh, yes.” Pagan glanced at the red-and-gold symbol engraved on the lighter. Of course. Emma had been born in Germany and would recognize the hammer and compass ringed by two ears of wheat.
Emma recoiled from Pagan slightly, as if she might carry germs. “You’re not a Communist, are you?”
Pagan laughed. “Heck, no. I got this because...”
She hesitated. The moment she’d taken the lighter had been one of the most memorable in her life, but it was also top secret. “I shot a movie in West Germany back in August, and one day I went over to East Berlin to have lunch with my costar Thomas Kruger’s family.”
So far so true. There had been tabloid shots of Pagan visiting tourist attractions in West Berlin, if Emma or anyone was interested in checking up on her. When lying, it was always best to stick as closely as possible to the truth. You had less to remember that way, and so were less likely to be caught.
“I still can’t believe those horrible Communists divided the country and now the city itself,” Emma said, flicking ash out of the window. “When Germany was once the most powerful country on earth.”
Pagan schooled her face not to react to the nostalgic tone in Emma’s voice. Many Germans probably said the same sort of thing. And maybe Emma’s father was just a physicist.
“Do they sell the lighters as souvenirs?” Emma asked.
“No,” Pagan said, then wished she’d said yes and turned the whole thing into something completely innocuous. “We ran into a couple of the military police there, and they recognized my costar, Thomas,” she lied.
The truth was that she’d been running for her life through East Berlin the night the Berlin Wall went up, pursued by a very determined member of the East German volkspolizei. He’d been intent on killing her and nearly succeeded. But she’d knocked him unconscious, thrown his gun in a water barrel and taken his lighter as a souvenir. She had been sorry for him as he lay there, his head bleeding. What had happened to him?
Alaric Vogel. That had been the name she found in his wallet. Something about it itched at her brain, but Emma was looking at her expectantly.
“Thomas is quite famous over there,” she continued. That part was true. Thomas had been a big teen star in East Germany, but he hadn’t been there when she took Alaric Vogel’s lighter off his unconscious body. He’d been fleeing across the new border between East and West Berlin, saving his family while Pagan provided a distraction. “One of the officers flirted with me. I didn’t like him, but when he pulled his Zippo out to light Thomas’s cigarette, I asked for it as a souvenir.”
“And he gave it to you?” Emma shook her head, puffing smoke out the window. “Must be nice to be a Hollywood star.”
“It comes in handy. Sometimes.” Pagan didn’t look at Emma. The girl clearly hadn’t made the connection that Pagan was using her stardom right this very second, to seduce Emma, if seduce was the right word.
“But sometimes not?” Emma sounded doubtful.
“Sometimes not.” Pagan rubbed her thumb over the raised emblem of the volkspolizei on the Zippo. Stardom had gotten her and Thomas into a high-level East German party that night, but they’d both nearly died. The lighter was a token of how she’d overcome that and so many other obstacles, through luck and sheer, cussed unwillingness to give up. The lighter tapped her back into a time when she’d been useful, worthy of being alive.
And here she was, trying to do it again. If only she could catch a glimpse of the elusive Rolf Von Albrecht. She’d rather not have to kiss Emma to keep that chance alive, but she realized that she was quite willing to do it if she had to. It was dishonest and wrong, but it was for a good cause.
She put the lighter away. “You said you had the latest 45 from the Tokens?”
Emma nodded, smiling.
Pagan gave her a taunting look. “You owe me, remember? Play it for me!”
Moments later they were blasting “The Lions Sleeps Tonight.” It was so catchy they played it five times in a row. After they segued to “Please Mister Postman,” which Emma insisted was undanceable until Pagan grabbed her hand to show her how. Emma kept a hold of her hand as long as she could, until Pagan twirled away. They acted out the lyrics and then played it again so they could go over the choreography together.
It was fun, dancing with a girl. You could be sexy or silly, sweaty or alluring, without worrying that a man would get the wrong idea and come on too strong. Well, Emma was definitely getting the wrong idea, but that was manageable. Emma was probably too shy to make a real move unless Pagan made a move first. And if she did, one cross glance would send her scurrying away again.
Pagan leafed through all of Emma’s 45s, throwing the danceable ones onto the turntable. “Peppermint Twist,” “Tossin’ and Turnin’”...that made her smile. She and Thomas had danced their hearts out to that one on the rooftop of the Hilton Hotel one fateful night in West Berlin. She kept leafing through 45s until she saw “The Fairest Stars” (N. Randazzo) Nicky Raven.
Nicky, her ex. The boy she’d given everything to until the accident with Daddy and Ava had taken everything. Nicky was a big name in music these days.
“The Fairest Stars” had hit number two on the Billboard charts, so it really shouldn’t surprise her to find a copy of it here, in the bedroom of a teen girl in Argentina. But seeing Nicky’s name never failed to give her a jolt of pain. He’d loved Pagan so very much, but when she needed him most, after the accident, he’d abandoned her. Now he was married, about to be a father. He hadn’t called since the night he’d tried to get her back, on that Hilton rooftop in West Berlin. She’d probably never speak to him again, and that was the right thing, of course.
Why, then, did it make her feel so sad to see his name like this?
Under “The Fairest Stars,” Pagan spotted “Sticks and Stones,” and she put that on first, shoving Nicky’s record away. Emma got red-faced and out of breath dancing to that and begged off to have another cigarette while Pagan put on Del Shannon’s “Runaway.”
“Hey, Verlierer!” a male voice called from outside. Pagan recognized the German term for loser. “Erhalten hier unten!”
Get down here.
Emma spurted out smoke and peered down at the alley through her open window. Whatever she saw there made her shoulders slump. “Why?” she called back in German. To Pagan, she said in English, “Dieter. Sometimes he can be a pain. Most of the time.”
“I’m hungry,” Dieter yelled up, still in German. “Come down and make me a sandwich.”
“We’re having dinner in thirty minutes,” Emma said, and Pagan noticed that it was getting dark outside. Time flew when you were dancing. “Just wait.”
“Now!” Dieter barked. “Or I’ll tell Papa you’re smoking.”
Emma exhaled hard and smashed her cigarette out on the windowsill. “Can you believe this?” she muttered low to Pagan in English. “I have to do whatever he tells me or else he tells Papa I’m smoking. Now he wants a sandwich—right before dinner! Mama spoiled him so, before she died. He thinks I should do the same.”
“There must be something you know about him you can counter with,” Pagan said, turning the music down. “He almost started a fight in the café last night. Tell him you’ll tell your father that and then tell him to go t
o hell.”
Emma held her arm out. The wrist was ringed with yellowing bruises. “That’s what he did to me last time I tried something like that. He’s a beast.”
Pagan stared at the marks, anger pulling on her like a tide. “I can show you where to hit him when he tries that,” she said. “I promise you, he’ll never try it again.”
Emma shook her head, looking defeated. “You don’t understand. I have to live with him. He could come into my room while I was asleep... Anyway!” She forced a smile on her face. “Sorry to be pulled away. Listen to whatever you like. I won’t be long.”
Pagan watched Emma thump unhappily down the stairs. Dieter’s selfishness made him a terrible brother, but it also meant Pagan wouldn’t have to make out with Emma for now. She couldn’t help feeling a rush of relief. The girl deserved to make out with someone who really liked her.
A boy like Dieter could very well be the son of a Nazi war criminal. Pagan had her story ready if she ran into Rolf Von Albrecht and he recognized her. But first she had to run into him. And then there was that basement, waiting for her to explore. With Emma busy for a few moments, now might be the time.
She set the record player up to drop six of Emma’s 45s in a row, turned the volume up and padded down the stairs in her silent sneakers, in search of Dr. Someone.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Von Albrecht House, Buenos Aires
January 11, 1962
ARREPENTIDA
A quick evasive movement for avoiding collisions.
As Pagan’s toes hit the ground floor of the Von Albrecht house, a clash of falling plates rolled down the long hallway toward her from the kitchen.
“Careful!” Emma admonished Dieter distantly in German. “You’ll disturb Papa.”
“You can clean it up, smoker,” Dieter replied. His feet thumped hard on the floor as he moved around the kitchen.
Pagan could remember tormenting her little sister in the way siblings did. But Dieter was in a class by himself. The urge to run down the hall and kick him where she’d kicked Tony Perry was strong, but Pagan made herself pad noiselessly over to the office door and press her ear against it instead.
Nothing. She laid a hand on the doorknob, tempted to turn it. If it wasn’t locked she could stumble inside, meet Herr Von Albrecht, apologize for her idiocy and stumble out. At that point it wouldn’t matter what he thought of her. He could throw her out of the house if he wanted, as long as she got to see his face and hear his voice.
“Cool your jets!” Emma said in English to her brother.
He laughed and replied in German. “Talking like you’re the movie star. Shut up and hurry up. I’m hungry.”
What would happen to Emma if Pagan stumbled “accidentally” into her papa’s office? Pagan was Emma’s guest, so Emma was the one most likely to be punished if Pagan trespassed.
Fine. Pagan could wait half an hour until dinner to meet Rolf Von Albrecht. Not long now.
She turned to go back up to Emma’s room and caught a glimpse of the stairwell heading down to the basement.
The basement, which was Rolf Von Albrecht’s laboratory, where Emma wasn’t allowed. If there were tunnels, as Dieter had said, that would be the place to find them.
She might never get back into this house after tonight. The dark stairs beckoned her, like a half-opened envelope.
Pulling two hairpins from her ponytail, Pagan zipped lightly down the stairs, slowing as she neared the bottom to allow her eyes to adjust to the deepening gloom.
The wooden door had two locks, but she concentrated on picking the newer bolt-type lock above the doorknob first. When they were in reform school, Mercedes had taught her how to break into almost anywhere, and it had come in handy getting into lockers full of forbidden food or finding tools to help them with their escape. They’d been caught as they went over the fence, but Pagan retained the image of a typical locking mechanism in her head. It was simple to pick one when you knew how. But it took time.
She bent one hairpin and slid it into the bottom of the keyhole, testing the cylinder inside to see which way it turned. From there it was a matter of raking the pins, finding the “stubborn” pin and getting it and the other pins pushed up far enough to turn the cylinder all the way.
It went faster than she dreamed. The bolt slid out of place. Now for the lower lock...
She put her hand on the doorknob, and it turned. The lower lock wasn’t engaged! Thanking the gods of alcoholic movie stars, Pagan eased the door open, happy to find the hinges well oiled and silent. Maybe that meant Von Albrecht came down here frequently. She sent up a second prayer asking that he not come down here again, at least not for another ten minutes or so.
Damp air whooshed over her, smelling faintly of burned hair and something worse. Something dead.
Dread prickled over her skin and settled into her bones. Something terrible waited in the basement. She nearly shut and relocked the door then. She didn’t need to see the lab. That wasn’t her job. Her job was simply to identify Von Albrecht, or not, and get the hell out.
Devin wouldn’t want her to go in. If she was found in there, it might jeopardize his mission.
But beneath the fear and the worry, a spark of something else made her push the door open wider. She didn’t know quite what that spark was, but it told her that she had to know what lay in Von Albrecht’s basement laboratory. It was always better to know, somehow. Ignorance was bliss until the secret things turned around like sea monsters and swallowed you whole.
More steps down. It was very dark. She fumbled for a light switch, found it and clicked on a single dangling bulb as she shut the door silently behind her.
The stairs descended and turned. She couldn’t see the bottom. But the smell was worse, a combination of stomach-turning decay, hair that had sat too long under the dryer and sharp pine cleanser.
Down the stairs, wooden now, splotched with nameless black and red stains. Down into a thickening, invisible cloud of hot metal and dead things.
She sensed but could not see that the space opened up around her at the bottom of the stairs. Another light switch. She touched it, hesitating, then flicked it on.
A large room with a cement floor and high ceilings covered with rusty pipes and greenish lights that cast complicated shadows down on the metal tables, tubes, equipment and cages arranged in a rough square.
Nothing stirred. Pagan heard no sound but her own pulse hammering in the veins of her neck.
On the other side of the room, another set of stairs sloped down. On the central metal table, amid test tubes and burners, lay a stack of paper piled neatly on top of some notebooks.
Pagan flitted noiselessly past a large metal cage filled with putrefying trash, and a series of empty smaller cages with filthy floors, not looking at them too closely, and made a beeline for the papers. Now she could see, stacked along the other walls, large sacks, barrels and crates. The equipment on the table, unlike the cages, was clean and well kept. She didn’t recognize half of what she was looking at.
The piece of paper on top of the stack was covered in jagged black handwriting and looked like gibberish until she found some plus signs and parentheses. Mathematical formulas of some kind.
Well, that was no help. Even if Pagan had studied hard in school, she was pretty sure formulas several lines long each would be way over her head. She lifted the page and squinted under it. The language was German. She couldn’t decipher it well, though not because it was code, but because the handwriting was so terrible. Something about shipments, Berlin and 30 January, 1962, with a side note that said, Twenty-nine years to the day, followed by an exclamation mark.
January 30, 1962. That was more than two weeks away. Twenty-nine years ago it had been 1933.
Goose bumps rose on Pagan’s skin. She was no history expert, but she and everyone in
the world knew that 1933 was the year the Nazis consolidated their power in Germany. She didn’t know what particular event happened that year on January 30, but twenty-nine years to the day, the note said. Who but a Nazi physicist would want to commemorate any date in 1933 with weird experiments in a secret lab?
And how, exactly, was Rolf Von Albrecht planning to commemorate it? What did this basement full of nauseating vapors have to do with it?
She didn’t have time to go through the notebooks, and she couldn’t take anything away with her, or it might be missed. She needed to get the hell out of here before anyone came looking.
She set the paper down and tiptoed over to the other stairs, the ones descending to another level. The old, crumbling brick steps looked like they would take her back in time as well as deeper into the earth. At the bottom she could see the outline of another door.
She walked down a step, then stopped herself. The mystery of what lay down there, the possibility of unlocking more secrets, crooked its finger at her. But it would be stupid to go farther. Every second that ticked by put her in greater danger.
She didn’t have time to learn more about all the strange things in this room. Barrels and crates lined the wall near the stairs. Sacks of what looked like dry dog food lay on top of a heavy metal trunk with some sort of emblem on it. She took two steps toward it, frowning at the black-and-yellow symbol. It was circular with three trefoil shapes radiating out from the black circle at the center.
Radiation. That was the warning sign for nuclear radiation.
The trunk bearing the symbol was made of thick black, heavy metal. She couldn’t be sure, but it might be lead.
Pagan backed up two, three steps. That large metal trunk contained radioactive material. Or it had contained it in the past.
Or it would in the future.
In the horrified jumble of her mind, she picked out a relevant memory. Devin had said something about the war criminal they were after, Rudolf Von Alt, having worked on the Nazi version of the nuclear bomb. When that program hadn’t panned out, he’d gone on to experiment on people in the concentration camps, using radiation.