City of Spies

by Nina Berry

  She stared at him, dumbfounded. Her knees appeared to be made of pudding, and her head seemed to have floated off her shoulders like a helium balloon.

  “Yes.” He pulled her closer, fingers digging into her arms hungrily. “I love you. You said it first, but I felt it first. I felt it the morning in our hotel suite at the Berlin Hilton when I quizzed you on your lines and you were so...strong after all you’d been through, and so funny. And the night Nicky tried to get you back, I wanted to kill him, really kill him. I knew then I was in way too deep. And when you took a drink later, I wanted to hold you, to make it all better, although I knew I never could.”

  It was his fierce grip on her more than his words which brought her down to earth. It was the line of his throat, the movements of his mouth, saying these words to her that made it feel real. That made her think it might be true.

  “You helped me,” she said. Her face was wet, but she wasn’t crying. Her eyes were brimming with something like joy. “You found Hans and Matthew so I could have an AA meeting with them the next day. It’s the most amazing thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

  He put his palms to her cheeks, fingers sinking into her tousled hair. The storm in his eyes calmed as he gazed down at her. “When I got the phone call telling me that Thomas and his family were safe because of you, that you had stayed behind so they could escape. That’s when I knew I’d found the most magnificent girl in the world.” His voice was husky, his Scottish burr purring like a panther. “The only one for me. Pagan Jones. Mo grádh.”

  He bent and softly kissed her lips, as if she were the most precious thing in all the world.

  “Mo grádh,” she repeated against his mouth, getting the lilt right this time. “I know what it means now.”

  “My love,” he said, and her lips opened as he kissed her more deeply.

  Everything went dark as her arms wound up around his neck. His fingers stroked the soft skin of her neck and his touch sent shivers along her skin like ripples in silk. He traced kisses down her jawbone and below her ear.

  “I want to devour every inch of you,” he breathed in her ear, and then lowered his head to sink his teeth softly into her neck.

  A sound she’d never heard before came from her throat. The streetlight cast not two shadows, but one, onto the cobblestones.

  Devin’s lips were on her shoulder, her collarbone, and her mind was hot, black and red. She dug her fingernails into his back, wanting to destroy what little space there was between them. The past, the fear, the whole world that was always there, always looming over her, was vanishing now. Together she and Devin would tear it all apart.

  “We can’t, we can’t,” he murmured. “Not yet.” He kissed her mouth again and pulled away. His lips were reddened, his dark hair every which way.

  “Not yet?” Language came strangely to her. Words were foreign, conversation overrated.

  “Not yet,” he said with more conviction, and kissed her again as if he couldn’t help it.

  “My mission with you is over,” she said, her hand on the back of his neck. “You’re not my supervisor anymore.”

  He kissed her again. “Dieter’s still out there. He’s dangerous.”

  She interrupted him with another kiss and shook her head. “We’ll get him in the morning. I don’t want to wait for you any longer.”

  The two-block walk to the Alvear Palace Hotel took longer than it should have because Devin kept pulling her into shadowy niches and alleys to make out. By the time they stopped at the concierge desk, the blood in her veins was thrumming. She tugged on his hand, pulling him toward the elevator. But Devin paused long enough to put a wad of bills in the surprised man’s hand. “Please leave a message for Miss Duran that Miss Jones is quite safe and not to worry. And in the morning, please send a man to get Miss Jones’s dog at Dr. Fernandez’s office and then bring the dog to her suite.”

  Pagan favored the man with a giddy smile. “Thank you so very much.”

  The concierge smoothly slid the money in his jacket pocket. “Of course, señor. Señorita. It is as good as done.”

  It took years for the elevator to arrive. Pagan couldn’t quite believe it when she saw an older couple already inside it, also going up.

  “Don’t they know we need to be alone?” she whispered in Devin’s ear as they pressed the button for the seventh floor and leaned against the back wall, side by side. The lift groaned and rose so slowly Pagan considered getting out to push.

  Devin let go of her hands long enough to push aside a stray lock of her hair, his fingertips brushing her eyebrow, her cheek, her lips.

  “I’m a muddy mess,” she said softly.

  His flexible mouth turned up in a knowing smile. “I could give you a bath. No extra charge.”

  She was going to burn a rift in the elevator floor, sending them both plummeting into the depths. And she didn’t care.

  When they were in his room, with the door shut and locked behind them, Devin slid her clothing off one piece at a time. Then they were in the tub together. She couldn’t help splashing him until he grabbed her and slid her body, slick with soap, on top of his. The water splooshed over the sides of the tub, and Devin took in a mouthful of water that sent him spluttering with laughter.

  “Clean enough!” he said, and in three decisive moves had her out of the tub, wrapped in a huge soft towel and thrown, giggling, onto the bed.

  What followed was both more serious and more fun than she expected. Devin kept finding places on her body she hadn’t paid nearly enough attention to. He was patient; when her breathing began to come fast and shallow, she didn’t have to ask him to keep doing exactly what he was doing. He knew.

  Later, Pagan opened her eyes to find Devin propped up on one elbow in bed beside her, looking at her, a tiny smile on his lips.

  “Well, hello,” she said, stretching luxuriously. Most of the pillows were still on the floor, but the sheets and bedspread, which had been wrenched out of place, were now thrown haphazardly over her.

  “You sleep without a pillow,” he said.

  “Miss Edwards took away my sad excuse for a pillow to punish me for insubordination my second day in reform school,” she said. “I got used to sleeping without one.”

  “Insubordination—from you?” He frowned, pulling her in close for a kiss. “Not possible.”

  There was more kissing, until he broke away and said, “I’ve always wondered. Why did your parents name you Pagan?”

  She turned over restlessly onto her back. “I don’t know. It was Mama’s idea.”

  “Doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good idea,” he said, and kissed her shoulder.

  She turned her head. She’d never seen him so sleepy and warm and sweet. But the thought of her own name now set her teeth on edge. “I don’t know if I like it anymore. Not after what I found out about her.”

  “She did at least one good thing,” he said. “She made you. And I think she named you perfectly.”

  She turned back on her side to face him. “Someone asked her about it once for a magazine interview. She said she chose the name because her daughter was not one to believe everything she was told. That she—that I—would follow my own creed. I don’t know. Maybe she made all of that up. And when I think about it, I did everything she told me. Some pagan I turned out to be.”

  He laughed. “But that’s changed. No one knows what you’ll do next. We just sit back and marvel. It’s the perfect name.”

  Pagan wasn’t so sure. “But if Mama believed all these horrible things like Von Albrecht says, if that was her idea of following her own creed, then it’s a horrible name.”

  He smiled. “Your mother may have given you the name, but she wasn’t the pagan, the disbeliever. You are.”

  Mama had been a true believer. That’s what Von Albrecht had said. Was Pagan all that differ
ent? She wasn’t sure of that, or of anything.

  “Right now the only thing I believe in is that you’re the best kisser in the world,” she said to him.

  “Allow me to demonstrate,” he said.

  The kissing went on, until he had to pull another one of his English Durex condoms out of the nightstand.

  * * *

  Sometime later she stirred to find him standing over by the desk in his room, wearing only his pants, going over some papers.

  “Do you ever sleep?” she asked.

  He turned, smiling. “I don’t want to sleep while you’re here. Every second is precious.”

  She blushed and shook her head at him in mock accusation. “And whenever you don’t have a Nazi war criminal newly in custody with his gang leader son still at large.”

  “Dieter.” Devin shook his head. “I checked in, and no sign of him returning to his house. Emma’s going to wonder what happened when she wakes up.”

  “You should put a watch on the gang’s underground headquarters, down by the South Docks,” Pagan said, sitting up. “Where they have their drag races.”

  “I’ll tell our contacts in the local police,” Devin said. “Our numbers are stretched a bit thin now that we have Von Albrecht in custody.”

  He was still frowning over the paper in his hand. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “It’s a little odd.” He walked over, papers in hand, and sat on the bed beside her. “I’ve been going over the files they gave me, and none of them say that Von Alt was working for the US Nuclear Program, much less that he was specifically working on a dirty bomb.”

  “They kept it from you,” she said.

  He threw the papers down. “Which leads to my next question...”

  “What else have they kept from you,” she finished for him. “Von Albrecht told me he stole the plutonium for the bomb from the American program he was working on. He said he’d created something they’d been trying to make, but hadn’t succeeded.”

  Devin leaned back against the headboard. She couldn’t help watching how his abdominal muscles bunched up nicely as he did it. “The Americans, the English and the Soviets all recruited Nazis they thought might be helpful after the war.”

  “Helpful?” Pagan said. “Look at what he did to Rocket. He did worse things to people during the war.”

  Devin stared off into the distance, shaking his head a little at the thought. “That kind of decision is way above my pay grade,” he said. “I’m not saying I agree with it, but he might’ve had vitally important information at the time, something that would do more good than his death could ever do.”

  “But he should have gone to jail at the very least!” She moved restlessly under the sheets. “You can’t pat men like him on the head and say, ‘Bad boy, don’t do it again,’ and expect him to behave. His victims deserve better than that.”

  “I agree,” he said, reaching out to touch her cheek. The contact soothed her. “But at least we prevented him from creating more victims.”

  She scooted over to lie against him, her head on his chest. He put an arm around her, and she took a deep breath, inhaling every particle of him that she could. The even drumming of his heart, the warm scent of his skin, the way one corner of his mouth indented a little farther than the other when he smiled. She’d waited so long for this; she needed to savor every second.

  “I asked Von Albrecht if Mama knew what he’d done,” she said. “And what he planned to do.”

  He pulled her in closer. “What did he say?”

  “He said she didn’t care what he did, as long as it helped the Führer’s dreams come true. He said she was a true believer, like him. Basically he said that my mother was a monster.”

  He pressed his lips against the top of her head. “How could she be a monster and still have created you? People are complicated.”

  She pulled away from him a little to look him in the eye. “You never talk about your father. Yet he’s part of who you are.”

  “My father was not a good man.” He looked down, his face carefully blank. “I don’t know whether or not he loved me. Not the way you know your mother loved you.”

  The only thing Pagan knew about Devin’s father was that he’d been an expert art thief who had used his own son as a decoy and a helper until, somehow, it all came to an end, and Devin had been recruited by MI6.

  Being with Devin was somehow safe and exciting at the same time. It allowed her to finally say the dark thing that had been gathering strength in the recesses of her mind. “But Mama was such a bad person...” She’d said those words to Mercedes back in Los Angeles. She hadn’t known how to finish the sentence then, but she knew now. Still the words did not come easily. “Does that make me bad, too?”

  He shifted away so he could look down at her, dark brows drawn together in concern. “Of course not.”

  “But I’ve done terrible things,” she said. “I don’t want to be like her, but part of me is. I can’t help it.”

  “You can be like her in many ways and still be a good person,” he said. “You can take what you loved about her and use that to make things better.”

  “Mama did love us,” Pagan said, and put a hand on Devin’s chest. His heart beat beneath her palm. “And your father must have loved you, somehow, some way. How could he not?”

  He put his hand over hers. “This isn’t about me. Or my father. I want you to know that I don’t take your feelings lightly when I say I don’t believe in monsters. Your mother was a human being. She had many sides to her—one side was ugly and wrong, but another was beautiful and right. That’s the side of her that loved you and your sister. The bad and the good don’t cancel each other out, you know. They live, side by side, in all of us.”

  Pagan knew all too well the weak side of herself. It was finding the good that was challenging. “If it’s all so damned gray,” she said, “how do we decide who’s right and who’s wrong? How do we choose a side?”

  “I second-guess myself a lot,” he said, interweaving his fingers through hers. “And then I go with my gut.”

  “I guess we have that in common,” she said.

  He put his arms around her again and buried his face in her hair. “I still can’t quite believe you’re here with me. Like this. I never want to leave this room.”

  “Scared you tonight, didn’t I?” she said. “Sorry.”

  “Never be sorry,” he said. “It’s one of the reasons I love you—that you risk yourself for what you know is important.”

  Those three words. He said them again. She kissed his chest. “You’re the one who made it all possible, Devin Black. You’re the one who gave me the chance to see what I could be, what I could do.” She scooched up and kissed him twice.

  He kissed her a third time, long and hard and deep. It left her breathless.

  “Let’s see if we can tire you out enough to get you to sleep,” she said.

  * * *

  Later, she woke to find him passed out beside her. She couldn’t help staring down at his long black eyelashes and his mouth, softened by sleep. Then she wrapped herself in his robe and padded into his bathroom and closed the door before turning on the light. He needed every minute of sleep she could give him.

  There beside the sink lay the hair gel and the Pepsodent she remembered from her visit to his bathroom in the Berlin Hilton. Everything was spotlessly neat and organized, set in straight lines and right angles. Someone had drilled order and neatness into him. Maybe that had been his father.

  There were two other things he’d brought with him in Berlin that she’d found after searching his rooms. Had he stored them in the same, secret place here in Buenos Aires? She lifted the top off the toilet tank and set it on the seat.

  Sure enough. A black waterproof bag lay at the bottom of the tank. She put her hand in
to the cold water and pulled it out. Time for him to share with her as much as she had with him.

  * * *

  When she woke up it was late afternoon, and Devin was in the shower. Well, they hadn’t gotten in from the night’s craziness until close to 5:00 a.m. She dialed the number for the suite she shared with Mercedes. The number rang and rang until an operator picked up.

  “Any message?” the woman asked.

  Maybe the vet had brought Rocket by, and Mercedes had taken him for a walk or something. “No, thank you,” Pagan said. “Can I have room service, please?”

  She ordered coffee and breakfast, and it arrived as Devin walked out of the bathroom, buttoning his pants, his dark hair spiky and damp.

  “Any word on Dieter?” she asked.

  “No sign of him yet. The cops have been alerted, but they’re a bit overwhelmed right now.”

  Pagan wheeled the food cart over to his side of the bed. “Time for breakfast.”

  “You shouldn’t have,” he said as he sat down.

  “This is as close as I get to cooking,” she said, fanning a napkin onto his lap. “But I know you like your coffee black.” She poured him a cup and set it down on the saucer.

  “Bacon, sausages, eggs, mushroom, tomato and porridge?” He flashed her a grin. “You must love me if you ordered a full breakfast.”

  “I guess I must,” she said. He looked like the boy he was, sitting there with his hair wet and messy, his bare chest still damp from the shower. It was blissful just to look at him.

  He stuffed a large bite into his mouth. Through the food, his accent was waxing Scottish, which meant he was relaxed, and happy. “I’m starving, and you’re amazing.”

  “Had to butter you up, along with the toast, before asking you all sorts of personal questions,” she said, pulling a chair over to sit on the opposite side of the food cart.