by Nina Berry
“No black pudding?” He made a tsking noise before taking a large bite of toast. “Can’t answer personal questions without beans and black pudding.”
“Couldn’t find either one in Buenos Aires,” she said. “Although any food where the main ingredients are blood and intestine might not ever make it to my breakfast table.”
“What in heaven do you think sausages are?”
He couldn’t stop smiling at her, which made her smile, which made him smile, in a wonderful endless circle. It would’ve been kind of sickening if she wasn’t so damned full of joy.
“Here come the personal questions,” she said. She hated to break the mood, but she might not get another opportunity to ask him about what she’d found in the bathroom. “Are you ready?”
“Fortified, anyway,” he said, eyes narrowing with joking wariness. “One can never be fully prepared for an ambush.”
“I found this,” she said, and took the plastic Baggie from where she’d put it in the nightstand.
His chewing slowed down as his face smoothed into a familiar suave blandness. “Had to look again, didn’t you?” He shrugged and began to cut up a sausage. “It’s the best place to hide things in a hotel room.”
She opened the black bag and pulled out a second plastic bag. “You are so thorough. Did someone beat you to make you tidy?”
“My father smacked me a few times,” he said readily enough. “He was a stickler for organization, so it became a habit. Mum knew better than to hit me.”
“Mama never hit us,” Pagan said, thinking back. “Daddy, neither. But I think we pretty much always did what we were told.” She pulled his pistol out of the second bag and laid it carefully on the tray. “What kind of gun is this?”
“Walther PPK,” he said, still eating, but getting more serious by the moment. “Standard issue, no serial number.”
“And this.” She pulled out a small glass vial stopped with cork. Inside it a shiny, squashed bullet rattled around. “Who shot this at you?”
It was a guess. She had no idea why he kept a flattened bullet with him wherever he traveled.
He finished chewing and swallowed his egg, looking at the bullet in her hand. When he looked up at her, his blue eyes were almost black, his jaw tense. “I’m the one who fired that bullet.” His voice was low. “I shot my father.”
Pagan set the glass vial with the bullet down gently on the food tray. This was why he never talked about his father. This was why he identified with her so much. They had both hurt their fathers. Pagan had accidentally killed hers. Maybe Devin had done the same.
She wanted to put her arms around him, but she sensed that might either break him, or shut him up. “What happened?” she asked.
Devin put his fork down and spoke with careful emotionlessness. “It was during our last heist, on a large estate in the south of France. A buyer had asked my father to acquire several paintings being kept there as part of a private collection. What we didn’t know was that the buyer was working for the French police and Interpol. My father had long been an irritant to many police forces all over Europe, and they had decided to get him once and for all.”
“How old were you?” she asked.
“Thirteen,” he said. He was speaking in a crisp English accent now, one that enabled him to control every syllable he uttered. “I was better at climbing than my father, so he sent me in first, over the fence, and then up the wall to the second-story window, to cut the alarms. It was after I let him inside that the police surrounded us.”
He got off the bed with an abrupt movement and walked over to the closet to take a shirt off its hanger. “My father wouldn’t surrender. They had us with our backs to the wall, guns out. We had nowhere to run, and he wouldn’t stand down. Instead, he...” He drew a breath in sharply. “He grabbed me and held me in front of him. As a shield.”
Pagan was standing up, hand over her mouth, like some melodramatic silent movie actress of old. But she couldn’t help it.
Devin unbuttoned the shirt and slipped it on. “He managed to get through two rooms that way, holding my arm up behind my back, right on the edge of breaking it, pulling me with him. The police followed us every step, waiting for him to make a mistake.” His English accent was fraying into Scottish as he spoke. His once-vacant expression was pinched with pain. “But I knew him. No one ever executed his plans with more precision and discipline. He wasn’t going to make a mistake. So I made it for him.”
“You took his gun,” she said. She didn’t know how she knew that, but she could see the scene in her mind with perfect clarity. Young Devin would have been tall and very thin, his father taller, more solid and utterly relentless.
His eyes met hers for the first time since he’d started telling her what happened. In them, hurt mixed with a strange satisfaction. “I had to break my arm to do it, but yes. I got his gun. He’d positioned himself right near a window, and he would probably have made it through because I was still blocking the police from getting a clear line of sight. So I shot him.”
She sat there, trying to absorb what he said. No wonder MI6 had recruited him. “What happened to your father?”
“They took him to a hospital, and he died while they had me in custody.”
He was looking blankly at his ties as she walked up and took his hands in hers. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I knew we had a lot in common, but I didn’t know how much until now.”
He met her eyes, but there was no forgiveness in them, for himself or for his father. “The difference is that you didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” he said. “I aimed for my father’s heart. Missed it by an inch or two, but my hand was shaking.”
“I might’ve done the same if my father had used me as a shield,” she said. “He trained you to be a thief, used you to make a profit and then he betrayed you. You were a child. He’s to blame, and you know it.”
“I know it,” he said. “And I don’t.”
She knew exactly what he meant. All too well. “So you went to work for the British government. To be as different from him as possible.”
“Am I really that different?” He released her hands to grab a tie. His nose was wrinkled again in self-disgust. “I recruit and use people, the way my father used me. I utilize the skills I learned from him to blackmail, strong-arm and spy. I continue to steal, only now it’s information instead of art.”
“But you don’t do it to profit yourself,” she said. “You do it for your country, for a higher purpose.”
“That’s what I tell myself,” he said. “Sometimes I even believe it. When I read your story and saw your talent on screen, I thought, ‘There’s a girl who’s also looking for redemption. I can use that.’” He shook his head. “I didn’t see you as a person with a painful past. I saw you as a tool to use in our cold little war against Communism.”
There it was again. Thinking about people as if they were things like tools instead of human beings. She’d seen how that turned into evil.
But this was Devin, not some Nazi war criminal or Communist dictator. Heck, Pagan herself had used Emma Von Albrecht as a way to investigate her father. Did that make her evil?
“Why you do it makes a difference,” she said. “You do it to help, not to hurt.”
“Help us. Hurt them,” he said. “It’s two sides of the same coin, and I’m constantly flipping it, not sure which side I prefer.”
“You could quit,” she said. “We both could. You could finally be a self-important studio executive. Just like you always dreamed!”
In spite of himself, he laughed. “How do you do that?” he said, taking her hand again. “You could make me laugh at the end of the world.”
She lifted their hands so that they stood palm to palm, and interlaced her fingers with his. “We stopped a nuclear bomb from going off in the middle of Berlin, Devin.”
“You can always rely on me to defy your orders,” she said.
“You are dependable in that way.” He dangled the tie around his neck, and kissed her. “But I can recall several things you did last night exactly as I asked you to do them.”
“I take requests in bed,” she said, kissing him back. “With you. When I feel like it.”
“Noted.” He was smiling in a way that put the Cheshire cat to shame as she took the ends of his tie in her hands and began to tie it for him.
“Why January 30, 1933?” she asked, remembering the handwritten note in that terrible basement that said, Twenty-nine years to the day. “Did you ever figure that out?”
“Pope did. He’s good for something. January 30, 1933, was the day Hitler became chancellor of Germany. A strange way to commemorate something—killing everyone in Berlin.”
A jarring ring cut through his words, and she startled. He steadied her, hands on her shoulders, and she laughed at herself. “Guess I’m a little jumpy.”
He kissed her nose. “After what you did last night, I’d be jumpy, too.” He walked over to the phone as it rang again insistently. “Yes?” he said into the receiver.
He stood up straighter, coming to attention. “When?” His voice held an urgency that made her walk over to stand beside him.
“Of course. Where?” He listened. “All the way out in Tigre? It’ll take me a little while to get there, but I can leave shortly. Thirty-five Avenida Garibaldi. See you soon.”
He hung up, repeating the address to himself silently a second and third time before saying, “I’m sorry, but I have to go.”
“What’s wrong?” She tightened the belt on her robe, wishing she had fresh clothes of her own to put on so that she could force him to take her with him.
“A group of thugs tried to kidnap the Israeli ambassador from his home last night.” He finished tying his tie in the mirror as he spoke. “But his guards drove them off. None of the Israelis were hurt, but Pope thinks it was an attempt to retaliate for Von Albrecht being taken.”
“Dieter?”
He shot her a look. “Maybe.”
“So Dieter blames the Israelis for everything?”
“Nazi habits die hard. It’s good for us, but it’s too bad for the Israeli ambassador. And ever since their Mossad agents kidnapped Adolf Eichmann here a year and a half ago, they’re the first to get blamed and attacked for anything like this.”
“At least they didn’t get him.” A vague uneasiness was stirring in her gut. Dieter was out there, and he hated her. What would he try now that his attempt to take the Israeli ambassador had failed? “Where are you going?”
“We’re running short on men, and Von Albrecht’s guards need a break. I’ll help out until they get some more men. They weren’t prepared to take him into custody yet, so they’re scrambling a bit. And he’s too badly injured to fly him out. He’ll need at least a week to recover.”
“Good old Rocket,” Pagan said. “So they’re going to take him to America eventually, then. To stand trial like Eichmann did in Israel?”
“He’ll be taken to America,” Devin said, finishing up his tie. His eyes in the mirror were troubled. “But probably not for trial.”
“They wouldn’t kill him,” she said, not sure that was the truth. “Why save him only to kill him in secret?”
“Pope told me last night,” he said. “He’s pretty sure they’ll get Von Albrecht to come back and work for them again.”
“What!” He had to be kidding. Except that right now he looked like someone trying to squash down a poisonous anger. “But they tried that once already—and look what happened!”
“I know,” he said shortly. “I know.”
She walked around to face him. “This is a man who tortured and killed thousands during the war, then stole plutonium from the United States and tried to kill the entire city of Berlin and start a nuclear war. He needs to be punished!”
“I agree,” he said. “But it’s not my call to make. And you said yourself that we do it for a higher purpose—for our countries.”
“No, but you have to make them see, Devin!” She couldn’t believe he wasn’t more outraged. He was angry, yes, but she could see the resignation in his face, in the resolute set of his shoulders. “If you told them that he’ll try to escape again, that he’s slippery and dangerous and...”
“They know all of that,” he said. “And they don’t care. They might put extra security on him, limit his access to nuclear materials. That kind of thing.”
“He’s guilty of attempted genocide. You saw what he did to Rocket. He did that to people, Devin!”
“You have to understand,” he said. “They don’t care about his integrity or his character. They don’t care about punishing his crimes as long as he can be useful to them. And now that he’s succeeded in building a dirty bomb that works—or so he says—they’re going to want him more than ever. And he’ll say yes, of course. It’s better than prison or hanging.”
“Oh, my God.” She couldn’t stand to look at him any longer. She walked over to the ravaged bed where they’d been so happy moments before and sat down. “You’re going to help them do it.”
“That’s my job,” he said, walking to his closet to take down a suit jacket. “It’s what we were talking about. The world is messy, Pagan. Gray.”
He was right, and yet...she could not accept this. She’d seen the look in Von Albrecht’s eyes, witnessed the tortured animals in his basement.
To think she could’ve killed Von Albrecht herself, but hadn’t because she assumed the CIA would punish him. She’d always opposed killing people, but if governments like the United States didn’t punish the guilty, who would?
“Some things are black and white,” she said. “Otherwise, what’s the point of anything?”
He swung his jacket on, pulling the perfectly tailored sleeves into place over his shirt cuffs. “Sometimes we stop the bad guys. And sometimes we get them to come work for us. Even if I wanted to stop the CIA from recruiting him again, I couldn’t. It’s out of my hands.”
“So you’re just following orders,” she said. Her heart was as heavy as Von Albrecht’s box of lead. “The men working for Von Albrecht could say the same.”
He pivoted toward her. “I’m not plotting the death of millions, Pagan. I’m going to guard a man to keep him from doing that. That’s all I can do. I’m not a politician, or a general. If and when they ask me to do something against my conscience, I’ll say no. But keeping Von Albrecht in a safe house until he can be moved is not a war crime.”
She stood up. “You’ve always been a rule-follower,” she said. “At first it was your father who made the rules, but MI6 and the CIA are your daddy now. You’ll do whatever they say until they betray you.”
His eyes were like blue radiation. “Don’t be a hypocrite. You were happy to deceive Emma Von Albrecht for us if it meant you could discover more about your mother. Did you ever think about what will happen to her now that her father is gone and her ape of a brother is on the lam? No. You gave her a wink and set a dog on the only parent she has left. You destroyed her life, and she’ll never know it was you. But you probably saved a million people in Berlin. Was that worth it, Pagan?”
“I don’t know,” she said. Poor Emma. Pagan really hadn’t thought about her much, had she? She’d been so caught up in her own mission the wreck it might leave behind hadn’t entered her mind. That wasn’t right.
Then she remembered the smug look on Von Albrecht’s face as he told Dieter to put her in a cage and drown
her.
“Thousands of lives saved for one life upset,” she said. “That’s worth it. But you helping to send Von Albrecht back to the American nuclear program won’t save anyone. If anything, he’ll help them build better bombs to kill more people with.”
His fists had loosened. His stance became distant, casual. The superior, sophisticated Devin Black was back, and he spoke to her as if she were a child in need of a lesson. “Nuclear material is used in treatment against cancer—did you know that? What if Von Albrecht’s research leads to a new treatment that actually saves lives? We can’t know what part he has to play, but maybe...”
“Maybe? You’re going to help a war criminal live a cozy life in the States based on a maybe? I can’t believe I helped them do it.”
“Cozy’s a bit of an exaggeration. If it will ease your conscience, think of it as prison, with benefits.”
Putting it that way made it sound like a viable option. But people who’d done far smaller things were in real prisons, without benefits. She’d thought so highly of the United States that she’d been eager to go work for the CIA. But instead of working for the good guys, she’d helped out the gray ones. Was there anything left in this world she could believe in?
“Does it ease your conscience?” she asked.
He paused, and the polished mask of cool slipped. “Nothing ever quite succeeds in that. Don’t you have a movie to shoot today?”
“I told them yesterday that I’m sick,” she said. “They can shoot around me until I’m not.”
“If you decide to pull out of this movie completely, I’ll have a word with the head of the studio,” he said. “So they don’t penalize you.”
She was having a hard time giving a damn about any of that. “What will happen to Emma?”
Devin shrugged. “We have no plans to interfere with her,” he said. “She can live out her life here, such as it is.”
“Maybe I should go over there, ask Emma if she’s seen Dieter, find out where he might be.”
He gave her warning look. “She may have heard about your role in all this. It’s better you stay away. You’re done, remember?”