City of Spies

by Nina Berry

  “Then can I come with you to the safe house?” She knew the answer, but she had to ask.

  He gave a mirthless little laugh. “I can just see the look on Pope’s face if I brought you there. No. You’re off the case. Go shopping, see the sights.”

  It made perfect sense, but a wall was going up between them, a nebulous boundary of clashing ideas and agendas. Some part of her longed to climb back into bed with him and forget they’d ever had this discussion. Another part of her wanted to punch him in the nose.

  He was looking at her, a faint line between his brows, as if trying to solve a riddle. “You know that I love you,” he said. “No matter what else I say or do.”

  Her resistance, her annoyance and anger at him, melted before the warm fondness in his eyes. But why did it feel like he was saying goodbye? “I love you, too,” she said. “No matter what.”

  His lips edged into a smile. “I’ll call you later,” he said. “I don’t know if they’ll let me out tonight, but I’ll do my damnedest to get back and see you.”

  “I’d like that,” she said, and watched as he walked out of the room and shut the door behind him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Recoleta, Buenos Aires

  January 13, 1962

  CASTIGADA

  Punishment. A move in which the lady’s leg kicks forward and around, stroking her standing leg.

  Devin’s phone rang after she showered and was getting dressed. She stared at it for a few rings, then shrugged and picked it up. “¿Hola?”

  “Oh, uh, forgive me, señorita.” She recognized the smooth voice of the concierge. “But I thought there was someone there to help me with a little problem.”

  “Mr. Black is out,” she said. “I could take a message for him.”

  “It’s a bit more urgent than that.” His voice was still smooth, but underneath she could hear an edge of anxiety. “You see, we brought your dog in around eight o’clock this morning, and per Mr. Black’s instructions, we took the beast up to your suite, but no one answered the door. We rang the room again around noon and once more, just now, but no one has answered.”

  That wasn’t like Mercedes, to be out all day. “Has Miss Duran left any messages for me?” she asked.

  “No, señorita. No one has seen Miss Duran since yesterday.”

  Something about the way he said “since yesterday” made the hair on the back of Pagan’s neck stand up. She hadn’t spoken or talked to her friend since that frantic phone call to her from the Von Albrecht house.

  She must be out all day sightseeing. It couldn’t be anything else. Mercedes, of all people, could handle herself. Still, it was very unlike her not to leave a message. “I’ll be there in two minutes. You can bring the dog up to me then.”

  “Gracias, señorita.”

  Pagan left Devin’s suite and walked faster than usual down the hall toward her door. Nothing bad could’ve happened. Mercedes was probably squeezing a few more hours of boring museums and historic buildings in before heading back to her comic books.

  “Mercedes?” The suite door opened to her key, and Pagan’s heart gave a jolt and her breath stopped. A bronze flat shoe belonging to Mercedes lay upside down on the Persian carpet next to the overturned coffee table.

  “Mercedes!” Pagan threw open the door to her friend’s room, but it lay quiet and neat. No one in the bathroom, no one in Pagan’s room, either...

  “Señorita?”

  She whirled, hand on her throat, to see a bellboy standing in the doorway to the suite, holding a leather leash connected to a brand-new collar around Rocket’s neck. The dog, bandaged and smelling of iodine, wagged his tail warily, sniffing the air.

  The bellboy’s eyes were wide. “Is everything all right, señorita?”

  “No,” Pagan said, her mind racing. Mercedes was gone, taken, perhaps, with a fight. It had to be Dieter or members of his gang. She didn’t see any blood, so...

  She sank down on the couch as her knees gave way.

  The bellboy was beside her. The dog was licking her hand. She looked into Rocket’s one good eye and took a deep breath. “My friend has been taken away by Dieter Von Albrecht,” she told the bellboy. “You heard about the fire down at the docks last night? Well, one of the boys involved has kidnapped my friend. I need you first to call the police and tell them what I just said. Second, leave an urgent message for Devin Black in suite 736. Third, take the dog and keep him safe until I return.”

  She was up and pushing him toward the suite door. There was no time to lose. “Return?” the boy said. “Where are you going?”

  She looked him dead in the eye. “I’m going to find my friend, and I’m going to make anyone who hurts her pay.”

  He swallowed, trying to find a reply.

  “Go! Call the policía and tell them now that Miss Duran was taken by Dieter Von Albrecht. Entiendes?”

  “Sí,” he said, and ran down the hall with Rocket jogging alongside.

  Pagan slammed the door, and in a blur she ripped off her muddy dress from the night before and changed into sneakers, stretch pants and a dark shirt. What she was about to do was better done in flats.

  Carlos was reading the paper in the lobby. She hadn’t expected to see him, and the sight energized her. “Carlos! I need to get to the Von Albrecht house, now.”

  She tersely told him Mercedes was missing during the brief drive there. It took less than five minutes, and Carlos intimated that he knew how to get ahold of Devin, better than the concierge. “I’ll have to drive to where he is,” he said. “But I’ll get him as soon as I can.”

  She thanked him, put a scarf over her bright hair and made Carlos drop her across the park from the Von Albrecht house, to make her arrival less obvious, in case Dieter’s thugs were watching.

  As she ran across the park she became aware of an echo of her padded footsteps in the distance.

  Alaric Vogel. Pagan had almost forgotten about him. But of course he was still following her. Why would he stop? If he’d been on the job last night, he must have seen her enter the Von Albrecht house and never come out. Now, with Von Albrecht “missing,” he and the Stasi must suspect she was somehow connected. Well, he could follow her now till the end of time. He was irrelevant.

  She rapped on the door, waited, then pounded harder. She needed to keep her cool with Emma, string her along a little longer, so she could find out where Dieter had taken Mercedes. She inhaled a breath that did nothing to soothe her and arranged her face carefully into a smile.

  Emma, her eyes red, whipped open the door. “Pagan, oh, my God!” she said, and flung her arms around Pagan’s neck, crying.

  Pagan patted her with hands heavy as lead. “Emma, honey. What’s the matter?”

  So much. So very much was the matter.

  “Come in, come in. I can’t talk out here.” Emma pulled away, sniffing, and tugged Pagan inside. She shut the door and pulled a handkerchief out of her skirt pocket. “They took Papa! He’s gone!”

  “What?” Pagan took her by the hand and led her down to the kitchen. “Who took him? Why? Here, sit down.”

  Emma sat in a kitchen chair, tears streaming anew down her cheeks. “It’s got to be the Israelis. That’s what Dieter thinks. Papa was in the German army during the war, and the Jews think he did all these crazy things. He disappeared last night, and Dieter says he was kidnapped. Just like with Adolf Eichmann. Dieter says the Jews will put Papa on trial, too. If they don’t kill him instead.”

  Her own last words brought forth a fresh bout of sobbing. Pagan didn’t like the way Emma’s mouth curled with disgust when she said, “Jews,” but she grabbed some paper napkins for her to use as tissues and poured her a glass of water.

  “That’s insane,” Pagan said, setting the glass down. “When did Dieter tell you all this?”


  Emma waved her hand in the air. “Earlier. Papa told him all kinds of things he never told me. I always knew that Papa thought I couldn’t handle it because I’m a girl. And it turns out he was right!”

  Pagan patted her arm and asked the question burning on her tongue. “Where’s Dieter now?”

  Emma blew her nose on a napkin. “I don’t know. He called me this morning and told me about Papa. He kept shouting about revenge and told me to stay here and I haven’t seen or heard from him since then! He left me here all alone. First we lost Mama, and now Papa. Oh, God, what if they come after us?”

  Revenge. Dieter had been shouting about revenge. Dieter must have organized the attack on the Israeli ambassador first. And when that hadn’t worked, he’d turned to a more personal vendetta. He knew from Emma where Pagan was staying and must have gone to Pagan’s suite this morning to get that revenge. Only he’d found Mercedes there instead. He already hated M for standing up to him, for not being a blond Aryan idiot like him and his friends. He must have had backup if he’d succeeded in taking Mercedes without bloodshed. “I don’t think you need to worry about them coming for you,” she said. “They didn’t go after Eichmann’s family, did they? You’re innocent. You can’t be held responsible for your father’s crimes.”

  “Papa is innocent, too,” Emma said indignantly. “He fought for his country. You can’t kidnap him because he fought for his country!”

  Pagan swallowed down a blazing response and shook her head. This was not the right time to tell Emma the truth about her father. She needed to know how long Dieter had had Mercedes. He wouldn’t kill her outright, would he? No, he’d keep her so he could use her against Pagan. He was probably calling the hotel right now to taunt her. “Of course not. I didn’t mean that. What time did Dieter call you?”

  She’d slipped it in as casually as she could, but it hadn’t been invisible enough. Emma’s frown deepened. “Around lunchtime, maybe. I don’t know. Why do you care? Whatever he’s doing is justified. Whatever revenge he takes, it won’t be enough to compensate us for them taking our father!”

  Lunchtime. That was hours ago, enough time for all kinds of terrible things to happen. But she knew where Dieter must have gone to do them. “No, no, of course not,” she said automatically. “Sorry. I just need to make a quick call.”

  She left Emma and trotted over to use the hall phone to call the concierge at the Alvear.

  “I need to leave a high priority message for Devin Black,” she said in English when the concierge picked up the phone. “Let him know that Pagan Jones is going to the South Docks area. I don’t know the exact street, but it’s a block from the river near those docks.”

  “Of course, señorita,” the concierge said smoothly.

  “Tell him it’s about Dieter and Miss Duran.”

  “What are you doing?” Emma ripped the receiver’s cord out of the phone with one jarring pull. “Who are you talking to about my brother?”

  Oh, hell. Once again, Pagan hadn’t paid quite enough attention to Emma. She’d overheard the whole thing, of course, and she understood English perfectly. Her small fists were clenched, her wet face flushed with horror and rage.

  “Dieter’s about to hurt someone, Emma,” Pagan said, and handed Emma the detached phone receiver. “I have to stop him. You see that, right? If he hurts someone, it will be worse for him once the police get him, and then you’d really be all alone.”

  “What Dieter does is none of your business.” Emma advanced on her, and Pagan backed up two steps. She wasn’t afraid exactly, but she also didn’t want to waste time in a fight. The front door of the house was fifteen feet down the hall. “You gave away our hideout.”

  “If people are getting hurt, it’s everyone’s business,” Pagan said. “Open your eyes, Emma! Your father was no saint.”

  Emma cocked her head. “I don’t know what Papa was doing. How could you?”

  “It’s going on right under your nose, Emma!” God, if only the girl could see the truth, she might be saved from becoming like her father and brother. Pagan turned away from her and walked down the hall. “Haven’t you ever wondered what your father was doing in that basement of horrors?”

  “It’s research for his classes... Are you saying— Do you know what he was doing down there?” She grabbed Pagan’s shoulder and turned her around, her eyes searching Pagan’s face. “How could you know?”

  Oh, hell, she’d really messed this up. “You said your father was kidnapped, like Adolf Eichmann. You know what Eichmann did, don’t you, Emma? He’s directly responsible for the death of millions of people.”

  “That’s a lie,” Emma said in the flat voice of someone who had heard the story and rejected it many times before. “Jewish lies to defame great men like my father. “ Her look and her voice sharpened. “Are you a Jew?”

  “What if I was, Emma?” Pagan stared back at her. “Would that change how you feel about me?”

  Emma stopped dead, her face going pale. “Dear God, you’re a Jew. That’s why you came here in the first place, isn’t it? You don’t care about me at all.”

  “I do care!” Pagan shoved aside a stab of guilt. “I want to stop Dieter from doing something terrible, from becoming just as bad as your father.”

  “Oh, Papa!” Emma crumpled right before Pagan’s eyes. One minute she was standing there, angry and righteous. The next she was curled up on the floor of her own hallway, hugging her knees and sobbing. “I need my papa!”

  Pagan had curled up like that in the hospital, after she killed her father and sister in the accident. She’d wanted to curl up so tight that she’d disappear.

  She knelt down beside Emma. “I’m so sorry, Emma. I lost my father, too. And it’s so hard, the hardest thing there is. But your father’s gone, not dead. And it’s not the end of your life. You’ll find your way.”

  Emma kept sobbing. Pagan’s words were empty, and she knew it. What use was it to say anything now, when Emma had lost all trust in her and could feel nothing but the loss of her father?

  It was Emma’s job now to mourn, for however long it took. Knowing that was freeing in a way, for Pagan. She could leave Emma and try to stop Dieter from hurting Mercedes.

  “I’m going to leave now, Emma,” Pagan said, putting a hand on the girl’s shuddering back. “Every second that goes by means Dieter might hurt someone else.”

  She couldn’t be sure that Emma heard her. It was horrible to stand up, to pull away from the raw need of the weeping girl in front her. But something far more urgent lay ahead.

  “I’ll come back to see you,” she said, pushing herself toward the front door. “I’ll check on you, I promise.”

  “Get out, you lying Zionist bitch.” The words were muffled, wet. Emma uncurled and got up on her hands and knees, screaming. “Get out of our house!”

  Pagan fled. The door snapped shut behind her with a sound like a gunshot, and she ran across the park for the nearest taxi stand, not looking back. She couldn’t. She’d never broken anyone’s heart before, except her own. It was far worse than she had ever imagined.

  Between buildings, a violent orange stripe of sky glowed menacingly. It would be dark soon. Her black cotton capri pants, sleeveless collared shirt and flats weren’t going to keep her very warm after the sun went down.

  “Dock Sud, por favor,” she told the cabdriver as she climbed in breathless and slammed the door.

  The man made a face at her in the rearview mirror. “Dock Sud? Why would pretty girl wish to go to...”

  “Get me to Dock Sud, as fast as you can!” Pagan interrupted. She had no time or patience now for men telling her what she wanted. The driver clamped his mouth shut and looked impressed. “There’s a street parallel to that part of the river, two blocks in. I can’t remember the name. Just get to that area and I’ll tell you where to go.”

 
“Sí, señorita,” the driver said, putting the car in gear with a shrug. “If you insist.”

  “Here.” She leaned over the back of the seat and put some bills beside him. “And more if we get there fast.”

  “Sí, señorita,” he said with more enthusiasm, and hit the gas.

  The early-evening traffic was maddening, and it was well and truly dark by the time they crossed the Riachuelo branch of the river. Pagan thought she saw the same set of headlights behind them a couple of times, but then they disappeared, and she couldn’t be sure. There were fewer cars here, since the workers had all left for home, and Pagan rapidly recognized the long straight streets lined with two-story buildings and warehouses.

  “To the right! Here. Drop me here.”

  The cab pulled over half a block from a chain-link fence she recognized. She threw a wad of money at him and let herself out.

  “I will wait for you,” he said. “This is not a safe area.”

  He was clearly concerned, which was nice. She started to tell him to go, anyway, and then thought of something better.

  “I have a special request for you,” she said. “Double your usual fee, if you drive to the Alvear Palace Hotel and tell the concierge exactly where you dropped me. Tell him I’m going into an underground area next to that warehouse there and to tell Mr. Black. Then come back here to get me.”

  The driver blinked. “Of course, if you wish. But you should not be down here alone.”

  “Then get back soon.” She gave him her most blinding smile. “And thanks.”

  She left him staring after her as she half ran down the block toward the door in the fence. The cab’s headlights reached far enough to illuminate the padlock on the fence.

  Damn it. This was the place. She was sure of it. She could take forever to try to pick the lock or...

  She craned her neck, assessing the fence, a normal chain-link affair about ten feet high. No razor wire curled or strung across the top, and it was shorter than the fence around the Lighthouse Reformatory for Wayward Girls, her old reform school. She’d succeeded in scaling that fence and crossing its barbed wire, with the help of Mercedes and some tough wool blankets. This shouldn’t be as tough as that.