City of Spies

by Nina Berry

  Of course, she didn’t have Mercedes to give her a boost, and she’d been living a pretty soft life since Lighthouse. Three feet up, her foot slipped, and she fell with a jarring thud to the sidewalk. She bent her knees, though, as Mercedes had taught her, and rolled back onto her butt to absorb the shock. It wasn’t that far, really, but the last thing she needed was a twisted ankle or a bum knee.

  The cab had gone. No headlights to help her now, and the front yard of the warehouse wasn’t lit for security the way it might have been back in the States. Her fingers were aching from the chain link digging into her flesh, and she’d scraped her palm when she rolled back.

  At least no one was shooting at her, like the night she’d been chased through East Berlin by a vengeful, armed Alaric Vogel. How must he hate her still to be following her every move. He was probably standing out there in the dark, smirking at her sad attempt to scale the fence this very moment.

  The thought gave her a boost of energy. To hell with him. She had been training as a dancer the last month or so, and she was fit. She stretched out with a few high steps, then lifted one foot carefully and dug the toes into a link in the fence, both hands reaching high, and hoisted.

  Her legs were strong from the dancing. She lifted herself with ease and carefully found the next foothold, then the next. Then she was at the top, bending at the waist to swing her right leg over. Rather than drop and risk her previously injured ankle again, she took the extra time to climb down and land lightly on the ground.

  The yard here was dirt. With the stars her only illumination, she could see the black bulk of the warehouse in front of her. She jogged lightly to its right, sticking to the side of the warehouse in case Dieter had posted any guards, and finally saw the ramp sloping down into the earth. No sign of Dieter’s thugs. She sent a thank-you to the goddess of girl spies for Dieter’s arrogance, and trotted as quietly as she could down the ramp.

  It became very dark very fast, so she stuck to the wall. If she remembered it right, the tunnel eventually narrowed to the doorway, and that led to the stairs down into the sunken church.

  She’d only been there the night before, but without Emma chattering and multiple flashlights illuminating the way, the tunnel was like the lair of some giant worm waiting to thrust its way up through the dirt and swallow her whole.

  Thunk! She bumped into something so hard that her body recoiled and she landed on her butt again, hands scraping the rock of the tunnel floor.

  What the hell? She got achingly to her feet, dusting off her hands. Her palms were now wet with what was probably blood. She moved forward carefully, feeling her way.

  Her knee hit it first. Metal. She lowered her hands and touched the smooth horizontal surface of a car trunk.

  Of course. They’d parked here and walked farther down. Feeling around to the driver’s side of the car, she tested the door and it clunked open. No point in locking your car inside your secret hiding place, was there?

  She opened the door and slid into the driver’s seat, feeling for the steering wheel, and then the dashboard. Where was it in this type of car? There was no way to know the make and model, but it was a sedan and...there it was. She tugged on a knob and the headlights turned on.

  Parked cars humped before her like a pod of sleeping whales. The tunnel arced unevenly downward. She would have to pray that Dieter and his friends were too far down in their lair for the light to leak down to them. With the light, she was able to run at nearly full speed past the cars, avoiding uneven footing, to arrive swiftly at the narrow doorway and the steps.

  She paused to one side of the doorway, trying to keep her breathing quiet, and listened.

  “Who taught you to build a fire?”

  An irritable and irritating voice filtered up from below. Dieter.

  “Klaus didn’t bring enough kindling,” another voice said. It sounded like Wolfgang.

  Pagan edged around the door to peer down at the chambered space below. As before, steps led down to a hard stone floor with some kind of altar in the middle and side chapels disappearing into the darkness on either side. Candles had been lit and positioned on the bases of broken statues and over the floor to show about ten young men clustered around two piles of wood off to one side. One of them had a lighter, and was trying to get the fire started in front of one of the side chapels while Dieter, noticeable for his height and his honey-blond hair, stood over him, haranguing. Another boy stood by holding some kind of long metal rod.

  What were they messing about with? And where was Mercedes?

  Pagan walked with silent care down a few more steps, squinting in the wavering candlelight. Maybe they’d stuffed Mercedes in one of the pitch-black side chapels. There was no way for Pagan to get down there and search without being seen, and it would be ten boys against the one of her. But if they weren’t actively engaged in hurting Mercedes, then Pagan could wait and watch until help arrived.

  “She’s moving,” one of the boys said, and poked the larger pile of wood with his foot.

  Only it wasn’t a pile of wood. An invisible hand squeezed Pagan’s heart, and she froze in her tracks as one of the boys leaned down and turned Mercedes over onto her back. In the flicker of the shadows, crumpled there on the floor, she’d looked like just another jumble of firewood.

  Blinding-hot fury suffused Pagan. She nearly catapulted down the stairs into the clutch of evil boys then and there. She forced herself to crouch down and take a deep breath.

  Stop. Look. Think, Pagan. It was a drunkard’s training, and it came in handy at times like this. Don’t just grab the martini because it’s there. Stop. Think.

  Mercedes was barefoot and wearing her flannel pajamas, now scuffed with dirt, but their pinstripes were still visible. They’d tied her hands behind her back, and when they turned her over, she laid quite still, eyes closed. Pagan didn’t see any blood or evidence of broken bones, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.

  The boy had said, “She’s moving,” which implied that they knew she wasn’t dead. She wasn’t moving now. Another boy had knelt down and was feeling her neck, as if for a pulse.

  “She passed out again,” he said. “That stuff you gave her is potent.”

  They’d drugged her. Of course. Mercedes was too dangerous to leave conscious for long.

  “Keep a close eye,” Dieter said. “She should be waking up soon, and I want her to watch everything we’ve got planned.”

  A low moan reached Pagan’s ears. On the altar, something writhed.

  With no candles nearby, the altar lay in darkness. Only one boy stood beside it, and he was focused on the group around Mercedes, so Pagan hadn’t seen the person lying on top of the bare stone slab.

  The hair on her arms lifted, her skin prickling, as her eyes adjusted to even greater lack of light. There were ropes, and long dark hair, a gag and a familiar pair of dark brown eyes, opened wide in terror.

  Naomi Schusterman was tied to Dieter’s altar.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Dock Sud, Buenos Aires

  January 13, 1962

  FRICCIÓN

  A move where the woman is pulled, dragging her toes along the ground.

  Naomi Schusterman was alive, but she had a black eye and her flesh was rubbed raw across her legs and arms, where the ropes bit tight. Her dress was torn at the neckline, as if a meaty hand had grabbed it and ripped downward, exposing her white bra and more bruised flesh.

  Pagan hadn’t thought it was possible for her to be even angrier. Staring down at the girl, laid out and prepared for whatever horrors Dieter had, she stood up and ran down three steps before she realized—she had nothing to fight them with.

  No gun, no knife. She had some money, a tube of lipstick and the lighter she’d stolen from Alaric Vogel in her pocket. Unless someone had left a stick of dynamite lying around she
could set alight and hand to Dieter, like some Bugs Bunny cartoon, that wasn’t enough to defeat Dieter Von Albrecht and nine of his thick-necked friends.

  She ducked down and prayed they hadn’t heard her footsteps. There were too many of them for her to sneak down and somehow untie the ropes unseen. She didn’t have a knife to cut either Naomi or Mercedes free, and if she was caught, then they were all sunk.

  All three of you will die if you go down there. She had to tell herself that three times before her desire to wade in and start screaming came under control.

  A deep tremor took over. She made herself breathe in deeply three times, waiting. There had been no outcry, no one calling out, “Hey!” She hadn’t been spotted.

  Trying to ignore her rattling insides, she peered down cautiously. No one was looking in her direction. She’d gotten lucky.

  Dieter had wandered over to the altar and was checking on the ropes tying Naomi down. As he got close, she recoiled as much as the ropes allowed. And as he ran his hands over the bonds across her chest, he ran his hands over her body, too.

  “You should have stayed inside tonight, you stupid Jew,” he said, his voice thick as syrup. “Didn’t you know I’d come to take revenge for what you did to my father?”

  Naomi shook her head, trying to speak against the gag.

  Dieter looked down at her with a smirk. A moment later, his face morphed into a mask of anger and he slammed his fist down into the altar, an inch from Naomi’s head. “Why would I listen to your lies?” He brought his face close to hers. “Poor, filthy creature, lies are all you can speak.”

  Horrible echoes of what Emma had said. Pagan closed her eyes against her rising nausea, clenched her fists and chanted silently, “Don’t be stupid, don’t be stupid,” to herself. It was she who was responsible for the disappearance of Dieter’s father, not Mercedes, not Naomi, not Naomi’s father at the Israeli embassy. By rights, it should be Pagan tied to the altar down there.

  But Dieter wasn’t obsessed with Pagan the way he was with girls like Naomi and Mercedes—girls he hated and wanted. If she stood up and admitted her fault in the Von Albrecht affair, it would do no good. Dieter would find a way to blame Mercedes, the Jews and Naomi herself, and goodbye everyone.

  Anger and heroics were luxuries Pagan couldn’t afford right now. She had to think. She had to get help. Somehow.

  But help was miles away. If Devin had left soon after Pagan did, which was doubtful, he would only know to go to the general South Docks area. If the taxi driver’s message got through, he’d know where to come, but be farther behind. Pagan couldn’t tell what Dieter was planning with the ropes, the altar and the fire, but it had to be horrible. And once they got the fire lit, it would happen soon.

  Devin would never get here in time.

  “I think I got it,” Wolfgang said, feeding a twist of newspaper to the tiny flames now licking the pile of sticks on the floor.

  Dieter left Naomi to pace over to him. “Finally. It needs to get a lot bigger and hotter before we’re ready.”

  So she had a little time. To do what? Maybe she could bang on doors of the buildings outside or something, get some help, find a phone, call the cops.

  She backed up slowly, knees bent, head down, trying to stay as small as possible.

  Something slipped along her thigh and clacked onto the stone step.

  She halted and stared at the boys milling around below.

  One of them glanced up in her direction. She held her breath and got ready to bolt.

  But then Wolfgang said something to him, and the boy looked down at the fire again, and the moment had passed.

  But what had clattered? Her fingers tapped around until they encountered a small smooth metal rectangle. The lighter she’d taken from Alaric Vogel was lying on the step with its red-and-yellow East German volkspolizei symbol facing up.

  Damned thing had slipped out of her pocket. She scooped it up and got the hell out of there.

  The car headlights lit her way back up to the world above. Her mind was racing, but no answers appeared. Where could she get help? This was a warehouse and shipping district. Businesses closed up shop around 5:00 p.m. and the streets became deserted. That’s exactly why Dieter had chosen this area for his gang’s hideout. So banging on doors was unlikely to help. There were no public phones, either. It wasn’t a place meant for pedestrians, or tourists, or people who urgently needed the police.

  She put the lighter back in her pants pocket, paused and then pulled it out again. She ran her thumb over the raised black, yellow and red symbol on one side with its oak leaves, hammer and calipers. The former owner of this lighter had been following her for days now.

  Had he followed her here?

  Standing near the entrance to the tunnel, she looked around at the bare dirt yard and the blank mass of the warehouse beside her. Nothing moved. No footsteps echoed hers.

  She paced deliberately to the corner of the warehouse, not trying to conceal herself. A few yards away lay the fence she’d climbed over and a bit of the road on the other side. The evening summer breeze blew an empty box tumbling down the sidewalk. Everything else lay still.

  “I know you’re there.” She spoke in German, pitching her voice so that it carried. “Come out. I need to ask you a favor.”

  Her voice died in the empty air. The box kept thumping down the sidewalk out of sight. She stepped away from the building so that the feeble starlight fell full upon her.

  “I know you remember that night in Berlin,” she said, lifting her voice to project out into the dark. “The night you hunted me. I knocked you out cold. I could have killed you then, but I chose not to. That means you owe me.”

  The fence creaked in the wind. Pagan shivered and resisted crossing her arms against the chill. She needed to look confident, assured.

  If there was anyone watching, that is. Maybe she was crazy.

  A shadow moved. Alaric Vogel was standing by the far corner of the warehouse, eyes glittering at her under the brim of his hat.

  He was still tall, with broad shoulders and a strong, slim build under the belted gray trench coat. And he was handsome still, too, the arrogance of his hawk-like nose softened by the dimple between his full lower lip and his square chin.

  The cute one. At first that’s how she’d nicknamed him in her head, on the night the Berlin Wall went up. Then, when he’d hunted her through the midnight streets of East Berlin for miles, she’d changed that to the relentless one. His being here proved that name was all too appropriate. The question now was, how much did he resent the little trick she and Devin had played on him in Villa 31? Was he nothing but a ruthless monster, or did he have even the slightest sense of right and wrong?

  Vogel didn’t speak. He stood there, hands in his coat pockets, staring. Waiting.

  “Do you have a gun?” she had to call out against the wind.

  He thought about his answer, eyes shifting. “Yes.”

  That was good. She wanted him to have a gun. But it made her stomach flutter thinking he was armed and she was not.

  “Why?” He asked it casually, as if her answer didn’t matter.

  “Because I don’t have one,” she said, and walked cautiously toward him, her hands out, empty. “And Dieter and his fascist friends are about to do something awful to two girls, one because she’s Jewish, the other because she’s got darker skin. We have to stop them.”

  His lips curved up in a derisive smile. “We?”

  She kept moving toward him. She was more persuasive up close, and she wanted to see his face, gauge his reactions. “You’re a Communist, so you hate Nazis and fascists as much as I do.”

  “Fascists like your mother?” he asked.

  That stopped her in her tracks. Handsome though he was, his eyes were cold, waiting for her reaction. She didn’t want them to, but
those words hurt.

  “How do you know about my mother?” she asked, her throat tight. “Did everyone know but me?”

  Her emotion seemed to please him. “We have the file the Nazis kept on her during the war. Our Russian friends found it in the archives when they swept into Berlin. As your father fought for the Allies, his wife was doing her best to spread Hitler’s message back at home.”

  She paced closer again. He didn’t seem to mind. “And Von Albrecht? Was he in her file, as well?”

  “I found out about Von Albrecht by following you.” He gave her a shallow, mocking bow. “Thank you.”

  He was being sardonic with her now, but when she’d called for him a few moments ago, he’d stepped out of the dark. He didn’t have to do that. Something was driving him to talk to her, to tell her a little about himself, to boast. Perhaps he did feel some sort of obligation, or maybe he had a strange appreciation for the nerve it had taken her to call him out. Either way, he was still talking to her. The longer that happened, the likelier it was that he’d help her.

  But every second counted.

  “Sorry about the other night,” she said. “It wasn’t my idea. But I needed to see who you were, and you seem to have recovered well enough.”

  “You should have known it was me,” he said. Behind the ice in his eyes, amusement flickered. “Long ago.”

  “How long have you been tracking me?” she asked. “Was that you following us after Frank Sinatra’s party in Los Angeles in December?”

  “Perhaps,” he said with a lift of his eyebrows that told her the answer was yes. “It didn’t take me long after the wall went up to realize who you were. It wasn’t difficult to persuade Comrade Mielke to promote me and let me build a file on you. He hates you after what you did for the traitor Thomas Kruger.”

  Mielke was the head of East Germany’s security service, the Stasi, and a humorless, ruthless man. Pagan had acted like the silliest creature on earth the night he questioned her, and he’d decided she was harmless. He’d been wrong.