by Nina Berry
“How is Erich?” she asked, still sauntering toward him. She was only six feet away now. “Please say hello from me when you see him next.”
His eyebrows lifted, bemused at this insolence. “I may not phrase it quite like that,” he said.
Pagan had been sexy and cheeky with Alaric Vogel the night they met, at first. He’d liked what he saw. She’d flirted and deceived, and then humiliated him, and he hadn’t hesitated in his hunt after that to kill her. It was absurd that they were here now, talking almost like allies. But here, now, in this one thing, they had a common purpose. The Communists had been instrumental in defeating the Nazis, and their ideologies were directly opposed. Vogel was as predisposed to hate the likes of Dieter Von Albrecht as Pagan was.
And Vogel’s doggedness had wrung from Pagan a strange, grudging respect. So far it looked like her shenanigans had made him feel the same.
“Maybe you won’t tell your friends in the Stasi about tonight at all,” she said.
The smile faded. “Comrade Mielke only agreed to let me follow you because he despises you almost as much as he despises loose ends.” He shrugged. “But you’ve proven quite valuable.”
“Too bad your team didn’t get Von Albrecht,” she said.
“I would have shot him if he’d had the courage to leave his hole,” Vogel said. “Fascists destroyed my country. I have more reason to hate them than the daughter of a Nazi sympathizer.”
She ignored the dig. “Then help me keep the next generation of Nazis from hurting anyone else.”
He pulled a pack of Winston cigarettes out of his coat pocket. Her old brand. He removed a cigarette from the pack and tapped it on the back of his other hand. “You think I owe you my life because you didn’t kill me back in Berlin?”
“You nearly killed me,” she said. “I had your gun in my hand, and no one would have blamed me if I killed you. It would have been so easy, and I wouldn’t have to deal with you following me now. But I didn’t.”
“But if you had killed me then, I wouldn’t be here listening to you ask for my help.” He put the cigarette between his lips and reached into his pocket for a match.
Pagan pulled her lighter out of her own pocket, stepped closer and flicked the flame to life.
He squinted against the light, leaning in, and saw the volkspolizei insignia on the lighter. The lighter she’d taken from his unconscious body the night he’d tried to hunt her down.
His condescending sneer dropped. His eyes flicked up to hers, infuriated.
She gave him her most impudent smile, and moved the lighter closer, offering it again.
As his gaze shifted from her left eye to her right, his anger leaked away. His lips curled around the cigarette in a reluctant appreciation. His eyes narrowed again, but this time with conflicted amusement and respect.
He bent in close, very close, and put the tip of his cigarette to her flame. He lingered there a moment. His dark auburn hair was cropped precisely around his ear, but a faint stubble was emerging on his cheeks. She could smell the waxed cotton of his trench coat, his musky skin and the powdery pomade he used in his hair.
He straightened, towering over her, and blew the smoke up into the air. He pulled aside his trench coat to draw a long-nosed pistol from his shoulder holster. She couldn’t help taking a step back, which made his smile widen.
“If I help you tonight,” he said. “My debt is paid.”
She stared at him. This was really happening. “If we save Mercedes and Naomi Schusterman, the debt is paid.”
He nodded, dropped the cigarette and stomped it out. “How many of them?”
“Ten,” she said.
“Ten?” he said, amused and taken aback.
“Ten boys.” She gave a little wave of her hand to dismiss his skeptical look. “You can handle them. Unless you’ve only got blanks in that gun.”
Another reference to the night she’d shot his own gun at him, knowing the first few bullets were blanks. Reminding him of that moment was a risk...
He gave a tiny snort. “No blanks this time.”
So he appreciated the in-jokes. Good. “I’ll help. They’re down that tunnel you probably saw me go into. They parked their cars in there. Past the cars there’s a narrow opening, down some steps, in a kind of sunken, ruined church. Naomi’s tied with ropes to an altar in the middle of the floor, and to the right of that, Mercedes is tied up and knocked out with drugs near the boys who are building a fire. There are candles and broken statues and side chapels...”
He’d been checking his gun while she spoke, and before she finished, he bent over and pulled a thin sharp knife from his boot.
“Here.” He handed it to her, hilt first.
“Oh,” she said, not taking it. “Stabbing someone...too personal for me.”
“Not for stabbing,” he said in a long-suffering tone. “To free the girls. You said there were ropes.” He offered her the hilt again.
“Oh!” She took the knife gingerly. “Good thinking.”
He strode around the corner of the warehouse, back the way she’d come, and she scurried after him. She hefted the knife and stared at his gray trench-coated back. Clearly he wasn’t the slightest bit afraid of her stabbing him. She didn’t know if that was good or bad. As they entered the tunnel, he stuck to the wall, as she had.
“Light up ahead,” he said. “They may be coming out.”
“No, I turned on the car headlights,” she said. “So I could see.”
“Hmph.” He let out an appreciative sound and they picked up speed. “Can you get down there ahead of me, quietly?” he asked.
She couldn’t remember the German word for sneak, so she said, “I’ll try.”
“Get as close to the girl on the altar as you can, then I’ll distract them while you cut her free. Then we get your friend by the fire.”
He was good at this. She was strangely reassured yet nervous as hell. “An excellent plan.”
They slowed as they neared the doorway and aligned themselves on either side of it.
Pagan shot a look over at Vogel, breathing hard from the run down the tunnel, and from nerves. He had his gun pointed up, and his chest was rising and falling in sync with her own. Their eyes met.
“Don’t kill anyone,” she whispered. “If you can help it.”
“And why not?”
“I don’t want any more blood on my hands.”
That gave him pause, but he nodded curtly. “If I can help it.”
She had stepped through the mirror into the reverse of her adventures with Devin Black. Now she was working with a man who had once tried to kill her and followed her halfway around the world.
And it had gotten him promoted. Alaric Vogel might be nutty, but he was no fool.
From below, voices.
“I think it’s ready,” Wolfgang was saying.
Vogel peeked one eye around the frame of the doorway. Pagan did the same from her side.
The fire was larger now, burning brightly. The boys were still mostly clustered around it and Mercedes, except for Dieter, who stood by the altar, hands behind his back, waiting.
Naomi was lying still. It was too dark to see how she was doing, but they had to assume that she was still alive. The alternative didn’t bear thinking about.
Wolfgang crouched by the fire and took hold of something in his right hand, which wore a thick, padded glove. He lifted what looked like a stick, glowing at one end, and showed it to Dieter. “What do you think?”
The stick was a metal rod. It had been heating in the fire while Pagan spoke to Vogel, and now it glowed orange hot. She couldn’t see the symbol on the other end of it, but she knew its purpose now. Dieter and his friends were going to brand Naomi Schusterman.
“Make sure the other one is awake,” said Dieter.
Over by the fire, four of the boys cautiously sat Mercedes up and tugged her over to a pillar, so that her back was supported. They’d gagged her and tied her wrists together. One of the boys raised a hand, and Pagan almost cried out as he slapped Mercedes, once, hard, across the face.
“I’m not sure she’s going to...” He put a hand under her chin and peered closer at her.
It was hard to see exactly what happened, but it looked like Mercedes snapped her forehead into the boy’s face. He reeled back, clutching his nose, screaming, and Mercedes was on her feet. Pagan put one hand to her throat as she saw that M’s ankles were bound, too.
“Don’t let them kill her,” she said to Vogel. “No matter what!”
He hefted his gun and sited at the boys, but they had already piled on her, all of the remaining eight of them.
“Go!” Vogel urged Pagan in a low voice.
Crouched low, Pagan scuttled through the doorway and down the steps, padding as quietly as she could in her sneakers. She kept her head down until she paused, ten steps down, and looked up.
“Can’t you keep one girl still?” Dieter was shouting in frustration.
While the boy Mercedes had head-butted crawled over to sit against the base of a statue, Wolfgang had gotten another rope. Together, the eight boys tied Mercedes to the pillar in a seated position. Her nose was bleeding, and her eyes glinted in the candlelight. She was very much alive.
“One more move like that,” Wolfgang said to her in Spanish, “and we’ll just kill you both now!”
Mercedes’s head turned to the altar, as if seeing Naomi there for the first time. Her shoulders slumped, and she leaned her head back against the pillar, as if exhausted.
Dieter’s hands dropped from behind his back. The line of his shoulders was tense with excitement. “I think it’s time.”
One of the boys handed a padded glove to Dieter. He lifted his right hand and placed the glove over it with great ceremony as Wolfgang lifted the glowing brand over his head and walked toward him. Now that she was closer, Pagan could see the brand more clearly. It was a burning swastika, wide as the mouth of a teacup.
Of course. These were exactly the sort of lump-heads who thought using that tired symbol of hatred and oppression had some kind of sacred significance. They wanted to strike fear, to call upon the spirits of those who had first used the crooked cross to terrorize the world.
But they were just a shabby clutch of moronic boys in a damp crypt aping ghosts. It would have been pathetic if two girls’ lives didn’t hang in the balance.
More feeble was them treating torture like it was the lighting of the Olympic torch. But the posturing conveniently captured the attention of the other young men, and she was able to get all the way down the steps and right up to the foot of the altar, where the bulk of it hid her from everyone.
Shoulders against the cold stone, Pagan hefted the knife and looked toward the entrance. Alaric Vogel was halfway down the steps, pistol in hand, walking as if he didn’t care whether anyone saw him. What was he waiting for?
Shadows were moving. Pagan peered around the altar and saw Dieter’s feet and the tip of the swastika brand swinging in her direction. “Are you ready for your purification?” he asked, stopping near Naomi’s head.
Oh, God, was he going to brand her face? Pagan switched the knife to an overhand grip and eyed Dieter’s leg, less than five feet away. She could stab his foot, maybe, or the beefy part of his thigh.
Naomi uttered a muffled groan. Her dress rustled against the stone above as she struggled. Dieter’s free hand was on her. Pagan couldn’t see where.
Pagan raised the knife, gathering her legs under her to lunge. She looked back one more time for Vogel, but he wasn’t on the steps. Where...?
There he was. He’d moved to take cover behind the crumbling statue of a saint. He saw her looking at him, smiled and mouthed a word: Bereit?
Ready? He was asking her if she was ready?
Jawohl! she mouthed back at him. Go!
“Hold still, bitch,” Dieter said. “Or it will be worse for you.”
“Halt! Or I will be forced to shoot!”
Vogel’s voice rang out as he stepped from behind the statue, his pistol leveled at Dieter.
Dieter’s feet swiveled around. The tip of the brand was still glowing. He hadn’t pressed it to Naomi’s flesh yet.
“What are you doing here?” Dieter yelled, rather predictably. “Who are you?”
“You will back up toward the far side of the vault,” Vogel said. “All of you.”
“Get out of here!” another boy shouted, and the others began yelling things like, “We’ll kill you, too!” and ruder things. Their footsteps shuffled forward and back, voices bouncing off the rock.
Dieter hadn’t moved back. Pagan crawled around to the side of the altar opposite him, grabbed the first rope she saw and began sawing at it with the knife.
Crack! Vogel fired a shot at Dieter’s feet. Chunks of the stone floor flew up, and Dieter recoiled, arms up to ward off the shrapnel, dropping the brand.
“Back up, or it’ll be your head,” Vogel said.
“Jew lover,” Dieter spat. He didn’t back up farther. What a stubborn meathead. “Race traitor. If you come any closer, we’ll kill them both.”
Damn it, Pagan couldn’t see Mercedes from here. But she heard the scuffing of feet, and one of the boys whispering urgently, “Get your knife! To her throat, stupid!”
The rope Pagan was cutting parted quickly. Vogel’s knife was scary sharp. Pagan resisted the urge to reveal herself to see Mercedes and started on the second one. Two more to go after that.
“Stupid little boys,” Vogel said. “Hitler himself would have laughed at you. Branding girls. What’s next—cutting the whiskers off mice?”
The knife cut right through the second rope. Pagan heard Naomi’s feet kick now that they were free. She started cutting the third rope, and poked her head up over the top of the altar to get the girl’s attention.
“Lie still if you can,” she said, very low. “We’ll get you out of here.”
Naomi lifted her head, eyes wide, and saw Pagan. Her lips around the gag were bloody. Her bra had been pulled down to expose one breast. Seeing that, Pagan had to steady herself. That must be where Dieter was going to put the brand. She still couldn’t see Mercedes on the other side of the altar.
Focus! She spared a moment to put one finger to her lips, nodding at Naomi, then resumed cutting. The strands of the third rope, which was slung across the girl’s waist and looped around her wrists, were giving way.
“Every Jew we brand or kill is one less to poison the earth,” Dieter was saying. “They’ll see our work and know fear.”
Vogel laugh derisively. “Tell that to Adolf Eichmann. Or your father.”
“One more step, and they’ll cut the indio girl’s throat.” Dieter’s footsteps scraped closer.
Mercedes!
No, focus. The third rope gave way, and Naomi pulled the rope off her bloody wrists first, then pulled her bra up and started to wiggle her way out from under the last rope as Pagan started cutting it.
“Get away from her, all of you,” Vogel said to the boys near Mercedes. “Or I’ll start shooting. I’ve got enough bullets for you all.”
“Stay!” Dieter ordered. “Cut her throat if he...”
Vogel fired his gun, and a boy screamed.
Pagan kept sawing, and prayed Vogel was a good shot. That wasn’t Mercedes. That wasn’t M screaming at all.
“And that was just your shoulder I was aiming for,” Vogel said. “Imagine if I’d wanted that bullet in your head. Now move back, all of you!”
Feet were scuffling again. Voices muttered in German. “Help him.”
“I told you we should have gotten guns.”
>
Pagan could only hope that meant the boys were obeying Vogel. Would this goddamn last rope never part?
“She’s getting free!” Dieter said. He must have seen Naomi wiggling.
“Stop!” Vogel ordered. “Or I’ll kill you where you stand.”
“You can’t kill us all before we reach you,” Dieter shouted.
“Maybe.” Vogel didn’t sound impressed. “But as a clever girl I know once said, ‘I’ll just kill you first. Let’s see which one of your friends wants you dead.’”
Pagan couldn’t believe it. Vogel was quoting what she’d said to him when she’d pointed his own gun at him back in Berlin. The man had a twisted sense of humor.
This last rope was actually two ropes wound together. That’s why it was taking longer to cut. Naomi couldn’t seem to get out from under it, but she did pull the gag from her mouth.
“Who is that there?” Dieter said. “Behind the altar? Who is that?”
Pagan stood up. It gave her a better angle for cutting, anyway. “Just me, Dieter.”
She could see Mercedes now, and a clump of boys, supporting their two wounded members, clustered thirty feet away from her, staring at her as if she was a corpse popping out of one of the crypts.
Dieter’s whole body arrested in midmove when he saw her, as if he’d been struck by lightning. “Pagan Jones?” he said.
“Hello,” she said, and shot a glance at Vogel. “Carry on.”
While her attention was on Vogel, Dieter surged toward her. He was faster than she thought possible.
She caught the movement in the corner of her eye, and turned to lift the knife. He didn’t seem to care. His face was a grimace of anger and hate. His large hands reached for her throat.
One stab wasn’t going to stop him. She raised the knife and slashed. He ducked and got one hand on her knife arm, forcing it down, the other reaching for her neck. He was going to choke the life from her. Beside them both, on the altar, Naomi was kicking and yelling, unable to get free. Somewhere behind them, Mercedes was standing up, pulling free of the rope that tied her to the pillar.