The Pearl Thief

by Fiona McIntosh

‘Now, you know that’s not how life works, of course,’ she said, feeling the wine hitting her empty belly.

  ‘I do. I know there are people who spend every waking hour trying to out-manoeuvre the law. Nonetheless, my role is to negotiate between parties to get the best outcome for my client while ensuring we observe the law.’

  ‘Is that why you’re here with me?’ There was no point in tiptoeing around the subject that had clambered into the taxi with them, dodged the rain with them, now sat drinking wine with them. ‘I want you to know my letter contains only the truth … and the truth is what the law is surely all about?’

  ‘Do you know something, mademoiselle? Everyone believes theirs is the truth.’

  ‘Let me say it another way that might appeal to the man of law: everything in my letter contains only fact.’

  ‘Good. So …’ he sighed. ‘Let me read.’

  He sat down at his scrubbed pine kitchen table and opened her letter while Katerina tried not to hold her breath for too long, or to watch him too intently.

  She watched him run the tip of his tongue around the outline of his generous lips, which turned up slightly at each edge, giving the impression that Edward Summerbee had a permanent slight smile. It was echoed by the lines that flanked his eyes; they too flicked gently upwards so the overall look was one of someone on the brink of laughter, who seemed to know no sorrows. It had to be the liquor on an empty stomach that was prompting her irresponsible thoughts – the new one wondering what it might be like to taste those lips as he had just tasted them. This flippancy irritated her but it was also such a novel feeling that she didn’t want to let it go fully … just to push it away for now.

  He read on, turning the pages with crooked fingers, and she watched his expression darken and continue to fall as the gravity of her story began to press his shoulders down.

  She placed two bowls of soup down between them.

  ‘Only you can help me,’ she said as he looked up from the final page to draw a slow breath.

  Edward sighed. ‘Mademoiselle Kassowicz —’

  ‘It’s Katerina,’ she corrected. ‘I would enjoy hearing you call me by my true name.’

  ‘Then you must call me Edward.’

  Light from the candle that he’d lit between them caught the spark that flashed in his gaze. She sensed the helpless connection between them that was nothing to do with her manipulation of the situation. She’d felt it at the first hello and she’d been trying to touch what it was ever since and now she knew. What she had been reaching for today on her journey to Lincoln’s Inn Fields to deliver her letter arrived like a bomb exploding in her mind. And it was as foreign a feeling as it was helplessly alluring … like a narcotic she’d discovered that might ease the pain of years of suffering.

  It was, she now understood, the unbridled, unfamiliar, delicious attraction to another person. It was the feeling of being fourteen and hoping Alexandr Clementis might try to kiss her; it was the impossible hope that Dr Otto Schäfer would know how much she desired to fall into his arms and spend the rest of her life in his safety … and now it was, hard though it was to believe, Edward Summerbee and his tough yet kind, amusing yet professional manner that had got under her guard. More than two decades of building a fortress around her feelings and he’d unwittingly found a way through with his self-effacing style, those sympathetic eyes and a pea and ham soup that he insisted she share.

  Daniel’s words arrived in her mind to haunt her: someone unexpected would arrive into her life and she might learn how to find the mindset to discover romance and love. Perhaps she would let a fourth man into her world … perhaps.

  ‘Katerina …?’ He tested the name. She enjoyed it spoken in his voice. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I am. Sorry. The alcohol probably,’ she fibbed. ‘I forget to eat sometimes.’

  ‘I hope you will not consider it impertinent if I tell you that in spite of you forgetting to eat, you look exquisite. That shade of red is most dashing on you. Miss Bailey would need to take a couple of aspirin and have a lie-down, I suspect, if she looked at you tonight.’

  She gave a low laugh, genuinely amused at their running joke about the poor secretary.

  ‘Nice to hear you amused.’

  ‘It’s not a habit of mine,’ she admitted.

  ‘Not laughing?’ He looked at her as if he barely understood the meaning of the words. ‘Well, that’s just a sin,’ he said. ‘We must rectify that and teach you how to throw back your head at least …’ He feigned concentration, pulling at a pretend beard, which encouraged a broad smile from her. ‘Oh, at least three times a week. I’ll give you some pills.’

  ‘Thank you, Doctor.’

  His countenance grew serious as he began to spoon soup to his mouth. ‘I could hardly not be moved by your letter.’

  She followed his directness. ‘Aside from rape, after watching him murder all in my family, I told you he shot me and this was done after urging me to take my chances for freedom. He enjoyed watching me trying to escape. I was flung onto their corpses, presumed dead by the time he’d had his fun at my expense.’

  Edward looked ashen in the low light of the parlour. ‘There aren’t sufficient words to convey my horror, Katerina. And you’re so blunt about it.’

  ‘I wanted you to have the raw facts. He stole the Pearls and now I suspect he’s either trying to absolve himself of his sins – of his connection to us through those Pearls – or he’s using immense patience to find a way of making his profit from that theft.’

  ‘Or both,’ Edward murmured, frowning.

  ‘Most likely,’ she said.

  ‘You can’t be sure it’s him, of course.’

  ‘No, but you can,’ she said, nailing him with a stare.

  ‘How does Mr Horowitz fit into all of this?’

  ‘Daniel is Mossad.’

  At this his eyebrows lifted, crinkling the wide forehead, which swooped to a slightly receding hairline that was not unattractive in the way it framed his symmetrical features. Edward kept his hair trimmed short, and though it looked dark in this light, she imagined as a child he must have had fluffy golden hair that settled into a nutty colour in adulthood.

  ‘He’s hunting the same man,’ she continued. ‘That’s how we came to be associated.’

  ‘You indicated your friendship was platonic?’

  It was rhetorical and she remained impassive.

  ‘You could have fooled me.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps the waves of hostility that were directed at me as you were giving me your undivided attention.’

  ‘I think Daniel may have developed feelings,’ she said, deliberately playing down what she knew. ‘But it’s likely because he sees us as kindred spirits. I’ve set him straight. We barely know each other but he has shared my story and I have shared his.’ She gave him the abridged version of Daniel’s loss.

  He listened in silence but his expression grew grave as his soup cooled.

  ‘So he has an understandable grudge. Katerina, I want to help you but I’m not really sure how. You see, I don’t know this man, Ruda Mayek, of whom you speak.’

  ‘But – your client, he …?’

  ‘My client is a European legal firm. Now, who their client is I am not privy to. They are representing his or her interests but I am not; I am representing theirs. That’s it. I will never learn the name of their client, especially if you believe it is this brute; I suspect he would have moved with immense care to protect his identity.’

  ‘Could you ask, perhaps?’

  ‘I could not,’ he said. It was gently spoken but she recalled from earlier in the day how adroitly final he could be in the softest of tones. He had done it again: stilled her. ‘That would be breaking every rule that I am bound by. It would embarrass my firm, it would compromise my professional name, and I have to tell you it would be in vain, Katerina. The lawyer at the other end of this contract will no sooner reveal his client’s na
me than tell you that you can keep the Pearls.’

  ‘No, you see, I think that’s where there’s a misunderstanding, and perhaps I should have stated this from the outset.’ She paused, giving herself a heartbeat to be sure she wasn’t lying. ‘I have no intention of making a claim on the Pearls.’

  He showed his surprise by pushing his soup bowl forward as though he’d lost interest in his food. ‘Good grief. Why ever not? You say they’re yours.’

  ‘They are. But they represent only pain. And they’re hardly a simple item of jewellery that one clasps around the neck for a night out.’ She smiled, hoping to lighten the mood that had turned suddenly heavy around them.

  He gave a sad twist of his lovely mouth; it didn’t quite make it, but it approximated a smile for her.

  ‘I am comfortable that they go on display in a museum, whether it’s the British Museum, the Louvre, or one in Prague – Russia, even – all the way back to the palace in Istanbul, if need be … so long as it is stated that they were donated by the Kassowicz family. Let them be admired by all. I don’t particularly want to see them again, let alone wear them, but I will not allow him to profit from the Pearls, or to wash himself of the theft or my family’s murders.’

  He’d been watching her closely as she spoke; she knew she was showing more emotion than she normally would but it was important to convey, emphatically, that her motivation was not the Pearls. They were simply the proof.

  He sighed. ‘You’re so intense. Have you always been like this?’

  ‘I’ve become like this,’ she admitted.

  ‘It’s not unattractive but it’s certainly single-minded.’

  ‘I’ve been looking over my shoulder for most of my life. I’m not sure you can imagine what that feels like. I’ve feared but also hoped that one day there would be a reckoning with Ruda Mayek; I wanted to convince myself that the war claimed him and yet I never truly believed it did. And so I’ve been cautious to the point of …’ She lifted a shoulder. ‘Well, to becoming so introspective that I find it hard to let anyone in now. But no, as a youngster I was social; I loved life and I looked forward to it.’

  ‘I think you’re perfect as you are. Well, apart from that tiny mark in your eye that is so intriguing.’

  Katerina had thought herself immune to the raft of regular compliments that were lauded upon her. ‘My brother had it too but not my sisters; all three girls had lovely but unremarkable eyes.’

  ‘Brother?’

  She nodded and explained, including her father’s repeated attempts to get the children away on the Kindertransports. ‘Petr would be twenty-four if he’d been put on the train but he died of a sudden illness. Even if he had survived, Mayek wouldn’t have let him live anyway, so I shouldn’t let my thoughts stray like this.’

  He helped her by moving her thoughts on. ‘You didn’t explain in your letter what happened to the kind doctor.’

  She disturbed the neat shape of her hair with a self-conscious rake of her fingers. ‘Otto? He was my hero. Still is.’

  He smiled, encouraging her. She’d never told anyone the detail but it felt easy to talk to Edward – even easier than Daniel. ‘Otto was my saviour. He saved my life twice – first on the night of the murders and keeping me hidden in his holiday villa, and then hidden in plain sight in Prague, as he put it. I lived briefly in the servants’ quarters of his apartment. He’d coached me in nursing skills in case we needed that as a full-time cover but I was regarded as the housekeeper and no one scrutinised, to my knowledge.’

  ‘Oh, tongues must have wagged,’ Edward scoffed gently.

  ‘They may have, because I know he was troubled. He was married, you see. His wife is Austrian; they lived on the border at Salzburg and he wrote and told her about me. It was the measure of the man he was. He was not a liar or a cheat.’

  ‘Tell me he wasn’t in love with you.’

  ‘He wasn’t in love with me,’ she said, warmth creeping up her neck. ‘But that didn’t mean I wasn’t in love with him.’ There it was! She’d openly admitted her heart’s secret.

  ‘That’s understandable,’ Edward assured her. ‘You were still a child and vulnerable. I’d consider it odd if you hadn’t fallen in love with him.’

  ‘He was extremely handsome … that helped,’ she said as she cleared their bowls.

  ‘How old was he?’

  She shrugged, turning back to the sink. ‘Around the age I am today, I suppose. He would be in his late fifties now. If he knew how I felt about him – and I suspect he did – he went to pains to protect me from any temptation and didn’t allow me to make a fool of myself. He never overstepped his role as protector and I have no idea if that required his energies.’

  ‘As a man I can take a good guess that it did,’ he suggested.

  ‘I don’t know what repercussions my presence in his life had on his marriage. We only lived like that for a short while because circumstances pushed us to take action. When we parted in Czechoslovakia he asked me not to try to reach him and he admitted that his wife struggled with the notion that he had a platonic relationship with a young Jewess. She was a good woman … a loyal one. She obviously never mentioned it to anyone else and I presume destroyed his letter that spoke of me. And so, out of respect for her, especially for not turning me in, I have never seen him again since the war. We exchange polite cards once a year that I think simply reassure each other that we’re still alive, but beyond that I wouldn’t know anything more about him today.’

  ‘That’s sad.’ He frowned at her.

  ‘It is. But it’s also right. He loved his wife.’

  ‘But he lied to her because he loved you too, I’m convinced.’

  She pretended not to set any store by his remark, waving it away. ‘Otto is someone I put on a pedestal. He kept me safe. Sometimes I’d file for him, closeted in his office. I kept fearing I’d be tapped on the shoulder by Gestapo but it never happened, although I was never off my guard.’

  He gave another twist of his mouth in private amusement.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘Are you ever off your guard?’ He grinned. ‘I’ll make some coffee. Tell me the rest.’ He busied himself as she spoke.

  ‘I’m presuming you know about Heydrich? He was the most powerful man in Prague.’

  ‘I know about the assassination attempt by the Allies. Who doesn’t?’

  She nodded. ‘But did you know that he didn’t die immediately? He was injured and brought to the Bulovka Hospital.’

  ‘Oh my …’ He trailed off, looking stunned.

  ‘The Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia was lying on a ward not far from where I hid in plain sight and Otto was on the team of doctors caring for him. They’d sealed off the hospital just about and no one could get into or off that ward of Heydrich’s unless they had full German clearance. It was a moment of high panic for us. The threat of discovery felt horribly real – imminent, in fact; they kept doing spot searches and each evening they’d sweep through the wards, the offices, checking IDs, et cetera. I had brilliantly forged paperwork but it took every ounce of courage to remain calm and friendly each time they asked to see it.’

  The coffee bubbled on the stove. He removed it to pour two cups. He handed her a small black shot in a short cup and couldn’t know how impressed she was. ‘I can’t even imagine how terrifying that must have been,’ he said.

  ‘Otto knew Heydrich was dying. His wound drainage was copious from damage to his spleen. They did everything of course to save him but Otto didn’t trust everyone else’s optimism. You have to understand we were both living on a cliff edge of daily panic.’

  Edward nodded as he stared at his coffee. His face didn’t suit such a grave countenance, she decided; his surname alone defied such misery. ‘I don’t feel like reliving this, Edward, so I’m going to give you the short version.’

  ‘Please,’ he said, as if he too were suffering. It didn’t even feel odd that he hadn’t asked her if she took her coffee with milk; it jus
t felt right that they both drank it short and black.

  She sipped. Surprisingly rich and strong. ‘We had several burns victims on the ward following an explosion at a munitions factory. There were women too and Otto told me he only expected one to survive and if she did she would be so horribly scarred she would be unrecognisable as human.’ She cleared her throat. ‘I don’t know if he helped that woman to her death and disposed of her corpse in the hospital crematorium, but I became her. My face was covered in bandages and he wheeled me out of that hospital on 26 May 1942, the day after Heydrich’s operation to repair a wound to the vertebrae. They removed metal that had shattered his rib, punctured his stomach and lodged in his spleen. It was serious but everyone was cautiously hopeful despite the discovery of horsehair in the wound, which I later learned was from the upholstery of his roadster following the bombing. But Otto wasn’t going to wait for a recovery or a death; either way he felt the situation far too dangerous, especially if Heydrich didn’t survive, as I imagine every doctor in the hospital would suffer recriminations. Himmler, his boss, as you likely know, was not a reasonable man. So, using every contact he had, Otto got us out with his superbly forged paperwork and I arrived in the next country as a German-speaking Frenchwoman called Severine Kassel.’

  ‘So he smuggled you out of the hospital but under what pretence?’

  ‘Something about removing me to a spa in the mountains where the brisker air would help the wounds “cool”.’

  Edward scoffed at the thin excuse.

  ‘You have to appreciate, no one cared about the woman with the burns. The hospital was on the highest security alert for who-ever might be entering – not exiting it – while Heydrich was in recovery and word had it he was brightening, speaking to his medical team. The mood was buoyant that he’d make a recovery as we made our run for it. You know the rest of his story, but Otto pulled in all of his favours and got Mrs Biskup into Switzerland too. We felt she might be in danger and she couldn’t bear not to be with me – I’d become the daughter she didn’t have. She wasn’t close to her soldier son and he was married to a woman she didn’t especially like.