“He wanted to protect you in case our lead didn’t go anywhere, so he made me promise not to say anything.” She stared down at the table guiltily, but when she looked up again her face was wiped clean of expression. “Obviously things have changed, and I need you on this mission.”
Ren hated her a little for dangling in front of him the possibility of his mother being alive. He didn’t want to open himself to that idea, but it had already rooted itself deep in his heart. Marty’s manipulation had worked.
Ren downed his tea in a single swallow. “I’ll go to the interview tomorrow. Tell me what to do.”
Come daybreak, the Viper himself would knock on the front doors of the Fortress.
Early in the morning, as the first rays of Saturday sunlight spread across the sky, Ren stepped into the cold shadow of Fort Tomogashima and wondered if the soldiers above him would shoot. He counted five of them atop the concrete wall, with their rifles pointed at the softest parts of his body. But he forced himself to step forward anyway, even though an American like him would make excellent target practice: helpless, weak, and easily disposed of.
Ren was tempted to turn around and run away, but the Resistance needed him. The prisoners at Alcatraz needed him. And, most of all, his mother — if she was alive — needed him. If she had somehow clung to life these last five years, then he would do anything to get to this interview on time, even if it meant staring down those menacing black rifles.
In any case, it was too late for him to escape now.
“You there! State your business,” one of the guards called out, his voice echoing down to the gravel that Ren stood upon. A flag waved next to the soldier, bearing the red sunburst of the Empire. Even that flag seemed to be watching Ren’s every move.
Ren summoned his voice and dialed it to its meekest setting, which wasn’t hard to do. He wasn’t even inside the Fortress yet, but his hands were already shaking. “I’m here for an eight-thirty appointment with Kato-sama.”
Ren had done this twice already at the preceding checkpoints, first at the main gate and then at the secondary fence. Marty had briefed him about the Fortress’s security the night prior, but hearing her describe it had been much easier than experiencing it for himself. At every checkpoint so far Ren had to lay out his ID card and visitor’s badge before he turned over his shoulder bag for inspection. He had hoped that the guards would have let him inside by now, but he wasn’t surprised by their caution, considering Daisy Montgomery had tried to infiltrate the Fortress less than seventy-two hours ago.
“Wait there,” the soldier told Ren while he murmured into his radio.
Seconds bled into minutes. The morning air crept down his collar and bit at Ren’s skin, but he didn’t dare zip up his vest. He worried that any sudden movement would be his last. Finally, the metal door in front of him cracked open an inch.
“Go on inside,” the soldier shouted. “Slowly.”
Ren slid through the door, and his pulse doubled speed. He had gotten past the checkpoints. He was inside the Fortress.
Though not quite.
“Up against the wall!” a new soldier shouted into Ren’s ear, pushing his nose against the cinder blocks. “Legs apart!”
Gritting his teeth, Ren complied. Apparently, they weren’t through with him yet.
The soldier patted Ren down yet again and shoved him through another metal detector. While Ren waited for his bag to finish the security screening, he glanced around the lifeless holding room, his eyes drawn to the TV mounted on the wall. The morning news report played on the screen, showing stills of armored vehicles driving up to the Fortress and depositing foreign officials at its front door. Dignitaries from every corner of the globe were arriving in the WAT to attend the Joint Prosperity Ball, including the Italian prince of San Marino and an elderly emissary from Vichy France and even Deputy Führer Fabian Forst himself. The silver-haired forty-something Forst was rumored to succeed Führer Dieter Hitler and take over the reins of the Third Reich until Hitler’s young son came of age. Ren couldn’t help but notice how Forst entered the Fortress without a single pat-down or luggage screening. These checkpoints were only meant for Americans like Ren.
“You’re the one who Kato-sama sent for?” the soldier asked, a laugh right under his tongue. “He must really be short-staffed if he’s asking someone like you for help.”
“Hai,” murmured Ren, even though he had a few other choice words picked out. He couldn’t let this soldier get under his skin; he needed to focus on what lay ahead. So he went over the details that Marty had drilled into his skull, from what to say to Kato-sama to the secret code name of the mission (Callipepla californica, alluding to California’s state bird). He didn’t want to forget anything.
The soldier thrust Ren’s bag into his arms. “Follow me.”
They exited the holding cell and stepped back into daylight, where Ren got his first look inside Fort Tomogashima. A small city unfurled before him — a crisscross of roads and belching trucks, soldiers’ barracks, and other squat buildings. Even at this early hour, the Fortress stood at attention. A troop of soldiers marched past in orderly formation, while a few Ronin Elite launched into the sky to start their patrol down the coast. They looked almost majestic, like eagles taking flight, but Ren knew what they’d do if they found out why he had really come to this interview.
Soon, they approached the heart of the Fortress, where a magnificent nineteenth-century building rose regal and proud, a complete contrast to its dull surroundings. With its red roof and half-moon balconies, it looked like a Spanish castle that had been picked up with a crane and airdropped onto the California coast. It was once called the Mission Hotel and was built over a hundred years ago as a lavish resort. After the war, though, the general overseeing the WAT’s transition period had been so charmed by the hotel that he had taken up residence on its top floor and built Fort Tomogashima around it.
The soldier bypassed the hotel’s front entrance and opted for a tucked-away side door for the staff. Very fitting, Ren thought dryly. The original hotel had accommodated only white guests, so he never would have been allowed through the main doors, either then or now.
They walked into a windowless hall, lit by cold fluorescent lights. Dozens of workers whizzed by: maids carrying dusters, janitors pushing carts, cooks tying aprons, and gardeners donning gloves. Ren couldn’t help but notice how most of the maids and servers were white, whereas most of the janitors and gardeners were people of color. There seemed to be a clear racial line that separated the front of the house from the back.
As the soldier led them past the boiler room and numerous supply closets, Ren tried to memorize their path, but everything blurred together with the same linoleum floor and their same cream-colored walls. But once he spotted the laundry facility ahead, with the smell of bleach sneaking up his nose, he let his eyes linger on the door.
Check the escape route, Marty had instructed him last night. The laundry chute. Bird would soon install the pulley system to kidnap Aiko, and Marty needed to check that the chute was still viable. If Ren got hired, he would make his way back here as soon as possible.
With a turn here and there, they left behind the workers’ wing through a set of double doors and entered a different world entirely. The cheap linoleum turned into polished marble underfoot, and the scent of bleach gave way to the smell of chlorine, which drifted inside from the swimming pool in the courtyard. The old hotel lobby had been turned into a sitting area for the cadets, and Ren noticed a few of them on the chesterfield sofas, studying for tests that they’d take later in the day.
The Mission Hotel had been converted into an academy for the Ronin Elite decades before. The ballrooms had been separated into classrooms, the conference rooms into offices, the guest rooms into bunkrooms. Most cadets entered the fort after they manifested their power, and then they would remain there until they turned eighteen, once they had passed their exams and mastered the art of killing people like Ren.
“St
op here,” the soldier ordered Ren as they approached the cafeteria. The room was massive — a former ballroom from the looks of it, with crystal chandeliers that twinkled in the morning light and rows of clean tables set with cloth napkins and chopsticks. Ren wasn’t sure why they had stopped until he spotted the line of cadets walking in his direction, ready for their breakfast. The cadets walked in unison, wearing the same black slacks and the same pressed shirts. They even had the same haircuts for boys and girls alike. Ren figured they were around seven or eight in age. Children.
But these cadets weren’t just kids.
As they filed into the cafeteria, Ren kept his head bowed, but he could feel one cadet’s curious eyes land upon him. Her lips tightened into a smile, and that’s all it took before Ren found himself floating three feet above the floor, his arms windmilling as his legs dangled helplessly. The children giggled until their instructor ordered the little girl to behave.
The girl bowed to her teacher and released her hold on Ren, whose feet landed hard on the floor. He had to steady himself against the wall to keep from falling. Within a minute, the cadets filed into the cafeteria like a school of fish — piranhas, more like it — but the girl gave Ren another smile. It wasn’t a friendly sort of grin, either.
“This way,” the soldier said, prodding Ren in the back.
Ren hurried along and waited for his pulse to slow down. Before today he had crossed paths with only a few Anomalies around town, but each incident had left him feeling jittery. And now they surrounded him, with all sorts of powers at their little fingertips. Thinking about that made his heartbeat speed up again.
They made a few more turns until they reached a cluster of offices, and the soldier shoved Ren inside one of the rooms. “Katosama should arrive shortly,” he said before departing.
Ren looked around the small office. A table sat low to the floor, surrounded by plump sitting pillows, and a circular mirror adorned the wall opposite him. Ren glanced at his reflection and combed his hair, which was sticking up in different directions thanks to his many pat-downs. He was in the middle of re-tucking his button-down shirt into his pants when the door whooshed open.
Ren stood up straight, readied a bow, and was about to launch into his prepared introduction — Good morning, Kato-sama, it is an honor to have this opportunity — but he didn’t see a middle-aged Japanese man standing under the doorframe. He found a young Caucasian woman instead, immaculately dressed in a silk blouse and a pressed pencil skirt, finished off with a pair of black heels that looked more expensive than the Cabots’ yearly food budget. At first glance Ren guessed that she was in her mid-twenties, but when he snuck another look he figured she might have been nineteen or twenty. She simply carried herself as someone older.
“Are you Paul Cabot? I’m Greta Plank, Kato-sama’s assistant. He has been hospitalized due to an illness, so I’m taking over his duties for the time being,” the young woman said brusquely. She addressed Ren in Japanese, and Ren had to admit that her accent was better than his own.
Greta Plank, Ren thought, turning the syllables over in his mouth. She must have been a Nazi citizen with a name like that. Her honey-colored hair and papery-white skin would certainly be prized back in Germany, but Fräulein Plank’s face didn’t look like the rosy-cheeked blonds that graced the Third Reich propaganda posters. Her features were too angular, from her sharp cheekbones down to her pointed chin, but her loyalty to the homeland was still on prominent display — her suit jacket lapel boasted two pins, one of a rising sun flag and one of a golden swastika.
There were thousands of Nazis living in the Western American Territories and enjoying their special status in an ally nation. Most of them were government officials; others were retired expats; and still others were businessmen, with an emphasis on men. Nazi women, much like their Japanese counterparts, were expected to marry young and stay home with their brood, so it was a little odd to see someone like Fräulein Plank working for Kato instead of settling down. And it was even more odd that Plank looked vaguely familiar. There was something about the cut of her cheek, the arch of her brow …
Ren dared another glance at the Fräulein, only to find her staring back at him. Her eyes scrutinized him behind a pair of emerald-green-framed glasses.
“I was under the impression that you’d be older,” Fräulein Plank sniffed. “Not a little tadpole who still has to grow legs.”
Ren let the insult slide and remembered the story that he and Marty had rehearsed earlier. “You did speak with my father, Fräulein, but he unfortunately broke his wrist and sent me in his place this morning. I’ve trained with him since I was little. I brought —”
“Look at me when you speak,” she interrupted, her words like a slap.
Ren shifted and uncomfortably lifted his gaze. His parents had taught him at a young age that he should never look an imperial soldier or official in the eye. That sort of direct contact could be seen as disrespectful, so Ren had trained himself to always keep his chin down. But maybe the Nazis were different.
“Tell me,” said Fräulein Plank, “how did your father break his wrist?”
Their gazes clashed, and Ren saw that her irises were a shocking blue. They weren’t a pretty color, either, like the ocean at dawn, all soft and welcoming waves. They were icy and bright, like the hottest part of a lighter flame.
“He tripped down the stairs,” Ren said, and offered nothing more about it. Marty had warned him that the more he embellished a lie, the more trouble he could get into. So he kept his mouth shut.
Plank looked doubtful. “I see.”
Ren decided to switch the topic before she could dismiss him. Digging a hand into his shoulder bag, he presented her with an olive-green tie that he’d sewn a year ago. “I brought a sampling of my handiwork.” Then he unfolded a men’s dress shirt, made from crisp cotton. And then he grasped his humble masterpiece, a lace handkerchief that he’d finished when he was twelve. “I can do embellishments as well.”
Fräulein Plank gave the shirt and tie a passing glance and held up the handkerchief to the light. The Cabots didn’t handle much lace at the shop, but his father had taught Ren lacework anyway, just in case a rich tourist had a fancy commission for them.
“Passable.” Plank practically tossed the handkerchief back at Ren. “Though I’ve seen better.”
Ren’s thoughts jumbled together. Marty had assured him that the handkerchief would be his in, and he had to wonder if Fräulein Plank was judging him by the color of his skin rather than his talents. It wouldn’t be the first time that had happened.
If he wanted this job, though, he had to ignore his frustrations.
Ren hunched his shoulders forward. “Fräulein, please give me a chance.”
Fräulein Plank sighed, and Ren was sure that she’d dismiss him with a snap of her fingers. Would he have to beg for the job? But then she told him, “The truth is that we need an extra tailor and we needed one yesterday. You’re hired, Cabot, but not because of your experience.” She clicked her tongue at him like he was a workhorse. “You’d better come along with me.”
Ren couldn’t believe it, but he wasn’t going to complain. “Thank you —”
“I said come along. You need an ID badge, and I’ll show you around the sewing room and the workers’ bunkrooms. We have one week until the ball and there’s plenty to do, and Kato-sama doesn’t want you squandering time on your commute.”
Ren’s eyes leapt upward to hers. Getting locked inside the Fortress wasn’t a part of Marty’s — or his — plans. “That’s very generous, but there’s no need to waste a bed on me. I live nearby, a few minutes’ walk.”
“You don’t understand. This job will require overtime hours. Most of the staff was told this morning that they’d have to remain at the fort until the ball is over. The sewing team isn’t exempt from that.” Plank raised a carefully plucked brow. “Will that be an issue?”
Ren felt blindsided by what she was demanding, but he had to think fast. “I’
m honored to take the position, but there are a few things I should grab from home. My personal sewing kit. A change of clothes —”
“You’ll find everything you need here. Are we in agreement, then?”
For a few seconds, Ren struggled for a reply, but he couldn’t say no to Plank, either. He had to take this job, no matter the terms.
“Yes, we’re in agreement, Fräulein,” Ren said, defeated.
With a curt nod, she charged out of the room and Ren forced his legs to follow her. He tried to stay calm despite the emotions tearing through his chest — relief at getting hired and a growing sense of alarm. He was supposed to meet with Marty right after the job interview to talk about their next steps and check on his dad, but now Ren wouldn’t be returning to the shop at all. He was trapped inside the Fortress, with the weight of the mission balanced on his narrow shoulders.
He would be on his own from here on out.
Ren told himself to count to ten, like his mother had taught him before she died. She had given him so many lessons over the years, from tying his shoes to mixing dumpling dough to what he should do if he was interrogated. That was where the counting came in — to clear his head so that he could stay calm in whatever circumstance. But when Ren reached the number ten and continued on to twenty, he wasn’t feeling much better.
If he just had a moment alone to think and regroup —
Fräulein Plank came to a full stop in the middle of the hallway. Ren almost crashed into her back, but Plank didn’t seem to notice. Her whole being was fixated on the soldiers who had rounded the corner, flanking a teenage girl at their center.
It was Aiko herself, here in the flesh. Ren bowed and shrank back toward the wall, not wanting to draw attention. Next to him, Fräulein Plank bowed as well, and her whole posture changed, shifting from her role as an authoritative assistant into a meek and modest servant.
“May I be of assistance, Your Imperial Highness?” Plank asked.
“Perhaps,” Aiko replied. She looked like the epitome of royalty, thanks to the army of servants who helped her get ready every morning. Those servants had masterfully played up the innocence of her doe-like face, framing her dark eyes with a touch of mascara, and her soft yellow dress only added to the girlish look. And yet when Aiko spoke, her voice registered lower than Ren expected, each word punctuated with authority. “Do you know what happened to my order of canvases? They should have arrived yesterday, but I haven’t seen them.”
Live in Infamy Page 6