A Fierce Radiance

by Lauren Belfer

  “All right, you two, that way. Jenkins, you come with me…” The urgent, raised voices of the police officers in front of the hospital reached the two men.

  Abruptly, Oretsky turned and left. In fact, he ran, although Nick couldn’t imagine what he was running away from, or what he was running toward. These Russians, so emotional and unpredictable.

  Nick looked down at Tia’s work on the table before him. No matter what had happened to her, he couldn’t leave her work here, for anyone who happened by to stumble upon. Oretsky could come back. Anyone could come in here. Nick didn’t have a key to the lab, so he couldn’t lock the door behind him. Jamie was out of town. Jamie would want Nick to protect his sister’s work.

  Nick felt a surge of energy. Quickly he searched. In a lower cabinet, he found a Bergdorf Goodman shopping bag in the shape of a shoe box. Methodically, he gathered all the materials relating to number 642 and placed them in the shopping bag. In the desk drawer, he found a razor blade, and he cut the pages from Tia’s notebook. Taking the back stairs, he brought the bag to his residence rooms. Placed the bag under the bed, for safekeeping.

  Then he went to the hospital cafeteria, a general gathering place, to find out what was going on. His colleagues were there already, talking in tight clutches. The police were there, too. Oretsky was with his phage research group, looking through some notes, his earlier upset seemingly forgotten.

  Nick learned that Lucretia Stanton was, indeed, dead at the bottom of the cliff, just as Sergei Oretsky said.

  Drifting…how long did it take, to bleed to death? Well, that depended on the type of injury. Nick felt no pain, and he wasn’t precisely certain where he’d been wounded. The shoulder, maybe. His left shoulder felt pleasantly warm, perhaps from blood. He was so tired now. Soon, he would fall asleep.

  After Tia’s memorial, when he found Jamie in the lab, he’d almost said to him, I have Tia’s great discovery upstairs in my rooms. I kept it safe for you. The Institute will develop it now, for the good of humankind. That was the Institute’s motto, after all.

  But Nick found he couldn’t say anything to Jamie. Tia was dead. He, Nick, was alive. Jamie had been raised in wealth. Nick had not. The things he could do with the money he’d make from selling the substance…not simply for himself but for his family. For his parents. For the children he might himself someday have. There was no reason to say anything to Jamie about the substance. No reason at all.

  Tia was dead, and she couldn’t be brought back to life.

  For some reason, Nick’s grandmother came into his mind. His mother’s mother. She took care of him when he was young and his parents were at work. In the image that came into his mind, she gave him that secret smile of hers that said, now we’re going to do something that your mother would disapprove of. Like buying ice cream cones on a regular afternoon instead of saving the ice cream money for a birthday or a holiday. Sometimes they’d spend even more money to take the trolley to Syracuse’s lake. They’d buy their ice cream cones by the lake (he, chocolate; she, strawberry), and they’d sit on a bench at the lakeshore and enjoy their ice cream.

  His grandmother was from a small village in the Dolomite mountains of Northern Italy. When Nick was very young, three or four, she still kept a loaf of stale bread on the kitchen counter, as her own mother had, as everyone in their village had. The bread was moldy—he had told Tia about this when he was trying to court her. The story made her happy. When anyone in the family had a cut or scrape, his grandmother would slice off the end of the bread, press the moldy side against the wound, and wrap a bandage around to hold the bread in place for a few days. No one in their family ever developed a wound infection. The mold was Penicillium. But this was old-country medicine, and, until recently, scientists never took it seriously.

  Eventually Nick’s mother got rid of the stale bread, calling it a disgusting holdover from the country they were never going back to, good riddance.

  Nick saw his grandmother once more, saw her smile, as if she were coming to staunch the wounds he now suffered.

  Silence, all around him. He was floating. Life, death…he was floating in between. Again he wished he could tell someone how peaceful he felt. But no one was nearby to listen.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Edward Rutherford stood at the window of his office, high up in the tower of 20 Exchange Place. You could see a long way from here. Feel like you were on top of the world. The window faced north, and he could see all the way to the Empire State Building.

  He’d returned to town this morning, on the sleeper from Chicago. The train was overcrowded and arrived two hours late. That was the war. He didn’t even have time to go home to change. He had a new project: two guys with revolutionary ideas about semiconductors. Nothing might come of the project—or their ideas might change the world. Rutherford was going to support them for a few years and see what happened.

  Betty, his secretary, buzzed him. He went to his desk and pressed the intercom button. “Your daughter to see you, sir.” Before he could respond, Claire had walked in the door.

  Rutherford understood the instant he saw her. She was dressed up, high heels, tailored suit, full makeup and a perfect hat. She was ready to do battle. This was probably what she called her Henry Luce outfit.

  “Sweetheart, what a surprise! You look terrific!”

  She didn’t respond. Not a good sign.

  “I’m just back from Chicago. Sit down, sit down.” He ushered her into a chair, one of four surrounding a coffee table in the corner. The office was designed in the Art Deco style, very sleek, to match the building. “How’s everything? What are you up to?”

  “Nothing much.”

  Nothing much. He knew that phrase from months past, when they were first getting to know each other. Nothing much covered everything that she didn’t want to tell him. Everything that mattered in her life. He wasn’t happy to hear it, and it told him how upset she must be.

  “Shall I tell Betty to bring some coffee?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Well, then.” He smiled at her. He put on an eager, probably fatuous look that said, I’m ready to hear absolutely anything you have to say.

  She seemed to need a moment to compose herself. Then:

  “James Stanton was right, wasn’t he? You did order the murder of his sister.”

  “What, young lady?”

  No, no. He mustn’t take this tack. He must not. He knew how to conduct this battle. He had to state the facts as he knew them, without pushing or prodding, without overpleading or pressing his case in any way. “No,” he said calmly, “I did not order the murder of Lucretia Stanton.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Whether you believe me or not is irrelevant. Your accusation is false.”

  “So how did your company just happen to have her discovery to develop?”

  “That’s very simple. Nicholas Catalano sold it to me. He said he found it in his hometown. Whether this is true or not, I don’t know.”

  “And since he’s dead anyway, you can’t ask him.” Jake Lind had sent Claire a note about Nick.

  Rutherford had no answer to this.

  “You also colluded in the death of Bill Shipley.”

  He just barely stopped himself from laughing. “For your sake, I might have been tempted to get rid of him, but no. The word on the street, as they say, is that government security did the job.”

  Barnett: just as she thought. Part of her wanted to believe everything her father said. To walk out with him to lunch, uptown at the Cloud Club, the businessmen’s club in the spire of the Chrysler Building. They’d discuss Charlie’s latest letters. Plans for Charlie’s schooling in the autumn. They’d discuss how to break to Charlie the news of his father’s death.

  No, she didn’t want to fight with Edward Rutherford. But she made herself press on. “You knowingly injured innocent Japanese prisoners by authorizing the testing of your new drug in the camps in the West.”

  “My staff wor
ked hard to find the best place to conduct clinical trials.” He made the tactical move of meeting her halfway: “I suppose that reasonable people might differ on this, but I truly believe that we did those people a great deal of good and only trivial harm.”

  She didn’t know what to say to this. Was deafness trivial harm?

  Now she’d arrived at the ransacking of her home. She paused.

  He misinterpreted her silence as a partial victory. He made a step toward her: “I know I could have done better, darling. All these years. Everything we talked about when Charlie was in the hospital. But I’m not a murderer. My people aren’t murderers.” He was about to compare himself favorably in this regard to certain other robber barons and their ilk, but he restrained himself. “Like anyone, I have regrets.”

  “Did you order my home ransacked?”

  “The men went overboard, I found out later. They got carried away. They were stupid, and they were fired. But that photo shoot of yours was a security breach, and I had no choice but to get the film back as soon as possible. I needed to protect my property. The government didn’t have the right to see those photos. I phoned you as soon as I heard, remember? To make certain you were all right.”

  Had she heard him correctly? She was astonished. Apparently he could rationalize anything, in the name of business.

  She looked at him for a moment. Then she stood up and walked out, slamming the office door behind her.

  Rutherford stared at the door for a long while. Then he listlessly returned to the window to look out at the city…. Thunderstorms were coming on, fat gray clouds behind the skyscrapers to the north. The clouds made the skyscrapers glow silver. How beautiful this city was. By definition, man-made. Skyscraper technology was incredible. What was the next step in skyscraper technology? What did you need, to allow structures to be built higher and higher yet? New types of flame retardant, maybe. Stronger glass. New types of steel? If buildings were constructed of glass and steel instead of stone, they would be lighter. Lighter meant higher. He’d do some research. Someday this war would end. A new age of glass and steel skyscrapers would begin. Looking out the window, he imagined the skyline transformed. When the time came, he would be ready.

  He let Claire back into his mind. He wanted his family to be together. That was truly what mattered most. He already had more money than he could ever use. He’d figure something out. He’d make this up to her and gain her forgiveness.

  Nothing much. He never, ever, wanted to hear that phrase from her again. Not ever.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Another day, another German restaurant in Yorkville. Kreindler was getting sick of thirty-foot murals of Bavaria. Today, the Original Maxl’s. This restaurant boasted singing waiters. Mercifully, Kreindler and Fritz were dining early, 4:00 PM, and no waiters had started their damned yodeling just yet. Incredibly, the restaurant was crowded, jam-packed with German-prating geezers.

  Kreindler was having Kassler Rippchen with Kartoffelsalat and sauerkraut. Fritz was digging into the wurst platter with fried potatoes and red cabbage.

  This would be Fritz’s last wurst platter for a while. Today was the day. At least one federal agent sat in the room. The FBI was rounding up the Yorkville ring. Kreindler’s job was to keep Fritz here, nice and safe over his bratwurst and Weisswurst until everybody else was downtown. That included Sergei Oretsky. The double agent would be taken in along with the rest of them. Well, he’d saved himself from the electric chair with his cooperation, but he’d be sent away a long time.

  Kreindler was feeling nostalgic and couldn’t resist a few digs at Fritz. “Things aren’t going too well on the Russian front,” he said, feigning disappointment. “We’re getting pushed back everywhere.”

  “Don’t believe the propaganda you read in the papers,” Fritz assured him. A piece of red cabbage hung from his lip, and he slurped it in. He cut off another piece of sausage, so big Kreindler was sure he’d choke on it, but no, it went down smooth as silk. Well, you had to admire a guy who enjoyed his food. Fritz took a swig of beer.

  “Don’t you worry, Marcus,” Fritz assured him. Inwardly Kreindler flinched at the use of his first name, but he held himself steady. “I’ve got some news for you. This is a secret, so don’t go passing it around: we’ve got a weapon in reserve. A big weapon. The biggest. The Führer is just waiting for the right time to use it. Getting everything into position, so it’ll do the most good when it’s really needed. Once the Führer uses the weapon, the enemy will be forced to surrender. We’ll be in charge. You thinking of yourself as New York City police commissioner under the new order, Marcus? I can see you there. After we send away the cretins and the Jews in charge now.”

  “That would be very nice, Fritz. Something to look forward to.” Fritz was tone-deaf to irony. “Thanks for letting me in on the secret.” He’d have to tell the FBI about this weapon business. Andrew Barnett, too.

  Fritz waved his hand magnanimously. “Of course. You’re a friend, Marcus. We’re loyal to our friends.”

  “Thank you for that,” Kreindler said.

  “Anytime.”

  With Lucretia Stanton on his mind, Kreindler turned the conversation to her. What the hell, he figured. He’d read in the paper that Nick Catalano was dead in the Pacific, along with three hundred of his shipmates. The Japs had bombed a clearly marked hospital ship. “Hey, Fritz, remember a while back we were talking about the scientist you fellas have over at that place on York Avenue—”

  “Yeah, yeah, the Russian. He’s a dud. He’s never gotten us anything useful. Almost a year ago, he even started sending us stuff that didn’t work—and he must have known it didn’t work.”

  Kreindler put the timing together, to when the FBI had made Oretsky into a double agent.

  “We were ready to cut the tie,” Fritz was saying, “when he started telling us how devoted he was, he even murdered some girl there, in his devoted efforts to help us. So we kept him on, what the hell.”

  “What?” Kreindler couldn’t help it, his astonishment got the better of him.

  “Yeah, yeah, remember, a year and a half ago or so, an accident on a cliff? That was our guy,” Fritz related with some pride. “Apparently she was on to him. Found him snooping around her lab. He convinced her to take a walk so he could give the sob story about his wife and children kept as prisoners in the Reich. Wandered onto the path along the cliff, looking at the scenery, and he gives her a push. Thinks he’ll get everything that way, but in the end, he gets nothing. Can’t get back into the lab, or so he said. A washout.” Fritz licked his lips, catching the last of the succulent combination of cabbage, sausage, and spiced mustard.

  “You know what’s so great about the whole story with him? I only found this out recently—this is incredible: the family he was trying to protect in France? They were already dead! The whole story was just a ruse to draw him in! Got to admire them, the people I work for.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Exactly what I said. The wife, the kids, the old mother—they got sent east at the beginning. They were Russians, what do you expect—they got picked up right after we moved in, and poof, no more family.” Fritz snapped his fingers. “The poor bastard is falling all over himself trying to protect people who died years ago. That’s brilliant, isn’t it?” Fritz said. “Wish I’d thought of it myself.”

  “Yes.” Kreindler nodded slowly. “Brilliant.”

  Fritz turned to order another beer. Kreindler used that moment to glance at Olsen across the room. Olsen had his eye on the front door, which was behind Kreindler. Olsen nodded. Kreindler heard the men coming in.

  “Sorry, Fritz,” Kreindler said as four guys came up to Fritz. Boy, the guys were big, 250 pounds at least, and tall. “You don’t have time to finish that beer.”

  That was it. Surrounded by the four guys, Fritz was gone in a few moments, no fuss, no muss, nobody in the restaurant, apparently, even bothering to look up from their schnitzel and sauerbraten.

  Kreindler
sat for a while. Sure, he needed to get downtown, but the feds were in charge, so there wasn’t much for him to do now.

  Even though he was officially on duty, he ordered a Pharisäer. Nobody looking at the coffee mug would think it held a good deal of spirits along with the hot coffee. He needed the shot of rum. It was good for his heart anyway, right?

  A guy like Oretsky would tell a lie a minute to get what he needed. He’d have a different untruth for every occasion as he desperately tried to hold on to his family. Kreindler should have realized this. He’d believed Oretsky when he said he’d seen Catalano and Tia Stanton walking along the cliff. It gave Kreindler a witness, it solved his problem. It made perfect sense.

  On the other hand, when Oretsky told Fritz that he himself was guilty of Tia Stanton’s murder, this may well have been a move calculated to endear him to Fritz, so who knew if it was true. It might be true, it might not be. And why did Oretsky want Fritz to love him? To protect his family in Europe. The family that was already murdered.

  What was Kreindler supposed to do, tell the feds to charge Sergei Oretsky with Tia Stanton’s murder? On what proof, exactly? On the word of Nazi Fritz, saying that Oretsky confessed the whole thing to him? Yeah, yeah. Sure, sure.

  Nicholas Catalano. Sergei Oretsky. One was already dead. The other would be going to prison anyway. So it didn’t even matter. William Shipley’s death was mixed up in there, too, but no sense trying to make that public: the government wagons would circle round to protect Barnett.

  A plague on both your houses. He felt like a character at the end of a Shakespeare play. The stage was covered with dead bodies, and he was the last man standing. Germans worshipped Shakespeare, read and performed in German translation. Kreindler’s mother read Schlegel’s Shakespeare to him in an effort to teach him German. He’d snuggled against her, her hair and clothes smelling of chocolate from the shop, as she read Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar (his mother liked the tragedies) aloud in German while he followed the text. That must be sixty years ago.