“Karen,” he said, his voice suddenly louder, surprising her, “where are these questions coming from?” There was something in his tone, barely translated across the Atlantic but still unmistakable, that she had never heard before. “To whom have you been speaking?”
The question landed hard. It was not the sort of question a man without secrets would even think to ask. And the edge to his words, like the crack of his silver cane on marble, said a great deal about how he felt about having such secrets exposed.
“Dr. Haupt,” she said, heart thumping, “did the US have something to do with the Wall?”
“I think it is time you came home, my dear. It is not safe for you there anymore. I will send—”
She dropped the telephone back into its cradle. It wasn’t the most eloquent way to end the conversation, but it was the best she could manage. Something else was at work here. Layers upon layers, endless staircases to dark basements that she wasn’t supposed to peek into. And yet . . . wasn’t that exactly what Arthur had told her to do? Solve the mystery of the Wall. Figure out the magic.
Prevent World War III.
And that was just what she was going to do.
TWENTY-EIGHT
There was nothing quite like a German butcher shop. There wasn’t much they did right, but the krauts knew their meat. Shops like this one, more plentiful in less bellicose times, always reminded Arthur of Christmas, with the stacks of hocks and chops wrapped in paper and twine for all the good little boys and girls, and sausages hanging in the windows like garlands. It was an innocuous place, somewhere everyone in the neighborhood eventually visited but no one really noticed or thought much about.
In other words, a perfect place for a spy.
Arthur pulled the list out of his jacket pocket. The crumpled paper had only one name left on it. Just this stop, and then one more errand after that. He replaced the list and found the flask in the same pocket. Never too early for a pick-me-up. He patted his driver on the shoulder and said, “Circle the block a few times. This shouldn’t take long.”
The bell over the front door jangled as he entered. He held the door for a tiny old woman carrying a wrapped hunk of meat bigger than her whole torso, then approached the counter.
“One moment,” came the call from the back room. Arthur took off his gloves. The shop smelled of blood and old wood, comforting smells, if you were the right sort of man.
The knobby bald head of the butcher appeared around a corner. “Welcome,” he said. His thick, bristled body followed slowly, carrying the burden of Germany’s many momentous years with each step. He had the look of someone who earned his living with his hands, not his words.
“Do you speak English?” Arthur asked.
The man nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I speak some.”
“Wonderful,” Arthur said. “We Americans appreciate you Europeans learning our language. Makes traveling abroad so much simpler.” He offered a broad smile. “I’ve thought about learning another language, maybe picking up some German, but if you learn English and I learn German, well, one of us is wasting his time, isn’t he?”
The butcher blinked small dark eyes. “How may I help you today?” His English wasn’t bad, maybe a bit too British.
“This is a nice shop you have here,” Arthur said, looking around. “Sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”
“Otto.”
“Otto,” Arthur said. “Pleased to meet you, Otto. How long have you had this shop?”
His eyes flickered a moment as he reached for the word. “Many generations,” he said at last. “My father’s shop, his father’s before that.”
“Your father taught you the trade?”
Otto nodded. “I learned what I could.”
“And your sons?” Arthur asked. “You teach them as well?”
Now the butcher’s face darkened. New lines creased his jowly face. “I lost my sons,” Otto said. “To the war.”
“Germany does seem to have an acute shortage of sons these days,” Arthur said. “But I guess that’s the cost of trying to burn the world down.”
Otto’s cleaver hands twitched. “How,” he said slowly, “may I help you today?”
“Peter,” Arthur said. “Your eldest. He died in France during that first push to Paris. Weren’t many casualties for you lot then, since the rest of us weren’t quite ready for you, but poor Peter just caught an unlucky bullet.”
“Who are—?”
“Edmund lasted a bit longer,” Arthur said, shaking his head. “Almost went the distance, but his battalion got hit by bombers just outside of Berlin during the retreat. Never really had a chance.”
“You must leave,” Otto said. His hands had become fists. “Now.”
Arthur pulled his Colt .45 from his jacket and set it on the counter with a solid clunk that ended all other sounds in the butcher shop. Otto was perfectly still. In nearly flawless German, Arthur said, “I never had sons myself. But I believe I can understand. If I had sons, and the Allies killed them, I too might have betrayed my country as you have.”
The fury died in the butcher’s face, replaced with wary confusion. “I have betrayed no one.”
“It is a problem of geography,” Arthur said, drumming his fingers softly on the grip of his .45. “If you were in East Berlin, gathering intelligence for the Soviets would make you a hero, not a traitor. But we are not in East Berlin, are we, Otto?”
“Who are you?”
“The answer to that depends on the day, Otto,” Arthur said. “Today, I am the trashman. I am sweeping garbage out of West Berlin.”
“You must have me confused,” the butcher said. He tried to keep his eyes on Arthur, but gravity kept pulling them downward, toward the barrel of the pistol. “You have come to the wrong—”
Arthur held up a hand and sighed. “I am a busy man, so you must forgive me for being direct. I have visited with a number of your colleagues today.” He pulled out his list and started reading. “Karl Müller, over in Wilmersdorf. Then Rolf Baumann, a tailor in Charlottenburg. I just came from meeting a Mr. Oskar Beck—now he was a cranky little fellow, not pleasant to work with at all.” He put the list away. “Need I go on? I have a dozen or so more.”
The butcher said nothing.
“I had each of them arrested for a myriad of crimes, some they had even committed. They will stay in jail at my pleasure. But you, Otto, you are lucky. I am going to solve your problem of geography.”
“You are sending me to East Berlin?”
“Yes, I am, but not because I am a gracious man. I need you to deliver a message for me. When you return to Karlshorst for your debriefing, there will be a colonel there newly arrived from Moscow. This colonel, some call him the Nightingale. He has something of mine that I want back: an agent named Jim. Every day I have to wait, I will send another of his spies back to him. At first I will send them walking. Then I will become creative. When I am finished, there will be no such thing as a Soviet intelligence network in West Germany. Am I making myself understood to you, Otto?”
The butcher was silent for a long time. Arthur did not press him. Otto’s entire life, what was left of it after the war took its due, was crumbling around him. He could spare a moment’s reflection for a broken man.
“Yes,” Otto said at last. “I understand.”
“Splendid,” Arthur said in English, sweeping up his gun and tucking it away in his jacket. “And while you’re at it, I’ll take a package of those delicious-looking sausages.”
TWENTY-NINE
Ehle was waiting for Karen when she returned to her cramped office. He was sitting behind her desk, her notes spread out in front of him in a disarray so complete it had to be either utter chaos or genius. At first it felt like a trespass; this guy was a prisoner of the state five minutes ago and now they just let him dig through her stuff? But then she reminded herself that he had been
freed on her request and that if she wanted him to help with her research, the first thing she’d have to do was share.
“This is impressive,” Ehle said without looking up. “You have been here a short while and yet have already made important discoveries.”
She leaned against the hard concrete wall and watched him. “Not bad for a woman.”
Now he met her eyes. “I did not doubt your magical ability.”
“What then? My upper-body strength? My capacity for rational thought?”
“It is complicated.” The anger was back, or at least more obvious.
“What is complicated?”
“My history with women.”
“Right,” Karen replied. She didn’t care if he was angry. She was angry; let him deal with that. “Men. Why are you so bothered by the weaker sex? Sorry that we keep getting in the way. It’s just hard, you know, staying hidden when you are half the world’s population.”
He let the paper in his hands flutter to the desk. His fingers were trembling; he balled them into tight fists, blue veins jagged and clear against white skin. He wouldn’t, couldn’t look at her. In fact he suddenly seemed far away, like his mind was making a hasty retreat from whatever was clouding his thoughts.
“I . . .” he started, his voice soft, his eyes gouging the desk’s surface, “apologize.”
“Okay,” Karen said. Her anger was long gone now, forgotten by what she saw coiled up inside this man. Rage, yes. But also pain. And an exhausting force of will keeping it all in check.
“I told you before that I discarded my locus,” he said. He still couldn’t look at her.
“Yes,” she said. “You haven’t done any real magic since.”
“Indeed,” he said wistfully. “You did not believe me, and I do not blame you. What magician would throw away such an item? Not only the source of our talent, but also of unmatched personal value. It was not easy.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” she said.
“You should know,” he said. He breathed deep and then continued. “As a young magician, I had skill but not enough focus. I tried a number of items as my locus, but nothing seemed to fit. It was only as a man, with a wife and child, that I loved something enough to find the necessary will.”
He held out an empty hand. “It was a locket. Silver, with a picture of my wife and my daughter. I can still see their faces now. My Karoline, and sweet Liesel. She was a lucky girl; she looked like her mother.” A tear hinted at the edge of an eye and he quickly brushed the intrusion away. “With such a talisman, my magic knew no bounds.”
“What happened to them?” Karen asked with the scratch of a dry tongue.
“The war took them as it took so many others,” Ehle answered after a long pause. “I could not bear the weight of that locket around my neck. And so I threw it into a pile of rubble.” He sighed, a bone-deep sound of relief. “Even now, it is difficult for me. Liesel would be about your age.”
For the first time since she’d heard his voice on the wind near the Wall, she faced the reality that Ehle wasn’t the means to an end or the answer to her prayers. He was a man: troubled, tired, and weak. Not just a man, a father. She saw her own father in him, not the stubborn taskmaster of her childhood or the scowling crank he’d become, but the silent, hollowed man he’d been in those first weeks after returning from the war. Both men had faced the worst, and somehow, both men had survived. But not without cost.
“I am sorry,” she said. The words were too easy, but all she could offer.
“Thank you.” His shoulders lowered a little and his fists became hands again.
Karen took the pouch from around her neck and emptied it on the desk. A tangle of little silver stars, like three-dimensional asterisks, tumbled out onto the smooth surface. “It took me a long time to choose a locus,” she said. “Our professors told us to pick something ‘imbued with resonant emotion,’ whatever that means. I tried jewelry, like some of the other girls in my class. The guys mostly went for manly things: pocketknives, flip lighters, wristwatches. One guy made himself a crown, an actual golden crown.” She laughed at the memory. Crown Guy had failed out in their junior year.
“But nothing really stuck for me,” she said, poking at the metal stars. “I played this game with my sister when we were kids. Mom called it knucklebones. We just called it jacks. It was silly, just something to pass the time when Dad wanted us out of the way. But when I feel these little guys in my hand, it makes me think of those days, when everything was just easier.”
“You find comfort in your past,” Ehle said. The thought sounded impossible to him.
“It makes me feel safe,” she said. “It reminds me that the world doesn’t have to be so complicated.”
“Ah,” he said.
Karen heard something in the tone of his voice. “You disagree?”
Ehle shook his head. “Your locus is yours alone. Whatever it is, it must be important to you, beyond everything else.”
“But?”
He hesitated, but she just stared at him until he blinked. “But,” he said, “sometimes, the world does have to be complicated.”
Karen gathered up the jacks and put them back into the pouch. “I think we have work to do,” she said.
“Yes,” Ehle replied. “To work. There is much to be done.”
She slid his leather satchel across the desk to him. “Can you be trusted with these?”
Ehle nearly reached for the strap, but then seemed to decide against it. “Please,” he said, “keep it for me. For now. Perhaps my trinkets can be of use to you, somehow.”
Karen watched him a moment, then took back the bag of enchanted items. She rummaged through her notes until she found what she was looking for. “What can you tell me about the Wall?”
“What would you like to know?”
“The magic’s impressive, no question,” she said. “When I first started examining it, I was frankly in awe of it. I’ve never seen power on that scale. Just standing near it is . . . deafening.”
His face was impassive. “It is the masterwork of the best magicians in a generation. I only wish such talent had been put toward more positive ends.”
“But that’s just it,” Karen said, pointing to the numbers she had hastily scribbled on the page. “This is legendary magic. It should also be elegant, but it isn’t.”
At this, Ehle offered a sliver of a smile. “You offered me asylum in the West so you might critique my craftsmanship?”
“Not at all,” she said. “Just your honesty. You and everyone who built the Wall.”
The smile shriveled, but was replaced with something more interesting. For the first time, Ehle looked engaged. “Go on, Miss O’Neil,” he said quietly.
“Like I said, the Wall puts out so much noise,” she said. “No magician could even hear themselves think near it. All that noise is wasted energy. Inefficient magic. I couldn’t figure out why such masterful magicians would cast such a rough spell, until we went over to East Berlin. Until our escape from your apartment.”
“Your distraction,” Ehle said.
“Yes,” Karen said. “Magic hiding other magic. The same thing happened in the tunnel. The Soviets carved explosive runes in the dirt, but we didn’t notice them until it was too late because of the Wall.”
“Do you have a hypothesis?”
“No,” she answered. “Just a question: what’s the Wall hiding?”
He was silent. She could read nothing from his expression. It was almost as if she had not even spoken.
“Mr. Ehle, our time is short and I—”
“Do you know Righetto’s Silence?”
Karen blinked. “Yes, I think so.”
“Would you show me? Please.”
The spell took a few moments to prepare. Luckily she had some chalk, an excellent memory, and passable Etruscan pronun
ciation. When she finished, she felt the silence settle in around them like a shroud. It was as if they were in the center of the earth, buffeted by miles of rock, isolated entirely.
Ehle nodded approval. “Well done,” he said, his restless hands reaching out to touch the shimmer that marked the limits of the silencing spell.
“Why did you have me cast it?” she asked. “No one is listening in. They’re too busy.”
“You should know better the men for whom you work,” Ehle said. “You have not experienced an unrecorded moment since you arrived.”
That was an unpleasant thought, but she brushed it quickly aside. “I have nothing to hide. I’m trying to help them.”
“As am I.”
“So why did—”
“Because I am going to trust you,” Ehle said. He took the chair out from behind the desk and moved it closer so that they could both sit facing one another. “And in doing so, risk my freedom.”
Karen sat. It dawned on her, as she did, that with the spell in place she was truly alone with this man. She slid the chair back a few inches and tried not to reach for her locus.
“Why,” she said, swallowing, “is your freedom at risk?”
“Because a condition of my release was that I not tell you the Wall’s true purpose,” he said, folding his hands in his lap. “And I intend to violate that condition.”
Karen’s fingers buzzed and her blood crackled. She had been right; there was more going on with the Wall than it appeared. Nothing about the Wall’s magic had made sense when she examined it, but that had been when she believed it was just meant to be a barrier.
“Why would you do that?”
“Because the Wall cannot be fixed.”
“But we have to try,” she said, leaning forward in her chair. She thought she sensed him forcing himself not to recoil. “I went there, I saw the people. I don’t want them to be stuck in East Berlin any more than you do, but it is going to be a massacre if we’re lucky and a war if we aren’t.” But then her thoughts caught up with her words and she realized she had missed something in what he had said, something that communicated more than the words he had used. She wet her suddenly dry lips and asked, “Wait, how do you know the Wall can’t be fixed?”
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