The Empire of Night: A Christopher Marlowe Cobb Thriller

by Robert Olen Butler

  I merely spoke my name to the frock-coated boss of the rosewood front desk and he turned instantly to the wall of pigeonholes behind him. This stirred up my wariness again, though their knowing me at once could have been a reassuring sign, suggesting that my coming here at the arrangement of Sir Albert—who surely had the blessing and good wishes of the German Foreign Office—made me a trustworthy guest.

  The frock-coat withdrew my key and an envelope and handed them both to me with a nod of the head. I hoped for something more from my mother. But my name on the outside of the envelope was not in her hand. It was written with a heavy, broad-nibbed stroke. A man’s hand. I tucked it away until I was in my room.

  Which was on the top floor, the fourth. The floor attendant bowed his way out of the two-room suite and I locked the door and put down my bag. The place was done in Empire style with the furniture in the sitting room all standing on animal paws, from the scroll-armed chair to the divan to the side table to the desk beside the bedroom door.

  I stepped into the bedroom, where, fortunately, the mahogany bed, with gold Etruscan helmets on the headboard, had no mammalian touches. For decor I definitely preferred the Baden, which had been done in unpretentious German vernacular.

  The drapes were open. I crossed to the glass door, which opened onto a narrow balcony, a wrought-iron balustrade, and the Unter den Linden beyond. Under the linden indeed. The street’s wide median was thick with linden trees. I angled to my left and gazed upon still more Empire.

  The Brandenburg Gate. The Germans’ vast sandstone version of the entrance to the Acropolis, its half dozen passage walls fronted with Doric columns and bearing up the bewinged goddess of Victory—Victoria, appropriately enough—standing in her chariot, driving four chargers, and hoisting a standard of the Imperial Eagle and the Iron Cross. It was lit with electric light from below, its copper turned victoriously gold but splashed with black shadows. I figured Willie must make a frequent pilgrimage the thousand yards west from his palace at the other end of Unter den Linden to see his own fate writ large up there on the Brandenburg.

  Beyond the Gate was the vast linden canopy of the Tiergarten, once the private hunting ground of the prince-electors but now Berlin’s centerpiece public park.

  I closed the drapes, sat on the side of the bed, and switched on my own, small, night-table splash of electric light. I opened the envelope that had been left for Joe Hunter. It was signed Sir Albert. It read: Dear Mr. Hunter, I will ring you in your rooms in the vicinity of nine this evening. I would be pleased to have a drink with you in the lobby bar.

  At nine o’clock exactly, the phone rang.

  24

  At five minutes past nine I was sitting where Stockman instructed me to sit, arriving there in the way he instructed me to arrive, by speaking his name to the bartender, a clean-shaven elderly man in an Adlon-emblemed dinner jacket and black tie. The man immediately left his post and led me to the end of the room that looked onto Unter den Linden. We turned to the right and went to the farthest corner, beyond the last window. I sat in one of a pair of facing armchairs, my back to the wall. The chairs, like all the drink-and-conversation-facilitating furniture in the place, were dark Spanish leather with cabriole legs and curving crests and arms.

  “Ein Joppenbier, bitte,” I said, ordering a fine, odd German beer made in Danzig, and he nodded and disappeared.

  Stockman had arranged for us to be private. This dim, far-corner setup seemed designed for that. At the nearest cluster of chairs and table, before the windows, four young German officers sat huddled close, drinking. Their feldgrau was fresh. From that and from the intensity of their drinking and the bloom of their cheeks it was clear they’d not yet seen battle but were soon to be shipped out to the front.

  I watched them talking low, laughing a couple of times, but in a subdued way, and then talking again, and now they sat back, first one and then the others, thinking quietly, inwardly, and drinking for a moment as if they were each alone, and now they resumed talking.

  A few minutes passed, and then Stockman’s towering figure swooped into the bar and headed in my direction. He was dressed in a German-style informal evening suit with silk-faced lapels and a double-breasted waistcoat. I rose to greet him and we shook hands with a nodded hello. He’d arrived before my beer did. As soon as he and I settled onto our chairs—he with his back to the young officers—the bartender showed up, though empty-handed.

  “What are you having?” Stockman asked.

  “A Joppenbier,” I said.

  He looked at the bartender, and with a soft little nod he held up two fingers. The man vanished instantly.

  “You know the beers,” he said.

  “Some.”

  “A German will order a Joppenbier. Not so often an outsider.”

  “I am German,” I said.

  He made exactly the same small, familiar nod he’d just used with the bartender. “Are you not an American as well?” His voice was as gentle as the nod.

  “Yes.”

  “Is that possible?” he said.

  I needed a good answer for that and a quick one, to seem sincere, and I tried to think fast. The bartender rescued me by appearing with our beers.

  He put two white, lidless steins on the small, polished mahogany table between the chairs. The beers had come very quickly after Stockman’s order. Which meant the bartender had deliberately kept mine back until Sir Albert arrived. I was right about the familiarity between them. Not to mention the barman made the delivery himself, even as a couple of black-coated waiters were working the rest of the room. Our Sir Albert was a celebrity here.

  Stockman leaned forward and took up his stein as the bartender vanished. I picked up mine as well. Its only decoration was the hotel crest in gilt: the planet earth, upon which sat the Imperial Eagle of the German Empire and below which, in an unfurled banner, were the words Adlon Oblige.

  He offered his stein across the table and I touched his with mine. We neither of us spoke a toast.

  The beer was dark—very dark, nearly black—and it had a pretty stiff kick, and it was heavy in the mouth, almost like syrup.

  Stockman put his stein down, as did I.

  “So?” he said.

  I was unsure enough of my true standing with him that the monosyllable seemed ominous, as if he were trying to bluff me into a confession of something he suspected but could not specify. I’d used that trick myself with some of the stupider Chicago politicians.

  I had no choice but to proceed as if everything was just fine between us. “Is it possible to be both American and German?”

  “That is my question,” he said.

  “Can I speak honestly?” I said.

  “For as long as we sit in this bar tonight, I would like that to be the rule for us both.”

  That he would assert this—and with a quickness and vibrancy that seemed utterly sincere—made my breath catch in its ambiguity. Either trust was growing between us or he was laying a trap.

  He leaned near. “How much of a journalist are you?”

  This didn’t sound good. But once more I had no choice.

  I said, “I am a journalist whose intention is to properly represent a country, a Kultur. What is the measure of such a journalist?”

  Stockman considered this for a moment, his eyes intently fixed on mine. He said, “Forgive me for speaking as I am about to. But we are being honest.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “I say this not from a distrust of what you have just declared. But perhaps a concern over what you might include in such a story, no matter how noble its intention.” He paused. He let this soak in.

  He didn’t say he trusted me as Joseph W. Hunter, but I liked his disavowal of distrust. Still, I knew his method. I waited for the threat. I was interested to hear it.

  “I am a powerful man,” he said. “Here and in England and abroad, even in America. I have associates in all those places. Friends. And they exercise my power on my behalf.” He paused to let
me work out the implication. I figured his next step was to clarify what offense on my part would engage his friends.

  It was clear enough already. I decided it would be a good strategy to anticipate him. “Sir Albert,” I said, “I will never publish, never write, never repeat a word you say to me unless doing so is explicitly discussed and agreed upon between us.”

  “I am glad to hear it,” he said.

  He sat back. He laid his elbows on the arms of the chair. He intertwined his fingers before him and rubbed first one palm and then the other with the opposite thumb. His hands came to rest.

  He seemed satisfied.

  “You were going to say,” he said. “Honestly.”

  We’d returned to the question of being both an American and a German.

  I had to be very careful now. I’d said the right things so far. I sensed the possibility that I’d won his trust. At least for this evening’s conversation. There were things on his mind. He wanted to talk, even still sober, though I had to figure he’d already been drinking this evening. But something about him seemed almost needy. Careful, I said to myself. His commitment to Germany and its interests would be fine to hear. But I needed to know his plans. I was tempted to try to guide him there directly. Incrementally but directly. But even in this state of mind, even if he’d had a few drinks, he wasn’t a dirty alderman ready to brag about his doings. This man was dangerous.

  So was I. But I had to be careful.

  “I like America,” I said. “I grew up there. You cannot help but feel a certain allegiance to the place where you are reared, particularly if it rewards you in many ways. Rewards and even nurtures you.”

  “Like a benign stepfather,” Stockman said.

  “Like a benign stepfather,” I said. “But there are stronger bonds than those.”

  “It is not his blood in your veins,” he said.

  I nodded. He’d leaped in to finish my thought, seemed to want to answer this question himself.

  But he said no more. He leaned forward and took up his stein and sat back again. He drank.

  I did likewise.

  “Eventually you have to choose,” I said, to finish the thought.

  He took the stein away from his lips. “Do you like this special German beer?” he asked.

  “I do,” I said.

  “Some would say it is too strong in its taste, too thick on the tongue.”

  Stockman seemed in an odd mood. I wasn’t sure if it was just beer he was talking about.

  I said, “I don’t acknowledge the idea of ‘too strong.’ It does things the beers of other countries cannot. This is good. No other beer in the world tastes both of the earthiness of malt but also of a sweet something that reminds one of nothing other than a fine port wine.”

  This made Stockman straighten a little, consult his palate. He smiled. “So it does,” he said.

  We drank some more.

  “Blood is stronger than nurturing,” Stockman said, following an associative track in his head that surfaced and submerged and surfaced again.

  “Blood is stronger,” I said.

  “Blood,” he said, “does not make itself new with each generation. It is perpetual. It is eternal.”

  I nodded. He fell silent, working out his thoughts inwardly. I was tempted to again affirm my agreement with him, but I kept my own silence. I didn’t want to interrupt his process.

  “Civilization is borne onward by a current of blood,” he said.

  He was speaking German now.

  He stopped again. But he did not seem inward. He was watching my eyes, as if waiting for me to comment. Was he testing me?

  “The truth you just spoke,” I said, also in German. “Is it a quotation from von Herder?”

  He smiled.

  “Someone else?” I asked.

  “My own thoughts,” he said.

  “Excellent,” I said. “I’m sorry I’m not taking any of this down.”

  “Nor should you,” he said. “When I am commenting for the public record, I will tell you.”

  We were speaking only German now.

  “I am eager,” I said.

  The officers beyond him laughed.

  Stockman glanced over his shoulder.

  “They go with joy,” he said. “Our young men.”

  He paused. He heard himself. Unsere jungen Männer, he’d said. Our young men, not their young men. As if he had already chosen between his two countries.

  So he added now: “That is to say, they all go with joy. The young men of both sides.”

  I nodded. Strictly speaking, his correction remained ambiguous.

  He took a long pull on his Joppenbier. I could sense his mind freely associating as he did.

  He lowered his stein. “Do you know there are three million socialists in the German Empire? The other sixty million Germans detest the beliefs of socialists.”

  He paused and let me take that in.

  I kept quiet.

  He said, “No doubt the socialists detest the beliefs of all the rest of us.”

  This time he did not pause to ambiguate his pronoun.

  He said, “So do you know what the socialists are doing, now that the country is at war?” He began to raise his stein, but he immediately lowered his hand again, letting go of the rhetorical question. “You must understand. These are German socialists. This is the German Empire we are speaking of. The three million German socialists have joined together with the rest the country. They are sending their sons to fight. Their sons are going to war for Germany. With joy.”

  Now he took the deferred drink.

  The stein came down lightly. Empty. He leaned forward and put it on the table between us. He lifted his face to me without sitting back.

  “There are beliefs,” he said. “And there are overarching beliefs.”

  Glaube and Überglaube. I’d never heard the second word. I figured he’d made it up by piecing two words together. The people of Willie’s empire loved to do that, with two words and sometimes with even more. To my mind this was a Sprachenperle of German. A pearl of the language. A lollapalooza feature of this Kultur.

  I realized my stein was empty and I leaned forward and placed it beside his.

  He was still suspended over the table.

  We were very near each other.

  “Blood,” I said—Blut—to identify the trumping Überglaube the German socialists and nonsocialists shared.

  “Blood,” he said.

  “Blutweltanschauung,” I said. Bloodworldview. I’d expanded Immanuel Kant’s famously invented word even further.

  Stockman laughed.

  He and I pulled away from each other as a waiter arrived and set two full steins of the black, strong Danzig beer on the table and vanished at once, without a word.

  The refill had been automatic. They’d been watching and knew what Sir Albert expected.

  “You have Kneiperuhm,” I said. Tavernfame. It was entirely my own word. He laughed again.

  We focused for the moment on a long, warming pull of the beer. I’d said the right things so far. I’d made him laugh, and I’d done it by acting German. I could simply keep that up. But it would get me no further. Exploring the Weltanschauung of his allegiance to the Germans was way short of what I needed. I needed to know what he was doing about it.

  At any moment he could reach his limit, either in time or in number of drinks, and call this off. And he could reach a certain point, as drinkers often do, when he would turn from talkative to silent. It was time to push him a little, even at the risk of making him suspicious. It was my work in Chicago for the Post-Express to get local prosecutors and lawyers, criminals and politicians, working stiffs and working girls to talk about things they’d rather keep to themselves. A bar and a strong drink were as useful as my notepad and my Conklin. Those and Polonius’s good advice, spoken at the Duke of York’s just the other night, “By indirections find directions out.”

  I stuck to German. I said, “I have lately asked myself what I will
do if the United States enters the war on the British side.”

  Stockman lowered his stein. “What did you answer yourself?”

  “I would leave the United States,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “I think it is the right answer,” I said.

  He stopped nodding. He kept his eyes on me but he did not speak.

  I could not read him. This could be a sympathetic stare. It could be critical. I doubted the latter, but there were attitudes on a continuum between those two—several of them bearing risks—that would influence what I said next. I was improvising. I was tempted to ask him outright if he had now left. If he was in Germany to stay.

  Not yet.

  “I have no close relatives here,” I said.

  “That does not matter,” he said.

  “I have to confess,” I said.

  I took a bolt of beer. I let him wait for the rest, as he’d done with me a few times already. Then I said, “I was exhilarated by the Zeppelins flying over us on Friday night. I knew where they were going and what they intended to do, but nevertheless . . .”

  I stopped again, as if I did not know how to express what I wanted to say. That the bombing of London did not lessen the exhilaration.

  Stockman said, “Nevertheless.” Not to prompt me to say more but to permit me to leave the thing unsaid. We already understood each other.

  But I nudged him. “Do you disapprove?”

  “I do not,” he said.

  “Please don’t mistake me,” I said. “I admired your speech.”

  He smiled just a little. “You were very shrewd to understand.” And he said in English, quoting my own words, “My speech was ‘to quell a panic, not to legitimize a foreign policy.’”