The Empire of Night: A Christopher Marlowe Cobb Thriller

by Robert Olen Butler

  The air smelled faintly of malt.

  Nearby was a stack of barley straw bales.

  Stockman’s bomb was dead.

  But that was all I knew for sure.

  61

  By reckoning from the verging sun, whose disk I glimpsed briefly through a scrim of clouds, I struck out to the southeast. At one point early on, I skirted a copse of pine but I diverted into the trees. I found a downed and rotted trunk and stuffed the parachute into a hollow beneath it.

  It felt to be a long while because of the uncertainty of my path and the fading light, but in fact I made pretty good time to a stone wall at the eastern edge of a pasturage, beyond which I found a graveled road.

  I followed it south, though it was angling me back to the southwest, and I ended up walking into the little town of Liebour, where a crowd had gathered around its central fountain in the town square.

  They’d assembled half a dozen wagons and were calling out for volunteers to board them.

  I knew what this was about.

  The nearby calamity.

  They were heading to the place of the crash.

  I figured the active gas was dissipating, but they would find clear evidence of the phosgene.

  I stayed back from the crowd, striding with purpose around the outer edge of the square. Those who noticed me started and stared or shrunk back or saluted.

  I ignored them and pushed on, and I reached the road sign leading away from Liebour. I was very glad to recognize two choices. One to Uckendorf, from which I could find the road east toward Spich that passed half a mile from the air base. The other choice, which angled farther east, led to Stockem. I’d studied Jeremy’s portfolio of maps well enough in our long trip to remember this town lying on the same Uckendorf-Spich road but closer to Spich. A shortcut.

  I struck off in that direction, walking fast, and thinking hard, now that I knew where I was going. I tried to figure out why Jeremy had arranged for Stockman’s bomb to succeed. Which raised the question of why he did so with such an elaborate first two acts in his little play, their elaborateness difficult to explain.

  I didn’t have an answer for that. Not right away.

  I knew only that something was rotten.

  And it occurred to me: maybe the explanation was not quite so difficult if our Erich Müller—stage name Jeremy Miller—was working for the German secret service. Not so difficult if they approved the attack but wanted Stockman out of the picture. Albert had control of his bombshell design, and maybe part of his selling price was for him to be directly involved in the mission. All this drama could have been intended to deflect Stockman and still use his device to attack London. They could blame the American secret service, in cahoots with the Brits. And with Jeremy appearing to help in such an elaborate way—secretly setting up the failure of the British-American plan at the last minute, with the simple failure of the time bomb to be blamed—he would effectively preserve his own central secret, that this dynamic English secret service agent was, in fact, an agent for the German secret service. The rococo acts one and two were the solution.

  Was I thinking clearly?

  It all seemed very complex.

  But what seemed simple was the logical end of Act Three of this play. The Germans wanted Stockman alive. Of course. He was a member of Parliament, after all. Inside eyes and ears. If they’d wanted him dead, this would have been a much simpler play. Jeremy had never intended to let me kill Stockman. He was going to have to prevent that now. And through Jeremy, the Germans knew that my mother was also an American spy. They knew it from the outset. So in the climax of Act Three—for a German audience very satisfying in its Aristotelian inevitability—we would have a poisoned London and two dead American agents.

  I was afraid one of them was dead already.

  62

  I hit the macadam road from Spich to Uckendorf with the light beginning to dim. I turned east and pressed on and soon the land to the south of the road was denuded of crop and tree and animal. The air base’s thousand acres. A wire fence took up, and then, ahead at last, was the stand of birch. I turned in at the road leading to the hangar and entered the trees.

  With the light fading and the Torpedo’s camouflage working, I was stopped cold at my first glance ahead. I thought the car was gone. But I stepped and stepped again, looking more closely, and there it was and I rushed to it.

  I opened the driver’s side door.

  Upon the seat lay a Luger.

  I pulled back.

  Before I could even start to think rationally about this, Jeremy’s voice said, “It’s mine.”

  I spun around.

  He was standing only a few paces away.

  His hands were raised. As if I were holding a pistol on him.

  I wasn’t. I put my hand to my own Luger, but he was not moving and he even lifted his hands higher. I did not draw.

  “I have no other weapon,” he said.

  I looked at him closely. He was still buttoned up tight as a German officer.

  He nodded down to his tunic. “They don’t make provisions for concealed weapons, do they.”

  I said nothing.

  “You did it,” he said.

  “You sound surprised,” I said.

  “As you know.”

  “As I know,” I said. I drew my own Luger now. Calmly, slowly.

  I pointed it at the center of his chest.

  “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised,” he said. “They all think highly of you in London and Washington, and I could see why all along.”

  “They think highly of you too,” I said. “In London and Berlin.”

  “No,” Jeremy said, instantly and ardently. “Not Berlin. Not the way you mean it.”

  In the silence now I pondered his tone. I understood performance. It was the gift of my upbringing. He sounded real.

  “Our little bomb,” I said.

  “Our little bomb,” he said. “We came to Spich. We took our rooms at the inn. We slept. We ate breakfast and I assembled the bomb. Nothing had changed. It was to go as we both had expected.”

  “Your telegram,” I said.

  “My telegram.”

  He paused.

  Okay. True enough so far. But. I said, “It wasn’t the Brits who ordered you to allow the poison gas attack on London.”

  Jeremy hesitated. He looked away. Not to prepare for a lie. Not an aversion of the eyes. He flipped his face a little to the side and his mind worked at something and he squared his gaze around to me again. As if I’d slapped him across the face and even though he was a man trained to counterpunch, he accepted it as just.

  His hands were still up and he seemed utterly oblivious to the fact. They were natural there.

  “Not the Brits,” he said.

  “You pulled a Stockman,” I said. “You were the one dropping the gas bomb.” I heard my vehemence. I’d once liked this guy.

  He gave a single sharp nod, casting his eyes down.

  And then he looked at me straight.

  “I work for the English,” he said, “but only when their goals are the same as the goals of my own country. I am German. But the Kaiser is not my country. Hindenburg and Moltke and Falkenhayn are not my country. None of the Kaisers. None of the generals. My Germany wishes to be like your country. A country governed by the people and protecting the people—all the people—from their government and from themselves. A republic.”

  I believed he was speaking the truth about himself.

  I said, “And what of the people of London tonight?”

  “It was not my decision to make,” Jeremy said. “We have our own leaders. They know we will never remake Germany as long as the Kaiser rules and these generals are heroes. The march into Belgium. The poison gas at Ypres. The sinking of the Lusitania. These acts of cruelty and the government’s rabid defense of them are already undermining its position. Not just in the world but here among the true Germans. The attack on London could have been decisive.”

  “But it would
have been your attack as well,” I said.

  We looked at each other in silence for a long moment.

  Jeremy said, “I’m glad you are good at what you do.”

  I could only shake my head at this.

  He laid the poisoning of London upon his leaders and then did what they asked. He laid the salvation of London upon me and was passively glad it went that way. I doubted this was a viable frame of mind for an aspiring republic.

  He misinterpreted my reaction. He said, “I’m here, am I not? I didn’t have to come. I came with hope, even though it was scant. Hope you were alive. The explosion rattled the windows at the hotel. I was afraid you’d died in the deed. You are capable of that sacrifice. I knew that. I’m very glad you were good enough also to survive.”

  I still found no words.

  He said, “I gave you my pistol freely. My hands are raised. For my betrayal of you, I am happy to offer this proof of my regret and of my regard for you.”

  He turned around.

  He offered me his back.

  He did not look over his shoulder.

  He did not see that I was indeed still holding my Luger steadily upon him.

  He said, “If it is your decision now to kill me, I am ready to accept that.”

  I lifted the Luger and pointed it at the back of his head.

  He waited.

  I waited. Not to make a decision. That was made. I waited to adequately clear my head of how dangerous this well-intentioned and obedient man was.

  “Turn around,” I said.

  Jeremy did so, slowly.

  The Luger was pointed now at the center of his forehead.

  He waited.

  “Put your hands down, Jeremy,” I said.

  He did.

  I lowered my pistol.

  He let out a held breath.

  I slipped the Luger into my holster.

  “May I shake your hand?” he said.

  I thought about that. Briefly.

  “Yes,” I said.

  And we grasped hands.

  63

  When our hands parted again, I said, “What have you done with Stockman and Madam Cobb?”

  “You underestimate her,” he said.

  This didn’t sound good.

  “We had a useful chat,” he said.

  “When?”

  “Not to worry,” Jeremy said. “Stockman was out cold and tied up.”

  I was worried.

  Jeremy had left Stockman with his lover. A woman so blind with love she still couldn’t accept or reasonably assess what he was capable of doing. But this man before me was capable of at least one of Albert’s most heinous intentions. And he’d been my friend. He was quickly becoming my friend again. Mother’s feeling for Albert, her desperate need for her feeling for him: couldn’t I understand that?

  “We should go to them,” I said.

  “I’ll crank,” he said.

  And he did. When he slid into the passenger seat, I handed him his Luger.

  I drove out of the trees and turned east onto the Uckendorf road.

  Jeremy said, “From what you must have thought of me, you need now to understand. I was never allied to Stockman. I am ready for us to kill him. I will do it myself if you wish. He will compromise us both.”

  I looked at him. It was only a glance, but just before I took my eyes from him, he glanced too.

  He knew what I was thinking.

  “I will not return to England,” he said. “I’m asking you to keep no secrets about me.”

  “Good.”

  He said, “I will be a more serious enemy to Berlin by working here for the republic.”

  I advanced the throttle in this open, empty stretch of good road.

  I said, “So did you leave her guarding him?”

  “Not to his eye, if he wakes,” he said. “She’s got the right stuff, but I don’t think she realizes we intend to kill him and I didn’t say otherwise. She thought it prudent that she continue to seem his ally. We feigned her bonds. She can slough them off at will. But she wants him to think they were in it together.”

  This was all right.

  Perhaps she was still taking her role as spy seriously.

  I had something to do now. The thing she did not yet see coming.

  It would be for the sake of Jeremy and his work. A democratic Germany could perhaps prevent another great war. It would be for the sake of my work, for the work of the American republic.

  And it would be for me.

  For her.

  I sped into Spich.

  Then I had to slow down drastically.

  The town square was dense with people. As in Liebour, Spich had turned out to share this disaster and do what it could. I eased the car in among them, and when people felt others yielding, they turned and yielded too, all of them doing so willingly, readily, respectfully, many of them greeting us, officers in their army.

  We crept through them and Jeremy and I found ourselves acknowledging these people’s nods and waves and salutes. As if we were one with them in their loss. It went with the uniform.

  And then we were free and soon we pulled into the parking field next to the Hotel Alten-Forst.

  I switched off the engine.

  I had been thinking this out as we drove.

  I needed to do this alone. Twice today I’d put a gun to a man’s head and twice I’d spared the life before me. Even if only temporarily. This would not happen a third time. Stockman would die directly by my hand. And my mother would instantly be cast in a great and complex role. I would tie her up properly. She would go on to play the devastated lover, having witnessed the death of the man she’d loved most in all her life.

  “I have to do this alone,” I said.

  He looked at me. He did not understand.

  “It’s not a matter of trust,” I said. “It is a thing between the actress and me.”

  “I’ll be here if you need me,” he said.

  “Be ready to drive us to Berlin,” I said.

  I needed to visit the American embassy. It was nearly time, as Trask put it, to leave the country abruptly.

  64

  I shed the flight jacket into the back seat, swapped the clip in my Luger for the full clip from Jeremy’s, restrapped my holster over Colonel Wolfinger’s tunic, and with a final nod between us, I left Jeremy in the Torpedo.

  I strode across the hotel courtyard and through the lobby, taking note of who might be here when I followed a gunshot out of the hotel. The lobby was singularly empty. An old man sleeping in a corner chair. One liveried man clerking behind the desk. Even the visitors to Spich were in the street on this night, being Germans together, awaiting word, sharing their righteous rage.

  It was a good night for an assassination. The shot would be two floors up and at the back of a nearly empty hotel in a distracted town.

  The elevator operator was also gone and I went up the staircase. I emerged on the second floor and entered the long corridor to Room 200. I slowed a little. I approached with measured, muffled footfalls on the Turkish rug.

  Mother wanted to continue to play her role. So be it. I would not knock. If he was conscious, I would not invite her to reveal the phoniness of her bonds. I would use my tools to enter the room.

  And Room 200 was drawing near.

  I measured my breathing as well. Careful now. Professional now.

  I stood before the door.

  I drew out my tools. Pick and torque. The lock yielded. I did not turn the knob at once. I put my tools into their loops in their leather wrap and I put the wrap into my inner pocket. I used the movements to calm myself.

  This was all feeling too personal.

  That could cloud my judgment.

  In fact, it already had.

  I put my hand to the knob and turned it and opened the door wide.

  Mother was sitting directly before me, in the chair where she’d sat last night among the roses.

  The flowers whose petals had not been plucked and strewn on
their bed this afternoon sat meagerly in their vases.

  She wore a kimono negligee. The peach-colored chemise, which was her costume for the afternoon cigarette card pose, showed at her chest.

  I took a step into the room.

  She was not bound. Even in a phony way.

  She looked at me oddly. The expression must have been genuine, because I couldn’t for the life of me read it.

  I took another step.

  This was way too personal. Only now did it fully strike me that she shouldn’t be sitting here.

  I moved my hand to my Luger even as the door slammed behind me.

  But before I could draw, a pistol barrel touched me at the back of my head.

  Stockman said, “Pull it out slowly and hold it to the side.”

  I had no choice.

  I drew the Luger from its holster, grasping it as if I would use it, just in case, since he’d given no instruction about that.

  I extended my arm to the right, straight out.

  I had no possible move other than this.

  He nudged my head with the muzzle of his pistol.

  “Toss it away to the right,” he said.

  I flicked my wrist as little as I could and still seem to comply. My Luger fell heavily to the floor.

  The steel vanished from the back of my head.

  “Don’t move,” he said.

  I didn’t.

  I heard the bolt slide into place at the door.

  “Turn around,” he said.

  I did.

  He looked clear-eyed but beat-up. A welt as fat as a three-hour cigar emerged from his hairline and fell across his right temple. His pistol hand was steady. He was holding a Webley break-top revolver. He and his German blood carried a very British weapon. I chose not to comment on this. That I even thought to comment was inappropriate under the circumstances. But he had the drop on me, and though I was toying with ironies on the jittery surface of my mind, I was thrashing around for serious options in the core of me as well. The ironies kept me a little detached. Calmed me. One of the ironies: in spite of the beating and the hog-tying, he still looked very much like my mother’s chisel-faced leading man.

  “Who are you really?” he said.