Weapons of Peace

by Johnston, Peter D. ;

  The nurse was his target this time, and she was almost his.

  He’d finally caught up to her. He’d lost her twice in Berlin, picked up her scent again in Hamburg, and followed her to Munich. She and three others were making fast for the south—the Bavarian Alps, he guessed—likely trying to escape back to England through Switzerland then France. He’d caught wind of a package she might be picking up on her way through the Alps, but he had no idea what that was about or whether he’d simply misunderstood a conversation he’d overheard.

  Doyle was his target because Buckley didn’t care about Nash anymore.

  Suggs confirmed for Buckley, via several sources, that Nash had in fact been in a vegetative state for six months. As a result, the German mole hiding under Churchill’s wing paid Suggs the other half of the money he was owed for killing the American negotiator, telling the assassin that Nash was now “dead enough.” Suggs had appreciated the gesture, but knew there had to be something else motivating his client to pay up.

  Sure enough, Buckley then told Suggs that he could earn twice what he’d received for the Nash hit if he could track down the nurse who’d tried to protect the negotiator. Apparently, she’d been successful in replacing Nash on his mission to Germany.

  From what Suggs knew, there were now two practical reasons that his client wanted Emma Doyle dead: Buckley had been informed by Suggs that the nurse suspected he was a German mole; if she survived, she could reveal Buckley’s treason, ruining him and his family’s safe haven in Britain. Buckley also wanted Doyle dead because she’d thoroughly pissed him off and ended the plans for Germania’s global dominance—a postwar world in which he would have been dominant himself, as well as fabulously rich for his efforts.

  Suggs’s challenge in killing Doyle was to isolate her from her pack. She always seemed to be with her companions. Two of them were armed. The other one was a young boy who draped himself all over Doyle whenever he had the chance, frolicking, whispering in her ear, sitting in her lap. As if the Schnitzel wasn’t hard enough on his stomach, this lover-like behavior between the pair made him want to throw up. In retrospect, he decided, maybe his psychotic parents had been the lesser of two evils.

  For Suggs to go for the kill, he had to have a clear shot from a distance and a reliable path for exiting the scene, then the city. Munich was under regular fire from the Allies, who’d already destroyed many of its main roads. That didn’t make his job, or escaping, any easier. With so much money waiting for him, Suggs felt more risk-averse than usual; he wanted to be alive and well to collect and enjoy his winnings, not six feet under or maimed.

  Now, finally, his best opportunity in more than a week had arrived. His patience and prudent approach were about to pay off.

  He lay poised with his rifle on the roof’s edge of a three-story building. Below him, those fleeing with Doyle had sat down at a makeshift outdoor restaurant attached to the place where they were staying—Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten, one of the city’s most prestigious establishments. The simple restaurant was designed to disappear as soon as the Allied planes began bombing again. Half the hotel had disappeared during another recent raid, but that hadn’t been planned.

  Suggs knew the group would be here for lunch, because he’d paid the concierge at the hotel an exorbitant sum to find out their plans well in advance. The fourth seat remained vacant as they waited for Doyle. She’d been with them for a matter of seconds and had then left, probably to go to the bathroom, he assumed, though he was starting to worry that she’d been called away for some other reason. He looked at his watch. She’d been gone for twelve minutes.

  Whenever she returned, he had a good sight line to her seat. He would fire once into her forehead, and, as her blood drained and her corpse stiffened, he’d pack up and be on his way—ten thousand pounds richer once he crossed the Channel.

  “I could hit that shot—but can you?” a familiar voice asked over his shoulder.

  Suggs drew back, startled, certain that he was hallucinating. Incredulous, he turned and found himself face-to-face with Emma and her revolver. In one movement, his gun was gone from his hands. In a second movement, Emma grabbed the back of his trench coat and pinned Suggs’s small body across the ledge, overlooking the sidewalk below.

  “Very clever, Suggs, paying off the concierge like that,” she said. “What you didn’t know was that I’ve been watching you for the past two days while you thought you were watching me. By the way, I paid the concierge twice what you paid him.”

  Suggs was still trying to come up with a suitable, witty response, the huge gap in his teeth sucking in air to help him catch his breath.

  “Okay, you got me,” he said, holding up his hands, trying to stay cool. “Why not just push me off this ledge and be done with me?”

  “Because you’re not my sworn enemy,” Emma said.

  He smiled, liking this unexpected turn in their conversation. “If I’m not your sworn enemy, then who is?”

  “The traitor you work for, whose orders you’re following,” she said. That traitor had stolen Nash from her side. “You have five seconds. Name, please.” She pushed Suggs farther out on the ledge, over a war-torn city that resembled a sandcastle doused by water. He looked down, wondering if he should call for help to attract the police. But what would the local authorities charge her with, anyway? Scaring the piss out of a professional assassin?

  “Nash guessed right. It’s Buckley,” he said, face contorted, part of him relieved—another part of him humiliated at succumbing to such a breach of client etiquette.

  Lady Baillie’s source was wrong, Emma reflected. Buckley’s deception must be far-reaching and almost impenetrable.

  “Well, we both know that you’re not here out of personal conviction,” she said. “Just like our concierge, who took payments from both of us, you’re all about the money, right?”

  “I’m sure as hell not here for the fun of it,” he said, glancing down again.

  “Good. Because I can afford to pay you a lot more than Buckley ever could.” His eyes lit up. She paused, momentarily distracted, as she gazed down at her son, who sat with her loyal friends, no doubt telling another one of his bad jokes to make them laugh. He was a boy who’d been given a second chance to be a boy. “And, by the way, just how long do you think Buckley would have allowed you to live? If you kill me, you’re one of the few remaining witnesses of his treason.”

  Suggs nodded. He’d thought about that risk and tried to manage it, deciding that the money made it worthwhile. “So, Doyle, when you say a lot more money, just how much?”

  Emma pulled the bald assassin back from the building’s edge, relieving the pressure on his bowels. “Enough money, Suggs, for you to afford a lifestyle well beyond anything you ever imagined—for the rest of your life.”

  Chapter 54

  Monday, April 30, 1945

  3:28 p.m.—The Führer’s Bunker, Germany

  It was almost time.

  They sat in the führer’s small, sparse study—its only furnishings a sofa, four chairs, a bookcase, a crocheted rug, and a simple wooden desk—squeezed inside four concrete walls, the heat uncomfortable, the hum of the generators soothing.

  She glanced at the door. They usually left it slightly open to allow the air to circulate, but today it had been locked. The resulting thick, stuffy air made it hard to breathe. Though she wore only a thin black dress, she was sweating, constantly dabbing perspiration from her face. Beads of sweat rolled down his forehead, but he ignored them. She could smell his body odor.

  With the Russians just five hundred yards from their bunker and fighting hard to get closer, they’d been warned that the electricity might soon be cut off, making their breathing underground even more labored.

  Eva Braun looked across at her husband of less than two days. He sat by her side on their worn, dusty sofa, his blue eyes closed. She knew that he was contemplating what cou
ld have been—Germania—and those who had turned on him, undermining his vision. In the end, not understanding him, just like his father.

  She was aware that he’d become increasingly isolated from those who reported to him. His commanders once hung on his every word, fearing the consequences if they didn’t. She’d seen the shift over time, how they looked at him now, how they reacted to his words, how they glanced at one another as he spoke—many, if not most, thinking him a madman. They would nod in agreement with him, then do something else.

  Göring had disregarded his advice about how to use the air force. Von Choltitz had refused his order to destroy Paris before the Americans reclaimed the city. Kammler had defied him on weapons. Stauffenberg had tried to assassinate him. Speer had undermined his efforts to destroy German industry and infrastructure so that no victor could benefit from them. Himmler had gone around him to try and negotiate a peace deal with the Allies. And, of course, the previous week, Steiner had ignored his directive to move his detachment to Berlin in order to protect the future of Germania and the nation’s führer.

  Eva was furious at such treasonous acts, knowing her lover to be far from mad. He knew what he’d been doing for the past several years, though he couldn’t always tell others in his chain of command about his plans and his intentions or get them to follow his lead. Of course, even if he didn’t admit it, she knew that he’d made mistakes about people, strategy, Russia—not because he was crazy but because he was human.

  Dying together, as they were about to do, also made sense. It was anything but an impulsive act by a madman. Her husband was not going to allow the enemy to brutalize their bodies the way they’d heard that Benito Mussolini and his mistress, Clara, had been torn apart and desecrated in the gutters of Italy the day before. No, she and the führer were going to die on their own terms—with cyanide capsules.

  Sadly, the day before, they’d had to try these capsules on his beloved dog, Blondi, to make sure they worked. As they watched the German shepherd convulse, both of them crying, their doctor explained what they were witnessing and how they themselves would die: the cyanide would bind to the hemoglobin molecules in their blood—the molecules responsible for oxygen transport—leading to their asphyxiation within minutes. Their bodies would undergo convulsions, like Blondi’s, they might vomit, they’d pass out as their brains were starved of oxygen, their hearts would stop, their skin would go pink and gradually darken.

  After they had both turned cherry-red, Eva knew that the führer’s most loyal followers were under strict orders to burn their bodies outside the bunker, ensuring that the Russians wouldn’t be able to identify them—at least, not easily.

  The führer would let her go first.

  He’d quickly follow, biting down on his capsule. Whereas she wished to stay in one piece, he would ensure that his head wouldn’t be available for posthumous viewing; he intended to blow it off with his handgun just as the cyanide started to suffocate him.

  Eva reached across to Adolf Hitler and took his hand.

  It was time, she told him.

  He shook his head, forcing himself out of his trance, for her sake. He wanted to be mindful of this moment, able to fully appreciate the remarkable woman beside him who had quietly done so much for him and his nation, and whose name, body, blood, life, and death would now be forever interwoven with his own.

  He looked sideways at her, drinking in her stunning beauty, reflecting on her intellect and her loyalty, before asking a final question.

  “Eva, is the boy safe?”

  She nodded vigorously, her eyes filling with tears. She wrapped his hands in hers, smiling at him as he smiled at her.

  “Yes, my führer, he is safe.”

  Epilogue

  The Peace

  Everett Nash

  Tuesday, May 8, 1945

  9:30 a.m.—Leeds Castle

  Emma held up the front page of the newspaper for him, reading its headline aloud.

  “Victory in Europe—Germany Surrenders.”

  Below this caption was a grainy photo of Hitler’s successor, Karl Dönitz, signing an agreement in Reims, France, proclaiming Germany’s unconditional surrender. Another photo showed a mass of people in London the night before celebrating in anticipation of an end to the fighting. Emma described the photographs to him and read him the articles, telling him that Churchill and King George would soon be waving from the balcony at Buckingham Palace.

  Nash lay in his bed by the window, bathed in a soft light, unresponsive, eyes closed, as his former student sat by his side, telling him about the peace that now blanketed Europe.

  “We did it, Everett.”

  For a moment, she thought she saw movement in his face, a flicker around the corners of his mouth. A smile? Or was that what she wanted to believe? She couldn’t be sure, but as long as he was breathing she had to believe that, somewhere deep inside his injured brain, he could hear her words and understand them.

  She leaned toward him and steeled herself to look more closely at his shrunken body, wrinkled skin, and snowy white hair—all unrecognizable, even to her. She had trouble connecting this body with her memories.

  Following weeks of precarious travel back from the Continent, Emma had first visited Nash two days earlier. Lady Baillie had been thrilled to see her, but quickly, apologetically, shared the reality of Nash’s condition: he lay in a vegetative state in the queen’s bathroom, connected to lifelines that kept his heart beating and his body hydrated. She admitted that he’d never recovered since Emma last saw him. In the past ten days alone, he’d declined precipitously, his heart rate erratic, his blood pressure low. She’d probably arrived home just in time, Lady Baillie said.

  With Lady Baillie by her side, a distraught Emma had been able to cope for only a few minutes during her initial visit with Nash. Emma had never expected him to be completely healthy, but one of the things that got her through her struggles in Germany was the idea of their being together again, of him holding her, the two of them talking—about everything. And that’s exactly why Lady Baillie said she’d misled Emma about his recovery, which made sense to Emma at one level but still angered her, and certainly left her unprepared for seeing him.

  After taking a couple of days to reset her expectations and emotions, she’d returned with the news of Germany’s surrender. She planned to spend the rest of the day with him—relaying her adventures and explaining how she applied what he’d taught her. She knew that he’d want to hear it all.

  Her mind raced from finding Eva and working with the resisters to blowing up the bridge, staging the auction, destroying Sicke’s facility, dealing with Kammler, establishing an informal court to get her son back, and burying her cousin Maria in a small rural graveyard outside Hamburg. She hardly knew where to start.

  But then she did.

  As she leaned in even closer, she whispered, “Everett, I discovered your golden key. It seems obvious now that I’ve thought about it so much, but when you first told me this key was more powerful than love and Einstein’s equation, while being golden, invisible, and blinding, haunting if misused or threatening life if not used—well, it seemed like an absurd riddle.”

  Emma stood up, moving away from him, pacing the room’s ebony planks as she once did during their chats. She took in the moat and the pink blossoms outside the lead-paned window, content to be back inside the walls of Leeds Castle.

  “One night in Germany, I was going crazy, trying to figure out why Eva was being so good to me, especially in helping me find Axel,” she said. “What was in it for her? Then I thought about how you’d taken a bullet for me and why you’d done that. It was only as I was falling asleep that I realized stopping these bloody disintegration weapons from ever being used by one nation against another probably involved the very same key you’d hinted at.”

  She turned to face where he lay. Memories of all the time they’d spent in this roo
m came flooding back—the world’s greatest negotiator patiently teaching a young nurse his craft, watching her improve far beyond his early expectations, wondering if she was ready. She hadn’t been, but she’d learned fast.

  “Your golden key is ancient, and revered in most religions,” she said, looking up at the bathroom’s eight-hundred-year-old beams. “This key embodies one simple law of influence: You get back what you give. Our globe revolves around this primordial standard, which, if properly applied, can help us open any door in our realm of influence. There are two distinct but complementary edges to this single golden key. The first is the Golden Rule, after which your key is named—‘Do unto others as you’d like done unto you’—known, less elegantly, as ‘quid pro quo,’ ‘an exchange of favors,’ or ‘give-and-take.’ ”

  Emma paused, catching her breath, gathering her thoughts.

  “On the other edge of your golden key lies the rule of retribution. Oh yes, you still get back what you give, but for your negative deeds instead—‘an eye for an eye,’ ‘tit for tat,’ ‘blowback’…‘bad karma’…‘reaping what you sow.’ ”

  She walked back toward the bathtub, the memory of their time in it clear, her mind as alive as her body had been that night.

  “Everett, this two-edged golden key has evolved to be part of the blueprint that makes us human and keeps us alive,” she said with wonder, her eyes wide. “It’s why good wins over evil; it’s not about morality, it’s about negotiating across time as a species for our survival—the ultimate collective interest. Good deeds must be rewarded so people keep doing things that move us forward as a whole. Likewise, negative acts, or acts of evil, must incur payback from our shared ancestral bloodline, which naturally knows that humans can’t survive without bad deeds being punished, or, at least, threatened by a punishment worthy of the violation. Even Hitler himself didn’t use chemicals, because he knew this could lead to those same weapons being used against Germany. Is it not possible, in the end, that he made a similar calculation about his atom bomb?”