A Room Full of Night

by TR Kenneth

  The Dresdenhof was within walking distance. Near the Memorial of the Murdered Jews of Europe. He wondered bitterly if Harry—though not Jewish—could qualify to be added to them. He himself might eventually need to be too. Truth be known, he was getting in over his head. He was a goddamned writer. The fiercest foe he’d ever encountered was a paper cut. A plan would be better than a hot temper and an old Polish firearm, but it couldn’t be helped. This was an ad hoc operation. And until he knew what he was up against, the P-83 was staying right where it was.

  From a distance, a woman in a vibrant red coat walked toward him from beneath the gate. She was swathed in the scarlet hood like a fairy-tale figure. Beneath it peeked a lock of blond hair. Her hands were encased in pale blue leather gloves.

  It was a strangely unsettling combination.

  She walked toward him almost with a purpose. The hackles rose on his neck. Perhaps it was the stare. Cool, slate-blue eyes fixed on him, their expression at once dismissive, and yet oddly enticing.

  Paranoia slowed his walk. He stared at the woman, stared until she went past him, slightly brushing his sleeve. She murmured an apology, smiled at him, then ducked beneath the canopy of the Hotel Adlon Kempinski.

  False alarm. But it served as a warning. He had to stay aware. He didn’t know what he was walking into. He knew none of the players in this deadly game. Everyone was suspect. If he was going to get any information, he had to be careful. He was facing a towering opponent. But even if the outcome was dubious, he knew he would spend his last dollar and his last breath to get to the truth. He was the man who’d lost everything. He wasn’t going to lose this one without a fight. Because of his mother, because of Holly, because of the fucking Nazis that Harry feared he might have come from, he wasn’t going to let this go. His whole life seemed driven to this very mission. And while he was an impotent nobody with no connections and no power, Harry’s murder was the last of the fuel to the ice fire that had eaten up his heart. His anger made him incandescent.

  He set his jaw. The four-horse chariot, the Quadriga of Victory, built on top of the Tor as a symbol of peace in the 18th century, now looked apocalyptic, galloping above him. He shook off the vision and continued to walk toward the Dresdenhof, the hitch in his gait more pronounced from the long hours traveling. Exhausted and afraid—even wondering if he was a little suicidal—he lied to himself that it was more of a swagger than a limp.

  CHAPTER TEN

  STAG SCOPED OUT the Dresdenhof as best he could. He stood across the street sipping a hot cup of coffee, his watch cap down in order to obscure his face. As casually as he could, he observed people come and go. Two schoolchildren were loaded into the back of a Maybach, their sleepy mother in her sable coat giving the driver specific instructions from her perch on the sidewalk. Three men separately came down in their uniforms of wool coats and briefcases, and were picked up by their drivers. There was nothing out of the ordinary about the building other than it seemed to cater to the wealthy. And it was certainly older than the adjoining buildings. By decades. That it survived the Allied bombings was a miracle.

  Several vans pulled up to the passenger zone. The drivers hopped out and opened up their rear doors. Catering equipment and floral arrangements in hand, they waited for the liveried doorman to open the door for them. Someone was having a party.

  Tossing aside the coffee cup, he realized his moment had come. He steeled himself from the jitters that suddenly caused his hands to shake, and crossed the street where the doorman couldn’t see him. He didn’t expect to be Jason Bourne, still, he had to be smart. He was walking into the fire. Harry had been killed because of one phone call to this building. Inside perhaps was the reason why. They had lured him there with Harry’s murder and that business card. He’d come all this way to find out what that reason was, and he sure as hell didn’t intend for them to know he was there.

  He went to the back of the first truck and grabbed an enormous arrangement of lilies. The flowers obscuring his face, he waited for the doorman to hold the door for him.

  He stepped into the ornate green and gilt lobby. To his left was a front desk carved with oak leaves. A dapper man in his early fifties stood behind it, his gaze barely registering him.

  Stag pressed the elevator button. Almost immediately the wrought-iron gates clicked open. He stepped in with the huge display of lilies hiding him. He pressed 12, and watched the ornate bronze door close in front of him.

  His heart slowed to a less ferocious beat once the lift began moving. He was in and so far, undetected. At the twelfth floor, he stepped out into a black marble hallway. It had only two apartment doors. 12A was to the right. The door was immaculately maintained, painted a glossy black with a transom of black glass. Gold scrolls were painted around the letter A on the glass.

  He stashed the lilies in the fire exit, then took out the key that had been slipped into the back of the painting. For a moment, he feared it might not open the door, that he’d come this far on a wild goose chase. In the back of his mind, he thought of the person who had written the note in his pocket. What had happened to him? Nothing good, if Harry was any indication.

  A moment of god-awful fear washed over him. He had no idea what waited for him behind the door. Surely bad things could happen just by opening it.

  He paused. 12A loomed like the entrance to hell with its unearthly glossy black door and opaque glass. But he’d come this far, he’d risked a lot to find out what was behind it. He was hell-bent to do it.

  The key in his hand released a satisfying thump as the tumblers turned in the lock. With a grimace and a look around him, he realized he was about to find out.

  Silently, he entered the apartment.

  PART TWO

  Vernebelt—a Nazi term meaning transformed into mist

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  PORTIER TOOK THE hand-delivered note. Since Tarnhelm was a security organization, his important communication was encrypted with the only non-breakable code known: an OTP, a One Time Pad. He worked the code in his armchair. After deciphering it, he tossed it into the fireplace, and watched it burn with the same ferocity that lit up inside him.

  Maguire had fled the coop.

  He was the only being who possessed secret knowledge of 12A, and now he’d manage to slip away. Like a puff of smoke.

  4EVER had always been Luc Portier’s go-to man, and now he’d failed. That was why it didn’t pay to send an assassin to do an intelligence run. The black man, in his eagerness to make his way onto the board at Tarnhelm, vied for every tough assignment. But he’d choreographed Maguire’s exit instead of his debriefing. Unforgivable.

  “I need to know what he has,” Portier said into a speaker.

  The silence at the other end seemed to speak volumes.

  “This is going to have to be finessed,” he bit out. “When this is under control, we can dispose of him. But until then, I need his information.” He paused. “Every nail does not need a hammer. Make him talk. He can bleed later.”

  He punched the speaker button. Then sat back in his chair, forcing his anger down to a simmer.

  Maguire was not going to escape. And he was not going to take down everything Portier and Tarnhelm had built. But before his end came with blood and silence, Maguire first had to be found and forced to reveal what he knew.

  Portier now had the best that Tarnhelm had on him. He would have to be a little more patient and see what they gathered. Later it could be decided how Maguire would die. In a pool of blood. Or, in a more preferred method. In bottomless silence. An eternal darkness.

  The apartment was dim and cool. Stag stood at the entrance for a long moment, his heart thumping with adrenaline while he assessed all threats. But there were none. The place was quiet, devoid of occupants, peopled only with shadows.

  Slowly he locked the door behind him and stepped into a time capsule.

  The draperies were half-drawn. The robin’s egg blue damask at the windows showed a few places where the silk had shattered wit
h age, but other than that, the place was perfectly maintained. The smoky mirrored cornices over the windows gleamed, the French Aubusson rug showed no paths of wear.

  All was quiet. It was a tomb. A beautifully preserved sepulcher that hadn’t seen human activity in decades by the look of it. And yet, somewhere inside had to be the key to solving the message written on the strip of silk in his pocket.

  There was the hauntingly faint scent of perfume in the air, a scent that had so permeated the place, it clung on even decades later. He couldn’t identify it. It was heavy and old-fashioned, but compelling. Strangely alive. As if the person who wore it had just turned the corner, out of sight.

  Not sure where to start, he figured it was best to explore methodically, bit by bit. He passed through a swinging door to the left of the entrance dais and discovered the kitchen. It was untouched. He went to the refrigerator, something that looked from the 1940s, and opened it. There was nothing in it, and it was not running even though it was plugged in. Clearly the motor had burned out long ago.

  Back to the dim living room, he was at a loss as to how to begin. He wanted answers from the place, but he didn’t have all the questions yet. All he knew was Harry had been murdered because of the secret inside this apartment. And he was determined to get to the bottom of it.

  He stepped to a liquor bar set up on a steel trolley. The bottles were still filled with random measures of alcohol, an impossibility given the years they had been opened. The contents would surely have evaporated. But whoever maintained the apartment kept the bottles in their original state. He even found marks that someone had placed on the bottles with a Sharpie to keep the level intact.

  Next to the bottles was a beautiful stag-horn corkscrew. Runic letters of R-H were engraved on the sterling endcap. He picked it up and studied it. It gleamed ominously in the dim light. He wondered how many bottles it had opened. He didn’t ruminate for whom.

  At the far side of the fireplace, there was a nook of windows. An artist’s easel stood abandoned in the center of the space and the palette sat next to it, dried blobs of paint smeared together in a fashion only the artist could decipher. Leaning against it all were canvasses with sketches in burnt umber. The hand that had sketched them was clearly the same as the portrait of Heydrich.

  He stepped to a shiny black Telefunken console by the bookcases. The pristinely dust-free 78 shellac on the player was a 1934 hit by Libby Holman called “You and the Night and the Music.” He wondered when it had last been played.

  There was a desk placed near the entrance to the bedroom. A white saber-leg chair was angled up to it, as if the woman who sat on the pink satin had just momentarily stepped away. On top of the desk, next to the ubiquitous photo of Hitler, lay a creamy piece of stationery in anticipation of a letter. The date had been written on it, now in faded peacock blue ink. May 15th, 1942. The name engraved at the top in dove gray script was Isolda Varrick.

  Isolda Varrick. There was finally a name.

  He pulled out the white silk strip and compared the peacock blue handwriting there to that on the date of the letter. They were the same.

  Glancing above the fireplace, he wondered if the painting that hung there was a portrait of Isolda. It was unusual. The young woman stood backlit on a small hill. The breeze blew a few strands of gold hair across her face. She looked down at the portrait’s observer, her eyes clear, steady, and knowing. Her head was turned so her face was in half-shadow and her expression hard to read. It could have been desire as much as disdain on her face. One thing was certain; she was no meek character. She owned that hill, everything she walked toward and left behind. What or who she looked back at would be forever a mystery.

  Curiously, on the opposite wall there had once been a large mirror. Now it lay shattered on the floor, each shard no doubt right where it first fell. He walked up to the small hole in the wall where it had hung, his feet crunching over glass. No mistaking a bullet hole.

  He went to the bedroom, his steps muffled beneath the lush carpeting. Sheer, frilly curtains peeked out from hyacinth blue taffeta draperies, the kind one expected to see in a madcap heiress’ bedroom in a black-and-white movie. He tugged at the satin coverlet on the bed and wasn’t surprised to see sheets underneath. The place was eerily maintained. Its occupant seemed to have walked away May 15th, 1942, and never returned.

  A very tall Biedermeier chest of drawers stood to the right of the entrance to the bath. He opened the drawers. Luscious silk lingerie in colors like ice blue and shell pink sprang from the interior. There were enough stockings in one drawer for an entire navy on shore leave. The lingerie made it clear she was no wallflower. Sex had to be part of the equation of the apartment. If she were mistress to a very powerful man in Berlin in ’42, he would be able to get unheard-of luxuries during wartime with no difficulty.

  Buried in the bottom was a large square of white silk. He held it up and saw the raw edges where it had been cut. Hastily, he stuffed it in his pocket. He would see if it matched up when he got back to his room.

  He peered into the bathroom beyond. There was a porcelain claw-foot tub, green glass tiles, and sleek deco fixtures. Towels embroidered with the letter I hung strangely refreshed on the towel bar.

  Opposite the bathroom door was a vanity table, festooned in silk and crowned with an ornate Venetian mirror. It still held her powder and rouge. He picked up her French perfume. The stopper had a large W on it; the star-sprinkled bottle said Je Reviens—I come back. He figured it was the scent that still permeated the apartment, a mixture of jasmine and lemon, and something much darker. Mysterious and troubling. Next to it was some kind of face cream called Tho-Radia. He picked the jar and read the label: methode scientifique de beauté. Placing it back on the table, he wiped his palm on his jeans and wondered why anyone thought it was a good idea to put radium in cosmetics.

  Back to the living room, he appraised the fat slip-covered sofas that flanked the fireplace and pictured the parties that must have been held there. Men in tuxedos, louchely perched on ottomans, laughing with bejeweled women who drank martinis. The place was created for just such a scenario. But the reality of it was something else entirely. It more likely involved field gray uniforms, two thunderbolt runes, and a death’s head cocktail of prussic acid.

  He sat at the desk and went through it. There was nothing in the drawer but some calling cards and an extra bottle of ink. He opened the oxblood leather portfolio that held her stationery. Thumbing through it, he saw only more of the same that had been left on the desktop.

  But then, between the leaves, a card fell out. The name on it:

  SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich.

  High stakes were involved in the apartment. He pictured Isolda, the artist, obtaining a commission to paint a high-ranking officer of the Third Reich. If the silk that she wrote upon was any indication of her politics, she was on the side of the Allies. Coding on parachute silk was their technology. MI-9 even issued silk escape maps to RAF airmen for their flight jackets. Certainly, her recruitment by the enemies of the Reich would be profitable. A beautiful young portrait painter; a long, erotic sitting. If she played her cards right, she’d begin to be privy to all sorts of information. Heydrich was a notorious sexual profligate. He even started his own SS brothel called Salon Kitty in order to spy on his men. He was ripe to keep a mistress.

  Heydrich probably didn’t know it, but it sure looked to Stag that he was sleeping with the enemy.

  Stag perused the bookshelves behind the desk. He knew enough about spy craft to know that codes were sometimes linked to a favorite poem or novel. It would correspond to an edition of a book that only the spy knew. Without it, it would be impossible to crack. If that were the code, which book would correspond? Isolda Varrick’s library was deep. There was everything from the requisite volume of Mein Kampf to Children’s and Household Tales by the Brothers Grimm.

  He began running through the titles on the shelves. It was impossible. He didn’t have days,
he had minutes. If someone came, discovered the lilies gone from the truck, he would be in danger. He had to get as much information in the shortest amount of time. There was no time to read every book.

  Scarcely making a dent in the volumes, he stepped back, frustrated. He could never check each one in the time he had. And that was only assuming the book Isolda Varrick used was on these shelves. Or even assuming it was a code connected with a book.

  His gaze skimmed the titles again, until it fixed again on the notable red spine of Mein Kampf. Running his fingers along it, he realized Jake was right. Everyone knew about Mein Kampf, but even he—a writer—had never read it. Sure, he’d begun it a few times, but it obsessed and rambled, and he lost interest quickly. Now as he stared at the three oak leaves embossed on Isolda Varrick’s copy, he found it noteworthy that her volume looked well read. The spine was cracked and downright worn. If she coded with this book, it would certainly begin to look well read.

  Pulling the book off the shelf, he opened the first page. It was the special deluxe edition printed for Hitler’s fiftieth birthday. He dug out the silk strip again. On the desk, the book fell open on its loosened spine.

  Stunned, he couldn’t believe his eyes. Inside were pages and pages, not just of the book’s original text, but of peacock blue ink. He found whole paragraphs of code written in the margins. He picked it up. It looked like there was an entire other book written in the margins. Instead of Mein Kampf being the key to the message on the silk, it was just the opposite. The silk was the key to the writing in Mein Kampf. All hidden in plain sight.