by TR Kenneth
It was as depressing as it could be. The tourism industry was booming, but the economic effects didn’t translate to the population. Bali was the second poorest part of Indonesia after Jakarta, and it twisted his heart to see kids blindly hugging trees after huffing a plastic bag, but he knew he couldn’t really do anything for them now. He had errands to run. Focus was the only skill he had and he had to get to the bottom of this strange, terrifying organization called Tarnhelm.
His first item in Bali had been to purchase a gun. Now the Glock sat next to him on the table, ready to protect him should he need it. He then procured a large safety deposit box at the Bank Commonwealth to stash his valuables, and took out a mailbox to have his new Wuhan-made briefcase delivered. Afterwards he’d taken a sweet little swim in the Indian Ocean. He was now ready to sit back and do some serious deciphering.
The twenty-five million hadn’t arrived in his numbered account in Zurich yet, but he’d be patient.
Hans is no longer at the art store! He was “removed” by the Gestapo, said the old man, and he won’t say where Hans has gone. Very bad tidings. Now I have no one to give my slips of silk to, and yet there is now much terrifying news to deliver. Your little meeting in Wannsee has brought information about Prussic acid and train schedules. And there in your pocket one night I found a diagram of the bomb you say could be made the size of a pineapple. In desperation, I’ve taken to write to Eduard Schulte, pretending to be his fiancé. I sent the letter to Frau Keils in the hope that she may forward it from Switzerland when she goes. I shall write her again, but I fear for her also. She has been known to hide Jews. Much to her peril.
But if I don’t write Schulte, how else to get the information through at this very late hour?
The only answer is to persist. Because the world has gifted you more than your fair share, my darling. So I shall persist because, whether it matters not, I will never gift to you my silence.
He now realized the letters, unable to be forwarded to Schulte for some reason, must have been with this Frau Keils when she got rounded up and sent to Auschwitz. He checked the Auschwitz Death Books at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. And found a woman from Berlin named Anna Keils who died in early 1942.
Well, there was one small mystery solved.
Stag ran his fingers over the handwriting. At times, he felt Isolda was speaking solely to him. He was her companion in her terror. He was the broken man who fit her broken pieces with his own. The unsilent cripple. The first to be mocked. The first to be shunned. The first to be shoved into a shower. She wrote to rebel against Heydrich’s secrets the only way she could; he worked to rebel against Tarnhelm’s secrets the only way he could. It was a quiet war fought with research and planning, though it was a war he knew how to fight.
But what good would it do? If he were killed and forgotten, it would come to nothing. But if he persisted, with half as much bravery Isolda had shown, and if his plans and research worked, he could leave Tarnhelm limping like he limped. Then he had to somehow pay tribute to Isolda. He would see that her silence was broken. Her words would be published and placed in the timeline of history.
He flipped the page and continued.
I lay awake all night worrying about what information Hans may give your Gestapo. I’ve written several letters to My Dear Eduard, and now Frau Keils is no longer reachable. I have no one to help me, except the old man at the paint store, and I cannot tell if there was glee on his face when the Gestapo took Hans away or despair. He sits on his stool and never is there an expression in his dead, watery eyes.
Stag wondered whether her plea on that last piece of silk was stashed in the painting in a desperate attempt to reach the old man. Perhaps she had sent the painting with the silk to him under the guise of his matching a color she used. If that were the case, the old man had never seen it.
The gnawing feeling that something was amiss in that apartment came back to him. He went through the place in his mind again. Everything was there, right down to the ubiquitous photo of Der Führer. What was bugging him? The missing thing. What the hell was it? He needed to return to Berlin and that apartment, but there was too much to do in the meantime. The best he could do now was keep up with Tarnhelm. He made a note to call Jake on his Dedman phone and ask him to research a list of questions he had. If Jake was good enough to do that for him, he could then finish deciphering the diary.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
STAG MAGUIRE’S ACTIONS were suicidal, Angelika mused as she ended the session with Portier. Maguire was taking on way too much. While his audacity was impressive, there was no doubt in her mind they would kill him. Tarnhelm was now on the hook for twenty-five million. Portier told her they were paying it to buy time.
Now it was up to her.
She didn’t relish going forward. It was a tangle, for Maguire, for her. Her first assessment of Maguire as he walked past her in the Pariserplatz was that he was singularly unimpressive. His only distinction was he had a strange gait, stiff, like a propping horse. Maguire was a bit taller than average perhaps, his face clean-shaven, but his eyes possessed a certain wildness. When they looked around, they were a little too open, showing a sliver too much white. She remembered the last time she’d seen eyes like that. They belonged to a terrified Syrian mother trying to protect her child. They were the eyes of the hunted.
Inexplicably, Maguire had checked into the St. Regis in Bali. Luc had made some disparaging comment about Maguire already attempting to live like the nouveau-riche. Angelika wasn’t buying it. Maguire was no self-indulgent fool. It took more than a nice hotel to impress him. He was in Bali for another reason. He wasn’t taking a vacation now.
It was doubtful, however, that the weapon was in Indonesia. But his trip to the Königssee bothered her. It was a likely place for a Nazi secret. If Heydrich had a weapon that he wanted to keep to himself for strategic purposes, a nice salt mine was the place for it. It was logical that it had been moved there, secretly.
A car downstairs waited to take her to the plane that would take her to Bali. She didn’t know what her next move would be, but she did know Maguire was not staying at the Regis.
But for her, he would not be hard to find.
I wore your most spectacular diamond ring today. Everyone thought it was a ruby and a tiny one at that!But those who knew spoke of us in whispers, recounting the terrific fight you had with Goering over winning this ugly red stone. It looks like a small sparkling drop of blood on my finger. I didn’t know diamonds came in every color. You even told me of green ones tainted by uranium. You said when you win this war you will buy me two green diamonds, one for each ear, in order to look at them when we make love.
How like you to associate the beautiful things in life, Shubert and violin, your love for the rare and the beautiful, with that which is pure, and never see how they in themselves don’t translate goodness.
There is only Death and the Maiden in your world.
No meaningful grey. Only black and white. And red.
Sadler’s limo took the George Washington Memorial Parkway out of Reagan National Airport. He was almost home. All they had to do was cross the Potomac at the Beltway, and once in Maryland, head to River Road.
He opened the window of the limo and smelled the air. The Good Old USA never smelled so clean. To the left, was the spring green scent of the golf course at Avenel, and to the right, once they put Potomac Village behind them, he could just catch a whiff of horse manure. His thousand-acre farm and a good old-fashioned gallop through the sod fields would erase Zurich and uranium and that fucking Frenchman from his mind.
His phone rang. He wanted to throw it out the window and make the driver run over it again and again.
“What have you got?”
“There’s a blackout on his information. No one knows.”
Sadler angered. “Someone knows. His doctor knows.”
“There’s nothing. He has us locked out.”
“Good.”
“G
ood?” came the voice on the other end.
“Yes. If he doesn’t want us to know, it means it’s bad. Portier’s days as head of Tarnhelm are numbered.”
“Perhaps. Or he’s just fucking with us. That’s been known to happen in this organization.”
Sadler grunted and ended the call. The fieldstone gates of the compound were coming up to the left. He suddenly realized he’d never been happier to be home in the good ol’ USA.
I want to tell you about my first kiss.
His name was Miki Bloch. Ah, that name! I still feel dreamy thinking it. He was tall and handsome. He was, perhaps, fourteen. We shared realshule in Berlin. My whole school day was devoted to getting a glimpse of him. He, of course, did not know I existed.
I was eleven. A nothing. A child.
But he, he was my lord and savior! I would daydream about holding hands with him and walking through the Tiergarten on blustery days when he would take off his coat and wrap me in it because I was littler than he, and a lady. How I ached to be noticed! But I was invisible. I met his mother once while waiting in line for my father to pick me up. She was short and fat and, to think of it now, homely, but a truly beautiful woman, if the truth were told! She was always laughing, always happy to know you, always kind. I was grateful she spoke to me. I was Nobody, and here was Miki Bloch’s mother telling me how she had just baked some berlinerkranser, and if she’d known she’d be waiting with such a nice young girl, she’d have brought some for me!
I was beside myself with joy. Every day when she should see me in line after that, she would wave and call out my name. How delightful she was… Then one day, I was in the schoolyard, bouncing my rubber ball, and Miki Bloch walked by. I was so shocked by his sudden appearance, all I could do was grip my ball and back away, into a flower bed where I fell right on my bottom. Utter ruin! He laughed at me, but then came over to ask if I could use some help getting up. I nodded, and he bent down.
The most amazing thing happened then. He bent close to take my hand and I acted as if I was no longer myself, but a fiery princess overcome by a magic spell. I pressed my mouth on his and closed my eyes.
Then the worst. No magic kiss, no fairy tale. He drew back as if I’d just slapped him. Horror came over his expression. He pulled me up and walked away in embarrassment.
I died of mortification. It was the defining moment of my first walk into womanhood, and I was crushed.
I wish I could meet him again. I wish we could drink martinis at Harry’s and laugh about our innocence, perhaps even hold hands now as friends. If he was still the boy I remember, perhaps I could daydream of being his wife, of seeing to his dinner and his socks, with great domesticity and tenderness.
I bought a smock today in the market. I use old men’s shirts from the rag merchant since I go through so many. Painting is messy. I brought the shirt home, and as I handed it to my maid to wash, I noticed the black threads on the left shirtfront. They were still there, sewn into the white cotton. The shape of a Star of David. Another Jew who does not need his shirt.
You said to me today in your oddly high-pitched voice that you were sending a diamond over to the apartment until things settled down in Berlin. I dared not question what is unsettled in Berlin. But you told me I am to stay home, for my own sake.
The Gestapo has such talents for torture. So I think of Hans, and Miki Bloch, and the man who does not need his shirt.
I wonder when I shall become the woman who does not need her dress.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
ALDERNAY TROOST LANDED in Bali and went straight to the Regis. He flashed his badge and inquired about Maguire. No one had seen him. No, his bed had not been touched, no, he had had no room service since checking in.
No surprise. Dead end.
He called Berlin to see if anything had happened on their end. Nothing.
He wondered how it was that anyone could remain unfound in this day and age. If Tarnhelm couldn’t keep tabs on Maguire, what chance did Interpol have, with their government budgets and legal constraints?
“Do you want me to check other hotels?” Special Agent Jones offered.
“He’d be under another name.”
“Any idea where he’s going next?”
Troost let out a long, weary release of air. “Yeah. He’s going straight into the ground. We just don’t know exactly when.”
Jones just shrugged.
Rikhardsson had his own compound in Bygdoy outside of Oslo. Snow was still on the fields, ice on the walkways, but it had been all cleaned up by the time the caravan of black SUVs and limos arrived.
The door was held and the leader of the Daesh offshoot, the Black Plague, entered. In his Saville suit and keffiyeh, the caliph was the perfect mix of west and east. The custom suit, because white men rule; the keffiyeh, because God was the platform to rail from when one was grasping for power.
The men settled in Rikhardsson’s study. After libations were offered—tea for the most holy Caliph al-Samarrai—Rikhardsson got down to business.
“Our analysts believe it’s a Little Boy gun-type nuclear fission device of uranium 235 with a nitrocellulose propellant.” Rikhardsson lowered the note in his hand. “Sorry to get technical, but you went to Oxford, so I assume you understand what all this means.”
The caliph sipped his tea with proper English manners. “I understand it. Have they dimensions?” His accent was perfectly English as well.
“No dimensions. But it’s projected to be about the size of two 55-gallon steel drums. This is a non-governmental weapon that is currently unknown to any state power, ready for use, and untraceable.”
“Have you a price?”
“We estimate in the 5 billion range, but that could go up with competition.”
Caliph al-Samarrai took the news in stride. “The usual means of transfer?”
Rikhardsson nodded. “In your case, first to Bank Melli, then we will determine where we park it.”
“Lichtenstein?”
“Ah, who knows? We change with the weather and the current state of the Feds. Yesterday it was Panama, tomorrow it’s Vanuatu.”
Both men laughed.
“How quickly can we take possession?” The caliph cut to the chase.
“You won’t take possession at all. We will make a controlled drop, using our people and our security, on your chosen target. All part of the price.”
The caliph looked most displeased. “If we purchase it, we must have the authority—”
“You will not have it under any circumstances.”
“But, certainly, we would get your approval on the target, of course.”
Rikhardsson said nothing.
The caliph understood. “No deal?”
“Mr. Portier makes all the arrangements himself.”
“I think four billion is more in order then. If we cannot have control—”
“Four billion will get you in seventeenth place.”
“That many?”
“That many.” Rikhardsson raised his teacup and smiled.
I think this must be the end. I keep a placid face, but inside, I screech with terror. In one last attempt to save myself, I wrote a note on silk and put it in back of your portrait. Then I sent your portrait to the old man with the excuse of tightening the loose stretchers. If I am lucky, he will find the note and know who to contact. If not…
My God, death has been long in coming. It doesn’t seem possible to continue any longer. You have three diamonds here. A very bad sign for me. A delay has kept you from appearing, and so I wait and order coffee from my maid, and worry.
In another life, I think I could have loved you in some small way. I feel certain you would have loved me. Especially that night you talked of your boyhood. “Moses Handel” the children called you because you were musical, and, in their cruelty, they thought to place a curse on you from your rumored Jewish ancestry. Süss was by marriage only in your family but they tainted you with the Semite blood and you never forgave them. You nurse ma
ny petty grudges. You should have been Irish, not German!
In strange and little ways, we are very much alike. We both love Shubert. Wagner. Paintings by Bocklin and Monet—though Monet be most degenerate. You asked me to paint myself just like Woman with a Parasol, and even I had to smile inwardly. It was exactly the way I saw it myself. It haunts me even now. You saw things in me and I saw things in you that go beyond words and description.
Art and music are our bond.
When you order me gone, I will still take the time to explain to you how many times I wanted to kill you. How much I wanted to see your jaw slacken in death and see what little light in those lifeless eyes of yours drain away. I could have killed you while you slept, but what would serve as a satisfying momentary impulse would, in the grand scheme, go unnoticed by history. The juggernaut of the Reich is set to go forward, and it will move without you or me. The Jews will be murdered, the war will continue until Germany is nothing but rubble, men will starve and bleed, women will cry and wander the streets looking for loved ones lost forever.
And I will live to see none of it. For this one small mercy, I will be grateful.
Stag couldn’t figure out why the number of diamonds Heydrich was placing in her apartment caused her to feel such doom. Was it that she would be killed because she knew he was stealing them? Was he stashing jewels for his escape should Germany not win the war? And first and foremost, what about the weapon? Where in God’s name was it and what was in that apartment that Tarnhelm was desperate to understand?