THIRTEEN
DISGUISES
THE TAILOR WASN’T THERE. THE STORE WAS SHUTTERED, dark, and after hammering and calling for a while, Roxy closed her eyes and rested her forehead against the door.
She’d managed a few hours’ sleep, relatively fantasy-free. Then, at 6:00 p.m., to convince Jocco that she was ready to do what she’d promised, she’d strode from the smoky cellar all cocksure and waved to him before turning the corner. Out of sight, she’d sunk onto the curb and retched. The drug’s hold may have receded, but the serum still seeped through her system; her vision was still kind of blurry, her mouth sandpaper, her balance off. But she’d made it to the Kurfürstendamm, through the early-evening revellers upon it, all the way to the shop. What she really needed now was a chair and a drink.
Which I am not going to get here, she thought, though she didn’t feel like moving, the metal of the shutters cool against her forehead. What if he’s gone? Find another tailor? Who can make a great dress in a night? She’d have to return, tell Jocco, “Baby, it’s back to the cosh.”
A few people passed. One lady asked if she was okay. Roxy had managed a smile and a murmur, though she hadn’t opened her eyes. Now she heard footsteps again. They stopped near. Roxy readied her smile.
“Fräulein Loewen?”
“Herr Bochner. For mercy’s sake, can you let me in?”
“No. I cannot. You must—”
“Please. Just for a moment. I am having a little difficulty staying upright, as you can see.”
She staggered as she stepped away. He grumbled but raised the shutter, unlocked the door, opened it, beckoned her inside. Pulled the shutter back down, locked the door again. It was dark in there, for which she was grateful. He went and turned on a small light while she sank onto the sofa.
He returned to stand above her.
“You are ill?”
“It’s not contagious. Something I…ate.”
“You cannot stay, Fräulein. I am expecting someone. He—” He broke off, gestured her up. “You cannot stay.”
“But I have brought you business. I need another dress.”
“I am out of business. Finished.” He ran his hand through his thinning hair. “You will go, please.”
“Another dress, Herr Bochner. I can pay. Cash. US dollars.”
He was shifting from foot to foot, while his eyes kept moving to the door. “There will not be time. I am hoping that the man who comes—” He broke off again. “I told you of my wife. This man, I must persuade him to take less money now. To wait for the rest. To free her.” Tears sprang, and ran down his cheeks. “Go!” he shouted. “Why will you not hear me?”
Roxy put her hand on the sofa’s arm, prepared to lever herself up. It was no good; the man was too upset. She’d tried. It looked like Jocco’s risky plan was the only game left to play.
The knock was loud, a hand hammered on metal. The shutter vibrated. “Bochner!” A man’s guttural voice.
“It is him!” The tailor looked about wildly. “He cannot see anyone else here. He will—”
“Is there a back door?” Roxy said, pushing herself to her feet.
“No.”
“Bochner? You better be there, Jew. I am not waiting.”
He took her arm, dragged her fast past the counter. Then he almost threw her into the change cubicle. “Shh!” he ordered, finger to lips, before jerking the curtain across. “I come, I come,” he called, moving away quickly.
There was a stool and Roxy sat on it. She heard the door open, the shutter go up, then the reverse as the man came into the room. The tailor had left a gap between curtain and frame. Leaning carefully forward, she could see into the store.
The man was as tall as Bochner, heavier built—and the tailor wasn’t small. The man’s large head thrust out from the collar of his uniform jacket like a white cabbage perched on a grey box—a match for the grinning skull insignia on his right collar patch. His hair, revealed when he took off his peaked military cap, was thick, short, bristling like a blond brush. He was sweating heavily. “Scheisse, it is fucking hot,” he said, taking out a filthy handkerchief and wiping himself. “Have you anything to drink? Beer?”
“I am sorry, no. I have water. Some schnapps.”
“That,” the man commanded, throwing himself down onto the sofa, lifting his feet to drop them onto the small table, polished boots thumping onto the material and magazines there.
Bochner went to the counter, pulled a bottle and two glasses from beneath it, returned.
The man peered at the label. “Christ! Küpfels? You treat yourself well, don’t you, you people?” As Bochner uncorked it, bent, the man used the toe of his boot to knock over one of the glasses. “Not for you. I do not drink with Jews. Leave the bottle.”
Bochner did as he was told, straightened. “Of course, Herr Webel.”
“That’s Obersoldat Webel. I am a soldier of the Reich, Bochner, not some fucking tradesman.”
“I am sorry. I do not mean to offend.”
“I cannot be offended by a slug. Though a slug’s smell?” He gave a loud sniff. “Do you Jews never bathe?” He laughed, a sound without mirth. “At least your wife has an excuse for smelling so bad. She gets one shower a month in Sachsenhausen. What’s yours?”
“My wife. I—”
Roxy leaned back on the stool. She didn’t need to look at Webel anymore. He was adding to her never-quite-departed feelings of nausea. The drug still had a small grip on her. But it had a benefit, she realized. She’d struggled with German on occasion if people spoke really fast. A few glasses of Scotch would always improve her comprehension, though, and so, it seemed, did the last effects of the injection. She was understanding almost everything the Nazi said.
She heard the glass being put down, the cork popped, sloshing.
“So,” Webel continued, “the money? Have you got it?”
“Not all. I have over two hundred marks.” Bochner overrode the cry of “Fuck” that came. “It is nearly half what we agreed. If the price has not changed again.”
“You Jews! Always haggling! The price changed because I had to bribe more people. The night guard—who is on tonight, remember?—she needs paying for her silence. The gate guard too. Also, I decided I set the price too low before. So, this little extra.”
“I will get the rest for you, Obersoldat. This now, the rest after—”
“After? There is no after! There is only before,” Webel shouted. “After, you and your wife will vanish into one of your Jew rat holes. Or you will flee the country, perhaps. Good riddance. But first you will pay. And if you do not—”
Roxy heard him slam the glass down, rise.
“Well, at least I have half a bottle of Küpfels schnapps to accompany me back to Sachsenhausen. I am sure your wife will be so happy when I get word to her of your ‘afters.’ ”
“Wait!”
“Wait? For what? For you to give me five hundred Reichsmarks this instant? For you to give me five hundred more when I return with your Jew bitch of a wife tomorrow night?” Silence. “No. I thought not.”
Roxy had never been great at math. But it appeared to have improved along with her German. One thousand Reichsmarks was about two hundred fifty dollars. And she had one hundred in her purse.
She could see in the first moment that like a lot of braggarts Webel was a coward at heart by the way he flinched and shrank when she jerked the curtain back. “Who the hell—” he blurted as she marched forward.
“Roxy Loewen,” she said, adding, “journalist with the New York Times. Here covering the games. But I’m looking to write other articles too—about work camps, and corrupt guards and such like. Care to give me a quote, Obersoldat Webel?”
Webel obviously had some English, enough to get her gist. He blinked at her and sweat started again on his pasty forehead.
“What is this, Bochner? Have you tricked me?”
He said it in German, so she switched too. “Herr Bochner is an old friend of mine. He’s
asked me to help. And I will.” She reached into Webel’s coat pocket, extracted the bottle of schnapps he’d stashed there, poured herself a tot. “Oh, don’t worry, Obersoldat. You’ll get your money. If American dollars are acceptable?”
He swallowed, nodded.
“Good. You get fifty bucks now, which is two hundred marks. With Herr Bochner’s two hundred you got four. And there’ll be one hundred twenty-five more dollars when you bring Frau Bochner here tomorrow. Five hundred marks more.” She smiled as his eyes nearly crossed with the calculations. “Nine hundred marks total. The hundred less pays for the schnapps. And my silence. Deal?” She shoved a glass into his hand. “Deal?”
Once more he simply nodded, wordless.
“Good. Then prost!” She finished hers in a gulp. He sipped his, put it down. He was in a hurry to go now, and did, as soon as she counted the greenbacks and marks into his hand. After he’d closed the door behind the guard, Bochner sank onto the sofa with a moan. “What have you done? He will not return.”
“He will. Didn’t you see the greed in his eyes?” She sat beside him. “Believe me, I know that look. What’s he earn as a camp guard? Ten bucks a month? He’ll come back for a year’s salary, trust me.”
The tailor smiled. “Fräulein Loewen, you are a force.”
“That’s ‘Roxy,’ remember?”
The smile went. “I will pay you back, Frau—Roxy! If we can get out of Germany, I will work day and night to pay you back.”
“Well, you can start this day, this night.” She reached into her purse, pulled out the page she’d ripped from Vogue. “Because you are going to make me this.”
She handed the page to him. He unfolded it and his eyes widened. “In one night? Imposs—”
She halted his words with a finger to his lips. “Not a word I use, remember.” She took her finger away. “And there’s something else you can do for me.”
“Anything.”
“Tell me where you and Mrs. Bochner are going to be the day after tomorrow.”
The next day, just as Roxy put one elegantly shod foot on the Freidrichsbrücke, a bell inside Berlin Cathedral began to sound the hour. She glanced left to its dome, burnished in evening light. The River Spree was not wide here, the bridge not long, the toll of the bell stately, and she reached Museum Island at nine’s last stroke. Its deep note lingered in the warm air through which house martins swooped and tumbled, better at aerobatics than she’d ever be. She envied them their carefree moments in the sky. Yet if all went to plan, she’d be up there again soon. She may not have been able to loop-de-loop in Asteria 6—the Lockheed 227 transport was not shaped for sport. But she’d waggle the wings as a salute to those watching her go. And if her hold was filled with the cargo awaiting her in one of the buildings ahead, with her share of its sale she’d be able to buy a new racer, name it Asteria 7 and do the falling leaf from many a summer sky. If they did run the London–Melbourne again, she’d enter. Then she’d show these birds a thing or two.
If all went to plan…
Her knees started to give. She made it off the bridge, more stagger than walk, and leaned her head against the first stone column she came to.
Bravado had gotten her there. She’d always been good at bravado; it had taken her far: off the ground, into the skies. Persuading others, never letting them see her doubts, sweeping everyone along with her certainty. Which, half the time, was about as deep as her blusher. Bravado had brought her this far: to a museum in the most policed state in the world, preparing to steal a priceless painting from under the nose of that state’s dictator.
And it wasn’t just the odds. The drug may have been out of her system, but the memories weren’t. She’d been lucky at the Air Ministry; as lucky as she’d ever been in a plane, low on gas and no landing strip in sight. For if Göring and his crew had caught her again, she’d have blabbed, no question. Told it all. Betrayed everyone. And then what? Would she be in Sachsenhausen now with Mrs. Bochner? Would they even have bothered to take her that far? More likely she’d be just another body floating in the Spree. A tragic American suicide.
Mr. Bochner’s face came to her, tear stained and terrified. And though the circumstances were vastly different, a memory of another decent man popped into her head.
“Dad,” she murmured. It hit her sometimes, had never gone away in the seven years since his death. She missed him, utterly. She bent over the jab to her stomach the memory brought.
“Dad,” she said again. Differently. He was tough, Richard Loewen, and she was his daughter. She took a shuddery, deeper breath. “C’mon, girl,” she urged herself in a whisper. “Move.”
There was no turning back, not now. If she did, Jocco would understand. He’d tuck her up in bed with a few of his fancy rolled cigarettes, then go off to execute his riskier plan. She couldn’t let him do that. Not when he might not come back. And not if she had even an ounce of her bravado left.
It had brought her to this threshold. Surely its echo could take her one step further.
“Jocco,” she murmured, using his name like a last gasp of fuel for a coughing engine. Standing straight, she discovered her legs worked again. Enough, anyway, to propel her along the colonnade, an avenue of columns that swept away each side of her to turn and continue on—a square U with her destination, the Alte Nationalgalerie, the umlaut at its end.
There were still quite a few people around. During the Olympics, with all the city’s visitors, museums stayed open into the evening. The one ahead closed at nine. She was meant to be there at half past eight. Fashionably late again, she thought, and took a deeper breath. Ain’t that the double truth, she thought, and looked down.
Bochner, for all his grumbling at the haste, had done a magnificent job. He’d found a bolt of teal gabardine in his storeroom, perfect weight for the summer heat, far lighter than the wool crepe of Ginger Rogers’s Metropolitan dress in the Vogue clipping she’d brought. Other than that he’d reproduced it perfectly, except where he’d improved upon it. The way the peplum jacket fell over her hips just so, final adjustments only being made when she stood in the shoes his friends found her—green also but a lighter shade, with gold leather trim that separated all into scallops of silk, their instep straps buckled also in gold. Sheer silk stockings, a thin black line down each back, rose to vanish into the skirt, cut perfectly just below the knee. Three other craftsmen had finished her off: her cloche was not camel felt but straw to fit the season, its strands darker, shades of forest. Her wrist-length gloves were calf leather, emerald. The little purse she carried gave the only accent—a vivid slash of scarlet, buckled and chained in silver. It contained just five things: a slim leather cigarette case, a lighter, a compact, her cherry-stain lipstick and a vial of colourless liquid. Her derringer was tucked into her stocking top, at her right thigh. Herr Bochner would have complained about the slight bulge, this spoiling of line. But she was happy to sacrifice style for a bullet’s worth of security.
She pulled out her compact, and stepped into the light spill that came from the brightly lit building ahead. Touched up her powder, then ran the cherry stain over her lips. Made a moue, tucked all away and glanced down at herself one last time.
The dress had probably cost twice as much as Ginger would pay for an outfit to attend a premiere in Hollywood. And yet? Maybe not. Because with the two hundred fifty bucks she’d paid for this also came a human life. Frau Bochner.
With the hope on her tailor’s face in her mind’s eye, and the Alte Nationalgalerie in her gaze, Roxy set out across the grass.
As Jocco had said, the museum looked like a rebuilt Acropolis. Corinthian columns supported a pediment in which some classical goddess welcomed everyone with widespread arms. Before it, a man in cloak and part armour rode a stallion. The sponsoring Kaiser, no doubt. “Wish me luck,” she breathed.
She passed up the steps beside him and tried to enter by the main door. But she was going against the flow of those exiting, and when she’d pushed through, a uniformed gu
ide raised a hand against her and told her, “Wir haben geschlossen.”
She’d decided it was better to keep her German to herself. “Sorry, don’t understand. Do you speak English?”
He shook his head, yet still answered “Closed,” as he waved her out.
“I have an appointment. I—”
“Wir haben geschlossen,” he said again, taking her arm.
“Frau Winter?”
The voice came from behind the attendant, who turned, revealing a man approaching down the central stair. For half a second, Roxy forgot the name she’d assumed. Then she beamed and said, “That’s me.”
The guard still had a hold of her arm. “You know this woman, Herr Direktor?” he asked in German.
“Yes,” he replied. “We have an appointment. Is that not so, kind lady?”
“Uh, sorry, don’t really speak—”
He tipped his head. The English that now came was perfect, very lightly accented. “We have an appointment, do we not? But you are late.”
“Sorry,” she said. “Stocking accident. Had to go back for a new pair.”
She raised the hem of her skirt to the knee and turned her leg as she said it. Watched the other man colour. Lecher, Jocco had said. Confirmed.
The guard’s hand also tightened a little on her arm as he looked. “Hey,” she said, “may I have that back?”
He may not have spoken English, but he released her quickly. The director, Herr Müller, stepped aside and beckoned her to precede him. The staircase was wide, like something from an opera house, that feeling heightened by more columns all around and classical statues on pedestals and in niches.
There was a hall straight ahead, but Müller directed her up the next flight of stairs to the right. “Before business, there is something very special I wish to show you,” he said softly, leaning too close.
On the next floor, they took another short wide flight into a vestibule, a small room with paintings crammed onto its walls. He didn’t let her linger, waving her on to a larger space beyond, which was again crowded with paintings, most of these romantic nineteenth-century landscapes. However, the next room, the biggest room yet, was where he halted, and she immediately noted three things: the monumental canvases on every wall; the four soldiers clad in field grey, one in each corner, with rifles at slope; and the easel draped in cloth in the middle of the hall.
Chasing the Wind Page 14