Mitch Silver - The Bookworm

Was she divorcing Viktor because he was a no-good unfaithful bastard, or because she couldn’t bear to have him putting down her work? Did she surround herself with dead men talking because the actual live ones out there in the world were unknowable? From the time she’d been the tallest preteen in her srednyaya shkola in the closed city of Perm, Larissa had attracted the male gaze. But what, really, had they seen in her? Her nose was clearly too long, her teeth—though perfectly white and even—had a space in the middle, and her inky-black hair would never stay where she brushed it. Worse, out of her mouth would come whatever she was thinking.

Lara returned her gaze to the single-spaced German record in front of her; she would read the last of the pages and deal with her life some other time. By now she knew Traudl Junge’s machine, the typewriter with the chipped apostrophe. Guess they couldn’t get new typewriters in the bunker by 1945.

And what was “A.H.” doing on April 21, the day after his birthday party and the last day of the Chronologies? Was he in the map room, planning to move up his nonexistent Southern Army to block the Russians at the gates to Berlin? No, he did that yesterday. Was he in the radio room, directing waves of nonexistent V-2s to wipe out the Red Army’s advance units (and most of the Berlin population)? He’d already tried that too.

Today he was playing with the Goebbels children. On other days he’d show them Speer’s plans for the complete redesign of Linz, the Führer’s birthplace, into the new seat of Germanic culture. Today, though, he was back to playing with Tibet.

Fraulein Junge recorded it on the same onionskin paper she once used for councils of war: “1100 hrs. to 1215: A.H. again had us roll out the scale model of Lhasa to instruct the children on the beginnings of their race. How the gods had lived on the continent of Atlantis and how, when it succumbed to the Great Flood, they had moved to the lands of Thule and Ultima Thule far to the north. Then, when some of them had had carnal knowledge of mortal women, an elite priesthood of Nordics had taken refuge in another icy stronghold, in the Himalayas, and established their kingdom far beneath the surface of the earth.

“With that he delighted the children by lifting up the model’s mountains to reveal the magical city of the Aryans, the master race, as it had been recreated below. The little one, Heide, clapped her hands in joy as always.”

Lara shivered and let the flimsy paper drop from her hands. She knew that ten days later, her mother would crush cyanide capsules into the mouths of little Heide and her five brothers and sisters so they might all perish with the Führer.

Did Germany’s desire for lebensraum make the war inevitable? Or was it simply about one twisted, murderous man with unlimited power? One thing she did know: it was time to put the box back on the shelf and leave pure, unadulterated evil behind her for another year.

Okay, listen up, folks. The stewards will be serving dinner in a couple of minutes.”

The press secretary took her work phone out of her purse and hefted it up to her eyes. All the encryption software made it heavy as hell. “Coupla things. I’m not naming names, but two of you filed stuff yesterday with the same mistake. This meeting in Moscow is with the G20; the World Trade Organization’s a different, bigger group. Keep making these bonehead moves, and people might start to believe the campaign beat on the press for a reason.”

She smiled her not-altogether-friendly smile. No one smiled back.

“Second: got an addition to the printed schedule. Mogul and the other bigs are invited to a celebration Friday night in Red Square. The bus for the airport leaves three hours later than it says… can’t be helped.”

She waited for the groans to subside and smiled again. “There’s a new ETA for Andrews Saturday morning, so if someone’s picking you up… we’ll hand out revised schedules as soon as they’re printed, okay?

“Now, the president needs to rest before we kick off the Q&A, so I’m going to ask you to hold it down out here during the meal.” The secretary looked at her watch. “Let’s reset to Moscow time.” She twisted the stem of her Rolex for several seconds. “Right. Everybody, it’s now 1748 hours. Thank you and bon app.”

The two people on the far side of the bulkhead door and up a level from the press corps were in bed, true, but a nap was the last thing on their minds. It had been eight months since the inauguration and this was the administration’s first full-scale trip abroad. Not many couples get to punch their membership in the mile-high club in America’s most heavily armed aircraft… okay, renew their membership… and they’d vowed to make the most of it.

“Mogul” was a fairly big man, beefy in his nakedness but not bad for an older guy. She told him that his hair going from blond to gray reminded her of Kenneth Branagh in Wallander, which he’d decided to take as a compliment. Now he hoisted himself up on one elbow and looked over at her in her little lace “sleep teddy,” the matching bottoms buried somewhere under the covers.

In the dim light, with all the cabin’s shades down, there was still no missing that she was a former beauty queen and model, even now, on the far side of forty-five and after having had kids. She was looking back at him with that expectant grin he knew so well, her hair loose around her face and one long leg lying provocatively over the other.

She turned away from him briefly and shut off the little reading lamp built into the headboard. “This time, let’s do it with the lights off. More romantic.”

He could just make out the dimples in the small of her back, the ones right above her cheeks, that came and went as she rolled first away and then back toward him, dropping her reading glasses next to the tray of hurriedly eaten dinner on the carpeted floor. He knew he should be concentrating on their lovemaking, but he couldn’t help himself.

“Not more romantic than our own plane, sweetie.” He looked around at the bedroom cabin. “Where’s the wood paneling, the gold fixtures, the silk pillows? And I wouldn’t exactly call that dinky lamp mood lighting, not like our 757.”

She ran one manicured finger over his chest, and then down, her grin becoming something a little more. “As I said…” She reached up and flicked the rest of the lights off. “More romantic.”

After a few moments she murmurred, “So, that’s how they do it in the Air Force.”

Lara’s mobile rang as she was packing up. Or rather, it vibrated, so as not to disturb the others in the Arkhiv . Not surprisingly, it was Pavel. Very surprisingly, he was calling to ask her to lunch tomorrow in the hotel restaurant beside the Moscow River’s Crystal Bridge.

Lara remembered seeing the menu posted outside in a glass case. “Russian salad” (cucumbers and beets, no lettuce) all by itself cost more than Lara usually paid for her entire meal. Pavel said there would be three of them, and that the surprise guest (“Well, host, if I have to be honest”) would be paying.

All right, then. Her summer’s work behind her, a new job looming ahead, a fancy meal complete with mystery man—it was enough to make Lara put aside the way she felt about Pavel. “I’ll be there,” she answered. “But only if it’s on the late side; remember, I teach my class tomorrow at noon.”