Jeffery Deaver - Ice Cold

Wolf set his cup and saucer on the arm of the chair, and stood. He was tall, with a guileless manner that commanded the room. “It took some time to figure out how to get you here.”

“I can’t imagine why you’d be interested in me, Herr Wolf.”

“It was Emilie’s idea. I’m told you’re trustworthy.”

She nodded, earning a small smile from Wolf. That they addressed each other on a first name basis made Conrad wonder how long they had been acquainted.

“Trustworthy? I myself crossed the border I was guarding.”

“You behaved exactly as we anticipated.”

“I don’t understand,” Conrad lied.

In fact, he understood perfectly. Finally, things made sense.

Herr Muller has been just the beginning. The bicycle. Muller’s threats against his family. That spin around the block had always led right here. For a frantic moment Conrad even wondered if the woman with the garlic bomb had also been arranged by the HVA, to attract the press, to bring the bicycle, to spark his reminiscing and make him susceptible to Muller’s offer of a bike. The story of a baby. How had they known precisely how to tunnel into his mind?

He felt the urgent need to speak with Emilie privately. How long had she worked for Wolf? Was her defection to the west always part of the plan? When had Conrad been factored into it? If this was the case, perhaps she’d been in love with him from the start, in her own strange way. Her face revealed nothing. As his mind awoke, he recognized another fact of life: There was never any baby. It was merely a lever to bring him over, as planned, because Emilie asked for him. But it was Emilie they really wanted. Emilie, with her looks, her brains, her confidence, her inscrutability, would doubtless make the perfect spy.

Light-headed, Conrad turned to leave. But when Emilie’s hand landed in his, with its blast of warmth, he found he couldn’t get to the door.

“What exactly do you want from me?”

“Eyes and ears,” Wolf answered. “Keep us up to date.”

“How long have you been doing this?” Conrad asked Emilie.

“Connie, you’ve got to understand. The wall is just the beginning. Once they’re isolated, once they’re hungry, the wall comes down again and the GDR will run the entire city. No more separation.”

“What do you mean, hungry?”

“There’s a plan for how it’s all going to work. All we need to do is pass along information that could be helpful.”

“What kind of information?”

“Anything. Anything we might notice. Whatever we might overhear.”

“You told me we could get back to the east. Is this what you meant?”

Emilie looked at Conrad with a spark in her black eyes. He hated what she had done to him, and yet he loved her. “We’ll get back home by staying here and working together. We’ll have each other. It’s going to be perfect, don’t you see?”

Thoughts crashing, Conrad did the political math. If he agreed, they would work for the east against the west, while appearing to have defected to the west, as all the while Wolf and his team surveyed and manipulated them. Double agents, if he’d done the puzzle correctly. And if he didn’t agree? He thought of the bicycle, leaning against the tree outside his parents’ building every morning without fail, and knew he’d never get away.

“How can you be so sure we won’t be caught by the Allies?” Conrad asked them both.

“I’ll protect you,” Wolf answered.

“How? What makes you think that you of all people can keep us safe in the west? And what about my parents? How can I know nothing will happen to them if I’m caught?”

Wolf smiled, his teeth slightly yellow in the dim light. “You’re right, no one can trust anyone these days. But even so, young man, you’ll have to make a choice.”

My name is Rachel Hirsch, and here is what passes for my life: I reside at the Stone Coast Home for Seniors, along with a dozen other old souls in various stages of decline. I’m sharp-tongued and silver-haired, five-foot-two, and Jewish, even if I have not practiced my religion since childhood. At sixty-one I am still fairly spry, and have the dubious distinction of being the youngest resident, although nobody knows my true age.

Every morning for the past month I have woken at dawn, read for an hour in my room, and then pulled on a jacket to hike down the hill to my old house and Roy’s. I watch the sun rise as the lobstermen visit their traps, I hear the shriek of the gulls winging beside the boats, and I breathe deeply of the cold, spruce-scented air. Thoughts of my prior life flit in and out, and, for a few seconds anyway, I feel something akin to peace. Turning, and taking the hill with slow steps, my spirit seems serene in a way that I suppose only the very wicked can understand. Perhaps the snowfalls to come will make these morning pilgrimages impossible, but who can say when—or if—that will happen. I’ve found that winters on the coast can be capricious.

I take my breakfast with the other denizens of the Home. Seated in the stuffy salon where we consume our meals, I spoon oatmeal from a big bowl, sprinkle raisins and chopped walnuts on top, and listen to the memories of my housemates.

Each of us has a story. There’s Frank, a former surgeon from New York, tall, white-haired, and wobbly; Rita, raised up in a restaurant-owning family in a small Vermont town; and Betty, a martini-drinking, summer-stock-singing beauty. I pass the oatmeal to Willis, once the owner of a sardine packing plant Down East, who controls both the conversation and seating arrangement. He hasn’t lost the bullying demeanor of one who single-handedly ran a factory, no more than Frank has forgotten a certain air of medical arrogance, nor Betty the lyrics to songs from South Pacific . Seated beside Willis is Evelyn, dressed as if she’s headed to a disco, even though it is 1989 and the disco craze is dead.

My own story will never be told, not unless the dementia that is gradually gripping my mind loosens my tongue in a way that torture never could. Every day I look for signs that I’ve become a slack-lipped, crazy woman like Mavis, who was removed from Stone Coast Home for Seniors last week because she’d begun shrieking profanity. I wonder whether I’ll know when the time is right to take the cyanide pill I’ve so carefully concealed in an antique locket. I ought to remove it from my jewelry box tonight, pour a glass of Riesling and be done with it, and yet my spirit is such that I cannot help but hang on to this life. Perhaps my tenacity—or cowardice—springs from an inability to imagine a reality beyond the one I now know. Visions of heaven, angels, and welcoming white lights do not ring true for me. Unlike Roy, I believe that the end is The End.

I tell myself that I am curious, that I cling fast to my meager existence because, even after all these years, my story is still unfolding and I long to see where it goes. I hope and pray that is my truth. But there is a terror lurking beyond even the bleakness of death: I fear I am already lost in the fog of forgetfulness, and do not know any better, that I am closer to being like Mavis than I really know.

There are a few things I can say with certainty, and here is one: Roy Mahoney was my next-door neighbor, and a good one at that.

For close to twenty years he performed a laundry list of little acts that bespoke friendship and kindness. Each fall he’d prune the rambling rosa rugosa that bordered my land and the beach, cutting the canes nearly to the ground so that the following June’s blooms would be riotous. Every spring he rustled up a rototiller to turn over the garden, mixing in the aged manure he’d hauled from a neighboring farm. In return, I baked zucchini bread, lent him Tom Clancy novels, and helped pick out presents for his grandkids. My contributions to our friendship seemed small in comparison to his, and yet the man never once made me feel guilty.