Nina Berry - City Of Spies

Pagan was alone again with Devin Black.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Alvear Palace Hotel, Buenos Aires

January 10, 1962

CORTINA

Curtain. A brief musical interlude between dance sets.

“Alone at last,” said Pagan, echoing Devin’s words back to him as she sat back down with a thump. Devin took the chair beside the sofa with his usual careless grace, an arm’s length away.

Now that Mercedes was gone Pagan was free to notice how the long, powerful muscles in his shoulders pressed against the fine cotton lawn of his white shirt, and how narrow his waist was where the shirt was tucked neatly into his pants. She pulled her eyes away so he wouldn’t see her staring.

“Sorry it took me a little while to get in touch,” he said. “I had some background research to do before I talked to you and...”

He broke off, staring at her. His eyes, normally layered sapphire and indigo, caught sunlight coming through the hotel window and glowed nearly royal blue. His high cheekbones and long straight nose had tanned since she’d seen him at Sinatra’s house in December. He looked fit and coiled for action.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “You seem agitated.”

She relaxed slightly. “I’m fine, but this morning wasn’t fun. The wardrobe is derivative, dated and way too tight, which is exactly how this whole movie’s going to be. The script is terrible. I keep hearing the director’s a jerk, and my costar thought dance rehearsals back in California were the right time to proposition me.”

He didn’t move, but something behind his eyes tightened. “Which costar?”

The protective note in his voice was strong, immediate. She looked down so he wouldn’t see how happy it made her. “Tony Perry. He’s...” She wanted to tell him how Tony’s assumptions about how “easy” she was had made her feel awful, to hear Devin’s reassurance that he didn’t see her that way, but instead she trailed off and finished, lamely, “He’s just a jerk.”

“I’ll have a word with him,” Devin said. “For all he knows, I’m still a studio executive.”

“Oh, I think I fixed that particular situation,” Pagan said. “But thanks. He’s finally able to walk around now without help.”

His eyebrows quirked together. “Ouch?”

She nodded. “You look like you’ve been lounging at a resort since I saw you back in Los Angeles.”

“Not unless you call staking out the home of a possible war criminal resort living,” he said. “The summer sun down here is relentless.”

“Where does Von Albrecht live?”

The astonishment in his face was gratifying. “How did you know his name? I never told you he goes by that name. Did I?”

“No, but in a way, my mother did.” She got up and went to the fancy mirrored desk in the suite’s living room, where she’d laid one of her smaller suitcases and pulled out an accordion file. She tossed it to Devin, who caught it easily. “Rolf Von Albrecht wrote to my mother in coded letters in the summer of ’52, a few months before Dr. Someone came to visit us. I assume they’re one and the same person. I found the letters in my father’s safe last August. I broke the code in Berlin.”

He looked up at her from the file. “In Berlin? When?”

“The night before I went to Walter Ulbricht’s little garden party, the night I saw Nicky with his wife and had a couple of drinks. You remember.” She paused, recalling it well herself. As Nicky had started playing on Pagan’s sympathy, trying to win her back, Devin had literally shoved him away and told him to go back to his wife.

Devin’s mouth curled at the memory, too. She continued. “It was something you’d said about Hitler’s birthday before that which helped me break the code. Take a look at the letter on top.”

Devin pulled Von Albrecht’s letters out of the file and untied the string holding them together. His eyes swept over the first letter, taking in all its innocuous phrases, until he came upon a notation in different handwriting. “Twenty, four, eighteen eighty-nine,” he read. “April 20, 1889. Hitler’s birthday.”

“That’s the code, in my father’s handwriting. I don’t know how he figured it out, but it worked. I used those numbers—twenty, four and the numbers in eighteen eighty-nine—and found the real message. In them, Von Albrecht says Mama was a ‘sympathizer.’ He asks her to help him—specifically to give him a place to stay and arrange to get him on a ship leaving the country.”

“Did he say anything about coming to Argentina?”

Pagan shook her head. “No destination is mentioned, and nothing concrete about exactly who he is, why he needs to leave or what my mother was a ‘sympathizer’ to, but given that the code is Hitler’s birthday...”

She trailed off. Director Bennie Wexler had made it clear Eva Jones was anti-Semitic. He’d experienced her bigotry personally. That was bad enough. But if this Dr. Someone aka Von Albrecht was the type of person Pagan feared him to be, her mother was something worse.

“Who is this man you want me to identify?” she asked, coming back to sit on the sofa. “What did he do?”

Devin set the letters and file aside. “Early in 1952, a Nazi war criminal named Rudolf Von Alt escaped detention in the United States and fled the country. We believe that he changed his name to Rolf Von Albrecht, keeping the two names similar to make it easier to respond to, and that he found help from sympathizers all over the country. A sort of evil Underground Railroad. They housed him, kept him safe, funded his journey across the country. The evidence indicates that he stayed at your house in the summer of ’52.”

Pagan inhaled sharply and nodded as Devin threw her a look. It was exactly what she’d feared after decoding the letters. Her mother wasn’t only a woman who hated Jews. She’d helped a Nazi war criminal escape justice.

“It’s okay,” she said, although it was far from okay. “But I feel a little sick.”

He got up and poured her a glass of water. “After his stay with your family, Von Alt left on a ship from the port of Long Beach. We don’t know his exact route from there, but we think we’ve tracked him down here, to Buenos Aires.”

“Tracked him—how?” She took the glass from him. Although none of this was a surprise, it was unsettling to hear the story coming from Devin, who was as close to an official government source as she could get.

“I don’t know all the details, but during the war, the FBI knew that your mother was a Nazi sympathizer and kept a file on her. They didn’t think she was dangerous and weren’t actively watching her in ’52, so Von Alt was able to get away. Later, I don’t know how, they learned that she had helped a man who resembled Von Alt. Meanwhile, I learned that Walter Ulbricht’s daughter was a fan of yours.”

She sipped her water. How could the FBI have known about Mama during the war when Pagan herself had just found out? Mama had been an excellent actress in her own right. “And you got me to Berlin, using my desire to learn more about Mama to get me there,” she said. “You knew by then she had helped the Nazis.”

He nodded, eyes on her as if braced for a bad reaction. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you.”

She raised her hand briefly, waving off his apology. She’d forgiven him long ago. He’d been doing his job, and they’d had no connection then, no relationship, if that was the right word for whatever lay between them now. But could she trust him?

“Do you know anything else about my mother or father now that I don’t know?” she asked. She held her breath, not knowing if she would believe the answer, whatever it was.

“No.”

He looked right at her, brows steepled sadly, his eyes concerned, and warmth spread through her chest, like hot tears, melting away her uncertainty.