Nina Berry - City Of Spies

“All right,” she said. “I had to ask.”

He gave her a small smile. “Keep in mind, the CIA does know more. I can tell that the file they gave me on your mother was only part of the story they have on her. I knew she was the daughter of your grandmother Ursula, and that Ursula claimed to have married Emil Murnau and said he was the father of her baby.”

“But Emil Murnau wasn’t my grandfather,” she said. “He probably never knew Grandmama. He’s someone who died at the right time so she could cover up the fact she had a baby out of wedlock.”

“I wonder if your mother knew.”

Pagan considered this. “Grandmama would never have told her. She was too proud. And Mama was so sure of herself, of her place in the world...” She trailed off.

“Until the end.” Devin’s eyes were fixed on her, steadying her as the bleak, heavy thoughts about Mama’s death came over her. It was always like this, a smothering weight pressing the breath out of her. She’d started drinking to erase that weight, and it still made her long for the icy bite of vodka sliding over her tongue. She concentrated on breathing and pushed through it all.

“That’s not enough,” Pagan said, thinking out loud. “Mama wouldn’t have been happy if she learned that she was born out of wedlock, but it wouldn’t be enough to make her leave us. I know she wasn’t the best person in the world, that she helped this Nazi escape, that she pushed us hard. But she loved us. She loved me and Ava more than anything in the world. She wouldn’t have left us for that.”

She still couldn’t quite bring herself to say that Eva Jones had been a bad person. But maybe she had been. Loving your children didn’t absolve you of everything.

Devin was nodding, accepting her verdict. “So, if the Rolf Von Albrecht living and working here is the man you knew as Dr. Someone when you were a child, the same man who wrote those letters, then we can confirm we’ve found Rudolf Von Alt, Nazi war criminal, in Buenos Aires.”

“And I’m the only person who can connect the man living here to the one who wrote these letters?” she asked.

“We think so. I hope it won’t be too dangerous or difficult for you. Seeing him may not be enough to identify him because he may have had plastic surgery. And he will have aged since you saw him last.”

“I remember his voice better than his face,” Pagan said. “If you get me close enough to overhear him, I’ll know.”

“We’re hoping that won’t take very long. Once that’s done, you can wrap up your movie and go home.”

“But the US can’t prosecute him here in Argentina. If it’s the right man, do they plan to kidnap him like the Israelis did with Eichmann? Take him back to the US and put him on trial?”

Devin shook his head very slightly. “They haven’t told me what the long-term plan is, and they have to be careful. After the Israelis took Eichmann, there was a wave of anti-Semitic violence. The fascist gangs haven’t forgotten and are always looking for an excuse to lash out at the local Jewish population. But if this man is indeed Rudolf Von Alt, then he deserves whatever they have planned for him.”

“What did he do?” Pagan said, her voice quavering ever so slightly.

Devin hesitated. “He’s a doctor. A medical doctor with a second degree in physics. He started off working on the German version of the atomic bomb, but when that program collapsed, he started...experimenting. On the prisoners in the camps.”

Pagan pressed the palms of her hands against her closed eyes, trying to keep the images those words conjured from appearing in her mind. It didn’t help. She swallowed hard against her rising nausea. “He experimented on people.”

“With doses and implants of radiation, used without anesthetic, often combined with other typical Nazi experiments like limb transplants, using twins and pregnant women and anyone else he could get his hands on. Hundreds of them,” Devin said.

She swallowed the bile that rose in her throat. “A doctor,” she said stupidly. “Dr. Someone. My mother’s friend.”

“Your mother may not have known his crimes,” Devin said.

“Maybe,” Pagan said, remembering how her strong, stylish mother had laughed over dinner with the angular, balding Dr. Someone while her father sat stony-faced. Ava had been there, too, only four years old, piling her peas into the center of her mashed potatoes, seated on a booster next to a man who had done the unspeakable.

Pagan’s skin was going to shudder right off her body. She jumped to her feet, pacing over to the suite’s bar. It hadn’t been stocked with the usual welcoming bottles of Scotch, vodka and rum, and she was grateful. Nothing like Nazi atrocities involving your mother to make you want a good stiff drink.

“I’m sorry,” Devin said, getting to his feet. “I almost didn’t tell you.”

She leaned on the bar with shaking hands. “I don’t want to know, but I need to.”

Two sharp knocks on the front door made her pivot.

“Probably your steak,” Devin said. “You still up to eating?”

“Maybe in a bit,” she said, starting to move to the door.

“I’ll get it,” he said, and was at the door in one swift move, tipping the server right at the doorway and wheeling in the cart himself, pausing to knock on Mercedes’s door. “Steak’s here.”

Mercedes poked her head out. “Thanks.” She grabbed her plate and utensils off the tray. “Hey, do you know if they sell American comics here? I’m missing the second issue of Fantastic Four because Pagan’s a spy.”

Devin let out a surprised laugh.

Pagan smiled in spite of herself. “You can get it when you go home next week!”

“Might be sold out,” Mercedes said, raising her eyebrows. “It’s a whole new thing for Marvel, you know.”

“So you keep saying,” Pagan said.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Devin said. “No promises.”

“Thank you,” Mercedes said with a sly grin, and vanished once more into her room with her food.

“You do not have to get her a comic book,” Pagan said. “You’re not her butler.”

“I don’t mind asking,” he said, picking up a covered dish and a cold bottle of Coke off the tray.

Pagan walked up, hands out to take the food from him. “She is obsessed! Thanks.”

“Sit down,” he said, his lips softening. “I’ll serve.”

She bit down a smile and sat down in the chair by the suite’s desk as Devin set the plate down and opened the Coke bottle. He handed it to her. Her fingers slipped on the outside condensation and touched his. A brief touch, then his hand was gone.

“They don’t call it Her Majesty’s Secret Service for nothing,” he said, and lifted the cover off her plate with a flourish.

A cloud of fragrant steam rose from the large, beautiful steak lying there. Pagan leaned in to inhale, as Devin unfurled her napkin and laid it on her lap.

He leaned over her as he did it, and her shoulder brushed his chest. For a moment the heat from his skin enveloped her reassuringly. A whisper of his breath touched her temple.

She turned to him and looked up. He was looking down at her. Their lips were inches apart. Any moment now he’d close the gap to kiss her, pull her close.

Then he stepped back.

“You don’t have to do this for us.” Devin walked over to stare out the window, his back to her. “I know you want to, but maybe it’s best.”

So they weren’t going to make out. Fine.

“I’m going to do this,” she said, and took a fizzy sip of Coke to settle her nerves.

“You’re not responsible for what your mother did,” he said. “You don’t have anything to prove.”

“Mercedes said that, too, but neither of you grew up loving your mother only to find out later she hobnobbed with war criminals. She helped them.” Pagan took another sip of Coke. The saturated sweetness coated her tongue, a memory of hot summer days playing tag with Ava in their terraced backyard while Mama yelled at them not to get too dirty before dinner. How could that woman be the same one who welcomed Dr. Someone into their home, who helped him escape?