Robert Butler - The Empire of Night

The Allies controlled all of Chile’s saltpeter.

How much did our government and the European Allies’ governments know about this?

“This was six years ago?” I asked.

“Yes, when he demonstrated the process.”

“And they’re doing this now on an industrial scale?”

“Twenty-five tons of ammonia a day. For two years already.”

I wanted to ask where. But I flipped the crank on my reporter’s instincts and they started up instantly. I knew this was a fragile moment. An inappropriate, pointed question could shut Stockman down.

The links forward from where his mind had started were clear, from his having hopes that America will come to understand Germany, to his admiring my journalism in pursuit of that very aim, to his abruptly waxing rhapsodic about German nitrogen someday feeding a hungry world. He had it in his head to arrange for me to do a story. A grand one. The one with a humanistic face. I needed to be careful.

“If only America knew,” I said.

“Perhaps that can be arranged,” he said.

“I’d do the story full justice,” I said.

“Have you seen Baron Mumm von Schwarzenstein at the Foreign Office?”

I had that phony letter from the baron who controlled the press, courtesy of the American-occupied German embassy in London. I had to assume whatever Stockman might have in mind would run afoul of the bureaucracy. It was still unclear to me how much high-ranking, maverick authority Albert actually had. Or how naive he might be about the ways of the German publicity machine. I had to ask a delicate question.

I created a warm little insider laugh. “Do you know the baron well?”

“Not at all,” he said.

I tried not to show my rush of relief. “I’ve had my obligatory Kirschwasser with him from his crystal decanter,” I said, improvising the details. “And all is well.”

“Good,” he said. “Meet me here in the bar at two tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “Wait for me if I am late.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“And now,” he said, “I must take a pot of coffee to my rooms to await Hamlet’s entrance.”

I had nothing to say to that.

I rose and offered my hand.

He rose and took it.

He inclined his head toward my scar. “This is who you are,” he said.

I told Stockman I wanted to finish my coffee before I left and he bade me good night and consulted with the bartender — I presumed about having his pot of coffee delivered — then he walked across the floor, pretty steadily for all the drinking he must have done tonight, and he vanished into the lobby.

I gave him a couple of minutes to negotiate the elevator, and I emerged into the grand reception lounge of the Adlon ground floor. I stepped clear of the overhanging mezzanine, held aloft by square columns of yellow sienna marble, and I moved into the center of the lounge, with its frescoed ceiling vaulting high above me.

I carefully checked the scattering of people in the lobby. No eyes turning to me. No Herr Wagner.

To my left now was the reception desk, and there were empty settings of overstuffed chairs before it, but I moved on to the nearest chair and table of the Palm Court at the south end of the reception lounge. I sat in the center of three chairs closely arced around a small round table. I faced north across the central floor with a clear view of the stairs from the Unter den Linden doors. I ordered a pot of coffee. And, just in case, two cups.

The coffee was still warm when Mother swirled through the revolving door. She was surely tired after a long day of rehearsal, but she could do nothing other than make a dynamic entrance into such a public space as this. I knew that she would instantly, though covertly, assess her effect on her impromptu audience. I rose from my chair and began to applaud in broad, smooth undulations, though making no sound whatsoever. She was still fifty yards away and the sound was irrelevant anyway.

She saw me.

She fell out of the Grande Dame role and strode my way. To a viewer she was simply another woman walking across an open space. But I knew that this throttling back on her stage star aura meant she was all business.

She arrived.

“I’m having coffee,” I said. “Would you like some?”

“Good evening to you as well, my darling Christopher,” she said.

She used my real name but she spoke it low. When she wanted to be all business with me, she had to be the one who initiated it. Thus her umbrage at the missed niceties of greeting.

“Good evening, Madam Cobb,” I said, also low. “Who are you thinking of, may I ask? I am still your humble and eager scribe, Joseph Hunter.”

She stiffened. I realized she’d been unaware of the name she’d used.

And now I stiffened a little from the same twist of fear she’d just experienced. Her lapse had not been heard, much less understood. But she was capable of forgetting like this in a crucial moment, a crucial circumstance.

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Hunter,” she said. “What did I call you?”

“Christopher.”

She laughed lightly.

“Well, you see,” she said. “That’s my son’s name. He’s been much on my mind lately.”

“You may have good reason not to recognize me.”

“I’d say so,” she said.

We were speaking very low now, and it was safe, but she kept up the pretense a little longer. She said, “When I last saw my son, he had stitches in his cheek in that very place.”

“Did he indeed,” I said. “I got this from my college days in Heidelberg.”

“You went to Heidelberg, did you? You never mentioned this.”

“I revealed it only tonight, to Sir Albert,” I said.

“I’m sure he was impressed,” she said.

“He’s having coffee himself at the moment,” I said. “We can chat for a few minutes if you like.”

She began to sit on the chair to my left but glanced again at my scar and circled the table to sit on my right so as not to see it. I settled into my center chair and we leaned toward each other.

I could smell the orange blossom and violet of her Guerlain perfume. And the familiar musk of my mother herself, from her dozen hours on the stage, which the French scent was intended to cover. And the licorice bite of her Sen-Sen, covering the whiskey, which she always took in true moderation after a long day of rehearsing but for which she always felt guilty.

She looked with seeming casualness around her. So did I. As I’d thought, no one was near enough to have heard a syllable of this. And we were clear of the vaulted ceiling, so the acoustics remained local.

We could speak privately like this.

“He drinks too much,” she said, gently.

“For which I am grateful,” I said.

“It must make you look like a real pal sometimes,” she said. There was a cat-tongue rasp to her tone, as if I were being a hypocrite, taking advantage of him.

I leaned closer. “Do you remember why we’re risking our necks?” I said.

She sighed.

“What the hell is that sigh all about?” I said.

“You’re right, is what it’s about.”

I never could quite figure out how she was able to switch me from irritation to guilt in the time it takes for an electric light bulb to go from dark to bright.

“How was rehearsal?” I asked, trying to soothe things.

“This is terrible, wearying work,” she said. “A never-ending assault on your mind and heart.”

It was never like that when she was still perceived to be a leading lady. I didn’t say this. “Two casts at once, in two languages,” I said.

She looked at me. “Not the theater, child.”

She’d flipped on another light. She meant the spy work.

“You got into this all on your own,” I said.