Robert Butler - The Empire of Night

I turned now to her, taking it slow, deliberately taking it slow. I would not alarm her. Not by my actions.

“I love roses,” she said. “Do you even know how much I love roses?”

I did. But she said it as if she knew the answer was no .

I said nothing.

“ He does,” she said. “I count at least five different cultivars in this room. Bon Silene, the dark pink here behind me,” she said.

I said nothing.

“And Doctor Grill. Over there,” she said, pointing with a nod of her head. “Pink tinted with copper.”

I took a step now, to cross the room, to return to her, still taking it slow.

“Exquisite,” she said.

With my second step she began to speak more rapidly.

“And Safrano. From the French for saffron. In its bud the color is the color of saffron.”

Even moving slowly I was frightening her.

“Four Season Damask,” she said. “And Veilchenblau . Can you believe it?”

I drew near.

“The nearest thing to a blue rose in this world. He found that for me. There are two dozen of those.”

I stopped before her.

She lifted her face. “How did he find it?”

I said nothing.

“ Why did he find it?” She said this as if I should know the answer.

“Don’t you understand?” she said.

She seemed very small sitting there, my mother.

I crouched before her again, dropped to my knees so our eyes were level with each other.

“You must listen to me,” I said.

She drew her mouth tightly shut. She straightened at the spine.

“He is a bad man, Mother. More than what we’ve always known. Much more. Bad in ways he’s hidden from you.”

She said, very softly, “You would have said this of everyone who has loved me.”

“This is about Albert Stockman.”

“They never had a chance with you.”

“Mother, you need to listen now.”

She stopped.

“He has come here to make a Zeppelin raid,” I said.

She cut me off. “He’s restless being so passive in the defense of his people. We may not agree. .”

“Shut up now and listen.” My hand did not move, would never have moved, no matter what, but I had the impulse to slap her across the face. For her own good. She would have done as much to me.

She reared back. The words were slap enough. I had her attention.

I said, “He will drop phosgene gas on London. Poison gas. Do you understand?”

Her face had gone blank.

“This is his plan,” I said. “ His .”

I’d never seen her face blank. Not just her face holding inscrutably still, making it impossible to read. Blank.

I said, “He’s even built a special shell to hold the gas, to release it in the streets of London to kill as many as he can.”

“Impossible,” she said.

Her blankness shifted ever so slightly with this. How? Around the eyes. Just the eyes. Something there. They seized the blankness and slammed it into my face like a brick.

“I’m telling you the truth,” I said.

“It’s not possible,” she said, each word enunciated like a boxing jab.

“Doctor Einstein told me.”

“He doesn’t even know my Albert.”

“He knows Fritz Haber,” I said. “At the Institute. He knows Haber better than anyone. Haber is the German father of poison gas. He and your Albert are working together in this.”

I tried hard to read her face for some trace, some flicker, something, anything, to suggest she was at least opening to the possibility that this was true. I saw nothing.

“Has he spoken of London?” I asked.

She looked at me as if I’d not said a word.

I advanced the spark in my voice. “Has he spoken of London?”

“He loves London,” she said, her face suddenly flashing alive. “Of course he speaks of London.” She was going to seize on this sort of question as if it were the basis of my beliefs about him, typical of my flimsy thinking. “He loves the city. Loves the theater.”

My breath caught.

“He fell in love with me in a London theater,” she said.

“Has he lately spoken of the London theater?”

“You’re not listening,” she said.

“The theater district ?” I said.

She leaned forward and slapped me across the face.

“You’re not listening,” she said.

I rose.

Of course. What they called “Theatreland” in London was still robustly defiant of the Zepps, the Huns, all of it. The streets would be full of people leaving shows at the prime striking hour. And there would be the spill of plenty of light.

I said, “Sometime soon. Perhaps tomorrow night, if the wind and sky are right, your Albert will bomb the theatergoers of London with poison gas.”

She jumped up.

I retreated a step.

“Go away now,” she cried. “Go away.”

I turned my back to her.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she said.

I moved away, toward the door.

“I won’t go on,” she cried after me.

I approached the door.

“You’re a liar, Christopher Cobb,” she said.

I put my hand to the doorknob.

“You lie like a jealous lover,” she cried.

And I was out the door and careening down yet another hotel corridor.

I walked to the Boar’s Head and went in the front door and straight to an empty table in a far corner, sitting with my back to the wall. Not that I wanted to entertain the admiring glances of the half-drunks in the room. Jeremy would surely look in here for me when he returned from Kalk and I wanted to make sure he saw me. I avoided eye contact with the men in the bar and kept my left hand on the tabletop for a time, simply flicking it upward, from my still-planted wrist, to show my palm when anyone started to approach. A subtle gesture, really, given the context and the warm intentions of the inebriates. But I needed to do it only twice, and both times it worked instantly. The whole roomful, being German and quick to follow orders from on high, shortly understood and kept away. For this, I felt a warm feeling for these guys. An admiration even.

So I kept my stein awash in a nice black Köstritzer for an hour or more — the time sliding away after the boys in the bar learned to keep their distance — and then Jeremy was before me. He sat. Our innkeeper appeared almost instantly. Jeremy simply nodded toward my drink and she went away and shortly returned with the same for him.

We touched steins. He drafted long, and I drank not at all now but returned the stein to the table when he put his down.

“They met him at the gates of Bayer,” he said. “Near midnight, but men in suits. They all went in. He drove out an hour later. Big event. Big, special, secret event.”

He took another drink.

“Then to the air base,” he said. “Then to the hotel. The drivers and the truck went away. Probably back to Berlin.”

We sat in silence for a time.

Jeremy finally asked, “Did you speak to our actress?”

“Yes,” I said.

I knew there to be only a few swallows of my Köstritzer left, and I finished them.

After that, I stayed silent long enough for him to prompt me.

“Anything?” he asked.

“Perhaps his target is Theatreland.”

Jeremy humphed a that-makes-sense humph.

“I don’t think we can count on her from this point forward,” I said.

Jeremy fixed his eyes on mine and twitched his head a little to the side.

He wanted me to explain. I thought to say, She’s sweet on him.

But that would have only led to more difficult explanations. Beginning with: Don’t worry. I cannot imagine her working against us.

Which, I now realized, I couldn’t entirely vouch for.