Robert Butler - The Empire of Night

We crept through them and Jeremy and I found ourselves acknowledging these people’s nods and waves and salutes. As if we were one with them in their loss. It went with the uniform.

And then we were free and soon we pulled into the parking field next to the Hotel Alten-Forst.

I switched off the engine.

I had been thinking this out as we drove.

I needed to do this alone. Twice today I’d put a gun to a man’s head and twice I’d spared the life before me. Even if only temporarily. This would not happen a third time. Stockman would die directly by my hand. And my mother would instantly be cast in a great and complex role. I would tie her up properly. She would go on to play the devastated lover, having witnessed the death of the man she’d loved most in all her life.

“I have to do this alone,” I said.

He looked at me. He did not understand.

“It’s not a matter of trust,” I said. “It is a thing between the actress and me.”

“I’ll be here if you need me,” he said.

“Be ready to drive us to Berlin,” I said.

I needed to visit the American embassy. It was nearly time, as Trask put it, to leave the country abruptly.

I shed the flight jacket into the back seat, swapped the clip in my Luger for the full clip from Jeremy’s, restrapped my holster over Colonel Wolfinger’s tunic, and with a final nod between us, I left Jeremy in the Torpedo.

I strode across the hotel courtyard and through the lobby, taking note of who might be here when I followed a gunshot out of the hotel. The lobby was singularly empty. An old man sleeping in a corner chair. One liveried man clerking behind the desk. Even the visitors to Spich were in the street on this night, being Germans together, awaiting word, sharing their righteous rage.

It was a good night for an assassination. The shot would be two floors up and at the back of a nearly empty hotel in a distracted town.

The elevator operator was also gone and I went up the staircase. I emerged on the second floor and entered the long corridor to Room 200. I slowed a little. I approached with measured, muffled footfalls on the Turkish rug.

Mother wanted to continue to play her role. So be it. I would not knock. If he was conscious, I would not invite her to reveal the phoniness of her bonds. I would use my tools to enter the room.

And Room 200 was drawing near.

I measured my breathing as well. Careful now. Professional now.

I stood before the door.

I drew out my tools. Pick and torque. The lock yielded. I did not turn the knob at once. I put my tools into their loops in their leather wrap and I put the wrap into my inner pocket. I used the movements to calm myself.

This was all feeling too personal.

That could cloud my judgment.

In fact, it already had.

I put my hand to the knob and turned it and opened the door wide.

Mother was sitting directly before me, in the chair where she’d sat last night among the roses.

The flowers whose petals had not been plucked and strewn on their bed this afternoon sat meagerly in their vases.

She wore a kimono negligee. The peach-colored chemise, which was her costume for the afternoon cigarette card pose, showed at her chest.

I took a step into the room.

She was not bound. Even in a phony way.

She looked at me oddly. The expression must have been genuine, because I couldn’t for the life of me read it.

I took another step.

This was way too personal. Only now did it fully strike me that she shouldn’t be sitting here.

I moved my hand to my Luger even as the door slammed behind me.

But before I could draw, a pistol barrel touched me at the back of my head.

Stockman said, “Pull it out slowly and hold it to the side.”

I had no choice.

I drew the Luger from its holster, grasping it as if I would use it, just in case, since he’d given no instruction about that.

I extended my arm to the right, straight out.

I had no possible move other than this.

He nudged my head with the muzzle of his pistol.

“Toss it away to the right,” he said.

I flicked my wrist as little as I could and still seem to comply. My Luger fell heavily to the floor.

The steel vanished from the back of my head.

“Don’t move,” he said.

I didn’t.

I heard the bolt slide into place at the door.

“Turn around,” he said.

I did.

He looked clear-eyed but beat-up. A welt as fat as a three-hour cigar emerged from his hairline and fell across his right temple. His pistol hand was steady. He was holding a Webley break-top revolver. He and his German blood carried a very British weapon. I chose not to comment on this. That I even thought to comment was inappropriate under the circumstances. But he had the drop on me, and though I was toying with ironies on the jittery surface of my mind, I was thrashing around for serious options in the core of me as well. The ironies kept me a little detached. Calmed me. One of the ironies: in spite of the beating and the hog-tying, he still looked very much like my mother’s chisel-faced leading man.

“Who are you really?” he said.

There were certainly some ironies surrounding that question.

“The man who blew up your poison gas bomb over German soil,” I said. “Along with the LZ 78 and the rest of its payload.”

The pistol wavered a little.

I said, “Weren’t you conscious for the blast? It was a good three or four miles away but it rattled your windows.”

I realized I was provoking him. But I had no choice.

I said, “It was unfortunate to poison some Westphalian cows and lose a Zeppelin, but I had to stop you from disgracing our Fatherland and embarrassing our Kaiser. The measure was extreme, but he had to learn about you and Bauer waging your own little war. You are traitors to the Kaiser and to the Fatherland.”

Somewhat to my surprise, the pistol grew steady again.

Stockman said, “That’s all irrelevant now. I don’t give a bloody damn about the bomb or about the Kaiser. Not anymore. I know what’s important here.”

I had no idea where his mind had just leaped.

He said, “I know what’s important after all these years. And you are the man who would blow it up.”

I waited for more.

“Do you want to confess?” he said.

I said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You think I haven’t suspected from the start?” He glanced quickly over my shoulder. “I’m sorry, my darling,” he said. From the angle and height of his glance, Mother had apparently risen from her chair and had moved off a little to her right.

“I’m sorry I haven’t discussed this with you, my darling,” he said. “But that’s because I don’t blame you. Not at all. It’s this man. It’s his fault. He would destroy us.”

And now his eyes fixed on mine.

He said, “You are Isabel’s lover. It makes sense of all the little things. You are her lover even still.”

He seemed to want to say more, but words failed him. He pushed his pistol forward a little. It was holding steadily upon the center of my chest.

A heart shot.

Into a heart I heard thumping heavily in my ears.

The Webley was a double-action. I hadn’t heard the cocking yet. But I knew it was coming.

Any second.

And my mother said, from behind me, “My darling Albert.”

Stockman shifted his eyes.

The pistol stayed where it was.

His eyes went a little wide.

His brow furrowed.

And he began to move his shooting hand, the pistol shifting slightly to his left, in Mother’s direction, moving even as his eyes had moved, even as they widened and his hand was moving faster now, the pistol was moving and I started to move as well, to my left, I thought to turn away from the line of fire and lunge and grab his arm and lift it, I visualized this even as I began to move and I was twisting away and his pistol hand was moving and we were both of us nowhere near to the place where we wanted to be and the room rang loud and the center of Albert’s forehead blossomed instantly as red and as full-petaled as a rose and he flew back and his pistol jerked upward and he flew and he fell and the room rang and then it stopped. Then all was quiet.