by Matt Killeen
“She wanted three times as much . . . she’s, um, forthright,” she finished weakly, as the Captain shook his head. “We could always use a maid,” Sarah tried. “Having to bring in agency staff is a security risk—”
“Oh yes, it’s a great time to have a black maid. Soon we won’t even need to pay her, just remember to lock her door at night.” He sighed.
“What’s a Rhineland Bastard anyway?”
“Ha, I do like you having limits.” The Captain chuckled. “The Rhineland was an occupied zone after the last war. The French troops stationed there made themselves at home, including the colonial troops, the Tirailleurs Sénégalais—”
“I see,” Sarah interjected.
“Despite what you might hear, they didn’t—”
“Yes, I get the point,” she interrupted.
“Most women married their French boyfriends, some had accidents, and the children of those relationships are die Rheinlandbastard. National disgrace, evil foreign blood defiling German youth et cetera. She must be the very last of them. The French left in 1925.”
“We’ve needed an extra pair of hands,” Sarah said. “On the inside of what we do, I mean.”
“Do we? And she’s not on the inside. She thinks we’re the Abwehr.”
“You told me that’s the same thing right now.”
“So my choice is go along with this or kill her, now that you’ve told everyone she works for us—”
“I can’t live in another house where another person . . . dies,” Sarah burst out, with more feeling than she intended. “And I don’t mean do it somewhere else. I need . . . to not have caused this.”
The Captain studied the glowing dials of his watch before speaking. “She opens her mouth, breathes at the wrong time, she’s dead,” he said quietly and with complete seriousness.
“She puts us in danger, I’ll kill her myself,” Sarah snapped, instantly regretting the words.
She thought of Stern, the SS guard who she hadn’t stopped as he walked back into the inferno of Schäfer’s lab, of Foch who she had hugged as the Captain opened up his throat, and a cold wave of nausea lapped around her belly.
She looked at his watch and again at the moonlit construction site attached to the Embassy.
“Why am I doing this?” Sarah complained. “Why aren’t you going in as a builder?”
“At one a.m.?” the Captain replied, fidgeting.
“Why is a little girl awake at one a.m.?” she continued, but her heart wasn‘t in the argument. She wanted to do this—no, she needed to do this. The sense of sitting and waiting idly as the Third Reich swelled and absorbed the world gnawed at her being. The challenge at hand felt like picking up a sword and charging into that fight.
There was also a feeling that Sarah at first struggled to identify and then immediately felt guilty about. She was excited.
The steps up to the doors from the road were gentle, almost an affectation. There were plenty of trees, and the square columns of the entrance would obscure much of the gardens. There was no guard visible. The two lampposts were off for the blackout, but even with the moonlight there were plenty of shadows to inhabit.
If there had been a pie cooling on that colonnade, I would already be eating it, she thought. The starving girl who had run across the Viennese rooftops in search of food awoke for the first time in months.
The seconds passed.
“Let’s get on with it,” she moaned, tapping the door’s handle impatiently.
“He isn’t late, yet,” the Captain chided, but Sarah could feel his discomfort, and not just because they were parked up in the heart of the deserted diplomatic district.
She wondered about what Norris had said, that the Captain couldn’t commit, that his caution would get them all killed. Was the Captain as excited as she was to be doing things instead of just being?
“How’s your Japanese?” he asked.
“Sonzaishinai,” Sarah replied.
The Captain snorted.
“It means nonexistent,” Sarah said with a chuckle, before continuing more quietly. “I can sing you a folk song. My mother had friends . . .”
“Just remember, the guards will assume you’re with him. You have no reason to be here, if you aren’t. But that works both ways.”
A car screeched around the corner in front of the Tiergarten and then accelerated toward them, its masked headlights just glowing slits.
“That’s a Nazi driver right there,” Sarah mumbled, turning back to check her faint reflection in the window. Braids, uniform coat of the Bund Deutscher Mädel. Dumb little monster.
The approaching car growled past them before pulling up at the curb in front of the embassy with great drama.
“Wish me luck,” Sarah grunted, turning the door handle.
“Take no chances,” answered the Captain.
Sarah stopped and looked back at him. There was no fear in his face, but there was an absence of confidence that made Sarah feel vulnerable.
She slipped out of the Mercedes.
The asphalt here was fresh and perfect, and Sarah’s feet passed silently across it. She was grateful for its smoothness underfoot, as she wore noiseless ballet slippers, dyed black to pass as school shoes. She kept low to the ground and moved quickly toward the other car.
Its uniformed driver opened the rear passenger door on the curbside as Sarah approached. The SS officer Hasse climbed out.
Don’t look around. Don’t look around. Don’t look around.
He straightened up and stretched out his shoulders—
Don’t look around.
—and walked toward the embassy doors. Sarah reached the car and crouched behind it. Peering through the windows, she watched the driver, trying to guess his next move. Hasse was starting up the staircase—
Commit to something, gottverdammt. Stay or go.
The driver moved around the front of the car to the driver’s door. Sarah bolted the other way and up the steps behind Hasse, keeping to the shadowed side of the path.
There was a flash as light spilled down the shallow stairs. Two great oak paneled doors now stood ajar at the entrance, flanked by guards in military uniform. Silhouetted by the lights inside, an official in a tailcoat waited. Sarah slowed as Hasse reached the door. She couldn’t make out the exchange but saw the official bow to Hasse’s salute and a moment’s confusion ended in nodding. They entered the building and the doors began to close.
Sarah accelerated to a skip and emerged from the shadows.
Just a bit behind my adult. Catching up.
The guards were dressed in dark brown uniforms with red markings. As she approached, she tried to read their faces—were they bored, alert, tired?—but their expressions were fixed, martial and staring. They wore cloaks, even in the warm summer air. They’re trained to stand immobile. They are ceremonial, thought Sarah. Perfect. Not paid to think.
She skipped toward them, beaming and nodding.
Catching up. Sorry. Arigato.
She stepped onto the colonnade, and one of the guards moved across her path—
Sarah cursed herself. So sure of yourself. Her body tensed and quivered as it prepared to run—
The guard caught the closing door and pulled it wide open. His stony visage slipped as a half-smile lit up one side of his face and he winked.
“Arigato gozaimasu,” Sarah burbled quietly, her heart thumping in her chest and ears.
Hasse and the official were already halfway down the brightly lit hallway, but she had to slow her breathing or she would be overheard. Sarah slowed to a crawl. There were doors to either side, and she tried to overlay the architectural plans on top of what she was seeing. The carpet was thick and her feet made no sound, but that meant that no one else was making any noise either . . .
She glanced at the closing front door. There was
no one behind her. The embassy was deserted, sleeping, vulnerable.
She veered to one side and crouched next to a sideboard as the others disappeared through a door at the far end of the corridor. She saw herself once more in the polished black lacquer. She was less a dumb little monster and more a scared little girl. Oh, verpiss dich, Schwächling, Sarah tutted at her reflection, reaching for the nearest door.
Although Sarah knew the way, in theory at least, the offices and waiting rooms were unlit and windowless. Several times she collided with furniture and had to pause, bruised and aching in the dark, waiting to see if anyone had heard her. Once she scattered a pile of papers across the floor and, not being able to see to tidy them up, became conscious that she was leaving a trail for anyone following her. She picked two locked doors on her journey and wondered whether to lock them behind her, but she did not have time—the meeting was probably already underway.
Besides, tonight the building was out of bounds to the staff. Hasse did not want his visit to the embassy to be noticed or remarked upon, and apparently Imperial Japan was equally happy for the meeting to be unobserved.
She hurried up a dim back staircase and emerged at the end of a long, empty, and brightly lit corridor. The ambassador’s office was halfway down, and Hasse must already be inside. She moved swiftly along the carpet, counting doors against the building plan in her head. Men’s bathroom, first secretary, military attaché (spy), file room, ambassador’s secretary. The sign on the door was, for Sarah, unreadable.
Sarah stopped, wondering if the plans were up to date, whether the offices could have been swapped around.
Commit to the move.
She dropped down and gently laid a shoulder against the door. She gripped the handle and pulled slowly, before turning. The latch bolt slid silently back, and Sarah let her weight open it. No lock. But as wood crossed carpet it made an audible swish that announced her arrival. She froze.
A typewriter and some more complex printing machine were lit by one green desk lamp; the rest of the windowless room of dull filing cabinets and minimal decor was illuminated by the corridor behind her. There were two internal doors. One, leading to the waiting room, was bordered by thin, white light. Faint noises could be heard through it. The other, to a bathroom that led onto the office itself, was dark.
So near now—
As Sarah entered, she noticed she was breathing heavily . . . or rather she found herself aware of her breathing, sensing the air rushing through her windpipe and exploding into the atmosphere in a way that couldn’t possibly go unheard. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply through her nose, holding the lungful for a moment before letting it out through her mouth in one long, slow release.
Not for the first time, Sarah waited for another voice to chide, cajole, and pester her, but nobody spoke.
She opened the door to the bathroom, noticing at once the acoustics change. The room was unfinished and filled with boxes of tiles, copper pipes, and anonymous white ceramic items in wooden crates. There was an aroma of sawn timber and sewage. The murmur of voices, now clear enough to be understood, came echoing from a rectangular outline of white light at the far end of the room. She stepped inside and found that the floor was littered with sharp fragments that immediately attacked her feet. She took one last look at the jagged landscape in the light of the office, scrunched up her toes to minimize any damage, and closed the door behind her.
Sarah moved slowly toward the entrance to the ambassador’s office, reaching out for the boxes she knew to be there. Someone was speaking in perfect German, but with an American accent, so Sarah guessed it was the Japanese ambassador.
“. . . the beginning of a more extensive and profound relationship between our empires—”
Something sliced through her slipper into the sole of her foot. Sarah wanted to scream and hop and hit things. Instead she stuffed a wrist between her teeth so she didn’t reveal herself. She waited, panting silently, for the waves of shock and pain to ebb away.
“. . . cooperation that goes beyond the military, that our shared goals . . .”
She tried to put weight on the foot. It hurt, but she could bear it. She doubted that she could run if she needed to, and more worryingly, she could feel something serrated moving around in her wet sock.
Her destination wasn’t a door at all, but a sheet of wood nailed into place while work was carried out. It was ill fitting, and as Sarah squatted down next to it, she could see a sliver of the room. By leaning forward and back she could see the whole meeting.
The large room was brightly lit by a chandelier and was a mixture of Germany’s marble minimalism, some luxuriant furnishings, and a smattering of Japanese objets d’art. Hasse stood in its center, cap under his arm, his gray day-to-day uniform seeming out of place among the tangible expense of the room. His face was a mask of affable tolerance.
Behind an extensive desk, and dwarfed by it, sat the Japanese ambassador. He was a small man who grinned as he talked. His eyebrows seemed too big for his face and too high up his forehead. Coupled with his mustache and glasses, the resemblance to a Jewish comedian Sarah had seen in a film when she was little was startling. She half expected him to begin waddling around the room.
The almost comic stature of the ambassador was in sharp contrast to the officer of the Imperial Japanese Army who sat impatiently to his right. Dressed in simple khaki battle-dress but sporting thick braids of gold on his red collar patches and long, spotless boots rather than the puttee wrappings of the guards, he reminded Sarah of Trotsky, the communist driven out of Russia by his Bolshevik friends. At not much under two meters tall, he towered over both the ambassador and his desk. Merely by tapping a foot in irritation, he seemed to dominate the space, a personality on the verge of explosive expansion. This had to be Shirō Ishii.
Behind both of them sat a Japanese woman dressed in a Western style, head bowed and taking notes. So still was her body that Sarah almost overlooked her entirely, until she turned a page of her pad.
The ambassador stopped to take a breath in his speech and seemed ready to go on, but Ishii interrupted in terse Japanese.
“In German, for our guest, please,” the ambassador scolded after a pause of surprise and disappointment.
Ishii sighed and then repeated himself in halting German.
“I think we get the idea, Your Excellency. Now I think the Obersturmbannführer and I need to have a confidential conversation.”
He nodded toward the exit.
The ambassador looked at his assistant and then smiled.
“Oh, Fujiwara-kun is entirely in my confidence,” he scoffed gently. “A lady of a great house. You may speak in front of her.”
“No, Your Excellency. I need to talk to the Obersturmbannführer. Alone.”
The ambassador’s expression froze and then fell into a scowl as the insult hit home. He began to growl in Japanese, repeatedly tapping his finger on the desk.
“Not in German for our guest?” Ishii sneered in German and then replied in Japanese. The argument continued.
Secrets. Authority. Military. Hierarchy. Mine. Courtesan—
The ambassador stood and slammed a fist on his desk, rage reddening his face. But he fell silent.
Courtesan. The suggestion that had ended the argument.
The seconds ticked by.
The smaller man turned to Hasse, his face under control. “Obersturmbannführer, it was a pleasure meeting you and I hope you have a fruitful military meeting,” the ambassador managed.
Hasse nodded as the ambassador bowed minutely and then strode from the room without acknowledging Ishii. He was followed by his secretary, who had glided to the door in his wake, but found herself on the wrong side as it closed. She waited for an awkward few seconds, head down, until the ambassador returned to open it for her.
When the door finally shut, both Hasse and Ishii broke into rauc
ous laughter. The German sagged and placed his hands on his thighs as if struggling to breathe. The Japanese officer leaned back and hissed through his teeth.
Finally he stood and waved the SS man into a nearby armchair, before perching on the edge of the desk.
“Politicians,” Ishii scoffed. “Diplomats. How much more we could achieve without them.”
“My friend,” Hasse said, holding a finger in the air while he sat. “I am a political animal, as are you. Is not war just politics by other means?”
Hasse was now mostly obscured by the back of the chair, and Sarah had to press up against the wooden partition in order to hear him clearly.
“Yes, yes, true, true,” Ishii conceded. “I just have no time for indecisiveness. That our countries are not yet formally allied and we must meet under cover of darkness is a nonsense. Come,” Ishii exclaimed, clapping his hands together. “Let us not follow their example. You have something for me? How did my ceramic bombs work?”
“They have been useful, and we are in your debt. There are still problems with our cannon, but—”
“I know they work!” Ishii interrupted. “We just completed some field tests over Ningbo. That Chinese city is now enjoying an epidemic of the bubonic plague.”
Enjoying.
“Excellent . . .” Hasse soothed. “But, if I understand, metal shells or explosives kill the bacteria or insect vectors. What if you had a virus that could survive the blast?”
“Viruses . . . too difficult to work with,” Ishii dismissed the idea. “And you can’t improve on smallpox.”
“For which there is a vaccine! What if I could get you something better?”
Sarah felt, rather than heard, something behind her, as if pushed by a breeze, and she caught a crisp, chemical scent of jasmine and rose. She looked around, but her eyes hadn’t adjusted to the darkness before a hand wrapped itself around her mouth.
SEVEN
SARAH TRIED TO pull away, but her right foot, now sodden, slid across the tiles, and she fell into the body behind her. Another arm coiled around her, and she was dragged backward. She squirmed and tried to open her teeth to bite the hand, then realized she would only alert the men behind the partition. Their voices continued uninterrupted beyond it.
