Nest of the Monarch

by Kay Kenyon

  “You are not the first embassy wife I have approached.”

  “I should like to know who I am speaking to.”

  “I am Hannah Linz. A name to be careful with, Mrs. Reed.”

  They were not alone in the vestibule, but nearly so, and were not attracting attention. “Why are they looking for you, Fräulein Linz?” Kim asked.

  “I am, in their eyes, a criminal. Some things I have done to protest the rounding up of Jews, the confiscation of property, the new rules against Jews. Murders as well.”

  Linz’s words called forth in Kim the distressing scene from the plaza.

  The woman went on. “A few months ago my father was murdered by the SS. They filmed it to make us fear them.”

  Filmed it? This surpassed anything that she had thought even Nazis were capable of.

  Alex came out of the reception hall, scanning the vestibule and, seeing Kim, began to walk toward her.

  Hannah Linz noted this too. “Tell your husband that I know of a Nazi scheme that is called Monarch. All I ask is ten minutes of his time. I am sure I can offer something the British government will want very much. If he will see me, he should leave his card in the only mailbox without a name on it. At this address.” She handed Kim a card. With that she crossed the atrium, leaving through a door that led into the banquet room.

  Tucking the card in her bag, Kim produced a pleasant face for Alex as he came up to her.

  He glanced in the direction Hannah Linz had gone. “Who was that?”

  “Oh, I’ve met so many people.” She rummaged in her bag, as though trying to find the card again. Giving up, she said, “We’ll sort everyone out when we get home. I saw Göring arrive, did you?”

  He led her through the back way into the banquet room. “The dinner gong. Didn’t you hear it?”

  People were taking their places at a table that looked like it could seat a hundred. The woman with the red hair was nowhere to be seen. The woman who knew about a Nazi scheme called Monarch.

  Curiosity coiled inside Kim, awakening her instincts. Soirees like this were rife with gossip and traded secrets; some had import for the intelligence service and some did not. Often people had motives of money or favors, but that might not negate the significance of what was offered. Nor did it prove value, of course.

  Alex pulled out a chair for her in the center portion of the table, just above where the junior diplomats took their seats. China gleamed, and cut glass stemware reflected the light from crystal chandeliers. Outside, a different world of alley beatings and murder. Hannah Linz’s world, where murders were filmed for maximum terror.

  To her chagrin, Rikard Nagel was about to take a seat next to her. But his wife, seeing Kim, protested. “No, Rikard, I’ll sit there.” Nagel drew out the chair for Sonja, and the two women smiled at each other. Alex leaned across Kim, greeting Sonja and offering to make introductions, but finding none needed, he turned to the person on his other side. Across from Kim sat a man who might be a banker or industrialist of some kind, and on either side of him junior secretaries from the consulate. Kim nodded to a few of them.

  She felt quite distracted, distanced from the chatter in the hall, as though she were a shadow in a room of more solid beings. Waiters were already pouring wine, and protocols be damned, Kim took a surreptitious gulp of hers.

  Near the head of the table, Göring commanded a position of prominence, listening to Captain Nagel, who bent down to converse with him.

  Sonja observed this too.

  “Your husband,” Kim said, “appears on close terms with the aviation minister.”

  Sonja glanced at her with some irony. “The Reichsluftfhartminister knows everyone, of course.” She watched the two men confer. “But Rikard is on close terms with no one.”

  Kim allowed her brow to wrinkle.

  “Oh yes, Rikard goes his own way. As do I. But he has sold his soul to them.”

  “The Party, you mean?”

  Sonja shrugged. “It is how one advances these days. You climb and climb to the glittering heights.” She put her napkin in her lap, looking lost. “And then, of course, you fall.”

  Göring raised his glass and turned toward Sonja, appearing to toast her. Blushing as several people took note and glanced at her, she did not pick up her glass.

  Rikard Nagel looked across at her and then, incongruously on such a face, smiled.

  8

  TIERGARTENSTRASSE 44, BERLIN

  THAT EVENING. In her dressing gown, Kim made her way downstairs to the library. She found Alex at the escritoire opening his mail. He looked up in surprise. By the carved wooden clock on the wall it was 11:41 PM.

  “Something the matter?” He still held his letter, so she had caught him at something he wished to read.

  “Yes. But maybe you can help.”

  He put the letter down and swiveled in his chair, inviting her to sit on the overstuffed couch. She did so, using a smile to cover her discomfort at having to ask her simulated husband for a favor. They weren’t married and they didn’t entirely share agendas, even if they were both under the Foreign Office.

  “Still upset by what you saw in the Pariser Platz?”

  “Alarmed and disgusted, rather. But no, it’s something else.”

  He waited, looking attentive. In the shadowed library he and his desk occupied a pool of lamplight, an emblem, she suddenly thought, of the power he held.

  “It’s about a woman who is in danger of her life. She—”

  “In danger? One of ours, do you mean, or a German?”

  “German.”

  He frowned. “Who is it?”

  “A woman approached me at the function tonight. She’s been turned away by embassy staff, and she asked me to intercede with you. She hopes for an interview regarding extraction. I thought you could talk to someone in the Passport Control Office.” His eyes narrowed; not a good sign. “Her father was murdered by the Nazis and she’s become a protestor against anti-Jewish regulations. The authorities are looking for her and will probably send her to jail or worse.”

  “So she’s Jewish? Was this the woman I saw you with in the foyer tonight?”

  “Yes. In exchange for your help she’s offering what she says is important information, including a project called Monarch.”

  “She hasn’t made your cover, has she?”

  “I doubt it. She’s been asking embassy wives to intercede. So far no one has been willing to help.”

  Alex shook his head. “I’m surprised that you fell for her story.”

  “It might not be a story.”

  “But she thought you’d be a sympathetic ally. And here we are, talking about a person who may be a criminal, a Communist. Anything.”

  “Even a criminal may have important information.”

  “Elaine.” They avoided her real name, even when alone. “This is the reason our embassies shy away from recruiting sources. It’s unsavory and jeopardizes the trust the host nation has in our consular activities.”

  “Oh, please. It happens all the time.”

  “If you’re so keen on her, why don’t your people get her out?”

  Lots of reasons: because Kim had little clout. Because she was on her first Continental posting. Because it likely had nothing to do with her present mission.

  Alex went on, “I remember that a woman came unannounced to the embassy last week. She was without a passport and couldn’t supply any background. Naturally, we refused to see her. And now that I know what she was after, I certainly won’t see her, either.” He held up a hand as Kim started to speak. “The embassy can’t be involved in internal German affairs.”

  “You don’t have anything to lose just by listening to what she has to say. I’d get her to tell me what she’s offering, but it would jeopardize my cover to be curious.”

  “And what is she offering? Something called Monarch, did you say?” He stood and made his way to the sideboard. As he poured whisky, he said, “I have no idea what that is.”

  “We
ll, it’s odd that you aren’t even curious.”

  “You’re right, I’m not. Things are a damned mess in Berlin right now. By interfering we risk losing the confidence of the party officials, so that we’d be further hamstrung in moderating whatever excesses her family is suffering.”

  He brought the drinks over and handed her one. “For all you know, this woman is involved with that Jewish resistance group. Bunch of saboteurs. They’re trying to take the law into their own hands.”

  She put her drink on the coffee table. “Law? What law? Hitler suspends rights, persecutes people in the streets without so much as a trial . . .”

  Sighing, he went on. “Look. I’m not unsympathetic to the misconduct surrounding the Jews.”

  “Misconduct? Is that what you call the beating we witnessed?” How sanguine he was about it.

  He sighed. “I know it’s bloody hard to watch these thugs carry on in the streets. But we aren’t in control. This isn’t England.”

  He sipped his whisky. “Did you get her name, her contact information, by the way?”

  “No, we were too rushed.” He didn’t need to know. Just as he didn’t need to know that she had taken a flat near the Alexanderplatz in the center of the city. Nor that she had the spill. He didn’t know her any more than she knew him.

  “If the woman didn’t give you a card, how was she going to find out whether I would see her?”

  “She said she’d find me.”

  He glanced at the lace-clad windows. “Splendid. She might be watching the house right now, waiting to join us for a whisky.”

  But she’s a Jew, so that certainly won’t happen. She was surprised that she had rushed to that conclusion. But she was liking Alex less tonight and wouldn’t put such prejudice past him.

  “Elaine. Your idea of following up—it’s needlessly provocative. We do have the bond repayments to finalize, and it’s touch and go right now. We can’t have anything get in the way.”

  Nor in the way of his likely promotion to first secretary for trade if he could nail the deal. The current first secretary was in London for cancer treatments.

  He raised his drink to her. “Let’s have our night cap, shall we?”

  She gave him an I give up smile. Alex had gone to some inconvenience to provide her a cover in Berlin, so she really must get along with him.

  He leaned back on the sofa, putting his arm along the back, still in his dinner jacket but the tie missing, always a good look. “How was the evening, other than this cloakroom appeal?”

  Everything he said grated, but he needed to be sure he’d won, and she must let him. “Well, I met a woman I quite like.”

  “Sonja Nagel?”

  “I mean the reporter, Rachel Flynn. I might ring her up for an excursion.”

  “Right. The American. The Germans admire the Americans.” He clinked his glass with hers, looking into her eyes. “So do I.”

  “Such a flirt. Scandalous in Berlin.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes, in a city like Berlin, you flirt with other people’s wives.” She sipped her whisky.

  A bit more small talk, and she bid him goodnight. In the dark foyer with its green silk walls, the glass next to the front doors flashed with the passing lights of motorcars on the Tiergartenstrasse.

  The chat with Alex, a bust. True, she couldn’t save every dissident in Berlin. But Hannah had offered quid pro quo. It took a stubborn disinterest not to be at least curious. Monarch, Linz had said. Something your government may greatly need. But it appeared that Alex’s ambition went as far as making nice with repulsive officials and smoothing over murders in the street.

  And she had rather liked him for a while.

  Making her way upstairs, she paused at one of the paintings on the wall, one of a couple holding an infant. In the background, on a side table, a branched candleholder, a menorah. The woman wore the satin gown that had been left in the armoire. Seeing the dress on this dark-eyed, contented young mother roused an unpleasant idea. All the lovely things left behind, perhaps in haste . . .

  She put her hand on the railing, letting the thought settle in: this house had belonged to Jews. A family that had not had time or permission to pack up all their possessions when they were rousted out. She wondered how it had gone, their last moments in this house. In her imagination: raised voices, a crying baby, the smash of a vase. She shuddered.

  Alex had come into the foyer. “Everything all right?” He came up to stand beside her, looking at the painting.

  “They lived here once,” Kim murmured. “Maybe the recent owners. They left so many things behind when they were kicked out, their possessions confiscated.” She turned to look at him. “Jews, persecuted for what they believe.”

  “Oh please. You don’t know that.”

  “I found a dress on the floor of my wardrobe. It’s the one in this portrait. Why would the family have left this painting behind?”

  “You’re really cooking up a story there, don’t you think?”

  My job, dear husband, is to put two and two together. She let her gaze linger on him, waiting for him to see her point. He didn’t. “You should have the embassy look into it. Don’t you think?”

  She turned abruptly to climb the stairs. Behind her he said, “It’s been a long night. Get some sleep.”

  In other words, be quiet. She went up to bed, now not the least bit sleepy.

  9

  BADEN-BADEN, GERMANY

  THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19. In the large meeting hall of the Steigenberger Hotel the stooped, white-haired guest of honor crossed the stage and, reaching the lectern, fumbled with his notes. In the audience, fewer than fifty people had turned out to hear the renowned theologian, Hanns von Lerchenfeld.

  The low turnout pleased Juergen Becht, sitting in the audience, observing his target. He fingered the pin on his SS collar, tracing the small Nachkommenschaft insignia, the vulture that established him as a Nachkomme.

  At the lectern, von Lerchenfeld shuffled his notes as people waited for him to settle himself, perhaps wondering if the old man was quite up to a lecture. At eighty-one, he had lived to see the Catholic faith much diminished in influence. Of course he believed that the church had been persecuted and subverted by the National Socialists. He still did not understand that in the Third Reich religion must take second place to German patriotism.

  Von Lerchenfeld began to speak, his voice surprisingly steady and deep.

  “What are we to say for our beloved church in these times? This is perhaps the very question that you, gathered here, have asked yourselves. We have seen things that even five years ago were unthinkable. Thousands of priests, nuns, and laypeople have been arrested on spurious charges. The leader of Catholic Action was, as we have seen, murdered. Catholic publications are suppressed and even—even!—the sanctity of the confessional violated by the Gestapo. Yet the party program guarantees liberty for all religious denominations. This, of course, is a bald lie. What, then, are we to do?”

  Von Lerchenfeld looked over the top of his spectacles at his audience, which had noticeably quieted at this direct attack on the government. He swept his gaze through the auditorium, stopping for a moment when he saw an SS uniform among them. Then he went on.

  And on. He inveighed against anti-Catholic propaganda, incitements, and outright threats against the church, enumerating them.

  Becht felt the heat of these insults, felt the old fool’s gaze on him, as he increasingly addressed his rants to the only uniformed man in the room. Even now, after the Nazi Party had established its dominance, people still clung to the old ways. Like so many that Juergen Becht had had to reeducate: the professors at universities, inferior doctors who thought they would always have standing in society, Jews running subversive cinema programs, thinking that, deep in the forested countryside, they were safe from discovery.

  Twenty minutes later, the speaker began urging an awakening of the moral feelings of the German race as articulated by the church. Becht judged it the ri
ght moment to cast his mesmerizing power over the group, to numb their minds, to allow him to have his way.

  As von Lerchenfeld concluded, a few people clapped, but given the profound stupor he had willed upon the gathering, most did not. People shuffled in their seats, perhaps wishing to leave, but feeling a lethargy that forbade it.

  In the surreal quiet, Becht strode to the stage and walked up the stairs, crossing to the podium. A woman with a flushed plump face was shaking von Lerchenfeld’s hand but dropped it as Becht approached.

  “Herr von Lerchenfeld.” Becht looked into the man’s gray eyes, seeing no recognition of what was to come. “We have an appointment.”

  The old man frowned in confusion.

  “You do remember? We were to have an important meeting after your address.”

  “Oh,” the woman said, looking relieved that she could be excused. “I won’t keep you then, Herr von Lerchenfeld.” She seemed to take note of Becht’s dueling scar, a facial mark that he was well aware added to his aura of intimidation.

  “My coat,” von Lerchenfeld said. “My coat . . .”

  Becht fixed a look at the woman. “You will bring Herr von Lerchenfeld’s coat.” He could smell her, with her ample flesh, her powder. The blood flushing her cheeks.

  “What?” she asked, surprised to be addressed. Then seeing Becht’s expectant stare, she wandered off in search of the wrap.

  Von Lerchenfeld had taken off his spectacles and was stabbing them at his breast pocket, trying to put them away. “A meeting, you say?”

  “Yes. Of the utmost importance.” He led von Lerchenfeld to the stairs. They were met by the woman carrying the old man’s wool coat. She helped him into it, then watched in perplexity as Becht led him down the steps.

  He had cast the mesmerizing throughout the room, but it could not hold for long over so large an assemblage. Best to depart while the plump frau and the crowd of religious enthusiasts were still unaware of what was happening. Surely the evening’s hosts had planned a repast at a fine restaurant. When the air cleared, they would wonder where the guest of honor had gone off to.