Nest of the Monarch

by Kay Kenyon

  Her smile fled. “All right. Good luck, then, with all this.” She turned, almost fleeing down the hallway.

  He exited the suite, feeling confused by nearly everyone. His usual certainty pecked away at by boss, daughter, former lover. Or perhaps the usual uncertainty was less bearable than it had been in the old days.

  34

  THE TRAIN TO MIESBACH

  THURSDAY, DECEMBER 17. Kim slept in a dazed state, head against the back of the seat. Half heard, the rattling of the train punctuated by the screech of metal on metal as the train slowed for the stations. The thud of doors as passengers came and went. When not in a station, the stabbing lights went dim, for which she thanked God.

  Luther sat next to her in second class, upright, stalwart, reading a book, while she leaned back, head lolling. Until now, she had not slept in twenty-four hours. She kept imagining standing in the line at the purification ceremony, her face dusted with the powder, fiends in front and in back of her. Inching closer to the tsarina. Irina Annakova—she imagined an imperious tsarina in a jewel-studded dress—pressing her face with her royal hands.

  After Naumberg, Luther allowed her to make her way to the toilet by herself. It was funny. Where could she run off to? And besides, she had wanted to be here, she had asked to come. Still, Kim thought, sloppy tradecraft. The Nazis were not so deucedly clever as most people thought. Back to her seat and looking forward to oblivion. It would be seven hours to Miesbach.

  It seemed it had been dark for many hours. The window was black, showing only her blurry reflection.

  “You want to watch your step when we get there.”

  “Absolutely. Anything in particular I should be careful about?” Besides the Nachkommenschaft being a little mad, and her, a spy among them?

  “Always use their titles when speaking to them. They like to hear that. Lieutenant, major, that sort of thing. You don’t want to appear rude. Especially as a woman.”

  As though she would be rude to the SS. Or to the cadre of the Nachkommen Excuse me, Wilhelm, but you have blood on your chin. She chuckled.

  Luther snapped a look at her. “It is not a laughing matter. The doctor in charge, he can send you away if he does not like you. I bring them up the mountain, and sometimes . . .” He shrugged. “The Talents, they are wasted.”

  They sped into a tunnel, changing the timbre of the hurtling train.

  He went on. “But I keep a record of my Talents. Yes, every one Kaltenbrunner sends home. It is a waste! If they ever ask me . . . I have a record.” He cut a startled look at her. “It’s no more than anyone would do. Go to sleep. You look fatigued.”

  He didn’t like having told her about the doctor. Ah, a spill ? Something to remember, if so. There is a doctor who sends people away. Well, it wouldn’t be her. She closed her eyes.

  She woke with a start when someone hefted a suitcase into a nearby overhead rack.

  Luther handed her a sandwich wrapped in brown paper tied with a string bow. Foggy with sleep, she unwrapped the package and lifted one corner of the bread.

  “Liverwurst,” he said.

  Normally a sandwich she would avoid, but she hadn’t eaten for a long time. Needs must. She rolled the liverwurst into a tube and ate it like a pickle. The bread, set aside.

  He was watching her.

  A mistake on her part. She must give no indication she had been touched by a catalyst. She was supposed to be a natural 7. Not that rolling your liverwurst was a giveaway.

  “I really can’t eat yet. A sandwich is too much.” Reminding him she’d had food poisoning.

  He had withdrawn his attention, looking at two small photographs he carried in his billfold. She looked over, catching a glimpse of children. “Yours?”

  “My sister’s. This is Hans.” Pointing to a serious-looking boy in knickers and formal shirt. “And Angela.” The girl, older, in a school uniform, clasping her books to her chest.

  “Very sweet,” Kim said. Luther took a few moments to savor his nephew and niece. A man who loved children, carried their pictures. As long as they were Aryan, familiar, related. The children of some not admitted to the circle. How did a man who carried these pictures give his loyalty to the Nazi party? She would rather not have admired anything in him at all. But all of them had families, didn’t they? All of them cared for aged parents, loved their nephews, were fond of, perhaps even in love with, their wives. And beat Jews in the public squares and made sure Hannah Linz could not attend law school.

  “Do you have sisters? Brothers?” Luther asked. The train swayed into a curve, clacking past the dark fields, dotted here and there with the blurry lights of cottages seen through the rain-drenched window.

  “No, sorry to say.” Nora Copeland did not.

  “Then you are missing out. The big family. You Americans are loners.”

  She had confirmed for him some impression of Americans as self-made people, striking out across the frontier, unmarried women with careers. Cowboys. Closing her eyes, she signaled the conversation was over.

  Leaving her with the question of a brother. The reality of a brother, once upon a time. So few memories of those early days at Wrenfell. The ones she did have played over and over.

  Standing in the drafty hallway outside the kitchen. There were no windows or even wall sconces between the drawing room double doors and the buttery, so one was always in darkness approaching the kitchen. She heard voices raised. Paused, listening. Robert and her mother.

  “Just because everyone else is doing it,” her mother said, slapping something down on the lead counter.

  “It isn’t that. Is that what you think?” Robert’s voice.

  “Patriotism, I suppose. For England, God and country. But it’s the thing everyone believes, even the enemy.”

  They were fighting again about his wanting to sign up for the war. Father had said, “We’ll hear no more about it, this is Robert’s decision.” But Mother had him alone in the kitchen, and she was going to make the most of it.

  “You make it sound half-baked. Like it doesn’t mean anything. It’s not like that.”

  “Oh, Robert, so you keep saying. But what is it like?”

  “It . . . It’s just something . . .”

  “For God’s sake.”

  “It’s just what you do. When the fighting starts, you have to choose.”

  Kim didn’t think they ever reconciled the issue. He came home in uniform after his first course of training. When he left, his mother’s eyes were dry and hard. Julian shook hands with him. Kim had never shaken hands with her father, so when he did so with Robert, she knew it was something important. Almost like they were equals, because Robert was in uniform and leaving.

  It was all very complicated. Until it wasn’t. Until it was over for Robert and no going back or arguing about things anymore.

  She slept, the lights dim, like the hallway. Hearing voices murmuring in the kitchen. If she could just reach the kitchen door, they would all be there. Sometimes her mind acted like it didn’t know what had happened and what didn’t. Who was here, who was lost. Memory kept everyone. It would be unjust and cruel to let them slip away, so it must be best to remember, even if most days it didn’t seem that way.

  “Frankfurt,” Luther said, speaking to Kim as though he knew she was just pretending to be asleep.

  And later: “Nuremberg.”

  35

  THE INTAKE CENTER, THE AERIE

  FRIDAY, DECEMBER 18. “Nora Copeland?” The SS guard stood in front of her in the frigid hall. “Folgen Sie mir.”

  Next to her, Luther nodded for her to go.

  She picked up her suitcase and the guard led her to a door that opened into a small room, not much warmer than the hall. An SS captain in a black uniform sat at a desk. He was young, with a round, unlined face and hair slicked back on top with close-cropped sides. Beside him, a piece of equipment that she recognized. A kind of dynograph. Her test, then.

  He said something to her in German, but it went by too quickly
to catch.

  “Ich spreche nicht so gut Deutsch.” I don’t speak German well.

  His expression, coldly flat. “You will learn,” he said in English. His sober admonition struck her as amusing. It was not, of course. The urge to burst out laughing had become disquieting. Her passport lay on the desk, open to her photograph. The captain gestured for her to sit next to the dynograph.

  She had not told Luther that her Talent was spill. She had not wanted to give him any reason to send her away. It was better to let it come out at the test.

  The officer fastened leads to her head, carefully parting her hair to make contact with her skull.

  The ink arm began to vibrate, tracing a pattern along the paper feed. She hoped it did not scream a damning message: A spy, a spy. But the dynograph could not read her thoughts, only record activity, activity that one trained on the machine could interpret as relating to one Talent or another.

  “Breathe deeply,” he ordered. After a few minutes he frowned. “You must relax, I cannot get a reading.”

  “Yes, I am trying.” A little nervousness was to be expected, but she wished she were not terrified.

  “Describe the drive up from Tolzried.”

  She described how the lights of the town disappeared behind them as they drove from the village into a forested area. Rain had become sleet as they ascended the steep, deserted road. The car swayed in the slush, fishtailing around a curve. Luther said they must keep up their speed, or they would lose traction. She was relieved when she saw the intake center. They had made it.

  Her interviewer watched the needle swing back and forth. Then he asked mathematical questions, counting backward by sevens, simple multiplication. She knew that the imprint of every Talent suggested itself in stock graph tracings.

  A dog barked outside. She had seen the Alsatians on leashes, sleek shepherds, ears high, eyes darting. She hated that the dogs had been trained to kill on command.

  The captain handed her a booklet and pencil. “Begin to copy what you see, but move quickly.” The first pages were full of simple shapes. Owen Cherwell would be fascinated to see this booklet, part of the work-up for the precise German rating system of Talents. Triangle, hexagon, rhombus. She got as far as a parallelogram when the captain ordered her to stop.

  He left her attached to the machine and went out. Now came the real test; whether she could convince them that the report of her supposed Talent had been a lapse, a mistake in transcription, or just carelessness on the part of her recruiter.

  Soon the captain returned with a man in a white doctor’s smock.

  “This is Major Kaltenbrunner. We have a difficulty.”

  Ah. Kaltenbrunner, who Luther had mentioned. The major, tall and potbellied, ignored her, looking at the readout, pulling the long sheet quickly through his hands.

  “You are not a precognition Talent,” he said in excellent English, fixing her with an even stare, neither accusatory nor predatory, but in the crack between.

  “Precognition? No, I have never had that ability. It is the spill, of course. They didn’t tell you?”

  Kaltenbrunner exchanged glances with the captain, who handed him a clipboard with a sheaf of forms.

  As the doctor flipped through the sheets, he said, “You were to be a 7 for precognition, as rated at the Rawlings Institute.”

  “I am sorry, there must be some mistake.”

  “Obviously.”

  “I hope it will be all right.”

  “It is not all right. The spill  ”—he barely concealed his contempt—“is not of use to us.” He handed the clipboard back to the captain, turning an annoyed glance at her. “The spill is only fit for spying.”

  The word sent a trickle of stomach acid down her insides.

  “That is not to our purpose, even if you are an 8.6.”

  8.6? Kim felt weak. Hannah had taken her far past a 7.

  “You have come a very long way for nothing.”

  Kaltenbrunner reached into his pocket and drew out a card. Handing it to her, she read the words stamped on it. Special Assignment.

  “But Major Kaltenbrunner, I—”

  “There is nothing more to say. Show the card to the intake officer in the lobby.” He flicked a glance at the captain, who pulled the leads from her skull. “I suppose it was not, after all, your fault. You would not have lied. Unless it was to be more valuable?”

  “Oh, I would never have lied. The dynograph does not lie, it would be foolish to claim something I’m not. Surely, doctor, I can be of some service?”

  “I am afraid not. Back to Berlin with you. They may find a use for you. I cannot.”

  She wanted to grab him by the front of his smock and shake him, implore him. But he was already headed for the door. He turned, hand on the doorknob. “I am sorry, Fräulein Copeland.” A look of pity? Such a long way she had come.

  Kim looked down at the card. Special Assignment. Wherever she was sent next, this horrid little card said it all. She had failed.

  “I must speak to Major Kaltenbrunner,” Kim said in German.

  She had been sitting in a side room for an hour. A little space heater was dutifully pumping out a trickle of warm air.

  The guard outside the door said, “Nein, nein.” He pushed her back inside.

  “Major Kaltenbrunner, please!” she said with more urgency.

  He slammed the door shut.

  Why, why hadn’t she thought of what to do earlier when she’d had Kaltenbrunner’s attention?

  At the sound of a motorcar engine starting up, she looked out the window. A car drove past the window. Luther driving. She watched as he approached the intersection where the barrier arm barred the road. He turned down the road and headed away.

  Leaving without her? Weren’t they sending her back to Berlin?

  She rushed to the door to implore the guard once more. The door opened and Kaltenbrunner stood there, frowning. A file was in his hand. Perhaps he was still considering the irregularity of her having the wrong Talent.

  “You have been calling for me?”

  “Yes, thank you! There is something you should be made aware of. I can be useful to you. I know something.”

  “Well. And what is this useful information?”

  “Luther. He’s not quite, well, regular. I don’t know what it means, but . . .” She hesitated, pretending reluctance to get the man in trouble.

  “Yes, go on.”

  “He spilled to me. Something that you may want to know.”

  “You criticize this man?”

  “Maybe there is something to criticize.”

  “I have pressing duties, Fräulein.” But he waited, frowning.

  “Well, on the train—it was a very long train ride from Berlin.” A twitch of annoyance in Kaltenbrunner’s face. “And he said I was not to cause any trouble when we arrived because I would be sent home at the least infraction.”

  “As is the case.”

  “Yes, but he said that—please pardon me—but he said that you are too particular about regulations and have turned away several important Talents that you deemed unfit for service. And he has kept the names and details of each person he has brought you that you turned away in case your superiors ever require to know the situation more fully.”

  The doctor’s face darkened. “Why would he do this?”

  “I don’t know. I thought it sounded disloyal. It was a spill, of course.”

  “I see.” He stepped into the hallway. She heard him say, “Bringen Sie mir Luther Bliel.” They would pick him up on the road. He might deny it, but if he did have documentation on Kaltenbrunner, they would find it.

  When the doctor turned back to her, his face had softened.

  She plunged on. “I am watchful for the Party, you see.”

  Kaltenbrunner held out a hand to her. “Miss Copeland. Give me your card.”

  The assignment card. She opened her handbag and found it, handing it over. He put it in his right smock pocket. From his left he took out ano
ther card. She accepted it, quickly scanning the stamped designation.

  Intake approved. He smiled, as though they now understood each other, their little misunderstanding was past. Joy surged through her, as though a window had opened in an oxygen-starved room. She let herself smile, hoping it was not too triumphant.

  “An 8.6 on the scale,” he said, nodding. “You may have some use after all.”

  His German accent, with its staccato pronunciation, seemed amusing. A giggle started to come up, but she managed to suppress it.

  “Thank you, doctor. You won’t regret this. I will do everything I can for you.” And you will quite wish you had found me unfit. She hoped her expression looked happy and not amused. How quickly she had passed from fear to mirth. There was nothing whatsoever to laugh about.

  Kaltenbrunner signaled that she should pick up her suitcase, and then he escorted her down the hall to another room.

  Leaving her in the hall, he went inside.

  Her confidence surged. She had outwitted him, and her satisfaction at this became an acute pleasure. They couldn’t touch her, they couldn’t outthink her. But on the other hand, could they? She wondered if such confidence was the natural state of a high 8 on the scale. She doubted that it was, for surely she would have heard of such a thing. It might be Hannah’s touch, the state of having been augmented.

  Hannah hadn’t said this was how it would feel. But Hannah hadn’t experienced that state, having only been on the other end of the transaction.

  Kaltenbrunner returned, no longer carrying her file. “Good day, Fräulein Copeland.” He waved her through the door. “I hope that your arrival at the Aerie has no more bumps in the road.”

  She entered a windowless room. This one held yet another SS official. He sat behind a long table, and to one side stood another soldier. Ahead of her, facing the table was a man, a civilian, apparently going through his own intake process.

  She waited by the door until beckoned forward. As she approached the table, she passed her fellow recruit, a short, squarely built man with a heavy accent, perhaps Polish or Czech. He left the room carrying a stack of things. Clothes, shoes.