The Diplomat's Wife

by Pam Jenoff

  I am not amused. “What’s your plan?”

  Paul looks upward, thinking. “I’m sure there’s a back way into the police station. The local stations tend to be small, so hopefully there’s only one or two policemen on duty. If I can get in and overpower the guard without anyone else hearing, we have a chance.”

  A chance. “You need a decoy,” I reply. Paul cocks his head. “I can go into the police station, claim I lost my passport. Flirt.” A wrinkle of displeasure forms on his brow. “That way any other policemen will be distracted while you are in the holding area.” Paul opens his mouth, but before he can speak, I continue. “Come on. I’m right and you know it. You need my help.”

  “I don’t know…” Paul begins. “I mean, what if something goes wrong?”

  “Then I’m just another woman in a police station. I can walk right back out the front door. But it could make a huge difference in your being able to get to Marcelitis.”

  I watch Paul’s face as he searches for another argument. “Okay,” he concedes. “But at the first hint of any trouble, I want you to get out of there and go to…” He stops, unable to finish the sentence. I know that he wants to be able to tell me to go to the embassy. Suddenly I am reminded of playing tag with the other children in my village as a child. There was always home base, a safe place that one could run to and not be caught. But we are behind Soviet lines, completely alone. There is no home base here. “Well, just get out of there, okay?”

  “Agreed. When are we going to do this?”

  I follow his gaze to the clock over the bar. It is almost nine o’clock. “Soon, I think. The night shift should come on around ten and hopefully they’ll be on a skeleton crew after that.”

  An hour later we stand in a doorway around the corner from the police station. It is a drab, one-story concrete structure, no larger than a corner grocery store. “There’s the shift change,” Paul whispers as three policemen exit the station. Their voices fade as they walk away from us down the street. “You’ll go in the front door,” Paul instructs, pointing. “There should be just one guard at the desk. Talk slowly. I’ll go around to the back and find the holding cell. It’s probably in the basement.”

  “What if the back door is locked?”

  “I’ll get in,” Paul says, his face resolute. “There’s always a way.”

  I wonder then about the work he has been doing since surviving the crash, the things he must have seen. “How long do you need me to stall?”

  “Fifteen minutes at least. Twenty would be ideal. Any longer and Marcelitis is either not there or dead.”

  A shiver runs up my spine. I hadn’t considered the possibility that we might be too late. “You don’t think…”

  He shakes his head. “That they would kill him here? Highly unlikely.” I start to walk out of the doorway but Paul grabs me by the shoulders and pulls me back. “Marta, wait.” I turn back. His eyes search mine and for a second I wonder if he might try to kiss me again. “I want to say, I mean, in case something happens…” He falters.

  I look up, fighting the urge to touch his cheek. “Let’s just get this done.”

  He nods. “Be careful.”

  I cross the street hurriedly. At the door of the police station, I pause and turn back. Paul has disappeared from the alleyway. I take a deep breath, then open the door. Inside, there are two desks, set about a meter apart. A heavyset policeman sits behind the desk to my right, reading a newspaper. “Ja?” he says, not looking up.

  “G-guten abend,” I stammer.

  At the sound of my voice, he lifts his head. Taking me in from bottom to top, his expression changes. “Guten abend, fräulein. How can I help?”

  I summon my most distressed expression. “I was on my way to visit my aunt when I realized my passport was gone.”

  “Lost or stolen?”

  I hesitate. “Stolen, I think. My money is gone, too.”

  “You’ll need to fill out a report,” the officer says. He reaches into a drawer and pulls out a form.

  I approach the desk slowly, stalling for time. “I’m Lola,” I say softly as I sit down. “What’s your name?”

  He gestures to the name on the breast pocket of his uniform. “Sergeant Schobel.”

  “No, I mean your first name,” I press.

  Schobel hesitates, and for a moment I wonder if I have gone too far. “Joseph,” he replies.

  “Joseph, it’s nice to meet you. Do you have a pen I can use?” As he hands me the pen, I brush my fingers against his, lingering for just a second. He pulls his hand back and quickly begins shuffling the papers on the desk.

  I look down at the form, feeling queasy from the effort of flirting with Schobel. Is this what it felt like for Emma, I wonder, having to be close to the Kommandant? Concentrate, I tell myself. Out of the corner of my eye, I look up. Schobel has picked up his newspaper and begun to read once more, but I can see him taking small furtive peeks at the top of my blouse. On the rear wall, I notice the outline of a wall hanging that has been removed. A swastika, I realize, suddenly nauseous.

  Forcing myself to breathe, I turn back to the form. A minute later I look up again. Behind the desks, there is a doorway leading to a corridor. That must be the way to the basement stairs. But I do not see any sign of Paul. I look down at the form again, pretending to write. Suddenly, there are footsteps in the corridor and another officer, older than the first and also heavyset, appears in the doorway. “What’s going on, Schobel?” he asks.

  I freeze, pen suspended midair. I was not prepared for a second policeman. “Young lady was on her way to visit her aunt and had her passport stolen,” Schobel replies.

  “You’re having her fill out a report?” asks the older man, whose name tag reads Hart. Schobel nods. “Good. I’m going to check on things downstairs.” He turns and begins walking toward the staircase.

  Oh God. If Hart goes downstairs now, he will surely catch Paul. I jump to my feet. “Excuse me…” I call after him.

  He turns back, clearly annoyed. “Yes?”

  I take a step toward him, pretending to read his name tag. “Officer…Hart, is it?” He nods impatiently. “Well, I wanted to ask you and Officer Schobel what I should do now that I have lost my passport and money.” I speak as slowly as I can, stalling for time.

  “Officer Schobel will be able to provide any assistance you need. Now, if you’ll excuse—”

  “But I wanted to ask both of you. I mean…” I stop as something moves behind Hart in the corridor. I recognize the flash of Paul’s brown coat before it disappears again. I have to keep Hart talking. “I mean, that is…” I falter. Noticing my distraction, Hart spins around. But the hallway is empty.

  “Fräulein, I really must ask you to sit down and let Officer Schobel assist you.”

  If I sit down, Hart will go downstairs and discover Paul. “But surely with your experience…” I press, stalling for time.

  Hart draws his eyebrows so closely together they look like a single knot of hair. “What street does your aunt live on?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your aunt, the one you came to visit in Berlin. What is her street address?”

  I hesitate, trying desperately to come up with an answer. “Number seven, Ringlerstrasse,” I reply, coming up with the name of the only street I remember passing on our way over to the police station, then adding a house number.

  Watching Hart’s eyes go wide with recognition, I know that I have made some kind of a mistake. “That’s quite impossible, fräulein. The houses on Ringlerstrasse have been completely uninhabitable since the last bombing raids during the war.” He grabs me roughly by the wrist. “Now, what are you doing here?”

  Panic shoots through me. “I—I don’t understand,” I stammer. “I already told you I lost my passport and…”

  “A likely story,” Hart says, cutting me off. “Why are you really here?”

  Schobel stands up. “Perhaps she is here because of the visitor.”

  “We’re not
supposed to talk about that,” Hart replies quickly.

  “I—I don’t know anything about a visitor,” I offer.

  “Maybe you did and maybe you didn’t, but you do now. We can’t let you go.” He turns to Schobel. “Arrest her.”

  “You’re arresting me? But I’ve done nothing wrong!”

  Schobel scrambles over to where we stand. “I told you we needed more staff while Marcelit—”

  “Again, we aren’t talking about that!” Hart explodes.

  “Well, I just thought now that she knows, anyway,” Schobel mumbles defensively, as he starts to put the cuff around my wrist.

  “Wait a second…” I begin, stalling for time. Paul said to get out of here at the first sign of trouble. For a minute, I consider trying to run. But there is no way I can break away from both of them.

  Suddenly, there is a noise in the corridor. “What the…?” Hart says, spinning around.

  Paul stands behind him, gun drawn. “Let her go,” he says. Hart’s jaw drops and he hesitates, uncertain what to do. Should I try to break away? Then he reaches for his weapon, swinging it wildly toward Paul. “Don’t!” There is a loud bang and Hart’s grip on my wrist loosens as he drops to the floor, eyes wide.

  Paul turns his gun toward Schobel. “Let her go,” he repeats. I can feel the younger policeman trembling, uncertain what to do. “We don’t want to hurt you,” Paul adds, stepping forward. Schobel hesitates for a second, then releases me. “Hands behind your back,” Paul orders, then turns to me. “It took me longer to get in the back door than I expected. Are you all right?” I nod, feeling his eyes on me, making sure. “Cuff him.”

  I follow his instructions. “What are we going to do with him?”

  “Put him in the cell.”

  “Have you been down there yet?”

  Paul shakes his head. “I had to come get you first.”

  “Thanks,” I reply, embarrassed. I was supposed to help him by distracting the police and instead I delayed him.

  “It’s fine,” Paul says, seeming to read my thoughts. “Let’s just go get Marcelitis.”

  “So that is why you are here,” Schobel exclaims.

  “Quiet,” Paul orders. He takes the policeman by the arm and leads him down the hallway to a staircase. “After you.” Defeated, Schobel starts down the steps, Paul close behind him. “Wait here,” he says to me.

  I nod, watching as they disappear into the darkness. The air below has a damp, fetid smell that reminds me uncomfortably of my own time in prison. “Hello?” I hear Paul’s voice. “Is there a light up there?” he calls to me. I feel along the wall until my hand touches a switch. I flick it on, illuminating the cellar below in gray light. Unable to wait any longer, I race down the stairs. The cellar is brick, the back half of the room separated by iron bars. Behind the bars in the far corner, a small figure crouches in a ball on the concrete floor.

  “Jan Marcelitis?” Paul asks. The figure does not move. My heart sinks. We are too late. Marcelitis is dead.

  Paul pulls on the door to the cell, which is locked. He turns back to Schobel. “Keys?”

  Schobel tilts his head downward. “My back pocket.”

  I cross to Schobel and pull the keys from his pocket, then toss them to Paul. He opens the door. He crosses the cell, rolls the crouched figure over. “Oh, my God…”

  “Not quite,” a muffled voice says in English. As the person I have been looking for across two countries sits up and turns to face us, I cannot help but gasp aloud.

  Jan Marcelitis is a woman.

  CHAPTER 22

  “Jan Marcelitis?” Paul repeats.

  The woman nods. “I’m Jan,” she says in accented English. I cannot help but stare. The great Jan Marcelitis is no bigger than me, with a low auburn ponytail and bright green eyes. She looks from Paul to me, then back again. “Who are you?”

  “There’s no time to explain now, but I’m American and she’s with the British government and we’re here to get you out. Are you hurt?”

  Jan stands up and brushes herself off. “No.” She steps out of the cell, shooting Schobel a withering look. “They hadn’t reached that part yet. I think they were waiting until they took me to headquarters.”

  “Good.” Paul turns to Schobel and points to the cell. “You, inside.” Schobel scrambles into the cell.

  “You’re leaving him alive?” Jan asks, her voice filled with disbelief.

  Paul hesitates. I was wondering the same thing. Schobel saw our faces, would be able to identify us. But I know Paul does not have it in him to kill an unarmed man, not if there is another way. “I don’t know…” he says at last.

  Jan turns to Schobel, who has turned pale. “How long until the next shift comes on?”

  “N-not until six,” he stammers.

  Jan looks at the clock on the wall. A cruel joke to have a clock in jail, I think, following her gaze, remembering my own endless days in prison. “That’s almost eight hours from now, assuming he’s telling the truth.” She walks back into the cell and grabs Schobel, who towers over her by at least a head, hard by the lapels. “You’d better not be lying,” she warns.

  “I—I’m not,” Schobel replies. “We came on at ten and each shift is eight hours.”

  Jan stares Schobel in the eyes for a second longer. Then she releases him so roughly that he stumbles backward, almost falling. She walks over to Paul. “Give me your gun.”

  Paul hesitates. “I don’t think we should—”

  “Just give it to me.” Jan reaches over impatiently and grabs the gun from Paul’s waistband, then strides back into the cell. “On your knees,” she orders.

  “Please…” Schobel begs.

  “Wait, I don’t think…” Paul begins, but Jan holds up her hand, silencing him. I open my mouth to try to help, then close it again. I was in prison once. I understand Jan’s fury.

  “On your knees,” Jan repeats, walking behind Schobel. Slowly, Schobel kneels and closes his eyes. I look away, bracing myself for the gunshot. Instead, there is a dull thud, followed by a muffled sound. I turn back toward the cell. Schobel lies slumped on the floor, eyes closed. She really killed him, I think. Then, taking a step closer, I can see that he breathes easily, as though sleeping.

  “I clocked him pretty hard,” Jan says, walking out of the cell and locking the door. She shoves the keys into her pocket. “He won’t wake up until the next shift arrives.” She hands the gun back to Paul. “Now, let’s get out of here.”

  Wordlessly, Paul and I follow Jan up the stairs and through the police station. Upstairs, Hart lies motionless on the floor, arms splayed above his head, his lifeless eyes staring at the ceiling. He is the second person to die today because of my mission. And he was not out to get us like the bald man; he was just caught in the wrong place.

  “We need to hide the body,” Jan says. I look over at Paul. He is staring at Hart and I can tell from the way that his mouth twists that he shares my guilt, that this killing did not come easily to him. “In the basement cell,” Jan suggests.

  I shudder inwardly, imagining Schobel trapped with the body of his dead colleague all night. “Do we have the time to do that?”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Jan concedes, then turns to Paul. “Help me move him behind the desk.” I look away as they drag Hart’s body from view.

  Outside, the street is deserted. “Follow me,” Jan says. “And quietly, we’re breaking curfew.” She leads us swiftly through the backstreets, not making a sound. Her auburn ponytail bobs like a beacon in the darkness. Paul follows behind me, so closely I wonder if Jan will think we are a couple. I fight the urge to reach for his hand.

  A few minutes later Jan stops in front of a large restaurant. A brightly lit sign above the front door bears the name Meierhof. Paul and I exchange puzzled looks. Surely we aren’t going in here. But Jan leads us around the side of the building and opens a cellar door, gesturing with a nod of her head that we should go inside. We climb down the ladder into a dark cellar. Jan fo
llows, closing the door above her.

  “Here we are,” she says, lighting a match and taking it to a small stub of a candle that sits on a table. Thousands of bottles, stacked on top of one another, line the brick walls on all sides, climbing to the high ceiling.

  “A wine cellar?” Paul asks disbelievingly, looking up.

  “Not just any wine cellar,” Jan replies. “This is the Meierhof wine cellar. Meierhof has been one of Berlin’s finest restaurants for more than a century. It has one of the most extensive wine cellars in the world.”

  Paul whistles. “I’ll say!”

  “And the cellar’s construction is incredibly stable. Not a single bottle of wine was broken during all of the bombing raids of the war. The Meierhof family let people take shelter here during the raids.”

  German people, I think. They were the enemy then. “They were just ordinary people,” Jan adds, seeming to read my thoughts. “Trying to survive the war. The Meierhofs were only saving civilian lives. They would have done the same for either side. And now they are staunch anticommunists, which is why they allow us to use the cellar in emergencies.”

  “Won’t the waiters be coming down here for wine?” I ask.

  Jan shakes her head. “There is a smaller wine closet up by the kitchen with more than enough for the evening. These are just the reserves.” She points to a small door on the back wall. “And if a customer has an unusual wine request, Herr Meierhof himself will send a note down in the dumbwaiter and we’ll send the bottle up. We won’t be disturbed.” She gestures to the table. “So why don’t we sit down and you can tell me who you are and what you’re doing here.”

  I hesitate, looking at Paul. I have imagined meeting Marcelitis for days and now that we are actually here, I am not sure what to say. “I’m Michael Stevens,” he begins, using his alias. “I’m an American intelligence agent. Marta here works for the British government.” I notice that he does not say my last name.

  Jan shakes Paul’s hand, then mine. “It’s good to meet you. My name is Jan Marcelitis.”