Midnight Hunter

by Brianna Hale

  Unexpectedly, Reinhardt gets into the art trade. It’s the last thing I would have thought would interest him but he takes his keen eye for detail and applies it to paintings and sculpture. He invests the last of the marks and dollars we brought with us from East Berlin into his first pieces.

  I suspect—no, I know—that not all the trading is legitimate. I know little about art but the signatures on a few of the more beautiful paintings catch my eye. Vermeer. Pissarro. Raphael. Such works were never on display in the East but I remember a passage in a school textbook about Nazi looted art.

  One day I find Reinhardt contemplating a painting propped up on the mantelpiece. It’s about two feet across, a landscape showing some olive groves and mountains in the background, except that the colors are vivid oranges and blues instead of the expected greens and browns. The brushstrokes are thick and haphazard, merely suggesting the scene, but it’s not an ugly painting. In fact it’s very beautiful.

  “Are you going to hang that there?” I ask. Occasionally Reinhardt finds a piece he likes or he thinks I’ll like and puts it in our house. Nothing that he believes was stolen, at my insistence. I don’t want to live my life surrounded by stolen objects.

  He puts his arm around my waist and caresses my swollen belly. At seven months pregnant I’m becoming huge. “That, meine Liebe, is an act of aesthetic violence committed by a degenerate seeking to undermine the steadfast German spirit.”

  I raise my eyebrows. “Is it? I thought it was just a painting.”

  He laughs and kisses the top of my head. “Not to Hitler. This was confiscated by the Reich, probably from a museum or a Jewish collector. Hitler didn’t like Modern art.”

  “And you’re selling it to the highest bidder.”

  “Not this piece. This piece is going to the Louvre. An anonymous donation.”

  I look at him in surprise. “Not into the hands of a collector?”

  “No. It’s too good for a private collection. This is one of my conscience pieces.”

  I don’t know what he means for a moment. Then I remember the other smuggling he used to do, reuniting families who’d been separated by the Berlin Wall. “Like Frau Schäfer?”

  “Ja, like Frau Schäfer.”

  I can’t say I’m thrilled by what my husband does and I suspect a great many of the pieces that pass through his hands should be sent to a museum, not just this one. But he did tell me he would land on his feet and I suppose I should be glad it’s paintings he’s dealing in and not something worse. There are no guns involved, no espionage. Most of his time is spent hunting through old auction catalogues and papers, trying to determine provenance and sniff out forgeries. It’s a different sort of hunting, and it suits him. “Promise me we won’t get wealthy from you doing this. It feels parasitic.”

  He nods at the landscape. “We shan’t. Conscience pieces like this don’t come cheaply. Once I’m satisfied that you and the baby are taken care of I’ll send something off to Paris or New York every now and then. How does that sound?”

  I think for a moment, leaning against him. It’s not honest work like farming or teaching or plumbing, but for Reinhardt it’s quite good. We regard the painting together for a while. How many more just as beautiful are being lost to rich men who hang them up where only they can see them? “It’s a shame to think of all these pieces disappearing into private collections forever.”

  Reinhardt digs a little book out of his pocket and shows it to me. “Maybe not forever. These are all my sales, buyers and their addresses. If the Wall ever comes down and there’s peace in Europe the authorities may be interested in this.”

  I flick through the pages and see the particulars of hundreds of pieces of artwork and dozens of buyers. There are detailed notes about the provenance of each piece and whether he suspects they were sold to him legitimately or not. “So they won’t be lost forever. I knew you had some conscience but you’re becoming positively burdened with one. When did this happen?”

  He gives me a dry look and caresses my belly with a large warm hand. “Since I found out I was going to be a father.”

  I’ve sensed a gradual change in Reinhardt since we left East Berlin. As he said, happy men do not snatch women from the streets. I think that in getting us out he’s laid a ghost to rest. He couldn’t save Johanna all those years ago but he was able to save me. Her specter seems to be dissipating and I hope that now her memory is at peace he can be, too.

  “So you’re happy about the baby, Reinhardt?”

  He regards me silently. “Some mornings I wake up and I don’t know where, or even who, I am. This place. No uniform for the first time since I was a boy. You getting so big with our child. I want to laugh because it doesn’t seem possible.”

  “You don’t think you deserve it?”

  He kisses me softly. “No. But I think I’ll try to. If I earn your love then that’s all that matters. Yours, and Fritzl’s or Magda’s, or whomever this little one will be. If I can make you both happy then I will have done better than I ever thought possible.”

  I snort with laughter. “Fritzl or Magda? We are not having a Fritzl or Magda.”

  Mock surprised, he says, “What is wrong with such good and sturdy names? But tell me, Liebling, are you happy here with me?”

  I look up at my husband who was once so fearsome to me. Who desires my strength and has taken strength from me. Who gives me hope and all his love. For so long there was the gray of the Wall in his eyes but it’s been many months since I’ve seen that concrete scar reflected in their depths. They’re the blue of the sea these days.

  I smile, and go up on tiptoe to kiss him. “Yes, Reinhardt. I am.”

  Epilogue

  Evony

  July 12, 1966

  Dear Heinrich Michel Daumler,

  It will be painful and confusing for you to read this after three years of grief, but they told you the wrong thing. I’m not dead. It was Ana he shot that night, not me, but perhaps you know this if the scandal of our flight from East Berlin reached your ears. I’m buried far away from you, your Schätzen, where no one will ever find me. The postmark is a red herring. My husband smuggled this letter out of our country and into the West so that it could reach you. He’s very clever, my husband.

  I found out what happened that night, that it was you who betrayed us. I’ve been saddened and confused about this for a very long time. I know how much you love me. I love you, too, and that’s why it’s taken me so long to write. Because I too have done something that I know you won’t be proud of. For my part, I have no regrets. Each day that passes I love my husband more and more. I love him for the life he has built for us. The child we have together. When I look at Michel (he has your curls, though they’re bright blond like his father’s hair is) I know how you must have struggled with the decision. I don’t know if I would have done the same thing. I hope I never have to find out.

  Michel will be tall and handsome like his father, and very resourceful. I’m happy in this little house with the man I love and our child. It’s a life I never imagined when I lived in the shadow of the Wall. I always craved something more and you tried to give me that, but the sacrifices you made along the way weren’t yours to make.

  What I’m trying to say, badly and haltingly, is that I forgive you. I wonder if you forgive me. Did you ever run into Frau Schäfer on the streets of West Berlin? She has a tale to tell, if you can get it out of her. Tell her that he’s said it’s all right that you know.

  Ours was a love that bloomed in an unlikely place, in an unfathomable way. It’s been hard for him, to have a child. I’ve seen such fear in his eyes, worry that we might be taken from him, that we might get hurt or sicken and there’ll be nothing he can do to save us. But each day the fear ebbs from his eyes a little more and the nightmares have left him alone for many months now. When I tell him our family will soon get bigger I’m certain that there will be nothing but happiness in their blue depths. My heart is bursting just to think of it. When I’ve sealed
this letter and put it into his hands I’m going to tell him. It will be a girl, I think. Maybe she’ll be dark like me, and I’ll call her Adalita.

  I think of you often, and even though many miles and a great political divide separate us I still love you, and I hold out hope that I will see you again. One day. If the Wall ever comes down.

  Yours,

  Schätzen

  Author’s Note

  The Berlin Wall stood for twenty-eight years, a symbol of the Cold War and the ideological and political divide that existed between East and West. On the night of November 9, 1989 thousands of East Berliners poured through the checkpoints into West Berlin, sounding the death knell for the division of Germany and the Soviet Union. The Wall was physically demolished soon after.

  When the Wall fell, Evony and Reinhardt’s eldest child would have been twenty-six and able to choose for himself where to make his home without the dangers his parents faced. I like to think he sought his grandfather out, and that Heinrich and Evony were reconciled eventually.

  I always wanted Evony and Reinhardt to have a happy ending and I struggled a long time with how and where that happy ending should take place. I felt that with all they’d been through, they deserved it. In many Cold War narratives the West is held up as a golden land of safety and opportunity but the reality was more complicated than that. High-profile defectors were in danger of retribution from the East and have been attacked and murdered even in recent years, long after the Cold War ended. I wrote this book amid the Brexit uncertainty in the UK and the Trump–Russia scandal in the United States. We’re living through a time of deep political divides and hard choices.

  I have benefitted from everything the West has to offer and I’m fully aware of and grateful for my privilege and freedoms. At the same time I couldn’t write an ending where the West offered Evony and Reinhardt an easy solution to a complex and dangerous problem. Life just isn’t that simple. What was most important to me was that they find a safe place where they could make their home, and though they had to fight for what they wanted they made it in the end. And besides, if I’d made things too easy for them I don’t think Reinhardt would have believed me.

  Brianna Hale

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  Read on for an excerpt of SOFT LIMITS by Brianna Hale

  “If you test my limits I’m going to test yours back, twice as hard. If you push me you’ll find you run out of ground long before I do.”

  Frederic d'Estang: performer, professional villain and my youthful crush. He calls me chérie, ma princesse, minette.

  And I call him daddy.

  Adult, sexy and daring. Brianna Hale gets better and better - The Book Bellas

  *sigh* All the stars in the world for SOFT LIMITS - AnObsessionWithBooks

  Brianna Hale knows how to write a damn good love story ... her books keep getting better and better - The Romance Rebels

  As soon as I reached the end, I could have read it all over again - Wicked Reads

  This book offered something different ... it had a darker side - Warhawke's Book Vault

  Beautiful and dark in all the best ways - Honeyed Pages

  This book is the perfect combination of vulnerability and dark fantasy - Book Talk By Sarah

  Brianna Hale just keeps getting better and better! SOFT LIMITS is so dirty and sexy that I couldn't put it down - Reading Cafe

  Chapter One

  Evie

  I’m not paying attention when it happens. The laneway is deep with silence and noonday shadows, and there’s a fresh breeze blowing. My eyes are following tiny birds as they hop among the cow parsley and tangled wildflowers, but my mind is far away, in a dark and bitter East Berlin winter of razor wire and searchlights and snarling German shepherds. I picture Mrs. Müller, not as I left her just now, a sturdy, gray-haired woman in a cream blouse, but as a young woman of twenty with a pale, determined face and clear blue eyes. She laid photos out before me of friends long dead. Shot going over the Wall. Arrested by the Stasi. Arrested. Disappeared. This one betrayed us—she was an informant and we didn’t know it.

  There’s a break in the hedgerow and I cut across the laneway, heading for the stile. The path beyond leads a mile across the fields to my parents’ country house, where I’m staying over the summer with my mother, father and my sisters. All three of them.

  Suddenly a car races around the bend. I freeze, turning toward this black, rushing thing, as silent as it is sleek—Why is it so quiet?—but then the driver slams on the brakes and the air is filled with the screech of tires and smoking rubber. The car stops six inches from my legs and I’m finally released from terror-induced paralysis. I scurry to get out of the way but my feet tangle and I go down with a yelp. Papers and books cascade from my shoulder bag. I stare at my burning hands pressed against the gravel, my chest heaving.

  A car door opens and rapid footsteps approach. Someone hovers over me, saying something about the driver and not seeing me and asking me if I am hurt.

  “No, really, I’m fine, the car didn’t touch me, I just fell,” I say, brushing gravel from my bare legs and scraped palms while simultaneously trying to grab at loose pages that are fluttering into the hedge.

  His hand catches mine. “Miss,” he says, in a voice that cuts through my babble. He’s got an accent of some sort. “I will collect your papers. Are you sure you’re all right?”

  I look up, and recognition and dismay stun me into silence. The man bending over me has dark, curly hair with a few silver flecks and slanted green eyes above pronounced cheekbones. His mouth is full and slightly parted. It’s a mouth I’ve seen thinned with anger, twisted into sneers and plumped with self-satisfaction. It’s the mouth of a villain.

  “Monsieur d’Estang,” I say automatically.

  His eyebrows shoot up, and then his concerned expression becomes a sleek smile. “Oui, mademoiselle.”

  Oh, god. He thinks I’m a fan. Well, you are a fan. No—not really, not anymore. “I’m not—” And I take a deep breath, because even I can only bear making a fool of myself so many times in one day. “I think you are on your way to see my father.”

  Dad didn’t mention that Frederic d’Estang, the French Canadian musical theater performer, would be coming to the house, but then he’s not much in the habit of warning us about these things. As he’s a theater agent, and a gregarious one, it’s not unusual for a star to pull into the drive while you’re eating your toast or plump down next to you at dinner.

  Monsieur d’Estang studies me for a moment. “You are Anton Bell’s daughter?”

  “Yes. Well, one of them.”

  He puts a hand over his heart. “Miss Bell, I deeply apologize.” And he continues to apologize in the most eloquent way for several minutes while he helps me up and collects all my notebooks and papers. I try to get them off him but it’s hard to get a word in while he talks on, and then he’s taking my elbow and steering me toward the car.

  “No, please, I’m fine to walk, it’s not far across the fields.”

  “But Miss Bell, we are going the same way, I believe.” His eyes are so much greener in person and I feel like a mouse pinned by the jeweled gaze of the cobra. He’s had more than twenty years’ professional experience convincing people of things with those eyes and I’ve only had minutes to try and discover how to refuse them.

  I fail, and get into the car.

  The driver adds his own apologies to Monsieur d’Estang’s while I’m buckling on my seat belt. It’s an electric car, he explains, which is why I didn’t hear it. I mutter something about not getting many of these in the countryside around Oxford.

  “What were you thinking about so deeply when we nearly knocked you down?” Monsieur d’Estang’s accent is unusual, a slight North American inflection with a clipped Frenchiness about the vowels. It’s a very nice voice, and surprisingly gentle for such a tall, sultry man. I thi
nk about all the actresses and singers he’s been romantically linked with over the years. He probably knows it’s very nice.

  “Communists,” I say.

  He looks amused. “Oh?”

  “I mean, it’s just something I’m working on,” I say quickly. “East Germany, Cold War.” Why can’t you say, “It’s a book I’m writing for a client”? Is that so hard?

  “Ah, so you’re a writer. That explains the daydreaming.” He glances out the window and I glare at the back of his head. I’ll put up with being pigeonholed as awkward and boring by my sisters, but it’s irritating from strangers.

  But it seems he was just checking where we were, as he turns back to me. “What are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere?”

  “What, walking?”

  “No, I mean here in the countryside. Why aren’t you in London, or Paris? Somewhere with a little more excitement.”

  “University,” I say, waving my hand in the general direction of Oxford. I’m working on a PhD in Victorian literature but he probably thinks I’m a gormless undergrad. I’m dressed like a gormless undergrad, in scuffed shoes and denim shorts.

  “During summer? Do they not allow you any holidays in England these days?”