“Do you really think Mr. Daubigny is that way?” Ciara said doubtfully.
“I’m not sure—about one chance in three, maybe? Though don’t hold me to that.”
“Isn’t it a bit, well, cold to say so to Horst? I don’t like him either; he wants them to use that horrible stuff on America—even his own part of it! But I mean—”
Since you are yourself, at least sometimes hung unspoken.
Luz shrugged. “Just business, querida. I really don’t care a bit if he is or not. And there’s absolutely no chance in this world or the next he’d try anything naughty with Horst! Not unless he’s been reading too much Entente propaganda about the German officer corps, in which case God have mercy on him because Horst would not. And Horst is much more likely to post that letter for me now. Let that be a lesson: If you want someone to trust you without thinking about it, arrange for them to feel they’re on the same team as you, or that you have a common enemy. Human beings are made that way. I’ve been convincing Horst of that since we met, in one way or another.”
Ciara gave her an odd look; Luz could see she was wondering exactly how much of a puzzle-palace of deceptions her own interactions with the Black Chamber operative had been. Then she shook her head ruefully.
“Luz . . . do you like Captain von Dückler? I mean, do you think he is . . . handsome?”
“Oh, yes. He’s pretty much the definition of handsome, as I personally think men go. And on that if nothing else the Department of Public Health and Eugenics would agree with me!”
They shared a chuckle that most Americans who followed public affairs would have understood.
At least the ones with a sense of humor, Luz thought. Which Ciara definitely has and which I must admit is not generally the Party’s strongest point.
She’d always been a Progressive and had been glad when Uncle Teddy’s legions took over the GOP in 1912 and made it the Progressive Republican Party—though part of that had been a simple lust for revenge on the revolucionarios, and the fact that Uncle Teddy was . . . Uncle Teddy. She’d been grateful for the Equal Rights Amendment and had approved of most of what the Party had done after that, too. The only thing that gave her pause occasionally was that so many of the Party stalwarts were po-faced, self-righteous sanctimonious scolds absolutely sure they knew better than other people what those benighted, ignorant just-plain-wrong other people needed to do for their own good, that and their conviction that everything could be reduced to science and time-and-motion studies.
The Department of Public Health and Eugenics was where the Progressive movement stashed the people the rest of the Party looked at that way, its more eccentric and crankish enthusiasts for Race Improvement, along with the ones who had useful phobias about germs and bodily fluids and social diseases, the type who walked around with a pocketful of sanitary wipes and pulled on a glove before they shook hands. The Race Improvement cranks tended in person to be—quite notoriously and to the joy of opposition cartoonists—very unlike the handsome, healthy, fecund exemplars on their propaganda posters and booklets with the Yea, I have a Goodly Heritage slogan or even the winners of the Fittest Family and Best Baby contests they staged at state fairs and other gatherings these days.
Most of the ideal types on the posters and in the books did look at least a little like Horst von Dückler or a female equivalent, or like idealized young farmers from Wisconsin dressed in ancient Greek robes and surrounded by abundant naked toddlers. Uncle Teddy had a lot of the same ideas in the abstract, but at least he really was an impressive man with a wife who was pretty much a match for him and he really did have six healthy, handsome, and intelligent children.
Though if there were a way to breed thousands of Alice Roosevelts . . . por Dios, nobody would be safe! They’d keep the rest of us on leashes and make us sleep on rugs in front of the fire.
“And Horst’s charming too, in his way,” she went on. “Not as clueless as most men, that is. A bit vain of his effect on women, but men are. And handsome, charming, intelligent, extremely virile men with a noble title and an officer’s uniform like him are very vain of it.”
“But do you like him?” Ciara said earnestly.
“Yes, I do like him in the way you mean, though of course he’s on the other side and when he finds out I’ve taken him in he’s going to be extremely annoyed. With himself, and with me because of that. It’s a pity, though a minor one as war goes. I’m not smitten, but I think we might have been very good friends if we weren’t enemies. Though as I’ve told him, quite truthfully, I wouldn’t marry him for anything on Earth, even if there weren’t the war and so forth.”
“You wouldn’t?” Ciara said. “But . . . you said you thought he was handsome and you like him, and . . .”
“It would be strictly church and Kinder and bossing the servants back at the Schloss for Freifrau von Dückler, with an occasional carriage ride among the fields of sugar beets for variety and having the Gräfin over for tea. Exactly the life my mother absconded to avoid, but with worse weather and white peasants. I’d end up assassinating him and he’d never know why.”
“He seemed . . . quite sensitive, this afternoon. Almost like a poet,” Ciara said. “I was surprised. He looks like such a soldier, so hard and ruthless and . . . I didn’t think there was anything else there.”
“Well, he’s a secret agent now and then, too. And most human beings are complex at some level or another. I wouldn’t have seduced him if I hadn’t found him attractive, despite it being convenient from a professional point of view . . . it’s called a honeypot trap in the trade . . . and I don’t regret doing it. Nor am I very unhappy that it’s over, though, either.”
Luz noticed that Ciara’s expression and the way she held herself changed at that.
I don’t think she noticed, though. Interesting.
“I don’t want to be doing that when the knife goes in. Even a spy has to have some standards, or at least I think so. Sorry if I’m shocking you, but I did promise what I told you would be true.”
“I just . . . can’t imagine doing that,” Ciara blurted. “No offense intended!”
“None taken,” Luz said, smiling. “Tell me something: If you imagine kissing Horst, what do you feel? Not think, feel?”
“Ummm—” She obviously considered it honestly. “I can’t imagine wanting to, to be sure. Though he is handsome, I suppose. Like the hero on the cover of an adventure story in one of the magazines. It just seems it would be like . . . like kissing an arm, perhaps? The thought of it’s not bad, like when Desmond Byrne kissed me—without warning!—at the parade and I felt like a dog had slobbered on my mouth and I gave him a belt about the chops.”
Oh, my, Luz thought. I don’t suppose that’s definitive, but it’s very indicative.
Aloud she went on: “Upper bunk or lower?”
Ciara hesitated, then said, looking down at her hands: “Luz, to be honest I’m more frightened the closer we get to this place where they’re preparing the . . . the horror, and I’m very afraid I’m going to have that dream about those men’s faces again. All twisted and bloody and . . . and if it wouldn’t be too hard for you . . .”
“Not at all,” Luz said with a fond smile. “But we should turn in, then.”
The bed wasn’t too small for two; in fact it was much more comfortable than most Pullman berths. Ciara turned out the light and inched backward. Luz gave her a chaste kiss on the top of the head and held her as she sang softly to the clicking beat of the rails:
“Aruru mi niño, arrurú mi amor
Aruru pedazo de mi corazón
Este niño lindo que nació de día
Quiere que lo lleven a la dulcería . . .”
Ciara’s breathing slowed; after a moment it was calm and even. Luz smiled to herself and carefully slid her right arm under the pillow beneath her head—she usually slept on her side in that fashion anyway, so that solve
d the perennial third-arm problem with spooning neatly. Feeling safe and warm and contented . . .
Then her eyes opened wide in the utter darkness.
¡Ten cuidado, muchacha! Watch out, girl! This snuggle isn’t just fun; it’s extremely soothing. Just lying here like this makes me feel happy. As if something is telling me I could get used to this.
Her mind skipped backward.
And I enjoyed making her giggle until she lost track of the chess game just for its own sake and to see her laugh, and making music together is wonderful, and talking . . . I’m . . . getting in deeper waters than I thought. And I’m about to see her into hideous danger on a mission that’s more important than either of our lives. ¡Ay, Luz! You didn’t have enough pain in your life? You couldn’t help loving Mima and Papá . . . Your heart heals a bit, and then you offer it up as a gift for the dogs of fate to tear?
Was that risk better than having it dead as a stone?
I don’t know. I really don’t.
FIFTEEN
Wilhelmshaven, Province of Hanover
Kingdom of Prussia, German Reich
SEPTEMBER 14TH, 1916(B)
Once upon a time long ago—about seven hundred years ago—there had been an outlaw lord’s castle and a pirate fleet based on the bay that now held Wilhelmshaven. A few generations later, the rising Hanseatic League of merchant cities had gotten around to burning the castle and sinking the fleet and hanging all the survivors they could catch, and the bay had lain empty save for fish and migrating birds. The current Kaiser’s grandfather had bartered it from the Grand Duchy of Oldenberg to build a base for the growing Prussian Navy . . . and in a brilliant but eccentric stroke of humility had named it after himself. There were a lot of Wilhelms in the House of Hohenzollern family tree.
Not so much of a change, then, Luz thought, propping her chin on her hand and staring out the train window at a stretch of stained boards dripping with rain. Fortified nest of pirates once again.
From this railroad siding they would have had a good view of the harbor southward, with its dreadnoughts and battle cruisers and rows of cruisers and destroyers . . . if the wooden hoardings hadn’t limited what they could see to a few of the rather archaic-looking pole masts with crossed yardarms the Germans favored on their otherwise exceedingly modern warships. The air had a smoke-and-metal reek that hinted at the shipbuilding yards, dry docks, forges, foundries, and machine shops that had sprung up to service the Kaiserliche Marine, and the sprawl of housing and buildings for the unfortunate civilian workers and those catering to sailors on leave.
It was yet another gray North European day—
I would go mad if I had to live here permanently, and strip myself naked and run screaming southward, looking for the sun!
—but the smell was of brackish seawater as well as coal smoke and oily mechanical scents. Other trains were unloading cargo onto wagons, mostly horse-drawn, a few motor trucks, and a surprising half-dozen steam traction engines pulling flatbeds loading thick curved metal shapes.
“Those are heavy turbine casings,” Ciara said, peering past her. “See the spindle shapes, from the low- to the high-pressure blades? For geared marine turbines, I think. But we aren’t going to see much, are we?”
Luz nodded. “Good basic tradecraft,” she said. “What we don’t see, we can’t reveal—this is an operation where we might be captured. They shouldn’t let us see anything we don’t actually need to.”
“A very good point,” Daubigny said.
He was looking rather strained; Luz hoped that at least part of that was her doing. He was also in a German naval uniform, or the rather informal . . . in fact extremely informal . . . version thereof that U-boat crews wore when actually at sea: rough gray trousers, a gray jacket over a blue sweater, and a round brimless cap. They’d been given leather foul-weather jackets too, though they hadn’t put them on yet, since Gefreiter Jäger had managed to scare up enough coal to keep the compartment warm, as well as a quite passable early dinner with pork and red cabbage and a quark cheesecake and some apples. If he wasn’t an innkeeper in civilian life, he ought to be and would probably be very good at it.
An idle hope went through her mind: that the tubby cunning Gefreiter would survive these years of iron and death, and end up running a nice clean Gasthaus in some sleepily prosperous little German town where nothing much happened but seasonal festivals and a mild scandal now and then and the odd tourist passing through. With the appropriate shrewd, dumpy, bossy Frau running him, and some tow-haired Kinder and a comfortable potbelly, and a clutch of cronies who’d lie to one another with their highly colored war stories over beer and sausages and cards once a week.
She mentioned it, and Ciara gave her a rather odd look.
“Him, specifically?” she said.
And not Horst? was clear in her arched brow.
“I . . . or Horst . . . people like us . . . we chose to do certain things for our countries, and chose the risks, por así decirlo,” Luz said. “So to speak.”
The thought became clearer to her as she spoke. “I hope we live, but we don’t have any real right to complain if we don’t. It’s . . . it’s what we’re for. We decided to play the role of hero or martyr, or possibly of villains depending on perspective and point of view, and we should take the consequences without wincing or whining. But little people like Jäger are just making the best of it as history breaks over them in an avalanche . . . and they’re what countries are for, when you come right down to it. What countries are. The rest, kings and nobles and generals and presidents . . . and we secret agents . . . are waves on the surface.”
“That’s . . . kind,” Ciara said, with a smile, and thoughts Luz couldn’t quite follow behind her blue eyes.
She and Luz were in the same submariner’s gear as the man, though it fit them rather worse, not having been designed for people with their proportions. Luz had tested and she had full freedom of movement; it just felt vaguely uncomfortable and looked lumpish, not like the field gear she’d had made to order. The girl from Boston looked down at herself and then stood and moved tentatively.
“This feels so strange,” she said; she’d obviously never worn trousers before in her life and it bothered her nearly as deeply as a skirt and blouse and flowered hat would have done Horst. “It’s as if . . . as if my legs belong to someone else. Or I’m all in bandages, or both. It doesn’t feel right.”
“I prefer skirts myself, querida, for everyday comfort,” Luz said.
I’ve spent a lot of time in trousers, though, she thought. When I was on hunting trips with Papá, and then in the field for the Chamber, which I can’t really mention right now.
“Especially I like modern skirts, not those hobble-skirt atrocities that were fashionable a few years ago.”
“I saw them now and then, but I never wore one. They looked stylish if you were nice and slim, the way you are, but not very practical. What were they like?” Ciara asked.
“Terrible. They really did hobble you, como un caballo cojeaba. Once was enough and then I simply refused. Why should a bunch of men in Paris who mostly don’t even like women get to tell us to wear things that hurt? But we’re going to be climbing up and down ladders and squeezing through narrow corridors with thirty men, strangers, for a good little while now. About two weeks, I think. Pants are best.”
“Oh. Well, I suppose so, then,” Ciara said, thinking. “Yes, you’re right, it’s the only possible thing to do.”
Daubigny had studiously avoided looking directly at their trouser-clad limbs, which might just mean he was a true gentleman. He started when Horst swung into the railcar, dressed very much as they were except that he had the leather jacket on, a scarf around his neck, a peaked officer’s hat without any actual rank markings, and an automatic pistol holstered at his waist.
Wait, that’s a .45, the 1911, not a Luger, Luz thought. Then: Ah, yes, he expect
s the next landfall will be in America. That Colt will stand out a lot less there . . . and ammunition will be easier to get.
A rather scruffy-looking man who seemed implausibly young—except for his eyes—in the same outfit but with a lieutenant’s band and crown stood beside him stony-faced, the white-blond wisps of his beard seeming to bristle a little.
“Herr Daubigny, you will accompany Leutnant zur See Hansen to the U-144,” he said, indicating the pale young junior lieutenant. “Fräulein Carmody, Fräulein Whelan, you will come with me.”
Luz shook hands with the southerner. “Luck go with you!” she said, not specifying what kind; Ciara nodded silently from behind her.
“And good luck to you both, and good luck to the cause of freedom,” Daubigny said gravely, and left.
Horst breathed out in relief as the two women put on their jackets.
“Come, then,” he said, and to Luz: “I dropped off your items, Elisa.”
“¡Ay! Now I can die with a clear social conscience! My last thoughts as I drown can be of joy in a noble house in Dresden as their cherished violin appears, and a lonely teacher happy that a pupil remembered her.”
He grinned back at her; then it grew wider with the extra glee of a man who’d had his assumptions upset and now got to watch others go through the same uncomfortable experience. Germans didn’t experience Schadenfreude more often than other people just because they had a word for it, but it wasn’t entirely an accident that they did have a general noun form for the concept to gloat over another’s misfortune.
“And I’ve just told the captain of the U-150 . . . Kapitänleutnant Karl Denke . . . just who the agents are that he has to take along on this voyage. He was . . . not happy.”
The car that was drawn up waiting to take them to the submarine pens made Luz chortle slightly with laughter and point at it accusingly.
“Amsterdam!” she said.
Horst nodded as he handed them into the backseat; it was a little bull-nosed Renault taxi, just like the ones they’d taken from the airship hangar to the hotel where she’d had one of the best meals of her life . . . followed shortly thereafter by desperate hand-to-hand fights to the death.
Black Chamber Page 31
