In the wordless moments that followed, Karen could hear only the gallop of her own heart in her ears. It had happened so quickly, she hadn’t had time to think about what she was doing before the spell was cast. Using magic against another magician, against the director of the OMRD . . . how had she thought that was a good idea? But then she found herself at Ehle’s side. His hands were still twisted, every muscle tensed like a bowstring about to break. His breaths came sharp, quick, and hard, but when he saw her, felt her hand on his arm, they began to slow.
Arthur’s men appeared over her and helped Ehle to his feet. Across the room, George did the same for Dr. Haupt.
“Take him downstairs to the holding cell,” Arthur said, at last breaking the silence.
“Arthur . . .” Karen started to say before he shot her a look.
He held up the paper Haupt had given him. “Orders,” he said. “You go back down as well, Miss O’Neil. You’ve got work to do.” Dr. Haupt began to protest, but Arthur stared him down. “Your memo addresses Mr. Ehle, Director, not Miss O’Neil, and I still have a crisis to avoid.”
“Miss O’Neil works for me,” Dr. Haupt said.
“Not today,” Arthur said. “Today she’s on loan to the CIA to assist in an emergency. If there’s a problem with that, perhaps we should discuss it in my office.”
Dr. Haupt turned to Karen, but she could not look at him anymore, not after what she had just seen. She had thought him to be the steady, generous man she knew from her time at the university and the OMRD. She knew his past was haunted, but he had been kind nevertheless. He had helped her, guided her. In turn, she had trusted him. But now she knew that man had never existed, not really; the true Dr. Haupt was something else entirely, a man of secrets. A man willing to use inexcusable magic. She turned away.
“Very well,” Dr. Haupt said, nodding. His voice lost the edge it had gained when he saw Ehle; he sounded more like the man she knew, or thought she knew. “We shall discuss this in private. Once I am certain the prisoner is dealt with.”
Arthur nodded. “Take him, boys.”
Karen watched Dr. Haupt and Ehle disappear out the door. She could feel something foul burning the back of her throat. Jim was home safe; this should have been a morning of celebration in the midst of chaos. Instead it just added to the noise.
She was halfway to the stairs following Dr. Haupt when she heard George behind her. When he called out, she spun on him, finger raised. She was fairly certain she saw him flinch.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve,” she said with twitching lips.
George held up his hands in mock surrender. “I’m not the one who just committed magical assault on our boss.”
“That was illegal magic, George,” she said. “Cruel magic. Used to hurt a man who posed no threat and is trying to help us stop a war.”
George held up a hand. His thistle and branch ring, his locus, was on a different finger than usual; his ring finger was red and blistered: a reminder of their bout in Dr. Haupt’s hallway back at the OMRD. “And what sort of monster would use magic to hurt an old friend, just to make a point?” he asked with mock seriousness.
“That was different,” she said quickly, though her face burned at the comparison.
“Is it?” George asked. “You’re awful quick to trust this stranger instead of your friends.”
“Is that what you are, George? My friend?”
“This Ehle,” George said, “he tell you what he did during the war?”
“Yes,” she said. George was just wasting her time; why was she even bothering with him? “He said that he was a magician soldier for the Germans. If that counts as a war crime, then—”
“Wake up, Karen,” George said. “He was a colonel in the SS. Part of the inner circle of Nazi magicians. For God’s sake, he was the chief magical researcher at the Ravensbrück concentration camp.”
Karen felt her face flush even hotter. Again her father’s voice thudded in her head, like heavy boots on the stairs: You weren’t there. You didn’t see what I saw.
George wasn’t done. “You look sick, Karen. Well, you should be. I’ve seen some of the pictures of what they did. The stuff of nightmares. And did I mention they housed mostly women there? That’s right, your new pal is a torturer of women.”
Of course Ehle had lied. Again. He had warned her not to believe anyone in Berlin, after all. Had any of his story been true? She’d known better than to believe him. A foot soldier, even a magician, wouldn’t know the things he knew. So why had she trusted him? Why had she been so eager for him to be something better than what he obviously was?
“George,” Karen said, “I can see on your smug face that you think you’re riding in here to save the day, but let me be the first to tell you that nobody here needs you. You aren’t some white knight; you’re just a little boy whose feelings were hurt when he got left out. And before you show up here with your sanctimonious opinions about Ehle, maybe you should go ask the illustrious Dr. Haupt what service he rendered to the Fatherland during the war.” She looked down the stairs toward the basement. “Actually, I’ll go ask him right now.”
* * *
• • •
Karen caught Dr. Haupt just outside the door to Ehle’s holding cell. His skin looked jaundiced in the glow of the exposed bulbs. “Sir,” she said, “about what happened upstairs . . .”
“Karen,” Dr. Haupt said, surprised. “You do not need to apologize.”
“I wasn’t going to,” she said. Her mentor seemed uncomfortable. His pale fingers tapped weakly on the head of his cane. He was exhausted, she saw; drained by the harsh magic he had summoned against Ehle. “What you did up there was . . . unacceptable, sir. You of all people should know that.”
“Yes,” he said, his voice distant. “Yes, you are correct. Erwin and I have a history together from the war. I let that cloud my judgment.”
“What sort of history, sir?”
He pressed his lips together. “One I do not wish to relate,” he said. “Now, if you will excuse me, there are matters I need to discuss with my former colleague. You and I can speak more on this later.”
Karen stepped between Dr. Haupt and the door. “It’s interesting. George told me you all think Ehle is a war criminal,” she said carefully, “but then you also said you worked together. What exactly did you do in the war?” She’d wondered about this before, but never asked him. She had always given him the benefit of the doubt, as she had done to Ehle. But after seeing what Dr. Haupt was capable of upstairs, she was no longer willing to believe the best of any of them.
“My dear,” Dr. Haupt said, staring at her over the bronze rims of his glasses with cold eyes, “I understand these have been trying days of late. This debacle is far more complex than I anticipated when I chose you for this mission. If you—”
“Would you have still sent me?” she asked. “If the CIA had been forthcoming about the problem with the Wall, would you have still sent me to take care of it?”
Dr. Haupt tapped his cane on the concrete. “Karen, I am sure you—”
“Or would you have picked George?” Her eyes narrowed. “Or would you have come yourself? After all, you must have a wealth of knowledge about the Wall’s magic.” She paused and watched every deep line in his face, every muscle around his mouth and eyes, for a reaction. “It is purely Soviet magic, of course. But I’m sure you must have had reason to study it in the years since it appeared.”
Dr. Haupt licked his lips, a gesture she had never seen from him before. “You should be careful, my dear,” he said after a long, heavy silence, “in whom you place your trust. There are those who would deceive you.”
Karen let out a soft laugh. “If I had a nickel for every time a man told me that since I came to Berlin . . .” she said. “Seems everyone here is a liar, Dr. Haupt.” His face was sour, but he made no reply. “Just one last question before
I let you go, sir,” she said. “You aren’t really here for me or for Ehle.”
“That,” he said, licking those thin lips again, “is not a question.”
“And that,” she replied, “is not an answer.” Karen smiled. She wondered if it looked real.
“I won’t keep you any longer, sir. I know you have important work to do.” She stepped aside. “And you do look very tired.”
Dr. Haupt gave a curt nod. “We will discuss this later, Karen.”
She turned on a heel and hurried down the hall and around the corner while the agents inside the cell room began working the locks. She heard the door start to creak open. Dr. Haupt had something to hide. Maybe Ehle had lied about everything, maybe just about his past. She grabbed her locus.
Either way, she was going to find out.
THIRTY-SEVEN
It was not the first time Erwin Ehle found himself thrown back in a cell after a momentary release, but it was probably the fastest. The Soviets had kept him in prison for nearly a year after the war, but once they let him go free, it had taken six months before they changed their minds and threw him back behind iron bars. The Americans, it seemed, moved at a faster pace.
Or more likely, they acted with less singularity of purpose. Too many men with influence, too many agendas. Moscow had its share of each, but was far more adept at homogenizing its leaders. Everything for the Party, after all. The West could not decide on its highest virtue. Democracy? For some, possibly. However, Ehle doubted there were many in Washington who cared much for anything beyond reelection. Capitalism? Hardly. Capital, perhaps. They all wanted the destruction of the hated USSR, but that ambition was too nonspecific. Too many devils in too many details.
But burning former Nazis at the stake? Now that was something the whole world could agree on.
The CIA’s cell was certainly more comfortable than the KGB’s, though none of his Soviet torturers had ever used pain magic on him. The echoes of it still clung to him like fishhooks buried deep in his skin. The only solace he took was in the knowledge that such magic, while effective, was also remarkably draining on the caster. Max would be fighting a magnificent headache right about now.
For the first time that day, Ehle found his hand reaching for his lost locket. It touched, of course, on nothing but air. Old habits. He dropped his hand with a sigh. He missed the pictures it had contained, though the small, still images did little to capture the truth. And he considered how simple it would have been to blast open the cell’s door, even with their valiant attempt at guarding runes, if he had not thrown his locus away all those years ago. It had been a vain gesture; you cannot discard the past as easily as you can its mementos.
So much would be different, if he still had his magic to draw upon. His work would already be done.
The lock on the outer door thunked and the door came open. “You have a visitor,” the guard said. A moment later, Max Haupt stood in the doorway.
“Ah, Max. Have you come to finish what you started upstairs?” Ehle asked him in German as his visitor approached his cell. “I must admit, I had forgotten how skilled you were at such magic. Voelker was always very proud. Do your new masters give you as much opportunity to practice as did your old ones?”
The guard brought a chair for the director of the OMRD, then retreated, closing the door behind him. Max sat, his legs unsteady. His brows were pinched toward his nose, and his forehead dotted with sweat. “I am sorry,” he said. He sat up very straight, as he always had, to compensate for his small stature, Ehle assumed. It made him appear as though he was always uncomfortable. “I do not know what came over me. I acted in haste.”
Ehle sensed something then, something else in the room. It was subtle but unmistakable, if you knew to look. A smear of color by the door, then in a dark corner. He forced himself not to smile. “Your German is terrible, Max. It almost sounded like you were apologizing,” Ehle said, switching to English. “Let us continue in your new mother tongue.”
“What are you doing here, Erwin?”
“You know why I am here.”
“To help America defeat the Russians?”
“To right a wrong.”
Max laughed. “You have become a poet in your old age.”
“It is not too late,” Ehle said. “There is little time, but it is not too late. Help me. Let us end this, once and for all. We both have debts in need of repayment.”
“Do not speak to me of debts, Erwin. I have paid my dues.”
“To whom?”
“The world.”
“The world?” Ehle laughed. “To hell with the world. It was Germany we betrayed. It is Germany that we owe. And I doubt if your Western benefactors even know just how much you owe. Ah, I see it plainly on your face. They have no idea. It is truly a marvel you have survived this long when you write your secrets in every scowl. What would they think if they knew they employed the Butcher of London?”
“Erwin,” Max said, tutting. “Do not be so naïve. The Americans, for all their public moralism, can be pragmatic when required. They know exactly who I am. What I have done.”
“Your masters know your sins,” Erwin said. “But what of those who work for you? What of Karen?”
Max cracked his cane on the concrete. “Enough. I did not come here to be lectured by you.”
“So why did you come back to Germany, old friend?”
“I came here to prevent a war.”
“How? You think you can restore the Wall? If you thought that, you would have been here days ago.”
“It was you, was it not?”
“How could I unravel a spell mostly designed by the great Max Haupt?”
“You could not,” Max said. “Unless the weaknesses were there from the beginning.”
“But that would mean,” Ehle said, “that while you and the other master magicians were determining how to hide away Germany’s shame and divide its people, someone working alongside you was already planning to undo your work. That would take remarkable foresight and patience.”
“Do you think I am impressed? If you were half the magician you once were, the Wall would be a memory now, and yet it stands.”
Ehle came forward, pressed against the bars of his cell. “Help me, Max.”
“Help you to do what?”
“Destroy the book. We owe Germany at least that much.”
Max rested both hands on the head of his cane. The last decade had aged him, harder than the years warranted. His face was gouged by wrinkles, his hair thinned, his knuckles knobbed. Ehle wondered how much of the man he knew remained.
“You are without power,” Max said after a long pause. “I envy you. There is a freedom in that. The freedom to be a poet. I have no such freedom. I only ever wanted to be a magician. Instead I have been made a politician.”
“A dire fate indeed,” Ehle said. “But you can use that influence to do what we must.”
“Do you know what keeps the world safe, Erwin? Not poetry. Deterrence. The West has the atomic bomb, but we are not so foolish as to think the Soviets will not get their own eventually. We will build bigger ones, and then so will they. And we will have peace.”
“That is peace?”
“Would you invade your neighbor if he had the power to burn your cities to ash?” He shook his head. “No. In all of our history, man has proven to be addicted to war. No virtue has proven stronger. Perhaps fear will be the answer.”
“Then build your bombs. See what sort of world they usher in. But what Voelker unleashed in Auttenberg . . . it must be put to an end.”
Max’s grip tightened on his cane. “Do not lecture me about the book. I know it better than anyone.”
“That is why you must help me.”
Max scoffed. “If we take the poet’s path and destroy it, what then? Wait for it to return in some forsaken corner of the world, for the Sovi
ets or someone worse to stumble upon it? The book always returns. You know this.”
Ehle felt his stomach drop. He had wondered how much of Max had changed with the years, and now he had his answer: very little. The only difference now was the flag he saluted.
“And what, old friend, is the politician’s path?” Ehle asked. Max did not answer. “Ah. That is why you have come back to the land of your youth, not for the Wall or for me or for your pupil. You have come for the book.”
Max stood. “The war was a long time ago,” he said. “Perhaps you will find mercy for your crimes, as I have. Good luck, Erwin.”
As the outer door closed and locked behind Max, Ehle closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the bars. We are all fools, he thought, cursed to replay our foolishness again and again, generation to generation. But not forever. No, only until we at last complete that task for which we are uniquely suited: our own destruction.
Ehle allowed himself the smile he had stifled earlier. He watched the blur in the corner start to move. It approached the cell. A moment later, Karen stood at the bars.
“Last time we met here,” Ehle said, “you arrived in a more official capacity.”
“Last time, I still trusted them enough to ask permission,” she replied. Her voice was cold. “Luckily they haven’t gotten any better at understanding magic in the last week.”
“Men’s minds change slowly,” Ehle said. “You slipped in while the guard was getting the chair? Portuguese Light Bending?”
She nodded. “Crude, but hard to detect if you don’t move around too much. Dr. Haupt is weakened by his little display upstairs or he’d definitely have sensed it.”
“It was a risk.”
Karen put her hands on the cell door. “You were no soldier. You were a Nazi bastard.” She could not meet his eye. “And you lied to me. Again. That’s a dangerous habit for a man looking for allies.”
“I told you many things,” he said. “The important ones were true.”
“You wanted my help, so you lied.”
Breach Page 19
