The Notorious Pagan Jones

by Nina Berry

  She glared at Devin. He was unmoved.

  “Gentlemen first,” she said with a sour smile.

  “Sure you don’t want to try the backseat yourself?” Devin shoved the passenger seatback forward and squeezed his long legs into the narrow space that barely qualified as two backseats. If the soft top of the convertible had been up, he never would have fit.

  Pagan stared at the car. The Benz was a little older than her Corvette had been, probably a ’55 190sl, but well kept, with bigger side fins than her Chevy. It had red wall tires instead of white, and a slightly boxier profile. But the overall feel of the two cars was very similar—elegant, sporty, exciting.

  The back of her neck was perspiring. Pagan forced herself to take a deep breath. “I didn’t think decadent Western luxuries like this were allowed in your country,” she said to Thomas.

  He shrugged. “My father was a party official, and when this was confiscated from the original owner, he decided he’d better take possession. Anyone with less commitment to the Party might have been contaminated by it.” He popped his eyebrows up with a crafty smile.

  “Nice of him to do everyone else a favor.” The car was beautiful, but Pagan’s feet didn’t want to move any closer to it. Devin had settled in, and Thomas pulled the seat back into place for her.

  “Father rarely drove it, of course, and I don’t much either since he passed away. It’s too Western to be paraded around. But I thought I’d take it out just for you.” He gestured to the open air above the car. “No roof means better sightseeing. Perhaps we’ll spot that building in your photograph!”

  “I’ll keep my eyes peeled.” She moved toward it and put her hand on the smooth crimson door. All that red. She took a deep breath, fanning herself with her Hermès clutch. “But if Devin really must come with us, hadn’t we better take a bigger car?”

  Devin was scrutinizing her as if she were a strange new life-form. “Since when do you care about my comfort?”

  “I don’t!” she said a little too loudly, then reined herself in. Waves of heat were washing over her, even though it couldn’t have been more than seventy-five degrees. “But you look ridiculous folding yourself up like that. And your knees will poke me in the back the whole way there.”

  Thomas frowned. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to inconvenience anyone…”

  “No, no, it’s not you.” Pagan pushed a smile onto her lips for Thomas. The thought of getting in the sports car, of being behind that familiar swoop of dashboard, of sitting there helpless while it was moving, made her dizzy. She took two steps back from it, swallowing down the bile that was rising in her throat.

  If she got in that thing, she’d die.

  Some tiny part of her brain knew that wasn’t true, but every other part of her body was about to riot if she got any closer.

  Devin was still examining her. He probably saw every bead of sweat on her brow, but she couldn’t care about that now. She had to get out of this. She waved a hand toward Devin. “Everything would be fine if he didn’t insist on coming along.”

  “I can be the villain in this story if you like,” Devin said. His assessing gaze was gone, his face mild. He scooched his way back out of the car with relative grace.

  “Give me a moment to arrange for our usual car and driver. How is that for you, Thomas? We can follow you as you drive your car back to East Berlin and meet you at your mother’s house.”

  Thomas shrugged. “Of course, whatever is most comfortable.”

  Devin slammed the door of the Mercedes sports car shut, and in that moment, as he stood close to her, said in an undertone to Pagan, “I’m sorry. I should have realized.”

  Before she could reply, he was walking back into the hotel. She backed farther away from the car, relieved.

  Within five minutes, the big black limousine pulled up in front of the Hilton, and she and Devin got comfortable in the back, then followed Thomas in his red convertible through the busy streets of West Berlin.

  The columns of the Brandenburg Gate loomed as they drove through, slowing just long enough to be waved on by an East German policeman in his olive-green uniform.

  “What a contrast,” Devin said. “Back in Hitler’s prime days, particularly on his birthday, this whole area was hung with Nazi flags. They installed extra columns with swastikas on top or eagles, leading up to the gate, and everything was red and black and white. Now look at it.”

  “Hitler’s birthday,” Pagan said to herself. Something niggled in the back of her brain, like a reminder of an event she had once thought important and then forgotten. “I think I remember seeing photos of them all goose-stepping past him and giving him presents.”

  “It was a national holiday in Germany while he was in power. Now people go out of their way to ignore it.”

  “When was his birthday?” Pagan asked. “I want to be sure not to bake a cake.”

  “April 20,” Devin said. “He died ten days after his fifty-sixth birthday, on April 30.”

  Again came that strange, jumpy feeling that Pagan was forgetting something. Something significant. But why should Hitler’s birthday have any special meaning for her?

  “Welcome to East Germany,” Devin said. “Where the people own everything, yet have so very little.”

  They entered Pariser Platz in East Berlin, and the bustle of the West faded into uneasy silence. Only one car other than theirs and Thomas’s was driving down the Unter den Linden. Despite four rows of young trees, two of them lining a walk down the center of the street expressly made for a lovely stroll, the boulevard hosted few pedestrians, and fewer businesses.

  Piles of rubble stood next to once-grand buildings with facades now pitted by bomb blasts, windows and sconces stripped of color, statues broken, their hands and noses gone. They passed two bicyclists and square-built Trabants parked by the curb. Scooting along in front of them, Thomas’s red convertible looked too shiny and colorful for this gray, underpopulated place.

  “It’s a ghost town,” Pagan said. She watched a little boy bounce a battered ball against the side of a building all by himself.

  “Committing genocide takes a toll,” Devin said in a dry tone that gave her a chill. “Many also died in the war, and in the past ten years, 20 percent more have fled for the West. Every day the numbers escaping into West Berlin get higher.”

  They passed a building halfway through reconstruction, but no one was working on it. Women in boxy dresses that didn’t quite approximate fashion in the West wheeled perambulators or sat smoking at tiny tables outside cafés. Men in flat caps and utilitarian corduroy trousers hustled along the tree-lined sidewalk, heads down.

  “There’s the Soviet embassy.” Devin pointed to a plain new edifice to their right. Two men in overalls were sweeping with large push brooms near a bust of Lenin as big as a boulder.

  He pointed down a road as they passed. “That’s Friedrich Strasse, once a main street in town. North, that way, if you go far enough, you’ll hit the French sector. Go South—” he pointed to the right “—and you’ll find yourself in the American sector.”

  “Must be confusing for the mailmen,” Pagan said. She peered down Friedrich Strasse. Although the street itself was clear of debris, every building lining either side was a bombed-out skeleton, a series of vacant shells covered in dust, pointing jagged fingers of stone at the sky. “Holy cats!”

  “In 1945, most of Berlin looked like that,” Devin said. “Dresden was even worse.”

  “They’ve rebuilt way less than West Berlin over here,” Pagan said. “Maybe East Germany should rethink what they’re doing.” Hanging down from the roof of a new building was a large black-and-white poster of Krushchev, bald and bulldog stern, next to a smaller picture of a man with glasses and a goatee that failed to hide his prim, thin-lipped mouth.

  “Walter Ulbricht,” Devin said, following he
r gaze. “First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party, which means he’s the leader of East Germany. Behind his back they call him Comrade Ice. He’s not the sort of man who will blame himself for the mass exodus. So he blames the West.”

  “He’s got to do something soon, or he won’t have any people to order around,” she said.

  A stationary tank with a Soviet red hammer and sickle painted on it went by. Several soldiers in darker green with guns slung over their shoulders stood smoking next to it.

  “That’s what’s got everyone worried,” said Devin.

  “But what can he do? Time magazine said the agreement with the West won’t let them close the border inside Berlin.”

  Devin looked grim. “And if they closed the border anyway, what could we do about it?”

  Pagan frowned. “We’ve got troops in West Berlin, right? So do the British and the French…”

  “What do you think would happen if we sent tanks and soldiers to reopen the border?”

  Pagan’s hands were cold. “War. And both sides have the bomb.”

  Devin nodded. “It all depends on what Krushchev and Ulbricht think Kennedy is prepared to do.”

  A lone tram rumbled in front of them along its tracks between the blank facades of nameless buildings. They’d reached the wide-open Alexanderplatz, and their car turned to follow Thomas’s north. More pedestrians were going about their business here, moving in and out of colorless stores around the circle of tram tracks with their shopping bags.

  “Nuclear war to save Berlin?” Pagan asked, not really looking for an answer. “That would just wipe it off the map.”

  She caught a glimpse of Thomas’s blond head ahead of them, shining in the sunlight. “If Ulbricht is so worried about people fleeing to the West, how did Thomas get permission to shoot a movie there? You’d think they’d crack down on things like that.”

  “They have,” Devin said. “Permits to work in the West have been curtailed, and the remaining ones are under strict watch. But Thomas is special. Not only is he a big film star in East Germany, but his father was a hero of the Communist party and a good friend of Walter Ulbricht’s.”

  “So not all of the proletariat are equal,” she said.

  “Karl Marx would not be pleased.”

  “When did Thomas’s father die?” she asked.

  “Two years ago, a car accident,” Devin said.

  “A car accident?” Sympathy sat heavy on Pagan. “Was the father driving, or…?”

  “He was driving, alone. Nobody else was killed. He drove into a wall. They say he fell asleep at the wheel.”

  “They say?” She angled a questioning look at him.

  “He was trying to become First Secretary of the Party at the time. He was very popular.”

  “So he died while campaigning against his good friend Walter Ulbricht?”

  Devin’s tone was heavy with sarcasm. “His very best friend in the world.”

  And Pagan had thought Hollywood was cutthroat. They’d moved onto smaller streets now, with fewer huge blank-faced buildings and more old apartments that had escaped the bombing.

  Pagan stared out, searching for the winged griffin in her grandmother’s photo. All she saw were curtained windows and a few brave flower boxes.

  They passed a park, where women in faded dresses sat in the sun, watching children tumble on the grass, then turned right, slowing before a nondescript older building six stories high. An elderly man inching along with a cane turned to stare at their large black car.

  “Where’s Thomas?” She’d lost sight of the red convertible.

  “He parks his car about a block away,” Devin said. “Indoor garage space isn’t easy to find. He’ll be along.”

  How could Devin know exactly where Thomas parked his car? There was something strange going on between those two. As Devin settled back in his leather seat, Pagan clunked the door handle down and swung it open. “I’ll keep an eye out,” she said, and got out of the car.

  Trees lined the street, shading the clean sidewalk. The entrance to the nondescript building was three steps up to a plain door. Pagan pushed the car door shut and scanned the six stories of windows.

  On the second floor, or what Europeans called the first floor, a cute girl about twelve years old with her long blond hair in a ponytail was staring down at Pagan, her eyes wide, mouth open, as if she’d seen a ghost.

  Pagan grinned and waved at her. The girl’s face lit up. She flapped her hand back at Pagan furiously. A very pretty blonde middle-aged woman walked up behind her, saying something, and the girl pointed vigorously at Pagan, explaining.

  The woman, who had to be her mother, arced her gaze out of the window, spotted Pagan, and she smiled with a familiar dimpled warmth. She had to be Thomas’s mother.

  She lifted the latch to angle the window open and put her face through the gap. “Hello, Fraulein Jones, is it? One moment and we’ll be right down!” She put a hand on the girl’s jittering head, laughing. “As you can see, Karin is very excited to meet you!”

  Pagan waved again. “Hello, Karin! Guten Tag!”

  Karin stopped bouncing, putting her hands to her mouth, suddenly self-conscious. “Hello,” she said, barely audible, before her mother put her arm around her and led her away from the window.

  “I bet Karin’s been staring out of that window all morning, waiting.” Thomas came striding up the sidewalk, fishing in his pocket to bring out a key. Devin still hadn’t gotten out of the car.

  “Just a minute.” Pagan opened the car door and stuck her head in, squinting into the dark depths to find Devin still coiled there, deep in thought, hands steepled. He turned to her, removing his sunglasses. “Thomas is here,” she said. “We can go in.”

  “You go on,” Devin said. “I have to run an errand.”

  “An errand,” she said flatly. “In East Berlin?”

  His eyes, nearly black in the darkness of the car’s interior, were preoccupied. “I’ll be back in an hour or so.”

  “But…” She’d been longing to cast him off, and here he was casting her off. And not telling her why. Could he be more contrary?

  He waited and said nothing.

  “All right,” she said, and withdrew to slam the door a little harder than she should have. Damned mysterious son of a…

  Thomas took her hand. His square fingers were strong and warm. “Don’t mind him,” he said, and led her up the steps, unlocked the front door, and held it open for her. “Just up the stairs,” he said.

  Inside was a dark, plain hallway lined with doors leading toward the back of the building. A narrow stairway pungent with the smell of wood varnish interrupted it halfway down, and Karin was already thumping down it at top speed, ponytail swaying. She came to an abrupt stop at the bottom of the stairs as Pagan walked up, holding out her hand.

  “So nice to meet you, Karin,” she said.

  Karin took Pagan’s gloved hand, eyes wide, and shook it downward, hard, once. Pagan laughed and pulled her in to kiss her on the cheek.

  “What have you been making?” Pagan asked. The scent of rubber cement was a dead giveaway.

  “Something for you,” Karin said, ducking her head, shy again.

  “For me? Well, I have something for you, too.” She reached over Karin’s head to shake her mother’s hand. “Hello, Frau Kruger. Thank you so much for having me over.”

  The woman’s hand was tiny, but her handshake was firm. “It is our great pleasure. Karin, step aside and let Miss Jones up the stairs, please.”

  Pagan glanced back. No sign of Devin. What was he up to? And did it involve his pistol? There was no way to know. She took Karin’s hand and said, “Komm mit mir die Treppe hinauf.” Come with me up the stairs. It was fun to speak German again. Her accent was pretty decent, given how long it had been.

/>   Karin jumped up and down, squeezing her hand. “Sie sprechen Deutsch!”

  “Almost as well as you speak English,” said Pagan.

  The apartment was a clean, modest two-bedroom with several bright windows overlooking the trees below. There was no peeling paint or crumbling brick, but it had a faded air, with doors that didn’t quite shut all the way and unexpected dips in the wooden floor.

  Cheerful watercolors of gardens and the sea were interspersed along the walls, fresh flowers had been arranged in several white vases in strategic spots, and a large banner hung over the table with hand-pasted crooked letters made of felt that spelled out, in English, Welcome to Our Home, Pagan Jones.

  There were silver stars scattered over and under the words. Pagan removed her hat and hugged Karin, said “Danke,” and pulled out the box of Belgian chocolates and a Wonder Woman comic from May she’d found at a newsstand that morning.

  Karin’s eyes got round at the comic. “Skyscraper Wonder Woman!” She stared at the drawing of a huge woman in red, white, and blue climbing the Empire State Building. “Who is she?”

  “I hope you don’t mind,” Pagan said over Karin’s head to Frau Kruger. “I’m corrupting her a little with Western nonsense and chocolate.”

  “Children need nonsense,” Frau Kruger said, but she put her hand under Karin’s chin to get her attention, and said in German, “You can read that, but only here in the apartment, you understand? Only family should see you reading that.”

  Karin nodded solemnly.

  “Show Pagan around,” Thomas said, and shot Pagan a smile over his shoulder. “Lunch won’t take long.”

  “Nun,” said Karin, looking around the small apartment, hands on her hips. “Of course here is where we eat.” She made a cursory wave at the dining table.

  “Where’s the window where I first saw you?” Pagan asked. She needed to see if Devin and the car had left yet.

  “Oh, in the Wohnzimmer. Here.” Karin grabbed Pagan by the hand and walked her a few feet down the hall to a small but brightly decorated living room with three large windows facing the trees.