The Notorious Pagan Jones

by Nina Berry

  She was trapped, the thing she hated most in the world. There were always options, a way out. There had to be, or she was dead.

  She looked down at the gun in her unsteady hand. She could try to shoot him in the dark, but even if she could hit him, gunshots would probably bring other soldiers.

  Still, it was better than letting him shoot her.

  But it was best if nobody got shot. That was her goal for the rest of the evening. That and getting across the border and telling Devin Black what she thought of him.

  Picturing Devin roused a profound ache in her chest. At the very least, she needed to see him once more, to brush her fingers over his face. Then she could die from all this anxiety.

  The door to the artist’s studio groaned. She had to decide now. Her only advantage was that he was progressing slowly, exploring every hiding place before he moved on.

  Hiding place.

  She looked up.

  Delicately, she reached for the metal pipe above her head that supported the scaffold. Placing the toe of one shoe on the cross brace below it, she hoisted herself up.

  The platform didn’t move, squeak, or rattle under her weight, thank God.

  Her hands were slippery from the oozing scrapes from her fall. She wiped them on her suit dress before strong-arming her way up to the next level, hips to the bar like a gymnast before she fell forward and crawled onto the platform.

  A cold breeze hit her. Shivering, she found the embedded rungs of a ladder and scaled it quickly. Her shoes made tiny, hollow metal noises as she ascended. She prayed to the goddess of alcoholic actresses that the relentless soldier wouldn’t hear.

  She reached the third and last level of the platform, hands throbbing, and had to pick her way carefully through bizarre arrays of broken gargoyles and praying stone figures arranged in rows. She knelt down to keep her profile low as she looked over the edge.

  A footfall landed on the cobblestones of the alley below. She craned her neck without moving other muscles to see over the edge of the scaffold, looking down on the relentless Stasi soldier.

  He was breathing hard, fighting to keep his panting quiet. His nose and cheekbones glinted with sweat. He had the rifle in both hands, swinging it this way and that as he peered down the alley in both directions.

  Her own hands were slick with perspiration and blood. She set the gun on her knees and wiped her hands on her skirt again. If he turned around and went back inside now, it might save his—and her—life. Even if she killed him before he could fire back, she really didn’t want to bring anyone running.

  But really, she’d killed enough people for one lifetime.

  She picked up a piece of broken stone in one hand and steadied it with the other, and saw with an odd clarity that it was a small bust of Karl Marx, placed here somehow among the other broken creatures.

  Thanks for volunteering, Karl. She peered over the edge of the scaffold again.

  The soldier was underneath her, not centered exactly, but if her aim was true and her hands not too shaky…

  The Stasi soldier turned, about to go. But he halted, staring at the metal frame of the scaffolding in front of him. As she watched, he followed the line of pipes up, his head tilting back.

  His gaze met Pagan’s with a shock.

  Then he smiled. “There you are,” he said with satisfaction, and raised his rifle.

  His helmet protected the top of his head, but he was looking up. Pagan hefted Karl Marx in both hands and dropped it.

  It struck him between his eyes with a thunk like a hammer striking heavy cloth, and cracked in two.

  The soldier’s eyes rolled back. Blood poured down his scalp. He staggered, reaching blindly toward the scaffold for support.

  Pagan scrabbled around her platform for another statue, grabbing something, anything, in case she needed to hit him again.

  But the soldier dropped to his knees. His unfocused eyes scanned the air above in confusion and anger, as if trying to find her. Then his face smoothed to a serene blank, and he toppled to the ground.

  She didn’t believe it at first. She stayed frozen, the wind whistling between the metal pipes of the scaffold, staring down at his still body until her trembling started to rattle the stone monsters around her. With her hands shaking, it took her longer to descend the scaffold than it had to climb up.

  The soldier lay on his side, blood pooling in his helmet. His hair, she could see now, was dark auburn. Lying there he looked very young and vulnerable, not relentless at all.

  She hunkered down and put her hand on his neck. It was warm. His pulse thudded under the skin, and the bleeding was slowing. Good. He’d live to fight capitalism another day.

  She sat back on her heels and took a deep breath, considering his bloody profile. She should feel sorry for him, she supposed. But she couldn’t summon up any feeling now beyond exhaustion and an all-consuming desire to get “home” to the Hilton in West Berlin. It was tempting to steal his heavy coat and get warm, but it was far too large for her, and the moment someone realized there was a girl inside it, she’d get arrested for spying or something.

  She did take his rifle and his walkie-talkie and dropped them both in a large barrel of the scummiest water she’d ever seen, along with the pistol she’d taken from him earlier. She kept his flashlight for herself, since it might come in handy, and went through his outer pockets to see if he had anything else she could use. She came back with a wallet, a stick of gum, a pack of filthy-smelling Russian cigarettes, and a very nice steel lighter bearing the flag/rifle seal of the Stasi in red, yellow, and black.

  She unwrapped the gum and thought of Devin Black, snagging Miss Edwards’s Zippo lighter back at Lighthouse Reformatory. That seemed like aeons ago, yet it had been just last week.

  She stuck the gum in her mouth and looked inside the wallet­—a few notes of currency and an ID card bearing the name Alaric Vogel. She tossed it onto the ground beside his head.

  “Well, Alaric,” she said, standing up and putting his lighter in her purse. “You owe me, so I’m taking your lighter. There’s someone I want to show it to, and you can always get another one.”

  She flicked on the flashlight and left him, following the beam through the warm artist’s studio, through the fallen church, back out to the street. Her watch said it was just past two in the morning, and her footsteps sounded a lonely dead-of-night echo down the deserted street.

  With no idea where she was, she turned the nearest corner. Lifting the flashlight, she could finally read the street sign. Not that she knew many street names, but what the hell.

  “Friedrich Strasse.” She said it out loud and looked up at the rising sliver of moon, her spirit rising, too, in triumph. “Friedrich Strasse!”

  This was the very street she’d looked down while riding in the backseat of the Mercedes-Benz limo, Devin Black at her side. She’d remarked on how badly destroyed it still was from the war. This same street Devin had said was one of the few which bisected the city. It began in West Berlin, cut south through a bulge of East Berlin, and came out in West Berlin again.

  She scanned Friedrich Strasse in both directions with no idea which was north or south. The good news was that, if she walked far enough in either direction, she’d get to a crossing back into West Berlin, one where she hadn’t just abetted an East German escape.

  She clicked the flashlight off, and set off at a good clip down the sidewalk. It, at least, was clear of rubble. But the buildings on either side of her reminded her of a line of plastic skulls her father used to set up along the mantelpiece for Halloween, with decrepit windows instead of empty eyes and uneven protrusions of brick poking up like broken teeth.

  She had no idea how far she walked down Friedrich Strasse, but her feet were throbbing nearly an hour later when she heard the roar of big engines and spotted a line of tanks lur
ching out of a ruined theater.

  “Jeez Louise!” A man across the street shouted in English. He wore a Hawaiian shirt over khaki trousers and was just emerging from a small side street. “Tanks out the wazoo!”

  The flat American voice, slightly slurred from a night out on the town, was music to Pagan’s ears. Three other men in similar casual clothes staggered sloppily out of the darkness behind him and stared at the procession of armed might.

  “Hoo, boy,” one said, leaning on a hand wearily against the ruined building beside him. “This can’t be good news.”

  Pagan trotted across the street toward them. “Are you guys American?”

  All four heads turned to her. Eyes lit up. “Hey, little lady!”

  She skittered to a stop in front of them. “Boy, am I happy to see you!”

  The tallest one peered down at her, mouth twisting with speculation to one side. “What is a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”

  “Trying to get back to civilization,” she said. “But I keep bumping into things like that.” She pointed at the tanks. “I’m Pagan, by the way.”

  “Pagan Jones?” the shortest one said, leaning in a bit too close, then jerking himself away as if realizing he’d been rude. She could smell the beer on him, but his smile was bemused and benign. “Why, so you are. Will wonders never cease. A real live movie star.”

  “Nice to meet you,” the tall one said, shaking her hand. “I’m Bob. Don’t mind Dickie. He’s harmless.”

  They all introduced themselves, and in short order, Pagan was strolling down Friedrich Strasse surrounded by four US army soldiers who’d used one of their off-duty days to explore what Dickie called East Berlin’s “less savory bits.”

  “They say it’s less savory,” Dickie added. “But I found it pretty tasty myself!”

  So Pagan approached the border of East and West Berlin in a guffawing clump of American goodwill. The men were amazed at the newly installed barbed wire and conglomeration of trucks and tanks, but quietly critical of the formation of the armed troops.

  An East German captain marched up, yelling, but Bob handled him with a self-deprecating smile and some decent German. After a brief display of their passports and consultation with another officer, the captain had his men push a cement barrier aside wide enough to let them through single file.

  There were no American troops waiting on the other side, but a few West German police had gathered in the shadows. One stepped out nervously and waved them forward, asking for their passports in a rattled mixture of German and En­glish that showed just how bananas the situation was.

  “Does the army know what’s going on?” her new friends asked, but the policeman shook his head and waved them down the street.

  He examined Pagan’s passport for what seemed like forever, checking it against a handwritten list. She asked to make a call, but he shrugged, looking helplessly around the dark deserted street fronted with tanks, and then he let her go.

  Bob, Dickie, and friends had gone. Any possible taxi cab had been frightened off by the tanks. So Pagan started walking again, looking for a pay phone or a cab.

  Unlike deadly quiet East Berlin, here heads were poking out of windows, staring toward the border. Voices called to each other across narrow streets, spreading the news. Pagan forced herself onward on legs made of egg noodles, her head buzzing with fatigue, craning her neck for a taxi, and stumbling over cracked paving stones.

  The streetlights blurred in front of her watering eyes. She hugged herself, the shaking from the cold penetrating to the bone. She stopped and leaned against a lamppost. Maybe if she just sat down here for a while to rest, she’d gather enough strength to go on.

  Here in the West, at least, there was life and noise. Here, if she lay down on the sidewalk in a coma, someone kind would eventually call an ambulance. Here she would not be shot or forced to run for her life.

  She barely registered a car doing a U-turn in the street next to her. Someone was shouting, and it pulled up beside her with a screech.

  Was it a cab? No, just another black Mercedes. She leaned against the lamppost again, her friend in need, and tried to keep herself from falling into a sickening blackness. Her knees gave. Her head fell back.

  But she didn’t hit the ground. The world swooped around her as strong arms caught her and cradled her close. A coat flicked around her shoulders, and a voice she knew was whispering her name in a thick Scottish accent.

  “Pagan,” he said. “Pagan, thank God.”

  “Devin.” Curling into his delicious warmth, she looked up and saw stormy blue eyes staring starkly down at her. She didn’t know how he’d found her, but somehow it didn’t surprise her that he had.

  She brushed her cold fingers over his cheek, just as she’d imagined doing back in that ruined church. “Devin.”

  “They made it out,” Devin said, his arms tightening around her with an intensity that would have frightened her if she wasn’t so happy. “Because of you, Thomas and his sister and his mother are all safe, Pagan. And now so are you.”

  She closed her eyes, smiling.

  Something warm and soft brushed her forehead. She wondered if it was his lips. She was indeed safe now, and as he picked her up in his arms to take her to the car, she fell without regret into the blackness.

  Pagan woke up in her big cozy bed in the Hilton. A sliver of golden daylight cut past the blackout curtains across her tattered Dior suit dress, hanging over the back of a chair. She doubted even a good cleaning would be enough to make it wearable again, but that didn’t matter much now. It had been a true and loyal ally during her long night. Perhaps Dior would consider featuring her in a campaign for “grace under fire” fashion.

  She stretched lazily and turned over to find Devin Black asleep beside her. Her heart jumped like a startled cat, but she stayed very still, not wanting to wake him. He looked so young and innocent with his lips slightly parted, his eyelashes dark smudges on his tanned cheeks.

  She was lying warm under the covers, but Devin lay on top of them, still wearing his shirt and pants from the night before. She double-checked herself and flushed as she realized she was in her bra and panties. She pulled her knees up to her chest. Had Devin been the one that put her to bed?

  He inhaled a long breath and opened densely blue eyes.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  He blinked and abruptly sat up, looking over her shoulder at the clock in alarm. “Crivens! I’m so sorry.”

  “Crivens?” she said.

  He hoisted himself off the bed, running a hand through his hair, which had spiked up along the top of his head as he slept. His long eyelids were heavy with embarrassment and fatigue. “I didna mean to fall asleep here. Nothing happened, I swear to you. I was just—” he made a sweeping motion with his hand at her lying there on the bed “—making sure you were all right, and I must have been very tired.”

  He scratched the back of his head, looking uncomfortable and adorable.

  “You’re very Scottish when you’re sleepy,” she said.

  He relaxed and shook his head. “I’m always Scottish, as you can see. I’m sorry for lying to you about that.”

  “And about a lot of other things,” she said.

  “Yes, yes.” He dropped his hands with resignation to his sides. “Will a blanket apology do?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” she said. It was fun, this discomfited version of Devin. She sat up and let the sheet fall to her waist. It was just a bra, after all. She’d revealed more in Beach Bound Beverly. “Was it you who undressed me last night?”

  “Oh, dear God.” He stared at her for a split second, his cheeks reddening, eyes wide until, with visible effort, he turned his back. “Yes. But I promise you it was just to make sure you weren’t seriously wounded. I considered taking you to the hospital, but
there was no need, and you would have been recognized. It’s better if nobody else knows what happened. And before we go anywhere, I need to debrief you.”

  “Looks like you’ve de-briefed me already,” she said. “Took my garters off and everything.”

  His shoulders slumped and he rubbed one hand over his forehead. “You were just so beaten up. I am sorry, but I needed to be sure you were all right. I dressed some cuts on your legs, too.”

  She lifted the coverlet and saw that indeed, there were bandages taped over her clean, sore knees and down one calf. She didn’t even remember hurting herself there, but she could feel the sting of the wound now. Warmth expanded through her chest, knowing that he’d taken such good care of her.

  But she was still kind of mad at him, for all the lies, the manipulations. She couldn’t let him off the hook yet. “So you’re a doctor as well as a studio executive and a spy?” she asked.

  He exhaled and moved toward the half-open door to her bedroom, averting his eyes. “I owe you a lot of explaining, and some breakfast. Or possibly lunch. So how about I order some food and we both get ready for the day.”

  “But I want to lie in bed all day.” She lay back on her pillow, clutching the coverlet to her chest, her hair spread out around her head, and pouted. “I think I’ve earned it.” She made sure to roll her Rs, getting very Scottish on earned it.

  He turned in the doorway to survey her, and a devilish look overtook him, as if he was about to say something scandalous. But he caught himself, ducked his head, smiling, and said, “As your legal guardian, I’m not allowed to have an opinion on what you do in bed, but you should know Thomas asked to see you when you were ready. He’s all right, but he’s in the hospital with a broken leg.”

  “Oh, my God, Thomas! What about Karin and Frau Kruger?”

  “They’re exhausted and shaken up, but fine. Get ready and you can see for yourself.”

  “All right, all right!” She whipped back the covers as he departed the bedroom, softly closing the door behind him.