The fool made it so easy. He used his own name on his passport and credit cards. And he seemed to spend days on end solid, of all things. It was as if the man had a death-wish. Perhaps he did. Well, Fritz wasn’t interested in sending Pfeffer to his final rest, but he enjoyed tormenting him in small ways.
Convincing Hansel and Georg to break free of their Uncle Pfeffer had been one of Fritz’s more satisfying accomplishments. It would have been nice to have the other three of the group back in the fold as well, but two was a good start. And those two had been oh-so-eager to tell tales of their Uncle Pfeffer. These conversations, Fritz recorded, naturally. Most of them had been appallingly dull catalogings of faults (as if Fritz didn’t know these already), but there had been a snippet here and there of great interest.
One of them—the most important—Fritz missed the first time round. Now and again, Fritz listened to these recordings hoping to find something that might lead him back to re-capturing Hansel and Georg. If they thought “Out of sight, Out of mind” applied to them, they were mistaken. Fritz was eager for a bit of revenge. Just a bit, mind, as the boys might prove valuable in luring the others from their cadre to rejoin dear Uncle Fritz. So he listened to the old conversations hoping to discover clues as to where the boys were most likely to be found.
They’d been close to their sister, Martina. Perhaps someday Fritz would interrogate her as to her brothers’ whereabouts….
And then the day came when Fritz was ready to do just this.
In one of the recordings, Georg was complaining that Uncle Pfeffer was more interested in destroying their ability to ripple than in utilizing it. Good God! Was this why Fritz had never observed Pfeffer vanishing? It was supremely frustrating that he could not simply ask Franz or Father if they’d seen Pfeffer turn invisible in the last year. So: had Pfeffer succeeded in developing a drug that would prevent it? The weak-minded fool would be only too likely to use it on himself rather than test it on others.
What if? What if?
It was time to put out feelers. What sort of raw materials was Pfeffer procuring these days? Thanks to Georg and Hansel, Fritz knew Pfeffer had set up shop in one of Helmann’s buildings. When first he’d heard, Fritz had planned to have Pfeffer summarily evicted. But then he thought better of that plan. If Pfeffer remained, Fritz could keep an eye on him.
So he did.
He learned what went into the building in Montpellier. He learned what came out. He learned what hours Pfeffer kept and what sort of equipment he ordered. And, because Fritz was a patient man, he bided his time. If Pfeffer could develop a “cure” for the chameleon disease, so much the better. Who knew industrial espionage could prove to be such an amusing pastime? And it might prove a very advantageous one.
18
CULL THE HERD
Sint Maarten, The Caribbean
Two years ago, after Matteo had left them—had left her—Martina had lain in bed for a week. And then two weeks. And then, when three weeks had passed without a word from Matteo, her love soured like milk left in the sun. It was easier to hate him than to pine for the taste of his mouth on hers.
She had pretended to forget him in her final year of training for the elite Angel Corps, but she was sure she’d dreamt of him during those months when she slumbered, hypnotized and invisible in Rouen, one of five sleeper agents awaiting Helmann’s words to awaken her. She was sure she must have dreamt of Matteo then, because, to her great shame, she dreamed of him still.
When the sun rose over Sint Maarten, Martina’s eyes were red and swollen and her belly was a hard, shrunken knot. She couldn’t remember when she’d eaten last. A bagel on the plane, maybe?
She rolled over in her bed, and as she did so, the difference between what she’d planned to do here and what she’d discovered came crashing down on her again, splintering like a broken mirror, slicing her heart in tiny, bloodied ribbons.
Desperate to quit the memory, she rose and left the room.
“I’m cooking bread,” said Matteo, standing by the sink in the other room.
Martina looked around. The kitchen had neither oven nor stove. There was a plastic cooler that she supposed served as refrigeration, if ice could be obtained in such a place. She thought she smelled something burning out of doors, so she shuffled outside to investigate.
Between the two dead trees, a hammock had been strung. There was an awkward pillow composed of bundled clothes. Or rags. Martina couldn’t tell. But it explained where Matteo had slept. And why the trees hadn’t been cut down for firewood.
Matteo had built a small charcoal fire and then banked the coals to cook something grey and doughy sitting inside cut-in-half cans. Sighing, Martina moved a few of the coals. She knew how to feed herself using such a fire. One more useless thing Helmann had made sure his children could do.
After a few minutes, Matteo joined her outside.
“The last of the coffee,” he said, passing her his cup. “It’s not very good.”
After the espressos and au laits of France, it was, indeed, remarkably bad. She passed it back to him and stared hungrily at the cans of cooking dough.
“Why did you come here?” asked Matteo.
She glanced up. He was staring into the coals, his long lashes shading his green eyes.
Sea glass-green. That was what Martina had called his eyes. She looked away.
She didn’t want to answer his question.
I came to ask advice.
Ah, what she would have given for Mutti’s advice right now.
I came to find things out.
Mutti might have known more about the ailment killing Hansel and Georg, the one that would kill her, too, if she didn’t return to Pfeffer.
I came because I wanted my mother’s arms around me.
That was the truest answer. But she would place her palms on those smoldering coals before she’d admit it out loud.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said.
“It matters to me,” replied Matteo. “I want to understand.”
Martina replied sharply. “I think we can both agree you forfeited all your rights in that area two years ago.”
She wouldn’t meet his eyes. But she knew just how he looked right now. How a flush would have stolen over his cheeks. How his brows would have pulled together, giving his expression a fierceness. How his lower lip would be tucked between his teeth, belying that fierceness.
Her eyes flickered up. She’d nailed his expression, her only mistake being that she imagined him as he’d looked then and not as he looked now. He’d found that missing razor. He was as beautiful as shattered glass.
And as dangerous.
“Did you know she was dying?” Matteo asked softly.
Martina shook her head.
“She wrote letters,” he said. “After the doctor told her he couldn’t do anything more for her. She wrote three or four letters. Maybe more. I thought—” Matteo’s voice cracked and Martina heard him drawing the rapid-fire breaths of someone trying not to cry. He regained his control. “I thought she might have written you. Or your … keeper. Pfeffer.”
“He’s not my keeper,” snapped Martina. “Keeper” had been Helmann’s term for the foster mothers. He’d been unsuccessful in getting them to adopt it for everyday use.
Then, because she had, once, loved Matteo, she said in softer tones, “I didn’t get a letter. None of our family unit did. And she can’t have written Pfeffer—he sent me here thinking she was alive and well.”
Matteo nodded and poked at the coals, then poked at the dough-balls, testing them.
“A few more minutes,” he said.
“Good,” she said. But she wasn’t remaining here with him because she was hungry. Hunger, she knew how to deal with.
She should get up and walk away. Why was she sitting here with the boy, now a man, who had fractured her heart?
Martina watched a long-legged spider making its way over the cracked soil. Mutti used to say spiders brought good luck. Although, maybe that
was only indoors. Martina examined the soil more carefully. Tested it with a fingernail. Here, beside the house, it was hard-pan, cracked and dried by sun and wind. It must have been terrible to dig Mutti’s grave in such soil. No, it would have been terrible no matter what the soil conditions.
They’d buried siblings eleven times at the compounds where Martina and the children were raised. Everyone had assisted digging those tiny graves: twenty minutes of digging per child. In Alaska or Russia or wherever it had been, the soil had been frozen eighteen inches below the surface. They had not had to dig Katrin’s grave, because she had died in a hospital. Martina had been grateful.
She was tearing up again. She’d cried her eyes dry last night and had nothing but a mouthful of bad coffee since then. How could she have more tears? Matteo moved closer and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. There it was again—the electric current between them. It was intolerable that her body should remember his with such longing.
“Get off of me,” she said, her voice half a growl. “How can you think I’d want you to touch me?”
He was back on the other side of the fire before she finished asking her question.
“It wasn’t my fault,” he said.
“Oh, really?” Martina asked, tears making her voice sound small and choked. “A kayak is missing, you’re missing, and it’s not your fault how exactly? I stayed awake all night. I know you never came for me, so don’t pretend you did.”
“I didn’t come for you.”
“I know. That’s what I just said.” She was sobbing now, hard enough that she couldn’t talk.
“I couldn’t come for you,” said Matteo. “I want to tell you what happened that night. Please?”
Martina couldn’t speak. Between losing Mutti and remembering what it had felt like to find Matteo gone that morning, she was drowning in tears.
“I had hidden myself in the bottom kayak, and I was waiting for Helmann’s boat to leave. And while I was waiting, I overheard a conversation I was most definitely not meant to overhear.”
Martina sniffled and tried to quiet herself.
Matteo continued. “It was Helmann. He was talking to the two médicins. Fritz and Franz. I didn’t understand it at first, and then when I did understand, I thought I had to be dreaming. They were arguing over how swiftly they could reduce the number of ‘undesirables’ to bring Earth’s population from seven billion down to one or two billion. And Franz said the best way to do it would be all at once and why not use the Angel Corps for something useful for a change?”
Martina’s tears had stopped. Her heart was pounding. Matteo had overheard that conversation? That decision?
“And Helmann thought about it for a few minutes—a few minutes, Martina—and then he said yes.”
Obviously he’d said yes. Martina and her siblings had been laid to sleep in waiting for the day Helmann was ready to kill off most of the world’s population. Of course, they’d been lied to: told they were being left in hypnotic sleep to await an order to offer inoculations for something more deadly than bubonic plague.
“And then Fritz said it was time to cull the herd again,” continued Matteo. “Like before, it took me a minute to realize what he was talking about. But he started naming names of children from the various Angel Corps compounds, citing instances of disobedience or laziness or incompetence.” Matteo swallowed before continuing. “And just like before, Helmann gave his approval. And then he said it was time for Svetlana’s boy to go, too. Did you know Mutti’s real name?”
A chill ran from the top of Martina’s head down to her tailbone. “Svetlana,” she said in a whisper. “He meant you.”
“Yes. Fritz was to kill me that night. I’ll spare you the details. Apparently Helmann had been fond of my mother for many years. That was why she was allowed to raise me. That, and, Helmann’s compounds needed a workforce that didn’t have to spend hours in daily schooling.”
Martina nodded. There had always been a handful of laborers who were neither mothers nor Angel Corps.
Matteo continued. “As I said, Helmann had been fond of my mother. But recently he’d decided to purge himself of as many mortal and venial sins as he could. And if my mother knew he’d had me killed—” Matteo shrugged. “She would withhold her favors. Reducing his … temptations.” Matteo’s voice was flat as he said this. “I had to die, and she had to know it was at his orders. Although that sort of backfired. When I found Mutti again, after you all graduated and shipped out, she told me she’d always known I ran away.”
They’d all known. “The missing kayak,” said Martina.
“I took to the water the moment Fritz left the beach heading for our house.”
“To kill you.”
Matteo nodded.
What else could he have done? Martina’s eyes were dry again. “I didn’t know why you left. I just knew you didn’t want me with you. I thought terrible things about you.”
“I’m sure you thought some things that were true,” said Matteo. “After hearing what use he planned to put all of you to—I was …” Matteo’s voice dropped. “I was disgusted. Because I knew you would all do it. You would take out eighty-six percent of the world’s population thinking you were helping save lives.”
Martina felt a fresh wave of revulsion for what Helmann had planned, for how willingly she would have gone along with it, given the chance. She felt, as well, the raw scraping pain of the day she’d learned Matteo left without her.
She wanted to believe his story. She didn’t know if she dared. When had her trust in anyone—anyone—ever served her? It had served her once. She’d trusted Mutti. She would trust the truth of Mutti’s love for her until she died. But she didn’t know if she could trust Matteo again. An iron band seemed to constrict her lungs.
She wanted to believe him. She wanted it so, so badly. Especially now that Mutti was gone. To have him back—it would be like … like plunging invisibly into the sea, like flying without substance along a sunlit shore, like fresh, hot coffee and playing fairy godmother and the scent of lavender and seawater.
She wanted it so badly she couldn’t breathe. And if he failed her again, she would suffocate, drown, die.
“I need some fresh air,” said Martina, gasping as she stood.
“Don’t run away,” said Matteo, his voice full of emotion.
Martina frowned and was on the verge of saying something very cutting. Instead, she turned and began running down the dirt road that had brought her to this sad dwelling.
19
SALT AND CUMIN AND RUM
Sint Maarten, The Caribbean
An hour later, she was back.
“I understand why you left,” she said, joining Matteo at the fire.
He poked at the coals. Sighed heavily.
She hadn’t offered forgiveness.
He didn’t ask for it.
“But I don’t know if I can do … this,” she said, waving her arms vaguely to encompass Matteo, herself, everything.
Matteo nodded.
They sat watching the coals, covered with white ash. Martina didn’t know what had happened to the bread. Maybe it was inside, cooling.
Then Matteo smiled.
“What?” she asked.
His head gave half a shake. “You. You can do anything you decide to do. Stubborn as a little donkey.”
Their eyes met. Martina shook her head.
“I don’t think that was the word you used to use,” she said. A smile twitched along her mouth.
“No. It wasn’t.” His green eyes danced with laughter.
In perfect synchronization, they both whispered, “Jackass.”
Immediately, they were giggling like children and it was as if the years fell away, and with them, the resentment, the bitter anger, the pain. Matteo stopped giggling first, wiping tiny tears from the corners of his eyes.
“Oh, I haven’t laughed like that in…” He shook his head, not finishing the sentence.
Martina finished it for him. “Years.
”
“Yeah,” he replied. “It’s been years.” His gaze turned away from the fire, and he scanned the French side of the island that lay below. His eyes narrowed and Martina saw afresh how those years had hardened the lines and angles of his face.
She wanted to say she was sorry. She wanted to tell him they were okay. That she would give him a second chance. She wanted to say these things, but they caught in her throat and she kept silent.
“The bread burned,” he said at last.
“Well, then we’d better make more. I’m starving.” Martina stood, relieved there was a task at hand. She turned away from the dead fire and the dead trees and her foster mother’s grave. “Come on,” she said, half extending a hand behind her.
Matteo didn’t see it. He rose and dusted his hands off.
She dropped her hand and walked toward the house, the back of her neck prickling with the sense of his eyes on her, his body so close.
“There’s no more flour,” Matteo said as they entered the dwelling.
“Okay,” replied Martina. “So, what is there?”
Matteo ran his fingers along a crack in the wall beside the door. He shrugged as their eyes met.
“You’re telling me there’s no food in the house?”
“There’s salt. And cumin. And rum.”
“Great.” Martina rolled her eyes. “We can make the most appalling cocktail in the history of … ever.”
Matteo grunted a small laugh and brushed self-consciously at a smudge of charcoal on yesterday’s trunks.
Martina hadn’t changed since yesterday either. Her clothes were in an appalling state, but she had clean clothes in her bag. They were French and stylish and a bit … much, honestly, considering Matteo’s state of dress.
“I have a job tonight,” he said. “It pays cash. And for now, we can barter for fish by the harbor.”
Martina thought of the hundred euro notes back in her Nice apartment. She would have brought them had she foreseen … any of this.
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