checked after the break-in. He kept it hidden under the insulation.”
“What is it?”
“Some box. He wouldn’t say what was in it. But after the break-in he showed me where he kept it. Said if anything ever happened to him, he wanted you to have it. Said you were the only one who’d know what to do with it.”
“Something to do with his work?”
Nat tried not to sound too excited. Who knew, maybe it was the four missing folders. Quest begun, quest ended. Just like that.
“He didn’t say. You want it now?”
“Might as well.”
She smiled.
“Figured you’d say that. Peas in a pod on that kind of thing.” She stood slowly and unsteadily. “Trouble is, this is my third drink. I can’t make it up those hideaway steps without breaking my neck. If you’ll do the climbing, I’ll talk you through it. Come on, I’ll get a flashlight.”
She fetched one from the kitchen, and they went down the hall to a cooler part of the house, where the night air coursed through screened windows. Nat pulled a lanyard from the ceiling to lower a folding staircase, which creaked as he climbed. He poked his head into stale air the temperature of midsummer as Viv handed the flashlight up to him. The beam fell first on a cardboard box with the title of Nat’s first book printed on the side. It was a publisher’s shipment of twenty-four copies-a significant number, considering that fewer than a thousand were ever printed. Nat opened a flap and got another surprise. Only four copies remained, meaning Gordon must have handed out quite a few.
“Found it yet?” Viv called out.
“No. You said it’s beneath the insulation?”
“Just to the left of the opening, between the first two joists.”
The insulation was foil-covered and fleecy pink. Nat rolled back the nearest strip like a blanket from a doll’s bed, and there it was-a square wooden container twice the size of a cigar box. It was heavier than he expected and smelled of machine oil. Emblazoned on top in German script was the name of a gun shop in Zurich: “W. Glaser, Lowenstrasse 42.” That alone might have meaning, he supposed.
“Got it!” he shouted down the steps. “Gangway.”
The contents slid and rattled as he descended. Definitely something besides paper in there. They went back to the couch to open the box by firelight. It felt like a seance, with Gordon’s spirit watching over their shoulders. Nat suppressed a shiver.
“Here goes.”
He pried open a rusty hasp and lifted the hinged top. The first visible item was the peaked cap of a German officer, with a patent leather brim and gray wool top, plus the customary emblem featuring a silver eagle perched on a swastika.
“What do you think?” he asked. “War trophy?”
Viv knitted her brow.
“No idea.”
“Why would he want me to have it?”
Collectors of Nazi memorabilia gave Nat the creeps, and Gordon had known that.
“Do you think he picked it up in the bunker?” she asked.
“Maybe. No note. No name on the hatband, either. Just a size, in centimeters.”
He set it aside on the couch. Four other items remained.
The largest was a small bottle of brown glass, girdled by a tightly folded sheet of paper attached with a rubber band. The band broke the instant Nat tried to remove it, and he carefully slipped off the paper. The bottle was about three quarters full. He shook it. Some sort of powder.
“This look familiar?”
Viv shook her head.
The paper, coming apart at the folds, was a memo dated September 1945, four months after the end of the war, addressed to “BB-8.” The sender was “GW,” presumably Gordon Wolfe, at a time when he would have still been based with U.S. occupation forces in Berlin while clerking for Dulles. It had a numbered series of instructions, one through four. Nat read the first one:
1. There is enclosed a bottle of secret ink powder which you requested in connection with your North Africa- Near East operation. This ink is secure against any known enemy censorship or ink-developing technique. The powder is shaving talcum with the secret ink ingredient mixed in it. For cover, it could actually be used as shaving talcum if necessary.
The next three instructions told how to mix the powder with water or distilled spirits-vodka and gin were recommended-to make the ink, and then how to use it.
Nat wondered anew if Gordon’s duties hadn’t been more important than the man had let on. He was also intrigued by the idea of Gordon being in touch with a “North Africa-Near East” intelligence operative, especially in light of what Willis Turner had told him about the FBI’s hunt for visitors of Middle Eastern origin. There was certainly no other connection that Nat knew of between Gordon and that screwed-up part of the world.
“Secret ink?” Viv said, peering at the memo. “That’s a new one.”
“Maybe I’m supposed to use it.”
“It’s what Gordon should have used to write that damn review of your book.”
“Thanks for saying so.”
“What’s next?”
“Looks like an OSS lapel pin, stuck on his ID card. Dated October 5, 1943.”
“The day he joined. A month after they crash-landed.”
“Wow. Dulles moved fast.”
“They were pretty shorthanded in Bern.”
He picked up the next item in the box.
“Know anything about this matchbook? It’s from the Hotel Jurgens in Bern. Is that where he lived?”
“No. He had an apartment, down by the river. Never heard of that place.”
He set it aside. The last item was a key, wrapped with a rubber band along with a white business card and a plastic swipe card with a black metal stripe. All three looked relatively new. The business card was for Matt Boland, manager of U-Store-Em Self Storage in Baltimore.
“Must fit a storage locker,” Nat said, his interest growing. Another possible resting place for the four missing folders. Assuming, of course, that the FBI was right in claiming that Gordon had stolen them to begin with. “What do you make of all this?”
Viv frowned and put aside her drink. Then she lit another cigarette and inhaled with what seemed to be an extra degree of vehemence. Something about the assortment of objects was making her uneasy. She narrowed her eyes and picked up the business card.
“Baltimore,” she said. “I lived there during the war.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Worked on the Liberty ships. A regular Rosie Riveter. Had an apartment in a row house on Brady Avenue in Fairfield. Rough little area. Most of the neighborhood still had dirt streets. Gordon and I stayed there a few months after he came home, in early ’46, and this address is practically right around the corner. Otherwise? No idea.”
They stared at the card a while longer. Viv picked up the German hat.
“Maybe my metric conversions aren’t so great, but I’d say this is Gordon’s size.”
He waited for more, but she was silent, frowning.
So what did they have here? Clues to a riddle? Cryptic signposts that would lead to the “legacy” Gordon had alluded to in his last rambling phone call? That would certainly fit with Gordon’s fondness for the elliptical, the coy. Or maybe it was nothing but trivial memorabilia, meaningful only to Gordon. One last cosmic prank played by the teacher on his eager, gullible student. The first step in finding the correct answer seemed obvious enough: See if the key still fit anything in Baltimore. As for the rest, who could say?
“Another thing,” he said. “While I was up in the attic I saw a box of my first book.”
She smiled.
