She nodded and complied, somehow managing to make the toss without letting the sheet drop a stitch farther. Then she lay back down and shut her eyes. Oh, definitely no manipulation going on here, he thought, smiling to himself as he turned out the light.
As he tried to get comfortable in the dark, he wondered anew what it was that drove her. Scholarly zeal, of course. All the best historians were competitive. But there had to be something more. He was about to drift off when she spoke up from the bed.
“I have some names I can share. Old contacts of Gordon Wolfe’s and Kurt Bauer’s, people who might have once handled the records, or have some leads.”
Throwing him a bone. It was a start.
“Living or dead?”
“Living. In Bern and Berlin. We can visit them, now that we have a budget.”
“Great. But with any luck the trail will end in Baltimore.”
Her silence told him she thought otherwise, which troubled him because it suggested she knew more than she was letting on. He had better check out her credentials, first chance he got. Until then, or until she opened up more, perhaps “arm’s length” was indeed the best policy. Funny how sensible that sounded down there on the cold, hard floor.
TWELVE
Nat’s great hopes for Baltimore died with the swipe of a card, the turn of a key, and the opening of an iron door. There before him on the concrete floor, looking lost and forlorn in the five-by-five storage locker, was a single item, barely bigger than a fist. It was wrapped in bubble plastic and smothered in tape. Definitely not the missing folders.
Berta said nothing, but Nat sensed an I-told-you-so chill.
At least they hadn’t wasted much time getting there. He had planned on using Sunday to drive Viv back to Wightman for a Wednesday memorial service. She instead decided to wait on her sister, which freed Berta and him to catch a midday flight from Albany to Baltimore. They drove straight to Fairfield, rattling down its potholed lanes among the rail yards and chemical plants of an industrial waterfront. Fittingly, they wound up briefly on Tate Street, where Viv and Gordon had lived after the war. Only one house remained on the block, and it was boarded up. The trail ended at a fenced compound with a “U-Store-Em” sign out front. Nat bounded from the car, but his excitement was short-lived.
“Well, let’s see what it is,” he said, trying to keep the disappointment out of his voice.
He slit the tape with a car key and unwrapped the plastic. Inside was an old book with a red cloth cover and a German title, Der Unsichtbare Henker (The Invisible Hangman), by Wolf Schwertenbach. Was this the crime novel that had made Viv so jealous? He doubted Viv had been familiar with the author, but Nat certainly was. Wolf Schwertenbach was the pen name of the late Paul Meyer, a Swiss diplomat who during the war opened a secret back channel between the Swiss and German intelligence agencies. He was also an OSS source who met Dulles several times. But none of that seemed to explain why Gordon had gone to the trouble of putting the book into storage.
The publication date was 1933, although this was a 1937 printing. Nat checked inside the front jacket. Sure enough, a girl’s name was penned in cursive in an upper corner, just as Viv had said. “Sabine Keller.”
“Noir pulp by a hack diplomat,” Berta said. “Not even a first edition. You might get five euros for it. Shall we go?”
“Hold on.”
Nat flipped carefully through the brittle pages. No hidden note. No scribbles in the margins. No cryptic inscriptions from the famed author. But on page 186 he found the very wildflower Viv must have seen. Crushed yellow blossom, bent stem. Nothing special, like edelweiss. Just a buttercup plucked from a field. He left it in place, feeling that somehow Gordon would have preferred that.
“Shall we go?” Berta repeated.
“Let’s see who’s on duty.”
They walked to a small office. A big fellow with a buzz cut and a weight lifter’s build looked up from a cramped desk behind the counter.
“Would you be Matt Boland?” Nat asked, using the name from the business card.
“That’s me.” He seemed surprised to actually be speaking with a customer.
“Do you keep records of customer visits?”
Boland shook his head.
“For some people that’s half the point. You’re not a cop, are you?”
“I’m here for a friend. So you have no way of knowing when somebody would have last visited locker 207?” Nat held up the key and swipe card.
“If that key belongs to you, wouldn’t you know?”
“It was a colleague’s. He died yesterday.”
“Sorry.”
“His name was Gordon Wolfe. Ring a bell?”
“Can’t say it does.”
“Have you got the paperwork for 207?”
“How do I know you didn’t steal that key?”
Nat pulled out the FBI letter of introduction and placed it on the counter.
“Maybe this’ll help.”
“You said you weren’t cops.”
“We’re not. Let’s just say we’re working on contract.”
“Is this some kind of terrorist thing?” Boland was getting into the spirit of things.
“Something like that.”
“Cool. Why didn’t you say so?”
Boland crossed the room to a set of gray drawers, where he retrieved a yellow invoice.
“What’d you say the name was?”
“Gordon Wolfe.”
“Wrong guy.”
“With an address in Wightman, Pennsylvania? 819 Boyd Circle?”
Boland glanced down.
“Yeah. Home phone?”
Nat rattled it off, and for good measure recited the number for Gordon’s cell.
“Three for three. In that case, who the heck is ‘Gordon Bern-hard’?”
“Bernhard?”
“That’s what it says.”
“Hold on a second. I’ll be right back.”
Berta sighed with impatience while Nat went to the car. He returned with one of Gordon’s books that Viv had given him that morning and opened it to the author photo.
“Is this the man who called himself Gordon Bernhard?”
“Absolutely. He was in here a couple weeks ago.” Boland stepped to a wall calendar, where he ran his finger across a row of days. “May seventh, to be exact. The Monday from hell. We had a power outage later that afternoon, which always screws things up and gripes out the customers. Mr. Bernhard needed a new swipe card. He was probably the only customer that day who wasn’t screaming at me.”
The timing put Gordon’s visit only a few days after the gotcha story broke in the
“Have you got a surveillance camera with a view of 207?”
“We’ve got cameras covering every part of the building. Want to check it for the seventh? It’s a digital system, stored on a hard drive.”
