Kingdom of Shadows

On the first floor landing, he stopped again. “Szubl?” He said it in a low voice-not a whisper, just barely loud enough to be heard on the floor above.

No answer.

He held his breath. He thought he could hear light snoring, a creak, then another. Normal for a building at four in the morning. Again he climbed, slowly, standing for a moment on every step. Halfway up, he touched something sticky on the wall. What was that? Too dark to see, he swore and rubbed his fingers against his trousers.

On the third floor, he went to the end of the hall and stood in front of the door. The smell was not at all strong-not yet-but Morath had fought in the war and knew exactly what it was. The woman. His heart sank. He had known this would happen. Somehow, mysteriously, he’d known it. And he would settle with whoever had done it. Von Schleben, somebody else, it didn’t matter. His blood was racing, he told himself to calm down.

Or, maybe, Szubl. No, why would anyone bother.

He put his index finger on the door and pushed. It swung open. He could see the couch, the bed, a dresser he didn’t remember. He smelled paint, along with the other smell, stronger now, and the burnt, bittersweet odor of a weapon fired in a small room.

He stepped inside. Now he could see the tiny stove and the table covered with oilcloth. At one end, a man was sitting in a chair, his legs spread wide, his head hanging, almost upside down, over the back, his arms dangling at his sides.

Morath lit a match. Boots and trousers of a German officer’s uniform. The man was wearing a white shirt and suspenders, his jacket hung carefully on the chair and now pinned in place by his head. A gray face, well puffed up, one eye open, one eye shut. The expression-and he had seen this before-one of sorrow mixed with petty irritation. The hole in the temple was small, the blood had dried to brown on the face and down the arm. Morath knelt, the Walther sidearm had dropped to the floor beneath the hand. On the table, the wallet. A note? No, not that he could see.

The match started to burn his fingers. Morath shook it out and lit another. He opened the wallet: a photograph of a wife and grown children, various Wehrmacht identity papers. Here was Oberst-Colonel-Albert Stieffen, attached to the German general staff at the Stahlheim barracks, who’d come to Paris and shot himself in the kitchen of Von Schleben’s love nest.

A soft tap at the door. Morath glanced at the pistol, then let it lay there. “Yes?”

Szubl came into the room. He was sweating, red-faced. “Christ,” he said.

“Where were you?”

“Over at the Gare Saint-Lazare. I used the phone, then I stood across the street and watched you come inside.”

“What happened?”

Szubl spread his hands apart, God only knows. “A man called, about two-thirty in the morning. Told me to come over here and take care of things.”

” ‘Take care of things.’ “

“Yes. A German, speaking German.”

“Meaning, it happened here, so it’s our problem.” Morath looked at his watch, it was almost five.

“Something like that.”

They were silent for a time. Szubl shook his head, slow and ponderous. Morath exhaled, a sound of exasperation, ran his fingers through his hair, swore in Hungarian-mostly to do with fate, shitting pigs, saints’ blood-and lit a cigarette. “All right,” he said, more to himself than to Szubl. “So now it disappears.”

Szubl looked glum. “It will cost plenty, that kind of thing.”

Morath laughed and waved the problem away. “Don’t worry about that,” he said.

“Really? Well, then you’re in luck. I have a friend.”

“Flic? Undertaker?”

“Better. A desk man at the Grand Hotel.”

“Who is he?”

“One of us. From Debrecen, a long time ago. He was in a French prisoner-of-war camp in 1917, somehow managed to get himself to the local hospital. Long story short, he married the nurse. Then, after the war, he settled in Paris and worked in the hotels. So, about a year ago, he tells me a story. Seems there was a symphony conductor, a celebrity, staying in the luxury suite. One night, maybe two in the morning, the phone at the desk rings. It’s the maestro, he’s frantic. My friend rushes upstairs-the guy had a sailor in the room, the sailor died.”

“Awkward.”

“Yes, very. Anyhow, it was taken care of.”

Morath thought it over. “Go back to Saint-Lazare,” he said. “Call your friend.”

Szubl turned to leave.

“I’m sorry to put you through this, Wolfi. It’s Polanyi, and his …”

Szubl shrugged, adjusted his hat. “Don’t blame your uncle for intrigue, Nicholas. It’s like blaming a fox for killing a chicken.”

From Morath, a sour smile, Szubl wasn’t wrong. Although, he thought, “blaming” isn’t what’s usually done to a fox. The stairs creaked as Szubl went down, then Morath watched him through the window. The dawn was gray and humid, Szubl trudged along, head down, shoulders hunched.

The desk man was tall and handsome, dashing, with a cavalry mustache. He arrived at 6:30, wearing a red uniform with gold buttons. “Feeling better?” he said to the corpse.

“Two thousand francs,” Morath said. “All right?”

“Could be a little more, by the time it’s done, but I trust Wolfi for it.” For a moment, he stared at the dead officer. “Our friend here is drunk,” he said to Morath. “We’re going to get his arms around our shoulders and carry him downstairs. I’d ask you to sing, but something tells me you won’t. Anyhow, there’s a taxi at the door, the driver is in on it. We’ll put our friend here in the backseat, I’ll get in with the driver, and that’s that. The jacket, the gun, the wallet, you find a way to get rid of those. If it was me, I’d burn the papers.”

Eventually, Morath and the desk man had to carry Stieffen downstairs-the pantomime played out only from the street door to the taxi, and they barely made it that far.

A blue car-later he thought it was a big Peugeot-pulled to the curb in front of him. Slowly, the back window was lowered and the little man in the bow tie stared out at him. “Thank you,” he said. The window was rolled back up as the car pulled away, following the taxi.

Morath watched as they drove off, then returned to the apartment where Szubl, stripped to his underwear, was scrubbing the floor and whistling a Mozart aria.

Polanyi outdid himself, Morath thought, when he chose a place to meet. A nameless little bar in the quarter known as the grande truanderie, the thieves’ palace, buried in the maze of streets around Montorgueil. It reminded Morath of something Emile Courtmain had once told him: “The truth of lunch is in the choice of the restaurant. All that other business, eating, drinking, talking, that doesn’t mean very much.”

Polanyi sat there, looking very sorrowful and abused by the gods. “I’m not going to apologize,” he said.

“Do you know who he was? Colonel Stieffen?”

“No idea. And no idea why it happened. To do with honor, Nicholas-if I had to bet, I’d bet on that. He puts his wallet on the table, meaning this was who I was, and does it in a secret apartment, meaning this is where I failed.”

“Failed at what?”

Polanyi shook his head.

They were sitting at one of the three tables in the room. The fat woman at the bar called out, “Say, boys, let me know when you’re ready for another.”

“We will,” Polanyi said.

“Who’s the little man with the bow tie?”

“He is called Dr. Lapp.”

“Dr. Lapp.”

“A name. Certainly there are others. He is an officer in the Abwehr.”