Kingdom of Shadows

the gunner looked for a target. Somebody-somebody not very bright, Morath thought-shot at it. The response was a blast of the turret cannon, a yellow flare and a ragged boom that rolled over the empty streets.

“Idiot.”

“A sniper,” the policeman said. “He tries to fire into the aiming port of the turret.”

They both stood at the window. As the armored car moved forward, there was a second shot.

“Did you see it?”

Morath shook his head.

“Sometimes you can.” Now, quite excited, he spoke in a loud whisper. He knelt in front of the window, rested the rifle on the sill, and sighted down the barrel.

The armored car disappeared. From the other end of town, a serious engagement-cannon and machine-gun fire. Morath, leaning out the window, thought he could see flickers of light from the muzzle flashes. Something exploded, an armored car sped past, headed in the direction of the fighting. And something was on fire. Very slowly, the outlines of the buildings sharpened, touched with orange light. Downstairs, in the kitchen, an angry burst of static from the radio. The policeman swore softly, under his breath, as he ran off to answer it.

Four in the morning. The policeman was snoring away on the couch while Morath kept watch. The policeman had apologized for being so tired. “We spent two days in the street,” he said. “Fighting them with batons and shields.” Morath smoked to stay awake, making sure to keep well away from the window when he lit a match, cloaking the end of the cigarette with his hand. At one point, to his amazement, a freight train came through the town. He could hear it from a long way off. It didn’t stop, the slow chuffing of the locomotive moved from east to west, and he listened to it until the sound faded away into the distance.

A silhouette.

Morath came wide awake, crushed the cigarette out on the floor, snatched the rifle from the corner and rested it on the windowsill.

Was it there? He didn’t think so. A ghost, a phantom-the same phantoms we saw in Galicia. Until the dawn.

But no. Not this time.

A shape, on one knee, tight to the wall of a building across the boulevard and very still. It stood, ran a few feet, and stopped again. It held, Morath thought, something in its hand.

He touched the bolt of the rifle, making sure it was locked, then let his finger rest gently against the trigger. When he squinted over the open sight, he lost the shape until it moved again. Then he tracked it as it stood, ran, and knelt down. Stood, ran, knelt down. Stood, ran.

Tracked, squeezed.

The policeman cried out and rolled off the couch. “What happened?” he said, breathless. “Are they here?”

Morath shrugged. “I saw something.”

“Where is it?” The policeman knelt by his side.

Morath looked, there was nothing there.

But it was there an hour later, in gray light, when they crossed the boulevard. “A runner!” the policeman said. “To supply the sniper.”

Maybe. Not much more than a kid, he’d been knocked backward and tumbled into a cellar entry and died there, halfway down the steps, arms flung out to stop his fall, a sandwich wrapped in newspaper dropped on the sidewalk.

At daybreak they walked back to the police station but it wasn’t there anymore. What remained was a burned-out shell, blackened beams, smoke rising from the charred interior. One corner of the building had been blown out-a hand grenade, Morath thought, or a homemade bomb. There was no way to know; there was nobody left to tell the story. He stayed for a while, talking to the firemen as they wandered around and looked for something to do. Then an army captain showed up and drove him back to the hotel. “It wasn’t only Novotny,” he said. “We lost three others. They bicycled in from an observation post when they heard a call on the radio. Then there was the police chief, several officers, militia. At the end, they let the drunks out of the cells and gave them rifles.” He shook his head, angry and disgusted. “Somebody said they tried to surrender when the building caught on fire but the Germans wouldn’t let them.” He was silent for a time. “I don’t know, that might not be true,” he said. “Or maybe it doesn’t matter.”

Back at the Europa, there was a spray of gladioli in a silver vase on a table in the lobby. In the room, Morath slept for an hour, couldn’t after that. Ordered coffee and rolls, left most of it on the tray, and called the railroad station. “Of course they’re running,” he was told. As he hung up the phone, there was a knock at the door. “Fresh towels, sir.”

Morath opened the door and Dr. Lapp settled himself in the easy chair.

“Well, where are my towels?”

“You know, I once actually did that. Back when. In a maid’s uniform, pushing the little trolley.”

“There must have been-at least a smile.”

“No, actually not. The man who answered the door was the color of wood ash.”

Morath started to pack, folding underwear and socks into his valise.

“By the way,” Dr. Lapp said. “Have you met the two women who sit in the lobby?”

“Not really.”

“Oh? You didn’t, ah, avail yourself?”

A sideways glance. I told you I didn’t.

“They were arrested last night, is the reason I ask. In this very room, as it happens. Taken through the lobby in handcuffs.”

Morath stopped dead, a pair of silver hairbrushes in his hands. “Who were they?”

“Sudeten Germans. Likely working for the Sicherheitsdienst, SD, the SS intelligence service. It caused quite a stir downstairs. In Marienbad! Well! But the women hardly cared-they were laughing and joking. All the Czechs can do is keep them overnight in the police station, and they barely dare to do that.”

Morath slipped the brushes through loops in a leather case, then zipped it closed.

Dr. Lapp reached in his pocket. “As long as you’re packing.” He handed over a cellophane envelope, an inch square. Fitted neatly within was a photographic negative cut from a strip of film. Morath held it up to the light and saw a typed document in German.

A death sentence. He’d put his drawings of the mountain fortifications in a manila folder and slid it down the side of the valise. He could, he thought, get away with that, even if he was searched. Could say it was a property for sale or a sketch for a planned ski lodge. But not this.

“What is it?”

“A memorandum, on Oberkommando Wehrmacht stationery. From General Ludwig Beck, who has just resigned as head of the OKW, to his boss, General von Brauchitsch, the commander in chief of the German army. It says that Hitler ‘must abandon the intention of solving the Czech question by force.’ Actually, he said a great deal more, in person, to do with getting rid of the Gestapo and the Nazi party bosses and returning Germany to ‘probity and simplicity.’ Then, in protest, he quit. And his successor, General Halder, believes these things even more strongly than Beck did.”

“I will be asked how I came to have it.”

Dr. Lapp nodded. “The Abwehr, military intelligence, is part of the OKW. We go to the same meetings, then, at night, to the same dinner parties.” He crossed his legs, tapped the heel of his shoe, and gave Morath a look that said, of course you know where to put that. He leaned over the table, took the Hotel Europa butter knife from the place setting, held it to the light and studied its edge, then handed it to Morath.

Morath took off his shoe and went to work on the heel. He was very tired and sick of the world and had to force himself to be patient and careful. He prized up a corner of the heel and slid the negative in. It didn’t work, he could see the space easily enough and he could feel it when he walked.

Dr. Lapp shrugged. “Improvisation,” he said, letting his voice trail away into a sigh.

Morath finished packing, pulled the straps tight on his valise and buckled them.

“I don’t know who you’ll find to talk to, Herr Morath, but the more powerful the better. We’re opening as many lines of communication as we can, surely one of them will work.” From his voice, he didn’t believe it, sounded as though he were trying to persuade himself that two and two was five. “All we ask of the English is that they do