Boots nodded curtly, no recognition in his gaze.
“Tell him I… we’d be delighted,” Chesna told him, and Boots strode away toward a group of officers at the center of the lobby.
The elevator came. “Six,” Chesna told the elderly operator. As they ascended she said to Michael, “We’ve just been invited to dine with Colonel Jerek Blok.”
6
Chesna unlocked the white door and turned the ornate brass knob. The smell of fresh roses and lavender rushed at Michael as he crossed the threshold.
The living room, a majesty of white furniture, had a twenty-foot ceiling and a fireplace with green marble tiles. French doors led out to a terrace, which overlooked the river and the forest beyond. Resting atop a white Steinway piano was a large crystal vase that held roses and sprigs of lavender. On the wall above the fireplace was a framed painting of a steely-eyed Adolf Hitler.
“Cozy,” Michael said.
Chesna locked the door. “Your bedroom is through there.” She nodded toward a corridor.
Michael went through it and looked around the spacious bedroom with its dark oak furniture and paintings of various Luftwaffe airplanes. His luggage was neatly arrayed in a closet. He returned to the living room. “I’m impressed,” he said, which was an understatement. He laid his topcoat down on the sofa and walked to one of the high windows. Rain was still falling, tapping on the glass, and mist covered the forest below. “Do you pay for this, or do your friends?”
“I do. And it’s not inexpensive.” She went to the onyx-topped bar, got a glass from a shelf, and opened a bottle of spring water. “I’m wealthy,” she added.
“All from acting?”
“I’ve starred in ten films since 1936. Haven’t you heard of me?”
“I’ve heard of Echo,” he said. “Not Chesna van Dorne.” He opened the French doors and inhaled the misty, pine-scented air. “How is it that an American became a German film star?”
“Talent. Plus I was in the right place at the right time.” She drank her spring water and put the glass aside. “ ‘Chesna’ comes from ‘Chesapeake.’ I was born on my father’s yacht, in Chesapeake Bay. My father was German, my mother was from Maryland. I’ve lived in both countries.”
“And why did you choose Maryland over Germany?” he asked pointedly.
“My allegiance, you mean?” She smiled faintly. “Well, I’m not a believer in that man over the fireplace. Neither was my father. He killed himself in 1934, when his business failed.”
Michael started to say I’m sorry, but there was no need. Chesna had simply made a statement. “Yet you make films for the Nazis?”
“I make films to make money. Also, how better to cultivate their good graces? Because of what I do and who I am, I can get into places that many others can’t. I overhear a lot of gossip, and sometimes I even see maps. You’d be amazed how a general can brag when his tongue’s loosened by champagne. I’m Germany’s Golden Girl. My face is even on some of the propaganda posters.” She lifted her brows. “You see?”
Michael nodded. There was much more to be learned about Chesna van Dorne; was she, like her screen characters, also a fabrication? In any case, she was a beautiful woman, and she held Michael’s life in her hands. “Where’s my friend?”
“Your valet, you mean? In the servants’ wing.” She motioned toward a white telephone. “You can reach him by dialing our room number plus ‘nine.’ We can order room service for you, too, if you’re hungry.”
“I am. I’d like a steak.” He saw her look sharply at him. “Rare,” he told her.
“I’d like you to know something,” Chesna said, after a pause. She walked to the windows and peered out at the river, her face painted with stormy light. “Even if the invasion is successful-and the odds are against it-the Allies will never reach Berlin before the Russians. Of course the Nazis are expecting an invasion, but they don’t know exactly when or where it will come. They’re planning on throwing the Allies back into the sea so they can turn all their strength to the Russian Front. But it won’t help them, and by that time the Russian Front will be the border of Germany. So this is my last assignment; when we’ve completed our mission, I’m getting out with you.”
“And my friend. Mouse.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “Him, too.”
As the lycanthrope and the film star discussed their future, a gunmetal-gray staff car with an SS pennant drove through the hotel’s courtyard a hundred and forty feet below. The car crossed the pontoon bridge and headed along the paved forest road that had brought Michael and Mouse to the Reichkronen. It entered Berlin and began to wind its way southeast toward the factories and dirty air of the Neukolln district. Black clouds were sliding in from the east, and thunder boomed like distant bomb blasts. The car reached a block of grimy row houses and the driver stopped in the street, heedless of other traffic. No horns blew; the SS pennant silenced all complaint.
A hulking man in an aide’s uniform, a gray peaked cap, and polished jackboots got out, and he went around to the other side and opened the door. The rear seat’s passenger, a rail-thin figure in uniform, a brimmed cap, and a long dark green overcoat, stepped out of the car, and he stalked into a particular row house with the larger man following at his heels. The gunmetal-gray car stayed exactly where it was. This wouldn’t take very long.
On the second floor a burly fist knocked at a door marked with a tarnished number “5.”
Inside the apartment there was the sound of coughing. “Yes? Who is it?”
The officer in the dark green overcoat nodded.
Boots lifted his right foot and kicked the door. It broke with a shriek of splitting wood, but the locks kept it from flying open. The door’s stubbornness made Boots’s face turn crimson with rage; he kicked it again, and a third time. “Stop it!” the man inside shouted. “Please, stop it!”
The fourth kick caved the door in. Theo von Frankewitz stood there in his blue silk robe, his eyes bulging with terror. He backed away, stumbled over a table, and fell to the floor. Boots entered the apartment, his metal- studded soles clacking. Frightened people had opened their doors and were peering out, and the officer in the overcoat shouted, “Back in your holes!” Their doors slammed, and locks clicked shut.
Frankewitz was on his hands and knees, scuttling across the floor. He jammed himself into a corner, his hands up in a gesture of supplication. “Please don’t hurt me!” he shrieked. “Please don’t!” His cigarette holder, the cigarette still smoldering, lay on the floor, and Boots crushed it underfoot as he approached the whimpering man.
Boots stopped, standing over him like a fleshy mountain.
Tears were crawling down Frankewitz’s cheeks. He was trying to press himself into the wall of his apartment. “What do you want?” he said, choking, coughing, and crying at the same time. He looked at the SS officer. “What do you want? I did the work for you!”
“So you did. And very well indeed.” The officer, his face narrow and pinched, walked into the room and glanced around distastefully. “This place smells. Don’t you ever open your windows?”
“They… they… they won’t open.” Frankewitz’s nose was running, and he snuffled and moaned at the same time.
“No matter.” The officer waved a thin-fingered hand impatiently. “I’ve come to do some housecleaning. The project’s finished, and I won’t be needing your talents again.”
Frankewitz understood what that meant. His face grew distorted. “No… I’m begging you, for the love of God… I did the work for you… I did the-”
The officer nodded again, a signal to Boots. The huge man kicked Frankewitz in the chest, and there was a wet cracking noise as the breastbone broke. Frankewitz howled. “Stop that caterwauling!” the officer commanded. Boots picked up a throw pillow from the sea-green sofa, ripped it open, and pulled out a handful of cotton stuffing. He grasped Frankewitz’s hair and jammed the stuffing into the man’s gasping mouth. Frankewitz writhed, trying to claw at Boots’s eyes, but Boots easily dodged the fingers; he kicked Frankewitz in the ribs and staved him in like a brine-soaked barrel. The screaming was muffled, and now it didn’t bother Blok so much.
Boots kicked Frankewitz in the face, burst his nose open, and dislocated the jaw. The artist’s left eye swelled shut, and a purple bruise in the shape of a boot sole rose on his face. Frankewitz began, in desperation and madness, to try to claw his way through the wall. Boots stomped his spine, and Frankewitz contorted like a crushed
