Heidelberg Effect (8 page)

Hugo sat on the couch looking into space as
if stunned that this is how the evening was ending up after
all.

Ella went into the kitchen and plugged in
her electric kettle. She dug out two mugs and a jar of instant
coffee.

Where had all that about
Rowan come from?
she wondered. She thought
she was pretty much over him. Was she fooling herself? She couldn’t
imagine Rowan pushing some half naked, willing girl away. She
poured boiling water into the mugs.

“Milk? Sugar?” she called. “I think I have
both.” She opened the refrigerator door to grab the milk and caught
the time displayed on the oven. It was three a.m. Rowan would be at
the office, probably drinking coffee and planning his day—not
screwing some hot Alabama babe. She put the sugar bowl, the mugs
and the milk on a tray.

That would’ve been
last
night.

She picked up the tray and walked into the
living room. She hadn’t heard him leave but she wasn’t surprised to
see that he was gone. She set the tray down on the coffee table and
ran to the bedroom to make sure. On her way back to the living
room, she locked the door and looked at the two steaming mugs on
the coffee table…right next to the block of C-4 and the blasting
caps he’d run off and left.

Chapter Five

Ella knew she should have
seen the coming storm. Although she knew some things just happen,
like a natural impetus independent of the actions or desires of the
people involved, she also knew that she was the author of every
step that had taken her to this point. She wouldn’t sidestep the
responsibility for that now. If she hadn’t taken the Heidelberg
job, if she hadn’t let go of Rowan, if she hadn’t been so stubborn
about accepting help from her own father, then maybe,
just maybe
the rest of
the dominoes wouldn’t have fallen the way they did. But by the time
it all came crashing down on her, it was way too late to think she
could’ve done anything to have stopped it.

The end of all hope of
happiness began for Ella as a typical Tuesday morning. She walked
to work from her apartment, hitting her favorite
Konditerei
for an
espresso
and a sweet
roll on the way. She would have preferred something more
substantial but she was already running late. It had been two weeks
since her visit to Dossenheim. With the exception of Hugo taking
great strides to avoid her and being sullen and
uncharacteristically curt when he couldn’t, she had managed to put
that day almost completely out of her mind. Glimmers of the day’s
revelations would come to her when she wasn’t paying
attention—taking a shower or waiting for the elevator. When they
did, she would feel an overwhelming emotion that she couldn’t name
but which was nearly unbearable in its pain. It was like a weight
that materialized on her chest, creating such debilitating pressure
that she could scarcely breathe.

When those moments happened, she recited
German verbs to distract her.

That had worked pretty well. Up to now.

As she hurried up
the
Hauptstrasse
toward her office building opposite the
Hard Rock Café
, she caught her
reflection in a shop window. She was pleased with what she saw: a
young woman with a black peacoat and pashmina around her shoulders,
her long dark hair blowing in the breeze. She looked like she
belonged here. Definitely not a tourist. And then she saw him,
reflected in the glass, standing across the street. He looked so
much like Rowan that for a minute her heart lodged in her throat.
She had whirled around expecting it to be him.

She walked the rest of the way to her
office, continually looking over her shoulder as if he might
appear. When she got off the elevator in her office, Heidi half
stood at the front desk and gave Ella an encouraging smile and a
thumbs up as she walked by. As pleasant as Heidi normally was, it
seemed such an unusual thing to do—even for Heidi—that it was then
that Ella realized that Hugo must have told her about her famous
Nazi grandfather. As soon as she made the connection, another,
fiercer, urge grabbed her—the urge to forget it, let it go, turn
away from it.

As she smiled at Heidi and walked to her
office, she knew that Heidi—and others in the office—were watching
her.

Granddaughter of a Nazi war criminal.

Ella entered her office and closed the door,
then stood with her back against it. Her heart was pounding in her
chest and she felt a warm flush spread to her face.

It wasn’t just her poor dead mother’s shame,
she realized. This was what she had been trying to avoid thinking
these last two weeks. It was the reason she had failed to call or
visit or even drop a postcard to that poor old woman sitting in a
nursing home in Dossenheim.

It was because it
was
her
shame,
too.

She went and sat at her
computer and tried to compose herself, breathing deeply with her
eyes closed. She held her hands over her computer keyboard and
willed them to stop trembling but all she could think was:
A monster’s blood runs through me.

It dawned on her how she had deliberately
avoided any research online that might take her close to the
identity of her maternal grandfather. And she was a professional
investigator. She knew it wouldn’t involve much of a search. She
knew she wouldn’t need to drill down very deeply to see his
picture, hear his voice, discover his legacy.

And she didn’t dare go
there. She
couldn’t
go there.

She signed on to her email account and
caught herself doing what she had been doing for the last month:
looking to see if there was an email from Rowan. Before she even
checked, the very truth of her need struck her like a sharp slap.
She would always look for him and never find him. She had let him
go.

She
had done that.

She turned away from the computer and buried
her face in her hands, her sorrow building like a sickness
spreading throughout her body. The sobs shook her body and she
realized she didn’t care if anyone could hear her. When she
stopped, her head on her arms on her desk, she knew what she had to
do.

She sat up straight at the computer, and
wiped her face.

I am stronger than
this
.

She opened up her browser and typed his name
in the search engine window.

Two hours later she had learned the truth
about Rudolf Vogel. In two hours she had cried every bit of her
makeup off and carefully ignored two taps on her office door and
three emails from Heidi asking her if she were okay.

In two hours she learned the whole truth
about where she came from and why her mother hadn’t wanted to
live.

As soon as she felt composed, Ella packed up
her desk and folded her resignation letter into an envelope
addressed to her supervisor. She timed it so that Heidi would not
be at the front desk. She walked to the receptionist, handed the
envelope to the young girl sitting there and left the office.

She walked the entire way back to her
apartment at a quick pace. Inside, she plugged in her cellphone and
turned it to mute, then went to her bedroom where she collapsed on
the bed and fell into a thankfully dreamless sleep.

When she awoke it was after eight o’clock
and dark out. She stripped off the work outfit that she had slept
in—a silk dress over leggings—and stepped into the shower. She made
the water as hot as she could stand it as if the scalding needles
could eliminate the terrible images she had seen online that
morning.

She had seen pictures of a handsome man in
jodhpurs and riding boots, a cruel smile, an arrogant set to his
chin. She had made herself look at the camp he had commanded and
the bodies of the people he had murdered. She had looked closely
into his face, the face of her grandfather, and could see no trace
of humanity or feeling or familiarity.

He was a stereotypical cartoon. A farce. A
cardboard villain.

Granddad.

She pulled on a pair of jeans and made
herself a ham sandwich which she ate at the kitchen table.

She got up and poured a light beer into a
glass and sat down at the table. There was no way she could stay at
that office. Not with everyone knowing. It would be different in
the US. Maybe. She pushed the sandwich away and pulled out her
phone.

She hadn’t spoken to him in over a month.
She wasn’t a hundred percent sure what she would say to him now.
But she knew she had to talk to someone and she didn’t know who
else to call.

The phone rang and eventually went to voice
mail.

“Hey, Rowan,” she said. “Surprise. It’s me.
Look, I was just wondering what you were up to. I mean, we haven’t
talked in awhile. When you get this message...please call me
back…And if you’re screening this call because you’ve got some
Alabama hottie on tap there, that’s cool. Except I thought U.S.
marshals had to be available at all times. I mean what if I were a
Federal witness needing a ride somewhere? Anyway…” Ella took a long
breath and glanced at the photo of the two of them. He looked so
capable and sure of himself she could feel her throat close up as
she fought to stay in control. “Look, not to get all dramatic here
or anything but I kind of need you, Rowan.” She felt tears roll
down her face when she said the words and started to choke on them.
She willed herself to shake it off. “Anyway. Okay, so you know this
is me, Ella, right?”

She disconnected and looked at the phone in
her hands.

Thanks a lot,
Rowan
, she thought.
Where are you when I need you?

The phone lit up in her
hand and she nearly pushed
Accept
thinking it was Rowan when she saw a photo of
Heidi show up on her screen. She wasn’t ready to talk to Heidi—or
anybody German at the moment. She let the call go to voicemail,
hoping and praying that Rowan hadn’t done the very same thing to
her five minutes earlier.

She thought of the
voicemail she just left and wondered what Rowan would think of it.
What was he supposed to even do? Stupid. She should never have
called. Embarrassing, too. Because by the time she got back to the
States it would all seem like a major overreaction on her part. She
wasn’t sure if she would ever even
see
Rowan again—what with their
relationship having come to an ignoble, whimpering, long-distance
end—but if she did, her face would be three shades of red in the
bargain.

She stood up. Her need to move and get out
of the apartment overwhelming. She needed noise and people and
fresh air. She needed to get out. Plenty of time tomorrow to figure
out how she was going to get back to the States. She still had a
full month left on her lease—and it was paid in advance.

What a mess of everything she had made. She
tugged her leather jacket on and dropped her phone into her bag,
double checking that her Taser was there. When she turned to leave
the apartment, her glance fell on the photo of herself and Rowan.
Why did she even keep it out? To remind herself of how badly she
can screw up? She vowed to pack it away first thing in the
morning.

She left her apartment and
disappeared into the dark, wet night. It was cold out on the street
and she was glad she had the wool scarf wrapped around her throat.
She walked up the side street to
Eppelheimerstrasse
. She could see
people and cars moving about and felt pulled toward the activity
and the noise.

Why
did
she and Rowan break up? she
found herself wondering for the hundredth time.
We’d started out like Johnny and June: hotter than a pepper
sprout.
Had
she
quit first? Why was that? Was
she just determined to be miserable and alone?

As she walked down the street, she felt her
phone vibrate in her bag. She looked at the screen with every
intention of letting it go to voicemail. It was her father.

“Hey, Dad,” she said, holding the phone to
her ear and continuing down the sidewalk. This section of
Heidelberg was always busiest at night.

“Do you have a moment to talk, sweetheart? I
hated how we left it the other day…”

“Yeah, now’s good,” Ella said. “But I don’t
know what else there is to say. It was a big shock, to say the
least but it explained a lot. Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

“
God knows your mother went
to extreme lengths to keep it secret,” her father said “But the war
was a long time ago. I hoped you might never need to
know.”

“That my grandfather was hanged as a war
criminal?”

“I wanted to spare you.”

“Well, I didn’t get spared
today when I went to the office and everyone had clearly been given
a PowerPoint on my genealogy.”
Ella began
to walk faster, her fist clutching her purse strap.

“People will always condescend to judge when
they can,” her father said.

“
This is such bullshit!”
Ella said, feeling the anger and frustration pouring out of her. “I
can understand how
Mom
must have felt but
I’m
an American! We liberated France, for crap’s
sake. We’re the heroes! Why were they looking at
me
like I’m somehow
responsible for…for…”

“I’m sure you imagined it, sweetheart.”

“You weren’t there, Dad. They couldn’t even
look me in the eye. I can totally see how Mom wouldn’t be able to
bear living in Germany after the war.”