Stardust (61 page)

“She just called?”

“The AD. Is there some problem? I called as soon as—”

“No. Thank you.”

He put the receiver back. Liesl was watching his face, confused, then alarmed.

“What?” she said.

But he could only look at her, the room still sliding, everything wrong.

He picked up the receiver again. “Get me Carl at the gate, will you?” He waited for the connection, Liesl still staring at him. “Carl? Ben Collier. I want you to close the gate. Nobody goes off the lot, not until I call back. Got that? Anybody asks, say it’s orders.” He put the phone down, now feeling eerily calm. “You’re asking for me on Sound Stage Four.”

“I’m asking—?” She stopped as he reached into the drawer and took out the gun, checking it.

“Stay here,” he said.

He went out the back of the building, then swung behind the writers’ wing. It didn’t have to be Sound Stage 4 itself, just anywhere on the way. He took a parallel route, away from the exposed main road, his eyes scanning side to side. A few grips were unloading flats from a truck down by the Western set, but otherwise the lot was quiet. The sun was almost gone, the dreary plaster walls now a light apricot. On the other side of the street, the prop building’s hangar doors were still wide open, spilling out bright light. Acres of tables and settees and mirrors, stacked chairs, all of it easy to hide behind if you’d planned it that way. He felt the gun in his hand. What could he say if anyone saw? Slinking behind buildings with a gun. But these weren’t real streets, people carried harmless guns between sets all the time.

The door to Sound Stage 4 was closed but not locked, the red light off. He opened it and stepped into a darkness so complete that he felt swallowed up in it, like a stray crack of light. He fumbled behind for a switch. The utility lights flashed on, not as bright as overhead
stage lights, but enough to see the set, the wood-frame backing and ramps for wheeling the cameras. Ben blinked, disoriented for a second. It was the nightclub in Rosemary’s picture, the bar just where it had been but the dance floor repositioned, down a short flight of stairs, the tables dressed now in white cloth with center lamps, swankier. He stepped carefully toward the bar, using the long mirror to check the space behind him.

“Liesl?” he said, playing along. He moved his arm in a slow circle, the gun pointed, ready. “Liesl?” he said again, his voice the only sound in the big space. He stood for a second, just listening. Quiet enough to hear a watch, someone breathe, but there was nothing, then suddenly a creak, a foot on wood, and he turned to it, not expecting the explosion, the noise of the shot, his hand burning, a searing pain as his gun fell and he clutched his hand, already smearing with blood. He ducked, an instinct, to reach out for the gun on the floor, then reared back when another shot went into the wood next to it.

“The next one goes in your head,” a voice said, coming out of the shadow at the end of the bar. He waved his gun, motioning Ben back as he stepped forward, finally reaching Ben’s gun and kicking it aside.

“Dieter,” Ben said, still in pain, clutching his hand.

“Did you think we were going to play with guns? Like cowboys? Who is faster? Don’t be a child.”

“Dieter,” Ben said again, trying to focus, watching his hand run with blood.

“What a trouble you are, this family. This time it’s not so easy to arrange. Bullets. There’ll be questions.” He paused. “If they find you.”

Dumped somewhere, off the lot. Another accident? The thought darted in and out of his mind, not yet ready for it, still hazy with surprise.

“I don’t understand.” But even as he said it, he did, all the scenes coming back to him now with a different face. A brandy glass. Don’t leave me. Dieter also at the hospital, more than just family. Ben tried to remember the sequence—racing for the doctor, Liesl where? The nurses’
station? Just a minute or two, all that would be needed. Concerned. In Danny’s room. Don’t leave me alone.

“What?” Dieter said.

Everything snapping into place. His hand throbbing, just the first shot. Keep him talking.

“Who told you about Genia?”

Dieter moved his head, physically taken aback. “At such a moment that’s what you want to know?” he said.

“Liesl told you.”

“Liesl,” Dieter said, dismissive. “You told me.”

“Not Liesl,” Ben said, as if he hadn’t heard.

“You. On the beach. After Salka’s lunch. A great favor to me, to know that. I had to act. If she talked to you, she would talk to others. I was always secret. Only someone from those days would know and here she was, talking to—well, Otto’s son, maybe she thought it was all right. But no discipline. Even Otto’s son. Something happened to her in the war, I think.”

“So you killed her.”

“I had to,” he said easily. “Once you told me. So I thank you for that. You know, I have an idea that she knew. What had to be done. When I called her, she came, no questions. The old discipline.”

“Because she was a threat, just knowing you,” Ben said, still stitching things together.

“Do you have any idea what we are doing here? How important it is? They’re making weapons so powerful—well, that’s for another time.”

“I want to know.”

“Why? You’ll be dead. What can it matter to you? Or do you think someone’s coming to save you? Texas Rangers, maybe. The marshal,” he said, drawing the word out, sarcastic. He shook his head. “No one is coming.”

Ben glanced around. His gun had been kicked toward the door, too far away. Something else. A nightclub table to duck behind. A bottle to smash. Any kind of weapon. But what was real? If he smashed the bottle would he have jagged glass or breakaway Plasticine? The stage telephone,
the fire alarm, everything useful, was behind him, impossible to reach. Keep talking.

“You’re not going to kill me yet.”

“No?”

“Not before you know how much I know.”

“It doesn’t matter what you know. You’ll be dead.”

“Or how much I told Polly.”

Dieter looked at him.

“You don’t want to kill her if you don’t have to. You don’t want that kind of attention.”

Dieter sighed, a mock concession. “So what did you tell her?”

“First you tell me.”

“What?”

“Why you killed Danny. I want to know.”

Dieter shrugged. “I said, it’s a difficult family. Always their own ideas.” He nodded to Ben. “Not in the beginning. Otto’s son. Anything we needed. But this place, it changed him. The life here. Liesl.”

“Liesl?”

“You know a wife changes things. In France, I thought, well, it’s good, he can get her out, he’ll make her serious. But it was the other way.
Kino,
this stupid
Quatsch
he makes. She was ambitious for him. No politics here, it’s another country. Well, what did she know about it? So he has to hide it from her, the work he does for me.”

“Hide it?”

“Of course. What would she think? Her father.”

“Slow down,” Ben said. “Her father.”

“That was the beginning. They wanted someone close to Hans.” He smiled. “Him they worried about. The Conscience of Germany. What did he think? Who did he see? So Riordan talks to Daniel, they know each other from those movies, he thinks Daniel’s a good American. Well, he was a good American. But also a son-in-law. Close, you understand. So he comes to me. What should I do? And of course I see at once what a thing this is. At first, even, suspicious—what if it’s a trap? But no, an opportunity. To work with the FBI. To have a man there.

Not high up, but still. Just how they make the files. The organization. Even this is valuable. They want to watch the German community? Good. Show them where to look. Imagine, Hans Ostermann’s son-in-law. Their man inside.”

“Their spy.”

“Well, what was there to spy on? Even Brecht. Daniel tells them about the girlfriend, and of course that’s all they can see after that. They even follow him to New York. Where does he sleep at night? How long does he stay?
Quatsch
.”

“But not you.”

“Me? I don’t have girlfriends. I don’t go to New York. I salute the flag. I’m happy to be alive. I think here it’s paradise. My colleagues. My numbers. It’s all I need, my numbers. Nothing else in my head. It’s more interesting, Brecht’s secretary.”

“And some of those colleagues are at Northridge.”

“Yes, some. And I know what some of them do. So that’s one piece. And of course they investigate us. Are we loyal? Can we be trusted? Look at my FBI file, a German, yes, but now American. It’s all in the file.”

“And Danny knew what you were doing?”

“There was a loyalty there, from Otto. He knew the FBI was watching the émigrés—his family, his friends—why not protect them?”

“But not the other? The work at the labs? The weapons?”

“It’s so important to you, this distinction? He worked for us. He was one of us.”

“But he didn’t know.”

“You have to understand how this
worked,
” Dieter said patiently, wrapped up in his story now.

Ben looked to the door again. The fire alarm. But he’d be dead before he pulled the lever. Get Dieter to take him off the lot, wherever he was going to stage a disappearance. There were still people outside. He wouldn’t want to be seen dragging a body to a car.

“No one knew,” he continued. “Just his piece. Daniel wasn’t at
Livermore. Or Cal Tech. Not out in New Mexico with the Project. He was here, making these foolish reports. Making them look where there was nothing to see.”

“Away from you.”

“I was a messenger, that’s all. But nothing could come to me. I had my security clearance, but you couldn’t risk the mail. They still look. It had to go somewhere else.”

“What did he think it was? All the mail.”

“Party matters. A convenience, for me. I was always secret, you see. He understood that. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to work.”

“But why help Minot?”

“Another opportunity, to make them look somewhere else. He had credibility. Do you know how valuable that is? The Bureau could vouch for him. Anything he said—”

“But Minot was after Communists.”

“But which ones? Hollywood,” he said, his voice brushing it off. “Circuses. Of no importance. But think what it means. Minot asks the Bureau to help him. Investigate. Verify. They’re not supposed to do it, but of course they do. Time and men, all for this distraction. They catch one, they want more. You see? They were right. More time, more men. So give them another. But always the same kind. Of no importance to us.”

“Party members?” Howard Stein. Milton Schaeffer. Written off. Distractions.

“The Party here is never going to amount to anything. It’s not a political force in this country. A cover, sometimes, but now that’s difficult. So, another use. A small sacrifice. Old members. People who left in ’forty. Some actives. These people are of no consequence. So Daniel cooperates. It’s useful to us.”

“And what about the people he gives them?”

“What about them?” He looked at Ben. “Another sentimentalist. So you’re alike that way. ‘Why are we doing this to—?’ Well, whoever. To ask such a thing. No discipline. Not like before. Something changed for him here.”

“That’s why you killed him? You asked him to throw them somebody and he refused?”

Dieter smiled, the idea itself unlikely. “No, he started reading the mail.”

“And realized—”

“Not immediately. But then, yes. What we were doing. What
he
was doing, too, don’t forget.”

Ben saw him in the screening room, running the newsreel over and over, each time worse, smothering.

“So he decided to stop,” Ben said. The crucial point, the one redemption.

Dieter nodded. “And
told
me. Imagine the foolishness. I should stop, too. Not just stop. Give the Bureau names in exchange—for what? Clean hands? There are no clean hands. Foolish. But dangerous—all our work. What else could I do?”

“How, exactly?”

“How? What is the point of this? You know how.”

“Was he unconscious? When he went over?”

“It matters to you, to know this? Yes, on the head,” he said, hitting his own. “I thought the fall would kill him. A very strong head.”

“So you went to the hospital. To make sure.” Don’t leave me. A pillow. A minute.

“A long wait,” Dieter said, annoyed, as if the inconvenience of it still rankled. “Are you finished now?”

“How did you get out? The Cherokee. You locked the door—you had your own key, you must have—so everybody would think he’d been alone. And then what?”

“I left,” Dieter said simply, the question not worth raising. “Everyone was in the alley. So I went out the front. I had a story, if anyone asked. I was family, and I’d been worried about him and now, my god, too late— But nobody asked. So.”

“One more. How did you know I had the list? Did you miss a pickup?”

Dieter shook his head. “It was not so regular. It was late, in fact. But you had to telephone. First at the faculty lounge, then even on the mountain. What’s so important, I thought, to call from the mountain?
And you’re living there, you said—Liesl never mentioned that. A worry. So I listened.”

“And then had someone waiting.”

“Another strong head, it turns out. But here we are. So. Did you tell Polly?” He tilted his head. “Or are you just trying to buy time. Waiting for the
marshal
.”

“No marshal. Just us. But you don’t want to kill me here.”

“No?”

“Carl has orders not to open the gate. My orders. So it would be a lot easier to have me drive you off the lot.” Picked up by Henderson’s tail. “You don’t want anyone finding bodies lying around.”

“More
Kino,
” Dieter said, almost sneering. “And then the fight and you save yourself. Not with that fist anyway.” He nodded to Ben’s hand.

“You won’t get through the gate.”

“Change the orders. Call.” He jerked his head toward the phone behind Ben.

“What if—?”

“There are no what-ifs. Say one thing wrong and I’ll put a bullet in your head. Mine, too, if I have to. So it ends here. No need to explain anything.”

Ben looked at him, thrown. “Why?”