The Diaries - 01 (56 page)

Gage shook his
head back and forth, speechless.

“Fella there said
you helped him with an
ant
problem,”
Ellis offered helpfully, making Gage snort so loud he hurt his rib.

“But you couldn’t
have followed me here; I took precautions.”

Ellis’s eyes
twinkled as he relished the moment.
 
“Nope, I didn’t catch up to you until I saw Jean picking that alleyway
lock, a pistol pinched between his bony legs.”

“But you said you
went to the house at Château-Thierry.”

“I did.
 
Helluva
nice guy
there, that Marcel.
 
A career hood, no
doubt, but I got the feeling he’s a decent enough fella.
 
And I’m lucky I was able to run you down.”
 
Ellis looked like he might continue, but
turned the cup up, draining Gage’s half of the coffee.
 
He glanced at the café longingly like he might
go for another cup.

“So you stayed too
long…” Gage said, wanting desperately to hear the rest of the story.

Ellis nodded.
 
“Sorry.
 
Yeah, he filled me in on some of what happened.
 
Even let me take a bottle of seventy-eight
La Mission Haut
Brion
,”
Ellis said triumphantly.
 
“I got it
wrapped up in the front seat of the van.”

Gage blinked
slowly.
 
“But
how
did you find me?”

“Well, we had a
long chat.
 
I first asked about Nicky
Arnaud, but Marcel said he had ‘gone away’ and was likely not coming back.
 
I didn’t feel the need to ask any more
questions about that.
 
That’s when he
told me you had helped him with an ant problem but had just left.”
 
Ellis made eye contact with Gage, his own eyes
twinkling.
 

“So as he told his
veiled story, I realized where you were heading, especially after he told me
about the one diary he had given back to you.
 
Marcel told me Jean would stop at nothing to find you, and would kill
you when he did.”
 
Ellis’s leathery face
twisted into a toothy grin.
 
“Then he had
an inspiration—he called a service that Opel provides,
kinda
like that OnStar we have back stateside.
 
He called the operator and said his son had run off with his car, but he
didn’t want the cops involved.
 
He had
the owner’s codes, so why wouldn’t they help him, paying customer that he is?
 
The operator gave him updates the whole way
here and he, in turn, passed them on to me.”
 
Ellis’s face broadened with a smile.
 
“We figured you were coming to Frankfurt, so that part was easy.
 
Just as I was coming into the city, they
tracked you right to that alley.”
 

Gage shifted,
wincing from the pain in his ribs and the realization of how much luck, and
skill, had been involved in his rescue.
 
He extended his hand and Ellis took it.
 
“Thanks for caring enough to stick with it.”

“That guy would
have killed you.
 
That’s what I was
trying to stop.
 
Even still, I’m glad we
got here when we did.
 
You had him beaten
but it would have been bad news had you killed him.”
 
Ellis stood and stretched.
 
“I needed some excitement, anyway.
 
You know how boring my job is sometimes?”

Gage grinned,
wincing again as his ribs ground together.
 
“So what now?”

“Well, Marcel told
me you got a little puncture wound on your side.
 
You need to get that looked at.”
 
He gestured to the alley.
 
“I’ll hold that
Frenchie
for twenty-four hours; take him somewhere quiet, patch him up a little more.
 
That should give you time to get clear of
here.”

Never in a million
years would Gage have guessed that Ellis was just going to let him go
free.
 
He struggled for words, finally
stammering a response.
 
“You’re really
just going to let me walk?”

“Marcel said he
had loaned you that car indefinitely, so you can drive if you like.”
 
He grinned at his wit.
 
“If I were you, I’d head somewhere way down south
to convalesce.
 
It’s so much easier to heal
when it’s warm, don’t you think?”
 
Ellis
was chewing his tongue inside his mouth, clearly enjoying the moment.

“I don’t really know
what to say.”

“Return the favor
to someone else, Mister Hartline, or whoever you are now.
 
I’ve been a real sad sack for a while,
mopin
’ around and
feelin
’ sorry
for myself…but today I feel pretty doggone good.
 
Why don’t you head off and do the same?”

“Okay, Captain
Ellis.”

“And after I let
this cat stare at a hotel wall for a day, I’ll let him crawl back to France
after a good debriefing.
 
Then I’ll go
back to chasing barracks bullies and diesel thieves.”

“Do the
authorities still think I killed Monika Brink?” Gage asked, pain flooding his mind.

“They don’t know
what to think.
 
They realized things went
deeper when they learned you had no background.
 
I heard there was a tip or two and then the search for you moved
stateside, and now—at least for the French and Germans—their main objects of
interest are those two men who you torched in Metz.”
 
Ellis twisted his body to stare directly at
Gage.
 
“I know why you did what you did;
at least, I think I do.”

Gage was unable to
respond, but nodded his thanks.

“I really haven’t
done you much good, but I think you did the world a favor, so I’m going to do
all I can to clear you of all this.
 
I
think a well-written report about Nicky and the two goons in Metz—leaving out a
few crucial details—should do it.
 
My
chief’ll
want a commendation, so he’ll share it with the
BKA, and they’ll do the same thing with the French.
 
After letting that cop off without injuring
him, you’re already pretty clean in their eyes, but you’ll be fully clear in a
few days.”
 

The two men shook
hands again and, even
through
the pain, Gage managed
to give Ellis a small hug.
 
After Ellis
helped him load the car, he was off, heading south.

Just like Ellis
suggested.

 
***

Ellis watched Gage
drive away, waving with the pride of a father watching his son leaving for
college.
 
When the car had disappeared,
he turned and walked to the olive green van, opening the rear door and eyeing
the sour-looking Frenchman who was pouting like a toddler.
 
From his pocket, Ellis produced a small
digital voice recorder, waving it in front of the cuffed Frenchman’s face.
 
He spoke loudly, like one might to an elderly
person.

“This is courtesy
of a man named Marcel Cherbourg in Château-Thierry.
 
He taped you every time you ever met.
 
Your voice is all over this thing, confessing
to all kinds of nasty things that could land your skinny butt in jail for the
rest of your life.”

Jean’s red eyes
burned with fury as his long thin nostrils flared.
 
Even still, he remained silent.

“So after we sit
on you for a day or so, you’re going to go back to your little job with a neat
and tidy story about where you been.
 
And
that man that just drove away will be long gone with a new name, so you can
forget about him.”

Sorgi turned from
the front seat, hitting his line on cue, but sounding every bit the part of a
bad actor.
 
“And what about us, boss?”

“Oh, we’re
gonna
be fine.
 
Me
and Mister Hartline are
gonna
become pen pals and I’m
gonna
send him a flash drive with this here recording
on it.
 
And if anything happens to me, or
you, he’ll come back and take care of business, in more ways than one.
 
Won’t he, Mister
Jenois
?”

Jean’s eyes were
dull and black, staring into some faraway place reserved only for the soundly
beaten.

“Won’t he, Jean?”

Jean
Jenois
turned to Ellis, his defeat mingled with the
indignation that he had been bested by a low-level Army investigator.
 
He muttered his response, displaying a crimson,
pulpy maw with no front teeth.
 
“
Oui
.
 
Let’s just get
on with it.”

Ellis winked at
Sorgi, jumping into the rear seat and sitting next to Jean.
 
As they drove to retrieve
Sorgi’s
car, Ellis tapped Jean’s elbow.
 
“Now
that all that’s straight, I have got to show you something, ‘cause you look
like a man who would know his wines.”
 
Ellis reached into the space between the two front seats and unwrapped
the prize bottle of wine.

Tears welled in
Jean
Jenois’s
eyes as he turned to look out the
window.

Chapter 15

Tel Aviv, Israel – seven weeks later

Had
he closed his eyes and
reopened them, Gage might have thought he was in San Diego, with the rocky
hills, the crystalline sky and the temperate breeze.
 
Just that morning he’d exited the overnight
ferry from Greece.
 
He’d taken Ellis’s
advice and spent the past seven weeks there, on Crete, convalescing.
 
After two months his head was still completely
clear and painless.
 
He’d not had one
single headache the entire time.
 
While
his side still occasionally ached, it was mostly healed, repaired by a friendly
U.S. Army surgeon and arranged by a glad-to-see-him Kenny Mars.

And Gage hadn’t
worn sunglasses once since his last mission, even in the brightest sunlight.

He dropped his
pack from his back, stopping in the shadows of an ancient building, opening one
of the diaries.
 
He’d read all of them
during his time in Crete and, when he again read the final diary, he was
shocked to find the note in Monika’s handwriting, on the simple stationary of
the hotel where she had perished.
 
The
note contained
Liora
Morgenstern’s name and last
known address, in Tel Aviv.
 
Gage didn’t
know how Monika had learned it, but he had a suspicion, while he was away that
fateful night, that she had done some investigating of her own.
 
Through the use of an Internet investigation
service, at the cost of just under a hundred euro, Gage learned the woman in
question had moved several times, and he now stood a block from her address.

He replaced the
diary, holding the note in his hand, on which he had scribbled the new
address.
 
It was lunchtime in
Tel-Aviv.
 
Small cars, most of them
white, or yellow, or light blue, buzzed by, many of them running the traffic
light several seconds after it turned red.
 
Gage didn’t cross until the locals did and, once he was on the far side
of the street, he turned right, walking half a block until he saw the building.

Tenement would
have been a better word.

Liora
Morgenstern was listed as a resident of the building,
living on the third floor.
 
It was eight stories
high.
 
Gage shook his head as he studied
the building.
 
The small patios outside
of each apartment were littered with hanging clothes and refuse.
 
On the bottom floors of the building, the
peeling white paint was replaced by fresh graffiti.
 
The parking lot contained a greater number of
rusted heaps than fully functioning cars, and in the dilapidated playground on
the building’s lot, numerous scrawny children played without benefit of
supervision.

Gage walked into
the base of the building, finding the mailboxes.
 
Using his
Boker
specialized knife, he picked the simple lock of the mailbox corresponding with
the address, staring at the week’s worth of bills.
 
After confirming the name, making sure she
indeed lived there, he climbed the stairs, sitting on the steps a half a story
above
Liora
Morgenstern’s floor.
 
He read from the International Gazette,
purchased on the ferry, sitting patiently for ninety minutes.

The door finally opened.

Mostly hidden from
view, Gage lowered the left corner of the paper, peering through the iron slats
of the banister.

He held his
breath.

Unlike what he had
envisioned, the woman looked nothing like Adolf Hitler.
 
She appeared quite a bit older than her
seventy-three years, hunched over and moving with the slow, scraping pain of
arthritis.
 
Gage waited until she reached
the bottom of the stairs, peering down through the center opening of the
decrepit stairwell.
 
He trotted down, reacquiring
her as she shuffled through the parking lot.
 
Her hair was dark, with streaks of gray, pulled back into a bun.
 
Gage moved off to her side, staying out of
her field of vision.
 
A group of tattooed
and
earringed
youths shouted insults at her as she
momentarily disturbed their basketball game, cutting across the edge of the
court and ignoring them.
 
She crossed a
street, entering a green, well-watered park.
 
He entered the park to the right of where she had, watching her as she
found a lone park bench.
 
From the pocket
of her tattered sweater, the old woman produced a handful of seed, feeding the
flock of birds that probably expected her at the same time each day.

He moved in close,
never drawing her gaze.
 
Her face was
lined, and tanned, and pinched.
 
The
woman’s brown eyes appeared sunken deep in their sockets.
 
Gage imagined she hadn’t smiled in
years.
 
Pigeons stood on the bench next
to her, unafraid of this tired old woman who probably couldn’t harm them if she
tried.

His mind was
churning, going over what he had planned to do.
 
Suddenly, his idea of revealing to this woman the cache of the diaries
seemed like a very bad idea.
 
Gage had no
way of knowing if she knew she was Hitler’s child.
 
He seriously doubted it.
 
But whether or not she did, Gage also doubted
the woman would have the means to know what to do with such priceless texts.
 
After crossing in front of her twice, he
decided to run back to her building.
 
He
bounded up the stairs, stopping in front of her door, listening for footfalls
on the stairwell.
 
Using the tool again,
he took his time, finally picking her lock after several minutes.
 
Gage stepped inside.

Cats,
everywhere.
 
Every color.
 
Every type.
 
Every size.
 
Gage estimated at
least a hundred cats, living in what he would term a hovel.
 
There was no television, no radio, no
newspapers.
 
He looked everywhere, not even
finding a phone.
 
Gage waded through the
feline throng, glancing out the dingy window, seeing no sign of the woman
crossing the yard.

He found a
card-box on the kitchen table, opening it to find check-stubs from the Israeli
government.
 
He shooed a nosy cat
away.
 
Each check was sent on the fifth
of the month, in the amount of 275 new shekels.
 
Having just exchanged money when he debarked earlier, Gage knew this was
equivalent to $1,100 a month.
 

Abject poverty.

Feeling his
allergies kicking up, he eased his way back to the door, locking it and pulling
it shut behind him.
 
Gage walked back to
the park, finding the woman still sitting there, out of seed, wringing her
hands, staring into the distance.
 
No
television, no newspapers, no phone, and probably no friends.
 
Surrounded by animals.
 
Her only friends.

Depression.
 
Deep, clinical depression.

Gage knew all
about the many signs and symptoms, having lived many of them himself.

He wondered if
Liora’s
condition was due to growing up parentless, with
her initial years spent in the horrors of Buchenwald.
 
Or, perhaps, her father had passed the gene
on to her.
 
Either way, as he stood there
staring at the woman, Gage couldn’t envision telling her about the diaries.
 

But he had to
speak with her.
 

Feeling a rush of
melancholy for Monika, wishing she was by his side, squeezing his hand, he
stepped across the strip of grass, resting his hand on the park bench.

“Hello.”

She twisted her
stiff back, looking up at him neutrally before her brow lowered.
 
She turned back, resuming her staring.

“Do you speak
English?”

She turned again,
her eyes narrowed.
 
Again she turned away.

She must not know
English.
 
But Gage didn’t know
Hebrew.
 
Perhaps she spoke German?
 
He cleared his throat.
 
“
Sprechen
sie
Deutsche?”

She stared
straight ahead, pressing her lips together.
 
In clear, faintly-accented English she finally spoke.
 
“You’re just not going to leave me alone, are
you?”

Gage smiled,
relieved to finally have bridged the gap.
 
He moved in front of her, giving her space, standing at an angle.
 
She rotated her eyes up to him.

“What do you
want?”

“I…I wanted to
speak with you.
 
You’re
Liora
Morgenstern.”

“Yes.”
 
Her tone was crisp but curious.

“You live here, in
the building a few blocks away.”

“And?”

“And you’re a
survivor of Buchenwald?”

Like iron prison
bars, the slight openness she had displayed slammed shut.
 
Her gaze went back to the distance.
 
“I do not
ever
talk about that.”

Gage chewed on his
lip, feeling intrusive but unable to contain himself.
 
He scraped closer.
 
“I understand, and I don’t want you to
talk.
 
I just want you to know…”

Liora
Morgenstern looked up at him again.
 
In her eyes was not malice, as he thought it
might be.
 
It was pain.
 
“Go on.”

He touched the old
woman’s cheek for just a second, quickly backing away so she wouldn’t feel
threatened.
 
“I just want you to know I
am sorry, truly sorry, for all you’ve been through.”
 
Gage forced a quick smile at the stunned
looking woman.
 
He nodded one final time,
turned and walked away.

His head was
swimming.
 
He walked toward the center of
the bustling city, trying to collect his thoughts.
 
As he approached a large square, he paused
when a gaggle of Israeli soldiers passed before him, noisily arguing about
where they would lunch.

Israeli soldiers…

Something occurred
to Gage.
 
The fountainhead of an idea.

He rotated his
head, seeing the official-looking building, the Ministry of Justice.
 
His eyes moved upward, watching the Israeli
flag snapping and popping in the pleasant breeze, framed by the cerulean sky.
 
The idea began to take shape.
 
Always one who knew direction by the position
of the sun, Gage’s head turned to the west, back toward Greece, toward the
location of the remainder of the diaries.

He dug into his
wallet, finding the same old phone card he’d last used in Germany.
 
It took him fifteen minutes to locate a
public phone, in the back corner of an American style pizza joint.
 
Gage sipped a paper cup of icy Diet Coke as
he went through the sequence of numbers.
 
The polite, computer-generated lady informed him of thirty-eight
remaining minutes.

This would only
take a few.

He pressed the
remaining digits.

“Hunter here,”
came the reply.
 
It would be four in the
morning at Bragg.
 
Hunter was wide awake.
 
Gage knew he should have called before
now.
 
But he’d waited, consciously,
because he’d wanted to discover his personal catharsis before he reached out
again.

“Hello, sir.”

“Sonofabitch,”
Hunter muttered.
 
“You made it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I assume you’re
clear, or you wouldn’t be calling me.”

“I am, sir.
 
I want to catch you up on what happened, but
before I do that, can I ask an urgent favor of you?”

“You can always
ask.”

“We worked in Ireland
once, with a friend of yours, an Israeli.”

Hunter replied
without a second’s hesitation.
 
“Ben
Galeena
,
Mossad
, in the
Metsada
.
 
One of my
favorite people on this earth.”

“Sir, could you
set up a meeting between him and me,
today
?”

“Where are you?”

“Standing
smack-dab in the center of Tel Aviv.”

“Tel Aviv,
huh?
 
Well, I can always try.”

 
***

Gage was scheduled
to meet him at the port, at one of the many waterside seafood restaurants.
 
The ferry was scheduled to leave in an hour
and a half.
 
He gripped the ticket in his
left hand, a glass of brackish tap water in his right.
 
It was just past four in the afternoon; the
restaurant was nearly empty.

Ben
Galeena
appeared from Gage’s right.
 
Gage had watched the front door, seeing no
other entrances.
 
The career intel man
must have entered from the rear.

“I believe you
wanted to meet with me,”
Galeena
said without
smiling.
 
He was short, with a barrel
chest and a neatly trimmed beard.
 
The
Metsada
operative wore white linen pants and a print silk
shirt, looking like the many robust sixty-
somethings
in places like Fort Lauderdale or Naples, Florida.