The Diaries - 01 (9 page)

No…it couldn’t be.

He rushed back to
the Internet café, hurriedly making the attendant give him a code to one of the
terminals.
 
Gage sat, taking a deep
breath before bringing up Google and searching for the names Albert and
Margarete
.

Google didn’t like
that, trying to force the spelling to the traditional “Margaret”.

Gage put quotes
around the non-traditional spelling of “
Margarete
”.

He clicked the
mouse.

The search came
back with hundreds of entries about Albert and
Margarete
Speer.
 
Albert Speer…the armament and production mister of the Third Reich.
 
Famous.
 
Renowned.
 
A member of the Reich’s
inner-circle.

He couldn’t
breathe.
 
Next to him, a teenager cackled,
laughing at something being typed to him on Facebook’s chat screen.
 
Gage touched his notepad, his index finger
stopping under the name that didn’t fit.

Aldo.

He opened the
diary.

Aldo just returned from Austria, high from a
great victory.
 

It had been 1938,
the year of the
Anschluss
, the
so-called “friendly annexation” of Austria.

Elsa.

Poor, sweet Elsa.
 
Trapped just like me.

Aldo…Adolf.

Elsa…Eva.

Gage steadied
himself.
 
He typed the following:
Greta
Dreisbach
,
Adolf Hitler
.
 

Click.

There it was, on a
site devoted to all things about the Third Reich.
 
Hitler’s personal organization, his employees.
 
Far down the list, below personal accountants
and advisors there was a grainy picture beside the name Greta
Dreisbach
.
 

Gage glanced
around the room, his mouth moving like a fish out of water.
 
He massaged his chest.
 
Breathe,
buddy.
 
Breathe.

Greta was in
uniform, not smiling.
 
Just standing
there, one of those old-time photos where the subjects look like they would
rather be shoveling coal than made to pose for a picture.
 
Even with the stoic pose, it was easy to see
she had been attractive.
 
Her dark hair was
pulled back severely, framing large, expressive eyes and a rounded face.
 
Only a few lines of description existed:

Greta
Dreisbach
— Long-time maid of Adolf Hitler,
rumored to be a possible lover.
 
She
disappeared in 1938 and was never heard from again.
 
Some historians have suggested Hitler might
have had her killed, but after exhaustive searches no concrete information about
this minor player in Hitler’s circle has ever been discovered.

Gage lifted the
diary from his bag, staring at it.

No concrete
information until now.

Feeling a thudding
in his temples, he donned his sunglasses.

***

Saarbrücken
, Germany

The windows on the
outside wall of Monika Brink’s bedroom creaked, sounding as if they might blow
in from the force of the gale.
 
The glass
panes were covered in condensation from Monika’s steamy shower, only displaying
a hint of the steel gray of the November sky.
 
Another gust hit the side of the
Saarbrücken
apartment, promising an icy night which would fully indoctrinate Germany into
the coming winter.

Monika and her
lifelong friend Hanna padded into the bedroom.
 
It was painted a light blue, adorned with stacked textbooks and
paperbacks.
 
On the far end of the room
were an old television set and a portable CD player.
 
It was the bedroom of a busy person, cozy and
warm, and used for only two things: reading and sleeping.
 
As Monika stripped off her pajamas and
stepped into the shower, Hanna stood in the bathroom with her, leaning on the
counter.
 
She held a glass of sweet white
wine, swirling it as she talked in a singsong manner.

“You’ll be back
when?” she yelled over the noise of the water.

“Tomorrow night,
or early Tuesday!” Monika shouted back, squinting her eyes due to the burn of
the shampoo.

“I’m betting on
Tuesday,” Hanna replied, plugging in the curling iron before walking into the
bedroom and plopping onto the unmade bed, sipping her wine as she thumbed
through a magazine.

Monika emerged
from the steamy shower, skin bright pink, wiping a circle in the mirror before
toweling off and blow-drying her long, dark hair.
 
Minutes later, Hanna appeared in the
overheated bathroom and sat on the stool, smirking at her friend.

“So what’s the
plan?” she asked Monika, staring at her in the reflective portion of the
mirror.

Monika clamped her
hair in the heated curling iron.
 
She
only liked to curl the ends, giving it what they called a “flip” down at the
shop.
 
“No plan…I’m just going to
Frankfurt to see my friend,” Monika answered, not making eye contact.
 
“You know that.”

Hanna tapped a
cigarette from the pack on the counter, using a book of matches to light it.

“One for me, too,”
Monika said, accepting it with her mouth as her friend held in place.
 
“He doesn’t know I smoke.”

“Big freaking
deal, and stop trying to change the subject.”

“What?”

“You know what,”
Hanna said knowingly.
 
“You shattered the
glass-ceiling two weekends ago.”

Monika blinked
rapidly as the cigarette burned her eyes, trying to hold it in place as she
curled the hair on her right side.
 
“So.”

“So, tell me you
don’t want him sweating and grunting on top of you!” Hanna yelled,
laughing.
 
“Tell me you haven’t been
dreaming about that for, what, months in that bed right in there?”

Monika appeared
appropriately shocked, her smile bleeding through.
 
“That sort of salacious thinking has never
passed through my pure mind.”

Hanna stood, wine
glass in one hand, cigarette in the other.
 
She leaned toward the mirror, her eyes locked with her friend’s.
 
“Oh, yes, it has.”

“I don’t want to
talk about it,” Monika said quickly, still grinning.

“It’s been, God,
two years, am I right?
 
Thomas, the guy
you dated from
Idar-Oberstein
…the chef?”
 
Hanna turned, speaking into her friend’s
ear.
 
“Am I right?”

Monika placed the
curling iron on the counter, jerking the 220-volt plug from the wall.
 
She turned to her friend, taking her wine and
sipping it.
 
“Yes, that was the last
time, and it was awful.
 
And, unlike you,
I don’t feel the need to
try out
every man I speak to.”
 
She offered a
tight smile and walked into the bedroom.

Hanna followed
her, playfully arguing the way best friends—friends who know everything there
is to know about each other—are prone to do.
 
“It’s not that I need to try them out.
 
It’s just, well…I get attached extremely quickly.”

Monika pulled her
jeans on and cut her eyes at her friend.
 
“Yeah, literally
attached
,
like in the first hour after you meet them at the club.”

Hanna turned and
stalked back to the kitchen, refilling her wine.
 
Her voice was a distant yell.
 
“Well maybe you should try it sometime!”

Monika fastened
her bra and dropped back onto the edge of the bed.
 
Though she would never admit it, she did want
to feel Gage on top of her.
 
But it
wasn’t about the sex.
 
Sure, that part
would be
wunderbar
,
but she wanted to feel his chest against hers.
 
To feel his heartbeat.
 
She wanted
his breath on her neck, his fingers in her hair.
 
To lie there together and chat, the way
lovers do, and tell each other the things that only a truly intimate couple
can.
 
She pressed her lips together,
feeling the flush on her cheeks.

“Look at you,”
Hanna said knowingly, as she reentered the room.
 
“I’ve got twenty euro you were daydreaming
about him…and
it
.”

“It?”

“Hell yes,
it
.
 
Big?
 
Small?
 
Thick?
 
Thin?”
 
Hanna smirked, hand gesturing
to her midsection.
 
“They’re circumcised,
you know…Americans.”

“How do you know?”

“Trust me,
darling, I know.
 
Believe me
I know.”

“That’s all you
think about,” Monika managed through a fit of laughter.

Two and a half
hours later, as she neared Frankfurt on Autobahn-5, Monika cracked the window
and smoked her last cigarette.
 
She’d
just spoken with Gage; their dinner was set.
 
He’d been excited and nervous on the phone, making her pulse race,
hoping.
 
Hoping.
 

Light snowflakes
whizzed past her car as she moved into the right lane, not wanting the stress
of the left lanes with the Porsches and Audis and all the blinkers and flashing
lights.
 
No, she wanted to enjoy her last
cigarette of the next few days as she
did
daydream about Gage, Hanna’s perverted mind be damned.

She’d been
attracted to Gage from day one.
 
But
there was something about a man who didn’t try to get in her pants right away,
and it had thrown her.
 
He wanted to know
her: Monika the person.
 
And on their
weekends together, they would share everything: movies, books, thoughts,
food.
 
But upon reflection over the past
weeks, after the big kiss, Monika realized that Gage spoke to her all the time,
but never really told her anything.
 
She
knew he was from New York; she knew his parents had died in an accident.
 
That was all.
 
There was nothing else.
 
Other
than his tastes in food and the arts, she had no clue who the hell Gage
Hartline really was.

After a long drag
on the cigarette, Monika pitched it out the window.
 
She cracked both windows, allowing the
frigid, swirling wind to fumigate the cabin.
 
As she eased the car to the right onto the Frankfurter
Kreuz
, it was readily apparent to her that her lack of
knowledge—the sheer mystery—of who Gage Hartline really was, had done one
singular thing: it had made her desire for him grow.

Monika retrieved a
finger toothbrush from her purse, preloaded with peppermint toothpaste.
 
As she slowed, driving the small car into the
city, she brushed her teeth frantically, doing all she could to remove the
cigarette taste.

Because she
planned to kiss Gage tonight, and more than once.

***

The area around
the
Alte
Oper
, or old
opera, in Frankfurt, is one of the most celebrated, undisturbed areas of the
city.
 
Much of the center-city was
leveled by Allied bombs during World War II, making the preserved plaza around
the Opera unique.
 
Predictably, the
historic quarter attracts many people, locals and tourists alike.
 
While typically teeming with people, the cold
must have been keeping the crowds at bay.
 
Flurries buzzed about, threatening a full-scale November snowstorm—a
rarity, even in Germany.

Gage sat on a
stone wall under a large, leafless linden tree, watching the square from behind
his dark glasses.
 
He glanced around casually,
trying to determine if the money was under surveillance.
 
Jean was a professional, and there were
certainly hundreds of vantage points the dead drop could be watched from.
 

After an hour of
bone-chilling cold—never spotting any measure of reconnaissance—Gage stood,
feeling his knees creak.
 
He crossed the broad
plaza, still scanning the area, looking at faces, windows, ledges on rooftops.
 
He approached the bike rack, littered with
bicycles that no one would dare use on such a day.
 
Gage pretended to struggle with a cold chain
lock on the bike at the end, glancing into the inch-wide space behind the sign
displaying the universal symbol of a mother walking with her child, marking the
area as a pedestrian-only zone.
 
Just as
he had done many times before, Gage slid a lightning-fast hand into the space,
liberating the thin envelope from the crevice.
 
It went into his interior jacket pocket as Gage turned and hurried away
from the area.

He hustled across
the square and into the
Alte
Oper
U-
bahn
station, stopping at the base of the stairs
and looking up the stairs behind him, waiting.
 
His eyes were wide behind the glasses, shooting lasers up the flight of
steps.
 
Heartbeat…in his chest…his
neck…ears.