The Secret of Lions (7 page)

She could see him brush some of the hair
away from his face. She thought of how she was always doing that.
As Evan did it, she noticed that the bottom of his hand was stained
with lead markings from the pencils.

She moved her eyes across his face. He
stopped moving. He knew that he was not alone. Barbara sidestepped
and hid behind a tall grave marker. After a brief moment, she
peeked out from behind the tombstone and saw that Evan was
standing. He looked alert and was holding a black, metallic object
in his hand.

A gun! It’s him! Who else would carry a gun?
He is Willem Kessler!

She lowered herself all the way to the
ground; her back leaned up against a tombstone. She remained there
for some time before she dared to move again. She was afraid of him
now. Kobnhavn had hinted that he might be dangerous.

After a long time, she finally summoned the
courage to stand up.

Evan was gone.

Barbara looked around the cemetery. He was
nowhere in sight. She went over to look at the tombstone where he
had sat. A name was engraved in it: Solomon. She wondered why Evan
had been sitting on it. Then she glanced over at the tombstone
across from it. It was marked:

Unknown Soldier

“U.S.,” she muttered under her breath. He
was definitely the artist that she had searched for.

Her first instinct was to tell Kobnhavn, but
then she thought about confronting Evan. She didn’t know what to
do. She wondered what she would say if she confronted him.

Just the day before, Kobnhavn had made it
known to her that his clients were growing impatient and wanted
results. Her thesis deserved to be written. Her findings deserved
to be known. This was her life. Her future depended on this
thesis.

She needed to think about it.

Her mother would have wanted her to finish
it. On the other hand, if her mother had lived, she may have liked
Evan, but that wouldn't have stopped her from telling Barbara to do
what was right for herself first.

Evan was the one she had been looking for.
It was time to make a decision.

23

Another night passed and she wondered if
Evan even wanted protection. Maybe he was perfectly happy without
anyone knowing who he really was. She started to worry that she had
made a tremendous mistake by telling Kobnhavn. Guilty feelings
crept up on her and she lamented her impulsive move.

Kobnhavn’s promises had certainly enticed
her into revealing Evan’s secret in the first place. Her greed and
ambition had gotten the best of her. She had to find the courage to
tell Evan. Tonight would be the night to tell him. Perhaps he would
be grateful or perhaps he would resent her.

She looked across the room. Lucy was gone,
but some boy was sleeping in her bed. Lucy snuck back out to meet
her sorority sisters and left him sleeping in her bed.

Their dorm mother was a nice middle-aged
woman. She must have been completely oblivious to the night time
activities of Lucy and her sisters.

Barbara decided that drawing would make her
feel better. It would relax her nerves. She got out of bed and
pulled her sketchbook from underneath it. She gathered some pencils
and went into the living room. It was a little hot in the dorm, so
she cracked opened the window.

The night was almost completely clear and
the moon was out again, not full just bright. She had continued to
practice drawing in dark areas ever since she’d watched Evan do it.
Tonight, the moon was so bright that it would provide just enough
light for her to draw. Cold air blew in and chilled her skin. She
went back into her room and pulled a blanket out with her.

She sat in the chair once more and opened
her book. Her latest drawing, made after she had followed Evan to
the cemetery a few nights before, was a sketch of a sparrow and a
lion.

It was the best drawing that she had done in
a long time. She could close her eyes and imagine it next to Evan’s
in the gallery. In fact, she had sketched his painting so many
times while trying to learn his style that her style of drawing had
evolved to mirror his own. Evan’s style had become hers.

With a pencil tightly clenched in her hand,
she began to shade in areas around the lion’s mane. She was making
it a black lion.

24

Barbara had closed the window earlier after
cold air filled the dorm. Her sketch was so close to being complete
that she hadn’t realized that she’d drawn for two hours
straight.

Barbara sighed heavily and finally looked up
from her drawing.

Suddenly, she saw someone staring at her
through the window. She was being watched. At first, she saw him in
the corner of her eye and dismissed it as mere shadows. However,
she slowly raised her head and realized it was Evan.

He sat on a scaffold outside her dorm room
window. Barbara froze. She thought about screaming but then felt a
strengthening sense of safety with him watching her. She trusted
him. He stared at her. She felt as if he was looking through her
eyes and into her thoughts. He slowly put his hand up to the
window. Barbara stood and walked to the window. She touched the
glass. She could feel the heat from his hand emitting through the
window. He smiled at her. She smiled back and unlocked the window,
letting him enter her dorm.

“Evan,” Barbara said. “What are you doing
out there?”

Evan crawled into the room. He shook off the
cold air and looked up into her eyes.

“I’m sorry to trespass like this, but I had
to see you,” Evan said.

“What are you doing here? Watching me like
this?” she asked.

“Barbara, we have both watched each other. I
know that you followed me the other night,” he said. “I have to
tell you something. I can’t bear to hide it from you anymore. I am
the artist you’re looking for. And I think that you already
knew.”

“Evan, how do you know that? How did you
know that I knew?” Barbara asked.

He reached out to her and gently took her
sketchbook. He flipped it open to a sketch of him.

He looked at her dark, brown eyes. They were
glossy. He grabbed her tightly. They kissed, holding each other in
a rapturous embrace.

“Evan, I want to go somewhere with you,”
Barbara said.

Evan nodded and took her hand. They started
to walk to the window.

“Wait, Evan. Let’s go out the regular way,”
Barbara said. They stopped at the front door to her dorm room and
she put on a pair of warm slippers. Then they snuck out of the
dorm.

Barbara looked up at the moon as she held
onto Evan’s hand. He took her through the courtyards and down a
maze of buildings and alleys.

He took her through a privacy fence and down
a stairwell. He stopped at a door at the bottom of the stairs. He
looked directly into her eyes and smiled as he opened it.

Inside, Barbara could see that it was his
apartment. It was rather spacious and slightly plain, except for
all of the artwork. In the corner was a small drafting table with
paints covering it and piles of drawings behind it. Beautiful
paintings littered the apartment. Only a few hung on the walls;
most were leaned against the walls or stacked in the corners. Other
than the drafting table, the only furniture in the room was a small
sofa. A staircase led up to the loft where his bed was.

Barbara could see that he was definitely the
mysterious artist. One of the stacks was all drawings of lions.
Another stack was of paintings of various other animals, a wolf and
an eagle among them.

“Wow. You’re the best painter I’ve ever
met,” Barbara said.

Evan shook his head.

“Why are you shaking your head? Are you
modest? Who is the best painter here if not you?”

Evan pointed at her. He walked over to her
and looked at her.

“Da Vinci, Monet, Rembrandt, they’re the
best,” he said.

“They’re dead,” she responded.

“So am I,” he replied.

She was speechless.

He continued, “I have a confession.”

“Tell me,” Barbara whispered.

Evan wondered how she’d feel about him if he
confessed.

Barbara could see that he was scared to tell
her. She reached out to him and rubbed her fingertips down his
arm.

“Evan, you can trust me. Tell me,” she
whispered again.

“I want to tell you everything. I want you
to know who I really am, Barbara,” he said.

“I want to know all of the details,” Barbara
said. “I’m not scared to know the truth, Evan.”

Evan paused for a moment and said, “Okay.
First, let me get something that will help us.”

He left her for a moment and walked up the
staircase to his loft. Quickly, he returned to her with a frayed,
old journal.

Evan took her by the hand and led her to the
sofa. They got cozy and he opened the journal.

“I'm going to read to you from Willem
Kessler’s journal. Everything that I have written here is from
several sources: my parent’s journals and letters, my journal,
evidence that has been brought to me by the British government, and
even Hitler’s private journal. This isn’t his story. It belongs to
Willem Kessler. It is Willem’s story. It is my story. This is how I
imagine it to have happened. From all of the sources that I have
read and remembered, this is the way that fits,” he said.

Part Two

The Eagle Circling

Chapter
Three

The Blood Mile

25

My father’s name was Heinrik Kessler. And I
only know him from my mother’s descriptions, her journals, evidence
that a friend has given me, and my imagination. My mother’s name
was Gracy Kessler. Heinrik worked at a prison in Landsberg, Germany
in 1923. He was a captain in charge of the prison guards. My mother
said that even though he was of average build, he had the heart of
a lion.

Inside the prison, the cells smelled of
death and decay, even to the nostrils of the guards, who had
smelled the same stench night and day. The smell never left them.
When they finished for the day and returned to their homes, they
could still smell it. Often, my father would shower twice a
day.

The cell doors were small and wooden, each
with a circular spy hole in the center. A number was engraved at
the top of every cell. The engravings were archaic and barely
legible. The outside of every door glistened with a wet-brownish
color, like the color of the trees in the harsh, hot rains that
swept up from the Mediterranean Sea during the summer months.
Storms gathered over the great sea.

They gained momentum as they traveled
through the North Sea and along the Netherlands’ coast. The weather
from the coastline dictated the weather in central Europe, almost
as much as Eastern Europe’s January winds were affected by the
winters in Siberia. As the coming storms gathered over the
Mediterranean Sea, they also gathered over Germany and the rest of
Europe.

The spy hole for each cell door was
barricaded by small, steel wires. The steel shimmered with a black,
reptilian color. They reminded Heinrik of the way that the black
rocks looked on the lakebed near the house he and his wife dreamed
of buying.

He walked up and down the corridor with a
long, brown rifle. The end of it was fitted for a sharp blade—a
bayonet, but that blade had long been removed. It was an infantry
rifle, not unlike the one that he fought with in the Great War.
Heinrik had fought for his beloved Germany. Besides the rifle, he
also carried a combat knife. The blade was once razor sharp. In the
war, he had done horrible things with it, things that he’d rather
forget.

Most of the watch guards carried a Luger, a
standard German pistol. It was easier to draw a pistol on a fleeing
convict than a rifle. But he preferred a rifle because of its
range.

It was uncommon for him to be posted in the
halls. Usually he was in the yard, but tonight the guards were
shorthanded and he needed to fill in.

Sounds protruded from the cells surrounding
the corridor. They were the sounds of the insane. Voices raved.
Each voice plagued his dreams when he returned to the solace of his
home. Every day he heard them and every night he took them home and
stored them in the back of his mind, not allowing discovery by his
wife. Many of the prison’s occupants were violent, so he had to
stay vigilant.

Heinrik made his way to cell thirteen,
Adolf’s cell. It was the only quiet cell on the corridor. That was
what was so odd about cell thirteen. It was quiet. This worried my
father. He suspected that the prisoner inside was conspiring, like
the brewing storms. He was gearing up, preparing for something
dangerous.

The cell was dark inside and smelled of
urine. The normal guard always stopped on his route every night at
this one cell. The guards were all informed to especially check
cell thirteen; it was the main stop on their rounds.

My father rested the butt of his rifle on
the concrete floor and leaned over to gaze through the spy hole. He
could only make out shadows. His eyes adjusted to the dim light
that crept in through the bars on the cell’s window.

Outside of the prison, the storm rumbled.
The rain pounded on the buildings. Droplets sprayed in through the
window; the roof leaked. Heinrik could hear rain hitting the floor,
piling up into a small ravine of rainwater. The sound of the
falling rain left a residing, banshee-like echo. It filled his
ears.

For a moment, that sound was all that he
could hear. However, as his ears adjusted to the stillness of the
cell, he began to hear something else. He could hear steady
breathing. It was faint at first. He thought that maybe the
occupant was sleeping. However, he knew better. He knew that even
as this occupant slept, he was never idle. The silent prisoner’s
mind was always vigorously working. Often Heinrik would see Adolf
lying in his bed writing. He kept a journal with him almost
everywhere he went.