The Traitor's Emblem (30 page)

The funeral ended. She and Manfred received the guests’ condolences. Paul was the last in the line and approached them with a cautious look.

“Good morning. Thank you for coming,” said Manfred, holding out his hand, not recognizing him.

“I share your sorrow,” replied Paul.

“Did you know my father?”

“A little. My name is Paul Reiner.”

Manfred dropped Paul’s hand as though it had burned him.

“What are you doing here? You think you can appear back in her life just like that? After eleven years without a word?”

“I wrote dozens of letters and never received a reply to any of them,” Paul said, flustered.

“That doesn’t change what you did.”

“It’s all right, Manfred,” Alys said, laying a hand on his shoulder. “You go home.”

“Are you sure?” he asked, looking at Paul.

“Yes.”

“All right. I’ll go home and see if—”

“Fine,” she interrupted him before he could say the name. “I’ll be along soon.”

With a final spiteful glance at Paul, Manfred pulled on his hat and left. Alys turned along the central pathway of the cemetery, walking in silence with Paul at her side. Their eye contact had been brief but intense and painful, so she preferred not to have to look at him just yet.

“So you’ve come back.”

“I came back last week, pursuing a lead, but it turned out badly. Yesterday I met an acquaintance of your father’s who told me about his death. I hope you were able to grow closer over the years.”

“Sometimes distance is the best thing.”

“I understand.”

Why would I say a thing like that? He may think I was talking about him.

“And what about your travels, Paul? Did you find what you were looking for?”

“No.”

Say you were wrong to leave. Say you were wrong and I’ll admit my mistake and you’ll admit yours, and then I’ll fall into your arms again. Say it!

“Actually, I’ve decided to give up,” Paul went on. “I’ve reached a dead end. I have no family, I have no money, I have no profession, I don’t even have a country to return to, because this place is not Germany.”

She stopped and turned to look at him closely for the first time. She was surprised to see that his face hadn’t changed much. His features had hardened, there were deep circles under his eyes, and he had put on some weight, but he was still Paul. Her Paul.

“You really wrote to me?”

“Many times. I sent letters to your address at the boardinghouse, and also to your father’s house.”

“And so . . . what are you going to do?” she said. Her lips and her voice were trembling but she couldn’t stop them. Perhaps her body was sending a message she didn’t dare articulate. When Paul replied, there was also emotion in his voice.

“I’d considered going back to Africa, Alys. But when I heard about what had happened to your father, I thought . . .”

“What?”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’d like to talk to you in different surroundings, with more time . . . tell you about what’s happened over the years.”

“That’s not a good idea,” she forced herself to say.

“Alys, I know I have no right to come back into your life whenever I feel like it. I . . . Leaving that time was a big mistake—it was a huge mistake—and I’m ashamed of it. It’s taken a while for me to realize that, and all I ask is that we can sit down and have coffee together one day.”

And if I were to tell you that you have a son, Paul? A gorgeous boy with sky-blue eyes just like yours, blond and stubborn like his father? What would you do, Paul? And if I were to let you into our lives and then it didn’t work out? However much I want you, however much my body and my soul want to be with you, I can’t allow you to hurt him.

“I need a little time to think about it.”

He smiled, and small wrinkles Alys had never seen before clustered around his eyes.

“I’ll be waiting,” said Paul, holding out a little piece of paper with his address. “As long as you need me.”

Alys took the note and their fingers brushed against one another.

“All right, Paul. But I can’t promise anything. Go now.”

Slightly hurt at the brusque dismissal, Paul left without another word.

As he disappeared down the path, Alys prayed he wouldn’t turn around and see how much she was shaking.

51

“Well, well. It looks like the rat has taken the bait,” said Jürgen, gripping his binoculars tightly. From his vantage point on a hillock eighty meters from Josef’s grave, he could see Paul making his way up the queue to offer condolences to the Tannenbaums. He recognized him instantly. “Was I right, Adolf ?”

“You were right, sir,” said Eichmann, a little uncomfortable at this deviation from the program. In the six months he had been working with Jürgen, the newly minted baron had managed to penetrate a number of lodges, thanks to his title, his superficial charm, and a number of fake credentials supplied by the Lodge of the Prussian Sword. The Grand Master of that lodge, a recalcitrant nationalist and acquaintance of Heydrich’s, supported the Nazis with every inch of his being. He had unscrupulously granted Jürgen the degree of Master and given him an intensive course on how to pass as an experienced Mason. Then he had written letters of recommendation to the Grand Masters of the humanitarian lodges, urging their collaboration “to weather the current political storm.”

Visiting a different lodge each week, Jürgen had managed to obtain the names of more than three thousand members. Heydrich was ecstatic at the progress, and Eichmann, too, as he saw his dream of escaping his grim employment in Dachau becoming closer to a reality. He hadn’t minded typing up note cards for Heydrich in his free time, or even the occasional weekend trip with Jürgen to cities nearby, such as Augsburg, Ingolstadt, and Stuttgart. But the obsession that had awoken in Jürgen over the last few days worried him a great deal. The man thought of almost nothing but this Paul Reiner. He hadn’t even explained what part Reiner played in the mission Heydrich had charged them with; he’d said only that he wanted to find him.

“I was right,” repeated Jürgen, more to himself than to his nervous companion. “She’s the key.”

He adjusted the lenses of the binoculars. Using them wasn’t easy for Jürgen, having only one eye, and he had to lower them every once in a while. He shifted a little and the image of Alys appeared in his field of vision. She was very beautiful, more mature than the last time he’d seen her. He looked at the way her black short-sleeved blouse emphasized her breasts, and adjusted the binoculars to get a better look.

If only my father hadn’t turned her down. What a terrible humiliation it would have been for this little tart to have to marry me and do anything I wanted, Jürgen fantasized. He had an erection and had to put his hand in his pocket to arrange himself discreetly so that Eichmann wouldn’t notice.

On second thought, it’s better like this. Marrying a Jew would have been fatal to my career in the SS. And this way I can kill two birds with one stone: luring Paul in and having her. The whore will learn soon enough.

“Shall we continue as planned, sir?” said Eichmann.

“Yes, Adolf. Follow him. I want to know where he’s lodging.”

“And then? We turn him in to the Gestapo?”

With Alys’s father it had been so very easy. One call to an Obersturmführer he knew, ten minutes’ conversation, and four men had removed the insolent Jew from his Prinzregentenplatz apartment, giving no explanation. The plan had worked out perfectly. Now Paul had come to the funeral, just as Jürgen was sure he would.

It would be so simple to do it all again: find out where he slept, send over a patrol, then head to the cellars of the Wittelsbach Palace, the Gestapo’s headquarters in Munich. To go into the padded cell—padded not to stop people hurting themselves, but to muffle the screams—sit down in front of him and watch him die. Perhaps he could even bring the Jew and rape her right in front of Paul, enjoy her while Paul struggled desperately to free himself from his bonds.

But he had to think of his career. He didn’t want people talking about his cruelty, especially now that he was becoming better known.

On the back of his title, and his achievements, he was so close to promotion and a ticket to Berlin to work side by side with Heydrich.

And then there was also his desire to confront Paul man-to-man. Pay the little shit back for all the pain he’d caused without hiding behind the machinery of the state.

There has to be a better way.

Suddenly he knew what he wanted to do, and his lips twisted into a cruel smile.

“Excuse me, sir,” Eichmann insisted, thinking he hadn’t heard. “I was asking if we will be turning Reiner in?”

“No, Adolf. This will require a more personal touch.”

52

“I’m home!”

Returning from the cemetery, Alys walked into the small apartment and readied herself for the usual wild charge from Julian. But this time he didn’t appear.

“Hello?” she called, puzzled.

“We’re in the studio, Mama!”

Alys made her way down the narrow corridor. There were only three bedrooms. Hers, the smallest, was as bare as a wardrobe. Manfred’s was almost exactly the same size, except that her brother’s was always piled high with technical manuals, strange books in English, and a stack of notes from the engineering course he had completed the previous year. Manfred had lived with them since he started university, when the arguments with his father had intensified. It was supposedly a temporary arrangement, but they’d lived together for so long now that Alys couldn’t imagine juggling her career as a photographer and looking after Julian without the help he gave her. Nor did he have much opportunity for advancement, because in spite of his excellent degree, job interviews always ended with the same phrase: “It’s such a shame you’re a Jew.” The only money coming into the household was what Alys made selling photos, and it was getting harder to pay the rent.

The “studio” was what in normal homes would have been the living room. Alys’s developing equipment had taken it over completely. The window had been covered in black sheets, and the only lightbulb was red.

Alys knocked on the door.

“Come in, Mama! We’re just finishing!”

The table was covered in developing trays. Half a dozen lines of pegs ran from wall to wall, clasping photos left out to dry. Alys ran over to kiss Julian and Manfred.

“Are you all right?” her brother asked.

She made a gesture to say that they would talk later. She hadn’t told Julian where they were going when they left him with a neighbor. The boy had never been allowed to get to know his grandfather in life, nor would his death provide the boy with an inheritance. In fact the entirety of Josef’s estate—much depleted in recent years, since his business had lost momentum—had gone to a cultural foundation.

The last wishes of a man who once said he was doing it all for his family, thought Alys as she listened to her father’s lawyer. Well, I have no intention of telling Julian about his grandfather’s death. At least we’ll spare him that unpleasantness.

“What’s that? I don’t remember taking those photos.”

“Looks like Julian’s been using your old Kodak, Sis.”

“Really? Last I remember, the shutter was jammed.”

“Uncle Manfred fixed it for me,” replied Julian with a guilty smile.

“Tattletale!” said Manfred, giving him a playful shove. “Well, it was that or let him loose on your Leica.”

“I’d have skinned you alive, Manfred,” said Alys, feigning annoyance. No photographer likes a child’s sticky little fingers anywhere near his or her camera, but both she and her brother couldn’t refuse Julian a thing. Ever since he had learned to speak he’d always gotten his way, but he was still the most sensitive and affectionate of the three.

Alys approached the photos and checked whether the earliest ones were ready to handle. She took one and held it up. It was a close-up of Manfred’s desk lamp, with a pile of books next to it. The photo was exceptionally accomplished, with the cone of light half illuminating the titles and excellent contrast. It was slightly out of focus, no doubt the product of Julian’s hands pressing the shutter release. A beginner’s mistake.

And he’s only ten. When he grows up he’ll be a great photographer, she thought proudly.

She glanced over at her son, who was watching her intently, desperate to hear her opinion. Alys pretended not to notice.

“What do you think, Mama?”

“About what?”

“About the photo.”

“It’s a little shaky. But you chose the aperture and depth very well. Next time you want to do a still life without much light, use the tripod.”

“Yes, Mama,” said Julian, grinning from ear to ear.

Ever since Julian’s birth, her nature had sweetened considerably. She ruffled his blond hair, which always made him laugh.

“So, Julian, what would you say to a picnic in the park with Uncle Manfred?”

“Today? Will you let me take the Kodak?”

“If you promise to be careful,” said Alys, resigned.

“Of course I will! The park, the park!”

“But first go to your room and change.”

Julian raced out; Manfred remained, watching his sister in silence. Under the red light that obscured her expression, he couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Alys, meanwhile, had taken Paul’s piece of paper out of her pocket and was staring at it as though the half dozen words might transform themselves into the man himself.

“He gave you his address?” asked Manfred, reading over her shoulder. “To cap it all, it’s a boardinghouse. Please . . .”

“He might mean well, Manfred,” she said defensively.

“I don’t understand you, Sis. You haven’t heard a word from him in years, for all you knew he was dead, or worse. And now suddenly he shows up . . .”

“You know how I feel about him.”

“You should have thought about that earlier.”

Her face contorted.

Thanks for that, Manfred. As though I haven’t regretted it enough.

“I’m sorry,” said Manfred, seeing he had upset her. He stroked her shoulder affectionately. “I didn’t mean it. You’re free to do whatever you want. I just don’t want you to get hurt.”