Vintage (21 page)

After considerable concentration, there was a click and the heavy door groaned inward. They descended a tight staircase and entered vaulted catacombs. Heinz flipped a switch and a few fluorescent lights buzzed and hummed as they slowly warmed, but they did little to dispel the chill and shadows.

Towering shelves stretched into the dark recesses of the chamber, and there was a small reception area with a metal desk and nameplate that read
Heinz Blau, Meister der Aufzeichnungen
.

“Custodian of Records,” Heinz said, touching the nameplate and pressing his other hand to his heart. Then with solemnity he added, “I perform my charge with honor and great pride.”

After a moment of reflection, Heinz jabbed his finger in
the air again and said, “We go now, to thwart the Communist thieves!” with such enthusiasm that Bruno regretted that they were a good sixty years too late.

A low shelf in the front contained ledger books, and Heinz bent over, studying their spines intently before removing one.

Bruno heard a creak behind him, perhaps the wind blowing the huge door, but then it would have had to be quite a gale to accomplish that. Something dripped in a dark corner.

“Wheat. Pork. Mushrooms. Corn.” Heinz shuffled through various ledgers until he found what he was looking for. “Ah, here it is: Fruit, berries and wine!”

He hefted a huge tome to the top shelf and flipped it open. The air was filled with the rich, dusty smell of history. Heinz traced lines across a ledger grid to steady his gaze, his tongue pinched in his lips and one eye closed as he concentrated. He grunted with the effort.

After several long moments he began nodding his head.

“Such wonderful, wonderful wines. Here we are: 1951 . . . 22,576 cases of Sylvaner. Shipped east as part of the agricultural exchange. Exchange! Bah. Such lies!”

“What about earlier?”

“Let me see.” More groaning and one-eyed concentration. “Here we are: 15,754 boxes of Müller-Thurgau, each box containing twelve bottles of wine . . . Ah, this is strange . . .”

“What is it?”

“Very strange indeed.”

“What, what?” Despite the chill, Bruno felt sweat on his brow. There was nothing like digging deep in the archives. It was almost as if he could anticipate that the moment of revelation was at hand.

But Heinz was starting to fade. His eyelids were heavy, and his speech slurred more.
Stay with me, Meister der Aufzeichnungen,
Bruno thought. “Please, is there anything more?”

“Three hundred and forty-two cases of ordinary red table wine.”

“Red wine?”

“We produce mostly white wines. And this is such a small, unusual amount, of unspecified variety. Here, the other reds are labeled . . . Dornfelder, Spätburgunder . . . but nowhere else, no other years is there simply a ‘red table wine.' ”

“That has to be what I'm looking for. Can I find out more information?”

Heinz yawned.

“Please . . .”

“Aisle thirteen. There should be invoices. You look and I'll keep watch here.” Heinz settled into his desk chair and was asleep in moments.

This,
Bruno thought as he stepped back through the aisles laden with volumes and boxes of documents,
is research!
There would come a time when all research was digital and meant staring at glowing rectangles for hours on end. He sighed deeply. To think that all of this might someday be lost.

But after ten minutes of digging through boxes and flipping aimlessly through file folders, Bruno decided he'd been a tad too sentimental and he'd be more than happy with a good database. He unshelved and reshelved boxes. He dug through piles of invoices, receipts, ledgers. Sure, the Germans were good at keeping records, but much of them were inscrutable. The shelves towered three meters high, stuffed with boxes, and Bruno felt the impossibility of the task of finding the one shred of evidence that he needed.

He heard Heinz snoring from three aisles away and was tempted to try to rouse him, but decided to dig through another pair of boxes.

He selected one at random on a lower shelf and with a stroke of luck found a cluster of papers from 1946. A stack of folders labeled
Weinlieferungen
caught his eye, and he grinned.

Within moments he clutched a small square of carbon paper capturing the shipment of 342 cases of
rot landwein,
a designation that basically translates as “generic red wine,” and unlike other regions suggested such low quality that you rarely saw it even used in Germany, let alone bottles that were exported.

The writing was in the archaic script that Bruno had seen in some of his mother's old family letters, hard to decipher. He was eager to enlist Heinz's help, and his hand trembled as he held the paper before him and walked down the aisle, amazed that the cork he'd found under a file cabinet in Chicago had led him to a
rathaus
cellar in the former East Germany.

He was so intent that he didn't see the advancing shadow rounding the corner at the end of the aisle. He bumped square into a large man in a dark fedora and long coat. It was not unlike running into the bricked-in end of the alley earlier in the evening, which had left his knuckles still smarting.

In the instant it took the fellow to rip the slip of paper out of his hand and shove him to the floor, sending him sprawling, Bruno caught a glimpse of the man's face. It was younger than he'd expected. He was pale, with light eyebrows, eyes that were a colorless gray and a long, thick scar that traced the edge of his square jaw.

Bruno hit the floor hard, slamming his head back onto the cold stone floor so that he saw stars with a crack that rattled his
skull. He was still holding a corner of the slip of paper and the blossoming pain in his head was outweighed by the great sense of loss and a rising anger.

He stood and dizzily stumbled. He grabbed at the shelf to steady himself, pulling out several boxes in the process. The man studied the paper and then, purposeful but unhurried, walked briskly away. Bruno staggered after him, ready to grab the man's shoulders, but the man spun, long coat whirling in the dim light, and Bruno felt a pistol pressing against his stomach. He looked down and then up into the man's cold eyes. He slumped and raised his hands, defeated, as the man turned in the aisle toward the stairs.

Suddenly an earsplitting explosion shattered the air. There was a cloud of smoke and dust and a rain of shredded paper drifting from overhead.

Bruno and his attacker both ducked.

Heinz was now blocking the stairs, holding a massive antique rifle longer than he was tall with a bayonet affixed to the end. He cocked the bolt, unsteadily aiming for his next shot.

“Bruno, Bruno! The Communists have infiltrated the
Aufzeichnungen
! They slipped past me while I was distracted.” He slammed the bolt home and pointed it at the man in the hat, whom Bruno had now dubbed “Scar.”

Scar made to duck into the adjoining aisle, and Bruno stuck out his foot and tripped him, snatching the receipt in the process. Scar's gun skittered on the floor and Bruno toed it under a shelf as he tried to scramble back to his feet.

There was another explosion as a bullet slammed into a box precariously close to Bruno's head. Heinz grinned and cocked the rifle yet again, swaying in his stance. “Bruno, get going! I'll hold them off while you escape and tell the world of their crimes!”

Scar scampered down the aisle while Heinz lowered the bayonet and charged into the dark aisle after him.

“For the Fatherland! Prepare to taste my steel, Communist dogs!”

Bruno tucked the receipt in his pocket and made for the stairs, feeling a tad guilty about leaving Scar to Heinz's zealous bayonet, but then Bruno was sure now that this was the man who had clocked him on the noggin in Chicago and had been following him ever since. He was relieved that his paranoia was justified. The question remained: For whom was Scar working? Aleksei had mentioned an oligarch, so surely he could find out more. Whatever the case, Heinz's current condition meant that Bruno was as likely to end up on the receiving end of a bullet as Scar was, so now was no time for investigation.

After the musty air of the archives and the smell of gunpowder, the empty streets of Naumburg were a relief. He wanted to study his latest clue, but he could barely make out the script, though he recognized it as
altedeutsche schrift,
an almost indecipherable form of handwriting that was taught in schools until the forties. If his mother were here she could help him, and he half thought about calling her until he realized that Frau Speck was a lot like his mother. It was late evening, or more likely early morning, so he found a bench in the park around the corner from Frau Speck's flat and fell fast asleep despite the chill, with help from the Sliwowitz still circulating through his blood.

*      *      *

He was in the middle of a lovely dream in which he was lying naked next to Sylvie as she smoked, and they were talking about Heinz and laughing, when he was suddenly awakened by a little
black schnauzer licking his face. The blue light of early morning filtered through the trees overhead.

“Shatzie! Get away from that filthy man!” a woman shrieked from the sidewalk as Bruno sat up. The dog glanced apologetically over her shoulder as she slunk after her owner.

“Shatzie, it's been fun. Don't forget to call,” Bruno said in German.

Hilda was thrilled to see him. She ushered him in, correctly assuming that Bruno would be hungry, so she fixed
hopple popple,
a farmer breakfast featuring fried potatoes and eggs and whatever leftovers or extras you can find. Bruno stood at her shoulder watching. In this case the leftovers included small
champignon
mushrooms and two kinds of diced sausages, white asparagus and grated
rauchkäse,
smoked cheese.

Hilda made coffee, and while he ate she helped him translate the invoice from the archives. Not all of it made sense, but it did clearly indicate that the shipment of wine was headed to Moscow at the direction of someone named Constanoff. Bruno now felt he had enough details to warrant the purchase of a train ticket east. How convenient that Parker Thomas had given him a business card with some Moscow contacts when they were both back in Beaune. And also irksome to think that Thomas might already be there with several days' head start. How much did he know?

Hilda suggested Dresden as a first stop, and as he made to leave she blinked back tears, which were comically magnified by her thick glasses. Bruno smiled and hugged her. She was wizened and arthritic, but there was also strength in her embrace. Then as he was leaving he stopped and turned.

“You know,” he said, “in France I was told that your husband
was a kind and fair administrator, and he's remembered fondly despite the circumstances of the occupation.”

“Thank you,” she said, choking out the words between sobs.

It was impulsive and a total lie. Bruno didn't have sufficient evidence to exonerate the man, but then Hilda had fed him twice and reminded him of his mother. Would she have taken him in during the forties if she'd known he was half Jewish and a quarter French?

When it comes to affairs of the heart, there are two important categories of foods: those intended for seduction and those meant for restoration. Mămăliga, a Moldovan corn porridge that is boiled and served plain alongside a traditional fresh curdled ewe cheese like telemea, is certainly intended for the latter. After a harsh evening of hard words and too much wine, mămăliga, cooked in an iron pot to buttery perfection, can coat the very interior of your soul and set you on the path to recovery.

—
B
RUNO
T
ANNENBAUM,
T
WENTY
R
ECIPES FOR
L
OVE

B
runo wasted two days crisscrossing Germany and Poland, making his way east and spending too much on train tickets and eating from vending machines. He hadn't had a glass of wine or anything more substantial than seltzer water, and he was feeling dizzy—his constitution, his very soul, lacked nourishment. These languages puzzled him, and he made poor decisions. In the Ukraine he chose the wrong side of the tracks and wound
up in Moldova after dozing for four hours. It was in the countryside beyond Chi
ș
in
ă
u that he decided he needed to regain his bearings before turning around for Moscow, and when he saw some healthy but unkempt vine rows from the window of his second-class car, he exited at the next station in search of a hearty meal and a glass of local wine.

At first he regretted his impulsiveness. The town was ramshackle, with mud streets, houses with faded paint and sagging roofs of rusted tin, straw or even cardboard, and nothing even remotely resembling a restaurant. He stood in the center of the main drag and smelled something foul, only to look down to see he was standing in a mass of animal excrement. A young, toothless boy leading a goat on a frayed rope (or rather the goat led the boy) ambled past and smiled at Bruno. Bruno listened to the fading sound of the goat's bell and hung his head, wondering how many hours it would be to the next train. A mangy dog with tufted fur, more like an underfed wolf than any recognizable breed, trotted into the street. It caught sight of Bruno and then scampered under a thatched fence.

Bruno scanned the dirt road, divots and potholes filled with rainwater, the faint smell of failed plumbing and decay, the envelope of dwindling cash in his pocket weighing on him heavily now. It had carried him here. To Moldova. The poorest country in Europe. Chasing something . . . chasing what?

Bruno thought of Carmen, flour-dusted and whistling as she kneaded dough for a flatbread, winking at him across the kitchen island. He thought of Claire sitting cross-legged on her bed texting her friends, his old postcards pinned to the wall behind her making a map of places she might never be able to go. He thought of Anna sitting at the dining room table late into the night, the glow from her laptop lighting her features as she
worked through her spreadsheets, her weary head propped in one hand. What would they think of him now?