The Kingdom of Shadows

THIRTEEN

The shades had been drawn, sealing out the merciless bright sunshine of the morning. A little piece of night remained inside the room that Ernst von Behren used as his study. He sat deep in brooding thought behind the desk. One of the few books he’d managed to bring with him from Berlin lay on the desktop, a black silk ribbon marking his place halfway though the yellowed pages. The book was a favorite, he’d read it many times through since he’d been a boy. But there’d be no reading of old tales set in thorny black-letter, this day. Perhaps for many days to come.

“It is true -” Marte sat curled up in the chair on the other side of the desk, her legs tucked up beneath her, a wet handkerchief squeezed into a ball in one hand. Her face was still puffy and reddened from her crying, though the tears had stopped hours ago. “I know it is.”

She had said those same words over and over, and each time von Behren had felt a knifeblade touch his heart, the edge dulled to ache rather than cut. He slowly rubbed a fingertip on the only other thing on his desk, a photograph of a child lifted up in a another woman’s arms. The corner of the photo had been crumpled where Marte had clutched it tight; he watched his own hand trying to smooth out the frayed creases.

There was nothing he could do about the things of which she told him. His brooding was a pit that opened wider beneath him. Working on a screenplay with Wise or anyone else, he could slash a red pencil through the bad parts, or crumple into his fist a page that was beyond redemption and hurl it toward an overflowing wastebasket. The SS were considerably more difficult to dispose of.

Von Behren roused himself from his brooding. The man from the German consulate, who’d come to Marte with the photos of the child, had displayed a fine sense of timing. David Wise wasn’t here in Los Angeles at the moment; he wasn’t even in California, but had just left on a two-week business tour of the movie theaters under the control of the Wise Studios – a separate corporation was about to be set up, to avoid getting hit with the same antitrust pressure that Roosevelt’s Attorney General had brought against MGM and Warner Brothers. He would have been the only one who could keep Marte here; he would have been able to wrap his arms around her and hold her, let her cry against his chest, tell her that he and his money and all his powerful friends would do something, he’d go up against the iron weight of the Reich, against Goebbels and the SS, he’d find a way to get the little boy out and bring him here…

It wouldn’t have even mattered if Herr Wise had lied to her about those things, about what he could or couldn’t do. He would at least have found a way of keeping Marte here. Told her that it would be better if she stayed here, in this safe country, while he pulled strings, all his great net of connections and influence, to find the little boy, Marte’s child, and trade whatever else Goebbels and the SS might want for him.

Which was the problem, of course; von Behren’s heart slowed and grew heavy inside him. He knew there wasn’t anything else that the Reichsminister for Propaganda and Public Enlightenment wanted. He had done his job all too well, when he had set out to have Goebbels fall in love with his protegee. Only one love greater, the interlocking of obsessions between the Reichsminister and the Fuhrer, that could have made Goebbels send Marte away. And now things had changed; Goebbels had paid his penance, the Fuhrer ’s gaze had turned elsewhere – and now the Reichsminister would have her back again.

As Marte wept quietly, curled up in the chair on the other side of the desk, von Behren reached out and turned a few pages of the old book before him. He stopped at the woodcut print of the cloaked and hooded figure, stalking with a crossbow through a night-dark forest. The figure leaned forward, the hidden face intent upon its prey. Der Rote Jager. The story and the image had sealed itself into von Behren’s dreaming years ago, when he’d been a child and his grandmother had first read it to him as he’d sat in the safety of her lap. The red hunter, the hunter of men. The one from whom there was no escape, no matter where you fled. As the nobleman who’d broken the ancient laws ran through the entangling branches, seeking the shelter of daybreak, only to find an endless night and a red-cloaked figure barring the path before him, the same faceless image that had strode unstoppable behind him…

Perhaps it was unavoidable, and always had been. Von Behren closed the book and let out a pent-up sigh. “We had better pack, then. You will only need to take a few things. I’m sure the gracious folk of the consulate will take care of all the rest.”

Marte raised her head. “You would come with me?”

He nodded. “Yes, of course.” He picked up the old book; that was one thing he would take with him, back to that land from which he had brought it. A rueful smile came to his face. “How could I not?”

After she had hurried away, back to her little house to throw a few things into a suitcase, he went on sitting at the desk, mulling over answerless questions.

He supposed he loved her as well. But he hadn’t realized it, until after he had given her to the eyes of other men.

The forest snared him in its branches, as he closed his own eyes and ran toward the waiting figure.

The house felt empty. Except for the man standing in the middle of the living room, the exact center of the little house with the other empty rooms echoing around. A man with necktie loosened and pulled askew, and a two-day stubble on a face trembling with anger.

“Well?” David Wise turned, his fists tightened. “Any word?” His voice was a demanding bark.

The head of security for the Wise Studios had left the house’s front door open behind him. With somebody in the state that his boss had worked himself into, Wilson knew it was best to keep his own options clear.

“It’s pretty sure they went through Mexico, and probably on to Buenos Aires.” He glanced at a piece of paper he took from his shirt pocket, though he’d already memorized what was on it. “Apparently von Behren tried to cash a check in Tijuana. At a hotel – the clerk remembers a group of about six people speaking German, and one of them was a woman. He didn’t see her face; they hustled her in and out before he got a good look at her.”

“How long ago was that?”

The security head shrugged. “Three days. Possibly four.”

“Damn.” Wise’s glare swept across the house’s doorways. “Those bastards kidnapped her.” His nostrils flared, as though catching a trace from a perfume bottle that Marte might have left open on her dressing room table.

“Come on – we don’t know if that’s true or not.” Wilson folded the paper and put it back in his pocket. “I talked to the cab driver, the one who brought Marte home that night – he told me about seeing the man waiting inside. And that there’d been a sedan with German diplomatic plates parked across the street; you don’t see that very often. You gotta face the facts, David – they might’ve found some way to talk her into leaving. Why else would von Behren have been with them?”

“I don’t know, and right now I don’t care.” Wise’s face looked as if it were about to explode from the pressure building up inside. “Look, you hire whoever you need, anybody who knows his way around down there. You can raise a goddamn army and send ’em if you have to. But I want you to find her and bring her back here. Got it?”

“If that’s what you want. But the chances are good she’s already on her way back to Europe. She steps off a plane in Lisbon, or more likely, off a boat in occupied France, you really think I can have a crew waiting there to throw a blanket over her and freight her back here? If somebody thought she was important enough to sic their operatives in the consulate on, they’re not going to hand her over with a smile.”

Wise raised a straining fist, as though he were about to cock it and throw a punch. His eyes were red slits. Wilson took a step back, getting his own hands ready to fend off the blow.

“David… come on.” He kept his voice low and soothing as possible. “How much of a mess do you want to make this? You want to blow this up into some kind of international incident? This is already going to hit the papers pretty soon. We’ve already called in every favor we had on the books, to get all the gossip columnists and movie mags to play her up as a refugee. They’re going to tear into this like a pack of wolves, just ’cause we’ve made ’em look like fools now. And how’s it going to play when the Germans get Marte to lay out some cozy spiel about why she wanted to go home again? It’s going to be more raw meat thrown to that pack if you go carrying on like some kind of jilted lover.”

“Screw that,” muttered Wise. “Look, I’m telling you, I don’t give a damn about any of that. I just want to find her and bring her back here, and I don’t care what it takes. And if the people I thought were my friends aren’t going to help, then fine, I’ll do it myself. But I’m not letting her go.”

The other man shook his head. “And I’m saying you can’t do it. Don’t you understand? She’s already gone. They got something on her, they told her something to make her want to go. Even if you found her and talked to her, are you sure you want to find out what it is you didn’t know about her?”

“The hell with you.” Tears welled up in Wise’s eyes. “Get away from me. I don’t want to hear any more crap from you.” He jabbed a finger at the security head. “You’re fired. I don’t want some disloyal bastard like you working for me.”

“Fine.” Wilson stepped toward the door. “You want to talk to me again, you can call me at home. Or don’t; it doesn’t matter to me. But just don’t make a bigger fool out of yourself than you absolutely have to, okay?” He turned and walked.

At the curb, pulling open the door of his car, he heard the sudden crash of sound from inside what had been Marte Helle’s house. He knew what was going on; he could see it unreeling on the screen inside his head. The overturned furniture, the lamps crashing against the walls, the manic fury pulling the heavy draperies from the windows, trampling them before smashing the glass panes themselves. David Wise was taking the place apart, stick by stick. Like a blinded, enraged Samson pulling down the temple, without benefit of two stone pillars to bring the whole thing crashing down upon his head.

Nothing more he could do for the poor bastard. He slid behind the wheel, twisted the key in the ignition, and drove away…

“I had the strangest dream.” Marte raised her head from the back of the airplane’s seat. She stayed curled up, legs tucked beneath her, the thin blanket sliding away. The only light came from the stars arrayed in the little window close by. “ Ganz befremdlich…”

“Oh?” Von Behren stirred in the seat beside her, a thick book on his lap, his finger marking the spot where he had stopped reading. He raised his voice just above the drone of the airplane’s engines. “And what happened in it, child?”

“I don’t know.” She looked out at the immobile night. Where were they? Somewhere above South America, she supposed. It didn’t matter. “I saw David.”

“That would seem unsurprising. For him to be in your thoughts.” Von Behren rubbed his eyes; he had probably been asleep as well. “What was he doing?”

“That was what was so strange.” Marte slowly shook her head. “He was just standing there. In that little house, the one he gave to me. Only everything… everything all around him… it was all in ruins. Everything was smashed and broken… in bits…”

“Hmph.” Her director was unimpressed. “Perhaps it wasn’t a dream.” A finger tapped the corner of his brow. “Perhaps you saw him, as he is. It happens. When you are, shall we say, close to someone. However far away.”

She hoped that wasn’t true. Because there had been more to the dream, that she hadn’t told. When she closed her eyes again, she could see, from memory this time. The image seemed so real that she wanted to reach out to touch David, lay her hand upon his shoulder and draw him around to face her. But she knew she couldn’t. All she could do was watch him as he stood in the middle of the little house’s ruins, the palm of his hand slashed by the shards of a crystal vase. The trickle of red spattered drop by drop upon the polished floor, as he gazed numbly down at the wavering reflection of his own face…

What does it matter? Marte pressed her face into the angle of her shoulder, trying to block out even the faint stars outside the airplane. It seemed so stupid now, so false and childish, to ever have dreamed of anything. She squeezed her eyes shut and hoped for sleep, letting the world below ebb toward wherever it might take her.