The Empire of Night

26

Mother didn’t expect that half brother of mine to have straightened himself out. She was ready to go off to the costume room for some stevedore’s clothes. I thanked her for the offer and for the new face and I wished her well for her rehearsal, but I returned to the hotel, figuring to change into a two-piece blue-gray flannel suit Trask’s boys had given me with the label of a Berlin tailor. Stockman hadn’t seen Joe Hunter in this one. And it befit the way my brother had gotten on in the world, in spite of the knocks that gave him his nose. In the taxi back to the Adlon I settled into this character I’d become. What was his name? What was my name for the next few hours? Isaac. The hardworking stagehand and his wife knew whose baby he was, of course, receiving him straight from her hand. They called him Izzy, thinking of his mother by blood.

I slipped into the Adlon lobby, keeping my face down, and I went up to my floor and approached my room. It was early afternoon. The floor was quiet. Most everyone was out doing what they were visiting Berlin to do. I unlocked my door and pushed through.

A man was standing in the center of the sitting room.

He was my Cassius of the lobby, the lean and hungry, hollow-cheeked, staring man. He was facing the door, his hands folded before him just below his rib cage, as if he’d been waiting for me, though my actual impression of him was that only moments before I confronted him he’d sprung into this posture at my imminent entry.

I had no doubt he was discreetly searching my room. He was probably attuned to just such interruptions and had assumed this position at the first faint whisper of my approach along the corridor.

I made this rapid assessment in a comfortable, self-assured frame of mind, which vanished instantly when I realized I was standing before this guy with another man’s face.

Hollow-Cheeks had even tilted his head a little as he contemplated this vaguely familiar but unexpected visage before him.

I had too many factors to think out — what should I say about my nose, if anything? could he see it was fake? what was this guy’s frame of mind in being here? routine because of my connection to Stockman? staunchly suspicious, that being the attitude of the Foreign Office operatives at the Adlon no matter who the guest? — so many factors to think about that to hesitate long enough to think effectively would itself make me seem guilty of something. I recognized all this in the briefest of moments and I chose to wing it.

“Who are you?” I asked, faintly aggressive, in the most formal German I could muster.

“I am with the hotel,” he said.

“I am staying at the hotel,” I said. “In this room.”

He hesitated a beat. He was doing the thinking now.

But it was about my nose, my complexion. He’d seen me pass through the lobby last night. He tilted his head again, in the other direction, and looked at me carefully.

“May I ask what brought you to the center of my sitting room floor?” I said.

His attention snapped from my nose to my eyes. I thought I saw a flicker of uncertainty in him.

Give him a punch, give him a pat. I stepped to him and offered my hand, making my voice go warm. “I’m Joseph Hunter.”

He took my hand and shook it, still looking at me, still hesitating behind his eyes. Mother’s makeup was good. He was trying to accept what he was seeing before him as me, given his impression from yesterday, when he’d directly seen my face only briefly and from ten or fifteen yards away.

I knew I’d eventually have to pay the piper if I didn’t address this issue now. Izzy’s face would vanish by tomorrow. The question was when I’d encounter this guy again.

“I am the assistant manager,” he said.

We ended the handshake and I gave him a quick, overt once-over, saying, “Herr. .” and leaving it for him to fill in his name.

“Wagner.”

“Herr Wagner,” I said. “What can I do for you?”

“I am here to make sure everything is correct in your room,” he said.

He did not twinkle at the ambiguity. He kept his little joke to himself.

I did not let him know I was in on the gag. “That is very kind of you,” I said. “Everything seemed to me to be in order.”

He clicked his heels, but his eyes stayed fixed on my face. And then he said, “Good day, Herr Hunter.”

I stepped aside for him and he went out of the room and closed the door softly behind him.