The Empire of Night

63

When our hands parted again, I said, “What have you done with Stockman and Madam Cobb?”

“You underestimate her,” he said.

This didn’t sound good.

“We had a useful chat,” he said.

“When?”

“Not to worry,” Jeremy said. “Stockman was out cold and tied up.”

I was worried.

Jeremy had left Stockman with his lover. A woman so blind with love she still couldn’t accept or reasonably assess what he was capable of doing. But this man before me was capable of at least one of Albert’s most heinous intentions. And he’d been my friend. He was quickly becoming my friend again. Mother’s feeling for Albert, her desperate need for her feeling for him: couldn’t I understand that?

“We should go to them,” I said.

“I’ll crank,” he said.

And he did. When he slid into the passenger seat, I handed him his Luger.

I drove out of the trees and turned east onto the Uckendorf road.

Jeremy said, “From what you must have thought of me, you need now to understand. I was never allied to Stockman. I am ready for us to kill him. I will do it myself if you wish. He will compromise us both.”

I looked at him. It was only a glance, but just before I took my eyes from him, he glanced too.

He knew what I was thinking.

“I will not return to England,” he said. “I’m asking you to keep no secrets about me.”

“Good.”

He said, “I will be a more serious enemy to Berlin by working here for the republic.”

I advanced the throttle in this open, empty stretch of good road.

I said, “So did you leave her guarding him?”

“Not to his eye, if he wakes,” he said. “She’s got the right stuff, but I don’t think she realizes we intend to kill him and I didn’t say otherwise. She thought it prudent that she continue to seem his ally. We feigned her bonds. She can slough them off at will. But she wants him to think they were in it together.”

This was all right.

Perhaps she was still taking her role as spy seriously.

I had something to do now. The thing she did not yet see coming.

It would be for the sake of Jeremy and his work. A democratic Germany could perhaps prevent another great war. It would be for the sake of my work, for the work of the American republic.

And it would be for me.

For her.

I sped into Spich.

Then I had to slow down drastically.

The town square was dense with people. As in Liebour, Spich had turned out to share this disaster and do what it could. I eased the car in among them, and when people felt others yielding, they turned and yielded too, all of them doing so willingly, readily, respectfully, many of them greeting us, officers in their army.

We crept through them and Jeremy and I found ourselves acknowledging these people’s nods and waves and salutes. As if we were one with them in their loss. It went with the uniform.

And then we were free and soon we pulled into the parking field next to the Hotel Alten-Forst.

I switched off the engine.

I had been thinking this out as we drove.

I needed to do this alone. Twice today I’d put a gun to a man’s head and twice I’d spared the life before me. Even if only temporarily. This would not happen a third time. Stockman would die directly by my hand. And my mother would instantly be cast in a great and complex role. I would tie her up properly. She would go on to play the devastated lover, having witnessed the death of the man she’d loved most in all her life.

“I have to do this alone,” I said.

He looked at me. He did not understand.

“It’s not a matter of trust,” I said. “It is a thing between the actress and me.”

“I’ll be here if you need me,” he said.

“Be ready to drive us to Berlin,” I said.

I needed to visit the American embassy. It was nearly time, as Trask put it, to leave the country abruptly.