The Arms Maker Of Berlin Part 14

"Scared of what?"

"Someone had searched my room. I think they were looking for the memory chips."

"You sure it wasn't just the innkeeper tidying up? These B&Bs are pretty finicky."

"They'd picked the lock. Things were missing from my suitcase."

Nat saw her suitcase now, lying open on the floor. The nightgown wasn't the only silky item. She had packed well for this kind of scene. He was tempted to sit on the bed, then thought better of it and opted for the chair, still clutching the wooden box. Maybe it was that Berta's ambition made him wary, or that Gordon had called her a d.a.m.ned nuisance and then dropped dead. Or maybe it was that he would have enjoyed nothing better right now than to snuggle up next to her on the bed.

Her eyes had adjusted to the light and she looked better than ever. Shoulders bare, except for the white silk straps. Hair in suggestive disarray.

"You're good at this, aren't you?" he said.

"Good at what?"

"Manipulating people."

He had expected to get a rise out of her, but she took it in stride.

"I can be. When there's something I want badly enough. But not with you."

"How do you see that?"

"Because we both want the same thing. You might just as easily manipulate me."

He smiled, admiring her skill.

"Holland returned our cameras, by the way. I don't know if you were able to tell yet from our work this afternoon, but you were right about the boxes. Four folders are missing. The feds have asked me to find the missing items. On their tab. Interested?"

She nodded, but surprised him by showing no sign of excitement.

"Where do you think we should start?" she asked.

The sheet slipped farther down her torso, showing some cleavage. Healthy tone to her skin for this early in the spring, yet no hint of a tan line. Of course, topless sunbathing wasn't exactly taboo in Europe. Nat cleared his throat, hoping to also clear his head.

"I was thinking Baltimore." He figured that would get a reaction, but her face remained blank. He opened the old box in a way that kept her from seeing the contents, and pulled out the key. "This fits a storage locker there. It's our first stop."

"All right. Are they paying my way, too?"

"Long as I'm in charge."

"Good. I've maxed out my credit cards. We'd better get some sleep. Shall you take the floor, or I?"

Well, he supposed that answered one question.

"Throw me a pillow."

She nodded and complied, somehow managing to make the toss without letting the sheet drop a st.i.tch farther. Then she lay back down and shut her eyes. Oh, definitely no manipulation going on here, he thought, smiling to himself as he turned out the light.

As he tried to get comfortable in the dark, he wondered anew what it was that drove her. Scholarly zeal, of course. All the best historians were compet.i.tive. But there had to be something more. He was about to drift off when she spoke up from the bed.

"I have some names I can share. Old contacts of Gordon Wolfe's and Kurt Bauer's, people who might have once handled the records, or have some leads."

Throwing him a bone. It was a start.

"Living or dead?"

"Living. In Bern and Berlin. We can visit them, now that we have a budget."

"Great. But with any luck the trail will end in Baltimore."

Her silence told him she thought otherwise, which troubled him because it suggested she knew more than she was letting on. He had better check out her credentials, first chance he got. Until then, or until she opened up more, perhaps "arm's length" was indeed the best policy. Funny how sensible that sounded down there on the cold, hard floor.

TWELVE.

NAT'S GREAT HOPES for Baltimore died with the swipe of a card, the turn of a key, and the opening of an iron door. There before him on the concrete floor, looking lost and forlorn in the five-by-five storage locker, was a single item, barely bigger than a fist. It was wrapped in bubble plastic and smothered in tape. Definitely not the missing folders. for Baltimore died with the swipe of a card, the turn of a key, and the opening of an iron door. There before him on the concrete floor, looking lost and forlorn in the five-by-five storage locker, was a single item, barely bigger than a fist. It was wrapped in bubble plastic and smothered in tape. Definitely not the missing folders.

Berta said nothing, but Nat sensed an I-told-you-so chill.

At least they hadn't wasted much time getting there. He had planned on using Sunday to drive Viv back to Wightman for a Wednesday memorial service. She instead decided to wait on her sister, which freed Berta and him to catch a midday flight from Albany to Baltimore. They drove straight to Fairfield, rattling down its potholed lanes among the rail yards and chemical plants of an industrial waterfront. Fittingly, they wound up briefly on Tate Street, where Viv and Gordon had lived after the war. Only one house remained on the block, and it was boarded up. The trail ended at a fenced compound with a "U-Store-Em" sign out front. Nat bounded from the car, but his excitement was short-lived.

"Well, let's see what it is," he said, trying to keep the disappointment out of his voice.

He slit the tape with a car key and unwrapped the plastic. Inside was an old book with a red cloth cover and a German t.i.tle, Der Unsichtbare Henker (The Invisible Hangman) Der Unsichtbare Henker (The Invisible Hangman), by Wolf Schwertenbach. Was this the crime novel that had made Viv so jealous? He doubted Viv had been familiar with the author, but Nat certainly was. Wolf Schwertenbach was the pen name of the late Paul Meyer, a Swiss diplomat who during the war opened a secret back channel between the Swiss and German intelligence agencies. He was also an OSS source who met Dulles several times. But none of that seemed to explain why Gordon had gone to the trouble of putting the book into storage.

The publication date was 1933, although this was a 1937 printing. Nat checked inside the front jacket. Sure enough, a girl's name was penned in cursive in an upper corner, just as Viv had said. "Sabine Keller."

"Noir pulp by a hack diplomat," Berta said. "Not even a first edition. You might get five euros for it. Shall we go?"

"Hold on."

Nat flipped carefully through the brittle pages. No hidden note. No scribbles in the margins. No cryptic inscriptions from the famed author. But on page 186 he found the very wildflower Viv must have seen. Crushed yellow blossom, bent stem. Nothing special, like edelweiss. Just a b.u.t.tercup plucked from a field. He left it in place, feeling that somehow Gordon would have preferred that.

"Shall we go?" Berta repeated.

"Let's see who's on duty."

They walked to a small office. A big fellow with a buzz cut and a weight lifter's build looked up from a cramped desk behind the counter.

"Would you be Matt Boland?" Nat asked, using the name from the business card.

"That's me." He seemed surprised to actually be speaking with a customer.

"Do you keep records of customer visits?"

Boland shook his head.

"For some people that's half the point. You're not a cop, are you?"

"I'm here for a friend. So you have no way of knowing when somebody would have last visited locker 207?" Nat held up the key and swipe card.

"If that key belongs to you, wouldn't you know?"

"It was a colleague's. He died yesterday."

"Sorry."

"His name was Gordon Wolfe. Ring a bell?"

"Can't say it does."

"Have you got the paperwork for 207?"

"How do I know you didn't steal that key?"

Nat pulled out the FBI letter of introduction and placed it on the counter.

"Maybe this'll help."

"You said you weren't cops."

"We're not. Let's just say we're working on contract."

"Is this some kind of terrorist thing?" Boland was getting into the spirit of things.

"Something like that."

"Cool. Why didn't you say so?"

Boland crossed the room to a set of gray drawers, where he retrieved a yellow invoice.

"What'd you say the name was?"

"Gordon Wolfe."

"Wrong guy."

"With an address in Wightman, Pennsylvania? 819 Boyd Circle?"

Boland glanced down.

"Yeah. Home phone?"

Nat rattled it off, and for good measure recited the number for Gordon's cell.

"Three for three. In that case, who the heck is 'Gordon Bern-hard'?"

"Bernhard?"

"That's what it says."

"Hold on a second. I'll be right back."

Berta sighed with impatience while Nat went to the car. He returned with one of Gordon's books that Viv had given him that morning and opened it to the author photo.

"Is this the man who called himself Gordon Bernhard?"

"Absolutely. He was in here a couple weeks ago." Boland stepped to a wall calendar, where he ran his finger across a row of days. "May seventh, to be exact. The Monday from h.e.l.l. We had a power outage later that afternoon, which always screws things up and gripes out the customers. Mr. Bernhard needed a new swipe card. He was probably the only customer that day who wasn't screaming at me."

The timing put Gordon's visit only a few days after the gotcha story broke in the Daily Wildcat Daily Wildcat, the one that had sent him heading for the hills.

"Have you got a surveillance camera with a view of 207?"

"We've got cameras covering every part of the building. Want to check it for the seventh? It's a digital system, stored on a hard drive."

Boland called up the log on a PC. The door of 207 showed up at a great angle from camera 4. Boland easily found the right day slid the time bar back to the approximate hour of Gordon's visit, and scanned forward on high speed until a blurry figure darted in and out of the frame. Then he backed up, slowed down, and there it was, a black-and-white image of Gordon Wolfe from behind, as if they were peeping over his shoulder from the ceiling. He was empty-handed, except for the key. He turned the lock, went inside 207, and shut the door behind him. The time signature read 1:12 p.m.

"So by this time he'd already stopped by for the new swipe card?" Nat asked.

"Correct. Said his old one wasn't working."

That meant Gordon had put the new swipe card in the box in the attic during the past week. He had certainly been attending to a lot of old business lately. Tidying up. Getting ready for something.

Boland scrolled ahead. Gordon reemerged at 1:38, still empty-handed.

"What the h.e.l.l?" Nat said. Had Gordon just spent twenty-six minutes visiting a taped-up novel? "Any way to slow that down?"

"Sure."

Boland scrolled back. This time Gordon exited in slow motion.

"Hold it! Back it up to when he opens the door, then freeze it. There, do you see it?"

Just behind Gordon's right leg was the right edge of a box, the size of the ones found at the Wolfes' summer home. By now even Berta was riveted.

"He left without them," he said. "He must have come back later."

"Couldn't have," Boland chimed in. "Like I said, we lost power right after that. The swipe card system went down, so I had to let people in manually the rest of the day. I'd have seen him."

"I guess he could have come back some other day," Nat said. "But if not, then he was right about one thing. Somebody planted those boxes at his house. Could you rerun his exit one more time?"

Boland nodded, and they watched again.