Christopher's Ghosts (22 page)

“You have no other information about Alexa?”

O. G. shook his head no. Behind the lenses of the pince-nez, his eyes were locked to Paul’s. Then they dropped to Paul’s hands, which trembled. Paul realized what his body was doing and stopped it from doing it. Obviously all was lost, just as he had warned Lori that all would be lost if he left the Reich. If this truth had been written in fire in the sky, it could not have been more evident.

“Thank you, O. G.,” he said. “It’s very kind of you to bring me up to date.”

O. G. leaned forward and took Paul by the knee. He was surprisingly strong. He said, “I can’t begin to imagine how this is for you, Paul, but just let events take their course and all will be well, I promise you.”

Paul acknowledged the advice and the absurd promise with a nod. His eyes grew cold.

“Call on me for anything, anytime,” O. G. said. “Your father said to tell you to see Sebastian Laux if you need funds. And of course you have Elliott.”

Later, O. G. said to Elliott, “By George, that look that Paul gave me would freeze your tongue to your sled.”

The next morning Paul rose early and read the shipping news in the
Herald Tribune
. He then put on one of his suits with a white shirt and a school tie, packed his bag, and left the house. He took the subway to Wall Street, checked his bag in a locker in the station, and walked through narrow streets to a low handsome building tucked between two tall ugly ones. A small bronze sign beside the door identified it as D. & D. Laux & Company. There was no indication on the sign of what sort of business was done inside—if you had to ask, you didn’t belong here. A doorman admitted him.

The receptionist, a bald expressionless man in a morning coat who had last seen Paul when he was five or six years younger, asked if he had an appointment. Paul said, “No. But please tell Mr. Sebastian Laux that Paul Christopher is here.”

“Very well, sir,” said the receptionist.

Paul was ushered by another solemn man—there were no women here—into the office of the chairman and president of this private bank. Sebastian Laux was a small person. As Paul entered he rose from his chair and dashed across the Persian carpet that had apparently been specially woven to fit this room to the last square inch.

“What a nice surprise,” Sebastian said, shaking Paul’s hand. “I had no idea that you were in New York. Your father and mother are with you, I hope.”

“No, sir. They’re in Berlin.”

Sebastian’s smile vanished. “I see,” he said. “But they will be following soon?”

“I’m not sure.”

“I see. Please sit down and tell me the rest of the news.”

Paul did as he was asked. All his life he had been told—or had overheard
his parents telling each other—that Sebastian Laux could be trusted with any secret. Therefore Paul told him everything, down to the smallest detail, omitting only his deductions about the relationship between his mother and Reinhard Heydrich. Sebastian did not interrupt. When Paul finished, he gazed for a long moment at a large portrait in oils of another elfin man, one of the two D. Lauxes who were his father and grandfather. The one in the picture looked remarkably like a much older Sebastian.

Finally Sebastian nodded, as if the situation Paul described had now been put into proper order inside his own head and he was grateful for this. He said, “Tell me why you’re here, Paul.”

Paul said, “I want to withdraw all the money from my account.” Since birth Paul’s money—birthday and Christmas checks, a small inheritance or two—had been deposited in this bank in his name.

“All of it?” Sebastian asked.

“Yes.”

“May I ask why?”

“I am returning to Germany. Today, if possible. The
Bremen
sails at four o’clock.”

Sebastian nodded as if this were the most reasonable answer in the world, then moved his left foot in its gleaming shoe and rang what Paul knew to be a hidden floor bell. The solemn man appeared instantly.

Sebastian said, “Mr. Paul Christopher’s balance?”

Evidently the man had already looked it up. He handed Sebastian a slip of paper.

“Two thousand nine hundred seventy-six dollars and eighty-seven cents,” Sebastian said. “I suggest you take five hundred in cash, two thousand in a letter of credit and leave the rest to keep the account open. Is that agreeable?”

Paul nodded. Sebastian said, “Five hundred in cash, if you please, Mr. Wilson, and the usual letter.” The man disappeared. In a moment he was back with an envelope containing Paul’s money in crisp new bills, together with a creamy sheet of paper. Sebastian took these. The man withdrew.

Sebastian said to Paul, “Why the
Bremen
?”

“It’s the only ship sailing to Bremerhaven this week.”

“Have you told Elliott about your plans? Or your parents?”

“No. Only you.”

“I see. This is because of the girl?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well. The bank can make your booking if you wish. It will save you some time and perhaps will attract less attention.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

Sebastian rang again and gave Wilson new instructions.

“It should only take minutes to book a place for you,” Sebastian said. “Not much demand for tickets to the Reich these days. Our travel agent will send a messenger.”

“Thank you,” Paul said.

“Your parents may not thank me when you reappear in a country about to start a war,” Sebastian said. “But it’s obvious that you will do what you’ve decided to do with my help or without it and it’s better for you to have a little money in your pocket. It’s the girl you’re worried about, I take it?”

“All of them. But yes, her especially. She has no one else to help her, nowhere to go.”

“I understand. For what it’s worth, you’re doing the right thing by standing by her, whatever it costs. You’ll find it easier to live with yourself afterward.”

Sebastian uncapped a fountain pen—a much smaller and plainer one than Paul was used to seeing in the hand of Major Stutzer—and signed the paper that Wilson had brought to him. He blotted it, folded it, and handed it to Paul.

“This is a letter of credit for five thousand dollars,” he said. “You understand how it works?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Your mother, your father, and you may all draw on it. It instructs the banks to disregard your age. If you require more money or anything else, the bank’s cable address is LAUXBANK. Mark the telegram for my attention.” Paul started to speak. Sebastian held up a
small manicured hand to forestall thanks. He said, “Shall I inform Elliott or your parents of your plans?”

“I’ll call Elliott from the pier. It’s best not to cable my parents.”

“Your ticket should be here shortly,” Sebastian said. “Would you like some tea?”

Before Paul could remonstrate, a young man in a double-breasted striped waistcoat under his morning coat appeared with a tray. He seemed to be in training to become as solemn as Sebastian’s older employees.

Sebastian prepared the tea himself, explaining where it had come from in Japan and the history of its cultivation. It was a green tea called Sencha Hiki, from Wakayama Province. “It’s sweeter than the last green tea you tried. I hope you like it better than the last time,” Sebastian said, handing Paul a cup. As a child, Paul had tasted this bitter stuff while visiting with his father and had spat it out into Hubbard’s handkerchief.

Paul sipped it. “I do,” he said.

“Then you should cultivate a taste for it. It’s good for the brain. Not to mention the appetites.”

When the ticket arrived, Paul attempted to pay for it. Sebastian waved him off again—Paul’s account would be debited. He gripped Paul’s hand tightly. This was twice in two days that Paul had been surprised by the strength of a man who seemed old to him.

Paul said, “Have you any message for my father?”

“Only my love to him and your mother,” Sebastian said. “We’ll see each other soon.”

They rose to their feet. Sebastian smiled up at Paul, who was inches taller than he was. The smile was a merry conspirator’s smile. Oddly enough, it was not a solemn moment. Paul did not try to thank Sebastian again.

 
 
5

Aboard the
Bremen
Paul was treated as an invisible passenger. He was given the same tiny single cabin in the bow of the ship that he had occupied on the westbound voyage. The crew gave no sign that they remembered him. The passengers with whom he was seated at meals ignored him. It was no great feat to read these minds that were all alike. He was of no interest to these people. His case was in the hands of others who were high above them. Soon enough, they believed, so would his body be.

Paul sat on deck by day or lay in his bunk by night, reading Baedecker guides to north German cities. He concentrated on streetcar routes, which, like every other aspect of the country, were described by Baedecker in minute detail. Paul knew that it was possible to travel across the length and breadth of almost any country in the world by streetcar. You simply took a trolley to the opposite edge of any city, then walked a short distance to the first streetcar stop inside the next city and repeated the process until you reached your destination.

When Paul went ashore in Bremerhaven the official on duty stamped his passport but asked no questions, not even the routine ones. On the quay in Bremerhaven Paul did not see Stutzer’s apprentices or anyone else who looked as if they had been assigned to follow him. He walked into the city, and at the first streetcar stop on Havenstrasse got aboard a squealing yellow trolley and began his journey across the most efficiently policed country in the world. Still no one took a visible interest in him. The secret police had no need to follow him. He was inside the Reich by his own choice, but he could not get out again unless the security apparatus permitted him to do so. For him, the Reich was a vast trap. The cheese was in Berlin. They knew where he was going and how he must get there. All they had to do was watch the bait and wait for him to spring the trap. Their routine surveillance at the Bremerhaven train station would report which train he had taken to Berlin. Their counterparts in Berlin would report his arrival. Blümchen would let Miss Wetzel know when he walked past her door on his way to his parents’ apartment and she would let them
know. It was summer. Paul was dressed as a Wandervögel, a youth on holiday, in shorts and knee socks and walking shoes, with the sun bleaching his dark blond hair and a rucksack on his back. He had acquired a tan during his round trip across the Atlantic. He was the picture of young Aryan manhood as imagined by the party’s poster artists. The streetcar he boarded on Havenstrasse was empty except for the driver and conductor, who took Paul’s pfennigs gave him the first friendly smile he had seen since saying goodbye to Sebastian Laux in New York. He got off, after changing cars, at the northern city limits. From there, on foot and by streetcar, he traveled to Cuxhaven, Stade, Hamburg, Lübeck and Rostock and Stratsund and several towns in between. He walked on country roads at night and slept in the open. He ate sausages and bread that he bought from street vendors and drank clean water where he found it. He smiled and answered the polite questions of the kindly people and the flirtatious girls he encountered, but engaged in no long conversations. No one he encountered seemed to think that he was anything but a German boy on a lark. Some found it strange that he was traveling alone; the whole point of wandering was to be part of a group, to sing, to work your way, to celebrate friendship and culture. Paul explained that he was meeting his friends farther down the road.

In Hamburg he wrote a postcard and mailed it to Rima. If she received it, and if she was free, and if she understood its unwritten parts, she would know where to find him. She would understand. He trusted her intelligence, her intuition, her knowledge of him. They had made no secret arrangements in which she might be entrapped. Rima could not confess what she could only guess.

Paul arrived in Rügen by night.
Mahican
was back, tied up at the mooring below Schloss Berwick, sails furled, centerboard and rudder stowed, with enough water and food aboard for a weekend sail. It was the dark of the moon, but this was luck. Paul had had no control over his time of arrival. He knew his destination, but even that was a shortlived secret, and he knew it. If he did not turn up in Berlin, Stutzer would know, Heydrich himself would know, that there was only one other place he could be.

Paul slept in a beech tree on an old platform he had built years before. At dawn S-boats came home and others put out to sea, trailing white wakes and rainbow spray. Moments after the sun rose, Paul caught sight of Paulus and his wolfhound Bismarck, out for their morning march along the cliffs. He wondered briefly if the dog would recognize his scent and bark him down from his tree, but Bismarck had no interest in any human being except Paulus. Paul ate some cheese and an apple, drank water from his canteen, munched on a chocolate bar. Like a scout in enemy country, he left no crumb or other sign that he had been present.

After dark, because he knew that Rima would come only after dark and would know of no place to meet him except aboard
Mahican
, he climbed down and waded to the boat. The blackout on Rügen was total. No lights showed in the windows of the schloss or any of the other houses within eyeshot. He felt the boat move as someone came aboard. The newcomer had a light step. The hull dipped only slightly. The intruder came below, making no sound, and found him in the pitch-dark space where he lay. He smelled a trace of sweat, a hint of soap, hair, and when Rima whispered in his ear, moist breath along with all the other scents that she emitted when they were together in the dark. He drew breath to speak. She put two fingers on his lips. “First, us,” she whispered.

They whispered in English as usual. Rima had known that Paul’s message meant that he had returned for her, and that this could only mean that he had a plan of escape, and that the only possible starting point for their flight must be Rügen. She had told no one about the postcard from Lübeck, not even her father. She knew what her escape from Germany would mean for him, but she knew, too, that he would never consent to go with her, would never break the law. He would never stop trusting his country. He still thought that Germany, his Germany, was just having a little breakdown. Soon the outlandish men from Mars, who had always before been invisible to educated people, would go back to being invisible. Germany would stop being the Reich and become the Fatherland again—hard work for all, just rewards, band music in the park on Sunday, honest boys and good girls walking
together under the trees. Stern fathers and loving mothers—the real, the natural German police—would take over again. Peace and order would return.