City of Spies (27 page)

“I...” Pagan couldn't speak for a moment. Even now, in the midst of insanity, with a Nazi's son pointing a gun at her head, his words struck her. Von Albrecht meant that she wasn't like Mama in a bad way, of course. But it didn't matter. All that mattered was that in this one thing, he was right. Pagan was not her mother. She was herself. That was all. That was enough.

And she was damned well going to stop him and get out of this alive.

“I only came here because I saw Dieter and his friends leaving the drag race,” she said. “He's just...so big and strong.” She fluttered her eyes the tiniest bit at Dieter, who frowned down at her. “I wanted to know what you two were planning, to be part of it. But then I saw the dog. I love animals, you know? I thought maybe if I distracted you by shooting the gas tank, I could get him free somehow.”

“You're not a bad actress,” Von Albrecht said. “But you're a stupid girl, and I think we will put you into the water along with the mongrel.”

Dieter snorted a laugh, and it chilled Pagan to the bone.

Who cares if you're cold. Keep them talking.
Stalling them was all she had now that the gas didn't start a fire.

“I don't believe you've really got a bomb,” Pagan said. It was the only arena she could think of that might provoke Von Albrecht. And Dieter wouldn't dare interrupt his father talking to shoot her. “Everybody knows the Germans tried to build an A-bomb during the war, but none of you were up to the job. And then you lost! I bet you can't even get your revenge right.”

Von Albrecht's narrow lips smiled. “More stupidity. I learned a lot while I was working with your government after the war. Guards at the camp where I did my experiments were hanged for war crimes—guards who only did their job because I told them to. They died, yet your government gave me a house, and a car—your American way of life. All because the US thought they could use me to create better, bigger machines of death. Instead, I used them. They taught me to make bombs, and then I took their plutonium, and I made a better bomb. Berlin's buildings and avenues won't be destroyed, you see. My bomb will not explode the same way the ones at Hiroshima and Nagasaki did. Instead, it will rain radiation down on everyone within a twenty-mile radius. Enough to kill them within minutes or hours. But the city of the Führer will remain, washed clean of filth.”

He was enjoying it, talking down to her like this. Every second he talked was another second closer to Devin or the authorities arriving.

But still no one was coming. They might never come. The United States had made Von Albrecht's horrific animal experiments possible. They'd given him all he needed to destroy a city, and maybe start a war. How could she rely on them to get here?

Devin. She could rely on him. He would come.

“Your government is an accomplice in this special mission,” Von Albrecht said, as if reading her thoughts. “You would do better to follow your mother's way. We are pure.”

There was that stupid word again. Unless you were referring to drinking water or a diamond, it was pretty meaningless.

“Pure isn't so great if it's pure evil,” Pagan said. Her voice was strong, but her heart was sinking into a pool blacker than the water around the ship. This was the man her mother had helped.

“Disease always believes its cure is evil.” Von Albrecht's eyes were alight with horrible glee. “Your mother would have loved my creation. They call it a dirty bomb, Imagine—no explosion! No blast wave to destroy the few buildings you and your Allies left us after the war. Just dead Communists, dead Americans, French and English. Dead, dead, dead!”

Pagan stared up into his pale eyes, wide with excitement. Excitement at horrific destruction. It was insane. But if you planned your insanity systematically, when did it cease to be insane? When did it simply become evil?

From the very beginning. From the first moment you looked at people and saw things.

It was too easy. All you had to do was look at the dog in the cage, and see not an animal capable of suffering, but an object to be used and thrown away. Once you looked at a single human being that way, what was to stop you from seeing them all as disposable? They became a disease to be cured, perhaps with a cleansing bomb, chemotherapy attacking a cancer.

The hotel clerk hadn't seen Mercedes the girl. Neither had Dieter. To him Mercedes and Naomi Schusterman weren't human beings; they were vessels into which he could pour his hate.

Mama had thought that way about Jews. She'd helped this man. Only one question stood out in Pagan's mind now.

“Did Mama know?” she asked. Her nose and eyes were running, and she wanted to throw up, but she wiped her face with the back of her muddy hand and stared at the Nazi. “Did she know about all the things you did during the war? Did she know what you were planning to do here?”

Von Albrecht's thin lips curled up in a smile of condescension so complete it was its own kind of madness. “So the little girl wants to know if her beloved mother was complicit in my so-called crimes? You look to
me
for reassurance? Well, don't look here. Because your mama didn't care what I'd done, or what I was planning to do. She only cared that I achieved my result.”

A weird little sob came out of Pagan. A wave of dizziness made her sway there on top of the white box. “Did she tell you that?”

“We didn't need to speak of it,” he said. “We were alike, your mama and I, in one very important way. Anything blessed by the Führer was to be applauded. Anything that furthered his Final Solution was sacred work. She knew it as well as I did. And now you know it, too.”

He and Mama—true believers both. This was the disgusting place she had come from. What was there to make her any better than them?

The dark world swam. What was the point? One stupid little girl could never stop such a legacy of hate. A stupid girl who had been born from that legacy. She worked for those who sheltered Von Albrecht and inadvertently provided the plutonium. She was part of it.

Dizziness spiraled over her. She leaned both hands on the
emergencia
box, head down, staring at the red stripe. The list of contents printed in black between her thumbs swam before her eyes.

Off in the distance, through the swirling dark, short, sharp, furious barks cut through the roar in her ears. The sound of a dog's focused rage.

Focus.

Pagan blinked, and the words on the box beneath her sharpened as if she'd put on glasses. Von Albrecht was still talking, but she wasn't listening. The dizziness began to lift, like fog at sunrise.

If she gave up now, who would save the dog?

She gulped in air and listened to the dog barking, calling to her. Her eyes ran automatically over the list of contents in the box beneath her. She concentrated, pushing her despair aside. Breathe, focus, read the list.

10
chalecos salvavidas
. Life jackets.

5
luces de emergencia
. Emergency lights.

2
pistolas de bengalas
. Flare guns.

2 purificadores de agua
. Water purifiers.

Her eyes skipped back up a line.

Pistolas de bengalas.

Flare guns.

Von Albrecht was still gloating over her hopelessness and stupidity. Something about the Führer and mongrels and war. It didn't really matter. She glanced at Dieter. He'd lowered the gun while he listened to his father, but he could easily raise it and shoot her if she moved. She needed them both to stop concentrating on her, to be certain she wasn't even a small threat, if only for a few seconds.

She narrowed her eyes, staring back down at the emergency box's content list. These men were going to kill her and then kill tens of thousands more.

Also, Dieter had a gun and big meaty hands that enjoyed hitting people. What she had in mind wouldn't be fun. It would hurt. But it might work.

“You're not as strong or as smart as your mother was, are you?” Von Albrecht was saying. “Stupid, spoiled little American girl. But then it should be no surprise. Your silly father wasn't German. You're a mongrel.”

“Damn you,” she muttered, teeth clenched.

She looked up at Von Albrecht. He was shaking his head at her in amused disgust, ready to turn away. Good.

She glanced up at Dieter, sweat-soaked hair falling in her eyes. Her hands on the lid of the box clenched into fists. She channeled all her anger, all her volcanic hatred, into her voice. “You arrogant, murdering sons of bitches—damn you!”

She launched herself at Dieter, fists raised.

She must have taken him off guard, in spite of her angry words, because he barely raised his hands in time to fend off her jab and right cross, aimed at his face.

“What...?” he started to say.

“I'll kill you both!” Pagan screamed. It sounded appropriate, and right now she wished she could. And she rammed her knee into his crotch.

The blow was slightly off, landing mostly on his inner thigh. But it must've hit something vital because Dieter's face transformed with a look of agonized surprise.

“Oof!” He exhaled hard, eyes screwing themselves into red points of rage. “You bitch!”

He backhanded her across the face. The impact sounded like a wet fish hitting the pavement. Her bones liquefied.

Pagan found herself sprawled across the top of the
emergencia
box almost before she even knew she'd been hit. Her head was a scarlet bowl of pain. A strange low hum had taken over the world. But she was awake, and alive. And she'd gotten what she needed.
Emergencia
boxes were never locked, right? They'd better not be.

She lay still, eyes shut. She'd never acted unconscious before, but it couldn't be that complicated.

Von Albrecht chuckled as Dieter cursed.

“Bitch!” Dieter spat. She heard him put the gun down on a crate. “That hurt.”

“Even gnats can bite,” Von Albrecht said. “Here. That cage looks about right. Get it down for me. She'll fit inside it. We'll put her into the water with the cur she loves. Even if she wakes up, she'll sink to the bottom.”

“Good.” Dieter shuffled away and grunted as something metal shifted a few yards away.

“That one,” Von Albrecht said.

Pagan barely opened her eyes. Through the curtain of her lashes and hair she saw Von Albrecht about five yards away, back to her, pointing up at a large cage on top of a crate. Dieter was climbing up a nearby box to start lowering the cage down.

Perfect. As quietly as she could, she slipped off the
emergencia
box, slid the latch open, unsnapped a second catch and lifted the lid. Lying on top of a pile of life vests were two fat-barreled flare guns.

“Hey!' Dieter said from atop his crates. “She's awake!”

Pagan grabbed a flare gun in each hand. They were big, and heavier than she'd thought, but close enough to what she'd fired when she'd played
Young Annie Oakley
for the purpose she had in mind.

“What is she...?” Von Albrecht's eyes got round behind their glasses as Pagan lifted the gun in her left hand to point at him. “Help! Heinz! Lars!”

“Will this work, Doctor?” she asked, and aimed the flare gun in her right hand at the growing puddle of gas and pulled the trigger.

She had time to see Von Albrecht's lips start to form the word
No!
before she dove for cover.

The tank exploded in a fountain of fire. A wave of heat scorched her back. The air filled with the pungent smell of gas and charred wood. Splinters and metal bolts rained down.

She lifted her head. The pallet of crates where the tank had been stored was on fire. Flames reached toward the sky and licked the crates nearby.

Far away, men were shouting. Attention was being paid, at last. Von Albrecht and Dieter must have run for it. In the sea of packing crates with the flames starting to take over, she couldn't see them anywhere.

Pagan coughed and got to her feet. Her ribs were screaming at her, her head rang and the bottom of her shoes and the hem of her dress were singed. At least she hadn't gone up in flames.

Feet were pounding toward them. Von Albrecht's high, nasal voice was shouting orders, getting farther away.

“Come on, Papa,” she heard Dieter say. “We must get off the ship.”

The right side of Pagan's body was hot from the flames. She gathered her wits and stumbled away. A sailor ran past her, carrying a hose, shouting.

She got to clearer air and took a deep breath. Before her the black sea rippled with reflections of red. A large cage sat by the edge of the ship. The creature inside it whined at her and whapped its tail against the bars.

“Hey there,” she said, limping toward the dog. Her left calf was shouting at her. She'd wrenched it somehow. She laid one of the flare guns down so she could put her hand through the cage bars to stroke the dog's head. He licked her hand.

Pagan looked back at the now-raging fire. Two groups of men were fighting it with water hoses. They might get it under control.

Off in the distance, a siren wailed. A second siren joined it.

“Not bad for a stupid little American mongrel, eh?” she asked the dog. “Never before has any girl been so happy to see some rocket's red glare.”

Something caught the dog's remaining eye. It growled, tail rigid.

Von Albrecht and Dieter were hustling down the deck. The gangplank had actually been partially retracted from the dock while she wasn't looking, and Von Albrecht was shouting for a sailor to hurry up and put it back. The man was hastening to obey, so they could all abandon the burning ship.

Pagan hefted the flare gun she still held in her right hand. She wasn't a great shot, but she could fire it at them. See what damage it might do. Hurting Von Albrecht and Deiter sounded wonderful right now. But killing was something else entirely. She'd killed two people she loved with a single turn of a steering wheel. That was enough blood on anyone's hands.