The Diaries - 01 (25 page)

Maybe it had been
a bullet, maybe not.
 
Carolina’s brother
could have had a million reasons for cleaning the spot, and the gouge in the
pavement could have been caused by any manner of heavy objects which could have
been dropped.

Okay, enough devil’s advocate.
 
The Army officer’s breathing picked up as he
thought about how it might have happened.
 
A robbery gone awry, someone was
knocked to the ground, a pistol was fired.
 
One of the shots connected, one missed, glancing off the concrete before
lodging into a ream of paper.
 
The heavy
walls would have muffled much of the noise, so the criminal took his or her
time, scrubbing the floor and collecting the slugs.

Or, Carolina’s brother dropped a container of
cleaning fluid, bleaching the floor white.

Or, he cleaned something that had been
spilled.

Glancing around,
Ellis found other imperfections in the concrete, other gouges not too dissimilar
to the one under the shelf.

“You’re pressing
too hard,” he muttered. “And you’re supposed to be on vacation.”

“What?” Carolina
asked, handing him a mug of coffee.

Ellis accepted the
coffee and shook his head.
 
“Just talking
to myself.”
 

“What did you
find?” she asked.

He shook his head,
wiping his forehead.
 
“Nothing.
 
I was just moving some heavy items trying to
find something, anything.
 
There was
nothing.”

“Do you think
Michel is okay?”

Ellis avoided her
eyes.
 
“I certainly hope so.”

“But you think
no?”

“I think there is
absolutely nothing here to suggest he isn’t,” he said, his eyes joining
hers.
 
“You just need to give it a little
time.”
 
While he was telling her the
absolute truth, something in the back of his mind told him that there was more
to be learned here.

They stayed ten
more minutes, Ellis drinking his coffee as he tried to make sense of her broken
English.
 
When she was done speaking,
again, she swore that Michel would not have left the store unattended and, if
he had for some strange reason, certainly not without telling her why.

Ellis’s mind was
still stuck on the clean spot of concrete. “You should go back to the police
and insist that they do a forensic search on this place.”

After explaining
the word forensic, Carolina covered her mouth with her hand.
 
“He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Not at all.
 
But to be complete, it’s what they should
do.”
 
Ellis’s heart ached for the
woman.
 
He walked her home, giving her a
small hug and making her promise to call the police again.
 
If they didn’t respond, Ellis instructed her
to call the
Police
Nationale
.

As he walked down
the street, in the direction of his hotel, Damien Ellis wrestled with himself about
whether or not to get more involved.
  
A
big piece of him was insisting he get on the train in the morning and never
look back.
 
This wasn’t his turf, and he
didn’t quite feel the local police would be rolling out the proverbial Welcome
Wagon anytime soon.
 
And something inside
him, a sixth sense, told him this was not a situation to trifle with.

Ellis smoked his
pipe as he walked, glancing into his bag at the bottle of wine and remembering
the large, claw-foot bathtub in his chamber.
 
At least he’d have somewhere comfortable to think things over.
 
His pace quickened.

***

Saarbrücken
, Germany

Gage performed
several backtracking maneuvers, each time using a parking garage, to make sure
they had not been followed.
 
After
crossing the border, they had spent the day in
Saarbrücken
,
in the hotel down the block from Monika’s apartment.
 
Monika checked them in, paid cash.
 
She knew the old lady at the front, so she said
her apartment had no power.
 
It being a
neighborhood hotel, the old woman took the cash with an understanding smile and
never made Monika sign her name.
 
She
probably never recorded the sale, or the guest’s name.
 
Taxes, while universally despised, were
sometimes a fugitive’s best friend.

Gage didn’t sleep
the entire day on Tuesday.
 
He sat in the
uncomfortable chair, wishing he had a cigarette, glad he had quit, but still
wishing.
 
He stared out the window all
day, watching Monika’s apartment, waiting to see if anyone came looking for her.
 

After Monika had
slept for four hours, she got up and, upon agreeing to his cautioning, left for
a few minutes, returning with a pizza and two large bottles of water.
 
They sat in silence, he watching her
apartment, she on the bed.
 
She had the
diary again, reading.
 
Occasionally she
would murmur her surprise at the content.
 
Other times she would read with her hand pressed to her lips.

“Anything
interesting?” Gage asked.

Monika let out a
long breath, shaking her head ruefully.
 
“She
had the child, and her husband, Heinrich, had no idea whose it really was.
 
She told him the baby was from her former
husband, in Berlin, who died of a heart attack.”

Gage twisted his
head back to the window, finishing off his slice of pizza.
 
He only ate one, swilling from the bottle of
water as he stared down the street.

Monika moved to
the edge of the bed, touching his arm.
 
“Just listen, Gage…”

Liora
is only five weeks old now and, as I stare into
her eyes, knowing she depends on me for everything it will take to keep her
alive, I ponder just how I can love her so, knowing she is the partial product
of such an evil incarnation.
 

But as I lay in the bed with her today, I counted
five fingers on each hand, five toes on each foot.
 
Her eyes were wide, staring at me as if I were
the only person on earth.
 
This child,
this perfect child, is only half of me.
 
But in my heart, and in my soul, I feel she is fully mine.

Is it right for me to have such heart-rending
passion for this baby?
 
I was surely biting
my knuckle when she was conceived, loathing her father, and our revolting, vile
act.
 
How could something so precious
emerge from a deed so very wicked?

He turned his
head, locking eyes with Monika.
 
“The one
good thing to come from that diary, that I’ve seen, is her love for that child,
tragic as it may have sounded.”

Monika’s face
trembled.
 
Gage knew she was tired, in
shock, and overcome by grief for her cousin.
 
Reading something as heavy as that diary wasn’t helping much.

“My heart just
goes out to this poor woman, Gage.
 
Imagine
what she must have gone through.”

His eyes moved
back to the window.
 
“I can’t imagine,
and I’m not sure I want to.”

“We should find
the child.”

Gage twisted,
standing.
 
“Say that again.”

Monika was
nodding.
 
“Michel said these diaries are
worth millions.”

“And?”

“You said you
don’t want to sell them, so, if we’re going to go through all of the trouble of
running from these people, we should at least find the child.”

He glanced out the
window again, then back at Monika.
 
“I
don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”

Monika stood, a
defiance coming over her, seemingly washing away her grief.
 
“In Frankfurt, over there by all the
embassies and consulates, there’s a Holocaust Organization.
 
I bet if we go to them with these diaries,
they can find the child, assuming she survived.”

Gage was silent,
standing there blinking.

“
Hitler’s
child, Gage!”

“All the more
reason not to find her,” he said firmly.
 
“Talk about ruining someone’s day.”

Monika’s voice
rose to a near yell.
 
“Did she have a
choice, Gage?
 
Why should we discriminate
against her?”

He made a tamping
motion with his hands, using a soothing tone.
 
“I’m not discriminating against her.
 
All I’m saying is hearing such news might not be good for her.”
 
Gage rubbed his temples.
 
“She’d be an old woman if she were alive, but
I doubt she even made it out of that concentration camp.
 
The stumble-stone listed her parents as dead.
 
She was just an infant.”

Monika cocked her
head.
 
“You don’t know her fate any more
than I do, Gage.”

“No, I don’t.”

She closed the
diary and resumed her spot on the bed.
 
Gage sat down, watching down the street again.
 
Monika was breathing steadily, silent for a
long time before her eyes closed.

Two hours later, a
girl parked on the curb in front of Monika’s building.
 
Gage rousted Monika from her sleep.

“It’s just
Silvie
, from work,” she explained groggily.
 
“She’s probably worried sick about me.”
  
She pulled on her shoes.
 
Their conversation grew heated again as he
gently gripped Monika’s arms, patiently explaining that she couldn’t leave,
couldn’t call anyone.
 

But her apartment
was right there, her job only a few blocks away.
 
This is insane!

No.
 
Too dangerous.

She cried for ten
minutes afterward.

An hour later, as
the sun began to set, Gage sat there, shaking his head.
 
Something would come from the incident in
Metz.
 
It had to.
 
Situations like that don’t just go away, do
they?
 
But then, after a full day of a
whole lot of nothing, he began to second guess himself.
 
Maybe the men from Metz were small
timers?
 
Just two punks who got what was
coming to them.
 
Maybe the big one
cleaned up the one Gage had iced and Michel.
 
He’d sanitize the shop while nursing his aching head and then he would slither
back to his hole, humiliated, never telling another soul.

He thought back to
his conversation with Colonel Hunter.
 
No
searches were on for a man who looked like Gage.
 
No alerts.
 
No bulletins.
 
Nothing.

And here Gage was,
preventing the one he loved from simply going home.
 
All because he was being overly cautious.
 
Like Crete.

Motherfucking Crete.
 

Again.

But, he thought,
countering his train of thought, his instincts had been correct on that fateful
day.
 
Gage turned to look at Monika.
 
She lay in the fetal position, silent, facing
away from him.
 
So maybe she misses a
week at work.
 
It was a small price to
pay to be safe.

Perhaps his
instincts were still sound.

Other than
Silvie
, the hair-stylist, no one ever came to Monika’s
apartment.

***

Wednesday, November 4
- Frankfurt,
Germany

On
Wednesday, the sky was a
never-ending sheet of gunmetal gray for the drive back to Frankfurt.
 
Gage entered the city by way of
Düsseldorfer
Strasse
, heading
directly to the storage space.
 
He
circled the block three times, scanning every face and window.
 
Eventually, he parked a kilometer away, leaving
Monika and reconnoitering the area on foot.
 
He used two switch-backs and even observed the entrance to the space for
a half-hour, scrutinizing all vantage points.

There was
nothing.
 
No tail.
 
No surveillance.
  

Satisfied, he went
to his storage unit and retrieved the last of his money, deciding after a
moment’s hesitation to leave the other diaries in the safe.
 

“I have some
money,” Monika insisted when he returned to the car.

Gage turned to her
as the car idled roughly.
 
“You’d have to
get it from the bank, which would leave an electronic signature.
 
It may turn out that we’re not being watched
at all, but I wouldn’t bet on it, not just yet anyway.
 
We have plenty now.”
 
Combined with the money he had earned from
Jean, he now had well over 11,000 euros, in cash.

Gage drove north;
they were both silent.
 
He parked four
blocks from his flat and instructed Monika to go into a drug store to buy them
toiletries.
 
She took the cash and
stormed from the car without a word.