City of Spies (7 page)

“You're worried,” Pagan said, wiping crumbs off the corner of her mouth. “About that guy in gray.”

“I'm telling you, he was up to no good.” Mercedes tapped her fingernails on the tabletop. “Do you mind if I go outside for a minute to make sure he's not still there?”

“'Course not,” Pagan said. “As long as I eat a large steak soon, I'll be the happiest girl in the world. The beef in Argentina's supposed to be the best.”

“Great.” Mercedes, distracted, was already standing up. She didn't carry a purse and never wore gloves, so she set the guidebook down on her seat. “Back in a moment.”

Then she was gone, moving quietly with her determined stride toward the front door. Pagan finished off the brie and speared a few olives from their tiny bowl with a toothpick. Olives made her think of martinis, which made her miss the icy bite of vodka moving down her throat, but she was too hungry not to eat them, and the sharp need for alcohol was dulled as her hunger abated. The waiter came by and she ordered more iced tea.

As the waiter moved off, the weird dizzy feeling in Pagan's head and its accompanying depression brought on by the confrontation with Tony, hours of dancing and lack of food faded.

What had she been so worried about? She could handle this whole silly movie situation. She'd made some choices she regretted in the past, but she wasn't going to let Tango Tony, as M called him, get on her nerves about it. Maybe now that he had some reason to fear her, he'd behave. And she'd find a way to charm the director, even if she did have to pretend to be the silliest clown in the circus.

“Alone at last.” A familiar voice floated over her shoulder.

Pagan's heart beat once, very loudly. She turned to find Devin Black lounging at the table behind hers, a coffee and folded newspaper before him, his dark hair, gelled back, curled slightly around his temples in the summer humidity. His dark, turbulent eyes, like the ocean at twilight, took their time looking her over.

Pagan swallowed her last bite, her pulse accelerating, and dusted the crumbs off her hands. “Just you, me and the cheese. I think I'm in love.” She paused. “With the brie.”

One corner of Devin's mouth turned down in amusement. It had been weeks since she'd seen that characteristic smirk of his, and it was as annoyingly beguiling as ever.

“Wait till you try the steak,” he said.

Why, oh, why did that remark make her flush? Or was it the way he was looking at her? Either way, her cheeks were hot, damn him.

She shook her ponytail, rallying. “Mercedes is going to laugh. She thought someone was following us with evil intent, but it turns out it was you. Or wait...” She surveyed his long, slender form again in its freshly ironed white shirt and crisp khaki pants, slightly scuffed brown leather oxfords on his feet. He was the picture of effortless summer sophistication, but he was not wearing a gray suit and hat. “That couldn't have been you.”

He frowned, leaning toward her subtly, eyes scanning the room. “Mercedes saw someone following you
here
?”

“Yeah, but...” She was about to say Mercedes was being paranoid, but the look on Devin's face stopped her. He dropped his paper on the table and signaled the waiter. “You think it's true?” she asked.

He was reaching for his wallet, pulling out paper Argentine pesos. “Buenos Aires is a hotbed for espionage, especially since the Israelis kidnapped Eichmann in '60.”

Pagan had a vague memory of hearing about Eichmann in the news—an infamous Nazi war criminal in hiding who'd been captured in Buenos Aires by Israeli intelligence agents and whisked away to be put on trial in Jerusalem. He'd recently been convicted of orchestrating the Nazi efforts to exterminate the Jews and sentenced to death. His capture had been daring and illegal. Because of it the little-known Israeli secret service, the Mossad, had emerged as bold and utterly ruthless. She had a vague memory of that caper causing a lot of tension between Jews and non-Jews in Buenos Aires when it was discovered.

Devin was saying, “You know Mercedes's background. She of all people would recognize a threat when she saw one. This man in gray must've realized she'd spotted him and may be gone by now. More likely, he got a follow-up man to take his place. I'll meet you back at your hotel room. They'll have finished sweeping it by now.”

He was settling his bill with the waiter, so Pagan canceled the order for steaks and asked for her bill, as well.

“Sweeping?” she said when the waiter had gone. “For dust bunnies?”

“Every afternoon while you're out, some friends of mine will sweep your suite for listening devices.” He took a linen jacket off the back of his chair and slid his wallet into the breast pocket. “That way we'll always have a safe place to talk. So you might want to keep your unmentionables put away.”

“What!” She managed to keep the exclamation low in volume and not to stare at him dramatically. The angle of his body and his gaze told her they were supposed to be acting as if they were in casual “we just met” conversational mode for anyone watching. “Every day? Is it really that dangerous here?”

“Having fun yet?” He grinned, sliding his gaze back to her.

There was an impact as their eyes met, like a meteor striking the earth. She was flushing again. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I am.”

“I'll meet you back at your suite.” He started to get out of his chair.

“Wait!” She resisted putting her hand on his arm. They were still faking casual chitchat, acting as if they were strangers. “Shouldn't you be staying to protect us from this guy?”

“Fear not, fair lady. He's got to be tailing you in these public places for information, not assassination,” Devin said. “And I don't want him tailing me. So act as if you're leaving because you changed your mind, and don't let him know for sure you've made him.”

“So we shouldn't try to lose him?” she asked. “If we see him again.”

“No. He probably knows where you're staying by now. See you soon. Give my best to Mercedes.” And with that he was gone, weaving toward the back of the restaurant, no doubt to slip through the kitchen and out a back door the rest of the world had no idea existed.

Pagan was finishing paying the bill when Mercedes came back, looking frustrated. Her eyebrows drew together as she saw the table being cleared and Pagan sliding her purse strap over her shoulder.

“Devin sends you his best,” Pagan said. “I told him you thought someone was following us. He's got a full file on you, so he figured you knew what you were talking about, but he says we're not in any danger. I need to meet him back at the suite to talk.”

“That explains the look on your face,” Mercedes said. “I couldn't find the man in the gray suit again.”

So her excitement at seeing Devin did show on her face. How aggravating. “Devin said he probably noticed you noticing him and left, or got replaced with a follow-up man. I wonder if that's a technical term. Oh, and they're sweeping our suite every day for bugs.” She put down a few pesos for the tip. “You're probably hungry. Stay if you like.”

Mercedes snorted and shook her head. “And miss a chance to finally meet Devin Black?”

They caught a cab back to the hotel. Pagan tried not to keep glancing out the back window to see if anyone was following them, but she caught Mercedes looking in the driver's side-view mirror more than once.

“Anything?” she asked.

M shook her head. “Hard to tell.”

Devin was waiting in their suite. It was a little unsettling to walk into their private space and see him lounging in the side chair, reading the paper. He stood and held out his hand to Mercedes, smiling while she shook it. “I was going to introduce myself,” he said. “But I'm thinking that might be unnecessary.”

“I might have heard a thing or two about you,” Mercedes said, taking her hand back. “But apparently nothing like the research you've done on me.”

Devin gave a one-shouldered shrug. “It's research like that which makes my job so interesting.”

Mercedes's lips pursed in an appreciative little smile. “A compliment that doesn't sound like a compliment. Pretty smooth for an art thief.”

“Former art thief,” Devin said. Pagan could see he was tickled by Mercedes tweaking him. “I never stole cars, but compared to taking a Picasso out of a guarded museum, it doesn't sound that hard.”

Pagan opened her mouth to shush him, and then shut it. As Devin well knew, Mercedes had stolen her share of cars, and other things. She was in reform school for armed robbery and extortion because she'd been one of the top enforcers for the Avenidas, one of the most powerful Mexican gangs in Los Angeles, a gang headed by her brother, who'd been shot and killed. A gang that still wanted her back.

Mercedes's eyelids dropped to half mast as she reassessed Devin. “It's not hard,” she said, “unless Clanton 14 has six guys chasing you from both ends of Rampart Avenue and the only car you can get to has two more of them inside it.”

Clanton 14 was the rival gang to the Avenidas. Reform school had taught Pagan a lot of things Hollywood could not.

Devin lifted an impressed eyebrow. “I retract my statement.”

“Look at us, three little criminals,” Pagan said.

Mercedes and Devin turned as one to look at her, faces wearing identical looks of skepticism.

“You think she qualifies?” Mercedes asked Devin, as if Pagan wasn't standing right there.

“As a criminal?” Devin shook his head. “She lacks the killer instinct.”

Pagan blinked at them. “But I...”

“She's got a thing for the criminal type, though,” Mercedes said.

“Obviously,” said Devin, turning back to her. “Now this man in gray you saw following you. Can you describe him?” He ushered Mercedes to take the gold brocade chair behind him. “I ordered steaks for you both, by the way. The hotel cook's pretty good.”

“Hooray,” Pagan said, still trying to deal with the two most important people in her life bonding without her. “I'm starving.”

She took the sofa while Mercedes lowered herself into the chair and said, “He was young, maybe early or midtwenties, over six feet, white, reasonably handsome with reddish brown hair under a light gray fedora. Gray suit, white shirt, narrow gray tie.”

“Thorough,” said Devin. “And what made you think he wasn't a fellow tourist?”

Mercedes squinted, thinking. “He wasn't looking around. He had no curiosity about the things or people around him. No guidebook. He kept staring at Pagan.”

Pagan straightened. Devin said, “He wasn't some fan of her movies, maybe?”

Mercedes shook her head. “I thought of that. But he didn't want an autograph, and not because he's shy. He was intent, focused, and he didn't want her, or me, to see him.”

Pagan was impressed, and convinced, and Devin was taking everything Mercedes said very seriously. “Will you let me know if you see him again?” he asked.

“Sure. Do you know who it is?”

It was like being at a tennis match, her eyes bouncing back and forth between them.

“No,” Devin said. “But we'll find out.”

Mercedes nodded. “He'll be back.”

“I knew Berlin was a garrison of spies,” Pagan said, turning to Mercedes. “But Devin says Buenos Aires is, too, even more so since the Israelis kidnapped that war criminal Eichmann back in '60.”

“I did some research for my school report that said there's a large Jewish population here,” Mercedes said. “But also a large German ex-patriot population.”

“Exactly,” said Devin. “And those are only two of the factions that come into conflict. Many of the old aristocracy resent elements within the German community and the former Perónist government, which harbored Nazis like Eichmann and Mengele. Then there are local gangs who follow various brands of fascism and Perónism, who agitate against the current government and target Jews. Not to mention that the Israelis and other foreign agencies are still active, all with their own agendas.”

“Why would any of them want to tail Pagan?” Mercedes asked. “For all they know she's a harebrained movie star. Sorry.” She shot an apologetic look at Pagan.

Pagan grinned. “I drank a lot of martinis to give that impression. Glad they didn't all go to waste.”

“Much as I'd like to discuss this with you in more detail, and much as I appreciate your sharp eye,” Devin said to Mercedes, “I can't officially talk to Pagan about her job for us with you here.” He turned to Pagan. “Shall we adjourn to my room, perhaps? It's down the hall.”

Pagan was on her feet. “You're staying down the hall?” It was silly how that news made her pulse race.

“Don't leave,” Mercedes said, getting up. “Pagan needs her steak, and it's coming here. Send mine in when it comes.” And she sailed into her adjoining bedroom and shut the door.

Pagan was alone again with Devin Black.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Alvear Palace Hotel, Buenos
Aires
January 10, 1962

CORTINA

Curtain. A brief musical interlude between dance sets.

“Alone at last,” said Pagan, echoing Devin's words back to him as she sat back down with a thump. Devin took the chair beside the sofa with his usual careless grace, an arm's length away.

Now that Mercedes was gone Pagan was free to notice how the long, powerful muscles in his shoulders pressed against the fine cotton lawn of his white shirt, and how narrow his waist was where the shirt was tucked neatly into his pants. She pulled her eyes away so he wouldn't see her staring.

“Sorry it took me a little while to get in touch,” he said. “I had some background research to do before I talked to you and...”

He broke off, staring at her. His eyes, normally layered sapphire and indigo, caught sunlight coming through the hotel window and glowed nearly royal blue. His high cheekbones and long straight nose had tanned since she'd seen him at Sinatra's house in December. He looked fit and coiled for action.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “You seem agitated.”

She relaxed slightly. “I'm fine, but this morning wasn't fun. The wardrobe is derivative, dated and way too tight, which is exactly how this whole movie's going to be. The script is terrible. I keep hearing the director's a jerk, and my costar thought dance rehearsals back in California were the right time to proposition me.”

He didn't move, but something behind his eyes tightened. “Which costar?”

The protective note in his voice was strong, immediate. She looked down so he wouldn't see how happy it made her. “Tony Perry. He's...” She wanted to tell him how Tony's assumptions about how “easy” she was had made her feel awful, to hear Devin's reassurance that he didn't see her that way, but instead she trailed off and finished, lamely, “He's just a jerk.”

“I'll have a word with him,” Devin said. “For all he knows, I'm still a studio executive.”

“Oh, I think I fixed that particular situation,” Pagan said. “But thanks. He's finally able to walk around now without help.”

His eyebrows quirked together. “Ouch?”

She nodded. “You look like you've been lounging at a resort since I saw you back in Los Angeles.”

“Not unless you call staking out the home of a possible war criminal resort living,” he said. “The summer sun down here is relentless.”

“Where does Von Albrecht live?”

The astonishment in his face was gratifying. “How did you know his name? I never told you he goes by that name. Did I?”

“No, but in a way, my mother did.” She got up and went to the fancy mirrored desk in the suite's living room, where she'd laid one of her smaller suitcases and pulled out an accordion file. She tossed it to Devin, who caught it easily. “Rolf Von Albrecht wrote to my mother in coded letters in the summer of '52, a few months before Dr. Someone came to visit us. I assume they're one and the same person. I found the letters in my father's safe last August. I broke the code in Berlin.”

He looked up at her from the file. “In Berlin? When?”

“The night before I went to Walter Ulbricht's little garden party, the night I saw Nicky with his wife and had a couple of drinks. You remember.” She paused, recalling it well herself. As Nicky had started playing on Pagan's sympathy, trying to win her back, Devin had literally shoved him away and told him to go back to his wife.

Devin's mouth curled at the memory, too. She continued. “It was something you'd said about Hitler's birthday before that which helped me break the code. Take a look at the letter on top.”

Devin pulled Von Albrecht's letters out of the file and untied the string holding them together. His eyes swept over the first letter, taking in all its innocuous phrases, until he came upon a notation in different handwriting. “Twenty, four, eighteen eighty-nine,” he read. “April 20, 1889. Hitler's birthday.”

“That's the code, in my father's handwriting. I don't know how he figured it out, but it worked. I used those numbers—twenty, four and the numbers in eighteen eighty-nine—and found the real message. In them, Von Albrecht says Mama was a ‘sympathizer.' He asks her to help him—specifically to give him a place to stay and arrange to get him on a ship leaving the country.”

“Did he say anything about coming to Argentina?”

Pagan shook her head. “No destination is mentioned, and nothing concrete about exactly who he is, why he needs to leave or what my mother was a ‘sympathizer' to, but given that the code is Hitler's birthday...”

She trailed off. Director Bennie Wexler had made it clear Eva Jones was anti-Semitic. He'd experienced her bigotry personally. That was bad enough. But if this Dr. Someone aka Von Albrecht was the type of person Pagan feared him to be, her mother was something worse.

“Who is this man you want me to identify?” she asked, coming back to sit on the sofa. “What did he do?”

Devin set the letters and file aside. “Early in 1952, a Nazi war criminal named Rudolf Von Alt escaped detention in the United States and fled the country. We believe that he changed his name to Rolf Von Albrecht, keeping the two names similar to make it easier to respond to, and that he found help from sympathizers all over the country. A sort of evil Underground Railroad. They housed him, kept him safe, funded his journey across the country. The evidence indicates that he stayed at your house in the summer of '52.”

Pagan inhaled sharply and nodded as Devin threw her a look. It was exactly what she'd feared after decoding the letters. Her mother wasn't only a woman who hated Jews. She'd helped a Nazi war criminal escape justice.

“It's okay,” she said, although it was far from okay. “But I feel a little sick.”

He got up and poured her a glass of water. “After his stay with your family, Von Alt left on a ship from the port of Long Beach. We don't know his exact route from there, but we think we've tracked him down here, to Buenos Aires.”

“Tracked him—how?” She took the glass from him. Although none of this was a surprise, it was unsettling to hear the story coming from Devin, who was as close to an official government source as she could get.

“I don't know all the details, but during the war, the FBI knew that your mother was a Nazi sympathizer and kept a file on her. They didn't think she was dangerous and weren't actively watching her in '52, so Von Alt was able to get away. Later, I don't know how, they learned that she had helped a man who resembled Von Alt. Meanwhile, I learned that Walter Ulbricht's daughter was a fan of yours.”

She sipped her water. How could the FBI have known about Mama during the war when Pagan herself had just found out? Mama had been an excellent actress in her own right. “And you got me to Berlin, using my desire to learn more about Mama to get me there,” she said. “You knew by then she had helped the Nazis.”

He nodded, eyes on her as if braced for a bad reaction. “I'm sorry I couldn't tell you.”

She raised her hand briefly, waving off his apology. She'd forgiven him long ago. He'd been doing his job, and they'd had no connection then, no relationship, if that was the right word for whatever lay between them now. But could she trust him?

“Do you know anything else about my mother or father now that I don't know?” she asked. She held her breath, not knowing if she would believe the answer, whatever it was.

“No.”

He looked right at her, brows steepled sadly, his eyes concerned, and warmth spread through her chest, like hot tears, melting away her uncertainty.

“All right,” she said. “I had to ask.”

He gave her a small smile. “Keep in mind, the CIA does know more. I can tell that the file they gave me on your mother was only part of the story they have on her. I knew she was the daughter of your grandmother Ursula, and that Ursula claimed to have married Emil Murnau and said he was the father of her baby.”

“But Emil Murnau wasn't my grandfather,” she said. “He probably never knew Grandmama. He's someone who died at the right time so she could cover up the fact she had a baby out of wedlock.”

“I wonder if your mother knew.”

Pagan considered this. “Grandmama would never have told her. She was too proud. And Mama was so sure of herself, of her place in the world...” She trailed off.

“Until the end.” Devin's eyes were fixed on her, steadying her as the bleak, heavy thoughts about Mama's death came over her. It was always like this, a smothering weight pressing the breath out of her. She'd started drinking to erase that weight, and it still made her long for the icy bite of vodka sliding over her tongue. She concentrated on breathing and pushed through it all.

“That's not enough,” Pagan said, thinking out loud. “Mama wouldn't have been happy if she learned that she was born out of wedlock, but it wouldn't be enough to make her leave us. I know she wasn't the best person in the world, that she helped this Nazi escape, that she pushed us hard. But she loved us. She loved me and Ava more than anything in the world. She wouldn't have left us for that.”

She still couldn't quite bring herself to say that Eva Jones had been a bad person. But maybe she had been. Loving your children didn't absolve you of everything.

Devin was nodding, accepting her verdict. “So, if the Rolf Von Albrecht living and working here is the man you knew as Dr. Someone when you were a child, the same man who wrote those letters, then we can confirm we've found Rudolf Von Alt, Nazi war criminal, in Buenos Aires.”

“And I'm the only person who can connect the man living here to the one who wrote these letters?” she asked.

“We think so. I hope it won't be too dangerous or difficult for you. Seeing him may not be enough to identify him because he may have had plastic surgery. And he will have aged since you saw him last.”

“I remember his voice better than his face,” Pagan said. “If you get me close enough to overhear him, I'll know.”

“We're hoping that won't take very long. Once that's done, you can wrap up your movie and go home.”

“But the US can't prosecute him here in Argentina. If it's the right man, do they plan to kidnap him like the Israelis did with Eichmann? Take him back to the US and put him on trial?”

Devin shook his head very slightly. “They haven't told me what the long-term plan is, and they have to be careful. After the Israelis took Eichmann, there was a wave of anti-Semitic violence. The fascist gangs haven't forgotten and are always looking for an excuse to lash out at the local Jewish population. But if this man is indeed Rudolf Von Alt, then he deserves whatever they have planned for him.”

“What did he do?” Pagan said, her voice quavering ever so slightly.

Devin hesitated. “He's a doctor. A medical doctor with a second degree in physics. He started off working on the German version of the atomic bomb, but when that program collapsed, he started...experimenting. On the prisoners in the camps.”

Pagan pressed the palms of her hands against her closed eyes, trying to keep the images those words conjured from appearing in her mind. It didn't help. She swallowed hard against her rising nausea. “He experimented on people.”

“With doses and implants of radiation, used without anesthetic, often combined with other typical Nazi experiments like limb transplants, using twins and pregnant women and anyone else he could get his hands on. Hundreds of them,” Devin said.

She swallowed the bile that rose in her throat. “A doctor,” she said stupidly. “Dr. Someone. My mother's friend.”

“Your mother may not have known his crimes,” Devin said.

“Maybe,” Pagan said, remembering how her strong, stylish mother had laughed over dinner with the angular, balding Dr. Someone while her father sat stony-faced. Ava had been there, too, only four years old, piling her peas into the center of her mashed potatoes, seated on a booster next to a man who had done the unspeakable.

Pagan's skin was going to shudder right off her body. She jumped to her feet, pacing over to the suite's bar. It hadn't been stocked with the usual welcoming bottles of Scotch, vodka and rum, and she was grateful. Nothing like Nazi atrocities involving your mother to make you want a good stiff drink.

“I'm sorry,” Devin said, getting to his feet. “I almost didn't tell you.”

She leaned on the bar with shaking hands. “I don't want to know, but I need to.”

Two sharp knocks on the front door made her pivot.

“Probably your steak,” Devin said. “You still up to eating?”

“Maybe in a bit,” she said, starting to move to the door.

“I'll get it,” he said, and was at the door in one swift move, tipping the server right at the doorway and wheeling in the cart himself, pausing to knock on Mercedes's door. “Steak's here.”

Mercedes poked her head out. “Thanks.” She grabbed her plate and utensils off the tray. “Hey, do you know if they sell American comics here? I'm missing the second issue of
Fantastic Four
because Pagan's a spy.”

Devin let out a surprised laugh.

Pagan smiled in spite of herself. “You can get it when you go home next week!”

“Might be sold out,” Mercedes said, raising her eyebrows. “It's a whole new thing for Marvel, you know.”

“So you keep saying,” Pagan said.

“I'll see what I can do,” Devin said. “No promises.”

“Thank you,” Mercedes said with a sly grin, and vanished once more into her room with her food.

“You do not have to get her a comic book,” Pagan said. “You're not her butler.”

“I don't mind asking,” he said, picking up a covered dish and a cold bottle of Coke off the tray.

Pagan walked up, hands out to take the food from him. “She is obsessed! Thanks.”