What did you do, Anneliese? Where did you go? What are you planning? Jordan shook her head in reflexive refusal, but she couldn’t help it: the resurrection of every suspicion she’d ever harbored about Anneliese from the day she’d turned around from the kitchen sink with a soapy plate in her hand, asking Jordan’s father You hunt? as the Leica’s shutter snapped. Mysteries about names, dates, swastikas among roses.
Now, now, Jordan could almost hear her dad chiding. No more of your wild stories, missy! But he was dead, and there was nothing wild or imaginary about the fact that Anneliese had been lying about her recent travels, that there was something fishy between her and Kolb, and that she had a great deal of unexplained cash.
Swastikas. Jordan forced herself to think about them again. And all the rest.
What did you do, Anneliese?
Who are you, Anneliese?
Who?
Chapter 46
Ian
September 1950
Florida coast
Kolb was sent home from work drunk yesterday, according to Jordan,” Tony said over a crackling line. “I think he might be about to crack.”
“Good.” Ian rested an elbow against the door of the telephone box, looking across the street where Nina was disappearing into a beachside five-and-dime. The sun was falling fast. “Because our Florida lead was a fifty-two-year-old man who might have been a camp clerk or a Nazi Party functionary but was definitely not Lorelei Vogt.” Tony swore, but Ian was fatalistic. “They were leads; we had to run them out.”
He and Nina had bitten the bullet and taken a bus down to the tiny town outside Cocoa Beach, Florida, that was their final lead, since bus tickets proved marginally cheaper and quicker than driving the rackety Ford, but the suspicion had already been growing in Ian that with six addresses already scratched off the list, the last name would be no more fruitful. “Who knows, maybe I’ll be back through here someday to help arrest that middle-aged fellow with the Berlin vowels and the nervous look who opened his door to us an hour ago,” he said when his partner ran out of curses.
A pause on the other end, and then Tony’s voice, more thoughtful. “Do you ever want to do more with the center than focus on arrests, boss?”
“Like what?”
“Making a repository. A museum, even, or maybe that isn’t the right word. I don’t know, but I’ve got ideas.”
“Did Jordan McBride put them there?” Ian asked wryly.
“She makes me think. Makes me think a lot, actually.” Tony took a breath. “What if we brought her into the chase?”
“What?”
“We have nothing to hide; we aren’t doing anything shameful. She might even be able to help. She knows Kolb and the shop, after all. She might have some angle we don’t know.”
“Or maybe she’d fire you for lying to her, and there goes our access to Kolb’s workplace,” Ian pointed out.
Tony’s voice was taut. “I hate lying to her.”
“We’ll talk about it.” Ian ruffled a hand through his hair. “First item for discussion when Nina and I get back tomorrow.” This Florida town was such a hamlet, there wouldn’t be another bus until the morning.
Ian rang off as Nina came strolling out of the five-and-dime with a small package. The sun was down, night falling fast. “I suppose we should try to find a hotel, if they even have hotels.” There wasn’t much to this tiny hamlet except sticky heat and the sound of waves.
“Why bother with hotel?” Nina looked at the darkening sky. “Is nice night.”
For any other woman, Ian thought, that would have meant there was a lovely sunset and a full moon, a night for romance. For Nina, it meant no clouds and only a sliver of moon—in other words, perfect weather to blow things up. “You want to pitch out on the sand all night?”
“Would save money, and we don’t sleep anyway after a hunt. Too fizzed.”
“True enough.” Ian didn’t know if there were two insomniacs alive worse than Nina and himself. On the road, economy dictated sharing a room, and Ian was surprised how much better sleeplessness was when shared. He’d wake at one in the morning with a parachute dream, steady his racheting heart by turning on the light and reading (surreptitiously) one of his wife’s Georgette Heyer paperbacks balanced on Nina’s bare shoulder as she slumbered. Eventually he curled up around her and dropped back to sleep, vaguely feeling her come awake an hour later and prowl out of bed to sit at the hotel window and drink in the night air. When she came back, she slid under the covers and started nipping his ear—“I’m not sleepy, luchik, tire me out”—and after he’d obliged her, they both usually managed to drowse past dawn, legs entangled, Nina’s arm thrown across Ian’s ribs, his face buried in her hair.
I’m not giving that up, Ian thought. If I can just figure out what will make you want to stay. How the hell did you woo a woman as impervious as a bullet?
They ate hot dogs at a ramshackle beachside diner, and then Nina found a public washroom and disappeared with the package she’d bought from the five-and-dime. Ian waited outside, fanning himself with the straw panama he’d picked up to replace his old fedora, crumpling and bashing it until it sat on his head at the appropriately battered angle. At last Nina came out with her hair lying damp against her shoulders, smelling of peroxide. “Better,” she said contentedly, running fingers through her newly blond roots as they set off in the direction of the beach.
“Why do you dye your hair?” Ian said curiously. “Not to be rude, I like it. But considering that your only other nod to personal adornment has been to tattoo your aviation record on the soles of your feet . . .”
Nina shrugged. Another of those arbitrary questions she refused to answer—Ian let it be, and they strolled on down the long deserted beach, shoulders brushing. It was now full dark, just the faint glitter of stars overhead and the gritty slide of sand beneath Ian’s shoes. Nina stopped and pulled off her sandals as they came to the edge of the water. Her profile was bright against the darkness, and Ian thought of the night on the ship rail. “Nina,” he asked, “those five years you spent in England before this . . . was there anyone for you? I wouldn’t blame you if there were,” he added, not entirely truthfully. Falling for his wife had brought out a possessive streak, he was finding, but that didn’t mean he had to give in to it. “It wasn’t precisely a real marriage.”
“There were a few,” Nina said matter-of-factly. “Was five years. You?”
“A few,” Ian admitted. “No one lasting. Are any of your fellows waiting for you?” he made himself ask. If she said yes, he wouldn’t say another word.
“No. Peter, he goes off to fly with aerobatic team. Simone, she’s married—”
Ian stumbled in the sand. “Simone?”
“My boss at Manchester airfield, he brings a French wife home from the war. But he’s in town every night with his mistress now, and Simone gets lonely. Bozhe moi, she could tire out a tiger. You ever need sleep,” Nina advised, “get a Frenchwoman, forty-five, who wears eau de violette and hasn’t had good roll in the hay in years.”
Ian digested this. “Bloody hell, Nina—”