He'd met her at a Harvard-Wellesley mixer, and they'd done exactly that, wantonly, during the summer of 1940. At first, Braun had been amused by the prim, reserved Lydia, seeing her as simple fare, a light challenge for conquest. The results came immediately, and if she demonstrated a distinct lack of expertise, it was more than compensated for by rampant enthusiasm. The entire, exhausting affair would have fizzled quickly had it not been for Lydia's prescient invitation — two weeks with the family at Harrold House. This was where Braun had become truly enraptured.
He remembered his first impressions driving down Bellevue Avenue. Expansive lawns gave separation from the road, allowing the commoners a glimpse from a suitable distance. And farther back, along the shoreline, was madness. Forty thousand square foot(cottages," occupied only a few months each summer. It was an impossible mix of styles and themes, an architects playground and nightmare at the same time. A Louis XIV chateau next to a Georgian Revival. French Normandy sandwiched between Gothic and Tudor. The resulting hodgepodge was an assault to Brauns trained eye. He preferred symmetry, consistency. Yet there was something more behind it.
In the days that followed, Braun realized the error of his first appraisal. He saw a greater force at work, an influence that overrode any architectural misdemeanors. These were not structures, they were statements, each a reflection of the individual owner's imagination and ego. Crass and unenlightened as they might be, the buildings and gardens were only props, a setting for the true occupation of Newport. Evenings in full dress, elbow to elbow with senators and ambassadors. Old money magnates and respectable crooks mingling to proper music served up by forty-piece orchestras. It was pure theater on a scale Braun could never have imagined. By day, the men competed, the more ruinously expensive the sport, the better. Polo ponies and racing yachts. Ruthless golf and tennis. By night, the parties rotated among the estates, and here the women competed — better caviar than the tripe served by the Smythes last week, or three bands to top the Wynn's two. There was backstabbing and manipulation. Deal making and lust. But more than anything, there was money. It was the constant, the standard by which foolish excess was measured.
For Braun, the leisures of Newport had been fleeting, interrupted when the telegram had come from his bullheaded father. Come to Paris right away. No explanation, no suggestion of reason. He had little alternative. Unlike most of his brothers at Harvard, Braun held no trust fund, no reserves from which to draw his final year's tuition, room, and board. He had explained to Lydia that the trip was academic, a scholarly study of the facades of a Paris that might soon be at risk from the impending storm of war. She'd been a model of understanding.
Newport had lasted only two weeks, but it had burned into Braun's mind. Memories that would later hold against the starvation of Stalingrad, the desperation of Berlin, and the killing grounds in between. Yet if he remembered vividly the mansions and galas, Lydia herself fell almost forgotten. He tried to recall her eyes. Were they blue? Or perhaps green? No matter, he decided. He would learn soon enough. Lydia, eager young Lydia, would be his ticket back.
A train pulled to the platform and he rose from the hard wooden bench. The cars were full, and he took a seat to the rear, next to a plump young woman who was firmly engaged in a dime novel. He coughed and snorted roughly as he sat. Feign sickness … people always avoid it. He sensed the woman pull away.
Braun settled back and closed his eyes, reflecting on the last days. Yesterday he had killed a man for nothing more than the clothes on his back and the few dollars that might be in his pocket. He mused on the progress this posed. Five years ago, as a third-year man at Harvard, the mere thought of killing a person would have been intolerable. Now it seemed perfectly natural.
He remembered Stalingrad and Berlin. There, Braun had met men who killed for pleasure. He was proud, at least, to have never gone down that road. I am not a cruel man, he reasoned, I only take life when there is a purpose.
The train rocked gently, picking up speed, and Braun closed his eyes. Minutes later he drifted off, his thoughts already having moved on.
Thatcher arrived at work well before dawn. His night had been sleepless as questions swirled in his head, a result of yesterday's frustrating afternoon. He had always been wired with a peculiar internal circuitry. It stipulated that everything must fit, falling into the universal order of logic and reason. A leads to B, and, in turn, C follows up. The war had short-circuited his world in the most terrible of ways, and Thatcher found relief only in work. It was his outlet, the channel for his energies. That being the case, he would not be put off by a troublesome Yank, or even victory in Europe. The issue of Alexander Braun was his to tackle.
He'd so far drawn a blank on the Manhattan Project, and asking the Americans again would only bring the hot water he was in to a boil. He wondered what a German spy could possibly be doing in Mexico, but the thoughts never advanced beyond pure supposition. To the positive, he had at least been able to ascertain that Major Rudolph Becker's body had been found washed up on the Northern Baltic shoreline, the cause of death indeterminate, but immaterial. And there was a sketchy report that General Freiderich Rode had been killed, a passenger in an aircraft shot down over Norway. It was plausible. Two years ago the place had been a German possession teeming with Nordic spies. Now the reciprocal had emerged. Thatcher assigned Sergeant Winters, his most capable assistant, the task of finding proof. If the information could be authenticated it would be one less Nazi for Thatcher to hunt.
The fate of Colonel Hans Gruber had proven more elusive. Thatcher doubted Corporal Klein would possess knowledge of his boss's escape plan. Gruber was an intelligence man who would understand the game — each extra person who knew his plans only increased the chance of failure. But Gruber was well known to the Allies, an easily recognizable target. Thatcher doubted he could evade for long.
Yet as the field narrowed, the last target became even more elusive. Only one other person remained from the meeting Klein had described, and that person was the most important, the key to uncovering a spy called Die Wespe. Unfortunately, without another witness, someone who knew where the man was headed, Thatcher was flailing in the wind. It had to be America. But how could Alexander Braun get there? And what use could he be now with Germany defeated?
It all weighed on Thatcher, each fact a piece on his mental game board, each unknown a pending roll of the dice. He reached across his desk and picked up a medallion. It commemorated the Arsenal Football Club's 1938 League Championship. Madeline was a supporter, and the medallion had been his first gift to her, one of those lighthearted gestures that had risen to become a landmark in their lives. Thatcher rubbed it slowly between his thumb and forefinger, feeling the sappy words he'd had inscribed on the backside — My dearest Mads, Always.
Always — except for the blasted war. England was singing, dancing, drowning in the pubs. And Thatcher sat mired, his investigation stuck in a ditch. The Nazi regime was a plague, a disease that had to be eradicated completely. And who was going to do the work? A bunch of drunk louts who, out of sheer relief, were ready to let bygones be bygones?
He put the medallion back on his desk. Thatcher knew what Roger Ainsley would say. Drop it. But something about this Manhattan Project, about Gruber's meeting during the last days of the Reich. There was desperation in it, a menace that wouldn't necessarily die with the formal surrender.
He wondered if Braun had already made it to America. Or perhaps he was sitting in a British internment camp right now, spinning the tale of a hard-fighting soldier who'd done his duty and was now ready to start life anew. There were millions of them. Thatcher could go through the camp rosters and search for the name Alexander Braun. It was common enough. There might be dozens. And would Braun even give his real name?