The Ambassador's Daughter (36 page)

“So you switched sides.” She had turned in Ignatz to the police not to protect me, but perhaps he was getting too close to the truth about her.

“I suppose. Or I became, as they call it, a double agent. That sounds very glamorous, doesn’t it?” she jokes feebly.

I do not respond. Regardless of whom she is spying for, I am equally betrayed. “You spied on me.”

“Not on you exactly.” No, of course not. I was inconsequential. But she had used me to gain access and the information she needed to know. “When Ignatz roped you in, it was a bonus—keep tabs on what he was up to while seeing if you were of use. We didn’t actually think you’d have the steel to go through with helping him. We had not expected you to take the document he wanted so quickly. I had to make sure it didn’t actually fall into the wrong hands.” So she intercepted the document before I could get it to Ignatz.

There are sides, I realize, hearing the triumphant note in her voice, boundaries that make some pieces of friendship untenable. “Why didn’t you just ask me to help?”

She leans against the desk, eyes me levelly. “Would you have done it if I had?” I consider the question. “No, you were too smart to follow me blindly, even for our friendship. You would have had the same questions and doubts—only you would have had no one to ask about them. Even if you wanted to help, the very information would have changed how you behaved. We needed you exactly as you were.”

Krysia was right. By appearing neutral, a friend and mentor who had only my best interests at heart, she was able to guide me exactly where she wanted me to go—and that was perhaps the greatest betrayal of all.

Or maybe not. An image flashes into my mind then of Krysia in the park, handing the ball back to the young woman in the park. “Emilie,” I say slowly, my voice heavy with incredulity even as the truth crystallizes in my mind.

Krysia shakes her head. “No, Emilie is not my daughter. What I told you was true—I did become pregnant almost twenty years ago. But the baby was not born.” I am curious, and yet at the same time grateful that she does not elaborate on what really happened. “Emilie is about the same age that my child would have been. She’s another operative. When she came to me I recognized so much of myself in her that she might have been... I tried to dissuade her in fact from working with us but she was intent. She volunteered instead of being recruited, and had a real passion and natural ability for the cause.”

I sink to the edge of the desk in disbelief. “But you were so worried for her when she was sick. You prayed for her.” Or had her excursion to the church been another rendezvous, part of her work?

“Emilie is not my daughter,” she repeats, as if trying to remind herself. All of her machinations over whether she had done right by the girl, her inability to let her go, and her worry when she was ill, were nothing more than a fiction. Perhaps she had developed such an affinity for the girl over the years that the story had started to seem true. “But our similar coloring provided a useful cover in case anyone—it just happened to be you—stumbled upon us.” So Krysia had gone to the park each week not to watch her child nostalgically, but to get or deliver information.

“What else?” I demand. This one report could not have been the total of it. Had she taken other things from Papa or Georg, as well?

But she presses her lips together. Though repentant in having got caught, she is still not willing to divulge all of her secrets. “There is one thing, now that you know—I suppose it is too much to ask, that is, there is still a great deal of work to be done...” She trails off, too embarrassed to finish the thought. My eyes widen. Does she really believe, after all that has happened, all of the betrayal and lies, that I would help her? Once I would have followed her anywhere. For a minute, I am flattered. Krysia thinks me worthy of involvement. Perhaps, that is why she came to Berlin. I shake my head. No, recruiting me was a contingency plan, to be implemented only if I discovered the truth. Otherwise she would have kept me playing the pawn.

She continues, “We believe that the Germans are rearming in spite of the treaty, that they are secretly making plans.” It can’t be true, though I would not blame them if they were, I think, remembering Georg’s disillusion. “You are in a position to help and you have real skills. Perhaps if you agree with what we are trying to do, if you believe...”

I shake my head. Once, I might have thought that Krysia and her friends had the answers. I wanted to be included so desperately I would have done anything for their approval. But they are politicians and liars like the rest. Now I just want to be free.

I study her, considering. I could scream and Uncle Walter and the servants would come running and summon the police to arrest Krysia. She deserves no better for her betrayal. But the scandal and everything that would be revealed would implicate Papa as surely as it had in Paris. There’s more to it, though, than concern for my father: Krysia had changed my life that night in Montparnasse when she challenged me to be something more. And there is part of me that wants to spare her, to save her as surely as she had saved me.

“I think,” I say with great difficulty, “that it is time for you to go.”

“Go? You mean you aren’t...” Krysia assumed that, knowing she had been behind everything, I would have her arrested. Her body goes slack with relief. Then she straightens. “I hope someday you’ll understand.” She starts for the door, then turns back. “Margot, there is one other thing...you must be careful about Georg. He’s broken and a bit off center since Versailles. With everything that has happened, there’s no telling what he might do.”

I stare at her, dumbfounded. Is she really purporting to offer advice after what she has done? Perhaps this is just another attempt to manipulate me. There’s nothing left for her to gain from it, though, and her expression is one of genuine concern. But I cannot trust her again.

“Goodbye, Krysia.” I turn away, understanding that I have seen her for the last time. A moment later, the door shuts with a click and she is gone.

Chapter 22

I turn back and stare at the space where Krysia once stood, wondering if it had been a dream. The wool scarf she knitted for me hangs around my neck, one of the few things I’d cared enough to take in my flight. It now feels like a scratchy noose. I remove it and study the patterns in my hand, its beauty a mockery. I am tearing it apart in my hands then, ripping each stitch from its moorings.

When I am done, I stare remorsefully at the great pile of kinked purple thread on the desk before me, still shaking. Now I know why Krysia had come to Berlin. It wasn’t about the wedding or supporting me. She had come with her own motives, to continue the deception.

But what had she been searching for? Pushing down the emotions that threaten to swallow me, I pick up the file of documents she had dropped on the floor. Like the paper I’d grabbed from her, they are blueprints and maps of the grounds. I remember then her questions about the layout of the villa, the tunnels leading into the house. Why had she wanted to know?

I see the great room, with the rows of chairs in straight lines. My wedding. A guest list of hundreds, with dozens of ambassadors and government officials, including the prime minister. It would be the perfect opportunity for an assassination attempt, if one could bypass security.

Considering my theory, doubts bubble anew. Krysia works for the British government. Surely they were not in the assassination business. But those in power will stop at nothing to achieve their aims. If they could send millions to die in the trenches, why not one or two more? And if it could be made to appear as if the right people did it—the communists, for example—the German government would come down on them with great force. Perhaps, it was not about the assassination at all, but about the repercussions after.

Of course, they will not dare to attempt the assassination at the wedding now that I know. But they will try again another way. I have to tell someone. Georg. I pick up the blank paper on which I’d intended to tell Krysia I was leaving. Should I use it instead to write to Georg? A letter would not be enough—any assassination plot, if they still dared to go through with it, might take place too soon, the damage done before my missive arrived. No, I have to tell him in person.

I grab my bag, then run from the house and climb onto my bicycle. I begin to pedal, straining to see the darkened road ahead. The night air is thick and humid. Thunder rumbles in the distance. As I near the center of town, I stop. It is well after curfew, and there will be no taxis or trains. The omnibus, I recall, making my way to the side of the train station. A dilapidated bus sits idling at the curb, belching fumes. I pay the driver, ignoring the curious stares of the two other passengers, laborers who are likely making their way to the city to begin night shifts.

As the bus bumps over the rough road leading from town and turns onto the motorway, I lean my head against the window and stare out into the darkness, unable to shake Krysia from my mind. She was like an older sister to me, and the closest I had to a friend. She had used me, betrayed me for her own version of good. Had it all been an act? But Krysia is not the only one guilty of deception. I lied to Georg as she had lied to me. None of it is clear anymore.

Forty minutes later, the bus stops at Potsdamer Platz and I step out into the night. It is raining now, thick drops that splash against my face as I make my way from the gritty square, winding in the direction of Georg’s hotel. The streets are deserted and ominous, and a strange burning smell permeates the air. I move swiftly, glancing over my shoulder every few seconds. In the distance, there is a loud popping sound. Gunfire, I think instinctively, stopping. It is followed by the sounds of shouting and sirens. Is it a political protest, or some sort of crime?

Struggling to breathe against the wet smoke that scratches my nose and throat, I press forward. Soon I reach the Grand. I stop, peering up at the front of the terraced hotel uncertainly. I do not want to face the questions the lobby clerk will surely have about the arrival of a strange woman caller in the middle of the night. In a second-floor window to the right of the entrance, a light burns. Rain falls harder now as I step closer. Through the crack in the curtains I can see Georg sitting at a desk working, and in that moment it is as if I am transported back to Paris, to a time when I could go inside and be with him.

I brush a tear from my eye and walk closer. “Georg,” I call in a loud whisper, through cupped hands, tilting my head upward. But, of course, he cannot hear me from this distance. Desperately, I search for a way to get his attention. I grab a few pieces of gravel from the pavement, throw one in the direction of the window, ajar despite the rain. But it misses by a meter and falls back to the pavement. I eye the front of the hotel. The ground-floor windows are covered by an iron grating, intended perhaps to stave off potential rioters. I hitch up my skirt and lift my foot onto the grating, climbing as I had on the cannon in Paris the day Wilson arrived. Despite the slickness of the wet metal, I find my footing and reach higher. My childhood years of scaling trees, to the distress of my mother and later Celia, now serve me well.

There is a precarious creak. I reach higher with my left hand, praying at the same time that the grating will hold and that no one will see me on the street below. With my right hand I hurl the second stone at Georg’s window, trying to hit the glass. But it flies through the open window and a moment later I hear a squawk.

“Georg.” I cringe at the volume of my voice this time, certain that it will attract attention from the neighboring rooms.

He comes to the window, rubbing his head. “Margot?” Disbelief and confusion cross his face as I scamper down from the grating, wet hair plastered to my face. Then he walks away and the curtains fall closed behind him. My heart sinks in despair. Is he really so angry that he would turn his back on me?

The door to the hotel opens. Georg stands shoeless in a white shirt and trousers, silhouetted against the golden light that burns behind him. A faint stubble covers his jaw. I have never seen him look so handsome. My breath skips.

He blinks twice, as though checking if the image he had seen through the window was a dream. “Margot?” he says again, his voice hollow. We had parted so badly that he had not expected to see me again at all, much less on his doorstep in the middle of the night.

“I’m so sorry to come here like this.” I could have called. Just rung the hotel and asked to speak with him. It would have been quicker that way. But instead I had to come.

“Is something wrong?”

“No, I mean, yes...” I falter. The rain continues to fall around me, though I am soaked to the point where it no longer matters. “May I come in?” He does not answer right away and, for a moment, I wonder if he will refuse. But then he steps back and ushers me upstairs to the room where he had been working. I stand in the entranceway, water dripping onto the parquet floor. “Thank you,” I say as he hands me a towel. I avert my eyes from the rumpled bed in the far corner, cringing at the half-empty bottle of liquor on the nightstand.

He clears a chair by the desk for me, but I do not sit. “Tea?” I shake my head. I have not come for a social visit. “What’s wrong? Is it your father?”

“No, I have to tell you something.” I take a deep breath. “There’s a man from Paris who was blackmailing me to spy on you.” His eyes widen. “You remember the assassination attempt on Clemenceau’s life that happened before you came to Paris?” I do not wait for an answer. “I’d said something in public that I shouldn’t have about Papa’s work and it prompted the man who tried to kill Clemenceau to act. And after, well, this other man was blackmailing me to get information from you. If I didn’t, he was going to blame everything on Papa. Anyway, I thought it was all done with in Paris. But then I discovered this.” I hold up the blueprint of the villa. “They were planning some sort of assassination attempt at my wedding, I think.”

“Who are ‘they’?” he asks. I hesitate. I’ve told the story in a roundabout way, jumbling Ignatz’s role in it with Krysia’s. But it is not until I have spoken that I realize what I am planning to do. “The man who asked me to take documents from you is called Ignatz Stein. He’s a Ukrainian and he used to run a bar in Montparnasse that has been shut down by the police. He’s working for someone, the communists or the British, maybe.”