A Shadow in Moscow, page 2
For two years she’d longed for such a smile and for him to feel that electric pull she discovered the first day they’d met. Sure his affection was never to be hers, two weeks ago she discovered it was suddenly there. Adam lingered one evening at their home after meeting with her father. The next afternoon he passed by on the Rathausplatz as she exited work, and last week he asked to walk her home. He hadn’t held her hand or kissed her yet, but Ingrid was sure both would happen soon.
Adam captured her hand as she reached the street’s curb, still not breaking eye contact. He threaded his long fingers through hers and squeezed gently. She glowed as he turned them in the direction of her home.
“You’re back!” He’d been out of town for three days, and while she knew he would not tell her where he’d been or what he’d been doing, it was a favorite game to hazard guesses. “Let’s see . . . You’ve been putting oranges in Nazi car tailpipes from Berlin to Bangkok, haven’t you?” She felt so light she thought she might float away.
“Bangkok?” He grinned down at her, replying in German. “That’s a little far-flung. Besides, if I found an orange, I’d eat it, Ingrid. Not waste it on some Nazi car.”
“Bananas then?”
“Bananas in Berlin and Bangkok. Someone should write a song about that.” Adam winked, his light brown eyes warming to cinnamon.
“You’ve been blowing up munitions trains.”
Adam’s lips curled and he tossed her a sideways glance. This time, he did not reply. He simply squeezed her hand and walked on.
The fact that she might have gotten close, or near to close, felt like victory, and the rest of their walk flew by with light laughter and irrepressible grins. Adam was truly the best part of her day, and she hoped she was becoming his.
Once home, they’d fall into the routine they did most nights when Adam came for dinner. Ingrid would help Mutti with the meal as she always did, while Adam—when not abroad doing who knows what—would sit in her father’s study and talk lesson plans and books for the classes Adam taught at the University. At least that’s what Papa claimed they discussed.
But she’d known from the moment her father ushered Adam Weber into the von Alton home two years ago—a young professor placed within the University by the Third Reich to “teach the next generation”—that this handsome man, with his German lineage and lifelong heart condition, was more than he appeared.
The effervescence filling Ingrid stilled as they rounded the final corner from Liebiggasse onto Grillparzerstrasse. She felt tension crackle the air even before she noted the crowd filling her usually quiet street. Nazi soldiers stood on her parents’ front steps. They weren’t relaxed and congenial as they usually were when coming to dinner, and they weren’t officers.
They were young soldiers, barely out of schoolroom shorts or off their fathers’ farms. Their brown uniforms stood in stark contrast to the white-painted brick and stone building; their strident tones and clipped accents ricocheted like bullets off the hard surfaces. The whole tableau felt angry, discordant, and—Ingrid absorbed the jeering faces—terrifying. She followed the crowd’s focus and found her father lying at the street’s curb. He lay bleeding as if he’d tumbled or been struck.
Ingrid rushed forward as yelling and a commotion drew her attention, along with everyone else’s, back to her building’s open doorway. Two stocky soldiers hauled Mutti onto the stoop.
“Stop! Stop pulling her,” Ingrid’s father yelled. “She’s not resisting.”
Still at a distance, Ingrid watched in horror as her father pushed up from the ground only to be shoved down by a jackboot centered on his back. His wooden leg broke off beneath him. He had lost the limb below the knee in the Great War. It was why the Nazis let him continue teaching at the University rather than conscript him into their army.
“I am flawed, weak, not an ideal specimen, according to the Reich. But it seems I’m good enough to teach their ideology and their literature.” Ever the true Austrian, he’d sounded cynical, defeated, yet oddly determined the day he’d announced his assignment to his wife and daughter.
“Papa.” Ingrid pushed through the crowd. “Pa—”
Nothing more escaped as she felt strong arms bind her from behind. An unseen hand clamped over her mouth as she met her father’s gaze through the parted crowd. His pale eyes widened in recognition before his focus drifted above and beyond her. His expression softened with an odd note of acquiescence. Ingrid’s brow furrowed in confusion.
Then, with a mighty roar, Christoph von Alton grabbed the full attention of everyone around them. He thrust up and, standing on his one good leg, seized the soldier above him by the collar. His fist flew and a ghost of a smile lit his face as his blow swept across the soldier’s jaw. The force sent them both tumbling into the street.
That was all Ingrid saw as the hands lifted and carried her away.
The hands, of course, were Adam’s.
A block away, tucked within the safety of a deep door well, Adam spun her to face him. Fear and fury warred like living beasts inside her and she clawed at him, punched him, then tried to push past him. “Let me go! We have to help!”
Adam stood still, a wall of granite and flesh, holding her tight as she raged. Then, after what felt like an eternity, she quieted and he pulled her close. He held her tighter yet as she sobbed into his shirt.
Ingrid remembered little after that, only shadows and shapes until this morning, when the bright light pouring through Adam’s apartment windows jarred her awake from turbulent dreams.
“You need to get up and go to work.”
Those were the first words she heard, and they felt as harsh and glaring as the sunlight hitting her face. Pulling her hand from across her eyes, she found that, as upsetting and offensive as they were, the words were matched by the equally unwelcome sight of both Adam and his friend Martin Thomas standing cross-armed over her bed.
“Leave me alone.” Ingrid wished for quiet, for darkness. To roll over and never wake again.
“Not on your life, and that’s what this comes down to. Your life.” Adam laid a heavy hand on her shoulder. “Get up and meet us in the kitchen. Martin saved a little real coffee for you.”
In the end she obeyed. Not for the coffee but for the promise of a noon meeting. If she went to work, Adam said he’d be waiting on her favorite bench in the Rathauspark at noon—with answers. Only that pledge kept her moving and sane. In fact, her mind was so fixated on that moment all morning, she misdictated memos, misfiled papers, and tripped twice weaving her way through the desks at the Third Reich’s Economic and Administrative Office.
“What’s with you today?” a coworker asked. At Ingrid’s simple reply that she hadn’t slept well, her friend shook her head. “Shape up. Obergruppenführer Pohl is here and on a warpath. You’ll get written up if he notices you stumbling around making mistakes.”
Ingrid nodded, sat at her desk, pretended to work, and watched the clock.
At noon she raced down the steps and across the Rathausplatz to the park beyond. As promised, Adam sat waiting. “What did you learn?”
After a fleeting glance, he shifted his focus back across the green expanse of the park. “I don’t want to tell you.”
“You have to, please, and don’t lie. Papa and Mutti always lied to me. They were so sure I wasn’t big enough, strong enough, to handle anything. I’m petite,” Ingrid protested, “but not weak like you all think.”
Dubbed “my little poppet” by her English mother, Ingrid had been sheltered by her parents for every one of her twenty-one years like a porcelain figurine. A classic Dresden with her blonde hair, blue eyes, and pale skin. Too precious to let venture far. Too delicate to pull close. And when the Nazis absorbed Austria in 1938, their protective tendencies only grew. Ingrid knew her parents worked against the Germans, but she didn’t know how—for while they kept her at a distance, they held their secrets tight.
“After your father struck that soldier, your mother was shoved down the stairs. Her head hit the steps . . . She didn’t survive.”
Ingrid pressed both palms against her eyes. Red sparks shot behind her lids. She spoke through the darkness. “And Papa?”
“Mauthausen. He was put on a train this morning.”
Ingrid lowered her hands. The red sparks shot gold in the sunlight, blinding her. She blinked and tears filled her eyes. “They laugh about him at work. Franz Ziereis. The commandant. He’s the cruelest there is. Papa won’t survive that camp.”
Adam nodded. “I know.”
She nodded too, appreciating his honesty. The last thing she wanted was the lie of false hope.
“I’m sorry . . .” He turned to face her. “Ingrid, we need to get you out. They will connect you to your parents as soon as the paperwork goes through. You won’t be safe here. If anyone is anymore.”
“I am.” Ingrid reached into her pocket and pulled out her identification papers. She handed them to Adam.
“They’re . . . They’re fake?” Adam studied them. “Who is ‘Ingrid Bauer’?”
“I am.” Ingrid pressed her lips shut. Humiliation seeped into her sorrow. “They had no faith in me.” She raised a hand to stay Adam’s huff of denial. “They hid families in our attic. I heard them, but when I asked, they denied it. ‘Mice,’ they said. But I know. I lived there. And Papa worked all hours of the night. What professor of literature needs to grade papers all night? Every week? And Mutti . . . All those parties, walks, secrets . . . They lied. Every day. To me, their own daughter. Then that.” She pointed to her identification card. “Papa destroyed my papers and handed me those. Bauer is a Russian last name, you know. He chose it because it has ‘pre-Volga origins,’ he said, to explain my German accent.”
Adam studied the papers for a long, silent moment. “Why Russian?”
Ingrid slumped against the bench. “Stalin and Hitler were allies when Papa made those. He thought if it came to it, Stalin was the stronger and he’d subdue Hitler. Then Papa sent me to work here, to cower in plain sight.”
Ingrid lifted her eyes to the impressive building towering to their right. The Austrian Parliament Building was now draped in the red-and-black flags of the Third Reich and had been for six interminable years.
“You can’t blame him, either of them, for wanting to keep you safe.” Adam handed her papers back to her. “Those are perfect, by the way. Your father was good. Really good. He was the best forger we had and he saved thousands of lives.”
“Forger?” Ingrid straightened. “That’s what he did? It makes sense. He was brilliant with art, languages, even science . . . Who exactly is we?” At Adam’s closed expression, she shifted to face him. “No more hiding. You tell me right now.”
“Your father was a loyal Austrian trying to save his country. What he believed could still be his country . . .” Adam stalled. Ingrid forced herself to remain upright and not tip forward in anticipation. “Great Britain. We both do, did, sorry . . . I work for British Foreign Services.”
“Both of you? How?”
“For me it started in school.” Adam shrugged. “I was in school outside London while my dad taught maths at Oxford. Friends reached out after I returned to Germany and recruited me. Like your father’s leg, my heart was deemed unfit for the Reich’s army and they let me teach. And your father? Well, that was your mother. While she’s lived here since she married him, she was still well-connected back in London. She was my initial contact after I got assigned to the University. She helped me create my first network.”
Ingrid closed her eyes. How little she knew her parents. Outside that vital role they played as parents, did she know them at all? “She said she met Papa right after the Great War. Her family was vacationing on Lake Neusiedl and he was there with friends for the weekend. Was that true?”
“Don’t, Ingrid. Don’t question everything. I’m sure it was. And they loved you. That was true too. More than anything.” He chuffed a sad, derisive sound. “They weren’t pleased with me lately, I’ll tell you that.”
“Why?”
“You.” Adam regarded her with such openness and vulnerability that, for an instant, she felt she could see into the very heart of him. His every emotion mirrored her own—loss, pain, fear, and love. She blinked at the last, unsure if it was real or her imagination. She tipped forward and noted the second Adam’s brain told his body to do the same.
He pulled her close as his lips covered hers. Their first kiss wasn’t hasty, forceful, or demanding. It felt like sorrow touching springtime, a slow unfolding toward hope. It teased all her senses and she felt herself falling into it and into him. It was gentle. It was full of yearning and love. It was—
It was over.
The sudden loss of Adam’s counterweight surprised Ingrid, and she caught herself with one hand on the iron back of the bench. Studying his shuttered expression, she realized that whatever she’d seen in the heartbeat before their kiss had vanished and that whatever he’d felt for her in the past weeks of heightened glances, fleeting touches, meeting her after work, and walking her home was over. Her world tipped from that glimpse of spring and all its inherent promises back to the last days of fall with an endless winter ahead.
“I shouldn’t have done that.” Adam scrubbed his hand over his face. “When your father looked to you yesterday, he looked to me as well. Like it or not, Ingrid, you are my responsibility now.”
There it was. She wasn’t to be loved; she was to be protected. She was once again to be managed at a distance in order to keep her safe. She closed her eyes. “Why does no one think I can take care of myself?”
“Oh, Ingrid . . .” Adam sighed. “This isn’t about that. It’s about a promise. You’re the strongest woman I know. Let me get you to England.”
“Nein.”
“Do you want to stay?” He widened his eyes as if he couldn’t imagine such a thing. “Why would you try? This isn’t your home anymore.”
Ingrid gazed out into the Rathauspark. Despite the destruction around her, this one corner of the park remained lush and green. Focusing only on that, she could almost believe the world might right itself and all would turn out well. “Then call it my battleground.”
“You don’t understand what you’re saying.” Adam twisted to face her. “Your father wouldn’t want this for you. Your mother would be furious.”
Ingrid glared at him. His expression appeared tired and worn. He’d aged in a day. They both had. He had also seen more than she had in that last devastating moment, and she’d seen enough. “Papa lost that right yesterday, didn’t he? He lost his life, threw it away. Mutti did too. And for what? A few papers, a few whispered secrets? No, they lost the right to tell me what to do because they aren’t here. And you don’t get to step into their shoes, Adam.”
He shifted away rather than toward her. The silence grew long and uncomfortable, but Ingrid refused to break it.
“It was far more than a few papers and a few secrets, Ingrid. And you need to know that what your parents did, what I do, requires you to play a game with no end in sight. It’s exhausting and it divides your soul. They were spies. True spies.” Adam sighed with a long, deflated breath.
He paused, as if giving her time to absorb his statement, before he continued. “I’m still working as one and it’s hard. Harder than you can possibly imagine. You saw what these years did to them. They didn’t want that for you. But if you insist on staying, if you won’t be reasonable and go, then you must understand what’s coming.”
Ingrid had seen, perhaps, more than Adam understood. Because alongside her parents’ weary expressions and greying hair, the thinning features and worn, slumped shoulders, she sensed a strength and purpose—a peace, solidity, and focus—she had never witnessed before. It came out in whispers, gestures, inflections, and glimmers of light in the dark that were so fleeting she almost thought she’d imagined them. But deep down, she knew she hadn’t. Her parents had grown stronger in the crucible of war. They had glowed—but had never trusted her enough to share their purpose, even their joy, with her.
“I’m staying,” Ingrid stated again, and contrary to everything Adam said was to come, a calm rather than a tumult settled within her. “Tell me what I’m to do.”
Adam studied her and whatever he saw seemed to please him. The corner of his mouth lifted the tiniest bit before he banked it. “Pretend it’s a game so the reality of life doesn’t terrify you every moment of every day. Then learn to play and live within that game better than anyone around you.”
“How?”
Adam’s lips flattened into a straight line. “I’ll show you.”
Three
Anya
Washington, DC
April 21, 1980
Would I stay, if I could?
I never answered Scott’s questions last month, and he had the grace not to ask them again. We both know there are no good answers. Besides, the sentence that preceded them still has me reeling.
“There’s a lot to love about America.”
I said that. I said that out loud. Do I think that?
In moments, yes, maybe, fleetingly. But deep down, is that how I really feel? All month that question has danced in the back of my mind. Teasing me. Plaguing me.
I can’t say yes. I can’t say I love America or I’d ever try to stay. It’s too painful to admit—or worse, to secretly desire—something that can never be. And I don’t. That would be foolish. I mean, I think I don’t. I’ve worked hard to keep one corner of my heart safely tucked in my immutable reality, trusting it’s enough to keep me from shattering when my four years here end. And I’ve done it. I’ll be fine.
But I also can’t lie and say no.
I dream about it—a job, a life, a marriage, even kids. I thought these years would be like summer camp. I’d take the classes, learn all the right words to say and things to do so as not to get beat up, and I’d be done. But it’s been different. I’ve expanded; I’ve grown. And from the day we met, Scott saw more in me than I ever thought existed. I’ve stretched above and beyond myself. Not unlike that silly fern Tracy placed in our windowsill. A little warmth and sunshine and that darn thing is about to take over our dorm room.
