“What’s on the other end when you dialed those numbers?” Tony asked.
“All private residences.” Sometimes a woman had answered the telephone, sometimes a man, in one case a child’s treble. But not one person at the end of the line had been anything other than puzzled when Ian asked about the business named on the list. “I heard at least three German accents, as well. And when I asked the operator to find me the number of the business, she told me there was no Huth & Sons in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, or anywhere else in Rhode Island for that matter. Same with the others. Those businesses do not exist.” Ian could feel his heart clipping along in staccato pleasure, the thrill when tedious legwork finally produced a lead.
Tony gnawed a thumbnail. “Was anyone on the other end suspicious?”
“Some sounded flustered. One rang off on me. Mostly I pleaded a wrong number and rang off myself in a hurry.”
Nina hadn’t said anything at all. But her eyes glittered, and as Ian looked from her to Tony, he felt the same electric charge leaping between the three of them.
Seven addresses. Die J?gerin might be living at one of them.
“Car or train?” Ian asked. “We’ve got a few day-trips ahead of us.”
“BLOODY HELL . . .” Ian looked around a sea of unfamiliar street signs, pulling over with a squeal of some very dodgy brakes. Tony had taken the train to Queens to see a cousin and come back in a rusty Ford on loan. “Hand me that map, Nina.”
Nina rummaged for it, sharp white teeth crunching through the skin of a beet. She ate raw beets like apples, until her teeth were pink. Ian hoped they wouldn’t be pulled over by any policemen questioning his tendency to drift to the correct (i.e., English) side of the road, because the woman at Ian’s side looked like a small blond cannibal. “You’re holding the map upside-down, comrade. Some navigator you are.”
“I navigate skies filled with stars,” Nina said huffily, “not places called Woonsocket.”
“I am never getting in an airplane with you, so kindly start learning to navigate in two dimensions rather than three.”
“Mat tvoyu cherez sem’vorot s prisvistom.”
“Leave my mother out of this.”
It had been a two-hour drive between Boston and their first target, with Tony staying behind to cover the tail on Kolb. Nina had spent most of the drive telling Ian how she’d left the Soviet Union, flying into Poland two steps ahead of an arrest warrant before running into Sebastian. American road maps might be a mystery, but Ian was getting a feel for how to navigate the minefield that was his wife: ask anything about Lake Rusalka or what happened there with die J?gerin, or display any sign of affection whatsoever, and she either lapsed into prickly silence or detonated outright. But she didn’t mind telling him about Seb, and Ian stored her affectionate stories up like coins. New memories of his little brother, every one priceless . . . but now it was time to work.
The Ford soon coasted into a quiet suburb with green yards and bicycles lying in driveways. Number twelve was a small yellow house with a modest, lovingly tended garden. It most certainly wasn’t an antiques shop named “Huth & Sons.” Seeing it here, so plainly a residence and not a business, made Ian’s pulse pick up. Someone who was not who they were supposed to be lived here.
Nina had fallen silent too, thrumming like a plucked wire. He drove past number twelve and parked around the corner. Nina slid out, back to severe respectability again today in the high-necked blouse she’d worn to interrogate Kolb, a broad summer hat shading her face. She took Ian’s arm and they strolled up the street in perfect propriety. As discussed, Nina released his elbow and continued wandering up the street, and Ian turned as if by impulse up the front stoop of number twelve.
Had there been no answer to his knock, Ian and Nina would have returned to the car to wait, but the door opened. A middle-aged man, stocky, hair parted and barbered with (Prussian?) precision. “Hullo,” Ian said in his most drawling public school accents, removing his fedora with a deprecating smile. “Terribly sorry to disturb you, but my wife and I are pondering moving to the neighborhood.” He waved at Nina, standing one house down with the map raised close to her nose as if she were shortsighted. Critical to have her at a distance, in case it was indeed die J?gerin who answered the door, who might remember Nina’s face as Nina remembered hers. Ian’s wife gave a distracted wave back, deftly hiding most of her features between the map’s edge and her big hat brim, but without looking like she was trying to hide. Bloody hell, but you’re good at this, Ian thought in admiration.
“We’re considering a house just a block over. Graham’s the name.” Ian extended a hand, banking as always on two things: that most people were incapable of refusing a handshake, and that most people instinctively trusted a plummy English accent. It worked, as it usually did: the other man shook hands, firm and unhesitating.
“Vernon Waggoner. My wife and I have lived here a year.”
Definitely German, Ian thought. That unmistakable clip, the W like a V, the V like an F. Ian made pleasant small talk, asking if the neighbors were friendly, what schools there were for his nonexistent daughters. Did Mr. Waggoner have any children? No, just his wife and himself. Waggoner remained polite but formal.
“Your wife, does she like the neighborhood?” Ian asked. “Mine is most anxious to make friends here.” It was entirely possible that die J?gerin might have settled down with a new husband; her options for work would have been few for a refugee. Ian wanted a good look at any woman who lived in this house, but there was only so long he could spin chitchat on the stoop.
“Vernon?” Another voice floated from the hall behind, and a woman appeared, drying her hands on a dish towel. “Do we have visitors?”
Her German accent was much heavier than her husband’s. Ian’s eyes raked her face even as he begged pardon for interrupting. Very plump, blond, blue eyes. About the right age for die J?gerin—it was entirely possible that the very young woman in their old photograph had put on weight and tinted her hair. Ian angled himself as he shook her hand, drawing her out on the stoop so Nina from her vantage point would have the best look possible. His heart thudded.
But Nina tucked the map under her arm and crossed the lawn to mount the steps, offering a gloved hand. Ian’s hopes crashed. Had she kept her distance, she would have been signaling Yes, that’s the one.
“Do you hail from Austria or Germany, Mrs. Waggoner?” Ian continued, concealing his disappointment. “I spent some years in Vienna as a young man, I remember it fondly.”
“From Weimar,” Mrs. Waggoner said with a quick, relieved smile that a German accent was not going to be answered with a nasty look.
“I had a good friend from Weimar, actually . . . does the name Lorelei Vogt mean anything to you?”
They both looked blank, not even a tiny flinch of a reaction. Well, it had been a long shot. Even if they had met her, who knew under what name?
“I shan’t take up any more of your time,” Ian said, taking Nina’s arm. She murmured something politely inaudible. “You’ve been most kind.”
“Not at all,” Waggoner said jovially enough, but it hadn’t escaped Ian’s attention that in this land of overwhelming friendliness, the man hadn’t invited them in. He stood solid in the doorway, smiling a pleasant smile, eyes giving away nothing. I wonder what you were, Ian thought, before you became Vernon Waggoner of Woonsocket, Rhode Island.
“Thank you again,” Ian said, and retreated down the stoop. Nina’s hand in his elbow gripped like steel.
“Not her,” she murmured.
“I know.” They rounded the corner out of sight, and Ian opened the car door for her. “But he was someone. He has things he was nervous about hiding, enough to pay Kolb for a new name.” Ian closed the door after Nina, slid in on his own side. “A camp clerk? A Gestapo guard? One of those Reich doctors who culled the unfit from the ranks of the master race?”
Ian heard his voice growing louder and halted himself. He’d wanted so badly for it to be Lorelei Vogt. He wanted that door to open and show him the woman who killed his brother.
“We come back for this mudak some other time,” Nina said, kicking off her heeled pumps. “We know where he is, what he looks like. Later, after die J?gerin, we get him. Whoever he is.”
“He’s a goddamned Nazi,” Ian said. “But not the one we’re looking for.” He wasn’t even aware of making a fist before he drove it hard into the wheel.