God's Formula (9 page)

“They say that Cole Porter wrote this song here,” said the darkly handsome man leading Marlene Jaeger gently but firmly as they danced to “Begin The Beguine
.”
“At that very piano.”

“Which is what we’re doing, isn’t it?” Marlene murmured, her cheek very close to her partner’s.

“What is a
beguine
, exactly? Do you know?”

“A long, slow dance. The dance of life, some say, when you find your soul mate.”

“French?”

“Creole.”

“Are you sure?”

“No.” Jaeger smiled, letting her mind drift. Her first real lover—if you could call him a lover—when she was seventeen, had been a Haitian general in exile in Switzerland. He had taught her the most God-awful French and the most delightful uses of the human body. She had been frightened then, at least at first, and then never again. She murmured again as she pressed her body closer to the would-be wine connoisseur who, classically upright, was waltzing her with ease and finesse around the parqueted floor of the Ritz’ Bar Vendome. She felt the tips of her breasts tingling as they brushed against his chest.

“Have I told you how stunning you look?” her dance partner asked, bringing her back to the present.

“Yes, but you can again.”

“Gorgeous.”

“
Danke
, Herr Harrington.”

Marlene Jaeger wore a black, sleeveless dress cut to below the knee with a tucked waist, ebony buttons down one side, and a slit on the other that revealed a great deal of creamy thigh. The pearls on her neck and ears matched the color and luster of her skin. Her almond-shaped hazel eyes looked more Slavic than German, more oriental than western. Her full lips, painted a lovely red, and her long brown tresses, completed a picture that she knew was indeed stunning.

“Till you whisper to me once more, darling I love you…” Mr. a/k/a,
as Marlene was beginning to refer to him in her mind, sang softly, his lips close to her ear, close enough, she hoped, to smell the single drop of No. 5 she had dabbed there after getting dressed and made up earlier.

“Can I ask you, Herr Harrington,” Jaeger said, pulling away and looking up at him, “are you married by chance?”

“I’m not,” he replied. “Does it matter?”

“It adds depth, I always find.”

“You mean all that pain and suffering?”

“That, yes, or pent up emotion.”

“I’m single, but still very complicated.” a/k/a Harrington smiled as he took her around the waist and bent her slightly backward to punctuate the end of the song. They stood for a moment and applauded the mulatto chanteuse standing in front of the piano, and then clapped again when the black piano player in evening dress looked up and nodded to the crowd on the dance floor, his teeth as white as his beautifully starched shirt.

“Can we go someplace else for a nightcap?” Marlene asked. “There is so much of Paris to see before I must flee.”

“Of course. When do you leave?”

“We’re not sure. We hope by the weekend.”

“You’ll be cutting it close.”

“What about you? I haven’t asked you…”

“I am in an allied country. My papers are stamped for a departure before June 30.”

“Why are you staying?”

The chanteuse had stepped away, but the piano player was starting in to another Cole Porter song,
Paris Loves Lovers.

“He’s looking at us,” said Marlene. “Do you know him?”

“He’s a business associate.”

“American, I presume.”

“Jamaican.”

“Your wine business?”

“Yes, I give him a fee for finding me caches of great wines.”

“What are the great wines? I’m afraid I haven’t a clue.”
Please, Monsieur a/k/a, teach me about wine.

“I am currently looking for a 1922 vintage
Le Romanee Conti
.”

“Very special?”

“It’s from a five acre vineyard in Burgundy, where grapes have been grown and wine made for two thousand years. But that’s not it really. The 1922 vintage produced only two cases. I have been tracking down the last two bottles.”

“Expensive, I presume.”

“Very.”

“Shall we dance?”

“Mais oui.” They had moved to the edge of the floor and now stepped onto its darkly gleaming surface and began dancing again.

“Charles sometimes let’s me use his apartment,” Monsieur a/k/a said, “on Rue Bonaparte, overlooking the Seine.”

“Charles?”

“The piano player. Shall we have our nightcap there? There’s a balcony covered with jasmine.”

Marlene Jaeger lay naked on her back on the red and white striped chaise lounge on the balcony
chez
Charles-the-piano-player, dreamily looking up at the night sky through the branches of the Spanish jasmine that surrounded her on its trellis on three sides. At first she thought she was looking at dozens of stars so close that she might touch one if she reached up. Then she realized, smiling languidly as their heady aroma reached her nostrils, that it was the jasmine’s tiny white flowers arrayed overhead, not stars. Better than stars, she thought. Her dress, which had been slit up the back from hem to neckline, lay crumpled on the stone floor nearby; her stockings, garter belt, underwear, and silk slip were scattered on the floor as well.

Her breath returning to normal, she listened to MI-6 special agent Ian Fleming making noises in the apartment’s interior, then reviewed what had just happened. First, the long kiss at the railing in the lovely night air, his tongue—firm, gentle, darting,
drinking
her—then the gun in her ribs, very hard—
turn around, Marlene, this is a nine millimeter Navy Beretta.
She turned and immediately felt a tugging at her hemline, followed by the sibilant hiss of something cutting her dress open, bottom to top. A razor? Then the ripping and cutting away of everything else, a second’s work. Then—he must have knelt down—the tongue again, darting and licking, as he spread her legs apart, drinking again, his head buried in her flesh. Then him standing, and the stinging pain in her buttocks,
whack,
and
whack
again. Then the sex, the thick hard penis, serpent-sized, it seemed, taking her from behind as he pulled her hair and leaned her over the railing, her juices flowing like never before.

I have been truly fucked, she thought, for the first time.

She noticed now that the moon was full, that its silver light filtering through the jasmine branches overhead cast a crazy lattice of shadows on her body, which had been flushed but was now being cooled by a very lovely breeze. She was reaching idly for her dress, thinking to drape it over her, when Fleming reappeared carrying Champagne on a silver tray.

“Don’t,” he said. “I like you like that. The moonlight becomes you.”

“Ian…”

“Yes?”

Marlene Jaeger knew a/k/a’s real identity. She had taken pictures of him via her diamond brooch when he visited her table at Maxim’s. She had read his dossier, and was prepared to be impressed, but not
this
impressed, not in
this
way.

“My dress. How will I get home?”

“Safety pins, of course, and my dinner jacket, but there are no cabs now anyway. We’ll leave in the morning.”

“I see,” Marlene replied, letting the dress slip out of her hand and fall to the floor. “What about your friend, Charles? Will he come home?”

“He’ll stay at the Ritz tonight. No worries. You can scream as loud as you want.”

Marlene smiled. “So we’re…?”

“Of course, we’ve just gotten started,” Fleming replied, smiling a broad smile, his burlesque version of wickedness. “But let’s drink first. This is very good Champagne.”

“
Mein
Seelowen
, I miss you.”

“
Mein delfin
, how are you?”

“Well.”

“And your sister?”

“Terrible. One of her friends was attacked on the street, he’s in hospital.”

“Goodness, by whom?”

“We think it was a jealous rival.”

“How is she taking it?”

“She and the nanny have become friends.”

“And your nephews. Any word?”

“No, we can’t find them.”

“What is Paris like?”

“Rumors, everywhere rumors, on everyone’s lips. There are bonfires at Quai d’Orsay.”

“You must stay safe. The war is not our business.”

“I will.”

“If Paris falls, the president of my company will visit.”

“Shall I try to see him?” she asked. “Pay my regards?”

“No, he will be too busy.”

“Very well.”

“Another time, perhaps.”

“Of course, my dearest.”

“Dearest. Auf weiderschein.”

“Goodbye.”

Madame Amethyste hung up the phone, stepped out of the
cabine de telephone
and quickly surveyed the small bar-bistro she had randomly entered to make her call. The same bartender, the same people at the same tables, six in all, except for one newcomer, a man in a shabby suit, with a rough beard, sipping coffee and reading a newspaper at a table near the window. Outside, she walked casually to the corner, turned right, at the next block right again, and then immediately stepped into the alcove entrance to a small hotel. She waited. The man with the rough beard did not appear. To be safe, she entered the hotel, found its rear entrance, and exited.

On the metro to her Latin Quarter neighborhood, she puzzled over the events of the last few days. Starting with the summons home to speak with Canaris, who told her about the remarkable formula carried by the Friedeman boy, and gave her instructions concerning Himmler’s pet, Marlene Jaeger. She supplies him with young boys, Canaris had said.
They are both disgusting
. She recalled vividly Canaris’ bitter disappointment when she told him young Friedeman had escaped, a surprising show of emotion for a man who almost never revealed his feelings. And now this, Hitler coming to Paris, and Canaris’ instructions to leave him be.
If he gets the formula first
, Madamoiselle Amethyste thought, putting the pieces of the puzzle together in her mind’s eye,
assassination will not be necessary. He will depose our grotesque “leader” bloodlessly. He who holds the formula for a rapidly made atomic bomb, rules all, including Adolf Hitler, who will be happy to go rather than be handed over to the Prussians, who do not want this war and who hate him.

She hated the silly code she and Canaris had cooked up for their telephone conversations. Extemporaneous events, like the loss of the SS agent following Fleming, were difficult to articulate. Both she and Jaeger—that is, the Abwehr and the SS—were following him, but Jaeger did not know of the Abwehr’s operation, nor even of Mademoiselle Amethyste’s existence. Quietly, as the train rocked, she composed in her head the coded report she would send to her chief, childhood friend and sometime lover, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, via airplane, the same one that brought her to Berlin and back yesterday.

MI-6 agent Ian Fleming romancing Marlene Jaeger. Fleming has disabled a member of Jaeger
’
s cell, who was tailing him. Fleming has made no other contacts. I will continue to watch him and Jaeger. I will bring you the formula.

“Hello.”

“Herr Reichsfuhrer.”

“Speak.”

“Fleming has not returned to the school.”

“Contacts?”

“None.”

“What has he been doing?”

“Sightseeing. Reading the newspapers at cafes.”

“And you deduce what, exactly?”

“The boys have left the school. He does not know where, but believes they are in Paris. He must have a colleague, several perhaps, who are looking for them.”

“You think I’m stupid?” Conrad Friedeman asked.

“Far from it,” was Karl Brauer’s answer.

“I’m not,” Conrad said.

“Of course…”

“This formula? They are mad. I have no formula.”

“They think you’ve hidden it someplace.”

“Madness.”

“Conrad…”

“There must be a munitions plant nearby.”

“Conrad…”

The two boys were sitting against a sweating stone wall in the dank and musty cellar of a four-story apartment building. When the air raid siren had gone off, they were hustled out of the third floor apartment they were staying in. On the way down, they heard antiaircraft fire and a loud, guttural hum high overhead. Conrad had tried to open a window in one of the landings to look out, but he had been yanked back by the bearded Monsieur Boule, one of their watchers. They were the only ones in the cellar. Boule had locked them in. Now Conrad was going on in the way he did sometimes, but today he seemed more agitated.

“We will win the war, Karl,” said Conrad, “have no doubt.”

“Those are phony broadcasts from Berlin you have been listening to,” Karl replied. “Goebbels’ doing. You must know that. The French are not defeatists.”

“They are cynical,” Conrad replied. “The unions, the oligarchs, the politicians, the church. Everyone out for themselves. There is no honor here, no principles worth fighting for.”

“Why do you persist in this, Conrad? You will be killed if you fall into German hands. To them, you are a traitor, carrying the formula for a super weapon to the enemy. Do you understand what that means?”

“The unions will still work no more than a forty hour week. Can you believe it, with the Wehrmacht a hundred miles from Paris?” Conrad’s dark brown eyes had a hard glitter to them now.

“Rubbish. Propaganda from Goebbels.”

“We will…” Before Conrad could finish his sentence, there was a loud boom overhead, followed by a shaking of the ceiling above them and the crashing down of one of the ancient wooden beams holding it in place.

It was not a munitions factory that was nearby, that seemed obvious. Staring at the rubble, dazed, covered with dust, but miraculously unhurt, Conrad could see a name etched on a stone lintel, now on the sidewalk, that had obviously just a few minutes ago hung over the building’s front door.
L
’
Ecole Vincent Van Gogh
. The decadent painter, he thought, starting to come back to his senses. Some papers flapped at his feet. He looked down and saw several colorful crayon drawings, a crude tree and house in one, a stick family in another.
Devoirs
was written across the top of a third, a picture of an apple. Then something in the rubble caught his eye. A movement. Scanning, he realized that the front half of the one-story school building had been demolished. He shielded his eyes with his right hand. The day was beautiful. It is spring, he thought, apropos of nothing. Then he saw the movement again, moved closer and looked down to see a bloody arm and a crushed head—a small, bloody head—with silky brown hair splayed behind it, as if it was resting on a cushion. The arm moved again, a twitching movement. He stared at it. Then, when it did not twitch again, he cleared some of the rubble from the body—a child’s body—which, except for the bloody head and arm, was completely intact and unscathed, its legs splayed slightly, its white and yellow dress pretty in the golden sunlight, its small feet still in its white socks and canvas shoes.

Conrad stared at this body for a second and then heard a siren in the distance, the insistent
high-low, high-low, high-low
of a Parisian ambulance or police car. He listened to this jarring sound intently for a few seconds as it drew closer and louder, unable to stop it from entering his head through his ears, which seemed to be as large as megaphones. There were people nearby speaking and gesturing. Had he said something? Everything, except the sound of the siren, seemed to be on the other side of a pane of glass, or was it all under water? Then there was that familiar taste in his mouth and the debris-strewn sidewalk seemed to rise up toward him, but before it reached him, a large bearded man took hold of his arm.