Heart of Lies (6 page)

The hopelessness of his situation struck him as he made his way downstairs. Any moment the police could be after him, for counterfeiting, for murder. He took out his wallet and examined its contents. He had enough money to get out of Paris, for he still had the better part of the thousand francs from the note he’d changed yesterday at the hotel where he’d stayed with Martha.
Martha.
He could not think of her now. It would break him.

But where could he go? Not back to Budapest. Gombos’ men would kill him as soon as he returned to Hungary. Within hours, within minutes, he would be a hunted criminal throughout Europe. Where could he go, without proper papers, that would be far enough away for him to create a future that could still include Martha?

And then, the solution came to him. But it meant retrieving the necklace.

Moving as if in a trance, willing himself to walk forward, he made it to the Ritz. If word was out, if the concierge at the Ritz had connected his necklace with the one purchased with counterfeit notes at Cartier, the police would already be there waiting for him.

Taking a deep breath, he strolled into the Ritz lobby, displaying a calmness he did not feel. He could not believe it that was just now nine o’clock. Luckily, the same concierge who had helped him yesterday was on duty this morning.

“Ah, good morning Monsieur Bacso,” said the young man affably, gesturing to Leo’s luggage, “checking out, I see?”

Leo nodded. He handed the receipt to the concierge, who politely excused himself. An eternity passed. The young man returned. He handed the velvet case back to Leo.

“It’s an exquisite piece. Even around here, one is not privileged to
see jewelry of such magnificence very often.” Leo nodded again. Speech was beyond him. He left the hotel.

At three o’clock that afternoon, a junior detective from the French Ministry of the Treasury was engaged in the monotonous chore of reviewing the concierge’s records at the Ritz to see whether, by chance, any of the establishment’s guests had stored a particular diamond necklace in the hotel vault. It was a tedious, dead-end task, but his supervisor had ordered him not to leave a single stone unturned, and Claude Boulanger was a man who obeyed orders.

His heart began to race when he found an entry made the previous afternoon, checking in a diamond collar valued at fifty thousand francs. After quickly confirming with the front desk that the guest in question was still registered at the hotel, he placed a call to his supervising officer. By God, this would make his career.

“Hello, Captain Bossard? Lieutenant Boulanger here. I’ve found something very interesting. I suggest you order the immediate arrest of Mr. Janos Bacso, a Hungarian national currently staying at the Ritz.”

At five o’clock, a waiter at Angeline’s glanced repeatedly at the door, waiting for a particular girl to enter. He would normally have refused the role of courier, but the size of the tip pressed upon him by the distraught, dark-haired gentleman, and the description of the girl to whom he was to deliver the note made him change his mind. Ah, that must be the one. He waited for the beautiful woman to be seated, then with all the elegance he could muster from his short, stocky frame, he handed the letter to her.

A minute later he regretted it, regretted it with every ounce of his
romantic Gallic blood. What bastard would make a woman cry like that? What dirty bastard would do that to such a beautiful woman? Why, the bastard should be taken out and shot.

Late that night, Leo Hoffman left the train station in Marseille, hired a cab to take him to a dock at the bustling port, and boarded a ship bound for Shanghai.

Martha leaned her head back against the firm, worn leather of her seat, and tried not to think.

The words that he’d written found a rhythm in the cadence of the train’s steady movement as it rolled along the tracks. “Please trust me,” the steel wheels murmured. Martha lifted her head slightly and shook it, trying to dislodge the unbidden words from her brain. Still, they haunted her.
Please trust me. Please trust me. Please trust me.

The Great War had given Martha’s entire generation an early introduction to sorrow, and she was no exception. Martha lost her mother during the winter of 1919. Although it was influenza and not a soldier’s bullet that had killed Ruth Levy, Martha would never shake her conviction that the war had contributed to her Mother’s death. By the winter of 1919 the residents of Munich had insufficient coal to warm their houses, insufficient food to warm their bellies, and insufficient faith to warm their spirits. Martha believed that her mother had died from the cold that the war brought to them all.

She had mourned her mother long and deeply. But nothing had ever prepared her for the pain she felt rip through her as she read Leo’s letter. She had anchored her soul in his, only to have the promise of a lifetime of fulfillment jeopardized by a few hastily written words.

She’d promised herself not to read the note again until she arrived in Munich. Now she broke that promise, digging the crumpled and tear-stained piece of paper out from the bottom of her purse. Looking at the page served no real purpose, however, for every word was burned into her brain:

What could have happened? Whom could he have betrayed? Was he really, this moment, fleeing for his life? Who was this man she had fallen in love with?

Martha tried to think about all this in a practical, realistic way, the way her sister Bernice would, the way her father would want her to do. This was an untenable situation. When he contacted her, why, she could decide what to do after hearing his explanation. If he did not, well, then she would go on with her life. They were together for only two days, after all. Only one night, really.

The self-imposed lecture did not help. She could not think the way her father and Bernice did, with their ability to apply logic to every situation. She could not square, with logic, her abandonment by Leo with the love she had seen in his eyes, and the love she had felt in his arms. The words he’d written must be true; otherwise the truth of the words he’d spoken to her during their night together were false.

One night
. A volcano erupts and destroys an entire countryside in one night. A hurricane rushes ashore and destroys an entire island in one night. An earthquake hits and destroys an entire city in one night. Her love for Leo had the power of a volcano, a hurricane, an earthquake. She could not just go on with her life as if she had not met him. She had to believe that he’d meant what he said. She had to believe that he would find her.

She had to trust him, or her life would not be worth living.

On the morning she and Leo parted, Martha had been able to let herself into her hosts’ apartment without being discovered. This had, at least, spared her the embarrassment of a confrontation that would have eventually involved her father. After buzzing through the morning like an intoxicated bee, Martha collapsed for a long nap in the after
noon. When she awoke she explained to her puzzled hostess, Madame Bernard, that she’d come in late the previous night because she’d run into a college classmate. Martha told the skeptical Parisian matron that she planned to go out with her friend again that night, for dinner, and would probably be out late again; in fact, Martha added, she might even spend the night with her friend and her parents at their hotel in the Latin Quarter. Normally uncomfortable with deception, Martha found it easier to lie in a foreign tongue. One could blame one’s awkwardness on the language.

The friendly old couple was surprised to see their lovely guest return a scant two hours after her sunny departure. She shuffled through their front door, face puffy and eyes swollen, complaining that she did not feel well. Madame Bernard, always worried about the flu in December, hustled her off to bed, where the exhausted girl stayed the entire next day. Martha then announced that she wanted to go home.

Madame Bernard immediately sent a cable to Martha’s father, explaining that his daughter did not feel well. “No fever, no vomiting; but wants to come home. Will arrive tomorrow midmorning,” she wrote. Fortunately, it was not a difficult trip: one overnight express from Paris, and a change of trains in Stuttgart. She could sleep most of the way.

The astute little Frenchwoman thought the girl looked heartsick, but she dared not share
that
diagnosis with Martha’s father, or with her own husband, who’d known Martha’s father since they were in school together many years ago. The possibility was both plausible and perplexing. When could she have…? Well, this was Paris. She only hoped that Martha’s tender young heart had not been too badly damaged. And she hoped that Martha would get home before the young man showed up on their doorstep to apologize. The lady of the house did not want
to witness any romantic upheavals. She’d lost both of her sons in the war, and had faced more than enough trauma in her own life. She did not wish to share anyone else’s. She no longer had the energy for it. She would help Martha pack her bags, and keep her theories to herself.

Martha’s train arrived in Munich only slightly delayed by the copious quantities of snow that poured from the sky. As she descended the stairs to the platform, Martha was touched by the worried look she saw on her father’s normally impassive face.

David Levy’s heritage was Jewish, but his family had lived for ten generations in Frankfurt, and he was as German as any Prussian. A teaching post at the university brought him to Munich when he was in his early twenties, and he’d met and married his wife in the refreshing atmosphere of the Alpine air. Yet he’d remained essentially unaffected by the more open Bavarian way of life. David Levy had never felt comfortable with emotions of any kind. The greater the crisis, the calmer his approach. But today he was clearly relieved to see his youngest daughter, and Martha appreciated the fact that his concern, for once, was transparent.

If anyone had ever been bold enough to ask Professor Levy which of his two daughters was his favorite, he would have said he loved them both equally, although in his heart he knew this was not true. Bernice was his eldest. He was often startled by how closely her thoughts tracked his own, and reassured by how easily they understood each other. She lacked the flighty nature of most women, and knew that coolheaded reasoning was the key to handling any problem. Even her plain features resembled his own, too much so for her to ever be called pretty. Professor Levy knew that Bernice was his favorite, for she had been the perfect child for him to raise. She had been so easy.

Yet it was Martha to whom he felt the greater responsibility, precisely because she always seemed balanced on the edge of some harrowing danger, from climbing up on tables as a toddler, to escaping from the house to watch the Palm Sunday riots in the spring of 1919, during the short-lived reign of the Bavarian Soviet Republic. One could never be sure what the child would try next.

His wife’s love had filled him with awe, and yet always made him feel inadequate, for he had never known how to return it. When Ruth died, David knew the only way he could thank her for all the love she had given him was to take care of her Martha. For Ruth understood that Martha was born with a more restless spirit than she, or her husband, or their brilliant daughter Bernice, possessed.

He knew that to protect her he had to teach his impetuous and unruly daughter to rein in her dangerous emotions; he had to persuade her that only cool heads and clear minds would succeed in these turbulent times. To educate her in this manner was the only way he knew how to express the love he felt. He could only hope that it was enough.

Now he was chiding himself for having let her go alone to Paris. Yet she’d wanted to go so badly, and seemed so grown up, so practical, in suggesting that she take the trip as soon as her exams were finished so that she could look for a job right after Christmas. She was determined to take at least one semester off and work, to see if that helped her become more motivated to succeed at her studies. Given this admirably rational plan and the new potential for self-discipline it revealed, Professor Levy had agreed that a short trip to Paris was not such a bad idea. What had gone wrong?

He watched Martha descend from the train, then walked up to her, put one arm around her shoulder, and gave her a light squeeze. Martha
looked up at him in grateful surprise. A public hug was profound, coming from Professor Levy.

“So, you don’t feel well?” he asked her as they headed toward the station exit.

“No, Papa, I’m fine, really. Just too much rich food and not enough sleep. I tried to see too many things in too short a period of time. No self-restraint, isn’t that what you always accuse me of?” Her question could have been provoking, but it was not. Delivered with a tired smile, her words contained an element of resignation that Professor Levy found disconcerting. A change had come over Martha. He could not quite put his finger on it. She looked at him with eyes that seemed…different.

He hired a cab to take them home, an unusual luxury for the frugal professor, for one could generally walk wherever one needed to go in Munich. As they passed by the snow-covered rooftops of the town, Martha could not help but compare the massive twin towers of Munich’s cathedral to the ornate architecture of Notre Dame. The two towers of the Frauenkirche were each adorned with a clock and topped with a low, round, copper cupola. The townspeople had run out of money before finishing the steeples in 1488, so they decided to add the Gothic spires later. But by the time more funds became available, the people of Munich decided not to make any additions to the church. They liked it just the way it was. For all of their fun-loving ways, Bavarians hated change. For the most part they were as immoveable as the mountains that surrounded them.

Martha and her father lived on the northern outskirts of Munich, near the university and just south of the village of Schwabing. This little hamlet had grown through the years into a bustling artist’s col
ony. The cultural menagerie of Schwabing attracted an eclectic mix of painters, sculptors, composers, writers, and mere admirers of the arts. Some, who came to soak up the creative energies of the place, like Vasili Kandinsky, Franz Marc, and Bertolt Brecht, exploded like comets into international view. Most remained obscure.

The older townspeople of Munich regarded the Bohemian community to the north as something of a mildly bothersome, occasionally entertaining nuisance. The students and younger residents of the city found Schwabing an essential part of life. To Martha, Schwabing was a haven that made her continued existence in Munich possible. An ironic smile briefly touched her lips as the taxi passed a sign giving motorists directions to the main street that cut through the heart of Schwabing. The street’s name: Leopoldstrasse. Leopold Road. If only it could lead her to Leo.

Martha and her father said little during the short ride to the house. He wanted to ask her about her trip, what she had seen, and what she thought of Paris, but her reticence made it clear that she did not feel like talking. Once inside their small but comfortable home, he broke the silence.

“Well, Harry will be happy that you are home. He has been moping around like a lonely puppy. You should call him up. Perhaps he will come over and read the latest popular poetry from Berlin. Or bring his violin. You can sing, with that pretty voice of yours. Harry loves to hear you sing, and I would not mind a private concert, myself.” He pantomimed the playing of a fiddle as he moved around the room in a rough parody of a waltz. This was so out of character for him that Martha had to laugh in spite of how she felt.

“Maybe I will call him,” she said as her laughter subsided. Funny,
she’d not thought about Harry for three days. Leo had swept him completely from her mind.

Henrich Jacobson, known to all of his friends and relatives as “Harry,” was originally from Leipzig. He’d come to the university at Munich to study engineering, and everyone agreed that Harry would be a brilliant engineer. Everyone also agreed that it was a shame. It was a shame to be so very talented at something that was so irresistibly practical, when Harry’s first love was, and always would be, music. But no one, at least no true German, could ignore a gift like the kind that God had given Harry—the ability to divine the complexities necessary to hold a bridge together, or simplify the intricacies of raising a skyscraper—just to indulge oneself in the tranquility of a sonata for the violin. Music was not a “real” career, unless one was extraordinarily gifted; and, although Harry was good on the violin, indeed,
very good
, he could not wield a bow with the same virtuosity with which he could wield his mechanical pencil.

Harry himself realized this. So he resolutely pursued his degree in engineering, winning prize after prize in student competitions, all the while entertaining himself and his closest friends with his musical gift. He kept his fantasy of playing with a symphony orchestra tucked away in a solitary corner of his imagination.