Deeper Than Red (Red Returning Trilogy) (33 page)

“And Erica?” Liesl asked.

“She can’t know any of this,” Max said. “Ben will be adequately vague about lifting security and why.”

“And the two of you?” Liesl ventured.

Max shrugged. “I don’t know where we’re headed. She’s a hard one to know, and I don’t give her much encouragement, I’m afraid. She’s probably better off without me.”

“Okay, I think it’s time for pastrami,” Cade announced with a wink at Liesl.

“Thanks for tossing a lifeline,” Max said as they headed into the deli.

Across the street, Felix Shevcik watched Liesl Bower disappear into the deli with her husband and the violinist. Surely they’d leave for Nuremberg soon. The concert was Friday night. Outdoors. Surrounded by the dark. Thousands of cheering fans to muffle the shots.

T
hey were to stay at a country estate outside Nuremberg. A wealthy music patron and friend of Max’s had offered it to him and his guests for the festival. The man’s family dated back to the late seventeen hundreds in that region of Bavaria. They’d been bankers until Hitler’s Nuremberg Laws wrested their German citizenship from them and then, for most of the family, their lives. Franz Bernhoff had picked up his family’s trampled banner and carried it back to Nuremberg, where he reinstated the family name and grew a thriving medical practice. Now retired, he could fill his days with music.

After flying from Berlin late Thursday afternoon, Max, Liesl, Cade, and the rest of their entourage were met by two German police officers, still charged with protecting the celebrity musicians. They left Nuremberg airport and headed first to the city. Max had suggested they visit the performance site “before the ghosts are chased away by the crowds.”

“Those ghosts will never leave,” Ben had insisted.

Heading south from the airport, their driver, one of the officers, skirted the eleventh-century Imperial Castle rising high above Old Town, and veered southeast to the historic Zeppelinfeld rally grounds of the Nazi Party. Parking the van near the entrance, the driver and his fellow officer got out and quickly scanned the area, then returned for their charges.

After a short walk, the group entered the grounds and stopped to listen. The orchestra’s stage crew had already set up close by. Though the final rehearsal was scheduled for the following morning, a few musicians had arrived to absorb the natural vibes of the place and tune them to their instruments.

But quickly, the familiar sounds died away, at least to Max’s ear. He had now turned to find that one spot, that portal where it seemed that the ultimate evil had funneled its powers onto the man who used to stand in that place. Silently, Max drifted away from the others and made his way to the high platform, up the crumbling concrete grandstand at the base of the soaring wall once topped by a giant swastika. Now turning to mount the speaker’s platform, he looked down at his friends and saw the quiet understanding in their raised faces. In all but Erica’s. She had already strayed from the group and drifted across the field.

Max watched her a moment, but couldn’t linger on the mystery of her. The ghostly thundering of allegiant shouts from two hundred thousand people drowned out everything else. He wondered if anyone else could hear them, or sense their spirits returning just now to life forms as palpable as if they’d never left this place. Max looked out over the vast parade ground, now choked with weeds and deteriorated buildings, and saw the tight legions of goose-stepping troops and the attendant throngs of citizenry jabbing the night with stiff-armed salutes to the Führer.

Now, the lone Jew, the gentle violinist, shuddered involuntarily at the nearness of the voices. At that one voice shouting murderous hatred from the place where Max now stood.

How many times such a portal to evil had opened through the ages, in different lands, to different rulers and those who schemed to be. How many times had they gone mad from the touch of it. Max closed his eyes and thought about the things he knew of Ivan Volynski and Arkady Glinka, about their willing reach through that portal into another realm where they were mere pawns in the hands of forces beyond their control, beyond even their comprehension, yet forces they gladly embraced for what such powers could do for them. And just what did those powers do for them? Volynski was dead of his own volition. But Glinka was sure to become the next president of Russia. Would the forces follow him there? Then what?

Max had stood there too long. The others had strolled off to explore the haunting acreage now used for car races, rock concerts, and campgrounds. Would that quiet the voices? Max didn’t think so. Perhaps something else would, though.

Tomorrow night, descendants of the Holocaust dead would gather at the spot where Hitler had emerged from the portal, feverish with murderous contempt for an entire race of people. The collective voice of the Israel Philharmonic would raise from this very den of anti-Semitic fury. Could that voice defy the powers of the portal? Could anything?

Finally climbing down from the platform, Max saw Liesl and Cade waving him over. They were reading the interpretive signage posted about the grounds. Ben and Anna were nearby. But Erica was in the distance, a phone to her ear. His eye steady on her, Max approached the others.

“You okay?” Liesl asked him.

“Sure I am.” He looked back at the place he’d just left, then across the field at Erica. “Is there a problem with her?” He didn’t want to talk about the oppressive weight he felt descend on him each time he visited these grounds.

Liesl looked toward the girl. “She just said there were calls to return. Something about impatient customers waiting for their photographs. Does she stay busy with that?”

“Not really. Most of the display photos I’ve seen were taken years ago. Now, it’s mostly bridal portraits, but not many of those.” He kept watching Erica. “I’m not sure how she pays her bills. We don’t discuss those things.”

“Does she have family?” Ben asked.

Max shrugged. “All I know is her parents are dead. She’s estranged from a brother in New York. And that’s all she’s ever mentioned. Well, here she comes. I hope everything’s okay with the cat. That’s all she’s got in Tel Aviv. And me, I guess. Lucky girl.”

“Okay, this happy little conversation has come to an end,” Anna declared firmly, yet compassionately looping her arm around Max’s. “It’ll be dark soon, and we still need to find this house in the hills, right? So let’s go.”

“And when the quiet one speaks,” Ben teased his wife, “we must all listen and obey.” He glanced at the sky. “But she’s right. Night’s coming.” He looked pointedly at Max. “My buddy here tells me he isn’t afraid of ghosts. But I think he is. And I know I am.”

An hour later, the group headed out of the city toward rolling farmland and forests so dense, they appeared deep blue from the road. As the sun cast its last rays of the day, their German driver followed his GPS toward a closed gate, stopped, and punched in an entrance code. A hush fell over the car as someone spoke through an intercom at the gate.

“Max, is that you?”

“It is, Franz, and my guests.”

“Splendid. Come in. We are waiting.”

The gates opened and the van lumbered onto a narrow, blacktop road that wound into a deep wood, drawing comment from Erica, who’d been notably withdrawn for the last couple of days. “If Hansel and Gretel come charging out of those woods with a witch on their tail, please let’s not stop to pick them up.”

It took a moment to register that Erica had offered a droll respite from her gloomy mood. Everyone but Max rewarded her for it, laughing gratefully with her. With a weak smile, Max turned away to study the roadway ahead. It was now opening onto rolling fields only partially tended. Erica’s mood had been of less and less interest to Max as the concert hour approached. He couldn’t let her drain the emotional energy he would need for the performance, so he chose to distance himself from her and concentrate on his good fortune in friends, those with him in this car, and the old man waiting to greet them, if feebly.

At eighty-two, Franz had survived two strokes and a heart attack. But his spirit remained valiant, reinforced each day, he’d said, by music. The home was often filled by friends who came to play for him and by invited guests to the small chamber concerts he gave inside the palatial home. And there it was now, settled on a hilltop overlooking ridge upon ridge of countryside. It was built of stone and dark timbers, the land around it stretching into meadows of wild flowers.

“Oh, look!” Liesl exclaimed with awe. “It’s like a Romance painting of some absurdly beautiful landscape.”

Max looked at her with open affection, then checked himself before anyone else might notice. He would love her forever, he was sure. But something had begun to turn in him. He’d finally come to realize that it wasn’t the love he used to feel, when he would imagine her in his arms. It had matured beyond that. Platonic? He cringed at the clinical and antiseptic word. But he had no other to substitute. She was a friend whose attachment to him defied description.

He turned from admiring Liesl to catch Erica’s hooded eyes. How long had she been watching him watch Liesl? Just now, it didn’t matter. He smiled pleasantly at her and turned away.

When they pulled up at the handsome manor, Franz was there on his walker to greet them. An attendant stood nearby. When everyone poured from the vehicle, there was an almost exhaustive round of introductions and mutually admiring chatter. Max preferred to listen to it, like music. He was feeling so strange, like emotions long turbulent inside him were beginning to ebb into something like a monotonous flow. Or was it mere resignation? Why fight what you can’t change. Or, perhaps he was simply numb.

That night after dinner and a couple of early
gute nacht
s from Ben and Anna, everyone else retired to the octagonal music room of the house where Franz had installed a grand piano and an assortment of instruments. It was a small concert hall where most of Nuremberg’s gifted had performed over the years. A massive, carved walnut cabinet was filled with music for solo and ensemble performers.

While Cade, Erica, and their host settled into leather wingbacks, Liesl and Max launched into an impromptu recital that took them from Beethoven and Mendelssohn to Gershwin and Copland.

When the music that evening reached an end and all were ready for sleep, Franz took Max aside as the others were led upstairs by one of the housekeepers. The old man who played no instrument himself, but had a voracious passion for the music, laid a hand on the piano and stroked it as if it were a beloved pet. “Max, tomorrow night must come from someplace I’m afraid you’ve not visited lately.”

Max didn’t understand, not at first.

“The music of your countrymen, and especially that which flows from your own violin, will fall flat and perish in pity if you don’t guard your hearts. If you don’t go to that place.”

Slowly shaking his head, Max insisted he didn’t know what that meant. But he did know. He just didn’t want to hear it.

“The place is forgiveness,” Franz continued. “Your music will never know the power it should unless you go to that place and bring some of it back with you.” His faded eyes held fast to Max, who turned his own eyes away.

“Look at me, Max.” The feeble hand wavered toward the piano and the violin propped beside it. Max obeyed. “In that audience will be the sons and daughters of those who executed our people. And they’re coming to hear you play because they no longer care that you’re Jewish. They want to rid themselves of the bondage of what happened. Especially the young ones. Why do you think Hitler’s exalted parade grounds lie in ruins while the Holocaust Museum in the heart of this country’s capital is meticulously tended? They’ve moved on, Max, and so must you. Free yourself. Forgive them. And one more.”

Max knew what was coming.

“He doesn’t deserve it, but you must forgive your father. And then, young Max … then your music will soar.”

B
y midday Thursday, Travis Noland had returned to the Oval Office. So far, the media had not sniffed out the president’s sudden predawn departure.

“Shelton, we’ve got another bomb on the way. At least, that’s the chatter.”

“From the Urals factory?” Shelton Myers asked. The president’s long-time friend and confidante from their earlier State Department days had been called to the White House along with CIA Director Don Bragg, who would arrive shortly. It was Shelton Myers who had advised Noland in the aftermath of discovering that Ivan Volynski was his half brother.

“That’s right.” The president handed him a copy of intelligence reports citing probable transfer of another weapon from the factory dug into the side of a mountain. The satellite image of the remote wilderness site hadn’t shown it ringed by cameras and trip-wire explosives. It had taken a surefooted CIA surveillance team to detect the invisible security shield.

“How can I help?” Shelton asked.

“I’m about to place a call to Arkady Glinka. I want you and Don to listen in. It’s my duty to give Glinka notice that we just intercepted a Russian-made WMD headed for Washington. And that the man who ordered it is good and dead … this time. But it’s my intent to do a bit of probing. We know Ivan and Glinka were linked. We have the patrolman’s positive ID of the two together when he stopped them in the Keys. And Tally Greyson is pretty sure it was Glinka she saw at Vandoren’s place the night they unloaded that bomb from the plane. You and I believe Glinka is complicit in President Gorev’s murder. But coincidence, “pretty sure,” and gut feeling isn’t evidence of Glinka’s guilt or association with Ivan’s operation.”