The Ambassador's Daughter

  Chapter 21

  “What...?” I cannot finish the question. As Krysia slowly stands, I search for a possible explanation. Perhaps she was lost. She turns to me and, unable to mask the truth, her usually impassive face crumples.

  “You,” I said, disbelief overcoming me. “You’re a spy.” She opens her mouth, but no sound comes out. The document, clutched in her hand in my uncle’s darkened study, makes it impossible to deny. Had she done it for the money? Perhaps Ignatz had been blackmailing her, too.

  Then, improbably, she laughs, swiping at the hair that has sprung forth from her usually well-ordered mane. “Spy. That’s such a grand term. People think that espionage is some vast sophisticated machine. In reality, it’s just lots of little bits, farmers and policemen and housewives living in border towns. There’s no giant conspiracy. People feel safer somehow believing such fears because it distracts them from the things they should worry about, harder questions of poverty and justice.” She is rambling now, as perturbed as I’ve ever seen her. Stalling for time. Fine perspiration coats her upper lip.

  She has not denied it. “It isn’t possible,” I say slowly.

  “Why? Because I’m a woman?”

  “You’re a musician. I would not have thought...”

  But she does not appear to take offense. “Everyone played a role during the war. Nuns obtained information from prisoners and convalescents. Young girls watched the train routes to detect enemy movement. I was approached early in the war, years before we ever met, by another musician who asked if I wanted to help. I found that I was good at it. Our touring for concerts gave us the perfect excuse to move between countries, to carry papers and information over borders. No one would think to check the lining of a violin case for documents. A piano might become a drop box.” Drop box. My head swims. “Even music became a kind of code.”

  I recall then the man who had come to the piano at the dinner party that night. “The sheet music...”

  “An effective way for sharing information,” she concedes. “Invisible in plain sight.”

  “You betrayed me. Got close to me in order to steal information from my father and Georg.”

  “I never planned it. When you found me and started asking questions, it seemed like an inconvenience. It was only after Ignatz discovered how useful you could be...”

  “That you decided to use me for your own purposes,” I finish bitterly. I see the past months replayed as a movie but it is all different now, each scene orchestrated like a puppet theater. Every conversation where I had confided and she had listened sympathetically was a setup, her mining each sentence for information. “He said you weren’t involved.”

  “That was a lie. In part, because he wanted to take credit for having found you and persuaded you to help—in part, to protect my leadership.” Red Thorn—it is not a man at all—Krysia is the head of the organization. She was not doing this out of desperation or for money. She believed in the work that she was doing.

  “I never planned it,” she repeats. “Our friendship was real, Margot, you must believe that. I felt a connection to you from the first, even before I realized who you were. But yes, I am involved with intelligence work. No one is watching out for our interests but ourselves. Not now and not a hundred years from now.” Is she talking about her interests personally, or her country’s? “I’m sorry,” she says, but her voice dispassionate, somewhere short of cold. “I was doing what I had to do. You would have done the same.”

  I would not, I want to tell her. But the point is moot. “And Marcin?”

  “Sweet Marcin is a cellist—a very gifted cellist. He knows nothing of this. I cannot burden him with such worries and he would be furious knowing the risks that I have taken. He’s a pragmatist, like your father, believing people are neither altogether as good nor as bad as they seem, that everything cycles with time and we cannot altogether make a difference.” More composed now, she points at the bag that sits by my feet. “Going somewhere?”

  “I...” I falter, instantly on the defensive. “You told me to see the world. Take charge of my destiny.”

  “There is a difference between going on an adventure and running away.” She has a point. I had fled Paris, now Berlin. If I left like this, secretly in the middle of the night, I was somehow always going to be running away.

  “The document from Georg’s study,” I say, unwilling to let her change the subject for long. “You took it, didn’t you?” She looks away and in her hesitation I see layers of the onion not yet peeled back. She had brought me the herbs for Georg’s tea, perhaps intending to steal the document from him herself. But I had drunk them instead and then, when I had grown drowsy and fallen asleep, she’d made her move. “But why would you go to all of that trouble? I was going to give the document to Ignatz, anyway.” Impulsively, I reach down and grab the document that is in her hands. It is a blueprint of the villa, showing entrances to the house, the underground pathways built a century ago between the servants’ cottages and the mansion. Access to the house. But she already had access. No, the document was for someone else.

  “Krysia...” There is a moment of interminable silence between us. “You aren’t working for the communists, are you?” She does not answer. “Then who? The Americans?” I stand up straight, meeting her eyes. “You can tell me or you can tell the police.”

  “What is it that you want from me?”

  “The truth. You owe me that much.”

  “The West.” Her shoulders slump. “The British, to be precise. I really did start working with a musician friend to help the communists. But British intelligence was onto me quickly and they approached me and asked me to work for them. ‘Turned me,’ I guess is the term. Not that it was hard—I couldn’t have continued once they knew. And the communists were in such disarray at that point, all of the turmoil and infighting. Working for the West really did seem like the best way to help the war effort and to secure a future for Poland.”

  “So you switched sides.” She had turned in Ignatz to the police not to protect me, but perhaps he was getting too close to the truth about her.

  “I suppose. Or I became, as they call it, a double agent. That sounds very glamorous, doesn’t it?” she jokes feebly.

  I do not respond. Regardless of whom she is spying for, I am equally betrayed. “You spied on me.”

  “Not on you exactly.” No, of course not. I was inconsequential. But she had used me to gain access and the information she needed to know. “When Ignatz roped you in, it was a bonus—keep tabs on what he was up to while seeing if you were of use. We didn’t actually think you’d have the steel to go through with helping him. We had not expected you to take the document he wanted so quickly. I had to make sure it didn’t actually fall into the wrong hands.” So she intercepted the document before I could get it to Ignatz.

  There are sides, I realize, hearing the triumphant note in her voice, boundaries that make some pieces of friendship untenable. “Why didn’t you just ask me to help?”

  She leans against the desk, eyes me levelly. “Would you have done it if I had?” I consider the question. “No, you were too smart to follow me blindly, even for our friendship. You would have had the same questions and doubts—only you would have had no one to ask about them. Even if you wanted to help, the very information would have changed how you behaved. We needed you exactly as you were.”

  Krysia was right. By appearing neutral, a friend and mentor who had only my best interests at heart, she was able to guide me exactly where she wanted me to go—and that was perhaps the greatest betrayal of all.

  Or maybe not. An image flashes into my mind then of Krysia in the park, handing the ball back to the young woman in the park. “Emilie,” I say slowly, my voice heavy with incredulity even as the truth crystallizes in my mind.

  Krysia shakes her head. “No, Emilie is not my daughter. What I told you was true—I did become pregnant almost twenty years ago. But the baby was not born.” I am curious, and yet at the same time gr
ateful that she does not elaborate on what really happened. “Emilie is about the same age that my child would have been. She’s another operative. When she came to me I recognized so much of myself in her that she might have been... I tried to dissuade her in fact from working with us but she was intent. She volunteered instead of being recruited, and had a real passion and natural ability for the cause.”

  I sink to the edge of the desk in disbelief. “But you were so worried for her when she was sick. You prayed for her.” Or had her excursion to the church been another rendezvous, part of her work?

  “Emilie is not my daughter,” she repeats, as if trying to remind herself. All of her machinations over whether she had done right by the girl, her inability to let her go, and her worry when she was ill, were nothing more than a fiction. Perhaps she had developed such an affinity for the girl over the years that the story had started to seem true. “But our similar coloring provided a useful cover in case anyone—it just happened to be you—stumbled upon us.” So Krysia had gone to the park each week not to watch her child nostalgically, but to get or deliver information.

  “What else?” I demand. This one report could not have been the total of it. Had she taken other things from Papa or Georg, as well?

  But she presses her lips together. Though repentant in having got caught, she is still not willing to divulge all of her secrets. “There is one thing, now that you know—I suppose it is too much to ask, that is, there is still a great deal of work to be done...” She trails off, too embarrassed to finish the thought. My eyes widen. Does she really believe, after all that has happened, all of the betrayal and lies, that I would help her? Once I would have followed her anywhere. For a minute, I am flattered. Krysia thinks me worthy of involvement. Perhaps, that is why she came to Berlin. I shake my head. No, recruiting me was a contingency plan, to be implemented only if I discovered the truth. Otherwise she would have kept me playing the pawn.

  She continues, “We believe that the Germans are rearming in spite of the treaty, that they are secretly making plans.” It can’t be true, though I would not blame them if they were, I think, remembering Georg’s disillusion. “You are in a position to help and you have real skills. Perhaps if you agree with what we are trying to do, if you believe...”

  I shake my head. Once, I might have thought that Krysia and her friends had the answers. I wanted to be included so desperately I would have done anything for their approval. But they are politicians and liars like the rest. Now I just want to be free.

  I study her, considering. I could scream and Uncle Walter and the servants would come running and summon the police to arrest Krysia. She deserves no better for her betrayal. But the scandal and everything that would be revealed would implicate Papa as surely as it had in Paris. There’s more to it, though, than concern for my father: Krysia had changed my life that night in Montparnasse when she challenged me to be something more. And there is part of me that wants to spare her, to save her as surely as she had saved me.

  “I think,” I say with great difficulty, “that it is time for you to go.”

  “Go? You mean you aren’t...” Krysia assumed that, knowing she had been behind everything, I would have her arrested. Her body goes slack with relief. Then she straightens. “I hope someday you’ll understand.” She starts for the door, then turns back. “Margot, there is one other thing...you must be careful about Georg. He’s broken and a bit off center since Versailles. With everything that has happened, there’s no telling what he might do.”

  I stare at her, dumbfounded. Is she really purporting to offer advice after what she has done? Perhaps this is just another attempt to manipulate me. There’s nothing left for her to gain from it, though, and her expression is one of genuine concern. But I cannot trust her again.

  “Goodbye, Krysia.” I turn away, understanding that I have seen her for the last time. A moment later, the door shuts with a click and she is gone.

  Chapter 22

  I turn back and stare at the space where Krysia once stood, wondering if it had been a dream. The wool scarf she knitted for me hangs around my neck, one of the few things I’d cared enough to take in my flight. It now feels like a scratchy noose. I remove it and study the patterns in my hand, its beauty a mockery. I am tearing it apart in my hands then, ripping each stitch from its moorings.

  When I am done, I stare remorsefully at the great pile of kinked purple thread on the desk before me, still shaking. Now I know why Krysia had come to Berlin. It wasn’t about the wedding or supporting me. She had come with her own motives, to continue the deception.

  But what had she been searching for? Pushing down the emotions that threaten to swallow me, I pick up the file of documents she had dropped on the floor. Like the paper I’d grabbed from her, they are blueprints and maps of the grounds. I remember then her questions about the layout of the villa, the tunnels leading into the house. Why had she wanted to know?

  I see the great room, with the rows of chairs in straight lines. My wedding. A guest list of hundreds, with dozens of ambassadors and government officials, including the prime minister. It would be the perfect opportunity for an assassination attempt, if one could bypass security.

  Considering my theory, doubts bubble anew. Krysia works for the British government. Surely they were not in the assassination business. But those in power will stop at nothing to achieve their aims. If they could send millions to die in the trenches, why not one or two more? And if it could be made to appear as if the right people did it—the communists, for example—the German government would come down on them with great force. Perhaps, it was not about the assassination at all, but about the repercussions after.

  Of course, they will not dare to attempt the assassination at the wedding now that I know. But they will try again another way. I have to tell someone. Georg. I pick up the blank paper on which I’d intended to tell Krysia I was leaving. Should I use it instead to write to Georg? A letter would not be enough—any assassination plot, if they still dared to go through with it, might take place too soon, the damage done before my missive arrived. No, I have to tell him in person.

  I grab my bag, then run from the house and climb onto my bicycle. I begin to pedal, straining to see the darkened road ahead. The night air is thick and humid. Thunder rumbles in the distance. As I near the center of town, I stop. It is well after curfew, and there will be no taxis or trains. The omnibus, I recall, making my way to the side of the train station. A dilapidated bus sits idling at the curb, belching fumes. I pay the driver, ignoring the curious stares of the two other passengers, laborers who are likely making their way to the city to begin night shifts.

  As the bus bumps over the rough road leading from town and turns onto the motorway, I lean my head against the window and stare out into the darkness, unable to shake Krysia from my mind. She was like an older sister to me, and the closest I had to a friend. She had used me, betrayed me for her own version of good. Had it all been an act? But Krysia is not the only one guilty of deception. I lied to Georg as she had lied to me. None of it is clear anymore.

  Forty minutes later, the bus stops at Potsdamer Platz and I step out into the night. It is raining now, thick drops that splash against my face as I make my way from the gritty square, winding in the direction of Georg’s hotel. The streets are deserted and ominous, and a strange burning smell permeates the air. I move swiftly, glancing over my shoulder every few seconds. In the distance, there is a loud popping sound. Gunfire, I think instinctively, stopping. It is followed by the sounds of shouting and sirens. Is it a political protest, or some sort of crime?

  Struggling to breathe against the wet smoke that scratches my nose and throat, I press forward. Soon I reach the Grand. I stop, peering up at the front of the terraced hotel uncertainly. I do not want to face the questions the lobby clerk will surely have about the arrival of a strange woman caller in the middle of the night. In a second-floor window to the right of the entrance, a light burns. Rain falls harder now as I step cl
oser. Through the crack in the curtains I can see Georg sitting at a desk working, and in that moment it is as if I am transported back to Paris, to a time when I could go inside and be with him.

  I brush a tear from my eye and walk closer. “Georg,” I call in a loud whisper, through cupped hands, tilting my head upward. But, of course, he cannot hear me from this distance. Desperately, I search for a way to get his attention. I grab a few pieces of gravel from the pavement, throw one in the direction of the window, ajar despite the rain. But it misses by a meter and falls back to the pavement. I eye the front of the hotel. The ground-floor windows are covered by an iron grating, intended perhaps to stave off potential rioters. I hitch up my skirt and lift my foot onto the grating, climbing as I had on the cannon in Paris the day Wilson arrived. Despite the slickness of the wet metal, I find my footing and reach higher. My childhood years of scaling trees, to the distress of my mother and later Celia, now serve me well.

  There is a precarious creak. I reach higher with my left hand, praying at the same time that the grating will hold and that no one will see me on the street below. With my right hand I hurl the second stone at Georg’s window, trying to hit the glass. But it flies through the open window and a moment later I hear a squawk.

  “Georg.” I cringe at the volume of my voice this time, certain that it will attract attention from the neighboring rooms.

  He comes to the window, rubbing his head. “Margot?” Disbelief and confusion cross his face as I scamper down from the grating, wet hair plastered to my face. Then he walks away and the curtains fall closed behind him. My heart sinks in despair. Is he really so angry that he would turn his back on me?

  The door to the hotel opens. Georg stands shoeless in a white shirt and trousers, silhouetted against the golden light that burns behind him. A faint stubble covers his jaw. I have never seen him look so handsome. My breath skips.