71
Present Day
Vienna
“EXCUSE ME, MA’AM. ARE you okay?”
I look up to see a man and woman, French judging by the accent, looking down on me. I can hardly blame them for their concern. I can’t imagine how I must look, a middle-aged woman sitting on the floor of a hallway in a Viennese hotel, my back against the wall, my head in my hands.
No, I am not okay. Twenty minutes ago, in this very spot, I held in my hand an artifact that would have proven Hitler’s obsession with Geli, his unwillingness to ever let her go, complete with his ink-stained thumbprint on the stationery.
And then, just like that, it was gone, snatched from me at gunpoint.
“I’m okay.” I try to smile while I get to my feet. I don’t remember collapsing to the floor.
I make it back to my hotel room, tapping the key against the sensor to open the door without even considering the possibility that someone might be waiting for me. That, fortunately, is not the case; the room is empty.
I no longer need the outfit they asked me to wear for the meet, so I shrug out of my beige corduroy jacket and let it drop to the floor.
I remove the ridiculous orange Euro Disney hat from my head and Frisbee it across the room.
I pull on a wool turtleneck sweater and run my fingers through my hair.
It’s times like this, when I’m questioning things, when my life is taking one turn or another, that I feel my daughter’s loss most palpably, that I long to hold her, feel her, talk to her.
They have words for women who lose their spouses (widows) and for children who lose their parents (orphans) but not for a mother who loses her child.
My burner phone buzzes. It’s my brother Ty, no doubt checking up on me again. Unexpectedly—as if anything happening to me of late is expected—I burst into tears. I put my hands on the bathroom counter and sob uncontrollably, shoulders bobbing, chest heaving, tears dripping into the sink.
The buzzing of the phone stops, but I know Ty will keep calling until we speak. I draw a deep breath and towel off my face, grab the burner phone, and leave the room.
I need fresh air. There may be someone awaiting me out there on the streets of Vienna. But I’m the furthest thing from an expert at surveillance or countersurveillance. Besides, if they want me, they’ve made it clear that they know how to get to me.
“I’m fine, Ty,” I say as soon as he picks up the phone.
The cool air, as I step out onto K?rntner Stra?e, is a welcome relief.
I turn the direction opposite the Stephansdom, where I had my nice chat with Stranger Danger in the church, and walk instead toward Vienna’s magnificent opera house.
But I’m not really looking at anything. I simply move forward as I recount the events, with as much detail as I can, to my brother.
I should probably edit my account, as Ty will worry, but I feel the need to unburden myself, and I know that if the roles were reversed, I’d want the truth from him, warts and all.
“I don’t want a lecture, Ty,” I tell him when I’m finished, when I’ve walked the better part of a mile, moving in and out of the various side streets off the main boulevard, nightfall quickly approaching.
“So the man you were supposed to meet, you never met,” he says. “But then he slipped you the artifact via a Greenpeace volunteer, hidden inside a brochure about whaling?”
“Right.”
“But the man you did meet with—Stranger Danger, as you call him—his people saw the exchange and took the artifact from you at gunpoint?”
“That about covers it.”
“Well, sister of mine—all of that tells me two things. One, these people are very good at what they do. And two, the thing you were trying to obtain is now in their hands. So you have no reason to stay in Europe. You did your best, but it’s time to come home.
You took great risks, Eleanor. Now it’s time to make the right decision. ”
I can’t help but chuckle. “Sounds like a speech you had prepared, Ty.”
“It doesn’t make me wrong. Let me just say one more thing.”
As I walk along a side street, passing a bustling café, Tyson giving me his non-lecture lecture, my internal radar forces my eyes to a woman standing at the corner, leaning against a lamppost, looking at her phone—but who was looking at me a moment earlier.
A young, pretty Asian woman in a leather jacket with cropped dark hair—
I stop in my tracks and focus.
Is that the same young, pretty Asian woman who bumped into me at Stephansdom as I was leaving the grand church? The woman with lime-green hair and facial piercings?
No lime-green hair now, no piercings, but…
I cross the street and beeline in her direction.
Without looking up, the woman peels herself from the lamppost and disappears around the corner.
I pick up my pace, rushing across the cobblestone street, but I’m surely no match for her in terms of speed.
By the time I reach the corner and turn, she is gone.
“You sound like you’re running, Eleanor. And not listening to a word I say.”
“Right on both counts,” I admit after catching my breath. “I think someone is following me. Remember I told you, when I was walking out of the church, bumping into the Asian—”
“She’s following you? Are you sure it’s her?”
“I’m—yeah, I’m pretty sure.”
“Then I rest my case,” he says. “It’s time for you to come home. There’s nothing left for you to find.”
But if there is nothing left to find, why are they still following me?
“The sixth envelope,” I mumble.
“The what?”
“The man I spoke with—Stranger Danger? He said there were six envelopes in Hitler’s safe.”
“I remember,” says Ty.
“He said Bauer must have accidentally destroyed whatever was in the sixth envelope when he tried to ‘view’ it. He said Hitler was upset afterward that it was ‘unusable.’ What could that be, Ty? What do you ‘view’ that could be rendered ‘unusable’? That doesn’t sound like a document or a photograph. ”
“I appreciate your curiosity, El, but didn’t Stranger Danger also tell you that it no longer exists?”
“Am I suddenly required to believe everything he told me?” I start walking back toward my hotel, ideas flashing in and out. “On the other hand, maybe he wasn’t lying, Ty. Maybe he was mistaken.”
“I’m… now I’m not following, Eleanor.”
I reach the entrance of my hotel and look around me. And once more I find the young Asian woman, this time wearing straight blond hair—she has many wigs, apparently—sitting at a table outside the Burger King across the street.
“Maybe I’ve been looking at this wrong,” I say. “Maybe I missed a critical fact. Something even Thomas Bauer didn’t know.”
“Oh, Eleanor.” This time, my brother heaves a sigh rivaling my mother at her most disappointed. “Based on rank speculation that there might be a sixth envelope from Hitler’s safe that might contain something incriminating and might still exist?”
“Between seeking the truth and letting it slip away forever? Absolutely. Love you, Ty.” I end the call on the burner phone before he can object.
I try to make eye contact with the Asian woman, but she won’t allow it. So I simply nod at her. She certainly knows where to find me.
And it won’t be on a plane to the States. I’m not done here yet.