Deeper Than Red (Red Returning Trilogy) (35 page)

F
ranz’s kitchen staff served a light breakfast in the sunroom, which overlooked a gentle scrolling of lavender mountain ridges. A pair of broad-winged birds cavorted in pastel skies.

“We moved the breakfast table out here years ago,” Franz said. “I couldn’t bear to look at walls when all this was going on outside. We even stripped away the heavy drapes my late wife had installed at every window in the house. Now, nothing separates me from … the things that soar.” He looked directly at Max, then turned to the others and swept a hand over the table. “Now, refresh yourselves. The fruits, the breads, the eggs and yogurt—all fresh from our own grounds.”

Throughout the meal, Max glanced repeatedly at Erica, who’d retired to her room the night before without so much as a peck on the cheek for him. He knew their relationship had withered dramatically over the last days, though he didn’t understand it. Conjecture, assumptions, and innuendos didn’t replace a solid answer.

Later, after profuse compliments and thanksgiving to their host, they wandered separately from the sunroom, preparing for different agendas that morning. Ben and Anna wanted to shop the antique stores in town. Cade would accompany Liesl and Max to rehearsal. But Erica hadn’t yet voiced her intentions. Max caught up with her at the foot of the grand staircase.

“Erica, would you like to walk with me before I have to leave?”

She looked apprehensive, her eyes searching his. But an instant later, her clouded face suddenly brightened. Now it was open, and she was eager to join him. It was a transformation he’d observed too often. As they left the house and headed for a path into the nearby meadow, he wondered at what triggered the seismic shifts in her.

“You’ve been so withdrawn the last few days,” he said. “Are you sure the clueless male that I am hasn’t committed some colossal insult?”

She looked up at him and smiled. It seemed genuine. “Not at all. I’ve just been, uh, preoccupied with a few ornery clients back home.” She looked away.

“Add to that a bunch of annoying bodyguards, quarantine conditions in Berlin, and a tour guide hauling you down to the catacombs of Holocaust atrocities. No wonder you’ve run the other way.”

She grabbed his arm and stopped walking. “If I’d wanted to run, I wouldn’t be here now.” She slid her arms around his waist and pulled him to her. Her kiss was sweet and soft, but brief. When she pulled away she seemed flustered. She started to speak, then clamped her mouth tight.

“Okay, this is going to stop. Something’s up with you. Up, then down, then up again. You’re making me dizzy. Tell me what’s going on with us. Please.”

Then he watched it happen again. It was like a sheet of ice sliding over her face, weighing the eyes into narrow slits and the mouth into a hard line.

“What is that?” Max exclaimed, pointing at her face. “That thing you do like flipping a switch. This person one second, and polar opposite the next. Who’s in there now? Have I met you before?” He didn’t mean to lose all composure, but oddly enough, it seemed to have little effect on her.

“No, you don’t know me. You don’t really want to.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

But she shook off the question and started back toward the house.

“Erica, please wait. Talk to me!”

But she kept walking. Over her shoulder, she called, “I’m going with you this morning.”

The whole way into town, Liesl felt the hard chill between Max and Erica. She hoped it would thaw before Max had to perform that evening. Then she shamed herself for thinking of the concert first. She should try to mediate between them, perhaps. Perhaps not. Neither one invited intervention just now, their faces set like plaster.

“Max, tell me about the program tonight,” Cade piped brightly.

That’s right
, Liesl thought, catching his intent.
Create a diversion.

It took a few moments, but Max’s face finally relaxed into familiar lines, Liesl was glad to see. Her friend glanced at her and smiled. It was the old Max. Impish, passionate, and enormously gifted at overriding his pain. “A tribute to a couple of guys Germany’s real proud of,” he answered. “We’ll begin with Beethoven’s
Triple Concerto
—Liesl at the piano, me on my outrageously expensive fiddle, a cellist, and full orchestra. Then comes Bach. The orchestra will dazzle us with a
Brandenburg Concerto
before Liesl returns to the stage to hog all the spotlight for herself. You
do
know what she’s playing tonight.”

Cade grinned, but barely. “And high time, I think.” He looked reflective. “No one in that audience, though, will know it was the piece that prevented a world war. But nearly cost me a wife.” He nodded slowly. “It’s time she chased off its demons.”

Liesl fought the tears and lost. Blinking them away, she landed on Erica’s clearly confused expression.
Oh no.
They’d spoken of things no one else should know. Classified things once vital to national security, even though the crisis had passed. How easy it had been to slip. She met Max’s eyes, now wide with the sudden realization of what he and Cade had done. They all looked at Erica, but said nothing more about Tchaikovsky’s
Grand Sonata in G Major
, and certainly not the code once embedded in it.

Now it was Liesl’s turn to distract. “Erica, I hope you won’t be bored with the rehearsal. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather take pictures in Old Town?”

“I’m sure,” she answered. “I’ll get some good stuff from the rally grounds today.” She smiled politely and looked out the window, offering nothing more.

They soon pulled up behind the bus now discharging members of the orchestra and their instruments. The conductor had promised a short rehearsal, for which Liesl was glad. She needed a long rest before the concert and the rigorous sonata, which she would rehearse alone at the estate. As she climbed from the van, she looked into a solid blue sky and was grateful for no threat of rain, especially after glimpsing the stage. The concert grand was now in place, a Gibraltar-size instrument. Perhaps she should have studied the piccolo. How convenient that would have been.

It didn’t take long for the first notes of the
Triple Concerto
to lift from the stage. For the next two hours, the musicians polished their performances, working out the kinks of performing on the portable stage and adjusting to the occasional gusts of wind over the open field. But spotters about the grounds assured the conductor that the sound quality and visibility were favorable.

When the rehearsal ended, Liesl gathered her music and helped cover the piano. Max invited Cade to the stage where he was introduced to the other musicians. Liesl heard her husband’s reporter instincts engage and the questions fly. He asked about their lives outside the orchestra and how they blended their music with professions that actually paid the bills, like dentistry and teaching.

Later, she took the steps to the ground and went off in search of the stage manager. She’d noticed a squeak in the piano bench that wasn’t at all in tune with the music. She’d just rounded the side of one of the orchestra vans when Erica approached her, camera in hand.

“Hi Liesl,” the girl said, her mood noticeably lighter. “Why don’t you slip away for a breather? Come with me down to the lake.” She pointed through the trees. “I’d love to photograph you against the sparkle of the water. The light’s just right at the moment.”

The girl’s voice carried an almost singsong lilt, and Liesl welcomed the change in tone. She looked toward Cade, who seemed not to notice that she’d left the stage. He was deep in conversation with a man demonstrating his tuba. Max had his back to them, busily tuning his violin. It would be okay. She’d be right back.

“Will you come?” Erica asked buoyantly.

Liesl shrugged and glanced around her. “Escape the bodyguards? I can do that.”

The two women walked at a brisk clip toward the far trees. “It’s called Dutzendteich Lake,” Erica informed. “On the other side is the unfinished congress building Hitler had built. He modeled it after the Colosseum in Rome. I guess he fancied himself the head of a new Roman-like empire.”

“It could happen again,” Liesl observed.

Without checking her pace, Erica’s full attention snapped toward Liesl. “Why do you say that?”

The reason was obvious to Liesl, though she couldn’t tell Erica why. A man named Ivan Volynski had penetrated the defenses that a post-WWII world had erected against another Hitler. Liesl had watched it happen, felt the heat of its force and its fangs at her heels. She’d seen those defenses against such a person fail, and the desperate attempts to patch them. She wasn’t sure they’d hold back all the Volynskis to come.

Just then, Liesl remembered Evgeny Kozlov’s refrain from his visit to her dressing room that night at Avery Fisher Hall.
Never stop watching them.
She glanced about her and wondered how far away, or how close, he was at this moment. There was never any way of knowing for sure. His was an elusive shadow.

“Hitler wasn’t the last of his breed,” Liesl answered simply. But that was enough on the subject. She didn’t wish to taint the morning and this brief respite. She changed direction. “What will you do with your photographs from this trip?”

But Erica ignored the question. “Liesl, I don’t want to talk about my photographs right now. I want to know why you all have to keep so many secrets from me. I’m practically held prisoner in Berlin, and all Max tells me is there are threats against your life, possibly his. I think there’s more to it than that. Why won’t anyone tell me what’s going on?”

They were in the trees now, the shadows deep and concealing. Liesl stopped. “You’re right. There is more to it.” Liesl gauged the set of the girl’s face. Was it childish pique at being left out of the clique? Or did she feel at risk by her association with them? Certainly she was and Liesl regretted that Max had brought his new friend along.

“I’m sorry if that brief quarantine in Berlin frightened you.”

“Oh, I’m not afraid,” Erica insisted. “And I’m not blind. I know Max and Ben are involved in some kind of intelligence work for Israel. I know you were at the center of something pretty awful a couple of years ago and again just six months ago. And now, it seems, something is still out there. But nobody trusts me enough to talk about any of it.” The voice went cold. “There is the slightest chance I might have been of help.”

Besides the sudden twist in tone and the letting of information Erica Bachman should not have known, the thing that struck Liesl most about that tirade was the tense of those last few words …
might have been
of help. As if the “something” still out there were over and done. And what could she possibly have done to help?

“I’m afraid I’ve said too much,” Erica allowed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to ruin our time together.” She touched Liesl’s arm, tugged slightly, and encouraged her to keep going.

Though her first impulse was to retreat, she resumed her place at Erica’s side and looked toward the water, which had grown bluer in the mid-morning light. Erica was quiet as they picked their way through the trees. When they emerged onto a sunlit path along the water, the girl stopped and looked around them. “There are a few high boulders a little farther down. Like the ones in Central Park, you know.” She smiled hesitantly at Liesl. “If you climbed up on one with the water behind you, I could get a great shot for your publicity manager.”

That sounded reasonable to Liesl, who was anxious to sidestep her misgivings about this girl. She was just impetuous and boldly drawn, like a van Gogh portrait. The notion swiped at Liesl.
Why would I think of him? The artist with whom Ivan Volynski seemed to identify. Ben had told her of the man’s fascination with van Gogh’s self-portrait, with the bandaged nub of an ear he’d lopped off his own head.
Was this her mind on overload with too many barbed bytes of her own fractured history, randomly sorted and irrelevantly linked? She believed it was.

“How far down?” Liesl asked. “I need to get back.”

“Just a little ways. Let’s hurry.”

But soon, Erica left the sunny path and headed back into the trees. “I thought the rocks were near the lake,” Liesl said.

“There’s a better place in here,” she pointed farther into the woods. “The dappled light through the trees will make a more dramatic shot.”

Liesl knew she’d been gone too long. Cade would be searching for her by now, and she’d left her phone—
both
phones—in her music bag. She’d seen Evgeny prowl the grounds earlier, though she hadn’t noticed him as she was leaving. “Erica, I’m sorry, we’ll take pictures another time. I have to go now.”

“The boulders are right there,” Erica said, pointing. “Just a couple of shots. Go on, climb up. But you might want to take off your shoes. They look slick on the bottom.”

Liesl sighed heavily and kicked off her sandals. “Five minutes tops,” she told Erica firmly. “That’s all the time I’ve got.”

Liesl hiked her long, filmy skirt and bunched it around her knees. She climbed steadily, finding her footholds. When she reached the top, she turned to face Erica. But Erica wasn’t there. Someone else was. A man Liesl had never seen before had just emerged from the woods. He walked slowly toward her and stopped.