“What did he do?” Pagan said, her voice quavering ever so slightly.
Devin hesitated. “He’s a doctor. A medical doctor with a second degree in physics. He started off working on the German version of the atomic bomb, but when that program collapsed, he started...experimenting. On the prisoners in the camps.”
Pagan pressed the palms of her hands against her closed eyes, trying to keep the images those words conjured from appearing in her mind. It didn’t help. She swallowed hard against her rising nausea. “He experimented on people.”
“With doses and implants of radiation, used without anesthetic, often combined with other typical Nazi experiments like limb transplants, using twins and pregnant women and anyone else he could get his hands on. Hundreds of them,” Devin said.
She swallowed the bile that rose in her throat. “A doctor,” she said stupidly. “Dr. Someone. My mother’s friend.”
“Your mother may not have known his crimes,” Devin said.
“Maybe,” Pagan said, remembering how her strong, stylish mother had laughed over dinner with the angular, balding Dr. Someone while her father sat stony-faced. Ava had been there, too, only four years old, piling her peas into the center of her mashed potatoes, seated on a booster next to a man who had done the unspeakable.
Pagan’s skin was going to shudder right off her body. She jumped to her feet, pacing over to the suite’s bar. It hadn’t been stocked with the usual welcoming bottles of Scotch, vodka and rum, and she was grateful. Nothing like Nazi atrocities involving your mother to make you want a good stiff drink.
“I’m sorry,” Devin said, getting to his feet. “I almost didn’t tell you.”
She leaned on the bar with shaking hands. “I don’t want to know, but I need to.”
Two sharp knocks on the front door made her pivot.
“Probably your steak,” Devin said. “You still up to eating?”
“Maybe in a bit,” she said, starting to move to the door.
“I’ll get it,” he said, and was at the door in one swift move, tipping the server right at the doorway and wheeling in the cart himself, pausing to knock on Mercedes’s door. “Steak’s here.”
Mercedes poked her head out. “Thanks.” She grabbed her plate and utensils off the tray. “Hey, do you know if they sell American comics here? I’m missing the second issue of Fantastic Four because Pagan’s a spy.”
Devin let out a surprised laugh.
Pagan smiled in spite of herself. “You can get it when you go home next week!”
“Might be sold out,” Mercedes said, raising her eyebrows. “It’s a whole new thing for Marvel, you know.”
“So you keep saying,” Pagan said.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Devin said. “No promises.”
“Thank you,” Mercedes said with a sly grin, and vanished once more into her room with her food.
“You do not have to get her a comic book,” Pagan said. “You’re not her butler.”
“I don’t mind asking,” he said, picking up a covered dish and a cold bottle of Coke off the tray.
Pagan walked up, hands out to take the food from him. “She is obsessed! Thanks.”
“Sit down,” he said, his lips softening. “I’ll serve.”
She bit down a smile and sat down in the chair by the suite’s desk as Devin set the plate down and opened the Coke bottle. He handed it to her. Her fingers slipped on the outside condensation and touched his. A brief touch, then his hand was gone.
“They don’t call it Her Majesty’s Secret Service for nothing,” he said, and lifted the cover off her plate with a flourish.
A cloud of fragrant steam rose from the large, beautiful steak lying there. Pagan leaned in to inhale, as Devin unfurled her napkin and laid it on her lap.
He leaned over her as he did it, and her shoulder brushed his chest. For a moment the heat from his skin enveloped her reassuringly. A whisper of his breath touched her temple.
She turned to him and looked up. He was looking down at her. Their lips were inches apart. Any moment now he’d close the gap to kiss her, pull her close.
Then he stepped back.
“You don’t have to do this for us.” Devin walked over to stare out the window, his back to her. “I know you want to, but maybe it’s best.”
So they weren’t going to make out. Fine.
“I’m going to do this,” she said, and took a fizzy sip of Coke to settle her nerves.
“You’re not responsible for what your mother did,” he said. “You don’t have anything to prove.”
“Mercedes said that, too, but neither of you grew up loving your mother only to find out later she hobnobbed with war criminals. She helped them.” Pagan took another sip of Coke. The saturated sweetness coated her tongue, a memory of hot summer days playing tag with Ava in their terraced backyard while Mama yelled at them not to get too dirty before dinner. How could that woman be the same one who welcomed Dr. Someone into their home, who helped him escape?
“Do you think she regretted it?” Pagan asked suddenly.
“Your mother?” Devin turned from the window, puzzled, until realization eased the line between his brows. “You’re thinking that’s maybe why she committed suicide.”
“Is it strange that’s the answer I’m hoping for?” she said.
“No.” Devin’s voice was gentle. “But whatever else she did doesn’t cancel out the fact that she really did love you. And Ava.”
“Why do people have to be so complicated?” She didn’t expect an answer. “I want to understand why she did it, but if I do figure that out, what good does it do me?”
“You’re the only one who can figure that out,” he said. “Identifying Von Albrecht might not get you the information about your mother that you’re looking for. It might get you her file, and it might not. You could go through all of this and still not have any answers.”
Pagan picked up her fork and knife. “All the stuff with Mama is secondary. If the man you’ve found here is the one who did those experiments on people, he needs to be brought to justice.” She cut a tiny piece off the steak. Slightly pink inside, the way she liked it. “Tell me more about him.”
Devin took a seat, watching her eat. “The man we found here named Rolf Von Albrecht is the right age to be Von Alt, the right height, we think, and he has the right sort of knowledge. He’s a professor of physics at the University of Buenos Aires, not far from here. He also lives nearby. He moved to Buenos Aires in March of 1953, which jibes with him leaving your house in November of 1952.
“He was later joined by his two children, Dieter and Emma, and his wife, Gerte. We know Von Alt had a family back in Germany during the war, but the records of their names and ages were destroyed. So we can’t trace him that way. Gerte died in 1960 of cancer. Dieter goes to a high school right next to where his father teaches and has been accepted into the university. He’s also part of a dangerous gang of teenagers that split off from a larger fascist gang recently. We think he may even be their leader.”
“He sounds delightful,” Pagan said.