The Book of Lies - Brad Meltzer [86]
“Eerste of tweede klas?” the collector repeated again, this time motioning to the back of the tram, which was divided into two sections. One with cushions. One without. “First or second class?”
Mikhel had spent his whole life knowing the answer to that one. “Second class,” he whispered, handing over threepence.
The change was a halfpenny, and the collector paused a moment, hoping that Mikhel would let him keep it.
Mikhel opened his palm. The collector shot him a look. Mikhel didn’t care. To get from Sweden to here . . . He had nothing left. Nothing but the items in the hold-all.
Walking to the back of the mostly empty tram, Mikhel followed the directions they’d sent along with the pocketwatch. He took a seat in the second to last row and held tight to the leather case in his lap.
At the next stop, he waited for them to appear. An old woman with a silk shawl boarded. She sat up front.
For nearly an hour, it stayed the same. Local Belgians coming on, getting off, as the tram grumbled past groves of chestnut trees and into the suburban countryside.
At their next stop—nearly at Waterloo—the old woman with the shawl got up and left the tram. As they started moving again, Mikhel looked around. He was the only passenger left.
“Kak dela?” a voice asked behind him in perfect Russian. “How are you?”
Mikhel jumped, nearly dropping the hold-all. Sitting behind him—how the hell’d they get behind him?—were two men in gray and black wool coats and matching dark hats.
“Vy gavareeteh pa anglisky?” Mikhel asked as he turned anxiously in his seat. “Do you speak English?”
“Odin jazyk nedostato˘cno,” replied the one with the thick glasses. “One language is never enough.”
Mikhel nodded. Their Russian was flawless. The Americans were not as uneducated as the empire always said.
Looking toward the front of the tram, Mikhel saw that the collector was now seated and facing front. Neither he nor the tram driver bothered looking back.
“They’re with you, too, aren’t they?” Mikhel asked in Russian.
Thick Glasses stayed silent.
Mikhel shifted in his seat. Not uneducated at all.
“Sounds like you had quite an adventure,” Thick Glasses began. “And to be the only one to walk away from it—you must be quite an expert fighter, huh?”
Staring out at the blur of sycamore trees, Mikhel could still feel the burn of Swedish snow in his boots. The dogs had reacted first, barking and pressing against their restraints. Outside the cave, Mikhel didn’t move. He panicked, just standing there, frozen as the snow, as the fighting began.
At first the screaming was all in Russian. But there was French . . . German, too. And then, above all else, a foreign tongue—one he still didn’t recognize.
Mikhel wanted to help. He wanted to rush in the cave and save them. But when the gunshots started . . . The snow was so cold in his boots. All he had to do was move. But all he did was stand there. Stand there until the screaming stopped.
“I got lucky,” he whispered to Thick Glasses.
“I didn’t think you Jews believed in luck,” the man in the gray coat shot back with an extra dollop of sarcasm.
Mikhel’s eyes narrowed at the man’s small nose and burning blue eyes. Clearly, they had anti-Semites in America, too.
“I still don’t know who they were,” Mikhel said. “The ones who killed my unit.”
The two men in hats exchanged a glance. The one with the small nose shook his head. But Thick Glasses ignored him.
“They’re known as the Thule Society,” he began. “The group you encountered was what’s known as Thule Leadership. That’s their symbol,” he added, pointing to the small brand—the knife and the quarter-moon—burnt into the front flap of the leather hold-all.
“And that language they were speaking . . . What was it?” Mikhel asked.
Again, there was a pause. “It’s an incantation.”
“Y’mean like religion?”
“No, Mikhel. Like magic.”
Mikhel sat with this a moment. Back in Sweden, when the shooting and the screaming and the fighting had stopped, Mikhel had released one of the dogs, which sprinted straight for the mouth of the cave. But Mikhel didn’t go in himself