The Diplomat's Wife(91)

Paul comes into the room. “Everything okay?”

“Fine,” I reply, feeling my cheeks redden.

“Then I’m off,” Jan says, handing me the candle. “I’ll be back before dawn to take you to the airport. Help yourself to a bottle of wine if you feel like it. Anything except the 1922 Chateau Rothschild. It’s worth a fortune. Herr Meierhof would kill me. Have a good night, you two.” Her tone makes me wonder if she still thinks there is something between Paul and me.

She walks out of the room, and a few second later I hear the cellar door close. Paul turns to me. “You did it. Congratulations.”

“We did it,” I correct him, setting the candle on the ground beside the mattress.

“Okay,” he agrees. “But let’s hold off on the celebration until we’re out of Berlin.”

Before I can answer, there is a banging noise from the front room. I wonder if something is wrong and Jan has returned. “Wait here,” Paul says. A minute later he reappears, carrying two steaming plates heaped with meat and noodles. “These came down in the dumbwaiter. Hungry?”

“No, but you go ahead.” Paul shrugs, then sets the plates down on the floor and drops to the mattress. I sit down beside him, watching him eat.

“You should try this,” he says between bites. “It’s really good. World-famous cuisine from the Meierhof. When are you going to have the chance to try this again?”

“Fine,” I relent. He stabs a piece of meat and covers it in sauce. Then he brings the fork to my mouth, cupping his other hand beneath it to catch any drips of sauce. As I take the meat from the fork, our eyes lock. Then I pull away, swallowing. “Delicious,” I say, my voice cracking.

“Do you want more?” I shake my head. He finishes eating, then carries the two plates, his empty and mine untouched, to the table in the front room. “It’s hard, isn’t it?” Paul asks abruptly as he reenters the room.

My heart skips a beat. “What is?”

He sits down on the mattress beside me once more. “Being back in Germany, after all that you went through here. It must be difficult.”

“Lots of things are,” I reply evenly. Paul looks away. Neither of us speak for several seconds.

“Do you want to play?” Paul asks finally, drawing a deck of cards from his bag. “We might as well kill some time.”

I hesitate. “I don’t know too many games. Gin is my best. I used to play it with my grandmother, Feige, when I was a child.” I see her stout fingers shuffling the deck of cards, her brown eyes glinting with anticipation as she arranged her hand.

“That’s funny, so did I.” Paul shuffles the cards. “Play gin with my grandmother, I mean. She would always let me win.”

“Not mine. She was really good and she always played for real. But every time she beat me, she would say, ‘Someone will love you very much.’”

“Really?” Paul begins to deal the cards. “What did she mean?”

“There’s some old saying, ‘lucky in cards, unlucky in love.’ Or maybe I have it backward. But the point is that if you are a bad card player, you are supposed to be lucky in love.” Lucky in love. Someone will love you very much. Bubbe Feige’s words echo in my head as I arrange my hand of cards. Had she been right? Simon loves me in his own way, I know. But “lucky” would have been finding Paul years ago, before it was too late.

I look up from my cards to see Paul staring at me. “Your turn,” he says. I pick up the top card from the stack, a queen of clubs, and put it in between the two other queens I am holding, then discard the ten of diamonds.

“So tell me about your life,” I say. “Not the classified parts, I mean. But where do you live when you’re not working?”

“Nowhere, really.” Paul takes a card from the top of the deck and discards it right away, revealing a five of diamonds. “There’s an apartment in Zurich and another in Brussels where myself and a few of the other guys can catch some sleep, get cleaned up, change clothes. But those aren’t home to me any more than this room. Mostly I keep moving, take as much work as they can give me. It’s not hard, there’s lots to be done right now.”

I pick up the five of diamonds, rearranging my hand to start a run of the suit. “Do you ever get back to England?”

He shakes his head. “Not since I got out of the hospital. I haven’t been back to Paris, either.” Or Salzburg, I guess silently as he takes his turn. And if there had been an assignment at the prison in Munich he probably would have turned that one down, too. He is avoiding the places that remind him of me, I realize. Trying to outrun his memories. “The work’s not just in Europe, though,” he adds. “I’ve been to Africa twice and I’m supposed to make my first trip to Asia next. When we’re done here, I mean.”

When we’re done here. The reality slams into my chest like a rock: this is going to end. As soon as we get out of Germany, I am going to get on a plane back to England and Paul will be off on his next mission. We will never see each other again. I stare at my cards, not seeing them. “You’re up,” he says gently. I did not realize he had taken his turn. My hand trembles as I blindly pick up a card, then throw it down again. It was the seven of diamonds, I realize too late; a card I needed. Paul picks it up and shuffles his cards. “Gin!” he declares, laying down all of his cards in neat succession.