Thinking that he could understand why a middle-aged Batman or anyone else might go a little nuts at times, Rodgers finally floated into a dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER FIVE Thursday, 10:04 A.M., Garbsen, Germany
Jody’s mouth twisted as she entered the trailer and took a look at the prop list.
“Great,” she said under her breath. “Just great.” The good-natured exasperation which had marked her conversation with Mr. Buba was tinged with genuine concern now. The item she needed was hanging in the tiny bathroom of the prop trailer. Getting to it around the clutter of tables and trunks would require delicate maneuvering. The way her luck was running today, Lankford would print the scene he was shooting after one take and move on to the next before she returned.
Placing the heavy clipboard on a table, Jody started out. Though it would have been faster to crawl under the tables, she was sure that if she did someone would see her.
At graduation, when Professor Ruiz had informed her that she’d gotten this internship, he’d said that Hollywood might try to discourage her ideas, her creativity, and her enthusiasm. But he’d promised that they would heal and return. He’d warned her, however, never to sacrifice her dignity. Once surrendered, that could not be reacquired. So she walked rather than crawled, deftly edging, leaning, and twisting her way through the maze.
According to the prop list, she needed to get a reversible winter uniform which actually had been worn by a sailor on the Tirpitz. It was hanging in the bathroom because the closet was full of vintage firearms. The local authorities had ordered the guns locked up, and the closet was the only cubicle with a key.
Jody sidled the last few feet to the lavatory. There was a heavy trunk and a heavier table beside it, and she could only open the door partway. She managed to squeeze in, though the door shut behind her and she gagged. The camphor smell was overwhelming, worse than it had ever been at her grandmother’s apartment in Brooklyn. Breathing through her mouth, she began flipping through the forty-odd garment bags, looking at the tags on each. She wished she could open the window, but a tic-tac-toe design of metal bars had been welded across it to deter thieves. Reaching the latch and lifting the window would be a pain.
She swore silently. Could anything else possibly go wrong? she asked herself. The tags were written in German.
There was a translation sheet on the clipboard and, with another quiet oath and a mounting sense of urgency, she cracked the door and squeezed back out. As she renegotiated the maze, Jody was suddenly aware of voices outside the trailer. They were coming closer.
Never mind the enthusiasm and creativity, Professor Ruiz, she thought. Jody could see her career ending in about twenty seconds.
The temptation to crawl was great, but Jody resisted.
When she was near enough to the clipboard, she leaned over, hooked an index finger through the hole at the top, and pulled it toward her. Desperate, she began to hum, pretending that she was.on the dance floor and moving like she hadn’t moved since the freshman orientation dance. And soon she was back inside the lavatory, the door shut, the clipboard on the sink as she frantically compared the clothes tags to the computer printout attached to the scene list.
CHAPTER SIX Thursday, 10:07 A.M., Garbsen, Germany
Mr. Buba turned as he heard the voices from behind the trailer.
“…I’m one of those people who never has any luck,” a woman was saying. Her voice was raspy and she was speaking quickly. “If I go to a store, it’s right after a movie star has been there. If I’m at a restaurant, it’s the day before a celebrity dines there. In airports, I miss them by minutes.” Mr. Buba shook his head. My, how this woman did go on. Poor Werner.
“So here I am,” she continued as they came around the corner. “I accidentally find myself on a movie set, just yards away from a star, and you won’t even let me see one.” Mr. Buba watched as they approached. The woman was standing directly in front of Werner, whose hat was pulled low, his big shoulders hunched forward. She was waving her arms, practically dancing with frustration. Mr. Buba wanted to tell her that seeing a movie star was no big deal. That they were just like other people, if other people were pampered and obnoxious.
Still, he felt sorry for the young woman. Werner was a stickler for rules, but maybe they could bend them so the poor lady could see a movie star.
“Werner,” said his colleague, “since this woman is already our guest, why don’t we—” Mr. Buba didn’t get to finish his sentence. Stepping from behind the woman, Manfred swung Werner’s billy club at the guard. The black wood crashed lengthwise against Mr.
Buba’s mouth, and the guard gagged on blood and teeth as he fell back against the prop trailer. Manfred hit him again, on the right temple, spinning Mr. Buba’s head to the left.
The guard stopped gagging. He slid to the ground and sat there, leaning against the trailer, blood pooling behind his neck and shoulders.
Manfred opened the door of the cab, threw Werner’s bloody club in ahead of him, then climbed in. As he did, a man from the film crew shouted, “Jody!” Karin faced away from the set. She knelt, pulled off her backpack, and slipped out her Uzi.
The short man shook his head and began walking toward the trailer.
“Jody, what the hell are you doing there, our soon-tobe ex-intern?” Karin stood and turned.
The assistant director stopped. He was nearly fifty yards away.
“Hey!” he said. He squinted toward the trailer. “Who are you?” He raised an arm and pointed. “And is that one of our prop guns? You can’t—” A confident pup-pup-pup from the Uzi dropped Hollis Arlenna on his back, arms splayed, eyes staring.
The moment he hit the ground, people began screaming and running. At the prompting of a young actress, a young actor tried to make his way to the fallen assistant director. As he crawled toward Arlenna, toward Karin, a second burst from the Uzi slammed into the top of the actor’s head. He crumpled in on himself. The young actress shrieked and continued shrieking as she watched from behind a camera.
The trailer’s powerful engine growled to life. Manfred revved it, drowning out the cries from the set.
“Let’s go,” he yelled to Karin as he shut the door of the cab.
The young woman walked backward, behind her Uzi, toward the open door of the trailer itself. Expressionless, she jumped in, pulled up the collapsible stairs, and closed the door.
As Manfred roared off through the woods, Mr. Buba’s dead body flopped lifelessly to the ground.
CHAPTER SEVEN Thursday, 10:12 A.M., Hamburg, Germany
Jean-Michel thought it fitting that his meeting with the leader, the self-proclaimed New Furhrer, was taking place in the St. Pauli district of Hamburg.
In 1682, a church dedicated to St. Paul was erected here, on the hilly banks of the Elbe. In 1814, the French attacked and looted the quiet village and nothing was the same thereafter. Hostels, dance halls, and brothels were built to cater to the steamship sailors who came through, and by the middle of the century the St. Pauli region was known as a district of sin.
Today, at night, St. Pauli was still that. Gaudy neon signs and provocative marquees announced everything from jazz to bowling, live sex shows to tattooists, waxworks to gambling. Innocent-sounding questions like “Do you have the time?” or “Have you got a match?” brought visitors together with prostitutes, while drugs were offered by name in low, careful voices.
It was appropriate that the representative of the New Jacobins should meet Felix Richter here. The new French incursion, and the union of their movements, would change Germany again. This time, for the better.
The Frenchman had left his two traveling companions asleep in the room and caught a taxi outside his hotel on An der Alster. The fifteen-minute ride to St. Pauli ended at Grosse Freiheit, in the heart of the lurid entertainment district. The area was deserted, save for tourists who wanted to see the sights without the enticements.
Jean-Michel pushed back his thick black hair and buttoned his moss-green blazer. Tall and slightly overweight, the forty-three-year-old executive vice president of Demain was looking forward to meeting Richter.
The few who knew him and the fewer who knew him well agreed on two things. First, Richter was dedicated to his cause. That was good. Monsieur Dominique and the rest of the French team were dedicated people as well, and M.
Dominique loathed dealing with anyone who wasn’t.
Second, people said that Richter was a man of wild, sudden extremes. He could embrace you or decapitate you, as whimsy dictated. In that respect, Richter appeared to have much in common with Jean-Michel’s own shadowy employer. M. Dominique was a man who either hated or loved people, was generous or ruthless as the moment dictated. Napoleon and Hitler were the same way.