Extraits

City of Shadows A Novel of Suspense Chapter One Berlin, May 1, 1922 "Esth-er." " What? " She tore off her Dictaphone headset, made a mark on a notepad, and went next door to his office. He was sitting with his chair turned to the window that looked down onto the floor of his nightclub. It was a fine nightclub, the Green Hat, one of the largest and most exclusive in Berlin. He'd hired Kandinsky to paint the walls"Russian scenes," he'd told him. "I want Old Russia"and been disappointed. "It's blobs," he'd said when he saw the result. "It's wonderful," Esther had told him. And it was. But his Russia hadn't consisted of blobs, so he'd insisted on lining the walls with huge stuffed brown bears and putting ribboned kokoshniks on the heads of the cigarette girls and hiring waiters who could squat-dance. "So they know this is a piece of Old Russia," he'd said. "You're not supposed to say, 'What?' " he said now. "You're supposed to say, 'Yes, Your Highness.' " He was in a good mood. "I'm busy. I'm translating your instructions to M. Alpert." She paused. "Are you sure you want to put them in a letter?" "Why not?" "Suppose the French police raid his office and find it?" Prince Nick distrusted telephone switchboards, in case his competitors were bribing the operators to listen in, and since he spoke only Russian and German, she handled most of his foreign correspondence, which, she supposed, made her an accessory to corruption, tax evasion, not to mention fraud, all over Europe. But it was a job; she hadn't been able to get another. "They won't. He's got the gendarmerie in his pocket." He blew out a redolent smoke ring. "And I've got the Polizei in mine." His pockets were weighed down with them. His other cabaret clubs were popular with the high-rankers because he kept them discreet; politicians, judges, police chiefs, could cavort in privacyand did. Lists of members and their sexual preferences were kept under lock and key. There was a price, of course: they had to keep Prince Nick from prosecutionthey did that, too. The police on the beat sold him information, usually about any vagrant good-looking young men and women who'd be likely recruits for his clubs. "I want them cheap, and I want them grateful," he used to say. He interviewed them himself. Nearly all came cheap, and most were grateful; working for Prince Nick was better than walking the streets. In her case she'd had the choice of going on the streets or jumping into the Spree, and of the two she preferred the look of the Spree. It was the rabbi of the Moabit synagogue who'd suggested she apply to Prince Nick for work. The Jews knew of him because, for a price, he could get papers for those wanting to emigrate. Papersthe Wandering Jew's eternal bugbear. But if you could afford Nick's, you could go to the U.S. embassy in the Tiergarten and get an immigration visa for America. "Go see this Prince Nick, Esther," Rabbi Smoleskin had said. "A crook, yes, but a fair crook. And a Russian like you, so maybe he'll give you a job." "With a name like Solomonova? And with my face?" "Brains you got. Languages. A brave heart. Who cares for pretty?" Prince Nick did; his clubs ran on pretty. He'd taken one look at her and opened his mouth to say sorry, but . . . She hadn't given him the chance. "I speak English, French, German, and Italian well," she told him in Russian. "I can get by in Polish and Yiddish and Greek. I can type, I do shorthand and bookkeeping. They say you're an international businessmanyou need me." Most of which was true. Not the shorthand, but she could learn. "Oh, and Latin," she'd said, "I'm good at Latin." "Always handy in cabaret clubs, Latin," he'd said, and she knew then that, if she could get him over the hurdle of her Jewishness, she'd have the job. "How'd you get the scar?" he asked. "Long time ago. In a pogrom." "A Jew, then." In Old Russia pogroms happened to Jews. "A Jew," she said. "With an expensive education?" In Old Russia pogroms happened to poor Jews. "My father was well-off. I had a mam'zelle and a tutor." "What did your father do?" "He was a banker." "Yeah? So how'd you get mixed up in a pogrom?" "Are you hiring me or not?" He hired her, which confirmed that he was no more a Russian nobleman than Rabbi Smoleskin. Prerevolution Russia had been about the only country in the world where persecution of Jews was part of the constitution, and she'd never met one of its aristocrats who wasn't anti-Semitic. Who he really was, where he came from, she didn't know even now. There was a slight slant to his eyes and a beautiful olive sheen to his skin that suggested Tartar, but he professed to be Russian Orthodox and made much of the estates he'd lost to the Bolsheviks. It didn't matter anyway; they were both frauds. And in a Germany that had lost the war, was losing the peace and its currency and, very nearly, its mind, it was only men like him who were making money. His office had two windows, neither of them giving onto the outdoors. One looked down onto the floor of the club, two stories below, empty this morning. The other, which was small and had a sliding shutter, gave him a view of the large and illegal gaming room next door. Set into one wall was a safe like a miniature Fort Knox. Her own office, through a connecting door, was small and windowless, and she worked in it for a pittance. He was in fine fettle today, smoking a cigar with his feet up on his desk, hair so sleek it might have been painted on, thirtyish, good-lookingand as ersatz as the sign on his door and the name on his monogrammed writing paper: prince nicolai potrovskov. City of Shadows A Novel of Suspense . Copyright © by Ariana Franklin. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from City of Shadows by Ariana Franklin All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. 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