Soul Intent Read online

  I touched my nose. “Bingo. And it’s a good thing, too, since you burned the original.”

  “How do you know that?”

  I smiled. “We also thought we should get to the journal before Archie returned it. We watched you destroy it.”

  She closed her eyes. “And now you’ve figured out my code?” She opened them and stared at me.

  I nodded. “Mostly Romany in a Glagolitic script.”

  She seemed to collapse into a chair across from the couch. “How much of it did you understand?” She bit her lip.

  “We’ve decoded half of it,” I said. “Right now we have a wounded brave knight and a captain in love with a confused princess.”

  Madame Flora sighed. “Scott, you mustn’t tell Archibald you can read it.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “You will cause irreparable damage for all of us.” Madame Flora sat forward on her seat, her hands gripping the ends of her bathrobe. “You mustn’t tell him.”

  I looked at Val. “What do you think?”

  “I think she owes us the rest of the story before we can agree to that,” Val said.

  “Me too.” I pointed at Madame Flora. “Translate your fairy tale into fact, and we’ll reserve judgment until you’re done.”

  Madame Flora’s gaze swung from Val to me. She nodded, and said, “Once you hear me out, I’m sure you’ll understand.”

  twenty-three

  October 1946

  Nuremberg, Occupied Germany

  Baba had given it to Flora last week, the night she completed calculating Goering’s soul identity. “Write it down,” she said, pressing the leather-bound journal into her hands.

  “Write what, Baba?” she asked.

  “Everything that happens to you from this day forward.” Baba handed her a fountain pen. “Today marks the first day of our new life. You must record all that happens.” She grabbed Flora’s shoulders and stared fiercely into her eyes. “You must form new dreams.”

  So Flora took the journal, and she wrote about the disastrous negotiations with the Nazi underground.

  The overseer knocked on the door just as she finished, and Flora glared at him. “Get out of my room,” she said. She moved to her bed and hugged her pillow to her chest.

  Archibald Morgan shook his finger at her. “You put my mission in jeopardy, yet you dare talk to me like this?”

  “It was your fault—not mine. It didn’t have to happen that way, and you know it.”

  “I know it?” His hands clenched into fists. “What do you think I could have done?”

  “Turned the gold over to the authorities,” she yelled. “We both know it’s stolen.”

  His chin dropped toward his chest. “Knowing is not enough,” he said softly. “I told you I needed proof.”

  “And James and I got you that proof.” She spat that out. “We almost died on Saturday—but that’s not good enough for you, is it?”

  He shook his head. “I have only your word and four scraps of burnt paper. James is barely coherent—he remembers nothing. And the only thing I saw in that clearing was a burnt-down barn.”

  She turned away from him. They had been so close.

  Flora had been mentally punishing herself ever since that hellish trip back from the barn. Baba had tried talking to her about it, but she gave up as Flora maintained her stony silence. Not even the historic news that afternoon of Goering’s conviction and death sentence could cheer her up.

  Why was the overseer bothering her, anyway?

  “I need your help, Flora,” he said after a minute. “Just one more time.”

  She turned back to him. “Haven’t I done enough, Mr. Morgan?”

  “I thought you had,” he said. “But the depositary team has reviewed my paperwork, and they now require a new form. Mr. Goering needs to sign a release and attestation for us.”

  “So have him sign it.”

  He sighed. “Mr. Goering’s lawyer, Dr. Stahmer, only trusted James. Now that he is hurt…” His shoulders slumped.

  Maybe she had succeeded after all. “What happens if he doesn’t sign the release? Will he be able to deposit the gold?”

  “He will not.” The overseer cleared his throat. “But before you get any ideas, let me make something crystal clear—if Mr. Goering does not deposit that gold, I will rescind the offer we made to your grandmother.”

  “Go ahead. I dare you.”

  Archibald Morgan nodded. “Very well. The two of you are to leave the residence tonight. I do not wish to do this, but you leave me no choice. You may take one week’s worth of medicine for her.” He turned around and stepped over the threshold and into the hallway.

  “You’re a cold-hearted bastard,” she said under her breath.

  He stopped, but he didn’t turn around. “Excuse me?”

  She clenched her fists. “All right.”

  Silence for a moment. Then he asked, “All right what?”

  “I’ll help you, Mr. Morgan. You can count on me.”

  He turned around and gave her a thin smile. “I hoped I could.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small black and white photograph and a folded sheaf of papers.

  Flora got up and walked over to him. She looked at the picture. “Who’s the soldier?” she asked.

  “Private Steven Lee. He is one of Colonel Andrus’s guards. James identified him as a weak link. I need your help getting to him.”

  “My help?”

  “Three weeks ago, I asked James to come up with a backup plan in case Mr. Goering’s lawyer blocked our access.” He held up the papers and frowned. “I will not lie to you, Flora. This is a delicate and, shall I say, a very personal assignment. And now that Mr. Goering has been sentenced to death, I need you to work quickly.”

  It wasn’t like she had a choice, was it? “Yes sir,” was all she could say. She closed her eyes for a moment and steeled herself for what she was about to do. She walked back to her bed and picked up a small cloth bag hanging from the post. Then she returned to the overseer. “Mr. Morgan, there is something you could do for me.”

  He smiled. “Certainly.”

  Funny how nice he acted, once he’d gotten his way. Flora reached into the bag and withdrew a hypodermic syringe. Then she quickly jabbed the needle into the overseer’s arm and depressed the plunger.

  He clapped his hand to his arm. “What did you do, Flora? That hurt.”

  “I need the whole story, Mr. Morgan.” She grabbed his arm and pulled him into the room, next to her chair. “You’d better sit down before you fall.” Baba said the drug took only took a few seconds to take effect.

  The overseer lurched forward and collapsed onto the chair. His body slumped to the left.

  Flora grabbed Mr. Morgan’s shoulders and pulled him upright. She straightened his neck like Baba showed her. Then she dropped the syringe into the cloth bag and hung it back over the bedpost.

  The Soul Identity team wasn’t the only one with a backup plan. Two weeks ago, Baba and Flora had taken the sodium thiopental from the Army medical kits, just in case the overseer tried to cheat them out of their trip to America.

  Baba said the drug made a person feel drunk, and it took away their inhibitions. She said that Flora could ask the overseer about the trip, and with a little cajoling, he’d cough up the details.

  But Flora chose to learn more about the gold instead.

  He opened his eyes. “This feels pretty good,” he said.

  “How good, Mr. Morgan?” she asked.

  “Like I have no cares in the world.” He closed his eyes. “Like I am sailing on a calm sea into a red sunset.”

  Flora thought he sounded like a totally different person. “You grew up on the water?”

  “I did. Prince Edward Island, in Canada.” He opened his eyes and smiled. “You would love it there, Flora. It is beautiful and clean and quiet. The sea would remind you of your own Istria.”

  “You know where I’m from?” she asked.

  “Of c
ourse I do.”

  She had no time for this small talk; Baba said a dose of the drug only lasted nine minutes. “Mr. Morgan, when are you sending Mr. Goering’s gold to the depositary?”

  “As soon as he signs his release. The depositary team is waiting on that last form.”

  “Do they know what they’re depositing?”

  “Not yet.”

  “They don’t know about the gold?”

  He shook his head. “Because of the possibility of you finding proof of its theft, I have not disclosed the contents of the deposit.”

  There was still hope. “Is the team in Nuremberg?”

  Morgan nodded. “They have been waiting at the Grand Hotel for the past five days.” He sighed. “James getting hurt has caused me many problems.”

  “Because you don’t have the release?”

  “Precisely.” He closed his eyes for a minute.

  She reached out and shook his shoulder.

  Morgan opened his eyes and stared at Flora. “You would not believe how difficult this assignment has been, Flora. Ms. Vida has threatened to have me killed if I fail to establish Mr. Goering’s soul line collection.”

  “Who is Ms. Vida?”

  “Isabella Vida is the executive overseer and the absolute dictator of Soul Identity. Every move I make here in Nuremberg gets broadcasted back to her.” He shivered. “And if I mess this up, she will have me neutralized.”

  Mr. Morgan wasn’t as big a boss as she thought him to be. That could explain why he was so pig-headed. Or not. “Mr. Morgan, do you believe Goering’s gold was stolen?”

  “Yes, Mr. Goering stole that gold.” He said that flatly, with no more emotion than he’d say yes, my hair is light brown.

  The drug was letting her peer into this new dimension of the overseer’s character. “If you know it’s stolen,” she said, “then why are you letting him deposit it?”

  “Because I cannot afford to fail.” Morgan leaned forward. “Soul Identity’s politicians would like nothing more than to watch me mess this up. Those vultures pick apart the fallen for their own sustenance. I dare not make a mistake.”

  “But I had proof!” she cried.

  He shook his head. “Your proof went up in smoke, and with James hurt, nobody can corroborate your story,” he said. “On the other hand, if I can get Mr. Goering signed up before his execution, I will score a win against the vultures and cement my position as Miss Vida’s successor.”

  Flora forgot for a minute he was drugged. “You’re going to use Goering and the gold as a stepping stone for your career?”

  He nodded. “I am.”

  So she was wrong in her assessment. He was less of a bastard and more of an opportunist. “But that gold is bloodstained!”

  “Nazi gold shines as bright as any other. And if I can use it to build a better Soul Identity for the future, I will.” He closed his eyes again.

  Flora shook his shoulder. “Mr. Morgan, wake up.”

  The overseer opened his eyes and looked around her bedroom. Then he turned to Flora. “I have something I need to tell you.”

  She doubted she could absorb anything else.

  “We have worked together for three months now,” he said.

  “Three months exactly.”

  He nodded. “We have worked very close together, have we not?”

  “Yes, we have, Mr. Morgan.” Where was he going with this?

  “Please call me Archibald.”

  She nodded.

  “Go ahead, Flora. Call me Archibald.”

  “Archibald.”

  He closed his eyes and smiled. “It sounds nice when you say it.”

  Maybe she had used too big a dose of the truth serum.

  His eyes remained closed. “When you first arrived, I thought you were intolerable,” he said. “You burned with anger.” He opened his eyes wide and stared into hers. “But then I learned it was not anger, but passion. You really did want to right the world’s wrongs.”

  “I still do.”

  He nodded. “I know. I see how much the wrongs matter to you, and how you invest everything you have to solve them. I am overwhelmed in my admiration.”

  Flora was also overwhelmed. Was this the real Archibald Morgan peeking out?

  “Your passion to right these wrongs is what makes you so determined,” he said. “My own determination is driven by my vision for a better future. We are not so different, Flora.”

  That was a new perspective. Two people, driven by different goals, each determined to make the world a better place.

  The overseer continued. “Your passion invigorates me in ways I have never felt. I spend half the night thinking about you, and the other half dreaming about us. I have fallen in love with you, Flora Drabarni. I want to unite your passion with my vision, for I believe that together we could form an unbeatable pair. We belong together, Flora,” he said.

  She stared at him, speechless.

  “These last few days without you around have been worse than torture,” he said. “I need you.”

  For a brief moment, Flora’s heart soared, and she lost herself to the idea of running into the safety of this man’s arms. Flora and Archibald, fulfilling their dreams together, changing the world together.

  But the un-drugged Archibald Morgan had layers of armor that prevented him from ever expressing these thoughts. In another minute he’d be back to reality, back focused on his opportunities. And she’d be back to hating what he represented.

  She needed to wake him properly. Baba had shown her how to make enough pointed suggestions so he wouldn’t recall anything they had discussed.

  And while she worked to help him forget, her soul cried out for him to remember.

  twenty-four

  Present Day

  Sterling, Massachusetts

  Last year Madame Flora injected Archie and Anne with sodium thiopental to fake their deaths. She also injected Bob to learn what Feret was up to. At the time, she casually mentioned that she had used it on some clients. Who would have thought she had been relying on truth serum for over sixty years?

  Who would have thought she and Archie may have had something going on for over sixty years?

  “Archie doesn’t know, does he?” I asked her.

  She shook her head. “And there’s no way he ever should.”

  We’d see about that.

  It was almost noon, and we had been up all night. Val and I headed back to our room and collapsed on the bed. We woke three hours later and got dressed.

  “What are you going to tell Mr. Morgan?” Val asked.

  “Until we get the rest of the story out of Madame Flora, I’m keeping quiet.”

  She pursed her lips.

  “If we tell him now, Madame Flora won’t help us sort out the rest of the story,” I said.

  “So we have to act just like her?”

  I thought about that. “You mean we’re doing the wrong things for the right reasons.”

  She nodded.

  That did seem to be the theme of the story so far: Flora helped Archie to get her grandmother medicine. Her grandmother read Goering’s eyes so Archie would bring her and Flora to America. Archie helped Goering so he could climb Soul Identity’s hierarchy.

  And here I was suggesting that we hide what we know so we could hear the rest of the story. Val was right to call me on it.

  “You think we should go to Archie now?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Flora is right—it will cause irreparable damage.”

  “But we’ll have to tell him what we learned, sooner or later.”

  She made a face. “That’s going to be tough.”

  I wasn’t looking forward to that, either. “Maybe after we find out what happened to the gold.”

  The translating was getting easier. I took the next few pages and marked the words we already had solved. That saved us half the work. While I forged through the new words, Val manned the online dictionaries. It took us three hours to complete the remaining pages and
head back to Madame Flora.

  Flora’s Journal

  8 October 1946

  With one behind you can’t sit on two horses.

  The princess sought out the wolf’s guard. Besotted with her beauty, he helped her pass messages between the captain and the evil wolf.

  She spent many hours pondering all that had happened. She began to look favorably upon the captain, and to admire the strength he showed as he performed his quest.

  But she still sought to destroy the wolf’s magic teeth. The captain brought her to the dungeon to see them. She gasped at the power the wolf would hold when he returned to life. Yet when she begged the captain to crush them, still he refused.

  So she used more truth-telling potion on the captain, down there in the dungeon, right next to the wolf’s magic teeth.

  The captain told her how and when the teeth would be transferred to the knights’ cave. Then he again professed his love for her. And this time, the princess felt her own heart jump. She realized she was in love with this captain of the knights.

  She told the captain she loved him, and then she showed him, and then she helped him forget.

  Later that night, finally, a plan, forged out of her love for her captain, and out of her hatred for everything the wolf represented, took shape.

  14 October 1946

  There are lies more believable than truth

  Her plan was so simple it was brilliant: trick the captain into giving the magical teeth to the princess’s friends, and find something else to place in the cave.

  What could she put in place of the magical teeth? After thinking long and hard, she chose to deposit her story. Then, when the wolf returned to life, he would learn how the brave princess had thwarted him.

  And how would she trick the captain? A friend of her godmother had offered to help; he and his men would fool the captain and take the magical teeth someplace safe.

  The princess is very excited: tomorrow the wolf’s teeth will be out of the knights’ hands. Tomorrow they start their journey back to the families of the wolf’s victims.