Page 58 of Beehive

He tapped a forefinger against his chin. “Three possibilities: One, it’s just a statue and has nothing to do with anything. Two, it’s important, but Uncle Joe hasn’t figured it out yet.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Why would they display it at a public event if they thought it had some clandestine use? That doesn’t make sense.”

“Okay, what’s number three?”

“Three: Uncle Joe knows something’s up with the rabbi but isn’t quite sure what, and he wants to watch us to see if we’ll uncover it for him.”

“What about number four?” I asked.

Will cocked his head. “I only had three. What’s number four?”

“Uncle Joe knows we’re here to play and is dangling raw meat under our noses, using the statue as bait to catch us doing something untoward.”

“Well, shit.”

As usual, Will summed things up perfectly.

21

Will

Iwalked into our hotel bathroom, turned on the shower and faucet, and waited for Thomas to join me and close the door.

“It’s the one,” I said quietly, my voice firm but carrying a thread of disbelief. I leaned against the vanity, my arms crossed tightly over my chest as if the room were freezing rather than hot enough to bake bread.

Thomas nodded. “The Soviets don’t seem to know . . . or if they do, they’re playing it close. Antonov didn’t even glance at the statue.”

“He didn’t have to. The more I think about this, the more convinced I am they don’t know it’s there,” I said. “If they did, that statue wouldn’t be sitting in a glass case for all of Berlin to gawk at. It’d be in Moscow by now.”

“We need to talk to Visla again.”

I sighed, a long, slow breath that carried more than a hint of reluctance. Visla’s prickly personality was only overmatched by the fact she was unwilling to look us in the eye. “You know what she’ll say.”

“I do,” he said. “But we really don’t have a choice.”

The streets had quieted since we returned to our hotel, the kind of quiet that didn’t feel natural. The heat of the day had given way to a sticky, cloying humidity that clutched at everything.

The café was tucked into a corner of the British sector that still felt like a battlefield. The buildings were jagged and torn, their windows empty sockets staring into the night. We rounded the corner, and there it was—Café Morgenrot. A planter sat in its usual place, the leaves of its sad plant drooping under the weight of neglect.

Thomas crouched, careful not to linger. He slipped the note into the drainage pipe, a small folded square wrapped in plain brown paper.

I scanned the street.

There were no shadows out of place, no sudden movements, but the air felt charged, like a storm waiting to break.

“Let’s go,” Thomas murmured, his voice low.

There was only one word written on our note.

Barnacle.

That was our code word for, “We need to meet—as soon as possible.” There was little rhyme or reason to how such code words were chosen, but I supposed that was the point. Anything related to the actual meaning might be figured out by the opposition. Part of our job was to keep them in the dark.

We moved quickly, not looking back, our path winding through alleys and side streets to avoid being too predictable. Itwasn’t until we were back at the hotel, the door locked behind us, that I finally let out the breath I’d been holding.

“Now we wait,” Thomas wrote on one of our pages we used to communicate without being overheard.