Page 31

Chapter Thirty-One

The train arrived at midnight, and the Japanese were singing.

They sang a bright, martial tune in time with their footsteps as they marched down the grand lobby staircases for the last time. It was the most merriment anyone had seen from the legation; the staff and other legations paused to watch even the sleepy-eyed children join. What was the song about? No one knew, at least not until Sachiko Nishimura broke off from the group long enough to whisper in June’s ear: “?‘Beyond the clouds of dawn, / Fuji’s peak rises / eternal and beautiful / what pride has Japan!’?”

The translation was a parting gift: the gift of understanding, just for June.

June bowed to Sachiko as she had seen the other Japanese do.

Sachiko, surprised, bowed back.

The train had actually arrived nearly an hour before, and the Border Patrol and a handful of state troopers had already started on the dozens of escorted trips required to ferry the luggage to the station. Once they were done, the women and children would ride down the same way. And then, finally, the men would walk to the station. It was the process of arrival, neatly reversed.

The Border Patrol would demolish their guard towers the following morning and throw the lumber onto the back of work trucks. Tucker, Hugh, and Pony would put the last of the recording equipment into the Bureau car and seal any sensitive evidence in locked bags for SOG. Housekeeping would begin to turn over the rooms. The Grotto would do inventory in the pantries and put purchase orders on June’s desk. The phones would ring, the calls going straight through the switchboard with no agent listening in, and the registrars would begin to book the summer season.

That was the government’s plan.

That was not June’s plan.

She watched the Italian legation descend the grand staircase, some pausing to tip the staff. Many of them nodded or lifted a hand to June as they passed, including the fellow who had set his room on fire.

Here came the journalists, except for Lieselotte Berger, who had been transferred to a hospital in Charleston that morning. When she finally healed, she would be allowed to walk right out into America and to wherever her future took her. The two other journalists passed June without saying a word. The hotel had never stopped being a prison to them, and she was just one of their jailers.

Tucker had appeared in one of the doorways; June joined him. Was Sandy in place? He nodded.

Wordlessly, they watched the German legation emerge on the second-floor balcony. Friedrich Wolfe, with Lothar close beside him, stopped them on the stairs and addressed them all in German. Impossible for June to know what the contents of the speech were; all she knew was that partway through, Erich von Limburg-Stirum, holding his wife’s hand, averted his eyes, and at the end, Friedrich Wolfe and Lothar Liebe both gave a one-armed salute that made the staff members in the lobby hold their breath.

A heavy silence followed.

The Avallon was used to maintaining the illusion of luxury through all sorts of circumstances, but this single gesture punctured right through the veil for all time.

Tucker’s attention focused; June followed his gaze. Sabine and Hannelore Wolfe had joined the legation late. Sabine had clearly been crying; no amount of diplomatic poise could hide it. Hannelore, on the other hand, was clear-eyed, her expression flat, no more expressive than June had been when her own mother left her in Constancy.

“Everyone, can I have your attention?” Basil Pemberton raised his plummy voice from the front door. “There are quite a lot of you and only a few cars, so I appreciate your patience as we get you all down to the train, thank you! Please let us know if we can make your wait any more comfortable.”

This was it. Months before, June had told Benjamin Pennybacker no . She hadn’t even known what he was asking yet, only that the State Department was bound to bring discord into her hotel. For more than a decade, she had given every waking minute of her day to keeping the peace. She had so much accumulated knowledge on the topic that other hoteliers asked for her secrets. June was the Avallon; the Avallon was June. Would any other woman give up such power? Would any other woman destroy her own creation?

But she had already made her decision. Now all that was left was to execute it.

June let the gathered people slowly push her to Sabine, inevitable as a tide reaching shore. “Mrs. Wolfe, I promised to help you before. Do you still want it?”

Sabine gazed at her. Shocked. Stricken. Where was the gilded queen who had arrived at the Avallon? Nowhere in evidence. June’s mother had looked like this, too, right before she abandoned June in Constancy. That glazed expression that meant she wouldn’t be able to withstand any additional tribulation; she was at the end of her ability to survive. Likewise, Sabine didn’t seem to have even been able to hear June, although the two women were close as they could be.

“Quickly,” June said. “I need to know now.”

Yes or no? Gilfoyle said.

“Yes,” said Sabine.

The smell of spring seeped into the lobby as people flowed through the flung-open front doors. The trees must already be beautiful along the ruined street of Casto Springs. Was it this warm in Germany, too? Did the smell of flowers and fresh-cut grass pour into the hotel at Bad Nauheim as the Americans hurried toward their own train? Or was it the churning, vile smell of machinery and rot, an unchanging season of war?

Sabine took Hannelore’s hand. Her daughter stared at this union of their fingers. June knew that she would be analyzing the gesture, taking apart all its possible meanings, trying to decide what was expected of her, trying to perform that for her mother.

“Once there was a girl named Hannelore,” Sabine whispered, “who traveled on a train to a magical land. Long ago, her mother and her father had made a bargain to a wicked king, and so they had to go back to their old home for a year and a day so that the curse could be lifted. It was a bargain they made long before Hannelore was born. It was not her fault. The queen loved Hannelore very—”

Sabine broke off. She transferred Hannelore’s hand to June’s grip instead.

“Be gentle,” she told her daughter.

Hannelore didn’t pull away. Her hand was dead weight in June’s. Her owlish frown deepened as Sabine backed away toward the rest of the German legation, her eyes getting brighter and brighter. Hannelore’s body was beginning to quiver, but she remained, obedient, until Sabine, finally unable to watch her daughter’s slow understanding, turned away.

Hannelore let out a wordless noise, soft as a kitten.

June’s mother hadn’t said goodbye. She had simply told June to wait while she went begging, and then she’d never returned. It had taken a full day for June to understand.

“I am sorry,” June told Hannelore. Across the room, she could see Tucker and Calloway keeping Lothar Liebe and Friedrich Wolfe busy in a conversation over the gun they had confiscated. Near the hallway to the pub, Griff was leading the dachshunds and the Wolfes’ dog away. “Later, this will make more sense.”

Robotically, the German girl let June lead her through the gathered diplomats to the lobby’s beautiful sweetwater font, carved for the hotel by Cyrus Edwin Dallin, who was known for his vibrant equestrian statues. Three horses, their manes sculpted into oceanic waves, poured sweetwater into the basin below. Snails crawled beneath their throats and into their nostrils.

This close, the smell of spring was overpowered by the stench of the water. It was the stench of that one-handed salute. It was the stench of that swastika. It was the stench of a list of betrayed colleagues. The stench of war.

Hannelore whimpered.

Across the lobby, Griff put his hand on a door, ready to push it open.

June said, “It’s all right to scream.”

She plunged their held hands into the water.

···

June remembered her final tantrum. It was embarrassingly late, long after her mother had left her in Constancy, long after she’d come to the Avallon to work as a maid. She was upset. Not over anything important: she’d been blamed for the housekeeping department’s latest linen shortage. She had known she hadn’t misplaced any towels. She was always very conscientious—she could not be otherwise, no matter how hard she tried. As the other maids tried to get her to admit her failing, shame and fury kept rolling over her in increasing waves, each one eroding her calm further. Even though the others were still talking to her and over her, she walked away. Down the hall, into the supply closet. She closed the door to shut out their distant voices, and in the dark, furious heat hazed her cheeks. She could feel her trembling body prepping the screams.

Curling herself into a ball on the floor, she fisted her hands. The floorboard pressed into her cheek. Everything smelled of the Avallon. Floor polish. Floral sachets. Woodsmoke. Fresh bread. Sweetwater. It whispered to her through the pipes, soothing her. Be calm.

And she was calm.

In that little quiet, she found she was able to be practical. She considered who else might have lost the linens. Burned kitchen linens got thrown away instead of tossed in the hamper. Plongeurs accidentally stuffed linens into their lockers along with their coats. Lazy maids rolled them behind pillows in unused sitting areas for later retrieval. Plumbers balled them into sponges beneath persistent leaks. Waiters collected dropped napkins during meal service and forgot to extricate them from their pockets at end of shift.

She would just explain this to the rest of housekeeping, she thought. She’d find the linens; no need to defend herself. It wouldn’t happen again.

The tantrum was gone as if it had never been a possibility.

It was not that everything began to make sense in that moment, but it was that it could . The world had a system, and she just needed to listen. Watch. Then put it into action.

It was the first time in her life she hadn’t felt powerless.

The sweetwater’s first gift to her.

···

The water in the lobby’s font was hot and unpleasant. Misery clawed at her skin. Hannelore began to wail. Something gurgled in the walls.

Across the room, Griff Clemons made eye contact with her. The staff at the front desk made eye contact. The staff on the stairs, in the halls. Holding the doors open for the diplomats. The staff that put their heads out of the dining room, that crowded from the kitchen. That leaned over the balconies on higher floors. So much of what went on in a hotel had to be unspoken. A gaze exchanged across a hallway, a subtle hand gesture from a balcony, a quiet anticipation of what the other needed, keeping the work of luxury silent.

Now everyone was looking at Hoss. Trusting her, as they had always trusted her. She didn’t know what Griff had told them—she was certain he had told them something —but she knew what she had told them.

Leave the water to me.

They had made something wonderful together, but the cost of luxury had become too steep. She didn’t know what the Avallon would be after this, but she knew it would never be this again.

With her expression, June told her beloved staff: Thank you.

With her heart, June told the water: Be free.

The font beneath her hand spilled water onto the tile beneath it.

Water formed glistening beads on the plaster ceiling far overhead. Water trickled from behind the paintings on the walls. Water seeped from the fonts on either side of the front door, as diplomats backed away. In the halls, in the Grotto, in the rooms. Pipes burst. Tubs coughed and spit water from their drains. The walls wept water. Where was it all coming from? There was so much. They were on a mountain, but the unwelcome guests were all suddenly up to their ankles in water.

A mighty crash sounded from overhead. Not 411 throwing furniture. Something violent was occurring in the Wolfes’ old suite—Francis Gilfoyle’s old suite.

Oh, the smell!

For so long, the metallic, sulfuric odor of the sweetwater had been synonymous with the Avallon. But now, every other scent of the hotel was flowing from the fonts. Shoe polish and new leather. Freshly cleaned sheets and just-soaped carpets. Coffee in the morning and bourbon at night. Decades of human activity that had seeped into the water, teaching it everything it knew.

Confusion murmured and then shouted through the lobby. It was imperative to get the people out of the building as quickly as possible. Federal agents and Avallon porters and Border Patrol agents and state troopers mingled with the crowd, everything in chaos, as people flooded out the front doors. It was all going according to plan. How June loved a plan.

···

The water was everywhere. As Tucker pushed out of the lobby, it pushed back, swirling against his legs. It poured down the stairs the Nazis had descended moments before. He jerked back to avoid a chandelier as it fell from the soaked ceiling above him. The fixture landed in the middle of the hallway with a muffled splash, looking like a partially submerged shipwreck as he edged around it. The lights flickered. For a moment, he thought about going back the way he had come, back toward the voices lifted in urgency.

And then the lights went out altogether.

Once again he found himself in a tunnel filling with sweetwater. When he reached out to guide himself, the wallpaper was already soaked. He heard the rushing of water from somewhere else in the walls. But he was no longer a boy, he thought, and this water didn’t stink of sadness and blood. It was listening to June Hudson, and she was pressing all the joy and love and passion she’d felt for this place into it.

Tucker realized he wasn’t afraid.

So he pressed on, moving as quickly as he could in the dim light. He was headed to the first-floor storage room where Sebastian Hepp was held. Hugh was outside, with plenty of witnesses; he would not be blamed for Sebastian’s escape. Tucker didn’t want to take the fall, either, but more than that, he didn’t want Sebastian Hepp to be electrocuted in Sparky just so that Pony Harris could be promoted. He didn’t have the storage room’s key, but it didn’t matter. He’d kick down the door. It would break. This hotel had not been built to be a prison.

Just as he lifted a foot for the first blow, though, he heard a mighty roar. It was a sound he had heard before, many years before. It was the sound of a great, faceless beast, with a mind like a mirror. The sweetwater was rushing through the corridor toward him in the dark. Tucker just had time to suck in a massive breath before—

The water hit the wall beside him with explosive force.

Tucker was knocked off his feet. He felt debris chaos right up against his body, and he tasted happiness , and then, just as quickly as it had arrived, the water was gone. The roaring ebbed away down the corridor as the destruction continued downstream. He was out of breath and he was sopping wet, but he did not know if he had ever been in danger. The sweetwater was listening to June Hudson, and he knew how she felt about him.

He still wasn’t afraid.

“Agent Minnick,” Sebastian Hepp said, voice shocked. The water had ripped the door right from its hinges.

“Here is what you are going to do,” Tucker said. He put a handful of sodden money in Sebastian’s palm. “Change your name. Disappear.”

“The lawyer—”

“The law prefers you dead right now.”

Sebastian put the money in his pocket. His eyes were round. Wow.

The water rumbled in the nearby elevator shaft. The sound had turned eerie; the confusion and fear of the legations would soon overwhelm June’s control. Things were coming to an end.

By the time Tucker had pushed back the way he came, there was no sign of Sebastian Hepp.

···

“Do you hear what the water is saying?” June whispered to Hannelore, their hands still submerged in the fountain.

Run.

The German girl gazed over the lobby; they were the only ones still left. She was standing straight, but somehow, she looked uncivilized. Wild. She looked, June thought, like the water running beneath the church in Casto Springs. Water wasn’t just one thing; it could be rain, snow, ice, and rivers. Hannelore had her entire life ahead of her. June had her entire life ahead of her.

Then, as sweetwater cascaded down the stairs, smelling of flowers, of fruit, of delicately spiced vanilla, of a hotel slowly weeping from every seam, June led Hannelore away.