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War is not coming to the Avallon, Gilfoyle had told her. How could it even find us? Turned out, it could just drive up the mountain, and he would open the front door.
And yet, like mice before snakes, deer before hunters, a certain type of gentle woman before a certain type of brutal man, humans pined and longed for these vistas.
He glanced over his shoulders at the other two FBI agents. “Wipe your shoes, fellas.” With the mountains at their backs, they entered the hotel, scuffing the January slush off their soles. Benjamin Pennybacker, his jaw squared with brave new optimism; Special Agent Hugh Calloway, graceful as Astaire; Special Agent Pony Harris, grin like a crocodile. Special Agent Tucker Minnick, tight as a piston. Heads down, hats in hand. Scuff scuff scuff.
Pony was a red-blooded young man in a way Tucker had never been, and the only role Tucker knew how to play with him was disappointed father.
It was a no with some real heft, a no you could put ham and cheese on. The room went silent to appreciate its substantiality.
It had a raw edge, despite the mannered furniture; a house too long without people became a little feral.
“I don’t need Hoss,” Tucker interrupted. “Just June.” She was completely silenced, absorbing his meaning. That first day, he’d stood in the Smith Library and given her the clean, cool facts of the upcoming detention, somehow correctly guessing she was someone who didn’t need life sugarcoated, even if she was always shaking sugar out for everyone else. And today, he guessed that sugarcoating cost her something, and offered her the ability to talk for free. Every interaction has a social cost, Mr. Francis had said. But what if some didn’t? Tucker said, “You don’t have to polish the bullets for
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“Sebastian Hepp was the one who gave the journalists the maids’ uniforms,” he said. Before she could consider how she felt about this information or why he might be telling her, he added, “I could arrest him. For assisting Nazis.” Warmth became fiery heat. “What the devil!” “I haven’t yet.” “Yet! Sebastian? Do you know what that would do to the Grotto? Do you know what that would do to him? For the crime of what? For the crime of kindness. For the crime of gentleness in this world, when he could’ve been any kind of man and he chose to be one with pity. For the—” “June,” he interrupted, and
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If I were to describe the letter, I think I would call it an uncomfortable portrait of an unathletic career man.”
“Erich,” Hertha said, taking off her hat. “Do you recognize me?” Erich von Limburg-Stirum was bright as the sun; his cheeks glowed. He said, “Of course I remember what heaven looks like.” “Gentlemen,” said Basil Pemberton, behind the counter, in his plummy voice, “that’s simply how it’s done.”
“He once knocked on my door, did you know? He said, ‘I just want to see what kind of a woman you are.’ ” “What kind of woman are you?” “The kind who did not open the door.
I know power. I can smell it on you.”
“It is not all bad. I persuaded the State Department that Lieselotte Berger’s suicide attempt was the gesture of an innocent woman, and Hertha made the numbers work. You gave her a life in America. You’ve done a magnificent job. It is not your fault that war is hell, and in hell, they compromise.”
June blinked. She did not think she was crying, but blinking still felt a little perilous.
A lifetime of being shaped by this job, and him with only a loose idea of what he would do on the other side of it.
Hugh asked, “You gonna tuck it in your bra so he notices it?”
“Sit down and clean yourself up. You smell like purgatory and look like hell.
Sabine said, “You ask me to give up one or the other.” “No,” Pennybacker replied, gravely. “I’m afraid your country is doing that.”
