Garden of Beasts

into a table and fell to the floor, where he lay crumpled like the German bisque doll that had landed beside him, unbroken, staring at the ceiling with her eerie, violet eyes.
    •   •   •
    “You’re a ringer, right? You’re not Reggie Morgan.”
    Paul didn’t bother to explain that he’d done what every smart button man has to do—memorize the appearance of a room when he left it and then match that memory with what the place looks like when he returned. He’d seen the closet door, which he’d left closed, was open a few inches. Knowing that Taggert would have to track him down and kill him, he knew that’s where the man was hiding.
    “I—”
    “Who?” Paul growled.
    When the man said nothing, Paul took him by the collar with one hand and, with the other, emptied his jacket pocket: a wallet, a number of American passports, a U.S. diplomatic identity card in the name of Robert Taggert and the Stormtrooper card he’d flashed at Paul in the alley when they’d met.
    “Don’t move,” Paul muttered, then examined the find.The wallet was Reginald Morgan’s; it contained an ID card, some business cards with his name and an address on Bremer Street in Berlin and one in Washington, D.C. There were several photographs too—all depicting the man who’d been killed in Dresden Alley. One photo had been taken at a social function. He stood between an elderly man and woman, his arms around them both, all smiling at the Kodak.
    One of the passports, well used and filled with entry and exit stamps, was in Morgan’s name. It too contained a picture of the man from the alley.
    Another passport—the one he’d showed Paul yesterday—also contained the name Reginald Morgan but the picture was of the man in front of him. Now, he held it under a lamp and examined the document closely. It seemed phony. A second passport, which seemed genuine, contained dozens of stamps and visas and was in the name of Robert Taggert, like the diplomatic ID card. The two remaining passports, a U.S. one in the name of Robert Gardner and a German one in the name of Artur Schmidt, had pictures of the man here.
    So this guy on the floor in front of him had killed his contact in Berlin and taken over his identity, Paul understood.
    “Okay, what’s the game?”
    “Just settle down, buddy. Don’t do anything stupid.” The man had dropped the stiff Reggie Morgan persona. The one who emerged was slick, like one of Lucky Luciano’s sharkskin-suited Manhattan underbosses.
    Paul held up the passport he thought was genuine. “This’s you. Taggert, right?”
    The man pressed his jaw and neck where Paul had hit him and rubbed the reddened area. “You got me, Paulio.”
    “How’d it work?” He frowned. “You intercepted the pass codes about the tram, right? That’s why Morgan did a double-take in the alley. He thought I was the rat because I flubbed the phrase about the tram, same as I thought about him. Then you swapped documents when you were searching the body.” Paul read the Stormtrooper card. “‘Veterans’ Relief.’ Crap,” he snapped, furious he hadn’t looked at it more closely when Taggert had first flashed it at him. “Who the hell are you, mister?”
    “A businessman. I just do odd jobs for people.”
    “And you got picked because you looked a little like the real Reggie Morgan?”
    This offended him. “I got picked because I’m good.”
    “What about Max?”
    “He was legit. Morgan paid him a hundred marks to get him the wire on Ernst. Then I paid him two hundred to pretend I was Morgan.”
    Paul nodded. “That’s why the sap was so nervous. It wasn’t the SS he was afraid of; it was me.”
    But the history of the deception seemed to bore Taggert. He continued impatiently. “We’ve got some horse trading to do, my friend. Now—”
    “What was the point of this?”
    “Paulio, we don’t exactly have time for chats, don’t you think? Half the Gestapo’s looking for you.”
    “No, Taggert. If I’m understanding this right, thanks to you, they’re looking for some Russian. They don’t even know what I look like. And you wouldn’t lead ’em back here—at least not until after you’d killed me. So we’ve got all the time in the world. Now, spill.”
    “This is about bigger things than you and me, buddy.” Taggert moved his jaw in a slow circle. “You fucking loosened my teeth.”
    “Tell me.”
    “It’s not—”
    Paul stepped closer, closing his hand into a fist.
    “Okay, okay,