Rules of Deception

It was not the first time this week that unknown people had been looking for Fräulein Kruger. Two nights earlier, she’d seen a pair of men acting strangely outside the building. She’d entered without speaking to them, and later, she’d heard noises on the landing and looked out her peephole in time to see them entering Eva’s apartment. She still felt bad for not having alerted the police.

And now a man with a neck wound who was practically bleeding on the ground!

She would not make the same mistake twice.

Returning to her living room, she picked up the phone and called the police. “Yes, Officer,” she said. “I’d like to report a…” She wasn’t sure what it was. The man did, after all, have a key. She brushed off her worries. He was an intruder. “I’d like to report an intruder at Waldhoheweg 30. Please come right away. He’s inside now.”

They had been there . This time they hadn’t taken care to conceal their presence, Jonathan observed. What he saw before him was evidence of a painstaking and methodical search conducted without fear of discovery.

The living room was large and sparsely furnished, lit by track lights. Directly in front of him was a black leather couch, its cushions removed, lined up beside it as if it were to be cleaned. Books had been pulled from the shelves and stacked on the floor. Magazines likewise. A Persian carpet had been rolled up and not quite rolled back. There was an Eames chair. A sleek coffee table with too much chrome and polished metal. A tortured sliver of steel that passed as a sculpture. Someone had lived here…but it wasn’t Emma.

He slid the driver’s license from his pocket and stared at the picture of his wife. The furniture matched the chic glasses, the severe hair, the glaring lipstick. It was Eva Kruger’s furniture.

He forced himself to make a tour. The kitchen was clean to the point of being antiseptic. Cupboards open. Plates removed, stacked on the counter. Glasses likewise. He opened the refrigerator. Orange juice. White wine. Champagne. A tin of beluga caviar. An onion. A loaf of packaged black bread. A jar of pickles. It was an apartment in which to entertain during her “lightning safaris.”

In the freezer, there was a bottle of Polish vodka in an ice ring. He checked the brand. Zubrowka. Made from buffalo grass. Two frosted shot glasses sat on the rack above it.

Opening the bottle, he poured himself a shot. The vodka was colored a pale yellow and had the consistency of syrup. He put it to his lips and knocked his head back. “To Emma,” he said aloud. “Whoever you really were.”

The liquid slid down like silk on fire.

A fulsome sadness settled on him. The weight pressed on his shoulders and made the ten steps to the study an epic journey. It was another small room. Immaculate. A metal desk and the Aeron chair that Emma coveted but could never afford. The computer had been removed, but the power cords lay on the floor next to a laser printer. No papers. No notes.

He walked into the bedroom. The sheets had been removed and thrown into the corner. The pillows cut open. The closets held a few outfits. A symphony of black. Armani. Dior. Gucci. Shoes to match. Five and a halfs. Emma’s size. (Why must he constantly check when he already knew?) And one cocktail dress, also black, cut to elicit gasps from the most jaded guest.

Against his will, he imagined Emma walking into the room wearing it. His eyes traveled up her long legs, stopping to admire her cleavage, then taking in the auburn hair that fell in waves to her shoulders. Yes, he decided, it would fulfill its purpose. She’d chosen the perfect attire to serve vodka and caviar for two.

Emma Ransom and Eva Kruger. Two people. Two personalities. But which one was real? How was he supposed to tell the difference between truth and fiction? And if he couldn’t, how had Emma?

It dawned on him that he was a part of it, too. Dr. Jonathan Ransom, globe-trotting physician conveniently stationed in all the world’s hot spots. After all, he’d been moved to Geneva for Emma to be involved in this…in Thor…whatever it was. Why shouldn’t it have happened before?

Jonathan as pawn.

No, not as pawn. As cover.

He sat down on the edge of the bed and picked up the phone. The dial tone purred in his ear. He called the international operator and asked for the number of St. Mary’s Hospital, Penzance, England.

“How far back did it go?” he asked himself. Before Beirut, there was Darfur. And before Darfur, Indonesia, Kosovo, and Liberia, where Emma had greeted him in a battered jeep on the airport tarmac.

Where had Emma drawn the line? Or more importantly, when?

Jonathan took down the hospital’s number and dialed it. A pleasant English voice answered and he asked to be transferred to Records. A woman came on the line. “Records.”

“I’m calling from Switzerland. My wife recently died and I need to obtain a copy of her birth certificate for the authorities. She was born in your hospital.”

“I’ll be happy to fax a copy once we receive an official inquiry.”

“I’m sure that won’t be a problem, but right now, I just need to confirm that you have the original document. Her name was Emma Rose. Born November 12, 1975.”

“Give me a minute,” said the woman.

Jonathan tucked the phone under his ear. He was holding Eva Kruger’s wedding ring. It came to him that there was no sign of a Mr. Kruger in the apartment. Why did she have the ring? he wondered. Everything else was so meticulous. An entire double life right down to the false eyelashes.

“Sir, this is Nurse Poole. We found a record of Emma Rose.”

“Good. I mean, thank you.” The news interrupted his musings. It was difficult to speak. He was on the verge of either breaking down or begi

In his mind, he had a picture of him and Emma driving past the hospital in Penzance, a squat red-brick building in the center of town. It was their only visit to her hometown, made a year after their marriage. “And that’s where it all began,” Emma was saying proudly. “I came into the world at seven sharp, crying like a banshee. I haven’t shut up since. It’s where Mum died. Circle of life and all that, I guess.”

The nurse went on. “There is one problem. You’re certain that she was born in 1975?”

“Absolutely.”

“It is rather strange, you see. Was her middle name by chance ‘Everett’?”

“Yes.”

More proof that it was her. She wasn’t Eva Kruger. She was Emma. His Emma.

“I did, in fact, manage to find an Emma Everett Rose in our records,” the nurse said, her voice harder now. “She was also born on November twelfth…but a year earlier. That’s the problem.”

“There must be some kind of typo on the document. It has to be her.”

“I’m afraid not,” stated the nurse. “I don’t know quite how to say this.”

Jonathan moved to the edge of the bed. “Say what?”

“I’m sorry, sir, but Emma Everett Rose, born November twelfth, 1974, in St. Mary’s Hospital, is dead. She was killed in a car accident two weeks after her birth, on November the twenty-sixth.”