VI.

The actual filming of the crash would take place near a small settlement called Nugatsiak, as a suitably stable iceberg was in the immediate vicinity. Mitch was supposed to fly to Udet's camp with Leni Riefenstahl, pick up the Moth, then return and crash the Moth at the iceberg in question, with the crew getting Riefenstahl and Mitch out of the icy water afterwards. Fanck was already on site, having departed immediately once he knew he had his replacement pilot, but Schneeberger, who was still grateful for the bear taming, offered to take Stasi with him when he joined the director, so she could watch and know Mitch was fine immediately afterwards.

"Oh, and if I were you, I'd, um, wear rubber pants. We all do here. It's impossible to be out for long without getting wet, no matter whether you're on a boat or on a glacier. Mr. Sorley can have some of mine, but you'll have to ask Leni for some of hers."

Stasi raised an eyebrow. "Rubber pants come in gender editions?"

"It's not that," Schneeberger said matter-of-factly. "It's that I'm twice your size, and you'll want them to be tight, trust me. Anyway, Leni has plenty, since Fanck didn't want to risk her getting sick. Just ask her."

"Yeah, why don't you become underwear-swapping chums," the ghost commented bitterly. Max Schirmer's outrage and disappointment hadn't abated since he'd heard her reply to Mitch. He'd then disappeared for a while, had, she assumed, tried on his own to perform a possession, and had found out what she could have told him: without any additional magic boost and faced with an unwilling, pig-headed opponent like the Riefenstahl woman, he was bound to fail.

"Mitch wasn't wrong about what unasked for possession is like, you know," Stasi said quietly while walking in the direction of Leni Riefenstahl's tent.

"I'm not a goddamn rapist," Schirmer raged. "Never in my life - but I'm not alive anymore, am I? And whose fault is that? Anyway, it's not like rape. It's like dressing up in someone else's clothes."

"Trust me, it's really, really not."

"And how would you know? You're not a ghost. And don't tell me someone did it to you. You feel like a fortress."

"A long, long time ago," Stasi said, and the ever present howls and barkings nearly drowned out her words, "someone died. I loved her, I didn't want to let her go, and so I didn't. I made her stay. Stay with me. I took the essence that was her and forced her inside me. Forced, because you see, she didn't want to stay. Not at all. But I wasn't listening to anything but my own grief and need. That's how I found out people are wrong about how Dybbuks are made. Not when a dead person wants to possess the living. When a living person who has the power without any of the common sense refuses to let go of the dead."

The ghost fell silent. He became almost translucent, with the dirty snow of the road shimmering through him. But he didn't vanish, not even when she'd reached the tent, which turned out to be equipped with some basic furniture made of wooden crates and a carpet made of dog fur. Leni Riefenstahl was already dressed in clothing that very much resembled Alma's when she was working; Stasi recalled that the character Riefenstahl was playing was a pilot. Having had a lifetime of experience with the type, she didn't expect the other woman to apologize for her earlier remarks. Undoubtedly, in the actress' mind, she was the one who had been treated rudely. Nonetheless, Stasi was surprised at the chipperness with which she was greeted.

"Ah, it's the raven haired beauty! Say, have you ever considered acting? That's why I asked whether you had training as a dancer when we met. You do have charisma and showmanship. Look, I'm really proud of The Blue Light, but I was directing myself there, and it was exhausting even for me. So my next one will probably star someone else."

Stasi could read people very well, not due to her psychic gifts but due to powers of observation she'd honed through all her life. There was absolutely no sign Leni Riefenstahl was feigning the cheerful tone in which she asked, or the friendly, eager expression on her face. It was, Stasi thought, as if nothing but the present and her own needs existed in this woman's head; she didn't assume anyone would be less than delighted at the prospect of starring in a movie because she herself would have been, because that was what she wanted, and because anything else like an inconvenient insult had been rewritten as a joke if it was remembered at all.

"It's a bit late in life for a change of profession for me," Stasi said neutrally.

"Nonsense! It never is. Just look at me. Every time someone told me I wouldn't be able to do something, I did it anyway. Of course there are obstacles. You should have seen Fanck's face when I told him I was going to direct. He couldn't decide between "but you're a woman", "but you're an actress" and "but I own you". I showed him. And honestly, if Joe von Sternberg can make a second rate bit of plump flesh like Marlene into a star, I can do that for much more promising material. I've got his camera man already, and I've made him tell me all his tricks."

"I'll think about it," Stasi said, to put an end to the topic. "For now, a pair of rubber pants would do."

Leni Riefenstahl sighed. "So prosaic. You've been in America for too long." But she did go to the small cupboard furnished from wooden box material and provided the longed for underwear.

Stasi was tempted to reply that no one had ever accused her of being prosaic before. But there was something else she needed from Riefenstahl. "Trust me, everyone in the US wants to be in the movies," she returned instead. "It's the Russian in me that's cautious. Would you mind if I read cards for you? I dabble. It was something to pass away the time when we were hiding from Bolsheviks in the Datscha."

She had rarely met someone who was as uninterested in the Countess' tragic past as Leni Riefenstahl was, who simply ignored any of the cues Stasi provided. The other woman shrugged.

"Oh, why not? I do have a soft spot for mysticism."

Stasi's main reason for this was that the woman was about to participate in a plane crash with Mitch, and while she trusted Mitch's skills to execute this insane stunt, it couldn't hurt to reassure herself. Of course, she could have read the cards for him on her own, but it helped if the person whose future was concerned was actually present. As she'd once explained to Lewis, precognition was based on recognizing patterns. The future was always in motion, and to a degree could be altered, but if someone was weaving a pattern around them, you could follow the strings with a great degree of accuracy.

Her other reason had to do with the still present Max Schirmer. The ghost maintained his silence, not just in terms of words but of body language. He had been reducing himself to his outlines. But there he had stopped. Either he was still hoping she'd change her mind, despite what she had told him, or he simply wasn't ready to go yet.

Using the tarot pack she always carried with her, she first shuffled, then made Leni Riefenstahl reshuffle it and pick three cards, then three cards more. Laying these out opposite each other on a wooden-box-cum-table, Stasi found the Chariot, the Wheel of Fortune, The Tower, The Star, the Emperor and Judgment. She stared at the icy mountains and tidal waves of the Judgment card and frowned.

"Well?" Leni Riefenstahl asked, sounding both curious and impatient.

"If you continue on your current way," Stasi said, dispensing with the explanation about what the symbolism of the individual cards actually meant, and simplifying the pattern for herself as much as for Riefenstahl, "all your dreams will come true - for a while. Fame, power in your chosen field, they will be yours, and what you create will never be forgotten. But then fame will turn into infamy. Fall. You will never do what you do best again. On the other hand, if you choose another way, you will never reach the heights of fame, but neither will you ever lose the chance to work, nor will you lose respect. You'll choose life or death as an ally, and depending on your choice, the way will follow. But the chance to alter that choice will pass soon."

Today, the pilot's cap she wore hid all of Leni Riefenstahl's brown curls, and her face, which outdoors, set against the ever present snow, had looked tanned, now appeared curiously white beneath it. After pondering what Stasi had said, she peered at the cards as well, then at Stasi's face, as if to discern whether or not Stasi was serious.

"Hm," Riefenstahl said at last. "It's Achilles' choice, isn't it? Fame and brief, blazing glory against a long life as a mediocrity. Well, I've always favored fire."

"Achilles came to believe he chose wrongly, though", Stasi replied.

"No, he didn't!" Leni Riefenstahl protested. "I know my Greek myths!"

"It's in the Odyssey," Stasi pointed out. "When Odysseus meets his shade in the underworld, Achilles says he'd give all his fame and glory for a long life as a farmer."

Riefenstahl wrinkled her nose. "Well, Odysseus always was a liar. I'm sure he made that up."

Stasi shrugged, and collected her cards. Beneath her calm demeanor, her heart was pounding. It wasn't that she'd lied herself right now. But she had left things out. The pattern this woman was fast becoming a part of if she remained on her path was something that felt worse than anything Stasi had ever sensed before, and she'd encountered death and destruction galore. There was a sticky, all consuming blindness to it, a greedy nothingness stretching out to swallow life whole.

She'd given her warning. Stasi didn't believe in choosing for other people. She'd make that mistake once, in the worst way, and she would never do so again. As to the immediate future, though...

"Why haven't you refused to do this crash scene?" Stasi asked with genuine curiosity. "It's not like your director could fire and replace you at this point. And you don't want to go on acting for him anyway. Why take the risk?"
Riefenstahl laughed, a careless, girlish laugh that made her look younger.

"Because I've never done it before! Isn't that the best reason for anything?"

For a moment, Stasi saw herself mirrored there. The devil-may-care thrill seeking that was also in her. Sometimes, she'd wondered who she would have been if she'd been born into a different life, a different background. Then again, she'd shed so many guises she didn't find fitting that she didn't want to believe she'd ever have chosen this one. And it was a choice. It always was.

As she left the tent, Max Schirmer muttered, Berlin accent stronger than ever: "Never mind fame, nice to have a choice between life and death at all. Some of us didn't."

"You're making the same mistake she just did," Stasi replied. "The choice isn't between living and dying yourself. That's never entirely in our own hands, though it should be. No, it's between working for life, and working for death. I don't know much about your life, Max. But I'd like to think it wasn't all about spreading a death cult."

"What? No, it wasn't. I was a worker. Who tried to have a good time with his mates in the Eden when the goddamn Nazis stormed in."

"There you go, darling. It's a bloody shame it ended this way, but how to handle that is still your choice. I didn't bring you along just to disappoint you. There's a reason why I didn't tell you outright I don't do possessions. I thought it would be nice for you to see something splendid before you cross over, and, well, the scenery here can't be topped."

"I'm not a la-di-da tourist," he grumbled.

"And you could save a life before you go. It helps with the crossing over."

The future was always in motion, and as skilled a pilot as Mitch was, there were about a thousand things that could go wrong if you crashed a plane on an iceberg and fell into the icy sea. As she'd feared, there was no certainty in the cards. None.

"You - you're really something, doll. First you and your man make out that I'm a goddamn rapist if I use that bitch to kill fucking Hitler, and now I'm supposed to play guardian angel for you?"

"Well, I don't know about you," Stasi said. "But going out as a life saving hero strikes me as a good curtain call to take."

He was silent again. Shortly before she'd reached the wooden church where she could change her clothes, he asked: "What happened to... you know, the dead woman you locked into your body?"

The horror and the shame of that time were firmly locked in a chamber of her mind she usually never opened. But for a moment, Stasi allowed herself a look.

"We drove each other insane, and then I finally let her go. The memory of her joy and relief when she left burns me still."

There was nothing of frivolous, light hearted or ironic in her voice, nothing that formed a part of being Stasi, as she added: "If it was her who left. Before we parted, I had lost all sense as to which of us I was. And that, Max, is the price you pay if you force a possession."