by Robert Brown
In front of him marched a kid who couldn’t have been much over fifteen. A big, lanky adolescent who sported a shaved head, gray jacket, camo pants, and boots. So Poland had skinheads. He shouldn’t be surprised. Stupidity was universal. He curled his lip in disgust, then quickly turned it into a mask of anger like everyone else. This was the real problem with these damn groups, they corrupted kids into their toxic way of thinking.
He made a mental image of this young thug—shit home life, no hope for the future, a string of petty crimes behind him, and then comes some older figure or group who accepts him and wants to “bring him up right”. The kid latches onto it like a life preserver thrown to a drowning man.
And then they have him.
Heinrich’s stomach turned again and he tastes bile in the back of his throat.
He walked as if in a dream. Everything seemed distant, the sounds muted, reality twisted. Heinrich’s mind fled the present, but found no solace in the past.
All the old questions came back. Why had his grandfather not told him about his life during the war? Had old Otto been ashamed of what his younger self had done? No, because he had given money to the Purity League. Then why hide his past? Did he fear the judgment of his grandson? Did he want to bask in the approval of a younger generation that saw his kind as the epitome of evil? Or did he simply fear the long arm of the law?
When the trial hit, Heinrich didn’t spend much time on denial, because suddenly a lot of things clicked. Not so much what Otto said but the way he said it. “You have to be proud of the Volk.” “Find a nice girl, someone like you.” “People don’t respect their heritage these days.” “Stalin was the real villain of the twentieth century.”
Plus, the evidence had been overwhelming. No amount of denial could have resisted what came out in the papers.
Grandpa Otto had tried to put the past behind him, to cover his guilt with a mantle of middle class respectability. But the past had a way of catching up with you. It had caught up with Grandpa Otto, and now it was catching up with Heinrich.
He looked back at the kid in front of him. The little bastard shouted “Sieg Heil!” and shot his arm out in a Nazi salute. Heinrich felt a mixture of disgust and pity. This little punk had no future, and it was thanks to the manipulative bastards all around him.
Heinrich was looking at the kid so closely he didn’t notice the Communists rushing out of a side alley until too late.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Commies came in a rush, wielding long wooden dowels that had probably been flagpoles until the last minute.
Now they were weapons, and those weapons smacked down on the marchers on the right flank of the parade.
Exactly where Heinrich was.
Only one person marched to the right of him, a thug in his twenties with an “88” tattooed on his neck. Mr. 88 saw the attackers just in time to bring up an arm to shield his head from the wooden rod swishing down.
Heinrich heard the sickening crack as the man’s forearm snapped.
Then he had to look out for himself.
Another Communist, a longhair who looked like a college student but strong enough to do him a world of hurt with a club, came right for him, swinging his weapon in a wide horizontal arc.
Heinrich ducked low, felt the rush of air as it passed an inch overhead, and gave him a right cross right in the crotch.
Hippie Student doubled over but Heinrich didn’t have time to double tap him because the weight of the attacking crowd hit the march like an avalanche. The space all around him exploded into a fury of flying fists, smashing clubs, and booted kicks.
Heinrich lashed out with a left hook that took someone down, then grunted in pain as a club smacked across the back of his shoulder. He spun to see who had attacked him, couldn’t pick him out from the swirl of the crowd, and hit the nearest guy who looked like a Red.
His shoulder sang with pain, but he ignored it, the adrenaline kicking in and making his fists into a pair of hammers, striking out again and again.
The Nazis rallied quickly, surging forward to regain territory after their initial shock. Skinheads, beer louts, and tough scum of all sorts poured into the fight.
But the Communists had weapons and organization. They formed a rough phalanx and smacked down with their clubs, cracking heads and smashing knees. A few of their number had strayed away from the pack and the Nazis descended on them mercilessly, stomping them with heavy boots. Blood spread on the cobblestones.
Brass knuckles and homemade saps appeared out of pockets, and the Nazis drove once again at the Communist ranks. Heinrich got pushed aside as the biggest bruisers from the march moved to the front.
The Reds gave ground, their organization breaking up as more of them got taken out. The line disintegrated into a dozen individual fights. A roar from the Nazis tokened their bloodlust. The tide had shifted. They sensed victory.
But not yet, and not cheap. The Reds renewed their attack, flailing desperately with their clubs, or stabbing with the jagged ends of those that had broken. A Nazi just in front of Heinrich took one in the eye and spun back screaming, clutching his spurting socket to fall in Heinrich’s arms.
Out of instinct, Heinrich pulled him away from the fray, but a scene he spotted through the crowd made him let go.
The skinhead kid who had been marching ahead of him was in a world of trouble. Backed against the wall of the alley, he was trying to fend off three Commies. Somehow the kid had grabbed a wooden dowel, and he was using it as a shield to fend off his attackers. A big welt on his face showed he hadn’t been entirely successful.
Without thinking, Heinrich shoved through the crowd, pushing aside Nazis and Communists alike. He got there just in time to see the kid get jabbed in the gut and fall to his knees. The Red nearest Heinrich raised his stick for the kill …
… and got Heinrich’s hard fist straight to the kidney.
Heinrich used the momentum of his run to add force to it. The Red let out a gasp and flew forward to land on the kid, shielding him the instant before another stick came swooshing down.
Instead of hitting the kid in the face, the stick cracked on the back of the Communist’s head.
Heinrich laughed as he swung a left hook that took out Mr. Friendly Fire with a hard connect to his jaw. The guy toppled backwards.
That left the third Communist. This one was older, more cautious. He had the look of a working man to him, with a cauliflower ear and a dozen little facial scars that showed he was no stranger to fighting.
His stick was shorter, thicker, a well balanced weapon that he no doubt had carved himself.
The Communist took a couple of steps back, but Heinrich wasn’t fooled. This guy wasn’t the type to retreat. Heinrich got in a boxing stance, both arms up, balanced on the balls of his feet and ready to duck any way that would get him clear of that club.
His opponent made a feint that Heinrich almost fell for and came in fast and low, swinging at Heinrich’s forward knee. Heinrich darted back, then had to jerk his head away as the swing turned into an uppercut with the tip of the club. Heinrich responded with a right hook that only met air as the guy dodged as quickly as Heinrich had.
All the surrounding fighting might as well not have existed. These two trained fighters circled and ducked and wove, searching for an advantage and finding none. Heinrich dodged three more swings, but the guy recovered too quickly for Heinrich to slip inside his guard. He got the sickening feeling that it was only a matter of time before this Commie got him.
Just then—a miracle. A stick came flying in front of him, tossed from the direction of the kid.
Heinrich didn’t have time to see if it had really been the kid who threw it to him. He grabbed it, then almost got it knocked out of his hand by a swing from his opponent’s club. A quick jump back saved him from another swing to his face.
He backed away another couple of steps to buy him some room and got a proper grip on the stick.
His opponent looked concerned, but not cow
ed. Nothing was going to stop this fight before one or the other of them lay in a pool of blood on the ground.
Wrong.
A bang and a hiss, and suddenly the air was filled with a billowing cloud of yellowish-gray smoke.
The smoke hit Heinrich’s nostrils, lungs, and eyes like a thousand tiny razors. His eyes teared up, and he started hacking like a lifelong chain smoker. Through the smoke he saw his opponent just as bad off as he was, alone in the fog as both sides scattered.
Heinrich swung at him, but the effects of the tear gas made him miss by a mile. Coughing and almost blind, Heinrich moved to where he had last seen the kid.
He found him bent over next to the two knocked out Commies, coughing his lungs out.
Heinrich grabbed him by the collar, hauled him to his feet, and ran.
In his disorientation, he took the worst route he could have.
They got away from the cloud of gas, the kid barely able to keep to his feet, Heinrich blinking away tears and only able to see the ground ahead of him.
He stopped, leaning against the wall, trying to recover.
Then he saw where they had ended up.
The alley.
Just ahead were the receding backs of a dozen coughing, choking Communists.
One looked over his shoulder and spotted them.
Alone, Heinrich might have passed for either side or even an innocent bystander, but with a teenaged skinhead leaning on him for support, he looked like meat for the slaughter.
The Red shouted something in Polish that Heinrich was too far gone to catch. It didn’t matter. The meaning was clear enough.
Yanking on the kid’s arm, he sprinted for the cloud of tear gas filling the end of the alley, thinking the Communists wouldn’t chase them into it.
Wrong again.
Their blood was up. Frustrated at not crushing the Nazis before being forced to retreat, they saw their chance to take out their anger on two isolated members of the march. Who cared if the foreign-looking guy had a club? They all had clubs and there were a dozen of them. They could beat him and the snot-nosed kid to a bloody pulp.
How could a bit of tear gas stop the fun of that?
The Communists sprinted after them with an animalistic roar. Glancing back, Heinrich could see them gaining. They hadn’t gotten as much of a whiff of the gas and had recovered quicker. One, especially, had broken out from the pack, a big lunk of a man who looked like he was a steelworker or a longshoreman or something. These weren’t like the pinko soy boys back home. These Communists really were workers and had the muscles to match.
Heinrich shoved the kid ahead of him, propelling him into the cloud of gas, then turned and swung out with his stick.
His pursuer was more eager than intelligent, and before he could stop or even slow down, took the end of Heinrich’s stick straight across the mouth. He spun in place, spitting teeth, got bowled over by two of his comrades coming up behind.
A couple of quick swings brought one of them down and sent the other backpedaling away, giving Heinrich the precious seconds he needed to take a deep breath, closed one eye, and duck into the cloud of tear gas.
The street had mostly cleared out, the people from both sides scattering. A few lay unconscious on the ground, and he heard the sound of hundreds of people shouting to his left, back in the direction the march had gone. He spotted the kid heading that way.
Heinrich ran to cut him off.
It only took a few seconds to catch him, but by the time he did they were both hacking and tearing up again. Glancing over his shoulder, Heinrich could just make out the entrance to the alley. Several Communists had stopped there, peering around the smoky street. They rubbed their eyes and coughed. Heinrich couldn’t be sure if they had spotted him or not, but the sight of their comrade’s teeth sprinkled on the ground and the gas they sucked in with every breath killed their bloodlust. They retreated.
Heinrich led the kid across the street, found another alley, and hustled him down it.
The kid pointed toward the sound of the crowd and coughed out something that sounded like, “They’re that way.”
“The police will come. We need to go,” Heinrich replied, impressed that he could make a coherent sentence in Polish given the circumstances.
“Wait.”
The kid stopped and pulled out a water bottle from his jacket pocket. He poured water over his face and eyes, then handed it to Heinrich, who followed suit.
He immediately felt better although he knew his eyes would be red and swollen for some time. Wetting his fingers, he cleaned out his nostrils, then had to pour some water in his ears because the tear gas had even penetrated into the sensitive skin of his ear canals. He handed the bottle back to the kid with a thank you and watched as he bathed his face again.
Once the kid finished, he turned his dripping face to Heinrich.
“Where are you from?”
“America.”
To Heinrich’s surprise, the kid replied in English. “Cool. Thank you for helping me. You really beat those guys.”
“Let’s get out of here before they come back, or the cops do.”
They started walking quickly down the alley. The kid looked up at him and grinned.
“No problem. You beat them again!” He made a few punches in the air. “You a, um, what is the word?”
“Boxer? Yeah, I am.”
“Cool! You fight good. Better than that Jewish scum.”
Heinrich resisted the urge to slap him.
“Those weren’t Jews, they were Communists.”
“Communism is Jewish trick to destroy peoples of Europe. All Communists are Jews even if they aren’t Jewish.”
Remind me again why I saved this kid’s life? Heinrich thought.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Jan.”
“Well, we better get you back to your parents, Jan.”
Maybe they’ll beat some sense into you.
“Them?” Jan spat on the cobblestones. “They assholes.”
Heinrich paused, then said. “You should go home anyway. It’s too dangerous out here. Where do you live?”
“Wałbrzych.”
Heinrich stopped in his tracks. “Really? You related to Dieter Freytag?”
Jan’s face clouded over with a mixture of grief and anger. “He my uncle.”
So there it was—that lucky break he always hoped for in a case and so rarely got. The one connection that pointed the way forward and brought him effortlessly a step closer to its solution. It happened so rarely that it always felt like winning the lottery.
Except this time, it took the form of a strutting teenaged Nazi skinhead.
Some luck.
The roar of the riot had faded behind them, but shouts and the sound of running feet echoed through the alleyway. The alley wound its way crazily between buildings, following some old route from before the days of town planning. Heinrich was beginning to get lost. They passed between two high buildings and came to a side street. A group of men ran around a far corner, gone too quick to see what side they were on. A siren wailed in the distance. The boom of another tear gas canister going off rattled the windows of a nearby house.
For the moment they were alone. Heinrich looked around nervously. The way this kid dressed acted like a beacon for Antifa and the Reds. They’d escaped just as much through luck as fighting, and he didn’t want to roll the dice again.
He pulled Jan into the recessed doorway of an apartment building. A heavy wooden door was shut tight against all the trouble in the street. Heinrich pulled off his coat.
Jan shoved him. “What you do? You faggot?”
“No, idiot. We’re trading coats.”
He handed him his coat.
Jan looked confused. “Why?”
“Because you’re a target. I have to get you out of here and back to Wałbrzych.”
“I take care of myself.”
Heinrich pointed at the red welt on his face. “Yeah, I can see that.”
“I save you when I give you that … ,” Jan said, drawing a stick in the air and puffing his chest out. Nevertheless, he took his jacket off and gave it to Heinrich.
Jan put on Heinrich’s overcoat. It was too big for him and made him look even younger. Jan looked at himself and nodded appreciatively. “Nice. You give to it me?”
“Hell, no,” Heinrich said, rolling up the kid’s coat and tucking it under his arm with the inside out.
“What’s your name?” Jan asked.
After a moment’s thought, he said, “Heinrich.”
He decided it was best not to start lying now. If the Nazis checked up on him and found out he was using a fake name, he wouldn’t last long. Besides, he always found that one lie led to another, and it was almost impossible to keep up a long string of them. That had tripped up more criminals than he could count.
It had tripped up his grandfather in the end.
Jan grinned. “A good German name.”
Maybe I should have lied after all.
Heinrich peeked out of the doorway. The coast was clear.
“I speak German too,” Jan said, then switched to German. “Do you speak German?”
“Of course,” Heinrich replied in the same language.
“Everyone in Wałbrzych learns it, because the town and the whole region is really part of Germany. The Jews gave it to Poland after the war.”
“Your German is better than your history, kid,” Heinrich said as he led him down the street. “The Soviets gave it to Poland.”
“It’s the same thing, I told you. Yeah, my German is good. I’ve always been good at languages. They’re easy.”
“You don’t strike me as the studious type.”
“School? Fuck school. I dropped out. I have better things to do.”
Like get beaten up by Commies?
“So tell me more about Wałbrzych. I’ve never been there.”
Before Jan could answer, a woman’s scream from inside an open garage cut through the air. Heinrich sprinted for the sound, Jan eagerly following.