Volk

by David Nickle

  “There were more now—more than twice as many. They weren’t in uniform at all, and some of them were nearly naked. Young men, some young women too. And yes, there were the old S.A. men too, the ones I knew from the farm—many of them by name. They stood in the midst of these new people, straight and still—as though they had stumbled into some gathering of the dead, and hoped not to be noticed. The new people stared pointedly at them, sometimes stepping close as though they had spotted some blemish, other times stepping back and simply looking, like artists framing a portrait.

  “Jason took my arm to hurry me across the field.

  “It was I would say three hundred yards from the steps of the farmhouse to the Latécoère. We started out simply walking, so as not to draw attention . . . and then, less than half the ground covered, a gunshot persuaded us to run. More gunshots followed, followed by screaming. . . .

  “I tried to look back, but Jason would not let me. He stayed just behind me, and every time I slowed he pushed my shoulder—not hard enough for me to stumble, but hard, so I kept running until we reached the Latécoère.

  “Jason climbed inside first, his hand on the Luger, and bade me follow once he pronounced it clear. Before I climbed aboard, I did look back. The gunfire had stopped, but it was impossible to say who had been firing. It had certainly done nothing to disperse the crowd; indeed, it might have grown, nearly five-fold. They milled between the farmhouse and the tents.

  “‘These are the children—the Hitler-Jugend you were sent to observe,’ I said. ‘Obviously,’ Jason agreed. ‘And Orlok?’ I asked, and he repeated back to me: ‘And Orlok.’

  “‘What exactly are they doing?’ I asked, as he took his seat in the co-pilot’s chair.

  “‘I’m not exactly sure,’ he said. ‘But I know they been living badly in that valley. There are orchards, and the water’s not a problem. There are deer in the woods that they sometimes catch, but they’re bad hunters. So it’s apples and water, the occasional deer, maybe a hare, and whatever stores they’ve managed to plunder.’

  “‘They have returned to the farmhouse for a good meal?’ I asked, and Jason laughed at that.

  “‘Logistics, sure.’ Then the laughter ended, and his face fell. ‘They had to get away,’ he said. ‘Like you.’

  “He did not say more about Orlok. He said some things—intimate things, regarding Fräulein Harper, which I will not repeat. But I took them greatly to heart, and told Fräulein Harper all of them, when we finally met.

  “Then he stepped outside as we started the engine, and he hauled the blocks from beneath the landing gear.”

  Zimmermann drew deep and drained his glass.

  “That was the last time that I spoke with Jason Thistledown.”

  Seven

  As Albert Zimmermann finished that last piece of his story, it left them all quiet. It had come out raw and wounded . . . with tears . . . and there were implications that set them all thinking.

  Kurtzweiller had opened another bottle, and as he filled everyone’s glasses, Lewis wondered aloud what had happened to Dominic, who had still not returned with coffee. Andrew agreed that was a good question, and rose to call downstairs: “Dominic! Do you need help?”

  When no answer came, Andrew stepped to the bend to peer down. The lights were dim, but not dark; Andrew could see the end of the bar, and seated at one stool, Dominic—or who he presumed to be Dominic, the view of his shoulders and higher blocked by the ground-floor ceiling.

  Andrew turned back to the room. “Drink up,” he said, and went downstairs to see about the Société’s newest member.

  “Do you need help?” asked Andrew again. He leaned on the bar beside Dominic, lowering his head so he could meet the other man’s eye. Dominic had helped himself to a cup of the coffee, and was staring into it, his hand shaking. He sipped it noisily.

  “I did see a Juke,” he said, “in Iceland. Didn’t I?”

  “Yes,” said Andrew. “I think you did.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I lost the trail . . . I ran. There was more to learn, and it should have been obvious to me. I failed you, didn’t I?”

  Andrew sighed. “You did,” he said. “Sure. You lost the trail. You ran. You failed. Just like we all have. We’ve been trying to investigate this for years . . . decades, some of us. We were better at it, we’d be closer.”

  Dominic smiled wanly. “You knew that Molinare and I were lovers,” he said.

  “Sure. We all understood that.”

  “Do you think that fellow Zimmermann and Jason were lovers, too?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it. From what I know of Jason, he’s not that way.”

  “Because of his affection for Miss Harper?” Dominic set down his cup. “That might mean less than you think. But I don’t know about Jason. I’ve heard Molinare speak of him, and the adventure that you and he had in that dead town when he was barely a man. But I did talk with that Albert Zimmermann fellow, when Miss Harper sent me down here.”

  “Did he tell you something?”

  “No. I had a sense of it. Possibly.”

  “Well,” said Andrew, “I’ll make a note of that.” He thought for a moment. “Were you listening just now? To the story about the watch?”

  “No. Why?”

  “There were some things Zimmermann said . . . just now. As I think about them . . . Maybe you’re right. But what of it, if you are?”

  “I wasn’t entirely truthful you when I told you about my journey in the north.” Dominic sighed. “The night in that bunkhouse, that wasn’t the only time I encountered Molinare’s ghost.”

  “You saw him again, afterwards?” Andrew didn’t see the trouble with that. “After the business in Eliada, with the Juke . . . many nights I’d awake, remembering the things that it made me see.”

  “I did see him afterwards,” said Dominic. “But I also saw him before.”

  “Before?”

  “Before I arrived in Iceland. But after . . .” Dominic looked at Andrew directly, with a chilling clarity. “. . . after the day I now know that he died. I heard his voice in my berth on the steamer, from England. I saw him at the edge of my vision.”

  “There are no ghosts,” said Andrew. “You know that.”

  “Of course,” said Dominic. “But there is the experience of them. Just as true, to the man who feels that. And II think that that Zimmermann fellow is seeing ghosts. Perhaps also Miss Harper. They both love that Jason fellow.”

  “As you loved Molinare.”

  “Just as I loved Molinare. Would you like some coffee, Dr. Waggoner?”

  Dominic rose and circled the bar, retrieved the percolator, and filled a cup.

  “When was the last time you saw Molinare’s ghost?” asked Andrew.

  Dominic set the cup down before Andrew.

  “Just now,” he said. “Just a moment ago. He was at the bar, over there.” Dominic pointed to the far end of the bar, toward the Liberty’s street entrance. “He warned me, as he often does.”

  “What did he warn you of?”

  “Calamity,” said Dominic. “Always calamity.”

  “Well,” said Andrew, “whether you saw him or not, I wouldn’t doubt the prediction. Based on Zimmermann’s story, I think that’s just what we’re going to be faced with.”

  “What did he tell you happened to Jason?”

  Andrew thought about that a moment. Zimmermann

  “Zimmermann, got out of there, finally. Flew out of there in that plane. He got far away. But he wasn’t with Jason. He thought he would be flying with him; Jason gave him every indication that that’s what was going to happen. But it didn’t work out that way.”

  “No? Why?”

  Andrew drew a breath and held it a moment, as he thought about what to say. “It was right as they were getting ready to leave. Some awful things happened at that farmhouse . . . like the things that you said you saw . . . at that old burned-out church in Iceland.”

  “The dead sheep,” said Dominic, an
d Andrew said, “But not sheep.”

  Dominic looked into his cup.

  “Jason had got the props spinning and pulled the blocks, which was when he should have hopped back into the plane. But he didn’t. He saw someone, you see.”

  “Who did he see?”

  “Zimmermann wasn’t clear on that. Just like you weren’t, when you were trying to tell your story.”

  “A ghost?”

  Andrew smiled and shook his head. “A vampire. Or a fellow named after a vampire, from the moving pictures.”

  “Bela Lugosi?”

  “From Dracula? The talkie? No. The one from Nosferatu, the silent German movie. Orlok. That’s who I think it was, although Zimmermann’s not too sure of anything. What he saw from the cockpit was Jason standing straight up after he pulled the block, looking back to that house and nodding at a big fellow who was running up, shouting something at him. Zimmermann couldn’t hear what, but he saw this fellow . . . take hold of Jason in one big hand, grabbing his jaw, and looking deep at him for just a moment. Then he let Jason go—and Jason just looked over at Zimmermann, and waved. Zimmermann got out of the cockpit and climbed down to the hatch, shouting after him. But by then, Jason was already walking away, side by side with this giant man . . . this Orlok.

  “Zimmermann finally got back into the cockpit, got the plane going again and left that place, flew to Crete where he scuttled that plane, so he’d seem dead to his masters. He left Jason behind.”

  “With his lover, perhaps?”

  “I don’t know enough about that Zimmermann fellow to say. But I don’t think Jason is a homosexual,” said Andrew. “I think Orlok’s a Juke. I’m pretty damn sure he’s a Juke. Right over in those mountains, in Germany. Bavaria. Not far from us now.”

  “A Juke. And your old friend Jason . . . he found it.” Dominic finished his coffee and slid the cup away from him. “It found him. What will we do?”

  Andrew drained his own cup. It was cool and bitter, and it suited him. Just like his own recollections of Jason’s own fare-thee-well those many years ago, in Canada.

  “We’re going to have to check Zimmermann’s story. Professor Kurtzweiller knows people in Berlin who might be able to shed some light on the goings-on in Wallgau. Dr. Lewis has contacts of his own here, and abroad. In a few hours, I’ll need your help transporting Zimmermann and Miss Harper . . . back to Vire, I think, for the time being. That will be as safe as anywhere. Safer than anywhere else. And it’s . . . it’s a place I can think.”

  “Of course,” said Dominic.

  “But as for Jason and Orlok, the Juke . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Sooner or later,” Andrew said, “we’re going to have to do something about that.”

  PART III

  The Elysium Deception

  One

  “You are looking very well, Mrs. Waggoner.”

  “You,” said Annie Waggoner, “are being quite formal, Mr. Thistledown.”

  “Mr. Thorn,” he said.

  “Lieutenant Colonel Thorn. You’re not fooling anyone,” she said.

  Jason Thistledown lifted his teacup and took a sip. His hand didn’t tremble, but Annie had an eye for these things, and could tell that hand wanted to. He was going to fly again, off to Africa . . . the last thing on earth he should be doing, and the hand knew it.

  They were sitting in the parlour room of Annie and Andrew’s apartments in Paris, sheltered from a misting spring rain that fogged the windowpanes and drained what little life there was from the wan afternoon light. Just the two of them.

  Andrew could well have been there too; Jason had wired to say he was in Paris for some time, and they’d arranged the date days in advance. Annie knew the schedule at the Sanatorium de Vire, and she knew he could damn well be here in town if he wanted to be.

  “I think I’m fooling folks well enough,” said Jason. “How’re you two doing?” And then he thought about that and laughed. “I’m sorry, Annie, I didn’t mean to say—”

  “—that we’re fooling folks?” Annie smiled at that. “We’re fooling folks fine, thank you. And other than that . . . well, we’re doing all right for ourselves. The sanatorium’s in its fifth year. We’re seeing to . . . forty-six patients now.”

  “Do they get better?”

  “Not enough do,” said Annie.

  “Same as ever I guess.”

  “Same as ever.” Annie drew a breath. “How about you now?”

  Jason blinked, a little too quickly. “What about me?”

  “You’re not well. Too thin. You’re not smoking right now, but I’m going to guess it’s only because you smoked your last on the way here. And stubbed it out there.” She leaned forward, and with a finger indicated the glistening flesh between collar and jawline. “That looks bad, Jason.”

  “You don’t mince words.”

  “No.”

  “Well, all right,” said Jason, “no sense in denying it. I remember when you sewed up my hand, back in Eliada. You sure knew what you were doing.”

  “I recall that Andrew was the one who sewed your hand,” said Annie. “I only helped.”

  “Well, it’s not infected,” said Jason. “I know from infected. I clean it, and when it gets bad enough I slap a clean bandage on it.”

  “You maintain your wound,” said Annie. “That doesn’t give me a lot of comfort.”

  “It’s not about comfort,” said Jason, and took another sip of his tea. He set it back down, and the saucer betrayed a rattle. He sighed. “Sure,” he finally said, “I’m just not right. It’s been hard times. Work’s been scarce to none since Imperial Air sent me away. But I do believe things are turning around. This job in Africa . . .”

  Annie regarded him, and felt a pang. For that moment, the hardness of the years sluiced off and Jason became that wounded boy she had met in the cellars at the Eliada Hospital—who’d just escaped, bleeding and terrified, from Mister Juke’s lair in the quarantine. Rescued by Andrew, maimed himself. Both of them—the farm boy, and the Negro doctor Annie would eventually marry—were each on the cusp of something monumental back then. They showed it in their eyes . . . in a terrible innocence that crossed Jason’s gaze again, right as they drank their tea.

  “It’s certainly far from here. Have you ever been?”

  “No,” said Jason.

  “I have. We have.”

  “You and Andrew? Where now, in Africa?”

  “The Congo,” said Annie, and at that Jason laughed.

  “Lookin’ for the Cave Germ?”

  “Something like that,” said Annie. “Andrew had a theory.”

  “He always did,” said Jason. “When’d you go there?”

  “Oh, years ago. The War was still on.”

  “That’s how I missed it,” said Jason. “Did you find the Cave Germ?”

  “No, thank the Lord. Mostly what we found was how bad an idea it was for a white woman to be travelling there with a Negro,” said Annie.

  “There and most places, I expect,” said Jason, and Annie agreed that was so, and thought a moment—although not, she soon concluded, long enough.

  “It’s not as bad here,” she said. “France is not a bad place at all, for folk like us.” She leaned forward. “We have room, you know. If you’re going to Africa because times are hard, I don’t think there’d be any trouble finding you a place to stay here. At Vire. Wherever you choose. There’s room.”

  It was an absurd invitation and she knew it as soon as she offered it. Jason’s cup rattled against the saucer and he lifted it to draw a sip. He set it down and put the saucer aside.

  “That’s kind, Annie,” he said gently. “But I think you and Doctor Waggoner got your hands full with those tubercular folk. You help them get better. That’s what you’ve always done best. You’ve a knack for it. I’ll be better in the sky. Always was, always will be.”

  She should have pressed the invitation, or offered it differently to begin with. Given what she learned when Andrew returned to the
Sanatorium de Vire in the company of Ruth Harper and her Austrian hobo, Mr. Zimmermann . . . it would have been better if Annie had dug into her store here, and offered Jason a strong sedative dissolved in his teacup. He would be far safer drugged and kidnapped by Annie Waggoner than he would as a guest of Nils Bergstrom’s brother and the Germans, in the sphere of the Juke.

  He would be far safer, Annie thought darkly, as she too often did these days, if someone had finished the job—maybe her and Andrew, if they’d managed to find another batch of that Cave Germ, and brought it straight to Cold Creek Harbour.

  Andrew arrived at the Sanatorium de Vire late in the afternoon following the night of his meeting with his biology club—which was earlier by five days than Annie was expecting him. He was to have arrived by rail, and he came instead by car . . . or rather, in an ambulance driven by a young Italian man. Andrew made a great show of tending to two tubercular patients, newly arrived from Paris. When Jean-Pierre, the intern on duty, ran out from the hospital building to meet him, Andrew waved him away and shouted to have Annie—and only Annie—meet him at the Maison du soleil. That was, of all four of the quarantine buildings, the one with the fewest patients at present: just three, in a house with three dormitories and a dozen private rooms. It tended to get more use in the summer months.

  Andrew apologized when she arrived, dressed for the sick rooms and full of questions: Why hadn’t he called ahead? Allowed time to prepare for intake? Why summon her from the residence, and not let Jean-Pierre or some of the other staff, take care?

  “We have guests,” he said. “An old friend, and a new one.”

  And as he and the driver opened the back of the ambulance, and after Andrew made it clear that tuberculosis was a ruse, Annie and Ruth Harper embraced.

  “I’m sorry we didn’t call ahead,” said Ruth. “We couldn’t risk an operator overhearing.” She rested a hand on Annie’s arm. “Our past is catching up with us.”

  Annie wasn’t sure what Ruth meant by that, but put questions aside for the moment, and gave a quick nod as though she did. “We’ll get you both inside, then.” She looked at Zimmermann, to whom she had not yet been introduced. He seemed an upright enough fellow, but Annie couldn’t approve of that beard. “Two rooms?”