by Dan Simmons
“I watched myself run into the stream, turning back again to the west, toward the hunting party, running hard now, gasping in shallow, painful bursts. The icy water splashed my legs and made the wool trousers heavy. My nose began to hemorrhage and the blood ran freely down my face and neck.
“Komm her! “I left the stream and stumbled through the forest to a pile of boulders. My body twitched and jerked like a marionette as I climbed to wedge myself in a gap between the rocks. I lay there with my cheek against the stone, blood pooling on frozen moss. Voices approached. The hunting party was no more than fifty paces away through the screen of trees. I assumed that they would encircle my pile of rocks and then the Oberst would make me stand so they could have a clean shot. I strained to move my legs, to shift my arm, but it was as if someone had cut the cables connecting my brain to my body. I was pinned there as surely as if the boulders had fallen on me.
“There was the sound of conversation and then, incredibly, the men moved on the way I had gone ten minutes earlier. I could hear the dog barking as it followed my trail. Why was the Oberst playing with me? I strained to make out his thoughts, but my weak probes were brushed away as one would slap away a per sis tent insect.
“Suddenly I was moving again, running in a crouch past the trees, then crawling on my belly through the snow. I smelled the cigarette smoke before I saw them. The Old Man and the sergeant were in a clearing. The Old Man was sitting on a fallen log. The hunting rifle rested across his knees. The sergeant stood near him with his back to me, his fingers tapping idly at his rifle stock.
“Then I was up and running, moving faster than I had ever moved before. The sergeant wheeled to look just as I jumped and struck him with my shoulder. I was smaller than the sergeant and much lighter, but the speed of the impact knocked him down. I rolled once, screaming silently, wanting only to regain control of my own body and flee into the forest, and then I had grabbed away the Old Man’s hunting rifle and was striking the sergeant in the face and neck, using the beautifully carved rifle stock as a club. The sergeant tried to rise and I clubbed him down again. He groped for his own rifle and I smashed his hand under my boot and then drove the heavy stock into his face until bones smashed, until there was no real face left. Then I dropped the rifle and turned to the Old Man.
“He was still sitting on the log, one hand holding a Luger he had removed from his holster, the cigarette still dangled from his thin lips. He looked a thousand years old, but there was a smile on the wrinkled caricature of a face.
“ ‘Sie!’ he said and I knew he was not speaking to me. “ ‘Ja, Alte,’ I said and was amazed to hear the words coming from my own mouth. ‘Das Spiel ist beendet.’
“ ‘We will see,’ said the Old Man and raised the pistol to fire. I jumped then and the bullet passed through my sweater and along my ribs. I grabbed his wrist before he could fire again and we pirouetted there in the snow, the Old Man staggering to his feet to join me in a bizarre dance: the emaciated young Jew with blood streaming from his nose and an ancient old man lost in his wool greatcoat. His Luger fired again, harmlessly into the air, and then I had it and staggered back. I raised the gun.
“ ‘Nein!’ shouted the Old Man and then I felt his presence like a hammer blow to the skull. For a second I was nowhere as those two obscene parasites struggled for the control of my body. Then I seemed to be looking down on the scene from somewhere above myself. I saw the Old Man standing rigid and my own body lurching around as if in the grip of a terrible seizure. My eyes had rolled back in their sockets and my mouth was gaping open like an idiot’s. Urine blotted my trousers and steamed in the cold air.
“Then I was watching from my own eyes and the Old Man was no longer in my mind. He took three steps back and sat heavily on the log. ‘Willi,’ he said. ‘Mein Freund . . .’
“My arm lifted and I shot the Old Man twice in the face and once in the heart. He went over backward and I stood staring at the hobnailed soles of his boots.
“We are coming, Pawn, whispered the Oberst. Wait for us. “I stood waiting until I could hear their shouts and the growling of the German shepherd just beyond the trees. The pistol was still in my hand. I tried to relax my body, concentrating all of my will and energy into a single finger of my right hand, not even thinking about what I was going to do. The hunting party was almost in sight when the Oberst’s control slipped just enough for me to try. It was the most crucial and difficult struggle of my life. I had only to close one finger a few millimeters, but it took all of the energy and determination left in my body and spirit to do so.
“I succeeded. The Luger fired and the bullet tore a path across my thigh and took off the small toe on my right foot. The pain was like a cleansing fire. It seemed to take the Oberst by surprise and I could feel his presence draw back for a few seconds.
“I turned and ran, leaving bloody footprints in the snow. There were shouts close behind me. An automatic rifle began to chatter and I could hear the steel-jacketed projectiles humming past me like bees. But the Oberst did not control me. I reached the mine field and ran into it without pausing. I parted the barbed wire with my bare hands, kicked aside the clinging strands, and ran on. Incredibly, inexplicably, I made it across the clearing. That is when the Oberst reentered my mind.
“Halt! I stopped. I turned to see four guards and the Oberst facing me across the strip of death. Come back, little pawn, whispered the creature’s voice. The game is over.
“I tried to lift the Luger to my own temple. I could not. My body began walking toward them, back into the mine field, toward the raised weapons. It was at that second that the German shepherd broke away from the guard holding him and charged at me. The beast had just reached the edge of the strip, not twenty feet from the Oberst, when the mine exploded. It was an antitank mine, very powerful. Earth, metal, and pieces of dog filled the air. I saw all five men go down and then something soft struck my chest and knocked me down.
“I struggled up to see the German shepherd’s head lying at my feet. The Oberst and two of the SS men were on their hands and knees, stunned, shaking their heads. The other two did not move. The Oberst was not with me. I raised the Luger and emptied the clip at the Oberst. It was too far. I was shaking too badly. None of the slugs hit near the two men. I spent no more time looking but turned and ran.
“I do not know to this day why the Oberst allowed me to escape. Perhaps he had been injured by the explosion. Or perhaps any further demonstration of his control over me would have shown that the death of the Old Man was his doing. I do not know. But to this day I suspect that I escaped that day because it suited the purpose of the Oberst. . . .”
Saul stopped speaking. The fire was out and it was long past midnight. He and Natalie Preston sat in near darkness. Saul’s voice had been little more than a hoarse croak for the final half hour of his narrative.
“You’re exhausted,” said Natalie.
Saul did not deny it. He had not slept for two nights— not since he had seen the photograph of “William Borden” in the newspaper on Sunday morning.
“But there’s more to the story, isn’t there?” said Natalie. “This all ties in with the people who killed my father, doesn’t it?”
Saul nodded.
Natalie left the room and returned a moment later with quilts, sheets, and a thick pillow. She began making the couch into a bed. “Stay here to night,” she said. “You can finish in the morning. I’ll make breakfast for us.”
“I have a motel room,” Saul said hoarsely. The thought of driving that far out Route 52 made him want to close his eyes and go to sleep where he was sitting.
“But I would appreciate it if you would stay,” she said. “I want to hear . . . no, I need to hear the rest of this story.” She paused. “And I don’t want to be alone in the house to night.”
Saul nodded. “Good,” said Natalie. “There’s a new toothbrush on the counter in the bathroom. I could get a clean pair of Dad’s pajamas out if you want . . .”
�
�No,” said Saul. “No need.”
“All right, then,” said Natalie and stopped at the entrance to the short hallway. “Saul . . .” She paused and rubbed her arms. “This is all . . . it’s all true, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“And your Oberst was here in Charleston last week, wasn’t he? He was one of those responsible for killing my father.”
“I think so.”
Natalie nodded, started to speak, bit her lip softly, and said only, “Good night, Saul.”
“Good night, Natalie.”
Tired as he was, Saul Laski lay awake for some time, watching stray rectangles of reflected car lights move across the photographs on the wall. He tried to think of pleasant things; of golden light touching the limbs of willows by a stream or of a field of white daisies on a farm where he had played as a boy. But when he slept at last, Saul dreamed of a beautiful June day and of his brother Josef following him to a circus in a pleasant meadow where brightly decorated circus wagons led bands of laughing children to a waiting Pit.
SEVEN
Charleston
Wednesday, Dec. 17, 1980
At first, Sheriff Bobby Joe Gentry was delighted to discover that he was being followed. To his knowledge, he had never been tailed before. He had done his own share of following people; just the day before he had followed the psychiatrist, Laski, watched as he broke into the Fuller house, waited patiently in Linda Mae’s unmarked Dodge as Laski and the Preston girl had gone out to dinner, and then spent a good part of the night in St. Andrews drinking coffee and watching the front of Natalie Preston’s house. It had been a singularly cold and profitless night. This morning he had driven by there early in his own car and the psychiatrist’s rented Toyota was still in the driveway. What was their connection? Gentry had a strong hunch about Laski— had felt the twinges of it the first time he had spoken to the psychiatrist on the telephone— and the hunch was fast becoming one of those unscratchable, between-the-shoulder blades itches of intuition that Gentry recognized from experience as being one of the necessary stocks in trade of a good cop. So he had tailed Laski yesterday. And now he— Sheriff Bobby Joe Gentry of Charleston County— was being tailed.
At first he found it hard to believe. This Wednesday morning he had risen at six as usual, tired from too little sleep and too much caffeine the night before, had driven by the Preston home in St. Andrews to verify that Laski had spent the rest of the night there, had stopped for a doughnut at Sarah Dixon’s diner on Rivers Avenue, and then had driven to Hampten Park to interview a Mrs. Lewellyn. The lady’s husband had left town the same night as the Mansard House murders four days earlier and died in an automobile accident in Atlanta early Sunday morning. When the Georgia state trooper called to inform her that she was a widow, that her husband had driven into an overpass abutment at 85 m.p.h. on the I-285 bypass outside of Atlanta, Mrs. Lewellyn had one question for the officer. “What on earth is Arthur doing in Atlanta? He went out last night to get a cigar and the Sunday paper.”
Gentry had thought it a pertinent question. It was still unanswered when he left the Lewellyns’ brick home at nine A.M. after a half hour interview with the widow. It was then that Gentry noticed the green Plymouth parked halfway down the block in the shadow of tall trees that overhung the street.
He had first noticed the Plymouth when he pulled out of the diner’s parking lot earlier that morning. He had paid attention to it only because it was carrying Mary land license plates. It had been Gentry’s experience that cops became obsessed with observing details like that, most of which were totally useless. As he slid behind the wheel of his cruiser parked in front of the Lewellyns’ house, he adjusted the mirror to take a long look at the Plymouth parked down the street. It was the same car. He could not see if it was occupied because of reflections on the car’s windshield. Gentry shrugged and pulled away from the curb, turning left at the first stop sign. The Plymouth began moving just before Gentry’s car would have been lost to sight. He made another left turn and drove south, trying to decide whether to return to the county building to finish some paperwork or to drive back to St. Andrews. Behind him he could see the green sedan staying two cars back.
Gentry drove slowly, tapping the wheel with his large, red hands and whistling a country-western tune through his teeth. He half listened to the rasp of his police radio and reviewed all the reasons he could think of for someone to be following him. There weren’t many. Except for a few belligerents he had jailed in the past couple of years, no one he knew of had a reason to settle old scores with Bobby Joe Gentry, much less waste time following him through his daily meanderings. Gentry wondered if he was starting at shadows. There was more than one green Plymouth in Charleston. With Mary land plates? sneered the cop-wise part of his mind. Gentry decided to take the long way back to the office.
He turned left into busy traffic on Cannon Street. The Plymouth stayed with him, hanging three cars back. If Gentry hadn’t already known it was there, he would never have spotted it now. Only the emptiness of the little side street near Hampten Park where Mrs. Lewellyn lived had tipped the other’s hand. Gentry swung the cruiser on a ramp onto Interstate 26, drove north a little over a mile, and then exited, taking back streets east to Meeting Street. The Plymouth remained visible in his mirror, shielding itself behind other vehicles when it could, staying far back when there was no other traffic.
“Well, well, well,” said Sheriff Gentry. He continued north to Charleston Heights, passing the naval base on his right. Hulking gray ships could be glimpsed through a latticework of derricks. He turned left onto Dorchester Road and then reentered I-26, heading south this time. The Plymouth was no longer in sight. He was almost ready to exit near the downtown and chalk the whole thing up to watching too many thrillers on cable TV when a semi-trailer changed lanes half a mile behind him and Gentry caught a glimpse of the green hood.
Gentry took Exit 221 and was back on the narrow streets near the County Building. It had begun to drizzle lightly. The driver of the Plymouth had switched his wipers on at the same instant Gentry had. The sheriff tried to think of any laws that were being broken. Offhand, he could think of none. All right, thought Gentry, how does one lose a tail?
He thought of all the high-speed chases he had seen in films. No thanks. He tried to remember details of spycraft from the many espionage novels he’d read, but all he could come up with were images of changing trains in the Moscow subway complex. Thanks a lot. It didn’t help matters that Gentry was driving his tan cruiser marked with CHARLESTON COUNTY SHERIFF on each side.
Gentry knew that he could get on the police radio, drive around the block a couple of times, and eight county cars and half the Highway Patrol could be waiting for this turkey at the next major intersection. Then what? Gentry saw himself up before Judge Trantor, charged with harassing an out-of-state visitor who was trying to find the ferry to Fort Sumter and who had decided to follow the local constable.
The intelligent thing to do, Gentry knew, was to wait this guy out. Let him follow along as long as he wanted— days, weeks, years— until Gentry could figure out what game was being played. The guy in the Plymouth— if it was a guy— might be a process server or a reporter or a per sis tent Jehovah’s Witness or a member of the Governor’s new strike force on police corruption. The intelligent thing to do, Gentry was absolutely positive, was to go back to work at the office, not worry about this, and let things sort themselves out of their own accord.
“Aw, the hell with it,” said Gentry. He had never been known for his patience. He whipped the cruiser into a 180-degree skid on the wet pavement, hit the lights and siren, and accelerated back up the narrow, one-way street directly at the oncoming Plymouth. With his right hand he un-snapped the leather strap over his nonregulation pistol. He glanced over to make sure that his nightstick was lying on the seat where he usually left it. Then he was driving hard, honking his horn to add to the commotion.
The grill of the Plymouth looked surprised. Gentry could
see that there was only one man in the car. The other vehicle swerved right. Gentry cut left to block it. The Plymouth feinted to far left of the street and then accelerated onto the sidewalk on the right to squeeze past the sheriff’s car. Gentry jerked the wheel left, bounced as he went up over the curb, and prepared for a head-on collision.
The Plymouth skidded sideways, took out a row of trash cans with its right rear fender, and broadsided a telephone pole. Gentry slammed the cruiser to a halt in front of the other car’s steaming radiator, making sure he was angled in correctly to block it from leaving. Then he was out, slapping away his shoulder harness and lifting the heavy baton in his left hand.
“Could I see your driver’s license and registration, sir?” asked Gentry. A pale, thin face stared out at him. The Plymouth had impacted the telephone pole just hard enough to crimp the passenger door shut and to shake up the driver. The man had a receding hairline and very dark hair. Gentry placed him in his mid-forties. He was dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and thin, dark tie that looked like it belonged in the Kennedy era.
Gentry watched carefully as the man fumbled for his wallet. “Would you please take the license out of the billfold, sir?” The man paused, blinked, and turned away to comply.
Gentry stepped forward quickly and opened the door and with his left hand, letting the baton dangle from its wrist strap. His right hand had gone back to touch the grip of his Ruger Blackhawk. “Sir! Please step out of the . . . shit!”
The driver swung around with the automatic pistol already coming up toward Gentry’s face. All of Gentry’s 240 pounds went through the open car door as he lunged to seize the man’s wrist. The pistol fired twice, one slug passing the sheriff’s ear to go through the roof, the other going wider, turning the Plymouth’s windshield into a powdery spiderweb. Then Gentry had both hands on the man’s wrist and the two of them were sprawled across the front seat like two teenagers at a drive-in. Both men were panting and puffing. Gentry’s nightstick was snarled in the ring of the steering wheel and the Plymouth bellowed like a gutshot beast. The driver raised his left hand to claw at the sheriff’s face. Gentry lowered his massive head and butted him; once, twice, hearing the air go out of him on the third blow. The automatic tumbled out of the driver’s hand, bounced off the steering column and Gentry’s leg, and clattered on pavement outside. Having a sportsman’s inbred fear of dropped weapons, Gentry half expected it to go off, emptying half the magazine into his back. It did not.