The Children's War

by Stroyar, J. N.

  “I guess I’m off guard duty anyway,” Olek said.

  “Gives you more time for other things.”

  “I’ll need it! Shit, when you left me alone in that office, I was swamped! I had no idea how much work was involved. You always made me feel so good about my abilities, I thought it would be trivial, but it wasn’t!”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to mislead you.”

  Olek laughed. “The day you stop apologizing for being kind is the day I’ll know you’re okay again.”

  Peter bit his lip and looked away, embarrassed.

  “You know what else?” Olek said. “When they give me my medal—I want you to have it.”

  “Why?”

  “You deserve it more than me.”

  “No, I don’t. I haven’t done anything.”

  “Yes, you have, and it’s about time someone tells you that. I haven’t heard one person say they appreciated the sacrifices you made. Not one. Maybe because they can’t see the injury, maybe we’ve just been at war too long and lost all semblance of civility. I don’t know. But what I do know is that you gave up a lot, voluntarily. You chose to fight for what you thought was right and you paid a very high price, and I think someone ought to say thank you.”

  “Olek, I—”

  “Don’t insult me by saying no!” Olek ordered, then clearly determined to change the subject before Peter could object, he asked, “Do you think she’ll still want me?”

  “Stefi?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Has she heard the news?”

  “Yes, so I’m told, but I haven’t talked to her directly. Do you think she’ll want to tie herself down with a cripple?”

  “I don’t know,” Peter replied honestly. “You’re both very young. If it wasn’t serious, then it won’t last, no matter what happened or didn’t happen.”

  “Oh, it’s serious. I love her.”

  “Does she love you?”

  “I think so. I’m going to ask her to marry me.”

  “Give her time before you do that. Make sure you’ve settled into your new life—you know, with all the changes your injuries will entail. You want to make sure that if she says yes, she says it for the right reasons.”

  “Why else would she say yes?” Olek asked with determined naÔvetó.

  Peter fell silent as he tried to think of a polite way of phrasing things.

  “Do you think,” Olek preempted Peter’s reply, “that your wife said yes for the wrong reasons?”

  “Just possibly.”

  “Enough said!”Olek responded with humorous severity.“I’ll heed your warning!”

  Peter laughed at the thought that at least his marriage could serve as an example of how not to do it. His thoughts drifted to Zosia, and Joanna, and Irena. He scratched absentmindedly behind Siwa’s ear, and she stretched and rolled luxuriously in response, falling off his lap as a consequence. She landed on her feet, looked arrogantly miffed, and walked off as if that had been her intent all along. Peter shifted Irena and stretched his arm to get the blood flowing again, then leaned forward and kissed Irena’s forehead. Maybe he was wrong, he thought, maybe they had done it right.

  “I’m going to ask her,” Olek said suddenly.

  “Ask what? Who?” Peter asked, having forgotten what they had even been talking about.

  “Stefi. I’m going to ask her to marry me as soon as she returns from Berlin.”

  “So you’re not going to take my advice.”

  “I don’t want to wait. Besides, I was just thinking about you and my aunt, and even if she did say yes for the wrong reasons, I think it has worked out for you.”

  “You do?” Peter asked, amazed.

  “Yeah.” Olek smiled. “You obviously love each other. So you get on each other’s nerves, who doesn’t?”

  “Obviously?” Peter asked, wondering at how the conversation was suddenly about his marriage.

  “Yeah, obviously. Don’t believe all that shit about things being perfect with my uncle Adam.” Olek shook his head knowingly. “I think a bit of history got rewritten after his death.”

  “Really?” Peter asked, amused. He was afraid to pursue the subject for fear of appearing—what was the word, catty? But if Olek insisted on telling him these things . . .

  Olek did. He spent nearly an hour tearing apart his uncle’s personality, dissecting his aunt’s previous marriage, and generally making Peter feel really quite good. “God, the noise they would make! I mean, you think you two argue? At least there’s no hitting!”

  “He hit her?”

  “Oh, no! Never! But that didn’t stop her from hitting him. Throwing things. My grandmother said she was a spoiled brat. But she doesn’t do that anymore, does she?”

  Peter shook his head.“No, not with me.” He remembered the one time he had caught Zosia’s hand in midair, angrily warning her that he would not be hit. The look on her face. Her denial that she was intending to strike him.“Not with me.”

  “Anyway,” Olek concluded, his voice suddenly shifting from cheerfully confidential to serious,“now that I’ve told you all that, I want you to tell me something.”

  “What?” Peter asked cautiously.

  “What do you know about what happened to my mother? And my father?”

  “The day I first arrived, Zosia told me both your parents were dead . . .”

  “Please, don’t give me the old song and dance. I’m old enough to know.”

  “Have you asked your grandmother about this?”

  Olek shook his head. “She won’t talk about my mother. Not at all.”

  Peter sighed. He remembered what it had been like to remain in ignorance about his own parents, and with that in mind, he came to a decision. He told Olek everything he knew; he told him that there was no reason to suspect his father was dead, that nobody knew who he was, that his mother had kept it a close secret. He told Olek what they knew about his mother’s disappearance and the details of the police report. “It looks like she blackmailed someone—perhapsyour father—in order to get enough money to go to America, so you would be safe. After that, she either told someone about the money or the person she blackmailed decided to get it back. Maybe she increased her demands and that made him violent.”

  Olek looked stunned but said, “I thought it was something like that.”

  “You realize what this all means?”

  Olek nodded. “Yeah, it might have been my father who killed my mother.” His eyes drifted to the picture of her on the wall. “She was a good woman. Some people say some awful stuff about her, but she was really good to me. She really cared. If I ever find out who it was, Peter, would you kill him for me? I won’t be able to, not now, not like this, but you could.”

  57

  “YOU HAVE SOME NEWS FOR ME?” Ryszard asked as he spread the p‚tó on his toast. Stefi sat opposite him smoking a cigarette and sipping her wine. The flame of the candle danced in the faint breeze caused by a passing waiter; its light cast shadows across Stefi’s face, and for a moment she looked old and careworn. A father-daughter dinner: that’s how they had presented it to Kasia; just a chance for Ryszard to spend time with his little girl. The waiters no doubt assumed otherwise, but they were well trained enough to maintain facial expressions of complete disinterest.

  “Yes, Wolf-Dietrich is leaving for London in three days time, for that laboratory I mentioned earlier,” Stefi answered. “I couldn’t get any specifics out of him, he’s very cautious nowadays, but he did mention the name of a scientist there: Shantler.”

  “First name?”

  “Don’t know. Just said something about having to talk to this chap.” Stefi studied her empty wineglass and then scowled off into the distance searching for their waiter. Within seconds the young man dutifully approached the table and poured more wine for her. “Lousy service,” she muttered after he had left.

  Ryszard ignored her complaint. “Good job. How did you get him to give up that much?”

  “Oh, when he said
he’d be gone, I threw a fit and accused him of seeing another woman. That got the information about the lab out of him. When he received a phone call, another wave of hysteria on my part got Shantler’s name.”

  “He really likes you?”

  “He’s hooked.”

  “What do you think of him?”

  “He’s a really nice guy. His father’s a bastard, but I can’t hold that against him,” Stefi replied impishly.

  Ryszard pushed away the remains of his appetizer and lit a cigarette. “Are you sleeping with him?” he asked as casually as he could manage.

  Stefi stretched provocatively in her seat; there was something very catlike in her movement. She picked up her glass and sloshed the wine gently around, then sipping it, she moaned as if deeply satisfied. “The more I talk to him, the more I’m convinced that what I told you earlier in the week is true,” she said, suddenly businesslike. “It seems like his father has some connection to information from the NAU. Whatever they’re up to has something to do with the division of the Hamburg lab that was shut down, you know, the sterility program; that’s why the son was brought into it, he worked in that lab and had some connections with the scientists there. I think Schindler senior is doing everything in London now because that’s within his jurisdiction and nobody will question him on his orders.”

  Ryszard nodded and wondered if he should ask his question again. He decided against it and commented instead, “I guess I’ll be heading out to London again.”

  “Be careful. Last time . . .”

  “Yes, I remember. Don’t worry, I won’t stay long, but I have to try and get something on the man.”

  “Will Uncle Peter be there?”

  Ryszard winced at the title. “Yes, Zosia’s husband should be back there soon. That reminds me, I’m supposed to send him some files.”

  “There’s one other thing,” Stefi said as she peered at her reflection in the wineglass.

  “What’s that?”

  “Wolf-Dietrich started bragging about a computer he had access to; he heaped scorn on the best we have in Berlin. I challenged him to put his money where his mouth was and he did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, he showed me a small, compact computer that was as good as the best I’ve seen in Szaflary.”

  “Which is that?”

  “The one in the cryptography office. Olek’s been using it, but he said it belonged to Uncle Peter and that it came from the NAU. This one looked just like that. Clearly American-made. Wolf-Dietrich said he’ll be taking it with him to London to translate some information they have there. I assume that would be the device that was passed on from that American agent.”

  “I wonder why they’ve waited this long?” Ryszard mused.

  “I think they only just got their hands on the computer they need. Wolf-Dietrich certainly acted like the proud father of a newborn with it.”

  Ryszard nodded, impressed by his daughter’s efforts. “I’m glad you mentionedthat. I’ll see if I can’t get permission from Katerina for Peter to take his computer back to London with him.”

  “So I lost the bet,” Stefi concluded.

  “Do you owe him money?” Ryszard asked, wondering how much he’d have to cough up.

  “No. I just had to sleep with him!” Stefi laughed.

  Ryszard coughed. Before he could say anything, a waiter came with their entróes. He sputtered silently for a moment, and by the time the waiter had left them alone again, he had regained his breath. Before he could ask anything, Stefi volunteered, “Don’t worry, Dad. It wasn’t a sacrifice. Like I said, he’s really nice and a great lay.”

  “I’m not sure—”

  “Don’t be prudish.”

  “That’s not what I was going to say,” Ryszard bristled. “I’m just concerned that you may become attached to this man. He is, after all, the enemy.”

  “You needn’t worry, Father,” Stefi stated icily. “Remember, I liked Til, too.”

  “Ah, yes, Til. I’m sorry about that, little one. It was his own fault, he made it necessary.”

  “I know. I was just reminding you, I never forget where my loyalties lie.”

  Ryszard looked into his daughter’s cold eyes; he did not doubt for a second that she was telling him the truth. “That’s my little girl. I’m proud of you.”

  58

  “T HIS ARRIVED FOR YOU.” Zosia handed a pack of documents over to Peter. “It was labeled confidential, so although they opened it, nobody but the translator and the censor looked at it.” She paused, then added,“Not even me.”

  “I appreciate that,” Peter mumbled as he studied the resealed envelope. “Who the hell is sending me packages?”

  “Ryszard apparently. I guess somehow he knew you were here, or didn’t want to risk sending it to London.”

  “Yeah, I told him I’d be here.”

  “When did you talk to him?”

  So Ryszard still had not told anyone about his jaunt to England! Peter smiled at Zosia. “Confidential information, darling.” He had heard the phrase often enough, and it was an absolute pleasure using it on her for once.

  Zosia’s face fell but she did not ask more. “I’ll leave you alone to read the papers then,” she said rather huffily, and giving him a quick peck on the cheek, left the apartment.

  Peter scanned the documents. Ryszard had gathered some internal reports onthe politics of his father’s office. The Pure German movement merited a separate file, and together the papers showed that it had been especially active in that region at that time. The regional leader, a man named Mentzer, had occasion to know of Charles Chase, and though there was no explicit connection between the two, Mentzer was implicated in some actions against other English Conciliators, though none amounted to murder.

  Peter had to read between the lines to determine what sort of harassment was common since the reports themselves were rather cagey about offending any possible political power. From the transfers list and from a separate complaints report, it seemed that the movement used petty vandalism, bureaucratic obstinacy, and scare tactics until the targeted individual requested a reassignment. The transfers were almost always to positions of less importance and were, within a few years, often followed by early retirement or resignation from the service.

  Charles was apparently on the same track to be driven out of any meaningful position. He had filed several complaints with the local police about mysterious vandalism; those stopped abruptly as he began filing his complaints with his employer directly and reporting to the new investigative office that had opened. There were also a series of citations for minor civil offenses and several instances of his being reprimanded at work for petty bureaucratic offenses, none of which Catherine had recorded in her diary. Peter guessed that his father had never intimated this particular form of harassment to Catherine. A transfer request was submitted in Charles’s name and then withdrawn, the withdrawal claiming that the request had been bogus and filed by another party who remained unnamed or unknown. The special investigative office then noted his arrest and subsequent, unexpected demise.

  There was an investigation into the death of a Party member at police hands. A young, inexperienced guard was assigned sole responsibility for having taken it upon himself to unofficially interrogate the English prisoner under his care. The short, slight boy apparently single-handedly entered the cell of the fully grown, well-built man and, without the aid of an accomplice or weapons or handcuffs, managed to pummel him to death. Under a plea bargain where he admitted his guilt and defended his actions as having been inspired by shock and outrage at the prisoner’s alleged denunciations of the Führer in the dead of the night, he was demoted and reassigned to Scotland.

  As for Catherine, she was held without charge for three days and eventually released for lack of evidence. Her release occurred just hours after her husband’s death, and before she even exited the prison she was rearrested under charges of sedition and making inflammatory statements to other
prisoners. She was tried several months later and sentenced to hard labor in a concentration camp for a period of ten years, sentence to be reviewed before release.

  Ryszard had included a summary of Mentzer’s career, and shortly after Charles’s murder Mentzer was transferred to Holland without comment. Notlong after his transfer to Holland he was transferred again with a demotion, then again and once again, until his unsolved disappearance several years later from a branch office in Sicily. Clearly, he had offended someone, somewhere, but the report did not draw that conclusion nor was he ever held accountable for his alleged actions.

  The cover-ups were obvious, there was no reason for them not to be. The relevant parties were silenced, the political egos that had been offended by Mentzer’s actions were assuaged. That was all that mattered. The murder of two apparently loyal subjects, the blackmail or bribery of a young guard, the destruction of a young boy’s family—none of it mattered as long as everything was nicely tidied up on paper. The ground higher up had shifted, Mentzer had pushed that bit too far, he had been taught a lesson, case closed until the political power structure shifted yet again and another Mentzer took his place with support from above.

  Peter grimaced. So now he knew the reason, if not the actual mechanism. Still, he could easily imagine what his father’s last days had been like. His thoughts were mercifully interrupted by a knock on the door. A young sentry greeted him with a smile and handed him a note. He read the words without emotion and muttered, “No reply,” to the waiting boy. The borders were to be opened soon and arrangements had been made for his return to London.

  59

  BARBARA HANDED PETERA CUP OF TEA, then skirted around him to sit next to Mark on the couch.“Now, tell us all about what happened.”

  Peter hadn’t been in the flat for more than ten minutes, but he understood her impatience. She had quickly passed on her news—the most relevant bit being that the license had been renewed. Now she and Mark waited eagerly to hear what he had to say. Everybody knew that something had happened, but nobody had the details; they had waited for his return to get news directly, and his delay in returning had only alarmed them further.