The Children's War

by Stroyar, J. N.

  Peter paused and smiled tightly.“Herr Tschejss, you know English, don’t you?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “I’ve never heard a good translation for that phrase. Perhaps you could give me one.”

  Erich thought a bit, then admitted, “I can’t think of an exact equivalent.”

  “Isn’t that interesting. Perhaps telling unpleasant truths isn’t viewed so negatively among the English.”

  “Maybe. It’s a loser culture given to whining, even against their own. They don’t understand loyalty,” Erich opined.

  “Yes,” Peter agreed sarcastically, “that must be our great strength: our unwillingness to criticize ourselves and our merciless revenge upon any who break that code. Your brother, for instance.”

  “Revenge?”

  “Yes, we taught that bastard a lesson!” Peter laughed harshly. “Murdered his young daughter in front of his eyes! He’s alive, all right, but he won’t dare open his fucking mouth again!”

  Erich’s eyes wandered around the room. He looked thoughtful, or perhaps he was studiously avoiding listening. If he had not been relaxed by the beer, he might have wondered what this had to do with an official investigation of his father’s death, but he did not state any such objection. Instead he asked, “You said he’s alive? Is he in prison?”

  “Alive, but not in prison. He escaped and is currently at large. He could be anywhere.” Peter glanced dramatically around the room indicating the crowd. “In fact, since he was just a boy when you last saw him . . .”

  Erich was staring at Peter, his eyes widening with realization.

  “. . . you could be looking right at him and you probably wouldn’t even know it,” Peter finished bitterly.

  They stared at each other for a moment. “Niklaus?” Erich whispered.

  Peter stared at him but did not respond.

  “Niklaus?” Erich repeated, slightly louder.

  “Do you know what it felt like to see Mom and Dad thrown into that Gestapo van? To be totally alone in the world with absolutely no one to turn to?” Peter hissed at him.

  “Niklaus?”

  “They killed our parents, Erich! How could you become one of them? How could you?”

  “Niklaus?”

  “They beat Dad to death! Do you know what it feels like to be beaten? I do! Mom probably starved to death! Do you have any idea what these people are like?” Peter slammed his fist into the table. “How could you become one of them?” At the look of surprise from his nearby companions, Peter stopped short and took a deep breath. In an attempt to goad Erich, all he had managed to do was provoke a flood of angry denunciations.

  “So you’re not from the Bureau of State Security and Oversight?” Erich asked as he began to perceive the deception.

  “There is no such thing,” Peter replied mordantly.

  “How many other lies have you told me?”

  “That was the only one. Oh, yeah, they don’t know my real name either, so there’s no link between me and you or your family. Niklaus Chase disappeared and drowned, just like you wanted.”

  “What do you call yourself?”

  Peter made a dismissive gesture. “Lots of things. Doesn’t matter.”

  “And your story about Father? Was that a lie as well?”

  “No. It was the truth. I have friends who dug out the information for me.”

  Erich stood suddenly and without a word walked away. Peter watched in stunned silence as he disappeared into the crowd near the door. Barbara glanced over at him, looked worriedly in the direction Erich had gone, and then came over to the table.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  Peter shook his head. “I don’t know. Nothing. He knows who I am, and he just walked away.” No apology, no reconciliation, nothing. “Just walked away,” Peter repeated quietly.

  “Do you think he’s gone to get the police?”

  “Even he can’t be that stupid.”

  “Maybe he just needs time to think,” Barbara offered after a moment.

  Mark made a hissing noise that drew their attention to Erich’s return. Barbara went back to her seat before Erich had noticed her.

  He came back with a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. “Can’t stand English beer,” he explained as he poured a glass for each of them. “They say they follow the Reinheitsgebot, but everyone knows they don’t. We should have gone to a good German beer hall.”

  Peter nodded noncommittally.

  “Now,” Erich prompted, “tell me about these xenophobes. Do I have anything to worry about? What should I do? Is my family safe?”

  Peter rubbed his forehead and laughed quietly to himself. He had been an idiot to expect anything else. With a prearranged gesture he indicated to his companions that they were no longer needed. He then spent the rest of the evening with Erich discussing Erich’s life, Erich’s family, and Erich’s career.

  At the end of the long evening, watching his brother stagger home to kith and kin, Peter contemplated the various choices they had each made and that had been made for them. He came to two definite conclusions: the first was that he needed to go home, and now there was no doubt in his mind where home was; the second was that he would give his brother’s name to the Underground as somebody who could now be easily blackmailed.

  61

  P ETER LEFT THE BAR feeling a bit groggy with the devastating combination of beer and whiskey. It was drizzling, but he decided to walk home anyway. The fresh air would do him good, and besides, it would save money. This area of town was fairly well known to him, and he followed old paths without thinking as he mulled over the meeting he had had with his brother.

  “Hey, there! Want a good time?” prostitutes called out as he walked along a narrow street. Just one question about how he was doing! But there had been nothing: Erich had wanted to talk about himself, about only himself. One of the prostitutes came close, started walking along with Peter, started to caress him. It was as though Erich had missed having someone to chat to, but made no connection between his brother’s long absence and his own actions. It was as if he were still eleven years old in Erich’s mind, incapable of having an independent life, there just to admire his elder brother’s achievements and sympathize with his problems. As the prostitute stroked down Peter’s chest, toward his wallet, he brusquely pushed her hand away. Even when he had handed Erich a selection of the photographs he had found, even then Erich could do nothing but talk about himself. He did not ask to see the diaries, did not ask if there were any other photos, did not thank his brother for the gift, he just sat there and smiled stupidly at his youthful image.

  The prostitute finally gave up as Peter stepped over the sprawling legs of a drunk sleeping rough in a doorway. Just one attempt at an apology! He skirted around a young kid offering him drugs. He felt sorry for the kid: the boy would not get any of the profits; he did the selling because he was told to by his gang leaders, and if he did not sell enough that evening, then there would be trouble for him. Peter thought momentarily that maybe he should give the kid a break and buy something; some of the profits would almost surely end up in the coffers of the Underground and he could use a rush of some sort, but he was already well past the boy and did not feel like turning back. He recognized a shortcut and turned down an alley. Erich’s continual blather about himself, his worried questions about the Pure German movement, not one question about what his life had been like! The two young men emerged from the shadows in front of him,and only then did Peter realize his mistake. He spun around to see that a third was approaching him from behind.

  A lone, unarmed German in an English section of town! How could he have been so stupid as to leave the main road? Even as the men pulled out their knives, he reached into his coat and pulled out his wallet, holding it out as an offering as they approached. One of them grabbed it and began rifling through it while the other two held their knives threateningly close.

  Knowing the severity of the penalties for physically injuring a German, Peter h
ad decided not to fight in the hopes that the men would stick to a simple robbery, but as he smelled the alcohol on their breath and looked into their wild eyes, he began to doubt the wisdom of his decision.

  “There’s got to be more!” the one who had rifled through his wallet growled angrily.

  “Let’s cut him!” the second hissed, and flourished a knife in a hypnotic arc under Peter’s face.

  “Frisk him,” the third suggested more practically.

  “Kill him, then he’ll be easy to search!” the second one insisted.

  While the second one continued to swing his knife wildly in front of Peter, the first and third attempted to search him.

  “How ’bout I take off an ear?” the second threatened, pressing the knife against the side of Peter’s head.

  “Don’t do that . . .” Peter began in as conversational a tone as he could manage.

  “What’s this?” the first one howled as his fingers detected the cast. He pushed Peter’s coat sleeve up, began cutting the material of his shirt.

  “It’s a cast,” Peter explained hurriedly, trying to calm him down.

  “Cut it off!” the second demanded. “He’s hiding something!” The man made a wild stab at the material with his knife and tried to slice across it as the first one fumbled with the clasps.

  “Hey, watch it! You almost got my finger!” the first one yelped angrily.

  “Wait! Wait! I can remove it!” Peter struggled to remove the thing before the excitable one sliced up his arm.

  As the cast dropped to the ground, the first one stooped to inspect it, the second returned to poking at him with his knife, while the third stared transfixed at Peter’s numbers. “Bloody hell!” he exclaimed.

  That alarmed the trio sufficiently to get all three of them pressing their knives against Peter to hold him at bay as they gazed in confusion at his arm. “He’s a bloody escapee,” the third one explained.

  “Let’s finish him and go!” the second one insisted.

  “No! We can get money for him!” the first one argued.

  As the second one raised his knife to stab Peter in any case, a sudden call of “What’s going on here?” interrupted them. All of them turned to look at the officer who was rushing toward them down the alley. He was drawing his gun.

  The three thugs froze in panic. Once the officer had drawn close, the first one shouted to him, “Look, look! He’s an escapee!”

  The third thug took the hint and thrust Peter’s arm upward, waving the numbers under the officer’s nose. As one, the three of them shoved him at the officer and fled in two different directions.

  The officer spun his head first one way, then the other, but he was too afraid of losing his new prize to take the time to fire off a shot in either direction. “Vermin,” he muttered as the trio disappeared into their rat holes.“But you”—he turned back toward his prisoner—“are worth some money, I expect.” He held his gun pointed at Peter’s face and reached down to inspect his arm.

  “My identification is over there.” Peter indicated his wallet with a nod of his head. As he had hoped, the officer stooped down and reached behind to pick it up, still holding the gun pointing at Peter.

  Without a second’s hesitation, he kicked the officer in the face, sending him sprawling backward. He then leapt forward and stomping on the wrist that was holding the gun, kicked the man in the jaw. As the officer lay stunned, Peter knelt on his chest, carefully extracted the gun from the man’s hand, and wrapped his scarf around it. Then he placed it to the man’s temple and fired. Despite being muffled, the noise sounded loud, but not surprisingly, it did not seem to draw any attention.

  Peter did not waste time watching as the man’s brain seeped into the mud of the alley. He left the gun next to his victim’s head. The scarf had absorbed most of the back spray and he abandoned it as well. It was nondescript and would not lead anyone to him. He dunked his gloved hand into a puddle to remove the blood that had sprayed onto it, then wrapped his cast around his arm and pushed his coat sleeve back down over it. He quickly inspected himself for obvious signs of brain and blood spatters, running his hands over his face, neck, and hair, but could not detect anything. His coat looked passably unstained: something that looked like a bit of mud was on the cuff of his right sleeve, but it would not draw attention. He picked up his papers, scanned the ground and himself one more time, then with a calm stride, headed back to the main street. He paused only once, to inspect himself in a shop-window mirror. Satisfied that there were no telltale signs of the murder, he walked the rest of the way home along busy roads and well-patrolled paths.

  That night Joanna visited him. It wasn’t like usual: there was no bomb, no running away; nor was it the other versions—the one where he strangled her himself or where he saw every detail of her death played out in gory slowmotion. No blood, no screaming, no anguished cries for help. This time she just visited.

  He perused her as she took off her wings and set them in a corner. She looked rather good for a ghost, he thought, and mercifully there were no signs of the injuries that had led to her death.“How are you doing?” he asked.

  “Oh, okay.” She plopped herself down on the edge of the bed.“How are you?”

  “Fine, little one. I’m happy to see you.” He wondered what else he should say. Could she read his mind? Did she know how much he loved her? How much he missed her? “I’m sorry about everything, you know, everything that happened.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that. You worry too much anyway.”

  “Do I?”

  She nodded. Clearly, something was on her mind.

  “What’s up?”

  “Oh,” she sighed, “I just wanted to know why you killed that man this evening.”

  “Had to, honey.”

  “No, you didn’t. You had him down, you could have just tried to knock him out.”

  Peter looked into her blue eyes. He saw clouds drifting past. Must be where she lives, he thought. “I guess I was afraid, baby. I had to act fast, decide quickly. . . . He saw my face, saw the type of identity papers I was carrying, he knew I was an escapee, he would have tracked me down sooner or later. I’m worth money, you know.”

  “Do you think he knew who you were?”

  “Not then, no, but any escapee is worth a bounty, and once he had put my face together with my wanted poster, he’d know I was worth lots of money. I couldn’t take that risk.”

  Joanna looked at him mournfully.

  “Oh, little girl, I couldn’t go through all that again. Look what happened last time!”

  “I know,” she said sadly. “Why didn’t you tell Barbara about it when you came back? Were you ashamed?”

  “I should have done. It does concern her. I will tomorrow.” He was desperately searching for a way to placate her conscience. Her eyes grew ever more cloudy and he knew she was leaving him.

  “Do you care that you’ve murdered someone in cold blood?” Joanna asked as her image began to fade.

  He took his time answering, and by the time he opened his mouth to reply she was gone and he was staring into the darkness of his bedroom. He turned to look at Barbara, sleeping peacefully next to him. She would have been at risk, too, and anyone connected with the place, anyone who stopped in too frequently, such as Jenny or Mark. He thought of that officer, willing to let the thugs escape just to hold on to his unexpected prize; Peter could still see the lust for money in his eyes. He thought of Zosia and the baby, thought of all the people he had lost throughout his life, and he thought of all the people who had shielded him since his escape. They took upon themselves the responsibilities he now felt so keenly. They resisted. If there had been more of them in the beginning, perhaps millions of lives and untold misery could have been spared.

  Funny that his subconscious had evoked Joanna to chide him; it did not fither at all. Already at the tender age of five she was being trained to fight, and if anyone would have understood his action, it would have been she. Like her mother, she would h
ave known there was a time to make peace and a time to fight. If anyone should have chided him, it should have been someone who had lived in determined ignorance and self-awarded piety.

  Himself perhaps.

  62

  “H ERR JÄGER?”

  Peter spun toward the figure of a man leaning casually against the wall near the door. He had one hand in his coat pocket, presumably holding a gun; the other held a cigarette. Without waiting for a reply the man motioned toward a car. “Come with me.”

  So soon? He was sure he had left no trace of his crime. He threw a glance back at the shop. “May I inform my wife? I told her I’d only be a few minutes.” He was surprised that the man agreed. After telling Barbara that he was being escorted to an interview, he accompanied the man to the car. When the man opened the door for him, he realized that it must be something else—Ryszard perhaps.

  The car made its way through the light morning traffic to the corner of Hyde Park that abutted Gestapo headquarters and the vast sprawl of Green Park prison. The man invited him to exit the car, and together they walked along the nearly frozen mud toward the restricted area around the Serpentine. A lonely sentry guarding the entrance to the exclusive park examined their credentials and let them pass without comment. Several meters from a disused bandstand, they found Ryszard contemplating the rotting woodwork and smoking a cigarette.

  The man accompanying Peter led him to Ryszard and then waited expectantly.

  “Any trouble?” Ryszard asked.

  “No, sir,” the serious young man replied. He glanced at Peter as if assessing him but said no more.

  “This is Stefan.” Ryszard gestured toward the man.“He’s one of ours.”

  Peter nodded and waited to see if he would be introduced, but as Ryszard said nothing more, he guessed he was already well-known to the man or his true identity was considered inessential.

  “We have an idea of where that device is,” Ryszard began, but still he did not remove his gaze from the wooden filigree overhead. After a moment he seemed to gather his thoughts, and with a peremptory “Let’s walk,” he took off in the direction of the lake.