Warner shook his head No, then turned around. “Okay, we’ll hold her where she is. My plotting says we should intersect the main shipping lane to Rostock somewhere around here. I’m going to try to pick the lighted buoys. Use the infrared. What do you see if you look up ahead?”
“Water, waves, clouds, mist skimming right above your wings.”
“All right, I’m depending on you. You’re my eyes. Don’t let me run into anything.”
“Got it.”
Ten minutes later, Steven yelled. “Climb! Left turn!”
They barely missed a freighter’s mast, but soon after leveling off, they both spotted the buoys of the shipping lane.
“Good work!” Warner screamed. “Put the camera away. I can see where I’m going.”
During the next hour, the fog thinned and the rain pushed inland. The moon, that same bright harvest moon that had looked down on them the previous night, broke through the clouds, this time to stay.
Still over water, they flew north of Rostock, a rusty port that had once been the center of East German shipbuilding. From Rostock, they continued east along the white sand beaches of the Baltic. At the deserted resort of Graal-Müritz, Warner turned inland. He overflew a broad stretch of heather, crossed an egg-shaped tidal basin and came to the estuary of the Recknitz River. Following his flight plan, he headed due south.
At 2:15 a.m. his path over the sparsely populated marshes, dunes and heather of northern Mecklenburg intersected with the Augraben River. The moon and stars were out now, patches of ground fog gave off a ghostly phosphorescent glow. He hadn’t expected weather conditions this good.
He turned to Steven, who gave him the thumbs up sign. Nicole stuck her foot up behind Steven’s seat in response to his inquiry about her condition. His crew and cargo seemed to be thriving; he turned all thoughts to locating the farmhouse and putting the plane down in a field neither too close nor too far from it.
Twenty minutes later he spotted an ironwork bridge spanning the river. He climbed to 1,000 feet so he could get his bearings. The straight untraveled road that crossed the bridge ran east to the dark village of Altenhagen. He knew it well from the map. It was the first landmark of his final approach.
He circled back downriver, climbing to 2000 feet, then feathered the prop and began retracing his path in a slow glide. Five miles south of the first bridge was a second bridge. The road across it forked just west of the river. One fork ran to the horizon. The other disappeared into a grove of pines and surfaced again not far from a sprawling stucco farmstead. He pointed, then held his hand back toward Steven. From the force of the shake he got in return, he knew his copilot was looking at the same thing.
They passed over a pine forest, its trees precisely stagger-cut. Beyond the forest, a large, level meadow stretched alongside the river. Just beyond was their destination.
Warner floated silently over the house and massive barn at 800 feet. There was no sign of human presence, but he could make out what looked like a gaggle of restless geese patrolling the barnyard.
There was no use restarting the engine, he thought. The old crate glided as well as it flew, and sounds on this crystal night would carry like a gunshots.
“Tell Nicole to brace for landing,” he called back. “We’ll be on the ground in a minute.”
He heard Steven’s command, heard wind whistling through holes in the canvas, heard a nighthawk objecting to their intrusion into its territory. Warner made a steep descending turn and headed back toward the farmhouse.
Fifty feet. God, he’d flown halfway across Europe at this altitude. He was ready to touch solid ground, not just look at.
The moon slid behind a cloud, the meadow went dark. He didn’t care, this one he could do by feel. The moon came out when he was near touchdown and dropping smoothly as a bird. No turbulence, no wind, just the even sound of air rushing across the wings.
A blur of heather and grass came up to meet them. Almost there.
He touched down, braked gently, hurtled through a dense wall of ground fog and bounced as he slowed beneath a clear, starry night. They were going to make it. By God, they were going to make it.
They weren’t rolling much faster than a bicycle when he saw a narrow ditch. Warner hit the brakes hard. The plane skidded slightly to the right.
Too late. They stopped with an abrupt jolt. Steven’s head banged into Warner’s back like a bowling ball. Warner’s harness restrained him so violently it squeezed the wind from his lungs. For a moment he sat gulping for air.
“Let’s move,” Warner whispered as soon as he had his breath back. He climbed onto the wing and tried to straighten up. He was frozen in the shape of a question mark. He had never in his life been so stiff.
Steven wrenched his seat forward and started talking to Nicole in French.
“Let’s move,” Warner repeated, still trying to straighten his legs. “We’re within a half mile of where we need to be.”
“She’s hurt,” Steven said.
“What?”
“Hurt. Broken ankle. Jesus Christ, Frank, I think I can feel the crack in the bone.”
“Shit.”
“It’s all right,” Nicole sobbed. “I’ll be all right. I’ll wait here for you.”
Warner and Steven both took off their jackets and passed them back to her. Steven spoke in French again.
Warner was about to intervene and ask him to hurry, but Steven jumped down before he could say anything, then held up his hand to assist him. “Come on, old man, I’m ready.”
Warner took the offer of help. He had his own ankles to worry about. “Bad luck,” he said as his feet hit in the soft earth. “I hope she’s all right.”
“Yeah, me too. Will the plane fly when we get back?”
“We’ll have to drag the landing gear out of the ditch but that should be all. We were lucky the prop didn’t break.”
“Okay, Frank. Nice flying. I didn’t see the ditch either. Let’s get this job done and get the fuck out of here. I’d rather be in Connecticut.”
They started across the pasture. Warner, who had been proud of his stamina during the long flight, felt like he had been hit by a train. Every joint seemed locked in the position it had held for the last few hours, every muscle felt as if it had atrophied beyond hope of resurrection.
Steven waited for him several times, then grabbed his arm. They entered the forest. The trail took them near the river. Tiny whirlpools swept silently by, like living creatures washed in moonlight.
Warner was uneasy. He had the feeling the river was watching him, listening.
Chapter Forty-Four
They hadn’t taken more than a few steps toward the house when the geese came toward them in a cackling mob. Steven kicked them out of his path, but this only intensified their attack.
“Goddammit,” he whispered. “What are these things? Watch geese?”
“I think they’re hungry,” Warner said. “Open the barn. Maybe they’ll go in there.”
Steven removed the bar and swung the door open. A huge steel tank loomed in the entryway, mounted on a brick base. There were cables above that looked like part of a primitive pulley system. Through an opening in the brick base he could make out an enormous gas burner, its pilot light a flickering blue flame. A long chute came out the side of the tank and emptied into a conveyor trough. The trough ran to some kind of a large old industrial press.
Nothing high-tech here. He couldn’t see any further into the barn without turning on his flashlight, and his batteries were getting low. The important things would be in the house.
The geese had rushed past him and were pecking violently at large sacks stacked along the walls. Pellets the size of marbles rained down through rips in the paper.
“Dog food,” Warner said. “This is an old dog food plant from the communist days. He must feed this stuff to his geese. Look at them go.”
Steven nudged Warner outside and closed the door on the ravenous birds. “Irritating fuckers,” he said. “Th
at’s a good place for them.”
They walked to the farmhouse, which was about 50 yards away. Steven said, “You think there’s a burglar alarm system, Frank?”
“We’ll find out.”
Warner examined the back door. “A dead bolt. Go ahead and break the window.”
“With what?”
“The butt of your pistol. Hold the safety on.”
“Frank, my gun’s with Nicole. You didn’t think I was going to leave her unprotected out there with a broken ankle, did you? Would have you done that to your wife?”
“I don’t have a wife, I have a girlfriend,” Warner whispered, wrestling the Heckler and Koch from his breast holster. “Yes, I would have left her out there. What do you think’s going to get her? Werewolves.”
“Hey, Warner, this is Germany. You ever read about this place? Skinheads, Nazis, what the hell do I know? Look who lives right here. Break the window.”
Warner did, precisely, thoroughly and without much noise. He cleared the remaining glass from the frame. No alarm sounded, and nothing inside the house stirred. The place was deserted.
Warner pushed his pistol back into its holster. “Give me a boost, will you?”
Steven made a step with his hands and hoisted Warner up on the window sill. He waited for him to drop inside and followed. With the weakening beam of his flashlight, he probed in all directions.
White stucco walls, beautifully finished doors, a kitchen with a black hooded stove and no modern appliances, a stairway. He was about to go upstairs when Warner said, “Let’s finish looking down here. There’s a hallway we haven’t checked.”
“I’ll go up, you stay down.”
“No. We’re staying together.”
“Whatever you say, boss.”
***
Nicole’s ankle throbbed. She tried to rest, but the stillness before dawn had an unnerving quality. It had seemed so quiet when Steven and Warner trudged off. Now, gradually, the night began to fill with tiny sounds. A mole in the high grass, a branch cracking under its own weight, a night bird crying from a distant perch. And the river, that was the worst, the river lapping softly and persistently, as if it were trying to find and devour her. Her mind conjured up dark water and swirling moss. She saw a school of eels writhing inside a hollow submerged log, saw her father standing on the bank, his hollow eyes fixed without interest on a drowning child.
She was becoming frightened. She peeked out through a hole in the canvas fuselage, hoping to put the sounds in perspective, to free her mind by returning them to their proper places in the night.
Lights flickered through scrawny pines far, far away. She listened. She heard the sound of a distant car. The sound gave her comfort. It drove off the primal visions and replaced them with images of cities and people, of daytime and health.
The car had been traveling in a direction that brought it no closer to her. She was about to stop watching it and try again to rest when it slowed and turned. The hum of its engine replaced the lapping of the river, soft, persistent, searching.
She held her breath and waited for the car to pass. It was still a couple of miles away. It was just a car. It did not have to have Claussen’s farmhouse as its destination. Her fantasy was nothing but her fear, she told herself, and it was again creating monsters out of nothing.
Then the car’s lights went out. She listened. It was still coming, more slowly now, so quietly she could hear the night bird cry, and the river lap and the mole rustling in the meadow grass.
She knew then that it was Claussen. The night had been trying to tell her something. She had listened and failed to understand.
Part of her terror remained; part of it turned into purpose. She felt enormous strength surging inside her pain-racked body. She knew she needed to work fast. Practical considerations were what mattered now. If she didn’t get there in time, it would be the same as not getting there at all.
She struggled out of her cocoon in the plane’s tail, dragging her useless ankle and Steven’s pack. She stepped on the lower wing with her good foot and heaved the pack down beside her. She dug for the pistol, found it and shoved it into her belt.
The moon shone brightly. She could see where she needed to go. But how was she to get there?
She put a little weight on her ankle. The pain was like a tooth being drilled without anesthetic.
Take a moment . . . take a moment. You must devise some sort of support.
What was that roll she had moved to get more comfortable in the plane? She climbed back inside, suppressing a cry when her ankle hit the seat back. She felt around in the dim light until she found it. Patching canvas, the same stuff the plane’s skeleton was covered with.
She heard the car engine stop. She needed to hurry, she knew she needed to hurry. She felt as if she were stuck in mud, as if her most trivial actions took an eternity.
On the wing again, she tore through Steven’s pack in search of a knife. Wet clothes, remains of provisions . . . Did the plane have a tool kit aboard?
She found it under Warner’s seat.
Moonlight, thank God for the light. She rummaged through the old tools, some of which she didn’t recognize. The search finally paid off. The knife had a wooden handle and a narrow rusty crescent blade. It felt sharp enough to do the job.
Time passing. Everything took time.
The width of the roll seemed right, about ten inches, but the material was very stiff. She held onto the end of canvass and threw the roll overboard, then hauled a yard of the material into the cockpit. It didn’t cut easily, she needed two hands to stretch and hold it, another hand to cut it. She used her teeth as a third hand and started sawing. As she worked, she fought to maintain her composure against rising waves of panic. Why was everything taking so long?
Her shoe was already off. She raised the leg of her jeans and wrapped her ankle as tightly as she could, then pulled the pant leg over the bandage to keep it from unraveling. It wasn’t a cast, it wasn’t perfect, but it was the best she could do. She had to go.
She slid on her stomach off the backside of the wing, landed on her good foot and started to walk. The pain was excruciating. Several steps and she couldn’t bear it any longer. She tried to hop on her good foot. She tripped on a clump of meadow grass and landed face-down.
She crawled the last 30 yards to the forest, breathing so hard her lungs felt like fire. Her ankle had stopped throbbing when she came to the dirt path that led through the forest. She would try to walk again, but first she had to rest for a few seconds.
The river lapped at the bank beside her. She could judge the speed of the current by the little whirlpools floating past in the moonlight. If she hadn’t been traveling upstream, she would have been tempted to swim.
She got to her feet and tried to walk. The first time she put her bad foot down, pain shot through her like a lightning bolt. No good. She thought of Steven and Warner being surprised and murdered just because she could not tolerate pain. She had given up too easily, she decided. She picked up a stout branch and used it as a cane, hopped two steps and put her bad foot down again. The same pain shot up her leg, but it was noticeably less than it had been. Or had she just gotten used to it? Nicole gritted her teeth and took a normal step. The same pain but less intense. Her ankle was going numb!
God had finally heard her cry for help. She could move, she could walk, she could fly! They might have to chop off her foot because of what she was doing to it, but she didn’t care. It was not far now, she knew it wasn’t far.
***
In a large airy first floor room with a chair and sofa but no windows, Warner and Steven found Claussen’s roll top desk. Warner opened it.
Hundreds of handwritten pages were piled in neat stacks. He selected one of the pages and began to read. Steven looked over his shoulder.
German! It might as well have been Greek. No use hanging around.
He went to work checking out the rest of the room. The walls were white here, too, and there were non
e of the watercolors he had seen in the corridor. But the sound system looked state of the art. The butcher evidently enjoyed music.
Steven peeked in on his collection of discs: all German, all classical. Sophie, he thought, would have approved of his taste. How people so different could like the same music he would never understand. There were a lot of things he would never understand.
Sophie. The pain that accompanied the tiniest thought of her doubled him over. He felt his fury rising, as it had done again and again since he had learned of her murder. This was the lair of the man who had killed his number one soul mate. Those pages in the desk might prove the role Claussen had played in bringing down the jets. They had come here to find just such proof. Yet the victory already seemed weak, pale and incomplete. He wanted Claussen, wanted to ring the bastard’s neck with his own hands.
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