Flashback sb-2

by Ian Hocking

  ‘He’s doing it,’ said Danny, coughing. ‘Use the gun. Shoot the bastard.’

  The night returned.

  ~

  Cory approached the fallen Óskarson first. Blood fizzed from his reopened neck wound, glistening with each heart tick. Cory licked his finger and touched the hole. It closed. Then he made a circuit of the room and checked the airway of each person. He picked up the smart matter. There was rotor noise in the air: enough to send his mind across the years to 1947, riding in good company towards the marvellous Star Dust.

  ‘Never shit more than you can eat.’

  He smiled.

  But there was the rotor sound. A police helicopter.

  Outside the hut, the snow lay in long folds. The sun was dim in a cloudy sky. Later, those clouds would snow, but for now they were curled fists in the gap of trees formed by the stream. Cory walked around the hut. A drift had buried Tolsdorf and his ingenious electromagnetic apparatus.

  ‘There’s a song?’

  ‘Dummy. Everybody knows it.’

  ‘I don’t know it.’

  He had parked the stolen ambulance at the end of a ranger track. He climbed inside and located three bottles of oxygen. He rubbed his hands with a sterile wipe to remove the grease, then opened all three. He stepped out and closed the doors. He entered the cab, started the engine, and depressed the cigarette lighter. What he would do for a cigar. The radio handset chilled his grip. ‘Police helicopter above me, come in.’

  ‘Who is this? Mr Self?’

  ‘If you like. There will be a smoke trail for you to follow. The people you’re looking for are at its base.’

  ~

  The explosion flooded the ambulance and burst its cracks. The windows darkened with soot. Minutes later, the helicopter descended. Its thumping rotors flattened the flames.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

  We people on the pavement looked at him:

  He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

  Clean favored, and imperially slim.

  And he was always quietly arrayed,

  And he was always human when he talked;

  But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

  ‘Good-morning,’ and he glittered when he walked.

  And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—

  And admirably schooled in every grace:

  In fine, we thought that he was everything

  To make us wish that we were in his place.

  So on we worked, and waited for the light,

  And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

  And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

  Went home and put a bullet through his head.

  ‘Richard Cory’ (1897), by Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)

  The Scharmützelsee, three weeks later

  The two rivers Oder and Spree define a district in Brandenburg, eastern Germany. Within this district, one can find the Scharmützelsee, which is a narrow lake ten kilometres long. On its wooded western edge, not far from an abandoned campsite, there is a road whose concrete slabs make traffic go lub-dub, lub-dub as the driver heads south, parallel to the blue expanse. The sound is pure East Germany. Poland is less than thirty-five kilometres away. It is winter and the wind today comes from Russia.

  ~

  The man is driving through the tunnels of colourless trees. Through occasional breaks in the woodland he sees the lake. He is thinking too much of Saskia Brandt. His thumb guides the steering wheel. His seat is fully pushed back. The radio, though German, plays American and English music almost exclusively, and he is singing along to a recent hit, Will Young’s Leave Right Now.

  His long, black coat is folded on the passenger seat. On top of it, a map.

  His throat is dry. He has not slept in eighteen hours. He has been driving since Calais.

  ~

  There is still light in the sky behind him as he steps from the rental car and looks at the house, which is far back from the road. He has a hold-all. He swings it across his left shoulder and crosses the broken pavement to a high, chainwire gate. There is a postbox: once white, now peeling to steel. It has a tube underneath for newspapers. A board has been knocked out of the wooden fence, leaving a hole large enough for a child, but he has seen neither children nor adults nor life on the last stretch of this road since leaving Bad Saarow, the spa town on the northern shore of the lake.

  He turns. The road is dark behind. No streetlights. Is a certain fear settling upon him, light as a bird on his shoulder? He has been alone in the car for too long. He smiles to himself. Will Young’s fault.

  A yellow, laminated notice has been attached to the gate with luggage ties. It reads: ‘Betreten der Baustelle verboten! Eltern haften für ihre Kinder!’ He touches it with his knuckles, thinking that the sign is old and that it must mean ‘Keep out’.

  Through the gate, he sees brown, winter-dead weeds. There is no hint of the paths that must once have crossed the garden. Some of the trees are more than thirty feet high. Their bottom halves are frondless, naked stakes. The house is boxy and pinkish. The roof is flat and the last, fading blue of the lake beyond makes him see it as a Greek villa. The thought cannot but fall, stone dead, in the freezing air. The weather is the kind that his mother would call ‘too cold for snow’. He shrugs to adjust the weight of his hold-all and wonders if this is the correct house. There are no lights. Pieces are missing from the arches of the veranda.

  Then he sees a shadow cross the wall. It is a woman walking towards him. Just as he sees this, the remaining daylight fails and, suddenly, it is night. The woman has shortish hair and her steps through the weeds are deliberately placed. As he watches her, the garden seems to brighten. Part of him feels that the darkness itself has condensed to form this figure.

  She stops at the gate. They look at each other through the links.

  ‘Saskia?’

  ‘Hello, Danny. Did you bring the things I asked?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Absolutely.’

  ~

  The house, Saskia explained as she gave Danny the tour, used to be the dacha of a former Stasi Lieutenant-General who died in Croatia a few months prior to reunification. It was a blank space on the administrative landscape. And it was freezing. There was no electricity and no water. They spoke of nothing in particular. Saskia had erected a tent in the hallway and they entered this small, blue dome at midnight. Danny lay down first and Saskia second, behind him. She pulled a blanket across them. Her left arm rested on his shoulder.

  ‘Go to sleep,’ she said.

  ‘You are so very weird.’

  He felt the silence. Was she smiling?

  Then the cold tip of her nose was against his neck and the inconstant, troubled exhalations become regular and his tiredness overcame him and he slept, the pressure behind his eyes lessening, and he dreamed about her missing hand, wondering where it was right then.

  ~

  For Saskia, the shelter of his body calmed her as though he were a cave into which she had crawled. She was transported to the night she and Jem had discussed an imminent rendezvous with Wolfgang, when Saskia had pulled on her gloves and rode all the power of her certainty. Now that certainty was cracked: when tested with a knock, its note was wrong. Saskia had wanted to tell Danny to sleep in the car, but she did not—he felt too good. She knew that something fundamental had split in the roots of her relationship with Jem. Saskia thought of the chessboard floor tiles of the dacha’s foyer and pictured the Stasi Lieutenant-General welcoming his guests one summer night. Despite this, despite her unhealed injuries, there was a wetness and engorgement within her more insistent than anything she had felt with Jem. She hated that.

  Danny twitched. Her arm moved and a shiver of pain passed through her, but she took it as a cost of this intimacy, whose depth would forever be this moment. No deeper, ever.

  ~

  The next morning, Danny found Saskia standing in a drawing room. She was a blac
k island among icebergs of dust-sheeted furniture.

  ‘First things first,’ he said. ‘A diesel generator. Some lights. Blackout curtains. And food. You haven’t eaten, have you?’

  She paused long enough to show that she did not want to answer that question. Then, softly, she said, ‘Danny, I need you to go to Argentina. Not yet. But soon.’

  He opened his mouth to laugh at this, but the laughter did not come.

  ‘Argent-fucking-what-now?’

  ‘He’s there. He wants redemption.’

  Suddenly Danny was angry. ‘And what do you want, Saskia?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  At length, she left the house and walked to the shore.

  ~

  Saskia tried to think of Cory instead of Danny. Over the next three days, the house grew brighter and warmer. Danny installed a generator in the basement and gas heaters in every room. Saskia scrubbed the windows and floors as hard as her strength permitted, then sat and watched Danny paint. He wore a T-shirt, jeans, and flip-flops. He looked so English. He noticed her watching and grinned.

  ‘Like what you see?’

  She tried to suppress her smile. Then it was raining again and she walked to the window and saw the darkening greyness of Scharmützelsee. The slow waves looked like the saw-tooth pattern on a Japanese sword. She felt, did not see, Danny’s concern. She ignored it. She thought of Cory again and wondered whether a bullet of smart matter would ding the window and put a coin-sized hole through her heart.

  ‘Did you call Jem?’ she asked.

  Danny returned to his painting. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was there a message for me?’

  ‘No,’ he said, and she could hear the pity in his voice like an accent.

  She remembered watching from a tree top as the police helicopter took off. And the honey light of the still-burning ambulance. Thinking: there go my friends.

  But.

  ‘It’s not over,’ said Danny.

  She wanted to go to him. Cup his cheek. Instead, she rotated her shoulder until it clicked.

  ‘Cold in here.’

  ‘You should rest,’ he said. ‘They’ll arrive in a couple of hours.’

  ‘Do you think they’ll come?’

  ‘Of course. We’ve all been through the same thing—and it’s not over.’

  ~

  Jem came shortly before dark. She parried Saskia’s kiss with a cheek and did not meet her eyes. Her frostiness passed through the room like a weather front. Saskia called her ‘Cool Britannia,’ but Jem did not laugh. She donned an apron and helped prepare the food.

  By the early evening, when Danny, cheerful and loud, resolved to reattach the chandelier and leapt onto the dining table like a buccaneer, Saskia had decided to talk with Jem, but her hesitant approach was interrupted by a knock at the door.

  Karel stood there holding bread and salt. Saskia took these with a curtsy. He held the back of her head as he kissed each cheek. Then he kissed Jem, who had appeared at Saskia’s elbow.

  ‘My dear,’ said Hrafn, following Karel. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Much better. Your neck?’

  Hrafn pulled on his collar. ‘I have a fantastic scar. I can’t wait to frighten my nephew. Hello, Jem.’

  ‘Hi, Hrafn.’

  ‘I brought some cheeses. I didn’t know if, well.’

  ‘Perfect,’ said Saskia. ‘We’ll have them after the fondue. Why don’t you help Danny solve his engineering problem?’

  ‘I’m freelance now,’ said Hrafn. ‘He can’t afford my rate.’

  ‘Like you can afford mine,’ called Danny.

  The room filled with masculine noises as Karel and Hrafn directed Danny’s attempt to hook the chandelier on its chain, and amid this distraction Saskia considered her feelings for Jem. The oil lamps on the sideboard made unfamiliar contours of her face and Saskia thumbed her fringe and asked, ‘Why so quiet, Schatzi?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Talk to me.’

  Jem took a huge breath. Her chest shuddered. Finally, her eyes stopped on those of Saskia. ‘Danny has you in his little spell, doesn’t he?’

  ‘No, he does not,’ Saskia replied. She smiled to underline the ridiculousness of the notion.

  ‘I thought we had something different.’

  ‘We do.’

  ‘That we were special,’ said Jem, turning away.

  Saskia said, ‘We are.’

  ~

  Inspector Karel Duczyński had been their greatest asset in the hours following the rescue from Tolsdorf’s hut. Despite suspension from his official position, he had retained the informal currency of a police officer and his colleagues had responded well to his claims—extraordinary by any standards—that the four were victims of a stranger whose name they were never told; a stranger who had hijacked and stolen an ambulance, murdered an elderly woodsman, and, unaccountably, signalled his location to the authorities so that his hypothermic captives could be rescued.

  It had proven more difficult to explain to the interrogators in Munich why all four of them had travelled to the crash site. The fictions were essentially truthful: Hrafn, as Investigator-In-Charge of the DFU team, was acting on a tip provided by Duczyński. Duczyński, in the hope of clearing his name, was following a lead provided by Danny. Danny was concerned for his sister. Jem had been overcome by a compulsion to visit the crash site, where her good friend Saskia Dorfer had died, and taken refuge in the woodland hut. A wild goose chase with a tragic climax. Who was the hijacker? Nobody knew. Who was Mr Self, the man who had called in the search-and-rescue helicopter? Nobody knew. The police investigators had been frustrated, but the trail was too cold and their stories consistent.

  Of Dorfer, there had been—of course—no trace, and perhaps never would. The crushing forces of the impact were tremendous, after all.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  ‘The ichor infests him,’ Saskia said, watching her guests eat. ‘It has become part of his body and his mind. He wants, I think, to die, but the ichor stops it.’

  ‘How?’ asked Hrafn.

  ‘Perhaps it can control his muscles,’ said Karel. ‘Just as Cory can control the factor.’

  ‘His magic wand is a separate issue,’ replied Hrafn. He seemed uncomfortable. Saskia knew that his scepticism had pushed him to the edge of the group. She touched her lip with a napkin. Now, she decided, was the time. She took a manila envelope, which had lain next to her empty plate since the meal began, and slid it across the table.

  ‘Hrafn, look at this. Read the addressee first.’

  ‘Just your name.’

  ‘OK. Open it.’

  Hrafn checked Saskia’s expression, then shook a leather gauntlet free from the envelope.

  Danny chuckled. To nobody in particular, he said, ‘Hand delivered, I see.’

  ‘Jesus, Saskia,’ said Jem. ‘If he knows we’re here, then we’re done for.’

  Saskia said, ‘I don’t doubt that Cory has known, perhaps precisely, the location of each of us since the moment he rendered us unconscious and escaped the Bavarian National Forest.’ She lifted her wine and considered its colours in the light.

  Karel and Danny shared a look of exasperation, and Jem stared fiercely at her plate. Only Hrafn appeared undisturbed. Saskia took a mouthful of the Chianti and smiled wetly; her raised eyebrow invited his questions.

  ‘You said this dacha had been abandoned,’ Hrafn said. ‘That it was untraceable.’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘And yet.’

  ‘Please,’ said Karel. His blue-bowed skewer lay unemployed. He turned it anticlockwise on his plate. ‘I am concerned, Saskia, that this conversation has a… layer, if you will, of half-truths. We have all made sacrifices. We deserve disclosure.’

  ‘Spit it out, Saskia,’ said Danny. ‘Is this the glove that Cory took from the captain of the Star Dust?’

  She turned to Hrafn, who seemed to debate whether he should handle the glove. Fin
ally, he took it. He rubbed the stitching. ‘The workmanship is similar to that of old flying gloves,’ he said. ‘The liner is silk, for example. But there’s no label.’

  ‘You are correct, Danny,’ said Saskia. ‘That glove was worn by Commander Cook.’

  Hrafn cleared his throat.

  ‘Do you still doubt, Thomas?’ she asked.

  ‘Thomas, excuse me, was the only disciple with any sense,’ he replied. ‘I want to be sure. I can accept that some distortion of memory has occurred. We have Jem’s example of that. But I’ll believe Cory’s story when I see empirical evidence of it.’

  Danny replaced his wine glass loudly. ‘What other evidence is there apart from the empirical?’

  ‘The logical,’ said Hrafn, looking at Saskia, challenging her. ‘That which we can derive.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ said Danny. ‘You’ve been booted off the investigation and you’re grumpy. We understand that. But you’re taking your scepticism too far.’

  ‘Am I? Did that man Cory not strike you as a zealot, Danny? Turn on the television. Listen to the myths we weave for our terrorists. What do we have here but a fabrication? He was obsessed by a song called Stardust, composed by Hoagy Carmichael. Shall I name another of Carmichael’s compositions?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Georgia On My Mind,’ said Hrafn. He paused to let the guests consider his words. ‘Was Cory ever Georgian? It could be bullshit, just a handful of ideas thrown together. It’s what spies call a ‘legend’, no more genuine than the Englishman Wilberforce or the German Wittenbacher.’ Hrafn stared at them all. ‘Cory left us with words, nothing more.’