by John Altman
“For both of our sakes—let us hope so.”
They looked at the field for another few moments. Then Eva shrugged, and they began to retrace their steps along the path. For several minutes, she concentrated on placing her feet, trying to avoid the tangles of brush and thistles. At length, Brandt asked conversationally, “So it’s to be tomorrow?”
“I think so. Yes.”
“What time?”
“Tomorrow. That’s all I know.”
“And what am I to do if your friend arrives after you’ve gone?”
She shrugged again.
Brandt didn’t speak for another two minutes. As they were drawing close to the bay and the air took on the tang of saltwater, he said, “Give Noyce a message for me, when you get back.”
Eva considered telling him she didn’t know Noyce, then decided there was no point. “All right,” she said.
“Tell him he’s gotten all he’s going to get from me. I’m finished.”
“All right.”
“The next time a ‘cousin’ appears on my doorstep, he’ll find the door locked.”
“I’ll pass it along,” she promised.
When they reached his house on the Fischerweg, the girl was still sitting by the bay, still absorbed in her book. The feeling of familiarity took Eva again. Young Katie Ilgner reminded her of something—or of someone.
Then she had it. Of course; the girl reminded her of Eva herself. Herself as she once had been, sitting outside the barn with her nose buried in a book as the horses nickered importantly from nearby stables.
She felt a sudden, irrational urge to run to the girl, rip the book from her hands, and fling it into the water.
Brandt noticed her eyes on the girl. He elbowed her sharply. “Inside,” he said.
Eva tore her eyes away, and followed him inside.
Frau Ilgner watched Brandt and Eva as they stepped through the door. Then she turned to the man standing beside her: Karl Baumbach, the local Regierungsrat.
“You see,” Frau Ilgner said. “That is the first time they’ve left the house since she arrived.”
Baumbach nodded sagely. “Mm,” he said.
“A cousin, we’re supposed to believe? There’s no family resemblance. None whatsoever.”
Baumbach nodded again. “Although sometimes,” he said, “cousins don’t look very much alike.”
“My Nana knew his mother for years. They grew up together. She didn’t have a sister.”
“Mm.”
“He’s up to something,” Frau Ilgner said.
“You may be right.”
“Well? What are you going to do about it?”
Baumbach looked out the window for a few more seconds. Then he raised his chin an inch, and tightened the muscles in his cheeks.
“I will place a call,” he said.
11
MECKLENBURG
Hermann Hetzler paused, sneering into the low-hanging sun.
The land here was open, a series of gentle swells, with only the burned-out ruins of the old Scheppel place breaking the integrity of the horizon. Either the man had vanished for a moment behind one of the gentle swells—in which case he would show himself momentarily as he continued moving—or he had taken refuge in the dilapidated hulk of the Scheppel house.
Close, Hetzler thought. Very close now.
Ludwig Sturm, standing beside Hetzler with his old Mauser rifle in one hand, was also looking thoughtfully at the ruins of the house. Around them, the other three men waited, stooped from exhaustion.
“What do you think?” Hetzler asked.
Sturm didn’t hesitate. “He’s there.”
They moved forward again, over land that squelched softly. As they drew nearer, the sun needled Hetzler’s eyes, blinding him. He raised his hand; the men piled to a stop around him.
“See how the sun glares,” Hetzler said. “That’s not by chance.”
“An ambush,” Sturm said.
Hetzler squinted for another few seconds. Then he turned to Friedburg, who was looking dolefully at his feet.
“We’ll surround him,” Hetzler said. “He’ll try to move again when night falls. Then we’ll take him.”
The men murmured agreement—all except Friedburg, whose face registered annoyance. “Who put you in charge?” he asked.
Hetzler gave no answer, looking instead to see the other men’s reaction to the question. He saw nothing that troubled him. Sturm was already beginning to move off, around to the right of the Scheppel place. Messel, a mountainous farmboy with enough muscles to make up for his lack of wits, was busy inspecting the tines of his pitchfork. Grünewald was checking his rifle.
Friedburg saw that he stood alone. He sighed in defeat; then his eyes found Grünewald’s. They began to move off together around the opposite side of the house from Sturm.
Hetzler turned to Messel. “Tired?” he said.
Messel nodded.
“Never fear. As soon as—”
Then a shot rang out, and the words caught in his throat.
The old Enfield was puckish; it dragged.
Hobbs pressed his lips together, and tried to judge what had happened.
The shot had gone wide—to the right, he thought. He swung the barrel a few degrees to the left and looked down the lustrous metal. The sight landed just past the first man who had broken from the group. He was obviously trying to flank Hobbs, but he hadn’t yet reached the shallow depression that might shelter him; he was out in the open.
Hobbs took a second before firing again, to make certain everything was in order. His right thumb extended over the rifle stock, creating a spot weld between cheek, hand, and gun. They were a single unit, he and the gun. His eyes flicked up to the trees a quarter-mile distant. He estimated the wind from their lazy motion, and compensated by moving the barrel another fraction of an inch. Just like the days back in Surrey, he thought, duck hunting with his mates.
He held his breath and squeezed the trigger again. This time he was rewarded by a squeal of pain.
He worked the bolt.
The man he had hit was down, and motionless. For the moment, Hobbs left him alone. He swung the sight back toward the others. The two who had been heading in the opposite direction had hit the ground; they were huddling down in the tall grass. In time, they would need to move again. They would make better targets then. As long as he didn’t let them get past him, behind the house …
He sighted on the last two, the two standing farthest away. One held a pitchfork; the other was shielding his eyes against the glare. But both were still standing at full height. Out of range. Or were they?
He sighted, compensated for the Enfield’s drift, compensated for the wind, then raised the barrel by instinct—feeling the arc of the bullet—and fired again.
He missed, but evidently not by much; both men were suddenly pressing themselves flat against the ground. He worked the bolt again.
Silence.
He could take another try at the nearer two on the ground. But why waste the ammunition? The men were pinned. If he could hold them there until dark, he could slip away.
On the other hand, he would rather finish it now.
He lowered the rifle. The pack of Player’s, propped on a crumbled ledge of brick beside the spare magazines, caught his eye. Only two cigarettes remained. He should save them. He should concentrate on what was going on in front of him.
The nearer pair on the ground were moving again—rising into unwieldy crouches, trying to circle around the back of the ruined house.
He socketed the gun back into his shoulder, and took careful aim.
Friedburg’s feet hurt.
He tried not to think about it. He kept waddling forward, peering from time to time in the direction of the burned-out house. Each time he looked up, the sun drilled mercilessly into his eyes. Beside him, Grünewald was moving in the same awkward crabwalk, torn between staying low and traveling fast. A good policy, Friedburg thought. He should try to get a little lower
himself. Yet his mind was fixed on his feet—they hurt.
A moment later, Grünewald had smacked him in the face with the stock of his rifle.
At first Friedburg couldn’t understand why Grünewald had done this. Because he had slept with the man’s sister? That must have been it. But how did Grünewald know about that? Besides, it was ancient history. Why now, of all times?
He put a hand to his forehead. The hand came away red, far redder than it should have been from a single blow. Then he understood—Grünewald had not smacked him at all. He had been shot.
The rifle cracked again, and a white-hot poker speared him in the chest.
Friedburg fell onto his back. The poker withdrew and ice water flooded in to replace it; there seemed to be no air in his lungs. He could see Grünewald’s face looming in his vision, concerned. Friedburg tried to open his mouth, to tell the man that he was all right. It was only a flesh wound. The bullet had only grazed him. The real problem was with his feet. His feet ached like the devil.
A moment later, he was gone.
Grünewald checked the man’s pulse with two fingers on his throat. Then he turned back to the house, hefting the rifle in his hand. He couldn’t see anything but sun.
He rose to his feet and charged forward.
Hobbs worked the bolt again.
One round left in the magazine. And now one of the men was making a break for it, running at top speed. Hobbs led him, aiming off. He fired.
Missed.
The man ducked around the side of the house, out of his field of vision.
He bit down a curse and jammed a fresh magazine into the gun, keeping his eye on the other three. The first one he had hit was still lying motionless. Not dead, he thought with sudden certainty; playing possum. The second, however, was not acting. Even from here, Hobbs could make out the bubbling chest wound, the slow river of blood staining the grass beneath him. The last two were still huddled against the ground, out of range.
He raised the Enfield again.
The one that had gotten past him might pose a problem. But for the time being he couldn’t afford to worry about that. If he let his attention lapse, he would have even more problems.
He aimed at the one who was playing possum. Compensated. He fired, and the man’s body jumped like a sandbag hit by a hard wave.
Now the last two began to move forward, splitting up. Trying to buy time, he thought, for the one who had gotten behind him.
He couldn’t stay in his perch any longer—not with the man behind him, between him and the setting sun. He carefully slung the Enfield back over his shoulder, then picked up the magazines and the cigarettes and stuffed them into the satchel. Then he began to shimmy back along the rafter, toward the stairs.
The wind picked up, wailing mournfully through the valley, fighting with the trees on the horizon.
Hobbs had backed halfway toward the stairs when the rafter beneath him groaned, buckled, and split.
Grünewald saw him: lying on an exposed beam on the second floor, facing out to the field.
Grünewald was rusty with the rifle. But he would overcome the rustiness. He was a blacksmith; precision was his business. He would place a bullet squarely in the man’s spinal column above his shoulder blades, incapacitating him instantly. The Engländer would not even squeeze the trigger reflexively, as his muscles contracted at the instant of death, to take a last shot at whomever he had in his sights. He would collapse as if poleaxed. A difficult shot; but he would manage it. For Paula.
He sighted on the back of the man’s head, then dropped the barrel a quarter of an inch. Above the shoulder blades but below the brain stem. He would have only one chance …
Then the man was moving.
Shimmying back, momentarily hidden behind a slab of timber. Grünewald swore roughly. He had missed his chance. He swept the rifle to the right, to the head of the exposed staircase, and tried to clear his mind. He would have another shot in a moment. And now that the man was no longer aiming out at the field, he would not need to hit the spinal column just so. Any shot would do. In a second, the man would appear again. Grünewald held the rifle motionless. Any second now …
The wind picked up; the beam on which the man was lying groaned, low and long—and then snapped, spilling the man down to the first floor in a shower of debris.
Grünewald blinked owlishly. The rifle swung down to the first story, but found no target; only a pillowy cloud of dust and grit. In a moment, the wind would sweep it away. Then he would have his target. The foreigner was probably stunned by his fall, perhaps even unconscious. Perhaps they could bring him back to town in one piece and take their time with him.
He moved forward, peering cautiously into the cloud of dust.
There—no. Only a shattered beam. There—to the left, half-pinned under a splintered rafter. But all he could see was a rifle.
The rifle spoke, curtly.
Grünewald fell back, a freshet of blood pumping from his throat.
Hermann Hetzler stopped moving.
The sun was lower now—a crucial few degrees lower. For the first time, he could clearly see the tableau before him. And it was not encouraging.
To his right lay Sturm, either dead or dying. A few paces ahead and two dozen to his left lay Friedburg. Friedburg was on his back, his limbs splayed loosely, his chest oozing gore. His days of complaining were finished.
An ambush, Hetzler thought. He had known it. And yet they had walked right into it.
Messel was still moving forward, his head bowed low like a bull’s, the pitchfork his only weapon. Too stupid to know what he was doing, Hetzler thought. Well, perhaps he had the right idea. God looked out for idiots and children. But Hermann Hetzler was neither—and he had no desire to die.
Suddenly, leaving the man to the Gestapo seemed like not such a bad idea at all.
But Grünewald was back there, behind the house. Perhaps Grünewald would have some luck. He tried to make himself move again, but fear had taken him in a firm grip. He only stood, conscious that he should keep walking, unable to do it.
The wind gusted; then something happened in the house, creaking and cataclysmic. A great cloud of dust rose, obscuring the rays of the sun.
Hetzler stood for one more second, trying to find some hidden reserve of courage.
Then he gave up, turned on his heel, and fled.
Hobbs was listening to the bells.
The bells were coming from all around him, reverberating. He inhaled and got a lungful of dust, then coughed it viciously back out. When the coughing had passed, his mind felt marginally clearer. He was surrounded by rubble, broken brick, half-mulched wood. The beam, he realized. The beam had collapsed.
He groaned, and tried to sit up.
A broken rafter was pinning him. As he looked at it, he realized with a small jolt of surprise that the satchel was still in his hands. The rifle was still on his back. He reached for it, but couldn’t find the leverage to pull it free. He tried again, to no effect.
The bells in his head grew louder; he swooned. They softened and he came awake again. There was no pain. Only a feeling of terrible urgency. How many men were left?
Another fit of coughing took him. When it was past, the feeling of urgency receded, replaced by a sense of unnatural tranquillity. He had been in worse situations, he thought. He couldn’t recall them at the moment; but they had happened, and he had survived them. So he would survive this.
Then he grinned. He was conning himself—or trying to, in any case.
He found himself looking at the strap across his chest. A moment later, his eyes moved to a sharp splinter of wood jutting from the broken rafter. He looked back and forth several times before his mind caught up to his eyes. Then he rearranged himself, inching his torso closer to the timber. The leather strap caught on the sharp edge of wood—just so. He worked a hand free and painstakingly pulled the leather tight against the jagged beam. Worked it back and forth. After a few seconds of sawing, the strap began to se
parate.
Then it snapped, and the rifle came loose. He pulled the Enfield around into his lap. He craned his head, looking outside of the rubble, trying to figure out what came next.
A man was there—a scant dozen feet away. Peering into the debris, a rifle held at his shoulder.
Hobbs planted the stock of the Enfield against his hip. He aimed the best he could, one-handed, and then fired. A wild shot. But a good one; the man fell away, out of sight.
A hiss came from between his teeth. Cocksucker, he thought. Almost had me. Didn’t you?
But he wasn’t done yet, God damn it. After watching for a moment to make sure the man was not going to rise again, he turned his attention back to the rafter. There would be no way to do this gently. So he did it harshly—in one wrenching tug, ignoring the sudden flare of pain, ignoring the strip of flesh that was peeled from his calf.
He dragged himself through the settling grit, onto damp grass. The man he had shot was lying here, dying. Hobbs glanced at him for a moment, then looked away. He tried his leg. It blazed with agony.
Eva, he thought.
The ringing in his ears rose again, deafening.
Messel rounded the corner of the house, pitchfork in hand.
There were two men lying on the ground within a dozen feet of each other. Neither moved; both, he thought, were unconscious. Then he moved to Grünewald and realized that the man was not unconscious but dead. His face was china-pale; his eyes stared bleakly into oblivion.
Messel looked down at the blacksmith for a few seconds. Then he moved to check on the Engländer.
This one was still alive—swimming in and out of awareness, his eyes coated with a milky cataract of confusion. The Enfield lay near one limp hand. Messel pushed it away with his foot, almost leisurely. As the broken strap trailed across the man’s arm, his eyes sharpened, flashing with panic.
He was right to panic, Messel thought coldly.
Hobbs was trying to speak, but he didn’t have the air. Instead he made a liquid sound, frantic but thin. A rapist, Messel thought with a curl of his lip. A rapist and a murderer.
He raised the pitchfork to deliver the fatal stroke.