The Aeronaut

by Bryan Young

  “Oui,” he said grimly. “But I don’t wish to speak of it further.”

  The hurt in his heart creased the lines on his face and I saw him age before me.

  Searching for something oblique to say to coax him to my side and put him at ease, I came up with nothing. I wished I could be forthright and just ask him openly and honestly what it was he wanted in trade for the cards. Lies, no matter how indirect, don’t become men of passion, do they? I’d rather be sitting there to level with him, to explain just exactly how bad his actions were and how quickly this could lead to his death and the deaths of thousands more if he wouldn’t hand me the data cards. If it were me plotting such betrayal, that’s how I would have like to have been approached.

  But no, my mission was to lie and so lie I would.

  “It’s an easy life in Germany, if you make it. Speaking from experience, Berlin is a wonderful city in which to forget the hardships of a broken heart.”

  “You are a young man, Monsieur Américain. Things like that are much easier for times of youth.”

  “A broken heart does not discriminate by age who it ruins. I’ve been there, I know.”

  “She was older than you, then?”

  “A bit, yes. And we were in love. But her parents disapproved. I imagine they found someone better suited to her and forced her to leave me as casually as one switches outfits.”

  I tried to shut my mouth, alarmed by how much of my deep, personal thoughts were tumbling out of my head and onto the table.

  “For me,” Jamert said, “she found someone else on her own. But lets talk of better times, shall we?”

  “I’ve never known better times,” I said and I meant it.

  I wondered how I’d done to gain his confidence and what he’d done to gain mine. It couldn’t have been so complete an act because I wasn’t lying to him, per se.

  It frightened me, opening up such raw emotion and vulnerability to a man I might very well have had to kill. I’d shared something with him now. Would some piece of me die with him if I was forced to end him?

  We sat there together, Jamert quiet in thought, me in stunned silence, waiting for us to take another flourishing step of our dance. The waiter came by to check on us and warm up my drink.

  As he left, I turned my gaze toward the grave scene beyond the rubble and through the smoke of the work being done on the backs of the formerly free people and prisoners of whatever nation dared to stand against the Central Powers.

  “Everything will turn out,” I told him, never shifting my eyes away from the distant toil. “Things have a way of working themselves out, both for better or for worse, but what needs to happen happens.”

  “That I believe, Monsieur Américain. I truly do.”

  “Speaking of what needs to happen happening, I believe we might get better acquainted in the very near future?”

  “I think that might be a possibility, though tomorrow was the appointed day, so I thought...”

  “Yes. Of course. We’ll obviously wait until tomorrow if that will put you at ease.”

  “Until all of this is over, one way or another, I’m not sure I could ever be at ease.”

  “Well, why not get all of this unpleasantness behind us sooner then?”

  “How soon?”

  “As soon as you’d like. I’m sure all parties involved are eager to have this all behind us. You most of all.”

  He took a moment, staring down at his drink. He sniffled. “I don’t know what I want anymore.”

  “That’s an old story, too.”

  Dr. Jamert stood up and slid his chair back under the table. “Till tomorrow, then, let’s say at a quarter to two,” he said, then tipped his head to me and left again.

  My mind reeled.

  I had no idea what was going on. I had no idea what I had just said. I had no idea if any of this was going to work. What I did have an idea about was how much of a failure I felt myself to be.

  The whole way back to my room I walked slowly, kicking rocks and never taking my hands out of my pockets, but my thoughts couldn’t go beyond the confusing nature of the work of spies.

  I spent an hour walking through the tattered streets of Cambrai, living dangerously, throwing caution to the wind. If I was recognized or stopped or caught, that would be the end of it for me. Maybe that’s what I wanted. Maybe I wanted to put the failure on the hands of someone else. If I was arrested and slammed into a prison camp, they’d know I did everything I could but things got away from me. They would understand that I didn’t know what I was doing, that I was in over my head, that I was a stupid jump jockey and had no business behind enemy lines except to set them ablaze up close.

  I wasn’t caught though.

  I went back and hid at the inn.

  Back in the room, what else would there be but another envelope full of instructions.

  I wondered who they had in the town to collect the messages and pass them along to me while I was out. Perhaps it was the old woman at the front desk of the inn.

  No one would suspect her.

  I certainly didn’t. I wasn’t even sure she could speak English, let alone deliver a note to me in such a sparse use of the language.

  The instructions were largely the same as they’d been before. I was told to carry on. It was the minimalist’s version of a pat on the back, I suppose.

  I didn’t feel like I was doing anything right. But they hadn’t asked me to make any changes in my performance. The note did nothing to assuage my feelings that I was flying blind, either. They’d covered my eyes, given me a handlebar, and pushed. I was only then starting to realize I was on a trapeze without a net.

  Turning the note over, I found more typing. “Message from Home. Things are well. LeBeau.”

  I’ll never forget those words for as long as I would live.

  Things are well.

  LeBeau.

  That note was the first I burned, but not then. I’d keep it folded neatly next to my heart through everything that was to come, stacked on top of her handwritten letter to me.

  Confusion gripped and shook me through the haze of pressure I was already under. Was the message from Sara telling me LeBeau had come to call on her?

  All I could hear was his drunk, wheezing voice telling me how he wanted her so, my wife. His hot breath, wet with wine, beat down on my neck, steaming my collar straight. My heart expanded in my chest with worry. I was terrified of having an attack of some sort that would further engorge my heart and force it to burst. A strain appeared at the edges of my ribcage, as though I was filling up with stress like a hot air balloon.

  I convinced myself it was the stress of the mission.

  But then the words came back to me from the last time I saw LeBeau. “I can look in on your wife.”

  He knew I didn’t want that. He knew I’d practically forbidden it. My stomach twisted.

  I paced the small, shabby floor, clasping my hands together tightly. None of the details in the room could be seen, I didn’t see the metal spring bed there. I saw our bed, mine and Sara’s. It wasn’t empty, but consumed with the combined twisted beast of Sara and LeBeau.

  It wasn’t rational, but the cryptic note was like a matador waving a cape in front of a bull. I was steaming out the nose, pitching dirt behind me, winding up for a charge. It didn’t make sense, but it was my nature.

  The only calming thought I could find was the idea that it wasn’t a mention of LeBeau, it was his signature. He’d looked in on Sara and wanted me to be assured that all was well. But that still put the two of them together and it still meant they’d fall for each other.

  The images flashing before my brain, in a circle like a zoetrope or one of those motion pictures, told a tale I simply could not handle. They were close shots I saw: the image of a glass of wine held close to her chest and his eyes staring down at her cleavage, lecherously. Another picture showed me his arm around her, his hand against the flesh of her back between the straps of her dress. She smiled.

 
At him, she smiled.

  Night had fallen on Cambrai, a crisp, autumn night with a bite to the cold and I hadn’t even realized I was in it until I turned a corner and found myself staring at the night crew of the pit being dug on the edge of the city on this side of the river. I had been so singularly focused on my anxious misery and my need to keep moving, running from my problems, that there was no time for me to comprehend where I was going.

  But here I was, at the site of the dig I’d noticed from the café, listening to deep Russian voices speaking to each other in sad, overworked tones.

  Prisoners of war from the Russian front being used as labor. It was abhorrent. My back ached just watching them.

  Poor bastards.

  From my perch at the café, I hadn’t truly realized the scope of the job they were doing: they were in the midst of constructing a network of trenches, replete with empty rooms and duckboards running the length of the street as far as I could see. The night-shift of Russians were in a line, picking and shoveling dirt. A line of men behind them handed baskets of the loosened soil up to the workers on top of the burgeoning trench where they would move it to defensive mounds they were building.

  It surprised me the Germans weren’t using any steam-powered trenching equipment. I’d seen them, cogged machines with pistons and scoops, belching dirt and smoke, tearing into the Earth with the ease of flying.

  But no… Here the prisoners did the work.

  Watching their problems play out across the edge of Cambrai somehow calmed my personal anxieties. It was easier to dismiss my “concerns” as absurd watching these poor prisoners with the proverbial whips of the Germans at their backs.

  A distant voice called out behind me, mutterings in German I didn’t understand. I turned, making out the distant silhouette of a pair of long-coated, pointy-helmeted soldiers. Even at that range, I could make out their bayonets. Sense gripped me and I realized there was surely a curfew in Cambrai and no matter how good my forged documents were, I probably wouldn’t be able to conjure a story well enough to get me out of that jam. Patting each of my pockets in turn, my fingers scrambled over every inch of me, searching for the travel documents that might get me out of trouble. I came to my chest pocket, felt the crumple of paper, and found only Sara’s letter.

  One of the Germans pointed at me, the other motioned in my direction with his rifle and bayonet.

  Without my papers and travel documents, there was only one logical course of action.

  Spinning around, I identified the closest alley and sprinted toward it. The shouting behind me in German grew louder and culminated in a bullet shot that ricocheted into the alley with a puff of smoke behind me as I disappeared into the shadows.

  “Schnell!”

  “In die Gasse!”

  The alley I’d ducked into felt like a long tunnel, twisting like a fun house and turning at an odd, sharp angle, like so many alleys in that old city. I’d vanished from their sight, but there were only so many places I could go and they must have known it, otherwise they wouldn’t have given such hot pursuit.

  My legs were already tired, putting me at a disadvantage, but they were wearing much heavier gear than I was. I could hear them shuffling quickly behind me, shouting louder in German that I stop, or that they wanted to kill me, or something else. Everything sounded horrible in German if you said it loudly and forcefully enough. They may as well have been telling me they’d been pawing at my wife and exploring her every intimate detail for all the fury their entreaties inspired in me.

  But they weren’t going to simply go away. I was going to have to do something about them.

  Bursting from the network of alleyways at a forced sprint, my eyes scanned the street beyond, looking for anything I could use to my advantage. The street was old and bare, stone and brick in every direction. A few vacant trucks were parked along the opposite curb, and a grouping of barrels and boxes and trash bins were on the side of the street closest to me.

  A single light, obscured mostly by the trucks, lit the road, giving it all the charm of a murder scene.

  The trucks would have been better cover, but I could see myself crossing the street and being shot down, so I opted for the closer option. The barrels and trash bins wouldn’t afford much protection, but they’d certainly afford me more cover than my exposed back.

  Four more strides and I could dive and roll behind the cover. Tightening myself up into a ball, trying to make myself as small a target as possible, I remembered why I preferred to be above the battlefield than in the thick of it. A shaking began in the pit of my stomach and radiated to a rattle in my chest and a vibration in my wrists and fingers.

  The moment I found myself curled up and hidden, the heavy gait of their boots and the heaving breath of winded chests could be heard, coming through the alley and out into the open. I imagined they looked around, saw nothing, and pointed their rifles up and down the street, seeking my hiding spot. They moved deliberately, both to catch their breath and prevent me from getting the drop on them.

  I wasn’t doing any better trying to regulate my breathing; I was inhaling sharp breaths and doing my best to keep them held, but it wasn’t working.

  There was some low talking in German and I assumed they were creating a plan or assigning duties to capture me. They fell silent once more and began to move.

  Footsteps grew closer, and it was just one set of them, as far as I could tell. The other must have tried heading around the trucks. If I’d played my cards right, they would guess I chose the better cover of the trucks and the one heading toward me would think he was flanking that position.

  As soon as I saw booted feet creeping up on me, I lunged for him, knocking the barrel of his rifle skyward and spinning around him, hoping I wouldn’t take a bullet in the meantime. I couldn’t tell you when I’d reached at his belt, but I had his trench knife in my hand and the point at his throat.

  Our encounter seemed silent enough, and I could hear no noise from the soldier who’d made his way around the truck. A vile feeling entered my body as the knife entered the man’s throat. He did his best to let out a cry, but his wind had been cut from him before it could happen.

  His blood was warm bath water on my hands.

  I pulled him to the ground behind the garbage, letting him bleed out into the street. Crouching low, I wanted to apologize to him. This would be an indelible moment in my subconscious and I knew it, attacking me in my dreams for years to come. But my thoughts turned more practical: I hoped I hadn’t been seen.

  A lie to myself. An errant bullet fired and smashed into the stone masonry of the building behind and above me.

  “Zeig dich!” he yelled.

  Keeping my head ducked and looking left and right, I searched for ways out of my predicament. There was a rifle at my disposal, but I was essentially in a trench. If I popped up to fire where he was expecting me, I might as well be holding a lighter up over the wire.

  “Zeig dich!” he yelled again. The slow tap of his boots on the pavement told me he was stepping toward me, the sound grew louder.

  I could see him in my imagination, gun raised, scared witless, and ready to kill.

  Quietly, I reached over and took the downed German’s rifle, all brass and cogs with an elaborate scope. Gathering the weapon wouldn’t have been a problem had the strap not been slung over his head tightly.

  Tugging on it, the dead soldier and all of his equipment scraped along the ground for the barest fraction of an inch, making a hideous squeak, like nails on blackboard.

  The footfall in the street stopped. He must have been looking around, right at me, right through the debris. If I were him, and I was confident my companion was dead, I would have just opened fire into the debris pile, hoping to get lucky with a bullet.

  Terrified that thought might solidify in his head, I had to act fast. I pulled the rifle around the German’s neck, making a horrible screech of a noise in the process. With it in hand, I ignored the gunfire lighting up around me and roll
ed on my shoulder, bullets passing through the wake of debris I left.

  Popping up, ready to fire, my tuck and roll had the desired effect. He was disoriented and I was on his nine, not apparent at all in his field of view.

  I pulled the trigger.

  A spray of blood and splash of errant flesh told me I’d scored a hit on his collarbone, spinning him in my direction.

  Disoriented, he wasn’t able to pull the trigger once he’d turned. Somehow I was faster, firing at him twice more.

  Once in the neck, the bullet blowing out the back of his throat, and again at the top of his chest, soaking his grey uniform in blood.

  Unable to linger, I dropped my stolen weapon and turned once more to run. Though they were no longer pursuing me, if I was caught blood-stained in the streets it would be the end of me.

  The wind racing past me on my way through the winding streets of Cambrai chilled the sweat on my brow, running it cold down my face. I ducked in and out of alleyways, hoping to find my way back to the boarding house, hoping I could make it through this assignment and just go home.

  I’d finally reached the place and stepped inside, realizing for the first time just how messy I’d become. My hands were a deep brownish red, covered to my forearms with the blood of the German soldier.

  It had dried and caked on.

  “Es dir gut?”

  My head snapped up to see, for the first time in the duration of my visit, someone sitting behind the registration desk. It was the same old woman with the sour face, squinting at me through her thick cataracts and her thicker glass lenses.

  Her face contorted with shock and fright.

  “Stimmt etwas nicht?” she asked.

  Averting my eyes, I pulled my arms close to me, hoping I could obscure them from sight, and walked directly to the doorway leading to the stairs and the sanctuary of my private room.

  “I’m fine. I’m fine. Everything is all right,” I said, going for the door and covering my face over with my bloody hands.

  Though I had no energy for it, I took the stairs all the way up three at a time without a break, finally making it to my room without a single easy breath in my chest.