The Wind Chill Factor

by Thomas Gifford

  “You don’t understand.”

  “And you wanted to take Frau Brendel back with you, a trophy, to prove what serious fellows you all are.” He shook his head. “God, how dreary.”

  He went back into the kitchen. I followed. Peterson was making coffee.

  “It all gets so messy,” he said. “There’s no point in trying to keep it clean because it always gets messy, like this.” He put cups on the counter. “People are so fragile.”

  “Everybody but you,” I said.

  “Ah, me. I’m a predator.”

  Peterson tied Siegfried’s hands behind him and stretched him out on the couch. We all went to sleep after we had our coffee. It was past seven. I woke up at a sound: Peterson’s eyes were open and he was watching Siegfried, who had gotten up, hands still trussed behind him, blood caked on his silver suit, and was pulling the front door open.

  Peterson put his finger to his lips. Siegfried got the door open and lurched out. We got up and went to the door. He was moving away, staggering in the deep snow, breaking clumsily through the crust. With his hands tied behind him he was finding balance difficult to maintain. The sun was shining somewhere behind the gray clouds and his silver suit reflected what little of the sun that seeped through. He shone like a new toy soldier, an astronaut on the surface of another world. He was drifting toward the cover of trees. He fell several times, thrashed on his knees like a wounded beast, struggled on. We watched until he made the trees and was obscured by the shadows and the windblown snow which hung everywhere in wisps.

  “Let him go. He’ll come wandering back. No way he can get his hands loose, poor bastard.” He yawned and stretched his arms high. “I’m too damn tired to go running after him.”

  He went in and stood looking down at Lise.

  “She’s been through a lot,” I said.

  “She thrives on it,” he said sourly. “She loves it. Beat her up, break her ribs, give her an eyeful of some good clean sadism. Keeps her mind occupied. She’d adore the death of a thousand cuts.”

  “Why don’t you shut up.”

  “Did you screw her?”

  “Does it make any difference?”

  “Hard to say anymore.” He paced to the far wall, peered at the contents of a huge built-in bookcase, ran his finger along the shelf, gathering dust. He picked out a thick, worn volume and blew dust from its spine. “Freud. Freud would have loved you and Lise. A field day for the old boy.”

  “Bullshit,” I said.

  “My God, you’re a monster.” Lise was awake.

  “Oh, look who’s awake. How are you, crazypants?”

  “John, make him be quiet.” She straightened up painfully.

  “Which game is it now?” he asked. “Shall we play John off against Olaf? You bore me, madam. You’re a tedious neurotic woman who may or may not be old Cooper’s sister. I have ceased to give a damn one way or the other.” He came back and dropped the book in her lap. “I just want to get rid of you.” He pointed to the book. “Read it. Kill some time.”

  He went upstairs.

  “Fucking monster,” she said and began to cry. She needed her pills, uppers or downers or a little hemlock, something. “My husband is dead. He cut Siegfried with a knife. I’m hurt, John, my side hurts, something is hurting inside.”

  In the afternoon it had begun to snow again and the wind was up, blowing down from the top of the mountains.

  Lise was sitting by the kitchen fire smoking a cigarette. She was looking into the fire, her face blank, empty.

  “Well, we’d better go look for him,” Peterson said. “If he’s out there when it gets dark he may not be able to get back.”

  We put on Brendel’s sweaters, got into our coats, wrapped mufflers over our mouths and noses. Snow cut at our eyes, burned any exposed skin. I could hear Peterson swearing. We slogged off toward the trees where we’d last seen Siegfried. It was getting dark quickly and trying to move fast left us wheezing and sweating by the time we reached the treeline.

  It didn’t take long to find the snowmobile, but Siegfried wasn’t with it. It sat drifted under, a handlebar sticking out. Any tracks he might have left were filled in by the wind.

  The next thing we found wasn’t Siegfried.

  Twenty yards farther on in the trees there were three more snowmobiles parked in a row, faintly dusted with powdery snow. It was too dark and the woods were full of people.

  Peterson tugged at his muffler, pulled it away from his mouth.

  “I think we just lost the game,” he said. “I didn’t hear them.” He watched the three snowmobiles intently as if he expected them to make a break for it. He kicked the closest one and turned his back on it in frustration.

  Moving through the dark trees, with the sun gone behind the mountains, we found Siegfried.

  Peterson tripped over him. His hands were still tied behind him. He was frozen in a kneeling position. Peterson tipped him over like a big stuffed animal and he moved in a piece, stiff, a once-human ice cube. Peterson flicked a match with his thumbnail and cupped it close to Siegfried’s head. The back of it was gone: the coup de grace. “An execution,” he said.

  They were waiting for us. Their snowmobile suits were thrown across the long table behind the couch and a huge khaki dufflebag stood on the floor. Three men, sturdy, fair, square-jawed, even-voiced, very proper. They were waiting quietly, chatting among themselves. Lise sat in her big chair, remote and pale, not looking well.

  One of the men, short-haired, blue-eyed, stood up when we came in. He waited while we got our coats off.

  “Good evening,” he said. “You’ll be wanting some brandy.” One of the other men handed us each a snifter. “Please sit down.” We sat down.

  The first man, who seemed somewhat older, took a pipe out of his hip pocket and smoothed an oilskin pouch on the table. He filled the pipe methodically and struck a match, sucked it into life. Once he got it going he used it to gesture like a self-conscious professor. They all looked like astronauts, the same prefabricated faces, blank and impersonal like automatons.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, folding his arms and trying to talk through teeth clenched around his pipestem, “we’re here to take you—and Frau Brendel—back to Munich. My associates and I have provided the proper attire for the first part of the journey. We will be met by limousine for the major part of the trip.” He took the pipe out of his mouth. “You will have to trust us.”

  “Who sent you?’ Peterson asked.

  “No comment, sir.”

  “You’re not Germans, are you?”

  “No comment, sir. I’m sorry.” He applied another match to the bowl of the briar. “Now enjoy that brandy before we go.”

  “Stick your brandy up your ass, Sunny Jim.” Peterson stood up and went to hold his hands out to the fire.

  “There’s no point in being abusive, Mr. Peterson. We’re just doing our job.” He must have been about thirty, all of him but his eyes: they were roughly two thousand years old. He’d rolled dice at the foot of the Cross, just carrying out his orders, just doing his job, and he’d stoked the furnaces at Dachau and kept the rack turning in the bad old days.

  “Well, Sunny Jim, you’re doing a mediocre to piss-poor job. We found a big piece of litter out in the woods. He’ll be a mess when he thaws out in April.”

  “Oh, no. …” Lise turned to me again, choking. “Oh, no. …”

  The three men looked blank.

  Peterson turned to Lise. “Oh, yes, oh, yes, crazypants. You may have lost a husband but you’ve also lost a fairy.” She began to cry again, hands pressed to her sore ribs.

  I drained off my brandy.

  One of them unzipped the khaki bag and took out a dark blue snowmobile suit. I took it. He handed one to Lise. Peterson looked at his.

  “We’ll leave in half an hour.” He put down his pipe and the three of them checked their wristwatches. Peterson went upstairs and two of them followed him.

  “Help me,” Lise said. We were alone by the smoking
remains of the fire. She was struggling with her suit, brushing tears from her face. She was short of breath. “John,” she whispered, “who are they? What’s going to happen to me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Will they hurt us?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Did you see Siegfried?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did they kill him?” There was a tic in her cheek.

  “I suppose they did.”

  She clutched my arm, nails digging in.

  “I’m afraid,” she said, panting.

  “So am I.”

  The limousine was waiting as promised, a Mercedes of indescribable length and opulence. The night was cold and wet, fog seeped across the mountain road. The headlights flicked on to guide us. The moon sneaked in and out among the clouds like a searchlight. We made the switch into the car with a minimum of talk. Lise huddled against me.

  I was tired but I couldn’t sleep. Peterson was snoring lightly. I watched the night sliding by. Near Munich it began to rain. The waiting was almost over.

  Rain was drumming in the streets, dirtying the snow and finally washing it away in the gutters. There was a familiar quality about what I saw but it took a moment to place it. The paraffin lamps were glowing, fuzzy, and as we passed they were being snuffed out. We were in Schwabing.

  Suddenly I was hyperventilating and I turned to Peterson, who stared into the night at the other window. “They’re taking us to Roeschler. We’re safe—they’re the good guys.”

  Peterson finally turned, pulled at his mustache, nodded.

  “It all fits somehow,” he said. “It all comes together and makes sense. It has to—but I don’t quite see how, yet. Roeschler sends his men to bring us back safe and sound, that’s fine, but why kill Siegfried? Why do Kottmann’s job for him?” He shook his head and rubbed his nose with a knuckle. “I suppose we’ll see.”

  We were moving slowly down the alleyway behind Roeschler’s house. The three men were out of the car immediately after it stopped, opening the back doors and helping us out. Rain rushed on the bricks, spattered from the rooftops, slashed at us in the wind trapped in the alleyway. I had my arm around Lise, helping her up the steps to the back door. From inside a shadow moved and opened the door. The kitchen light shone on his benign, smiling face. It was Roeschler and he was clucking over us, helping us inside to warmth and safety. Lise and I went on through the snug kitchen to the sitting room, where Peterson and I had first met him. A fire crackled, the cats stretched sleepily, awakened by the commotion. The rain slanted on the windows. The lamplight was yellow and dim seeping out from beneath the fringed shades.

  Lise and I were alone. The bags were being carried into the kitchen and no one was paying any attention to us for the moment. I helped her out of the suit and she stopped me, held me close to her. I felt her breath on my face.

  I shook involuntarily. She stepped back and stood by the fire in her Levis, looking like a slender boy. Her profile was fine and sad with the flames licking up behind her. Watching her stare into the fire, I knew that it didn’t make any difference, that I loved her enough to know I’d never quite get over it. Whether she was good or bad, or insane, or Lise or Lee, it didn’t make any difference anymore.

  It was past midnight when we’d all settled down. Peterson stood by the fire. Lise sat on the floor beside an overstuffed, ramshackle chair with a worn slipcover. And Roeschler, in his immense, droopy cardigan sweater, sat in his rocking chair with a pair of tortoiseshell cats warming his lap, nuzzling his dry, wrinkled hands. He’d poured schnapps for us all. The air was full of cat hair.

  “Well, I am delighted to have you all back safe and sound,” Roeschler said, his voice rumbling. “Are you all right, dear?” She nodded.

  “She may have a cracked rib,” Peterson said. “The late Herr Hauptmann beat on her with a grease gun for a while. Grand girl, though,” he concluded sourly, “came through like a trooper. Didn’t you, crazypants?”

  Roeschler stroked the cats. The rocker creaked.

  “Let me assure you all that you are quite safe here. The crisis which began with the discovery of Herr Brendel’s corpse—I’m sorry, Lise, my dear—the crisis has run its course. Ah, let me explain.”

  Peterson was in a truculent mood. There were no more options. His manner conveyed it, the bitterness in his voice, the slouch. “I’ve got the feeling we’d better brace ourselves.”

  “I’m afraid that you’re right, Mr. Peterson. But trust me.”

  Peterson laughed and went to the window, stood staring into the black rain. “Roeschler, you ask for miracles. Trust. The moon. An honest man.”

  “Mr. Peterson has a feel for all this,” Roeschler explained for our benefit. “And he is right, in his own way. He has guessed by now, I suspect, that I have been less than absolutely candid with you.” He took a deep breath. “Lise, I am the one who killed your husband, my old friend. He was an evil man. He had to die, it was the only way to stop him.” He looked at her, stroked his cats.

  “You?” she said tonelessly. “You murdered him?”

  “I executed him.”

  “That is lost on me, I’m afraid.” I had expected her to fly apart; instead she seemed uninvolved.

  “And to you, John, I must admit that I am not merely the tool of Ivor Steynes, not quite the doddering old victim I painted myself.” I held on to my chair. “In the vernacular, I am a double agent—forgive me the melodrama. At least three Nazis believe I am with them, Brendel considered me an ally. Trust. He trusted me—only in this way can I be of any real use to Colonel Steynes. I am not only an observer of the movement: they believe me to be a part of it.”

  “And what about all the White Rose bullshit,” Peterson said to the window. “What about your poor little Jewish wife?”

  Roeschler’s grip tightened on the cat. Its eyes clicked open, tiny white fangs popped into view, a claw arched up.

  “That is neither here nor there at present, Mr. Peterson. Suffice it that I am a Janus, I face both ways, doing what I can in a society which is dominated by Nazis, old and new. Judges, police officials, elected officeholders, directors of companies, educators all the way from kindergarten to graduate studies—there are Nazis everywhere and to function among them, I surely had to seem to be one of them.” His face, the Carl Sandburg visage, had grown harsh. All the comfort was gone.

  “With that in your minds, let me explain what has happened. Once Brendel’s corpse was discovered, once my housekeeper found me tied to my bed, I was summoned to a meeting at your home, Lise, a meeting convened by Alfried Kottmann. He is an ambitious man whose reach habitually exceeds his grasp.” He sipped his schnapps and reached for the bowl of nuts, fitted one into the nutcracker, and shattered its shell. “Kottmann assumed leadership of the Brendel faction without serious challenge, St. John at his side, of course. Alfried’s great virtue is craftiness. He has lasted a long time. Although it was assumed without question that you two gentlemen had murdered poor Gunter and escaped with Lise and myself as hostages, he immediately saw an opening—namely, that nothing stood in the way of blaming the murder on Siegfried. The motive? Siegfried wanted to assert the primacy of his faction, or possibly a personal conflict centering on Lise, jealousy. The motive wasn’t really important. What was important was the opportunity Brendel’s murder afforded the Old Guard to purge Siegfried and thereby defuse the dilettantes, as Kottmann called them.”

  “Are you quite serious?” Lise’s manner was hardening, growing more analytical. “There was actually a power struggle going on? What fools they are. …”

  “Precisely, a struggle, but hardly foolish. Kottmann convinced the others that Siegfried had been the weak link, the only flaw in the movement. And he was ambivalent about Lise’s importance—perhaps she should disappear, too. Why risk her continued existence? Who knew how much she might know and might decide to tell? There was always the off chance that someone might listen to her—and believe her.

  “I w
as instructed to make arrangements regarding Siegfried. And I was in a unique position to handle that because before going to the meeting I had received a call from Siegfried. He was on the verge of hysteria. He was desperate, he wanted to find Lise, he was babbling precisely the nonsense I expected. I sent him to the schloss, I encouraged him to go, have it out with you, make a deal, and bring Lise back in triumph.”

  Peterson was laughing again. Who the hell was who?

  “The poor fool accepted it. You see, if Kottmann hadn’t suggested the Siegfried operation I would have. Whether from the Nazi viewpoint or my own, Siegfried was the weak link, a danger to us all.

  “Kottmann was less concerned about you two, however troublesome you might be. When you weren’t turned up through normal channels he was willing to assume that you’d finally been frightened off and had gone to ground. He was ambivalent about Lise when I argued against harming her. It seemed overly coldblooded to the others so he backed away from it, said we’d discuss it later if I managed to bring her back to Munich.” He faced Lise. “I repeat, my dear, you are safe. Absolutely safe—but I’m ahead of myself.

  “By sending some of my own men to undo Siegfried I could protect all of you from any wild ideas Kottmann might have and I could get you back here as quickly as possible.” He stood up with a cat in each fist and placed them carefully on the chair cushion. He took a cigar from the humidor on the sideboard and carefully bit the end, spat it onto the worn carpet. He struck the match, let the phosphorus burn away, and leisurely applied it to the tip, enveloping himself in billowing, fragrant smoke. The old clock ticked like footsteps in a quiet hallway.

  “As it stands now,” he went on, moving to the clock and opening its glass cover, “Brendel has been temporarily replaced as German leader of the movement by Kottmann. Siegfried is dead and the young bunch is far less significant. Kottmann is pleased.” He permitted himself a dry chuckle and corrected the hands on the clock s face. It was three minutes to one. “The South American adventure will occupy his time. He will be returning to Buenos Aires shortly. St. John will remain here for a time, I believe. He pulls Kottmann’s strings like a master of puppets and Kottmann, pompous ass, hasn’t the faintest idea.” He slowly closed and fastened the glass and turned back to us, rubbing his hands.