by Glen Cook
“Dunajcik!” Gabiek gasped.
He didn’t know how he knew, but he did. It hit him like a thunderclap. There remained not a shred of doubt.
Kubis gave him a strange look.
“I’ll wait here.” Gabiek slid behind a pillar, afraid Dunajcik might react as he had. The old woman seemed popular. She might send someone after him....
The conviction grew more absolute. Inside that crone was the man who had caused all this by his treachery at the programming theater....
Gabiek backed from the church, his head shaking. It was a mystery. How could he be so positive? And how could the lieutenant have become a priestess? The man had always been weak and effeminate, and a bit too mystically oriented — but this vast a failure in one educated by the State?
He, as Neulist, had failed, he realized. He had not extinguished the spark of Uprising. It persevered, and had thrust its insidious evil into his own office....
The idiot was so happy he almost glowed. Was do devoted that he had done nothing to apply twenty-first century common knowledge to the retardation of the aging process in the body he wore.
Was the fool in such a hurry to get to Heaven?
Or had that ugly body been too old when he had arrived?
At least some laws of chronological conservation appeared to be in effect.
The Hangman, despite his ruined spine, would not die till the historically appointed moment. He lingered till the fourth of June.
Meanwhile, the Protectorate (and Reich) rapidly deteriorated toward chaos. Gabiek, ignored in all his efforts to betray the Resistance fighters in the church, and to link Lidice with the assassination attempt, suffered frustrations equaling those of his dealings with the Zumstegs. Damn it, the security police had to move. Fian Groloch was bound to remember his history soon. This fuss had to alert him.
But the timetable continued rectifying itself back toward historically established precedent.
Heydrich finally died.
Something clicked. The engine of history ceased sputtering, began to hum.
The security police closed in on Karl Borromaeus Church.
There were no survivors when they finished.
But this time there was no one named Josef Gabiek among the dead.
Next morning, carrying papers identifying himself as Dr. Hans-Otto Schmidt of the SS-Reich Economic Administration Main Office (the incongruously named bureau responsible for the death camps), in transit from Theriesenstadt to Mathausen, Neulist-Hodzâ-Gabiek was on the move, destination Ostmark, the Austrian province of the Greater German Reich. In the false bottom of his physician’s bag lay stamps massing less than half a kilo, yet worth millions of Reichsmarks. They would be his means till he could reach his Swiss deposits.
There was no easier way to move a fortune.
He was in Linz, preparing yet another identity, when the sword of this vengeance finally touched a Zumsteg.
That was the morning of June 9, 1942.
The massacre at Karl Borromaeus Church hadn’t seen enough blood spilled to satiate Heydrich’s avengers. For days all the Protectorate had been waiting, treading a razor’s edge of fear, not knowing where the inevitable blow would fall.
Early that morning ten trucks rolled to the outskirts of Lidice. Captain Rostock ordered his troops to surround the village. They were hard-faced men, Totenkopf men, ready for murder.
Their first victim was a twelve-year-old boy, shot down as he ran to warn his father, who worked in the mines at Kladno.
The next was an old peasant woman, shot in the back repeatedly as she fled across a plowed field.
The men they drove into Mayor Horak’s cellar....
And the killing began in earnest.
One thousand three hundred thirty-one people died at Lidice, including 201 women. And it wasn’t over then. More would perish in the camps. The babies of pregnant women would be murdered at birth.
Among the 1331 was Fian Groloch, who didn’t realize what was happening till far too late. His final remark, to Horak, was, “Ignorance can be a capital offense too,” which puzzled the mayor for the few minutes he remained alive.
Groloch spent his last minutes trying to reason out why the Heydrich-Lidice scenario differed from what he vaguely remembered. In the absence of knowledge about Neulist, he erroneously concluded that his own presence had affected the changes. He made admonitory notes in his diary, buried it in a box beneath Horak’s cellar floor. The construction crew excavating the foundations of the agency building might find it.
He tried to compose himself.
But he died terrified for the State.
Then Rostock burned the village, dynamited the ruins, and leveled the site. The surviving women went to the camps. Their younger children went to racial experts for determination of which were worthy of adoption into good National Socialist families.
And for three and a half years, in Vienna, a Dr. Schramm smiled, awaited the Russians, and considered how he would pick up his mission in America after the war.
XXI
On the Y Axis;
1975
Cash was reasonably impressed with the Tran family. The boys were a handsome pair, he thought during the introductions. Taller than their parents already, and not at all uncomfortable with American ways.
When he mentioned it, Tran replied, “They spent several years in the company of American children in Saigon. Children are more adaptable than us old folks anyway.”
“That’s the truth. That’s why they turn them into soldiers. Well, let’s get your stuff upstairs, show you your rooms. The boys are going to have to share, I’m afraid.”
The Vietnamese hadn’t brought much with them. Annie asked if the rest of their things were being shipped.
“This is it,” Tran replied, almost apologetically. “We weren’t able to bring much out.” Then, to ease Annie’s embarrassment, “Something smells good.”
“Supper. It’s just spaghetti. I didn’t know what to fix.”
“You won’t hear any complaints from my sons. They were ecstatic when they saw how near that pizza shop is.”
“Imo’s?” Cash asked. “I know it well. Michael and Matthew damned near kept the place in business when they lived at home. This’s it. Your room.” He hadn’t been into it for weeks. Annie had done a job. New curtains, new sheets, new bedspread, some plants in the windows, everything squeaky clean.
Once it had been Michael’s room. She had cleaned out every scrap that had been the mark of their son’s personality, even patching the plaster where the framed centerfold of a favorite Playmate had hung till he and John had pulled it-down while clowning.
Cash slipped his arm around Annie’s waist in a congratulatory hug.
“It’s very nice.” Tran seemed as much at a loss as they. His wife said nothing at all, and the boys, in the hall, confined themselves to whispers.
“The bathroom’s right here,” Annie said. “I’ll show your sons their room, then we’ll let you settle in. Supper will be ready when you are.” She took Norm’s hand and led him downstairs.
The wine she served with supper helped everyone relax. It was a native Missouri pink catawba; they made no pretenses in that direction. Soon all but Tran’s wife were chattering like old friends. The major didn’t seem to mind that his sons were heard as well as seen.
The phone rang while Annie was dishing out homemade butter pecan ice cream.
Cash answered it. “Hi. No. Yeah. You tried the station? Yeah, he was working on something for me, but I figured he’d get done in time for supper. Guess he must’ve hit a snag, eh? Would you tell him to call me when he gets there? Sure. Bye.”
Annie raised a questioning eyebrow when he returned to the dining room.
“Carrie. Looking for John.” How long could he keep this Teri business to himself? Annie had an annoying habit of putting odd numbers together to get four. Came from reading those damned mysteries all the time.
“Your partner?” Tran inquired. “I meant to ask,
how did you do with that case? The one with the old lady and the mysterious corpse.”
“Still going. We keep digging things up. It just gets spookier.” He brought Tran up to date.
“And not one body turned up? Very strange.”
“No lie. Don’t know for sure about the bodies, though. Tomorrow we start checking back, to see what’s on the record.”
“Norm,” said Annie, “I thought O’Lochlain told you they just disappeared. If they’d ever turned up anywhere, his people would have known. Wouldn’t they? And he’d have told you, wouldn’t he?”
“Maybe. Tommy’s a little strange.”
As Cash drifted toward sleep that night he realized that John hadn’t called. It didn’t matter that much this time, but he was going to have to get onto the kid’s case. Otherwise this thing with Teri was going to cause problems.
Cash reached work a half hour late because he had driven Tran in for his first day of work and had gotten, talking with the man’s boss.
Tran seemed to have timed his arrival to his job, to avoid the appearance of freeloading.
“Where’s John, Beth?” he asked as he pushed in. Smith and Tucholski had the squad room thoroughly fogged already.
“Not in yet.”
“His car’s in the lot.”
“Maybe he’s downstairs.”
“Maybe. I’ve got some research to get him started on. Tell him to see me whenever he shows.”
He spent ten minutes reviewing the activities of the previous shifts, then leaned back. It wouldn’t be such a bad year after all. The first quarter had been an anomaly. The heavy casualties had been primarily drug-related. That war seemed to have settled out now. Even the papers had found more interesting fare.
The remaining nuts, too, seemed firmly attached to their trees.
Next thing he knew, Beth was shaking him awake. “Your friend from New York just called. He says the Rochester place is a complete bust if you’re looking for something illegal. There’s one old man who’s lived there forever, and that’s it. Just like your Miss Groloch, only this one’s never been in any trouble. He said it’d help if he knew what the hell you were looking for.”
“Ah, the heck with it. Should’ve known I was wasting my time. What about John?”
“Not here. Hang on a minute.” The phone was ringing.
A moment later, “It was that judge. He said he still hasn’t made up his mind, but you’re getting closer. You’ve got him interested.”
“Okay.” He eyed Smith, who was stalking around with one cigarette in hand while another smoldered in his ashtray. The man was talking to himself.
Everybody had problems.
The temptation to run across to the liquor store after a pack of his own was, suddenly, horribly powerful.
“About that dinner I owe you. Would you think I was welshing if I invited you over to the house?”
She was several seconds answering. “No, that’s okay.” She didn’t sound enthusiastic, though.
“Hey. Come on. I owe you. I’ll do whatever you want.” He had thought that bringing in another shy person might liven Tran’s wife. The woman behaved like a lost soul.
Beth brought a cup of coffee. “I know. Doctor says verboten. But you’d better get it inside you. Hank’s grumbling about whipping the outfit into shape again. What if he catches his sergeant sleeping on the job?”
“It’ll blow over by Monday. It always does. You want to slow him down, just look at his old man like he’s the first change you’re going to make.”
“Damn!” It was the phone again. “That thing’s been jumping off my desk all morning.” A moment later, “It’s for you. Your wife.”
He took it on his extension. “Yeah?”
“Did John show up this morning? Carrie just called again. He never came home last night.”
Suddenly, Cash was back in that shack in the Ardennes. The Tigers and Panthers were clanking past with all the sound of hammers pounding the anvils of doom.
The panzergrenadiers, all tough, hard-eyed veterans of five years of warfare, were closing in.
His guts cramped with the fear.
“Norm! What’s the matter?”
Two voices said it. He looked from the phone to Beth.
“Oh... nothing. Just... for some reason I was remembering the war.” Now he was more puzzled than frightened.
“Is John up to something?” Annie demanded.
“Not now. I’ll tell you later. Tonight. Okay? I’ll find him. Bye.” Teri. Damned, it had better be Teri. “Beth, would you get ahold of the Post’s classified ad department for me?”
Those grim panzergrenadiers stalked forward under the low gray sky, their silence a dread contrast with the squeal, clank, and roar of the armor. The young Cash turned the crank on the abandoned field phone, round and round and round. No one answered.
Who was he calling, anyway? Hitler himself?
He was dead meat. He knew it.
“Norm?” Beth was offering the phone.
“Teri Middleton, please,” he croaked, hoping the girl was using her maiden name again, or that there was only one Teri employed there. “No, dammit! This isn’t a personal call. This’s the goddamned police department.”
He waved Beth out.
The girl was on the line in seconds. “John?”
“Shit,” he muttered to himself. “Teri? This’s Norm. I don’t want to pry, but have you seen John?”
“No.”
“Look, it’s important. I want to make sure he isn’t in some kind of trouble. We haven’t been able to locate him since yesterday.”
“Well, I haven’t either.”
“You’re sure?”
“I said so, didn’t I?”
“Shit. Oh, shit.”
“Swear to God. Really. He was supposed to meet me after work yesterday. He never showed up.”
“He didn’t?”
“No.”
“Okay. Thanks.” He lowered the receiver slowly. “What the hell am I going to do?” He looked right through Beth, who had ignored his directive to withdraw.
“Norm?” She sounded frightened now. “What is it? What happened?”
“It’s John. He... no. I can’t tell you yet. I’ve got to check some things before I tell anybody.” His ass was going to be in a sling. He was, voluntarily, going to confess to an illegal entry. “I’ll be back in a little while.”
He first checked John’s car. It seemed to be in the same parking space as yesterday, though that wasn’t remarkable in itself. Still, no one had seen Harald. He hadn’t signed in, nor had he called in.
A half hour later Cash was cruising past John’s home. Harald’s children were playing in the yard. He scrunched down to avoid recognition.
Carrie’s Plymouth Satellite stood at the curb. And John’s Honda stood inside the open garage, leaning against one wall.
John hadn’t gone off to live on the beach at Malibu.
“Shit.” His vocabulary had grown terribly limited today, he reflected.
His guts were cramping again.
The feldwebel with the Winter War patch spun through the door of the shack a second after another grenadier smacked it with the heel of a field boot. His submachine gun looked like an eighty-eight. Cash hadn’t believed his fear could grow stronger.
Honking horns and squealing tires yanked him out of the flashback.
He had run a stop sign. Death’s greedy claws had missed him by inches.
The brush calmed him.
He drove past the Groloch house twice. It hadn’t changed, yet it now seemed somehow both deadly and dead.
Annie would tell him what to do.
“What’re you doing home?” She had been trying to explain macrame to Tran’s wife. The boys were watching television and playing chess. Cash had already discovered, to his embarrassment, just how good they were at the latter.
“Honey, I... I think I yanked the tiger’s tail one time too many.” He collapsed into a chair. “I don’t know w
hat to do.” He rubbed his forehead with his left hand.
“What is it?” She was alarmed now.
“It’s John. I... I had him sneak into Miss Groloch’s place while she was at the funeral yesterday.”
“Without a warrant? Stupid. You want to blow your retirement? Norman, I think you’ve become obsessed. When you start cutting corners —”
“Annie. Please. I know all that. That’s not the point. It’s already too late to worry about it.” His breath came in quick, shallow gasps. “It doesn’t look like he ever came out.”
Her jaw hung slack for fifteen seconds. “What?”
“John went in and never came out. Just like O’Brien and O’Lochlain’s hoods and that Colin Meara kid.”
“Oh. Oh, no. Lord, no. Norm, what’re we going to do?”
“I don’t know. God. I don’t know. I wish I did. But all I can think about is what I should’ve done. I’ve got to talk it over with Hank, got to do something....”
Annie sat on the arm of the chair. “Poor Carrie.”
“Poor everybody.” The shit was going to hit the fan in a big way. A lot of people were going to get hurt.
“Whatever you do, don’t go charging in there after him. Okay? Promise?”
“Honey, I don’t think I’ve got the guts to go in there again, ever. Under any conditions. I’m scared. I mean, like I haven’t been since the war.”
The German sergeant relaxed, laughed softly, dragged the pale youth from behind the heap of broken peasant furnishings. His smile was neither gloating nor malicious. He removed the M1 from Norm’s trembling fingers, handed it to a landser, patted Norm’s shoulder. “Be okay, Yank.” He pulled the ration cigarettes from Cash’s pocket, passed them around to his men, stuck one between Cash’s lips, put the remainder back where he had found them. He and his men took turns lighting up and warming their hands at the stove whose smoke had given the American away.
And it had worked out. Six days later Cash was holding the rifle and passing out the smokes when counterattacking American troops caught up with them.
But the terror had never let up.
What was Joachim Schleicher doing these days? The stone mason’s apprentice who had run away in thirty-eight, at sixteen, to enlist and make his contribution to the New Order, had been a bitter old man at twenty-three. Danzig was in Poland now, wasn’t it? Had he even bothered to go home? Might be interesting to trace the sergeant someday.