“No one knows of this, back in Munich. That must make you feel better.”
“You sure? Someone we haven’t considered—or you considered. There’s always someone.”
“All anyone knows back there, and there’s only a few, is that a guy was murdered who is hardly an American and an Eastern European refugee may or may not have murdered him. So. What’s that got to do with this here, with these people? Us? Nothing, Max. Nothing.”
They kept drinking. Max loosened up. His eyes gained the sparkle. They talked about their parents, Manfred and Elise. Max was delighted they had written back to him. They only wanted their son alive and happy in the end, they wrote. Ironically, the war had settled Max and his father’s feud. Vati didn’t hold a grudge anymore. Sometimes you take a wrong road, their father had written. Often, one doesn’t have a choice in the matter.
Their parents were the ones who revealed to Max that Harry had been transferred to Munich. Harry had become a fine upstanding man and could certainly help.
“They didn’t mention New York. I didn’t. But someday? I hope we can talk about it,” Max said. The clear hooch had slowed his voice and thickened his tongue. Yet he was talking.
“We haven’t seen each other in a long time, me and you,” Harry said. “Yet you trust me. Take a chance on me. Still, don’t go thinking it’s a one-way street. I have to trust you, too.”
“I know. I do know that.”
“So what happened?” Harry said.
“What? Where?” Max glanced at the door.
“No, look at me. Start anywhere you like. Start with New York City, how’s that? That much is safe to talk about, isn’t it? It’s been over ten years now.”
Max’s head hung. The sparkle in his eyes dimmed, submerged in a gloss of memory.
He couldn’t get a break in America, he told Harry. First, he couldn’t get a decent gig performing in New York City and then he couldn’t get any job at all. He lost his American gal, Lucy, to California. Then Hollywood was too late for him, just another émigré German among far too many. He lost his will to scrape and fight and get ahead. He almost lost his will, period. New York was where he was going to prove himself to all, but it had become an utter dead end by 1939. Then, suddenly, Germany was looking like a Shangri-La, at least according to the kind German man from the embassy—a cultural attaché he’d called himself—who offered to cover Max’s fare back home. Great things were happening back there, the attaché had promised. So many new opportunities opening up.
Harry didn’t push Max. He didn’t ask many questions. Max had obviously never talked about this to anyone for many years and he wanted to now. As he talked he sighed often, from deep within. Irina came and went and left them snacks of dried apricot. Such treats were rare here too, but she must have been able to see that whatever Max was saying to his brother in their English was definitely needed, and she only wanted to keep it going. Harry and Max stayed down on the bedroll, their backs to the wall.
“I loved America, but it didn’t love me back,” Max told Harry. He added an incredulous laugh that made him shake his head. “You? You were lucky. You came over earlier with Mutti and Vati. By staying behind in Germany and finishing my baking apprenticeship—just as Vati wanted, I was already eighteen when I made it over to you in New Hampshire. Do you know what that’s like? I always felt like I was getting a late start. Funny thing. I guess I still feel that way.”
“You left our home, and you left your baker job that he set up over there. Dad had to answer for that, you know. Make up for it. I had to help out.”
“I know—”
“At some point they just wanted news of you, Max.”
“I kept thinking that something good to report was right around the corner. That big break of mine. You know? But the big long city street just kept stretching on and on, ever longer, no corner in sight. My letters got vaguer, farther apart. This is why.”
“If we got any letters at all. I wanted to visit you there in the city. You never responded.”
“It was like I said. What had I to show you?”
“You—I wanted to see you.”
“Ach.” Max waved at the air. “You were still a kid, what did you know—”
“Mom and dad wanted to visit. To see you. Jesus, Maxie. No one expected to find you in a penthouse wearing a top hat.”
The bottle was empty. They let minutes pass in silence. Max smoked and nodded to himself deep in thought as if, Harry guessed, reliving what had come after New York. Harry wasn’t going to press him on it. They would get there. Harry would have to eventually.
“Before you left, you wrote mom and dad from New York,” Harry said. “You said you were only going to visit Germany.”
“What could I say? I didn’t want it to shock them.”
“Shock them? What was left to shock?”
Max released a bitter laugh and his lit butt dropped to his trousers. He patted at the embers. “Now you shock me. We gave up on the corpse. We risked getting you tossed in some clink. We made contact with you.”
“Because I was out of control—I know, I know,” Harry huffed.
“It’s one thing to bend the rules. Keeping that corpse on ice like you were doing. But you were going around in public offering Irina amnesty. A Straferlass? Please. You can’t give her amnesty. How were you going to manage that?”
“I was going to find a way,” Harry said. “Somehow.”
Irina was standing in the doorway, leaning into the doorframe. Her look said: It was time for Max to come to bed. To her and her little Alex. Max, grunting, muttered something to Irina in broken Russian and gathered the blanket around him. She came over to him, nuzzled her head into his shoulder, and tucked a hand under his arm.
Max said to Harry, “I want you to know that, whatever happens, whatever you hear about me or even these people here, you will know that we are not monsters. We are simply caught between the trunk and its bark.”
“A rock and a hard place, you mean. At least that’s the English version.”
“We need the Americans’ help. They’re the only option left. But it must go through you. Through someone who can understand. Forgive. Who knows how to find a way. Good night,” Max said, and he gave a little bow and a flourish of his blanket as if it were a magician’s cape.
Harry woke in the middle of the night, right when he’d told himself to. He had a flashlight. He switched it on, keeping it under his blanket as he navigated the room.
Max had left his overcoat out. Harry checked the pockets and found his brother’s Soldbuch, his German military paybook. Harry flipped it open and saw a drab photo of Max in a regular army uniform looking offended. Name: Maximilian Kaspar. Max had been drafted in summer 1944, into a regular unit on the Russian Front. No awards. A common footslogger. But the record of postings ended in October 1944. A full seven months would pass until the surrender came.
Harry slid the Soldbuch back into the pocket. He fell asleep. At some point, he awoke to hear Max deliberating with others outside. They were arguing possibly. It was hard to tell. Harry fell back asleep.
Then Max was shaking him awake. It was early, the light a dark blue-gray.
“Morning,” Harry muttered, the kinks in his back battling with the aches of hangover in his head.
“We’re taking you back to Munich,” Max said. “But first, I want to show you something. Give you something. Because, we have decided.”
Max led Harry outside with his blankets still wrapped around him. They passed into the woods, into the fog. The older men were standing in a line, by a tree. They stared stone-faced, without gesture. Max halted Harry at what looked like a loose pile of underbrush piled up against a fallen log. Max eyed Harry.
“What?” Harry said.
“Your eyes should adjust first. Are they?”
“Yes.”
Max rolled the log away and heaved the underbrush to the side. Underneath was a board. “Go ahead,” Max said. Harry lifted it away to reveal a narrow di
tch, like a rectangular foxhole. Harry stood over it, looking in. Two naked corpses lay in the ditch, their skin a bright blue-white in the fog, their midsections covered with a blanket. They lay on their stomachs. The backs of their heads were matted with dark, dried blood. They had a slight gamey smell, but the corpses were effectively on ice here and didn’t give off much. Still, Harry’s stomach cramped and rolled, his feet floated, and he had to close his eyes.
Max rushed over, steadied a hand at the small of Harry’s back. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Yes.”
Max turned Harry away from the ditch. From somewhere in the fog, Irina had appeared and was replacing the board, underbrush, and log over the two corpses.
“They’re males, I take it?” Harry said.
Max nodded. “Soviet Army soldiers. They stumbled upon us a few days ago. Probably just AWOL, if not deserters, in which case they’d be shot. But you never know, and it’s only a matter of time. Who knows who they are really?”
Max walked Harry to a tree trunk. Harry leaned against it. “What about the uniforms?” he muttered.
“Burned. All of it. They were two yokels from the steppes according to their effects. Farm boys most likely, but we had to be sure. Some of the people here are talking about eating them. I can only hope it’s their dark humor.”
“It wasn’t just me out of control,” Harry said. “You had other reasons. This.”
“Yes. The thing you must know is the Soviets will find us. You’re giving me that look again. But you asked for it. You wanted answers.”
“Last night—you were arguing with those men,” Harry said. “They didn’t want you to show me this.”
“That’s right. But I won.” Max held out his hands like he did. Lucky him.
“And they want my help now.”
“They do. But the only problem is the Soviet Union is still your ally.”
“Thanks for reminding me.” Harry felt at the bark of the tree, a white birch—the bark was rough and jagged to his palm, but the sensation revived him. “Well, here we are. What did you call it? Between a tree and its bark?”
Fourteen
“DID YOU KNOW WHO HE WAS? That corpse of yours? You got any idea at all?” Major Warren Joyner bawled at Harry. Joyner’s office was now the interrogation room. The major had pushed Harry’s chair close to the desk so that Harry’s kneecaps pressed at hard oak as Joyner stomped around him in circles, huffing and puffing, the major’s face turning red as if he’d drank a jug of wine. Only he wasn’t drunk.
“No, sir,” Harry said. It was eight a.m. on Monday. He had returned to his billet late Sunday evening from Max and Irina’s refuge in the Šumava. When Gerlinde ran outside to him as he parked the Opel, Harry suspected it was Maddy trouble, but no—a major named Joyner was demanding that Herr Harry report to him first thing in the morning about something called “pronto.”
“You really do not know? You got no clue. Well, you better not. Because you told me—gave me your word—that this wasn’t going to involve a German.”
Harry said, staring straight ahead, “I’m afraid I don’t follow exactly, sir—”
Joyner slapped the desk, rattling drawers. Harry felt the soft old floorboards shudder under his chair as Joyner moved behind him, felt the major’s hot puffing on the back of his head.
“The man was in the goddamn SS!” Joyner shouted.
Harry recoiled. Joyner might as well have slapped him hard across on the cheek.
“That’s right—an SS-Mann,” Joyner said, spitting it out, “Goddamn it, Kaspar, why in the Sam Hell did you not report the death of a kraut who fought in the SS?”
“That’s a good question, sir. Only, I didn’t know he was SS.” Harry’s face was reddening like Joyner’s. Why the hell hadn’t Irina told him? That was the real question. Most any civilian east of Poland would be proud of killing an SS soldier even if just a private.
“Not only did you not report it—you were hiding his death. Jesus, Kaspar.”
Joyner didn’t have to tell Harry how this could look, and the fact that he was German-born wouldn’t help matters. But Harry had been hearing it long enough. So if this bull of a major wanted to make something of it, Harry was ready to buck back. He sat up, clamping his hands to the desk. “Like I told you already: I had no knowledge,” he said through gritted teeth.
“All right, Captain, easy,” Joyner said.
Both of them eased off. Harry’s hands found his lap and Joyner’s shoulder the window, where the major consulted the gray Munich moonscape. He still had one fist tight to his side as if ready to jam a pencil into his leg. Harry tried to keep in mind what drove Sheriff Joyner. After two years of war, and worse, a fighter like Joyner was a lone wolf. Too independent for the career officers, had no love for the silver spooners who’d come over craving more silver spoons, and too old for the boy GIs who rotated in on a treadmill. Harry could relate. He was used to being an outcast among certain Americans on account of him being MG and a kraut to boot. The only problem was that Joyner was looking even more like one of those certain Americans.
“Can I ask a question?” Harry said. Joyner nodded, still gazing out the window. “What was the name?”
“The dead man? It’s classified.”
“Classified by whom? Sir.”
Joyner turned from the window. His face had lost the redness. “Counterintelligence identified him. The CIC. They had it in their records. This bastard had been on the lam a while, and they’d been on his trail. It would’ve been a good catch, I reckon.”
“I gather he was more than just a private? In his deeds, I mean?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Would it help if I went to the CIC and talked to them—”
“No! Absolutely not. Truth is, I shouldn’t be telling you any of this. And God only knows why I am.” Joyner scanned the room as if checking for any guests who could overhear. “Something tells me you did not know. Tells me, makes me hope, that you would’ve wanted a scum like this caught alive just as much as I.”
“More than dead even,” Harry said.
Joyner didn’t respond. He sat down, his big frame made the desk look child-sized. He spoke in a near-whisper, his voice reedy like it was coming over a telephone. “This SS swine? He was part of the strike force that slaughtered our boys back in December of ’44.”
“Hürtgen Forest, was it? Or the Ardennes?”
“The latter. Battle of the Bulge. Ardennes Offensive, krauts called it. The bastard was in a special team, one of those who got behind our lines and posed as American soldiers. SS spies. We nabbed most of them, but this one had cut loose and tried to strike at anything he could—gas dumps, radio towers, generals I reckon if he would’ve got that far.”
An uneasy feeling churned in Harry’s gut. Why the hell hadn’t Max told him this? He lifted a Chesterfield to his lips, hoping Joyner didn’t notice his shaking fingers.
Joyner shot him a hard look.
“Oh sorry, sir. I won’t smoke in here.”
“Damn right.” Oddly, Joyner’s mouth had curled up on one side into something like a smile. He leaned forward. “I got you riled up though, didn’t I? I’m telling you, this swine had no business getting away, dead now or no.”
“And I hear you. Loud and clear.”
“Good. So, keep on listening.”
“Meaning, sir?”
“If you ever need help with whatever game you’re playing—with whatever you’re up to, you know right where to come.”
Fifteen
HARRY WONDERED JUST WHO MAJOR JOYNER supposed he was. Some sort of renegade Nazi hunter? A special assassin run by some new intelligence office? First Maddy and now Sheriff Joyner supposes he’s a special operator and Joyner even offers his help. If only matters were that clear-cut—then all could be fixed, Harry thought as he marched back to his office in frustration, his wool service cap crumpled in his fist and his belted officer’s overcoat hanging wide open letting the cold wind lash at his ch
est and neck and face.
If only he could tell it all to the likes of Joyner, or stroll right into the CIC duty station over in the Ludwigstrasse and ask for real help. That or he could even inquire, discreetly, with the reputed US Trade Council Representative at the far end of his floor with his overcoat draped over his shoulders and wide-brimmed hat. Harry had been wondering about the man, about his true operation. Munich was seeing a growing share of intentionally nondescript US officials like this, and surely some were covert operators. A man like that might know exactly what to do for the people trapped in the Šumava.
Harry marched on into his building and headed straight to the far end of his floor. The hallway was empty. He stood at the door for the US Trade Council Representative and listened. He heard nothing, no typewriters tapping, no voices, nothing. He stifled the urge to knock.
If only, he reminded himself. Sure, he had his own past to consider. But then there was Max.
Why would Max want to hide the identity of an SS-Mann? Could Max really not have known? The very idea of Max deceiving him—his own brother playing him for a fool—got him even hotter under the collar, and there wasn’t enough cold outside to cool it down.
Back in Harry’s office his secretaries passed in and out, a chain that he created by demanding each successive staffer fetch another so he could complete all tasks in his neglected inbox. He inhaled a sandwich and couldn’t recall what it was. A secretary told him he was sweating and looked red in the face. “I suppose I don’t feel so well,” he said. “I’ll have to go home.”
He marched outside and flagged down a jeep for the stretch across the river into Old Town. From there he made his way on foot heading west of the train station, traversing debris-laden rail yards, bounding across the tracks and ties and gravel. Gimps and fiends approached. He shouldered them out of his way.
He had worked himself into a fit. What had Max taken him for? Did Max think family would trump all? Max could just tell Harry his sad tale of NYC and expect to be trusted?
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