Harry had dropped Max and Irina off near the train station after they came back from the Šumava. His billet was too visible; they opted for a bolt-hole they used in urgent situations—a deserted passenger rail car that had gone off the tracks and into the wall of a gutted building and hadn’t been moved, Harry saw now, because it helped keep the wall standing.
The car was scorched and rusty on the outside. Harry headed right for it. A short but stocky man came at him demanding the password. Harry shoved him aside. He grabbed at a handle and charged up the car’s steps, all shoulders and snarl.
Max was bounding down the corridor toward him like a man itching for a fight. He wore a thick wool cap, darned GI gloves, and a German overcoat dyed black, the very picture of a broken Munich rubble dweller.
Harry kept going. They grabbed at each other’s lapels.
“You didn’t use the password!” Max shouted.
“I’m your goddamn brother!” Harry shouted back.
“And coming here in uniform. People will talk!”
“Don’t feed me that shit.”
Max’s eyes flashed around wildly. “What? What is it? Something’s wrong.”
“You bet it is.”
Harry tried to free his grip on Max but Max grabbed at him firmer, reminding Harry that Max was stronger than he looked. They’d fought like this as kids, no punches, just shoving and holding ground like wrestlers trying to throw each other down. It was all in the stance, Max had always told him.
“I gave you answers, Harry.”
“Did you?”
“You tell me what’s wrong!” As soon as Max said it, his face paled as if he didn’t want to know the answer.
They backed off each other, filling the corridor with their wide stances. Sweat was rolling down Harry’s face. He tore off his overcoat. Max, sighing, took Harry’s coat and cap and shook the cap into shape. He led Harry down the narrow corridor to a compartment with one bench intact and a larger table they’d hauled in to replace the bench opposite. The car had once been first-class, Harry saw. The woodwork still had polish and the bench a velour fabric the color of Burgundy wine. Amazing what survives, he thought, calming himself. Max slumped down on the bench, his elbows on the table. Cigarettes came out. Max pulled the curtain closed tight, and Harry slid the door shut.
“Just what do you want from me?” Max said.
Harry had the end of the bench closest to the door, trapping Max up against the window and table. He would let Max figure out the answer. He had decided on a new tack—he wasn’t going to reveal he knew about the SS-Mann. He’d rather see where his actor of a brother took this.
Max was shaking his head, snorting, working himself up. “If you won’t trust me, then—”
“Then what? Why should I? Give me one good reason.”
Max kicked at the table to free himself, but the table was too big. Harry had him boxed in.
Irina heaved open the sliding door, glaring at them.
“I can’t do it,” Max said to her.
“Then I will,” she said. “I will,” she repeated to Harry.
First, Irina brought food to the table—actual meat stew with lentils and that rare brown bread. Max ate quietly. Harry wolfed down his stew, wanting to get at the real story, but he was also damn hungry having had only coffee for breakfast. Irina watched them in silence. She removed their metal plates and bowls. She came back with a chair, which she placed in the doorway facing them, and sat.
“Kosaken,” she said in her clunky German. She patted her chest. “We Cossacks. You understand? Cossacks.”
Max was nodding for her. Harry nodded.
“In Old Russia, we live as free. The Reds, they want us Cossacks to die. We fight Russian Civil War. After this, the Red Soviets persecute us. So when Germans invade, we fight on German side. We fight for us people, for Cossack people. We not fight for Hitler, for German people. Germans offer us a way to fight on. With our identity.” Irina stopped to catch her breath.
Max said something in her language, adding in German, “It’s not a race, dear. Take your time.”
Irina focused on the ceiling as if recalling a street address. She pointed at Harry. “And then, your Mr. Roosevelt and the Mr. Churchill, they meet the Red Joseph Stalin in Ukraine, in Crimea. You make treaty with the one who wants us dead. Treaty say all Russians, Ukrainians, Soviet Citizens must return to Soviet Union after war.”
Irina meant the Yalta Conference of February 1945. Roosevelt and Churchill had met with Stalin to consider postwar borders, occupation zones, reparations, and organizations, and to reward Stalin for sacrificing so much to help them all beat Hitler. Repatriation was key to clinching a deal. Sabine Lieser had been sure to remind Harry of it.
“It was all decided at Yalta,” Max added. “All citizens of the Soviet Union were to be handed over regardless of their consent.”
Harry wanted to raise his hand, stop them right there. Policy was one thing. 1945 was long gone. This was 1946. The Americans and British weren’t as chummy with their ally Joe Stalin.
“You must understand,” Irina said. “For many Russians now, if they don’t want to return, it is no problem. We hear the rules are not so strong now. But we have no friends. No one will touch us. We are different, you see. Cossack armies retreat to west with Germans. We women, children, old people, we live and move with Cossack army. Our horses. Where we go now? Where? Red Russian Army came in fast from East, killing all like us, especially us. We are to them worse than Germans almost. The Germans, they promised we Cossack people receive new homeland in Northern Italy, near Alp Mountains. Thousands of us, you see. Hundreds of thousands at that time. Many Cossack fighters and officers and Atamans—generals—make way back to join us. We wait. We hope for homeland. Then your armies come from south. Then Soviet Army comes from east.”
Irina had clasped her hands together as if praying. She swung them, back and forth. She said something. Max translated: “Stalin has made them enemies of the Soviet Union state, Harry. Age, gender, innocence do not matter. Only the number of souls matters. ‘Stalin collects souls,’ is how she put it.”
Irina told the rest of the story in spurts, stopping only to glare at the ceiling. When the Allied armies advanced from the south across the Italian Alps, the Germans ordered the Cossacks northward into Austria. British army units overran the Cossacks near Lienz and interned them, cramming them into a canyon on the banks of the Drave River. The Cossacks surrendered without a fight. The British fed them and led them to believe they’d be protected from undue retribution by the Soviet Army now advancing well into Austria, only a few miles to the east. The Cossacks believed the British. They dared feel something like comfort, like safety.
At the end of May 1945, the British, still pledging protection, disarmed the Cossacks’ couple thousand officers and generals and trucked them to the town of Judenburg.
“Where is that?” Harry asked.
Irina shook her head. Her face had gone pale.
“Judenburg was just over the Soviet lines,” Max said.
“You’re telling me the British handed them over,” Harry said.
“If you want to call it that,” Max said. “Many of the older officers had emigrated years before—during the Civil War—and were not even Soviet citizens, so they were technically exempt. But the British did it anyway—for Joe Stalin.”
“What happened to them?”
“There are grim rumors,” Max said. “Treason trials. Executions, mass lynchings. Labor camps. This happens not only to Cossacks, you understand. The rumor is, it’s anyone—any Soviet citizen—who’s been occupied by the Germans. Peasants. Forced laborers. Even POWs. To Stalin, anyone who got caught or was ‘touched’ by the West is now contaminated. All we know is, little word comes back from those millions Stalin already took back.”
Tears were streaming down Irina’s face. Her mouth opened, but no words came out. Harry moved to touch her but she pulled back, grasping at the doorway.
“She’l
l be all right,” Max said. “For the Cossacks, the officers were only the start,” he continued. “The Brits’ ‘sacrificial’ deportation had left thousands despairing in the canyon on the Drave—the woman and children, the old ones, the poor regular soldiers who were fathers, sons, brothers. Three days later, on June 1, their own hell began. Troops of British Tommies, under orders, the poor bastards, prodded these helpless people at gunpoint into cattle cars and trucks. And in a panic bayoneted some. Mind you, this was happening across Southern Austria. Mayhem, all over. Many committed suicide. Or begged to be shot. Ghastly scenes, Harry. They’d brought their thousands of Cossack horses with them. These were children to them. Loved ones. How to leave them behind?”
A sick feeling constricted Harry’s waist, as if a belt was being tightened. It drew all blood and power from his legs. This couldn’t be true. He couldn’t believe it. Irina had to be exaggerating, to save herself. “No, we wouldn’t let that happen,” he said, his head shaking.
“Who wouldn’t let it happen, Harry?”
“At high levels, we’d be protesting it to the Soviet brass. Our officers. Diplomats. Somebody.” Harry knew it wasn’t true. He’d stopped believing back in Heimgau.
Max translated for Irina. Howling a laugh, she pushed at Harry’s shoulder. “Or politicians, maybe?” Max said. “Your local congressman?”
“I’m just trying to understand. You think you know so well,” Harry said to Max. “But were you there?”
Max looked to Irina.
“Don’t look at her. Well, were you?”
Max’s face softened. “Little brother, I—”
“Don’t call me that,” Harry said. He stood, but Irina had the doorway and he had nowhere to go either. He grabbed at the luggage rack and glared down at Max and Irina. What did they expect? These Cossacks fought with Hitler, and now they wanted a free ride out of it? Harry clenched at the cold metal of the rack, turning away from them, squeezing his eyes shut. He had risked his life once, but that was for a people who’d done nothing but existed, played by the rules, and even died in wars for the ones who ended up burning them and gassing them, their women and children, their old ones, their babies. What of those poor souls in the Šumava? Just days ago, they had killed two Russian soldiers to keep their secret quiet. Irina had killed a man who, it turns out, had been in the SS. But Max and Irina did not want Harry to know that?
“He does not want to help,” Irina blurted, “I told you. He’s like the rest. This is why I do not bring my Alex with me. Not yet. He’s safer in a lost forest, separate from his mother.” Glaring at Max, she pushed her chair clear of the doorway and stomped off down the corridor.
Harry slumped against the wall. He rubbed at his tired, itching eyes.
“Ages you, doesn’t it, brother?” Max said.
Harry didn’t answer.
“You’re scared of committing to this. To me. Well, I cannot say I blame you. But I don’t have a choice. You see, I was there at Lienz. That’s right. I’ll tell you.” Max gazed at the window, into the curtain as if it was that stark canyon with its fast moving mountain river. “The British assumed I was a Cossack too. I had mixed in with them. Oh, they had us all right. And when the people found out what the Brits were really doing? They started stabbing themselves, pounding themselves with rocks, whatever they could grab, leaping into the fast river if they could reach it. Others fought it, tooth and nail. When the trucks came … horrible. People tried to break the Tommies’ barrier, in great mobs, children and old women. And only so they could jump into the river, off bridges, find the tools to kill themselves. Even when the trucks started off, they leapt out, breaking their backs, getting run over, the trucks not stopping for them. It was mass hysteria.” Max paused, took deep breaths. “This was not a brief mass hysteria. This played out over days.”
Harry had sat back down.
Max went on: “Some of us escaped before the Tommies got to us. The Tommies were starting to crack from the strain. They couldn’t take it. Could you? They had started looking the other way. That’s when we escaped.”
“Irina. You and little Alex and that group in the Šumava.”
Max nodded. “Some came from other forced deportations—the woods and hills were filling with us, but, yes. And there is one thing you must keep in mind, brother. The woman and children there? The old ones? They did not fight on Hitler’s side. Why should they pay the price?”
“I understand that, I do, but …”
“It would be as if, back home, the FBI took Mutti and Vati away simply because I had been part of a Germany that became Nazi. Without due process. Just suppose the President and his party used fear itself to terrorize and tyrannize America? Your Mom and Dad are labeled a threat. And we never see them again.”
“There was a time, during the war, when I thought that might happen.”
“Ah, but it didn’t. Did it? It could not happen there.” With that, Max ended his confession.
“I see,” Harry said eventually. He wandered into the corridor. He trudged out of the car, and Max let him go. He stood looking out on the rail yards, smoking a Chesterfield. A group of ragged children approached, rooting around the tracks for scraps fallen from trains. Even though Harry was wearing his uniform, the kids kept on going, grabbing here and nabbing there, their little arms poking away like so many beaks of birds. Harry sighed. There was a time, and not long ago, when these kids would have rushed the American for candy, butts, whatever he had, even if to exchange a few words of broken English banter. Even if, more recently, to dupe him somehow. These days they didn’t bother. A quick pass over the greasy gravel and rail ties could offer more hope than some sunny Ami. Maybe they had gotten used to their fate. This was what bothered Harry most. He pinched out his cigarette and left the butt in the gravel, hoping the kids combed back this way.
He ended up back in the compartment. Max was sitting in the same spot.
They sat there a while. The rail cars and tracks made Harry think about his train job, about what had made him do it. The story Max and Irina were telling him was, on a higher level at least, even darker and deeper than his sordid tale involving that bogus colonel and his deadly racket. This was the bone-crushing machinery of the world of power at work, its levers pulled by self-seeking deal-makers who just a few years before had been the warmongers.
“Have you ever seen a dead child?” Max said. “Not just dead, but left for dead? I have. I used to count how many. I stopped.”
Harry had no answer for that. They sat a while longer.
“A story from a year ago is not good enough,” he said finally. “You’re going to need proof.”
Max dared a little smile.
“Okay—we are.” Harry held up his index finger. “But that’s not why I came here, is it, brother?”
Max stiffened as if he were holding his breath. “No.”
“You know it, and I know it,” Harry added. “You told me about that place. About her people. You both showed me them. Irina gave it to me straight, as far as I can tell. But what about you? What about Max Kaspar?”
“Yes. What about him?” Max said. “I tell you what: If you see this out with me, help me with this job, I will tell you what I’ve done and what I’ve seen.”
“But? There’s another ‘but,’ isn’t there, Max? I can see it on your face.”
“I’m afraid there is. You see, it turns out that I have a visitor. From my past. And he demands an audience.”
Sixteen
MAX KASPAR KNEW THAT HIS SUMMONS was menacing simply from the venue. He was to appear at a spot called Kino Maritim. The “Maritime Cinema” was a confining name in itself since Munich was as landlocked as anywhere in Central Europe. But it was more ominous than that. Two crucial moments in his life had transpired in a venue with a stage. First, the SS found him taking cover inside a theater on the Eastern Front—and forced him into their last-ditch special mission. Then his dear younger brother Heinrich—Harry now—reunited with him in an opera house.
When he confessed to Harry that he must face a visitor from his past, Harry had said, “I’m going with you, and don’t gripe about it. I’m going to keep watch for you.”
Max wanted to reject the notion or even trick Harry if need be, but he had already been pushing things too far with his brother. Besides, he had to admit he could use the reinforcement and he needed someone he could trust. He didn’t like the twinge he felt in his gut. All he really knew was that someone had left a note on his bench in the rail car: “It’s high time for a reunion show, Herr von Kaspar. I know your talent and I hope to see more of it.” At that he thrust open the car window and hung his face out in case he vomited from his head spinning.
Few alive knew him by his short-lived, one-time stage name of von Kaspar. The worst part was that the handwriting looked American.
It gave the location and time: eleven-thirty at night. The late show. In better times, in better moods, he might have told himself all these theaters were only foreshadowing his return to acting, down the road perhaps. Ah, but who was he kidding?
He had expected something grander nevertheless. Even the provincial theater in Poland where the SS found him was grand compared to this. Piles of rubble loomed around the building so it was hard to gauge how the middling splendor of the cinema’s faux nautical facade stood up to the rest of the street. Kino Maritim had a quaint, two-door entrance, ticket booth in the middle, and modest marquee not up too high that read WIR KOMMEN ZURÜCK—this was hardly the name of the last moving picture shown but rather the owner’s promise to reopen someday. Max wondered if the cans for one of his films were inside somewhere. The briefest of roles, they were, but they still deserved to survive.
For disguise he wore his cloak and fake beard and used another cane. He approached along the sidewalk, his head down, his eyes under the brim of his hat. A man on a rickety clacking bicycle passed, his knees stuck out sideways as he pedaled on by. Max, affecting a slight hobble, continued past the entrance and gave the insides a glance as he tottered onward. All he saw was the slight reflection of his cheekbone in the ticket booth window.
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