Lost Kin

by Anderson, Steve

  “On the front?” he said.

  “Of sorts.”

  “What unit?”

  The man paused, cocking his head back a little. Harry kept his eyes on the man and could hear Max moan nervously.

  “Counter Intelligence Corps,” the man said.

  Of course. This CIC agent had the same manner that Harry remembered. A fake colonel named Spanner had it, and Spanner even claimed to be a CIC agent himself, and it had all helped con Harry so much that he ended up having to kill that man. But wasn’t Harry like that now, too—that kind of operator? He was a freelancer when he had to be. People knew about him. Some even knew about the train.

  “What’s your posting these days?” Harry said.

  “Oh, we’ll get to that eventually,” the man said.

  Max scrambled off into the darkness. The man’s chin went up and his mouth parted a bit, like a cat sniffing at air. Max came back with two more chairs, rearranging all three chairs just so like only someone who’d worked on the stage would do. They sat.

  Harry stared at Max and the man and said, “So, what’s this all about? Who’s going to tell me?”

  Max eyed the man, who gave him a little shrug.

  “Where does one begin? Let’s just say that your brother Maximilian and I here share a certain, well, past.”

  “Maxie?” Harry said to Max. Max stared at his crotch as if there was a tarantula crawling across it. Harry added in German, “Well come on, out with it.”

  Max jerked his head up. “Don’t call me Maxie.”

  “Don’t call me Heino then,” Harry shot back.

  “Whoever said I was—”

  “Gentlemen, please,” the man said. “I see you are brothers, aren’t you?” One corner of his mouth wrinkled into a smile. “It’s up to Max. He will tell you when he’s good and ready.”

  But Max only went back to staring at his trousers.

  “I can say this,” the man added, “I simply aim to confirm that you two, once reunited, will seek to perform the sort of deed that I imagined you would—so this applies to you too, Harry.”

  “What? So we’re circus seals, that it?”

  “Hardly. ‘Subjects,’ more like.”

  “Don’t you mean, your ‘marks’? So you’re sort of like a flimflam man?”

  “In actuality, you make a good point. I think the con men—the skilled ones, anyway—must have similar talents. And salesman. They judge and predict to the point of knowing. In this regard I am rather like a scientist, you see. And now that my findings are being confirmed? I’d say that you two are welcome to continue.”

  “With?” Harry said.

  “Whatever I think you will respond to.”

  “And, why in the hell should we do that?” Harry said.

  “Heinrich, bitte,” Max said.

  “Don’t call me that either,” Harry said.

  “Actually, for now, it’s more about what Max will do. You are on board if you choose, but I believe I know what you will choose—based on your past—so let us assume for the sake of rational science that you will respond.”

  “Oh yeah, and what do I respond to?” Harry said. “You said you knew. So what is it?”

  “Well, the truth, of course,” the man said.

  Seventeen

  HARRY DIDN’T PRESSURE MAX on the way back to his billet. Max didn’t speak the whole time. His mouth was too busy hanging open like he was going to retch.

  Back inside the mansion, Harry poured Max and himself whiskeys in the living room. He made a fire. They sat near it, staring into the flames. Gulps became sips. Max smiled to himself, shaking his head, and then he moved closer to the fire rubbing his hands together. A man like Max, holed up so often like he was, probably dreamt of mansion fireplaces.

  “My compliments on your abode,” Max muttered. “It’s truly magnificent. Kudos.”

  “Thanks,” Harry said. “I wonder—how did that man lose his arm?”

  Max started. “In the war!” he barked. “He told you.”

  “Take it easy. I thought you were doing better.”

  Max rubbed his hands faster like he had too much lotion on them; he was going rub the skin right off if he kept it up. “You don’t know,” he muttered. “You weren’t in the war.”

  “No, but aren’t I getting all the shit that it left.”

  “Too true. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. And do not worry yourself—I don’t want the man’s help either,” Harry said.

  Max beamed at him. “Truly?”

  “Truly. I don’t even want to know his name.”

  Harry was relieved that Max, despite his apparent obligation, did not want to involve the onetime CIC agent if he could help it. Harry hadn’t told Max he had seen the man in his building, on his very floor at the far end of the hall from his office. The man may be legit on some War Department letterhead, in quadruplicate, Top Secret even, yet he still came from those same higher powers that pushed war, incubated a corrupt racket in Heimgau, sent in a fool like Harry’s former CO—one Major Robertson Membre RIP, and created a monster with a death wish calling himself Colonel Spanner. Now the predicament was Yalta policy. Now Harry worried the man might have an office there just because of Harry, to keep an eye on him along with his brother. So Harry had his own cards to keep close to his chest. At least the man coming for Max had not proved to be a German and especially not one in the style of the conniving Nazi at large who only appeared after dark. If a man like that had something on Max, they were in for it. And these days the tight spot had two ways—a cha-meleon ex-Nazi might even be under the employ of Joe Stalin.

  Max’s smile faded. He turned back to the fire. “But, you will want to know in the end.”

  Harry sipped his whiskey, then set it back down with equal pressure on all sides of the bottom, as if pressing it into sand. “It’s like the man said: Only when you’re good and ready.”

  “Okay. All right, Harry.”

  The man knew they were up to something. Before they left the movie house, they had each told him, without giving anything away, that they were working on an operation on their own and didn’t need his help. Each had their reasons. The man didn’t ask just what it was they didn’t need his help for. He had simply shrugged his overcoat forward onto his shoulders, set his hat on his head, and exited the stage. Max was holding out his arms like he was going to hug the man again, but he had held back.

  Max puffed up his cheeks, held it, blew out air. Harry poured him another whiskey.

  “Me, I didn’t like the way the man was talking,” Harry said. “It wasn’t his implying that we should commit to him and his organization, whatever that is. It’s that he thinks he’s so damn sure of our next moves. We’re not mice in some lab.”

  “Let us hope not, brother.”

  They downed the whiskey. They turned from the fire, faced each other, and began to work out their plan. Sleep could wait. They had even less time to lose.

  “Suddenly you must know so much?” Sabine Lieser asked Harry. “No one ever wishes to know.”

  “Someone has to,” Harry said. He sat with Sabine in a small Konditorei in Schwabing near what was left of Munich’s grand university. The unlit pastry case contained two half loaves of bread and three turnovers of dubious vintage, the mold surely scraped off daily. Yet the place had white marble and mirror tiles that helped show off the polished metal coffee machine, all more than ready for that day when the Kaffee was fine again. Harry imagined smells of pastry glaze and hot sweet milk, but all this place could offer for now was a faint smell of detergent. It was the morning after the man in the movie house—after Harry and Max worked up a plan till late. Harry had called Sabine first thing; this secluded spot was her idea. At a table in the back corner, they drank ersatz coffee they poured from little pots that they cupped their hands around for warmth. The place had no heat this time of day so Sabine had left her coat, scarf, and gloves on. Harry had fought off a sudden urge to rub her warm, all over. It was the firs
t time he’d seen her outside of her work. Her fur hat softened her face and she smiled more, making her look like the playful sister of the hard woman who helped run the Standkaserne DP camp. When Harry began by asking her about repatriation and about deportations specifically and how they took place, her face softened even more. Her eyes had fixed on him in that way that made some Americans uncomfortable. He had no problem with it.

  “And, you wish to know what exactly?” she said.

  “Supposing I found Irina—not that I did. Let’s just suppose I did. Problem is, she has a couple friends—refugees—she wants processed too.”

  Harry thought he saw a sparkle in Sabine’s eyes, or maybe it was a flash of window light reflecting off the coffee machine’s chromium plating. He expected her to ask him flat out if he truly had found Irina. Another sparkle wouldn’t help him keep his secret.

  “Processed how?” was all she said.

  Harry stole another look around. The cafe was empty. The two women running things were in back.

  “We’re safe here,” Sabine said. “They used to be refugees of mine. Why do you think I picked this place?”

  “Well, processed, as in, brought over from the Soviet zone into the West.”

  “On their own?”

  “Yes—not sanctioned, for lack of a better word.”

  “I see.” Sabine lifted her coffee cup. “Depends what the refugees have for a past. What identification is required. Depends on who’s willing to help, and, in turn, who’s willing to be bought off. Everyone from smugglers to officials to soldiers could help, but it’s risky. The crooks and double agents are multiplying by the day.”

  “Everyone’s either greedy or desperate.”

  “That is correct. Winter is coming. The Soviets.”

  “So, no normal channels? No official agents.”

  Sabine gave a little shrug of one shoulder and sipped. “If they come through Munich, through the Displaced Person authorities and the camp system, they would seem to be better off under my control, but they really are not. In camp, they are slaves to policy. As for your official agents? I should think not. They only represent the same big men who dreamt up Yalta …”

  Sabine stopped speaking. A haggard man and woman passed out on the sidewalk. The two looked in but seeing the case near empty, moved on. And the view was safe again—all Harry and Sabine saw was the slab gray of the banal building across the street.

  “Why do the dreary buildings always survive?” Sabine quipped.

  Harry smiled. “Search me.”

  She raised a gloved hand as if to take his hand in hers, Harry hoped, but she only set it on the table.

  “So,” he said, “should I gather that you—or people such as you—can help some unfortunate refugees outside of camp? Using your expertise, that is.”

  “This also depends,” Sabine said.

  Their faces were drawing closer, ever slowly, as if by a slight change in gravity’s pull, a strange sideways current. Sabine’s gloves came off. She pressed her slim fingers to the table’s edge as if to halt the pull.

  “Would you do it?” Harry said.

  “Do what, my dear?” They were speaking in German now.

  “You know what. Rock the boat of your masters?”

  “Be specific.”

  “If a repatriation meant certain death—would you work to stop it?”

  “I know what I would do. But do you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I said be specific, Harry. There’s no time.”

  “I am. I would work to stop it.”

  “Against policy? Against orders. Against threat of death. With eyes on us possibly.”

  “Yes. I would. And I will.”

  Over the next couple days, Harry bent the ears of American officers who knew the score. He’d been to enough parties with Maddy Barton to still know people who knew people staff level, the types who felt the latest scuttlebutt like a nurse measured pulses. To keep it casual, Harry had to navigate like a river captain. He bumped into officers in their buildings and on street corners. He surprised the officers on his floor with his friendliness. Meanwhile, he kept clear of the far end of the hallway and never saw anyone coming or going from the office of the trade representative. He hit the officers’ clubs day and night. He bought them and their Fräuleins’ drinks. It emptied his pockets and left him hung over, but it had to be done. Many didn’t want to know about repatriation while others shook their heads as if they might know but wished they didn’t. When Harry pressed them, lit their cigarettes, bought them another, all confirmed Sabine Lieser’s take. Flouting the repatriation regulations was touchy business. Refugees whom the Sovs clearly intended to persecute might be helped, but if those refugees had sided with the Germans in any way, it was probably a wash. There were other issues. The US Constabulary had stepped up border patrols. The Sovs were doing the same on the other side. Some now harbored genuine fears the Soviet Army was about to invade. Then there were the Soviet spies lurking around. It was a fine line. Even finding a sympathetic voice was a crapshoot. This was 1946 and all was in flux—with wartime agencies disbanding and new ones arising, too many internal battles had to play out first. Don’t rock the boat was the game more than ever. No one needed another war now, not with Joe Stalin. Not with so many careers being remade. The big showdown would come later. The new men, the comers, they first needed to stock up on shiny stars and fruit salad.

  Gossip bred gossip like so many rats, and Harry’s inquiries ran the risk of new tales propagating. All it took was one Joe to whisper that MG liaison officer Kaspar was up to something. Kaspar had to have a racket going. Was Kaspar trafficking in people? Could he really be dealing with Reds, or was it Nazis on the lam? Gossip could also turn cruel. After receiving Harry’s letter, Maddy Barton had arranged to have her belongings hauled from Harry’s garage. Harry had been expecting one last knockdown with her. But he discovered on his gossip tour from multiple sources that Miss Barton was taking it well. She had even taken up with a young colonel, a real mover and shaker. This was the part that gave Harry that hangover.

  He kept clear of MP Major Warren Joyner—until Thursday. The MP clerk said Joyner was in that morning, but Harry found Joyner’s office door closed. He knocked.

  “What?” Joyner barked from inside. “Come in,” he added before Harry could answer.

  Harry entered into near darkness. The major was sitting at his desk with the curtains drawn. A silhouette. The air was warm and stale and sweet with whiskey.

  “What is it, Kaspar?” Joyner’s shadow said.

  “Should I turn a light on, sir?”

  “No.” Joyner stood and ripped open the curtains and faced Harry. His face was more pink than ruddy, eyes bloodshot, his jowls fleshy and lined. A guy who looked this sad probably couldn’t get too drunk if he tried, Harry thought.

  “Everything all right, sir?”

  Joyner didn’t answer. He just stared at his desktop, at the inbox, pencils, files, and folders as if presented with them for the first time.

  “I could use some chow,” Harry said. “Could you?”

  To Harry’s surprise, Joyner said yes. He took Harry to a former small beer hall that had evolved into one of Old Town’s unofficial officers’ clubs. To keep a good thing going, the aging waiters spoke broken English and shaved off their Hitler-style mustaches that had once been so harmless everywhere from here to Nebraska. It was a long narrow hall with dark stained glass windows of colored circles framed in lead. The tables were knotty, the benches about as comfortable as pews; and red, white, and blue ribbons draped the old pillars like giant 4-H awards. Joyner ordered scrambled eggs, toast, and coffee. Harry, coffee.

  “I come here for the breakfast,” Joyner said. “Plus, got to say, reminds me of my Grange Hall back home. Go figure that one out.”

  “I can see it,” Harry said.

  “Just what do you want, Kaspar?”

  Harry asked if Joyner had any experience with repatriation efforts—forced repatria
tion to the Soviet Union, specifically. Joyner had not, but he had heard things within the Military Police. Down south in Austria, the British had sent home thousands against their will. American troops had been forced to do it, too, right here in Bavaria—sending away people like so much cattle, just like the Germans had done. It was part of a deceptive and brutal campaign called Operation Keelhaul. It gave everyone a bad taste in their mouths. Meantime, fewer trusted the Soviets by the day. Yet just because an American officer hesitated to offer someone up to the Soviets didn’t mean they were going to help someone either. For the most part, folks were on their own.

  “Enjoy your new freedom, peoples of Europe,” Joyner quipped. “Why you asking?” he added.

  “Because I knew you’d give me an honest take.”

  Joyner grunted. “During the Great Depression? We had a score of poor Okies come out west looking for a place to hang a hat. We helped them then. My town took them in. Done. No complex regs necessary.”

  Two young GIs passed, joking around, their caps pushed back. Harry was about to ask if the major knew Sabine Lieser in the Standkaserne camp but Joyner had clenched up, digging his elbows into the table as if wanting to bore right on through it.

  “What’s the matter, sir?”

  “What? Nothing.” Joyner’s head dropped, and for a moment Harry expected the major to heave up his eggs.

  “I’m sick of missing him,” Joyner muttered.

  “Him, sir?”

  “My son. My boy. If he came back right now, walked into this room here, I’d probably kill the damn kid I miss him so much.”

  Harry gave Joyner a moment. “What was his name?” he tried after a while.

  “Harry.” Joyner added a bitter chuckle.

  “A fine name.”

  “Maybe that’s why I haven’t shut you down yet.”

  Harry fought the urge to pat the man’s shoulder. “Can I ask how he bought it?”

  Joyner stared, but his eyes lost focus. “Northern Italy. Kid drove a tank, when he wasn’t fixing them. Took a direct hit, his CO letter said. A quick death.”