Lost Kin

by Anderson, Steve

  “Perhaps. But I mean, inside a person. It shows through the eyes. For those who suffered, really got dragged through hell whether at home or on the front, there’s a shock, a sadness, a determination all rolled into one look. For me, this Dietz fellow has something different, and I do not like it.”

  Harry kissed Sabine and promised to keep an eye on Dietz. Yet the sad truth was, and he didn’t have to say it, Hartmut Dietz was looking like all that they had.

  Harry’s foyer filled with the sound of singing, from the front door.

  Harry, Sabine, and Irina were huddled before the fireplace with maps, going over roads and rail lines. “Who is it, who’s there?” Harry shouted as Sabine and Irina rose and retreated to the safety of the back hallway.

  Gerlinde ran in grinning, arms raised as if she had just scored a goal. Dietz followed her, with Max.

  “Max!”

  Max and Dietz had arms around each other. They sang loud and not quite in unison: “Ach Mutter, bring’ geschwind was Licht, Mein Liebchen stirbt, ich seh’ es nicht …” It was the Faithful Hussar song—a soldier leaves the front to return to his true love who’s sick and dying. Harry could smell booze on them. Their hair was drenched from the rain.

  Harry hugged Max. Irina rushed back in. Max held her face and kissed her on the lips.

  Dietz stepped back, a frown on his face. He held up a glass flask, nearly empty. “We celebrated on the way here—to lift Max’s spirits. Fruit brandy. I hope this was all right?”

  Harry slapped Dietz on the chest. “Forgiven. Kind of you to indulge him.”

  “It’s prewar Obstler, Harry! Take a swig,” Max said and shared a laugh with Irina.

  “Now tell us how you sprung him,” Harry said.

  Dietz waved at the air. “It was nothing much. I simply talked sense into them.”

  “All I know is, your man here’s a miracle worker,” Max shouted over more of Irina’s kisses.

  Sabine emerged from the darkness of the hallway. Harry could feel her at his back, eyeing all as if meeting them for the first time. She held a forced smile on her face.

  “Look! Look who we have here,” Harry said to her.

  Sabine directed her smile to Dietz who stared back, his face slack and blank. “Yes, it is quite a miracle,” Sabine said. “Congratulations.”

  Dietz gave her a nod in thanks.

  Harry brought chairs and the five sat around the sofa. The rest of the Obstler was poured and Gerlinde brought beer. Harry asked her to brew coffee and make it strong because they were going to need it later. They toasted, laughed, and their wide smiles turned taut as Dietz told the tale.

  “It was easier than one might think. First, I said to them, you don’t even know who this man is for certain. In a Democracy such as we have now, you cannot just hold a man indefinitely, simply on a suspicion or a tip. A tip, from whom? I asked them. They did not know. Well, if we start acting on blanket imprisonments and incrimination alone, then we’re no better than we were under Hitler. And that’s when I had them! They had no proof that he’s even Max Kaspar. I said, ‘This man may be an actor but he could be Peter Lorre for all we know.’”

  Harry and Dietz laughed, but Max only rolled his eyes. “I’m not completely off the hook. I must register my domicile in Munich and report once a week until they find documents that identify me and show what I have or haven’t been up to.”

  “It was terrible in there?” Irina said, stroking his arm.

  “Not worse than a foxhole on the Eastern Front or some big city air-raid shelter on a night of firebombing. I tell you, I expected the worst. I had a sinking feeling my next visitor would be the one who damned me. I hardly expected it to be this man here.” Max patted Dietz on the knee, and Dietz showed them all the closest a German came to an aw-shucks grin.

  It was Monday afternoon, November 5. They worked on their plans into the evening, spurred on by the coffee. Sabine needed forgers to replicate documents, Dietz offered to help her with that, and Max and Irina could get a list of most of the Cossacks’ names. Dietz could get some trucks, but Harry might have to procure them trip papers. Sabine could free up a couple buildings in the Standkaserne, though Harry should try to score a barracks just in case. Best to keep all of the people together, at first. They had been so close together for so long.

  Harry vowed to them that he would do his best. He had an ace in the hole. He knew a major named Joyner. The man was certain to come through. Harry was feeling better about it.

  Late that night, after Sabine and Dietz left and Irina was asleep, Harry found Max outside on a balcony, staring out. Harry watched his brother from inside, his fingertips on the chilled window. It was getting colder, Harry could feel it, and the light rain was turning to a snow that would blanket his back garden white. Yet Max wasn’t wearing a scarf. He had no coat on, no hat. He just stared, into that bleak whiteness, as if waiting for the white to consume all.

  Twenty-Seven

  TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6. EARLY THAT MORNING, Harry drove a jeep out to the infantry base. He was towing a covered trailer full of silver, whiskey, and tapestries along with a couple Nazi flags and SS daggers thrown in to spruce up the barter. He’d added the valuable gifts from his office. For the lot, the base quartermaster filled the trailer and back of the jeep with new wool blankets, boxes of rations and even a carton of Hershey’s. On his way back Harry swung north of city center, and it was all he could do not to go see Sabine in the Standkaserne where he would find her as busy as ever, barking orders, keeping everybody in line. A gal like that had more grit than ten Maddy Bartons, he thought, steering on into the city now, along the Ludwigstrasse heading south past the university. Given Maddy’s American passport, looks, and powers of persuasion, it was a shame that she didn’t want more out of this life than a shiny ring and an open bank account. Or so it seemed. He had wondered if there was more to Maddy.

  He had the tarp roof on the jeep, a newer model with zip-on canvas doors. He turned the heat up. The rig even had a radio. The new Munich station was playing the latest swing tunes. Hail was coming down, mixed with snow. It rattled and pattered at the canvas around him, but he only turned up the heat, the radio, the wipers. Nothing was going to stop him. He was going for broke and out with a big bang. He had received a letter from Frankfurt about his replacement—arriving at the end of November.

  The streets were emptying from the weather, so he shifted up and gunned it for the final stretch back to his mansion.

  Five minutes to noon. Harry pulled into his front drive and around to the rear courtyard where he parked in front of the garage. He’d get help later heaving his haul into the garage because the jeep didn’t need to be back to the motor pool anytime soon. Pure snow was falling again, the ground still white from last night. He walked the path around back. The wind hit him there, a barrel of it that had funneled through long stretches of the English Garden, giving him a shiver. Onto the rear terrace steps he went and he almost slipped. Be careful, Harry. He shivered again, the snow floating off his shoulders and hat and …

  The rear door was cracked open. The wind was trying to pull it open further, but the heavy door only gave an inch, and then it banged back again, and again.

  Strange. Gerlinde must have forgotten to lock it. Sure, he thought—and Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring was one nimble ballerina.

  Then he remembered—Gerlinde was gone all day. She had family visiting and she was cooking for them; it was someone’s wedding.

  He stopped at the door, expecting to feel heat from the house. He got another shiver, and it wasn’t the wind this time.

  He stayed outside and stepped back, keeping close to the sandstone wall, out of sight of the windows. He didn’t have a pistol on him or in the jeep. Not in the garage either. No reason why he should. He did have his paratrooper pocketknife with him, and he moved it from his breast pocket to his trouser pocket.

  He scanned the tree line out along the English Garden. All he saw was the snow coming down in sheets. He tiptoe
d around to the windows on either side of him and tried to peek in, but the curtains and the reflection from the white outside gave him nothing.

  Back at the cracked door. His heart was racing now, his blood pumping, heating him up, the sweat trickling down under his wool shirt, his heavy overcoat.

  He told himself not to panic. He didn’t need his Mauser or his Colt or even his knife. Someone could have just left the door open. Max or Irina could have. They all had so much on their minds. He pushed the door open with one finger, making sure it did not creak, and stepped inside. Pulling the door shut. He stood against the wall, listening.

  He heard nothing. It was cold in the main room, no fire in the fireplace. He kept his coat on. Feeling at the spring button on his knife in his pocket. With his other hand, he picked up a poker from the fire set.

  He tried to be methodical. He locked the back door and the front, to make a tough exit for anyone who might try to escape. He did a thorough walk-through, first into the den, then Gerlinde’s guest room, and down into the pantry and kitchen and cellar. Nothing. Back up to the ground floor. The doors were still locked shut, and so quiet. He stopped to smell. Oddly, it smelled like nothing at all in here, like a bare refrigerator. That was what the cold did. It equaled all.

  He was still warm, with sweat behind his ears, but he kept his coat on—in case he would have to chase someone down. The second floor was next. Up the stairs he went, crouching, one hand grasping the poker, the other clenching the pocketknife, taking a good look around with each step. He checked the bathroom, his bedroom, the upstairs storeroom.

  Down at the end of the hall was Max’s room. The door was cracked open.

  Harry stood at the crack. He looked on through. He saw flesh. A hand. On the bed. A woman’s. Someone sleeping? Please, let it be so.

  He cracked the door open farther, pushing it open with his knuckles tight around the poker. The door, well oiled, swung open.

  “No. Oh, god, no,” he muttered.

  Irina lay on the bed, facing up. Arms and legs splayed out. She wore a long blue overcoat, her hat on the floor. The white of the snow and clouds from the window cast a pale bright light on her face and neck. Her skin was purplish blue and bloated, dotted with darker spots, her tongue a dark blue ball bulging out, dwarfing her lips. The beige bedspread showed a circle of blood, from below her neck. Harry gasped. Across her throat, he saw, was a thin dark line.

  Twenty-Eight

  WHERE COULD MY IRINA HAVE GONE? Max thought as he circled the Viktualienmarkt one last time. The open-air market with its ramshackle stalls and tents, kiosks and umbrellas and carts could easily conceal a girl, especially this morning as the snow came down thick for the first time this year. No one liked it coming, and how could they? People walked with their heads bowed and some even swiped at the flakes as if they were venomous bugs flying in their faces.

  It was Tuesday, eleven in the morning. He and Irina had planned to meet here and sell their last two Cossack sabers. Irina was going to carry them inside a long blue overcoat hanging from two loops she’d sewn inside. They had laughed about it back at Harry’s mansion. He’d seen watches, silverware, pans, sausages, but two infamous sabers inside a long coat? Now he had seen it all. His girl had a blade for each hand. Irina was his pirate—a ravishing Cossack raider.

  He stopped to huddle in a side street and survey the square, seeing mostly old women schlepping carts and bags with their old men following. He eyed the traders and what little they had to offer a poor soul to get a starving family through the winter. They brushed snowflakes off each other, off the ragged roofs of their tents and stalls, as if it would help. At least the snow helped keep the bulls away, Max thought, and any confederates of the Soviets sneaking about. To keep warm, he stomped his feet and rammed his fists into his pockets.

  They were supposed to meet a half hour ago. Maybe she had the spot mixed up?

  A fountain stood near the middle of the square. He bounded through the snow, jumped up onto the fountain rim, and held onto the statue he didn’t recognize with so much snow on it, possibly a drummer boy or a girl singing. Here he stood a few feet above the people’s heads, in line with the umbrellas and tops of kiosks, but it didn’t help him see a thing. It only blurred whiter up here and felt colder.

  Noon. Max could see Harry’s mansion through the trees in the English Garden as he marched home, his toes numb from the cold. The truth was that he didn’t know where else to go. He’d tried the obvious black markets nearby. They had given up their rail car bolthole. Irina didn’t have any other haunts or habits here in Munich.

  He crossed through the hedge of Harry’s rear garden. He stopped, dead in his tracks.

  Harry was standing out on the terrace, facing him. Harry didn’t wave, or even nod. His arms hung slack at his sides and looked shriveled to the bone. His face, paler than the snow.

  Max felt a clogging in his throat, putrid like someone had poured used motor oil down it. His lungs felt flat, he heaved to breathe. He slogged up the steps, his legs like cement now—wet, thick cement. Harry’s eye sockets were pink. Harry had something down the front of him. It looked like stew. Then Max smelled it. Vomit.

  Max stood face-to-face with Harry, the steam pulsing out of them, onto each other. Harry’s chin was quivering. Max pushed at his shoulder. Harry opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Max pushed harder. “What is it? You tell me!” he shouted.

  Harry held out his hand. Max’s hand found Harry’s, and Harry squeezed with both of his.

  “I’m so, so sorry,” Harry said.

  He led Max inside. The mansion was chilling cold as if no one had lived here for months. Harry sat Max down in the den, a serious, somber room of dark woods and a monstrous desk. A room like this offered only a grim reality. Again, and again. Max was so sick of dens, of bureaus, cells—masters, officers, bulls, anyone with rank for rank’s sake. They could all go to hell. They were bringing this on him, again.

  He surrendered to the urge to run upstairs and jumped up, but Harry grabbed at him and pulled him back into the den. Harry was fighting back tears, and this shocked Max back into the room. He shook Harry’s lapels. He said to Harry, “The Cossacks—that what’s happened? Someone got to them.”

  “No, not them,” Harry said.

  Max’s head spun. All turned white, like the snow outside, and the grimy thick oil clogging up his chest seemed to fill his lungs. He couldn’t get air, couldn’t feel his legs. He was staggering. He felt for a chair, wall, anything. All went black.

  Sometime later, Max found he was sitting on a small dais built into the corner of the den. At first he had thought it was a raised platform for a map table or a painter’s easel, but, no, it was a stage. Of course it was. There were even holes for stage lights, capped with metal discs.

  Certain things came back to Max: Harry had been holding him upright here at the edge of this stage after he had fainted and then flew into a hysteric wail.

  The heat from that episode had left Max’s head, face. His tears had dried, leaving his windblown cheeks feeling parched. He smiled for Harry, who came back over to him sitting there. Harry had shed his vomit-stained overcoat. Two whiskeys stood on the desk, untouched.

  “I must see her,” Max told Harry and marched out the den, his little brother in tow.

  Two hours later, Max and Harry were back downstairs in the main living room.

  “It was strangulation, correct? That’s what it is, so let’s call it by its name,” Max said. It was three hours after his beloved Irina was murdered, and here he was questioning Harry like a homicide lawyer, like a man he had never imagined himself capable of becoming.

  He had no choice. They had no time.

  “Are the prints safe—the negatives?” he asked Harry.

  Harry nodded toward the den. “There’s a concealed safe under the floorboards. I have the whole briefcase in there.”

  “Good. What was used, you think? A cord? A belt?”

  “Looks to me like something th
inner,” Harry said, somber.

  “A blade.”

  The tables had turned. It was as if Max were Harry the rational scientist and Harry was Max, the emotional artist. He had made Harry change all his clothes so that he didn’t smell.

  “This is going to trouble Gerlinde to no end,” Harry said, shaking his head.

  “Any reason to suspect her?” Max said.

  “No. Absolutely not.” Harry said she owed her life to him. Harry had found her sleeping homeless in the English Garden and, assuring her that he wouldn’t hurt her, gave her a job just to prove it.

  Max had to ask questions. He had to stick with this logic, with this focus that he had somehow found deep within him. It was the only way to proceed. It was true that it seemed every woman he got close to ended up astray, or leaving him, or dead. He didn’t care at this moment. He would wail again later. Irina would haunt him, she would, but he couldn’t run away from it as he always did. Face it. Investigate why. Act to correct it. He was sitting on the sofa facing the raging fire that he and Harry had built together muttering to themselves about how they were going to find the goddamn killer and do him in good. This was going to give him the strength. Reason. Vengeance. Justice done.

  Harry found his way back to reality. He splashed his face with water. He slid on his horn-rim glasses, then took them off and put them into a drawer. They spoke their thoughts. They stared out windows, retracing their steps. They paced the room, considering any suspicious connections. Harry had searched the mansion once more and then gone outside, he reported. He had looked for footprints out there. But the snow had covered all. He sat on the edge of the sofa with his back to Max, glaring at the rug. Then he came over to Max and they stood before the fireplace, Harry’s shirt collar open, his collarbone lit up hard by the flames.

  “I think we should go to this man of yours,” Harry said. “Aubrey Slaipe.”

  Max was prepared for this. He paused a beat, then another as if giving the idea hard thought. “I’m afraid we cannot do that,” he said mechanically.