Lost Kin

by Anderson, Steve

  “What were you doing at my billet?” Harry said.

  “I went there to find you! Irina was there. She came back because of those sabers; they were too hard to carry, as you say. She started up again with this spy business.”

  “She never mentioned a suspicion to me,” Harry said.

  “Me neither,” Max said.

  “She didn’t want you to know probably … she wanted to prove it herself, I imagine, then she would come to you.”

  “You strangled her. You slit her throat for good measure,” Harry said.

  “With a saber,” Max added.

  “No. That was not me. It was an accident.”

  A rattle of a sigh left Max. “Did you fuck her?” he barked.

  “No!” Dietz pressed his bloody knuckles to his chest. “Listen, let’s not get irrational. There was simply something about me that she suspected. The way I survive. She didn’t trust it. Everyone needs an enemy, a conspiracy to fear, is that not so? To justify themselves. It’s what you’re doing here right now. The Allies, the Soviets are starting it all over. I mean, look at us here. Please, meine Herren …”

  A twinge of doubt rippled through Harry’s stomach.

  Dietz must have sensed it. He shouted: “You will not kill me! You two? What are you, a failed actor, and this Captain Kaspar of legend? The Jews’ Robin Hood? Sure, Harry, you are rumored to have hijacked that plunder train once upon a time—if it’s even true—but you had a clear purpose then, didn’t you? But now? This is not your style. It’s too debatable. Your good conscience could not take this. So you’re stuck, aren’t you? And if you turn me in, then I simply finger your Cossacks to the Amis instead. I would simply have to.”

  “Go to hell,” Max said.

  “I’m already there, it appears.” Dietz laughed. He stood at the edge of the trench, his head just above it, his fingers digging into the mud of the wall. “You were all set,” he said to Harry. “You wear your conqueror’s uniform, good posting, fancy mansion, the pretty Ami girl. You could have done so much more with that—”

  Harry kicked Dietz in the face. Dietz disappeared with a thud.

  Max had turned his back to them. He was glaring up at the black sky, wheezing, muttering at the night. Harry wondered if he had any doubts.

  “Maybe we do call in your Major Joyner,” Max was saying under his breath, gritting teeth. “You said he’s the one who can help.”

  “No, we need to work on Dietz, get more out of him,” Harry said. “Something to show Joyner as proof. Photos might not be enough for him.”

  Harry and Max stood yards from the trench with their backs to Dietz. The cop had fallen silent, sulking down in the trench.

  “What more do you want? He killed her,” Max said. He punched at the air and stomped in a circle, glaring at Harry.

  How could Harry tell him? If he went to Joyner now, he wasn’t certain what Joyner would do with Max. What if Dietz was speaking some truth? The detective might not be enough of a prize. Harry didn’t doubt Warren Joyner would help with the Cossacks. Yet, for his efforts, would Joyner also want Max’s head on a stick? It was only a little less gamble than Aubrey Slaipe.

  “Just say it, why don’t you?” Max stepped close, his voice rasping with anger. “You still don’t trust me. Think I look a bigger catch than that pig-devil Dietz down there. So suppose I am, Harry? We should take that chance.”

  Harry didn’t have an answer. He could only stare back. They could wait a while. Dietz would lose his cool. He’d already admitted murder. He only called it an accident.

  “Give me your pocketknife,” Max growled, glaring into the trench.

  “No. We don’t need more blood, not yet. We need information. First, we let him stew a little.”

  “Then I need a walk, to clear my head.” Max wandered off, out along the tree line where the water slapped and loomed, his silhouette blending with the trees’ shadows and the black water as he shuffled along, out toward the far end of the island.

  Harry crouched at a far edge of the trench smoking a Chesterfield, keeping one eye on Dietz down there, head lowered, a dark lump. Was the detective praying? Planning his next lie? Harry thought of offering the swine a cigarette, but he spat into the mud instead.

  He heard crunches, grunts. He peered around but couldn’t see Max. Then he saw shadows flailing among the trees and water, all of it dark shapes. Shadows? There were two?

  A shot.

  Harry dropped flat to the earth and pulled his Mauser out aiming, but at what?

  “Max!” he shouted.

  Max had crawled back into view, just inside the tree line. He faced something, someone at the dark end of the island behind trees. He had his Colt out. He lay still, his cloak spread out like wings. Was he hit? The shot hadn’t sounded like his Colt.

  “Stay down,” Harry muttered. He regulated his breathing so he could hear. He heard a long groan but couldn’t tell where it came from as if this very island itself was giving it off, sick of the violence it supported. He switched his aim to Dietz’s trench, where he thought he’d seen Dietz’s head. He wasn’t sure now.

  He heard simple German and broken Russian. It wasn’t Max. It was between Dietz and someone else—another man on this island? Dietz must have had a tail as backup. His tail had somehow followed Dietz here. They were snarling at each other, Dietz at the far end of the trench and the other man somewhere behind the trees. Dietz insisted his man come to him, but the man refused to show himself.

  “Calm now,” Dietz was saying. “That’s it. Now, go to the one closest, get his gun.”

  “What about the Ami? He’ll shoot,” said the man.

  “No, he won’t,” Dietz said. “Just do it.”

  Max was only ten yards from the man behind the trees, while Harry had to be forty. The man moved out into the open to get at Max, a slow crawl. Harry aimed but had no good shot. He might hit Max from here.

  “Max! Max!” Harry shouted.

  The man reached Max. Max’s silhouette barely moved, he didn’t seem to fight it. The man wrangled the Colt out of Max’s hands. Now he used Max’s body as cover.

  “It’s over,” Dietz said to Harry from his trench. His voice had lost its shriek. It was somber, as if he were a cop again, telling a family member of a traffic death. “You’re no cowboy gunslinger, Harry.”

  Thirty-One

  HARRY STOOD WITH HANDS UP. He set his Mauser down on the ground so that Dietz could see it. Dietz climbed out of the trench, picked up the Mauser, and frisked Harry with the other hand, methodically, the plainclothes cop doing his job. He took Harry’s paratrooper knife and dropped it into his pocket. He patted down Harry a second time.

  Harry stood poised, his legs pumping with blood like a sprinter reading to launch. Dietz said, “All right, go ahead.”

  Harry rushed across the clearing to Max. Dietz’s man had flopped Max onto his back to frisk him, Max groaning. The man was staring down at Max with terrified eyes set in a thick brow. He moved away, backing up toward Dietz who urged him over in Russian.

  Max stared up at Harry, his arms propped up like a baby waiting to have its diapers changed. Blood was seeping through his sweater and ascot, from the chest. Harry tore at Max’s sweater and shirt as Dietz and his man argued again in the distance, Dietz demanding his Sauer pistol back. Blood soaked everything under Max’s shirt, sticky, wet, hot. Harry kept feeling around, his hands turning gooey until Max finally grunted, “Aua! Quit poking around—it’s up on the chest somewhere, the shoulder. Autsch.”

  “You! Come back over here,” Harry barked in German at Dietz’s man.

  Dietz let his man return. He produced a flashlight. Harry grabbed it, flicked it on. Seeing the wound, he heaved a sigh of relief. He slapped Max’s hand onto his upper chest where the shoulder and arm met. “Keep pressing there and do not let go,” he told his brother.

  Dietz kept Harry and Max down in the trench. Dietz’s man—his hired stooge—looked like any other refugee in his mismatched fatigues and
patched wool. He could be anyone from a Yugoslav to Ethnic German Pole. He also had cheekbones like cobblestones, a nose mangled sideways, and Max’s Colt now along with his own gun. Harry could care less. All he knew was, the man had offered to help Harry lower Max down to him. Harry ended up telling the stooge to go to hell and expected a smack for it, but he only got a gentle shrug from the stooge. It might be something to exploit.

  Dietz knelt over the trench and boasted how his man had trailed them and somehow found a rowboat, waving Harry’s Mauser for emphasis. “Earned his lumps today,” Dietz said, shouting it for his stooge who now stood out in the middle of the island looking bored as if waiting for a streetcar. Harry sat and placed Max next to him, propped against a crate, Max’s hand still pressed to his shoulder to stop the blood flow.

  “Spent time on the front, did you, Kamerad?” Dietz said to Max. “Look at the irony of it—only now do you get wounded. Well, it’s only a graze. So you’re lucky.”

  “And you?” Harry said. “You’re a dead man. Anywhere you go.”

  Dietz spat out a laugh that he cut short with a wince of pain. An eye and the opposite jowl were swelling, grotesque in the shadows and scarce light.

  “What, you starting to realize it? You’re the man who’s on the run now. Sabine Lieser knows where we are. And one Major Joyner of the US Military Police. Yes, Sheriff Joyner. If we don’t make contact soon, well … it’s just a matter of time. He has a whole squad and they have a motorboat.”

  Harry had to bluff. He’d been a damn fool. They had decided not to tell Sabine because they didn’t want harm to come to her. Sabine didn’t even know Irina was dead. There had not been time.

  Dietz opened his mouth to speak, but no words followed.

  “You want to cover your tracks?” Harry went on. “Then you’re going to have to kill us. But you’ve never killed anyone, have you? Maybe a young woman named Irina. But, no, I bet one of your other goons did the job while you kept watch like some spooked weasel.” He howled the words at Dietz, it forced its way out like hot spew. “That was the accident—she wasn’t supposed to get the blade too but that’s all a goon knows when a job goes fubar.”

  Dietz had stiffened.

  “That about right? Maybe you even handed him the saber. You panicked, see.”

  Dietz aimed the Mauser back on them.

  “You’re not man enough. Because you set up others to do that kind of work. Like your thug there. Your toady.” Harry shouted toward Dietz’s man: “What’s he paying you, huh? Not enough, I’m sure of that!”

  “Leave him out of this—”

  Harry laughed. “You’re vermin, Dietz. Doesn’t matter who’s running the show, what regime, as long as there’s a weasel’s work to be done, you stand ready, the ready rat-fink …”

  Dietz sighed. “You don’t think I agonize? I do.”

  “Tell it to Joe Stalin,” Harry said.

  “Uncle Joe put you up to this,” Max added.

  Dietz stared at muddy earth.

  “Why don’t you do it?” Harry said. “Do it now, right here. Only problem is, Joyner’s squad might just collar you on the way out and then what?”

  Dietz said nothing. He twitched. His thoughts must have been screaming at him so loud inside his head he wouldn’t hear himself talk if he tried.

  A silence crept in, and it settled them, he and Max down in the trench, Dietz’s stooge standing alone, and Dietz, all alone. The dripping of the trees and slapping of the waves returned as a belching, slapping clamor.

  “You’re running,” Max said to Dietz. “That’s your plan.”

  Dietz looked to Harry. “You know, my wife, she knew nothing of this …” His eyes had glossed over, welling up. “My children,” he muttered.

  “I can see that they’re taken care of,” Harry said.

  Dietz sighed, and his voice wheezed, oozing weariness suddenly. Harry recognized that fatigue. POWs sounded that way. It was finally over for them, and their lungs gave it away.

  “What about your wife?” Harry said.

  “I’ll get her over, somehow,” Dietz said.

  A born Municher, following her traitor husband without her children to the Soviet Union or some equally ghastly protectorate? The Soviet zone of Germany alone would be horrifying for a Catholic wife from the Free State of Bavaria. A woman like her would never go.

  Dietz straightened up. He was standing on his toes. Squinting, peering around. He shouted, “You get back here!” He hissed under his breath, “Shit, shit.”

  Dietz’s stooge was long gone. Dietz shouted for him again and got nothing, only that lapping water and the whistle of a little icy wind coming on.

  Harry said, “Looks like your new boy scout’s gone run out on you, Detective.”

  Max started laughing, from deep in his belly. It had to sting bad but he couldn’t help it, and he groaned between his laughs.

  Dietz jumped down into the trench, grabbed a pair of cheap binoculars, slung them around his neck, and climbed back out. He sloshed through the mud toward the end of the island, Harry’s Mauser and his Sauer in each hand, keeping one barrel pointed Harry’s way.

  “I can see that stooge already, back in his little boat rowing away,” Harry said to Max.

  “Row, row, row your boat …”

  Dietz shuffled back to them. His pistol dangled from his hand as if it might drop any second. The butt of Harry’s Mauser bobbled from a pocket.

  “Look at it like this—it’s a wash,” Harry said to Dietz.

  “Your man didn’t like what he saw,” Max said. “You aren’t worth the cabbage.”

  Dietz laughed, a sad chuckle. He waved his gun at them one last time. “I sincerely hope that I never see either of you two ever again,” he said and turned from them.

  Dietz headed off hobbling, dragging one foot after the other and one shoulder lower like a hunchback, and he had the face to match. His steps made sucking noises as he headed across the island, back for the rowboat they had come in on.

  Harry pulled himself up, grabbing at the edge of the trench. “The Soviets are going to kill you too!” he shouted after Dietz. “We saw it with our own eyes. You saw it. Those photos.”

  Dietz’s silhouette blended into the tree line, finding the darkness. Somewhere out there was a man who hated boats.

  Half an hour later. Down in the trench. Max was shivering. Harry found the driest possible blanket and draped it over him. He made Max keep his arms to his sides and pressed the wound at Max’s shoulder. They should be dressing the wound, but Harry had little to work with. There was nothing here but mud and sand and ice-cold stagnant water.

  “He can’t know where the Cossacks are, not exactly,” Harry told him. “In the Šumava, sure, but it will take him time.”

  “Save it,” Max said. “Next thing you’ll be telling me we just had tough luck, is all. So American of you. You don’t understand. For me and so many this is the way it is. Our natural state. That wind of fate never blows right for me. That’s what scares me, you know? That cruel wind could have—could still—lead to the gallows for me. But for you, it’s like you’ve been riding on a steel track—like it’s your birthright. Always has been.”

  “Till now. So don’t go and tell me you’re envious. I went right off the rails today. I gave it all away to Dietz. And now look at us.”

  “One must try,” Max said.

  Harry placed a Chesterfield in Max’s mouth. “I thought we were better at this, the shit we’ve both been through.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he did us a favor, in one way.”

  “How you figure?”

  “Let’s not kid ourselves. One of us was going to kill Dietz. Perhaps this was why we really brought him here. I know I wanted to do it, the more he sang.”

  Harry thought about it. After what he had once done to a wicked and heartless man, doing in Dietz would have been a cakewalk. His pleasure. “Supposing we’d just killed the bastard at first sight out on the street, dumped him in a rubble ho
le.”

  “That’s being too good at this.”

  Harry nodded. He glanced around the trench for items he could use to make a fire.

  A tear ran down Max’s cheek. “Listen, brother. If anything happens to me? Just lay me down in your cellar with Irina. It’s cold enough down there to preserve us both until buried. That’s where I want to be—”

  “Shut up with that. Melancholic actor. Besides you’re no Gary Cooper.”

  “Says you.”

  Nothing was dry enough to make a fire. The trees had to be soaked through. A light rain began to fall, laced with wet snow, tapping at the half-cover of tarp. Harry watched as little pools formed on it. How long would that last before it started dumping into the trench or come crashing down on them?

  “Bastard took my pocketknife,” Harry grunted.

  “I liked it better in that freight car,” Max said.

  “Me, I beg to differ,” Harry said but he felt a shiver, and another. He tried to cloak it with coughs so that Max wouldn’t panic. Harry’s arms were stiffening as he pressed at Max’s wound. How long could he keep this up? His wrists felt like they were falling asleep from it. Or was it the cold?

  Three hours gone. Harry and Max huddled together, against each other, Harry using his weight to press his shoulder into Max’s wound.

  “They used to say on the Eastern Front that the cold, it just takes you to sleep. And that’s it,” Max said.

  “Stop it, will you?”

  Four hours. Harry checked Max’s pulse—Max was only sleeping. He heard something. He heaved himself up, slapped Max’s hand on his wound, untangled himself from the blanket, and stood, his legs stiff and his toes numb.

  Men were shouting. Light beams flashed and shot up into the sky, the rays rippling along the water. Headlights. Harry ran to the tree line behind them along the far bank. He could make out silhouettes across the water. The opposite shore was closer on this side. Men in uniform, men with shovels. Flashlights.