Cold Lonely Courage

by Soren Petrek

  “You’re right, Willi. She’s a killer. Some people can just do it. You remember the men from our old unit who were like that.”

  “Glad we’re not like that, Horsty. Fighting like a soldier is one thing, but to do what she does, you have to sell your soul to the devil.”

  “I’ve read the file. She goes out of her way to not harm others. She doesn’t bomb indiscriminately, although I’m sure that that would be effective. Granted, I’m sure she’s been involved in other matters where regular soldiers have been killed, but it’s war. Every time there’s an Allied bombing raid, civilians die. She seems to have made a conscious choice to avoid that. I do not believe she enjoys killing at all. I think she sees it as her duty, perhaps to God. If that is so, she is more formidable than I realized at first. Makes you think, doesn’t it, Willi? How would God punish the wicked? He can go Sodom and Gomorrah on them, or he could send a Golem like the Hebrews believe. Golems can’t be stopped until their purpose is fulfilled.”

  “Beer, Horsty. No more lovely, scary bedtime stories for poor Willi.”

  “Here we go, Willi,” Stenger said, walking out into the alley behind the tailor’s shop, just as they heard Von Schmelling’s bodyguards yelling at the discovery of the body.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Madeleine was back in the storage facility, miles away from the kill site. Tonight she would stay here and then move on. She hoped never to return. She sat on the small cot with her back against the wall, thinking and smoking. The old can next to her had several butts in it; she had been winding down for a while. She shook her head slowly as she considered how close she had come to capture. She was lucky to run into a real cop, not a Gestapo or SS goon. There would have been a fight. She and several of the enemy would be dead. Must be a guardian angel looking out for me, she thought smiling at the notion and thinking how ironic it was that her nickname was “the Angel of Death.” With no effort on her part her legend had grown. London was careful to move her around the country so that she wasn’t pinned down regionally. Travel was the most dangerous part of her job. The killing had become so organized and habitual that the act itself was a relief. She remembered the words of the ghostly German who told her never to become complacent. He told her to expect capture, and to relish each escape from it as a victory. She forced herself to plan to the point where her actions were like a dance or a story, with a beginning, middle, and an end. Each part was as important as the others.

  Madeleine moved from the bed to the small stove and opened another container in a seemingly endless parade of prepared food. Generally it was edible and designed for maximum nutrition and energy. She longed for the days prior to the war when she and her family would often discuss the meals of the day to come, what they would eat, who would prepare what, which new wines were available. To her family, food was life. She longed for the days when her family sat on their veranda overlooking the town and ate their meals together. They watched their friends and neighbors pass by and observed the comings and goings at the beach a few blocks away. They worked hard, but play was just outside the door. They did everything you could in a beach town. On Mondays, when the restaurant was closed, the family would take their small sailboat to one of the hidden callongues. The little inlet knifed in from the sea, and its waters were clear and cool, protected by the sheer rock cliffs that formed its sides. They would anchor the boat and swim until it was time to eat. They always had a cold lunch, washed down with a white wine from the nearby village of Cassis. Her father would lower a bottle down beneath the boat to cool and heighten its perfectly crisp, dry bite. When she thought of it, she could taste each sliver of melon and pulled chicken splashed by the fruit of the wine’s flavor. By the end of summer the Toche’s had the deep tans of their Provencal heritage, Yves’s set off magnificently by his blond hair and blue eyes and hers married beautifully with her mane of wild black curls.

  Chez Toche prospered because of the family’s attention to the quality of their food and the loyalty of their patrons. She physically felt the loss of not being there working a Sunday afternoon meal. She worried about her parents and how they would cope without her and, sadly, Yves. He had been gifted. He had been so serious about the restaurant and the food from such a young age. Madeleine could cook; her mother and grandparents had taught her how. Yves just knew how. He was an artist born to the kitchen. He could watch one preparation, taste it, and improve it. He could look at herbs and other seasonings and invent dishes and entire meals of many courses as vehicles for their flavors and nuances. She allowed a little happiness into her grief as she thought of him. She knew that when the thoughts faded she would feel that slow sink back into melancholy and despair. It was a mire of pain from which she could only extract herself for short periods. Lately, there seemed to be an increasing glimmer of hope. Some promise of happiness to come. She knew the allies would invade soon. She was privy to information that came directly from the premier espionage service in the world. Her organization knew the military secrets before the military knew them.

  Madeleine always speculated that Prime Minister Churchill had something to do with that. There was a man, she mused. What were the Germans thinking, taking on the Brits with him as their leader? He was born for conflict. Not only that, he was half American, his mother having been from the States. Madeleine was Churchill’s dagger at the throat of the enemy. He had insisted that she be assigned the task. She had met him only once, but remembered the occasion vividly. He had simply asked if she was capable of the job. She remembered the two of them holding one another’s eyes for a long pause after his question. She had pulled all emotion into herself and allowed his piercing gaze to be absorbed into the empty hole in her soul. It was the place where her happiness had once been. Then the great man had laughed, pushed a brandy into her hand and talked about everything but the war. Too soon other duties called him away, but she carried his confidence every day as a bolster to her courage and against the loneliness of her heart. It was that confidence that allowed her to hope that she would be with Teach again, with the mi series of this life behind her forever.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Stenger sat with his feet up on the desk, pushing around a few files. Willi was in his customary position; hat tilted back, unabashedly snoozing. Stenger smiled, knowing Willi purposefully cultivated his laid back manner. It must be nice to have that kind of contentment. I just don’t have it, he thought. Every time I try to sit still, I get more restless. Out of curiosity, he picked up a file with SS markings. He opened the file and noted that it was a theft case. Finally he had something where the culprit might have exercised a little ingenuity and not just wanton violence or unplanned killing. During his time in the civilian police force, murders were the exception, not the norm. Financial crimes and large-scale thefts with intricate planning and execution, now those were the crimes Stenger liked to investigate. They were truly cat and mouse. Often he didn’t even dislike the thieves he tried to catch. They seemed to consider their work an occupation, just like the traditional jobs that people went to every day. The illegality and the prison time associated with getting caught were just part of the equation. Many times when he’d apprehended a major criminal, they seemed to be madder at themselves for getting caught than with him for catching them. He did his job well. Catching them was one thing, convicting them was another. These men and women didn’t just give up when apprehended. Few confessed and when they did, only to the bare minimum.

  This case was a priority for the SS. Apparently, varying amounts of gold had been disappearing with some regularity in the Limoges region in the western part of the country. With Hitler shooting generals with little compunction, nobody was above suspicion. It seemed that with the threat of invasion and increased Resistance activity, there were few resources for an in-depth investigation. It seemed that nobody had interviewed the commanding general in the region, General Heinz Lammerding. In fact, nobody seemed interested in questioning anyone from the General’s SS division. Stenger read
on to find out some more about the Das Reich Division. They had seen some of the bloodiest and most vicious combat along the eastern front fighting the Russians. Stenger knew from personal knowledge that the Russian civilians were tortured and killed indiscriminately. Whole villages were decimated. The Russians retaliated in kind. Some of these atrocities took place within sight of both enemy forces, like some horrible tit-for-tat game of death with women and children and helpless civilians used as fodder. Presently, Das Reich were regrouping and resting up in the Limoges region, apparently in anticipation of the invasion. He shook his head. I certainly hope that the allied generals don’t think the invasion will be easy. With soldiers like Das Reich, killing is like eating or sleeping. You send men with no combat experience up against those kinds of troops and you will see hell. He paused while he looked down into the depths of the file in front of him. His memory went back to the terror of battle and the knowledge of how effective seasoned troops could be. These were men with the stare that never seemed to settle on anything but was aware of everything. He had it and Willi had it. It never really left. He had heard it called the thousand-yard stare; the one searching for the enemy, knowing they were coming.

  Stenger’s silence alerted Willi, who glanced up and saw the look in his partner’s eyes. Willi said nothing and closed his eyes again, knowing that Horsty would work through whatever demons were creeping into his mind, just as he did when they came to him. When they did discuss war, they talked of the fond memories of comrades and episodes of mirth in a morass of darkness, fear, and death. They did not speak of battles, except in passing or to accentuate a point. They knew that they could rely on one another implicitly, and that was all the discussion they needed. Willi shook his head thinking how their lives as young men had been defined by war and how their lives after it had seemed false after the crushing reality of death and destruction. Their survival together bonded them more closely to each other than to their families. After the magnitude of war everything else seemed transparent and not quite real. They were each other’s strength and anchor in the world. Willi was thankful for it every day. Regardless, it wasn’t something they expressed with words. They were far beyond the need for them.

  Stenger shook the cobwebs out and pulled back from a walled-off place in the recesses of his mind. He looked back down and started reading where he’d left off. Apparently, a large amount of gold that had been seized from the civilian populace had disappeared. Nobody seemed to know anything about it. He smiled; it seemed that the SS could commit any act of depravity against mankind, but if you stole from the Reich, that was a different matter, one that could get you shot. The perfunctory investigation had thus far revealed nothing, and suggested that the Resistance might have intercepted the gold and hidden it away. The report mentioned a few SS officers of varying capacities, but was careful not to cast any suspicion their way. Stenger liked the idea of looking into the matter. He expected no help from the SS, and it seemed to him that the best way to get the SS off his back was to investigate them. He would proceed with caution and considered the fact that this new investigation might turn out to be his last of the war. He and Willi would casually look into it, and when Das Reich ran off to quell the invasion he and Willi would sit quietly in a police station and surrender peacefully when the allies came. Either that or take a side trip to Spain and wait the war out there. He just wasn’t going to shoot any more young men for the Fatherland. Willi was with him on that. The investigation would take them out of the area, which was an added bonus due to a question or two thrown their way concerning Von Schmelling’s assassination.

  Stenger had closed the book on chasing the Angel now that he’d put a face to the assassin. She wasn’t a random, out of control killer. She was precise and measured. Stenger instinctively felt that she would have done anything to avoid shooting Willi. His instincts had served him well in the first war and throughout his police career. He would not abandon them now. Willi had previously suggested, albeit after several large beers, that she didn’t need catching. Willi was quick to point out that it wasn’t because she was terrifying; it was because for some reason, the entire time she held the gun to his head, he felt safe. Willi didn’t have to say that he trusted Stenger not to do something stupid and get him killed; the possibility of that happening was left on the battlefield decades ago. Now, the feeling had come from her and he just couldn’t explain it.

  “Willi, how about a trip to Limoges?”

  “How’s the food?”

  “Wonderful, like everywhere else in France. Don’t you want to know what we’ll be doing there?”

  “As long as it doesn’t involve assassins and guns in my ear, I don’t care, Horsty.”

  “Gold, Willi!”

  “Do we get any?” Willi asked now fully awake.

  “You know, Willi, ordinarily I’d say no. But now, who knows? Sounds like some of it might be German gold and it would be our patriotic duty not to allow all of it to fall into enemy hands. Besides, if we open a Hoffbrau after the war we’ll need capital.”

  “What? The intrepid Detective Horst Stenger will put down his magnifying glass?”

  “Consultation or private work, Willi. No more day in and day out.”

  “Sounds good to me. Where do we put the Hoffbrau?”

  “Right in the middle of Munich. When the city is rebuilt we’ll build right next to everything. Your family makes the beer; we sell it and give them a cut.”

  “On one condition, Horsty. I get to hire the beer maids.”

  “Who better, Willi? Who better?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  John Trunce lay on his cot and tried to concentrate on a long letter from home. Everyone in his family added a page or two and he got all kinds of news, sometimes the same news from different perspectives. It never failed to be entertaining. He loved his family and his home in Missouri. He relied on these lifelines, and usually devoured them, rereading them many times. Today, he just couldn’t concentrate. The whole mood of the base had changed. None of the officers said anything, but the troopers could sense apprehension in their officers. They knew something, and the activity level had increased dramatically. Everyone from the guys in his stick down to the cooks and the boys in the motor pool felt something was up. Nobody asked. The sergeants hadn’t said a word, and there was no guarantee they knew anything anyway. Some of them were the quietest of all. They knew that on the ground their jobs would be among the hardest, keeping the men alive. Everyone was anxious to get going and get this thing over with. John felt that way. He hated feeling so tense. He felt like he was part of a huge body of water penned in behind a dam that was creaking and groaning under the strain. He knew that had to be the plan. This wasn’t going to be some little push. It was going to be a tidal wave, a long time coming. Men and supplies were amassed all over southern England. He’d seen plenty of it during the training missions. He figured the generals decided not to try breaking the door down with some carefully placed kicks. They were going to run through the door with everything they had. John felt good about that. He thought an all-out assault would overwhelm the enemy and save lives. The Germans on the other side of that thin strip of water had years of combat experience. Most of the American army would have to get on the job training, but he was confident that they would win the day.

  He rolled over and saw a line starting to form by the mess tent. He folded the letter and shoved it under his pillow. He left the tent and walked towards the chow line. The orders could come at any time, and he thought it would be better to go into battle with a full stomach. Besides, even though he was as skinny as a rail he was always hungry. Once it started he had no idea when he’d be able to expect food again. He smiled as he looked at the line. That’s one thing paratroopers can do, and that’s line up, he thought.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Hundreds of miles away in the middle of western France, Gabrielle Richard glanced out the window and into the courtyard of her neat little home. She was keeping an eye on Ant
oinette, her wandering three-year-old. Gabrielle smiled, thinking how precocious the little girl was. She was so cute with her jumble of curly blond hair and blue eyes. She was always talking and laughing. Antoinette was a village favorite. She was curious and warmed up to people right away. She would often take neighbors by the hand and lead them around her yard, showing them her latest discoveries. She was beautiful in every way.

  Gabrielle cut some root vegetables from last year’s garden. Soon enough, she thought her backyard garden would give them a supply for the coming winter. Her husband Marcel was off working. He was a short train ride away but would be home for the evening meal. Gabrielle sighed and felt fortunate. Day to day life in Oradour sur Glane was much the same as it had been before the war. She had been a newlywed then. Marcel had mild hearing loss from a childhood malady that kept him out of military service. The only German soldiers Gabrielle had seen drove through as part of a convoy headed somewhere else. That was exactly what Oradour sur Glane was, a town on the way to somewhere else.

  More than once Gabrielle thought about life outside of Oradour. She had traveled as a girl. Her cousin and her family lived in the south. Gabrielle visited Madeleine, her younger cousin, several times. They were a few years apart and Gabrielle had taken it upon herself to teach her about the ways of the world, the ways of boys and men in particular. While Madeleine was dark with sculpted features and a somewhat reserved personality, Gabrielle was blond, with the bold open features of the outdoor rural life. The two complimented each other perfectly. Gabrielle saw the way men looked at Madeleine from an early age and decided that Madeleine needed a little schooling in the art of flirtation and manipulation of men. Gabrielle sighed and regretted that she had lost touch with Madeleine. Letters from the Toche family had abruptly stopped after Gabrielle was informed of the death of Yves, when the Germans invaded. She mourned his loss but knew his death must have been devastating for Madeleine. Madeleine and Yves had been so close.