"Screwballs?"
"Means eccentric, weird, crazy. But I must work with what I have, trying to change them over time, giving them better direction, better goals."
Josten shook his head. It seemed bizarre, but so had the Nazi party to many people in 1923.
"Do you work alone?"
"No. Many people, most of them far more affluent than I, think the same way I do. I have contacts with very wealthy people in twelve states who are sympathetic to my aims and who are members of the Klan."
Josten went to the heart of the matter. "How powerful is your group? Could you force a confrontation now?"
"No, absolutely not. I've just begun the process. Give me five years. I need you to help me. But I've done all the talking. Tell me about yourself, about life in the Luftwaffe. You weren't in the SS, I know, but tell me what you know about it."
Josten stirred uneasily. It was not something he liked to talk about. Could Ruddick be recording the conversation?
"It's late. Let's leave the Luftwaffe for another time. I have too many painful memories of our failures with our jet fighter. And while I wasn't in the SS, I can tell you that it has been badly misrepresented. It was primarily an elite fighting organization, idealistic, dedicated to our leaders. The SS got all the nastiest jobs, all the worst fighting in Russia and in France. But people remember only the concentration camps."
He was silent and Ruddick said, almost wistfully, "I believe you had experience at Nordhausen, did you not? Tell me about it."
Josten stared at him; the man was a true believer, no mistake, but this was something he didn't want to talk about. He stood up, saying, "Excuse me for a moment. Where is the toilet?"
A few minutes later, Josten stood looking in the mirror as he washed his hands, thinking about Ruddick's proposal to join him. It was not a bad offer. With the flying wing dead at McNaughton, there was really no reason for him to be there, and, with his disabilities, it wouldn't be easy to find employment elsewhere. Why shouldn't he use this corrupt fool Ruddick, as a tool? He could work for him, building up his Klan while he recovered his strength. Then, perhaps, he'd be ready to see Lyra and Ulrich.
His eyes misted as he thought of them. She had been so cruel to take Ulrich away from him. He had not gone to see her because he was not yet fit—not yet potent. It would be unendurable to approach her again and not be able to make love to her. Perhaps in another few months . . .
Outside, the weather had turned cold, a front had switched off like a lamp the past two days of Indian summer. Erich Weissman sat in a Chevrolet sedan, its engine running, the heater and the wipers working. He'd stolen the car weeks ago from a new shopping center, where the owner had obligingly left the key in the ignition. The theft made him feel guilty as an assassination never did. Weissman had kept it garaged until tonight. He had the window cracked, the gun in his lap, and was grateful to have found a parking spot within good shooting range.
Weissman was still debating with himself the ethics of killing an American, even though he knew Ruddick was one of the most influential opponents of arms sales to Israel. He had nothing against Ruddick; his real target should have been the man he was dining with. If the intelligence was correct, Josten was the sort he hated most, an officer who pretended to despise the Nazis, while doing everything he could to help them win the war. He didn't know if Josten had ever beaten a slave laborer or sent a Jew to a concentration camp. But he did know that he had masterminded the installation at Nordhausen where slaves built jet engines for the Luftwaffe. Weissman knew that he would never have seen him there—the neatly uniformed Luftwaffe personnel rarely came down into the depths of the tunnel. But Josten was even more guilty than the guards who actually cracked skulls and broke bones. They were just brutes, unthinking animals. It was people like Josten who made their work possible.
Yet of the two, Israel had designated Ruddick as the primary target, the real enemy. Well, if the state of Israel had existed in the twenties, perhaps Hitler and Himmler would have been deemed enemies and been executed. Many millions of lives would have been saved. As the Germans always said, orders were orders.
He started each time the restaurant door swung open, bringing the gun up to window level. There had been only false alarms so far.
A light rain began to fall, shimmering against the windows of the jewelry store to the right. He tensed as he saw Ruddick emerge, holding the door for the slower man behind him. Ruddick continued to hold the door open while a couple, laughing, heads down, ran down the street in the rain.
The two men turned right and Weissman fired twice. Both dropped as the bullets ripped into the jewelry store window, an Atmos clock blowing up among the avalanche of glass cascading into the street. Weissman gunned the car out of its space, then roared down 17th Street, cursing himself. He should have concentrated on Ruddick; he knew he had missed them both.
Josten asked, "Are you all right?"
"Yes, I'm surprised my reflexes are still so good. I don't know what that was about, but I've made a lot of enemies over the years."
"They weren't after you. They were after me. It's the Jews."
A black and white patrol car materialized out of the air, and two officers emerged, guns out.
"Freeze. Put your hands up."
Ruddick smiled at Josten, now his comrade-in-arms. "They think we smashed the window to grab some jewelry."
*
Wichita, Kansas/October 26, 1952
The news commentator had just finished the fifteenth repetition of Eisenhower giving his "I will go to Korea" speech, and Ulrich switched the channel to "The Cisco Kid."
"How much television are you going to let him watch?"
"As much as he wants. He's a smart boy."
They'd been married one month, bought a new station wagon, moved two thousand miles, rented a furnished apartment, got Ulrich into school, and not yet had their first argument.
Bayard Riley stretched out on the couch, one arm around Lyra, one around Ulrich. "It's great you're so adaptable."
She looked at him with surprise. "Let me tell you something. Traveling across the United States in a Chevolet is much better than riding to Berlin in an ox-cart. How many times did we get strafed on Route 66? Not once." She kissed him. "You don't know how nice it is to open a refrigerator and choose what to eat. You don't know how nice it is just to have a refrigerator!"
As if on cue, Ulrich ran in to the refrigerator and pulled a Milky Way out of the freezer compartment. As he came back he rubbed his stomach appreciatively. A good kid, Ulrich had protested a little about leaving school in California, but by his third school day in Wichita, he was perfectly happy.
Lyra asked, "But how adaptable are you?"
Bear looked at her with surprise. "What do you mean? I'm the most adaptable guy in the world."
"So? Will you adapt to flying a bomber instead of a fighter? Will you adapt to have a crew reporting to you? Will you adapt to having a baby?"
He grabbed her. "Honey, are you pregnant?"
"Yes, two months. It turns out we would have had to get married, even if we didn't want to."
Bear rolled his eyes at Ulrich, absorbed in "Ceeesco's" antics.
"Don't be prudish. He's got to live in the real world."
"Lyra, this is great! And we'll have lots more."
"Perhapszz." When she was excited, a trace of her accent returned. "If you live long enough. I wish you'd get a job where you didn't have to fly."
He pulled her to him, ignoring the familiar Air Force domestic argument, and she pushed him away.
"There's more. I got a call from Helmut."
He rolled his eyes at Ulrich again.
"Ulrich knows that his father is in this country. Helmut knew all about us—when we were married, where we were going."
"What was his attitude?"
"Bitter. Very bitter. He didn't exactly threaten me . . ."
"Do you want me to confront him? I can be in Nashville in a few hours."
"No—h
e'd like that. I just want to avoid him. If he comes here, that's different. I can't believe that he'd hurt me, but he might try to take Ulrich away. I don't know what he'd do to you."
"Let him try. Does he know you're pregnant?"
"No. Do you think I'd tell him before I told you?"
"No. But tell me how you feel about him."
"Profoundly sorry. He was once a good man and I loved him very much. The war changed him; it changed me, too. If I could help him, I would, but no one can."
*
Salinas, California/November 4, 1952
The day had started well. Bandy and Patty went to the polls early, where for the first time in their lives they didn't cancel each other's votes. After McCarthy's violent attack, they'd become straight-ticket Democrats, even though Bandy liked Eisenhower better than Stevenson. But everything turned sour when they returned to their factory. It was hell to see something they'd built up so quickly and so well disintegrate. Half the work force had already been laid off; the rest would go when they finished the work in progress. No more airplanes were waiting on the ramp—now they were being flown straight to McNaughton's Nashville plant.
The Air Force, reacting to pressure from Congress, the public, and Milo Ruddick, had shut off the contractual spigot. There would be no more airplanes coming in for refurbishment.
Hadley had been waiting for them in their tiny conference room.
"First of all, Bandy, how did it go with Varney?"
The general had called Bandfield back to Washington the week before. "I offered to resign my commission, but he wouldn't let me. He's sending me to Boeing, to try and help out on the production problems they're having with the B-47."
"Well, that's a concession, anyway. I'm surprised, I thought sure this was it, that Ruddick had put the squeeze on you to get you out." Roget turned and asked, "How bad is it with the banks, Patty?"
"Well, I never should have tried to buy this place; the banks offered to build it and lease it back, but I figured we were good for four years of war work, anyway. My fault."
Roget shook his head vigorously. "No, it was the right thing to do. What's it mean to us now?"
"Well, we can't keep it up. I'm going to try to go back to the banks and sell it to them, then rent or lease it back. We'll lose our shirt, but we'll be out from under the payments."
Bandfield said, "Maybe we can just rent half of it back; we wouldn't need the whole facility at first."
"Let me talk to them. I'm not sure I want somebody else in here—if we sell as many executive planes as I think we can, we'll need the space. If somebody else comes in and does well, they'll want to run us out."
"Patty's right; if we can hold on to the whole place, let's do it. And if we start making B-17s into water bombers, we'll need all the space we can get."
Roget had already dismissed his anger against McCarthy and
Ruddick. If he could have gotten his hands around their necks, he would have cheerfully strangled them, but they were unassailable, and now the problem was there in Salinas, just like always—how to wring a living out of aviation.
*
Pyoktong, North Korea/November 23, 1952
Demanding to be treated as the other pilots were treated turned out to be a worse idea than pouring the tea on Colonel Kim. John had lost track of time since the rapid-fire events of that morning, but it no longer mattered. He knew he was going to die.
Each day brought him closer to breaking. Time was passing in a blur, just black moments between the beatings and the solitary, yet there were rare moments of great lucidity. A few days before, as he was being walked to a new slit trench, Marshall had turned a corner in the crooked street and had suddenly looked out on a sublime scene, the first element of beauty he'd, ever seen in Korea. The sun had broken through and was gleaming off the fresh snow blanketing the mountains that arced around Pyoktong, their white edge sharply defined by the deep blue of a huge lake. He'd been aware of the mountains but never knew until that moment that the lake was nearby. Startled, he hesitated momentarily and the guard clubbed him to the ground. Reflexively, he curled into a ball as the guard beat consciousness from him with his rifle butt.
Now, an unknown number of days later, still confused from the beating, he was told he would meet Colonel Kim's replacement. After a long wait in a cornstalk-lined mud hut, he was jerked to his feet and the viperous Colonel Choi entered his life, a short, sallow-skinned Korean who tapped a strip of bamboo against his hip like a riding crop.
Through Marshall's throbbing head came the thought: This guy looks like the villain in a Jap war movie.
Choi leaned forward, his brow beetling over thick, Coke-bottle-bottom glasses.
"Captain Marshall, I'm Colonel Choi. I will be interrogating you in the future. You will cooperate." He spoke without an accent.
He sensed his question coming, knew he should not ask it, and plunged on anyway. "Colonel Choi, haven't I seen you in the movies?"
Marshall heard the crack of bamboo before he felt it slice into his cheek. Raising on his toes, Choi rained blows on both sides, quick precise taps that cut flesh but left him conscious.
"Sit down, Captain Marshall. That's just a taste of what you'll get from me if you show any sign of disrespect. You will cooperate."
Marshall sat down carefully.
In the days that followed, Choi's questions were routine, but each carried the implicit threat of quick, sharp punishment. Once he said, "I'll never beat you beyond your endurance, Captain Marshall. I'll just push you to your limit of pain and hold you there until you tell me what I want to hear."
He kept his word, as aware of Marshall's physical limits as a physician, metering punishment out carefully, knowing that fear was as debilitating as the actual punishment.
His blows and threats were coupled with mind-numbing diatribes on the superiority of the Communist system and the certain downfall of capitalism. As Marshall's strength and mental acuity gradually returned, he drew comfort sometimes thinking what his own little capitalist, Saundra, would have had to say to Choi.
Choi differed from Kim in another respect. Someone was funneling him accurate information on racism in America. When he came in each day, he had fresh—and reasonable—statistics on Whites versus Negroes in employment, education, conviction rates, prison sentences, lynchings, percentage of Negro officers—anything that adversely reflected on the system. Choi didn't demand a reaction—he just fed the material, contrasting it sometimes with the harmony of ethnic relations in the Communist system. Marshall was sure that someone had provided Choi with the phrase, but he would conclude each of his race lectures with, "Remember, Captain Marshall, that Communism has no prejudices about color. And remember, too, your Air Force has forgotten you; to your Air Force you are just a nigger."
Irritated by the term nigger, knowing that it was true for some, like Coleman, Bones had declared a private war against the interrogator. The rules were weighted so that Choi must inevitably win—but he knew also that he would never surrender, never break. Choi could kill him—and he had given some thought to killing himself—but he would not give him any of the limited military information he had, nor would he ever admit to the unspecified war crimes he was supposed to have committed.
His biggest challenge was to remember the lies he'd told before, for Choi was obviously working from the papers Kim had prepared. Once Kim had asked him to describe the F-86; Marshall had spun out a long line of technical misinformation, most of it taken from material he'd read about the MiG, liberally laced with "secrets" from the Avia he'd flown—a millennium before?—in Israel. Kim had been ecstatic, and he forwarded the material with relish. When Choi repeated the question, with Kim's report in front of him, Marshall's weakened state made it difficult to recall exactly what he'd said.
Bones had discovered immediately after Kim's departure how very special his rations had been. Now all he got, twice a day, were wooden bowls of cold water and chook, a watered, gummy rice that every fourth or fifth da
y might also contain a fishhead or some garlic buds. Either was very welcome. Before, he felt as if he were starving; now he really was and knew that his nickname had never been more appropriate.
The first serving came before dawn. There was not much time to eat, yet he always saved the bowl of water to rinse the chook bowl, a spoonful at a time, to make sure he got every dreg. The second came at the midpoint of the evening, when the interrogators broke for their own supper. Then he had a little more time and would carefully space his bites, chewing each one until every trace of it, even the barely perceptible flavor, had entirely disappeared. When he was finished he would scrape the bowl with the spoon, as if he could express nourishment from the wood.
There was no way to tell the time, but judging by the appearance of his interrogators as they tired, he was being questioned from about six in the morning until one or two the next morning. The interrogators grew progressively more exhausted and ill-tempered, even though they took turns and often absented themselves, one or two at a time.
The prayers his dad had taught him were sustaining him mentally, but there was nothing he could do about his physical deterioration. There were no mirrors, but he could see his spindly limbs and feel his bony ribs. Sleeping on the hard-packed dirt floor was an agony. After eighteen or twenty hours in the interrogation cell, he'd collapse on the frigid floor and fall into a dreamless sleep for an hour or two until the insistent pain from his arms and bony hips would awaken him. He'd massage himself for a few minutes, then drop back into exhausted slumber like a stone falling into a well, repeating the process until the guard kicked him awake.
Marshall had already decided that the kicks, like most of the Korean brutality, were not aimed at him specifically; they treated each other the same way, and it was only natural that he would be low man on the kicking pole. The nine guards lived in the same hut with him, all in a room not much larger than his own four-by-eight-foot space. He watched their crude domestic arrangements—patching each other's socks, the tattered rags still on their feet; studiously picking lice out of seams; interminably reading, or pretending to, from Communist textbooks. They shared their frugal rations, and they stole from each other and everyone else without remorse. The lowest man in the guard's pecking order, evidenced by the fact that everyone kicked him and he kicked no one but Marshall, was U Eun Chur. U didn't kick him as often as the others did, and he had once given him a small frozen potato to eat, a gift from God. When the other guards were out of the room, U Eun Chur would come over and point to his skin and to Marshall's, then make a kicking motion with his foot. Marshall assumed he meant that they were both dark, that they were both maltreated.
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