The Red Eagles

by David Downing

  What could he do? There was no way of warning her – they’d just come face to face at the lodge. He’d have to play it off the cuff. But could he and she do it on their own? He unconsciously tightened his grip on the steering wheel.

  “She is slim and dark-haired,” he said, measuring his words. “I wouldn’t say she was – what did you say? – full of life. But people change. It could be the same woman. But there are a lot of Germans in this country who support Germany without loving the Führer. How well did you know her?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. We knew each for only a few days. A long time ago. 1933.”

  “Not a memorable year,” the other German said ironically.

  Kuznetsky breathed an inner sigh of relief. That was before her recruitment; the German couldn’t know anything specific. But … if there was one complication they hadn’t needed, it was something like this. He wondered how she’d react. Coldly, he supposed. The death of a current lover hadn’t seemed to upset her that much, and eleven years was enough to kill off any emotion, certainly anything generated by a few days’ romance. If that’s what it had been. And what else could it have been? He pulled the car off the highway and drew up outside a diner.

  “Lunch,” he said calmly.

  Nine

  Amy spent the morning trying to read, and constantly found her mind wandering off in other directions. The tension in her body seemed to grow by the minute, and she doubted if the endless cups of coffee were helping. She felt like a real drink, but Joe had decided against bringing any.

  She crushed out her cigarette, retrieved one of the tommy guns from their hiding place, and walked west along the lee side of the ridge. Under the trees it was cool, and even on the stretches of open ground the breeze made the heat bearable, even pleasant. She passed above the pool feeling no communion with the woman who had lain there two days before. Her body today felt like an alien attachment, just a means of transport for her mind.

  After she’d walked a mile from the road, she unslung the gun from her shoulder, took aim at a line of hickory trees, and fired a short burst. The gun was a good one; the action was smooth, the recoil minimal, and it was not as loud as she’d expected. Her marksmanship was good too; she’d always been an excellent shot. Three of the trees had been hit, and at an even height. If there turned out to be a need for her to use the gun, there’d be no problem.

  She walked back to the cabin slowly, feeling more relaxed than she had. A few more hours and they’d be here. Two German officers, two of her fellow countrymen. She hoped they’d be SS, real Nazis.

  The afternoon dragged. She lit the stove, mixed a stew from an assortment of cans, and left it to simmer. Then she sat by the window, staring at the forested ridges receding into the haze. This is it, she told herself, the moment of commitment. From today there would be no turning back, no more choices. The thought comforted her. No more choices. And no more deception. The debt would be paid in full.

  The light had begun to fade when she heard the approaching car. She walked out front, shielding her eyes from the glare of the setting sun. Her first concern was the driver, and she felt immediate relief on seeing Kuznetsky’s profile behind the wheel. The German in the front got out, then the one in the back, and her heart did a somersault. Eighty million Germans to choose from and they’d sent him.

  Her heart thumped, her mind whirled. She had just a few seconds to change her story – he would never believe she was a simple German patriot. With an enormous effort, she propelled her legs forward out of the shadow to greet them.

  “Hello, Paul,” she said quietly.

  “It is you,” he said. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Eleven years,” she said automatically, suddenly conscious of the expression on Kuznetsky’s face. He knew, was hanging back, waiting for her cue. Oh God. “Let’s get inside,” she said cheerfully, turning back toward the door. “There’s some food almost ready,” she called back, disappearing into the kitchen and praying that he wouldn’t follow. He didn’t. She heard Kuznetsky showing them their rooms.

  The shock was wearing off slowly, ever so slowly. After all, the number of Germans of his age with the necessary experience of America was bound to be limited – it shouldn’t have been such a surprise. And she’d been anti-American even when she knew him. That would have to do: patriotism and anti-Americanism outweighing her hatred of the Nazis. It was thin, but what reason would he have to doubt it? She was here. Eleven years was a long time; she could have changed. She had changed, if not in that direction.

  What would Kuznetsky be thinking? First Richard, now this. Hearing footsteps, she turned, thinking it was him, but it was the other German. “Gerd Breitner,” he said, offering his hand. “We weren’t introduced.” They shook hands, and he ambled over to inspect the stew on the stove. “Smells good,” he said. “Anything would smell good after four weeks in a U-boat. Rather a surprise, yes?” he added.

  She knew what he meant. “Yes, it is.”

  He looked at her with a steady, not unfriendly gaze. “For a moment I thought Paul had seen a ghost.”

  She returned his gaze. “We were close once. Things got in the way. I never thought I’d see him again, and I suppose he thought the same. But,” she continued, turning away to stir the pot, “it won’t make any difference to the operation. It was all a long time ago.”

  “Eleven years,” he muttered.

  The four of them ate at the trestle table. The two Germans talked incessantly to each other, Kuznetsky said nothing, and Amy concentrated on feeding a nonexistent appetite. As soon as they were finished she cleared the dishes away and disappeared into the kitchen, refusing any assistance.

  She returned to find Kuznetsky placing a large map across the table. He went through the plan, first running through the intended chain of events, then the emergency procedures devised to cover conceivable failures. He showed the Germans the photographs of the train and Coon Creek Valley, produced a diagram he’d drawn of the attack itself. Tomorrow they would see the valley for themselves.

  “There can be no survivors,” he said impassively. “The train will be missed at Huntsville, that’s one hour. They won’t be able to contact Scottsboro or Bridgeport, that’s another. If they start looking immediately, they could find it in one more. That’s three hours. By that time we won’t be a third of the way to the coast, and if anyone’s alive to identify us or the vehicles, we’ll never reach it.” He looked at the two Germans.

  “Agreed,” Gerd said grimly.

  Paul said nothing, but gave an infinitesimal nod.

  “Delivery,” Kuznetsky continued. “Rosa – Amy – and I will take the crates in the camper. A woman will arouse less suspicion, and as an American I’m the best qualified to deal with any unforeseen trouble. You two will take the car. We’ll take different routes” – he indicated them on the map – “and meet at Ossabaw Island the following evening.”

  “So we’re just here for the shooting,” Gerd said.

  “You’re here as soldiers. Any suggestions?”

  “No, it seems tight enough.”

  “Are you coming back with us?” Paul asked, not looking at Amy. “We weren’t told, and neither was the U-boat captain.”

  “Not unless something goes wrong. We plan to be back here next morning, continuing our vacation,” Kuznetsky said, treating them to a rare smile.

  Paul turned to find Amy looking at him. He held her gaze for a second. She broke the contact, saying she’d make some more coffee. He watched her carry the bucket out to the well, thought of following and decided not to. Since seeing her, since hearing in the car that it might be her, he’d been experiencing an apparently inexhaustible variety of emotions. She was as beautiful as ever, he thought, but harder, much harder, at least on the surface. Yet she didn’t want to look him in the eye.

  He wanted to tell her about the letters, but this obviously wasn’t the time. There probably never would be a good time. The past was better left as it was. They’d both changed,
and though he knew it was unjustified, he couldn’t help feeling a deep resentment. He wished she’d been anyone else, leaving his memories intact, unsullied.

  * * *

  Amy and Kuznetsky sat on the only chairs; Gerd had found the checkerboard and played with Paul, the two of them sitting against the wall with the board between them on the floor. Two oil lamps were burning but the light was still dim, and the room seemed full of moving shadows.

  Amy was trying her novel again, but every now and then she glanced across at Paul, who was sitting, purposely she guessed, with his face turned away from her. He seemed so unchanged in some ways: there was still the physical reticence complementing the withdrawn eyes, the feeling that he was watching the world rather than taking part in it. There’d been flashes of the old sense of humor, the thread of irony that seemed to run through most of his utterances. His companion’s too. The boy was still there in the man.

  But there’d been one change, one that was both subtle and all-embracing. Each of the characteristics seemed to have been exaggerated: the eyes were more withdrawn, the humor more bitterly manic, as if the parts of his being were straining at each other, as if the boy and the man were finding it harder to get along with each other.

  His partner was quieter, more watchful. He seemed as diffident as Paul, but she knew he was taking in everything. Gerd had noticed her glances at Paul. Physically he was heavier set, but in some manner he reminded her of a big cat; there was the same blend of self-confidence and constant wariness. And she could almost feel the protective mantle he threw around Paul. In fact the relationship between them seemed almost symbiotic. She felt a twinge of jealousy, then laughed at herself for being ridiculous.

  Kuznetsky was doing nothing, just sitting there smoking cigarettes and staring into space. “I’m going to bed,” she announced, getting up. “Sleep well,” Gerd said. Kuznetsky and Paul said nothing.

  “Where’ve you seen combat?” Kuznetsky asked after she was gone.

  “Almost everywhere,” Paul said, moving one of the black pieces.

  “France, the East, Africa,” Gerd answered.

  “Where in the East? I’ve taken a particular interest in the Russian campaign.”

  “So have we,” Paul muttered.

  “The march to Moscow. Almost to Moscow. Kharkov, Kursk, Vitebsk.”

  “Which division?”

  “Seventh Panzer.”

  “The Ghost Division.”

  Paul looked up. “Yes,” he said ironically. “Nothing but ghosts now.”

  Extraordinary, Kuznetsky thought. The four people in this lodge, like intertwining threads of the twentieth century. First her and the German, now this. They’d fought in the very division his Siberians had faced on the northern outskirts of Moscow in the last days of 1941. Wonderful, terrible days, when every mile recovered had contained a thousand frozen German corpses, when everyone knew that Hitler had been halted in his tracks. It had felt like spring, a blood-soaked frozen spring. Each morning the drop in the temperature had been announced, and his Siberian troops had cheered, knowing that each degree colder would kill another division of the Nazis.

  And yet the Germans had fought on, most of them still clothed in denim, many of them half-crippled with frostbite. It had been pathetic, wonderful, beyond reason, beyond humanity. And these two had been through it. He’d known before they answered. It showed in their faces, seeped out through their humor. I have heard the iron weep. In those days there’d been nothing else to hear.

  “Lovely day,” Gerd said, stopping by the window to examine the view. Outside, he could see Smith giving the vehicles a final check.

  “It’ll get a lot hotter,” Amy said. She turned to Paul, the list in her hand. “Right, what’s your name?”

  “Paul Jablonsky.”

  “Date of birth?”

  “August 5, 1908. Milwaukee, Wisconsin.”

  “Army record?”

  “One Hundred and Thirty-fourth Division. Purple Heart and medical discharge after Battle of Kasserine.”

  “Present employer?”

  “General Motors. War production consultant.”

  “That’ll do.”

  “Am I married?”

  “No.”

  “I wonder why.”

  “You never found the girl of your dreams, perhaps.”

  “Or found her and lost her.”

  Kuznetsky came in at an opportune moment. “Everything’s ready.”

  He drove, Paul beside him, Gerd and Amy in the back. There was nothing on the road down the mountain; between Lim Rock and the valley they passed only two trucks. Paul had forgotten how vast America was, remembered Schellenberg’s remark about empty territory, which no longer seemed quite so absurd.

  They drove up the narrow, claustrophobic valley, stopping just short of the trestle bridge. “It’s going to be very dark,” said Paul to no one in particular.

  “Our eyes will get accustomed,” Gerd said.

  “Yeah.” Paul walked across to the area assigned to him, imagined the train pulling to a halt, the doors opening … Another graveyard. The place reminded him of one of those narrow valleys in the Ukraine – where had it been …?

  “Outside Rzhavets,” Gerd said, reading his mind.

  “The day I drove the T-34,” Paul said, smiling.

  “The day you tried to drive a T-34,” Gerd corrected him.

  Paul didn’t respond. He was looking at Amy, sitting on her haunches by the side of the stream, noting the vivid contrast between the raven hair and the cream blouse.

  “Memories,” Gerd murmured.

  Paul wasn’t sure whether he was referring to the T-34 or her. “This is going to work,” he said thoughtfully.

  Gerd grunted. “Seems almost too easy. Someone in Washington’s going to suffer,” he added. “And deserves to.”

  “We’ve still got to get home, and the problems won’t end when we reach the U-boat. If we reach it. They’ll be scouring the Atlantic for weeks.”

  “Big ocean.”

  “The approaches to the ports aren’t so big.”

  “Well, one step at a time.”

  They walked back to the car, where Kuznetsky was already waiting. Amy followed, carrying a posy of small white flowers in her hand. Flowers from a graveyard, Paul thought with a shudder.

  At the end of the lodge road the two Germans got out, and Smith wished them good luck with one of his rare smiles and drove himself and Amy off toward Scottsboro. Paul and Gerd ambled along the track, the former engrossed in his own thoughts, the latter wondering how to broach the subject. Straightforwardly, he decided.

  “How does it feel to see her again?”

  Paul grunted. “How indeed?”

  “Why did you never mention her? You’ve talked enough about other women.”

  “Good question.” He kicked a stone into the undergrowth. “The one I’ve been asking myself, in a way. What made her so special? Gerd, this sounds crazy, but maybe first love really doesn’t die. Or maybe it was just the time. It was 1933, and I was coming back to Germany, a different Germany, and my father was dying – it felt like a moment between two lives. We met on the ship, had three wonderful days together, and then never saw each other again …”

  “Why not?”

  “Oh, a series of accidents really. It doesn’t matter. What I’m trying to say is that we, the two of us, those few days, they seemed – not at the time but afterward – as if they’d existed outside normal time, as if they had nothing to do with this world. Again, it sounds crazy, but it was like a moment of innocence – of adult innocence – and everything since has seemed corrupt in comparison …”

  “Not only in comparison.”

  “True. And she and I were outside all that.”

  “But no longer. I’m sorry, my friend.”

  “So am I. Maybe she is too.”

  “And you never saw each other again,” Kuznetsky repeated. “Regrets?”

  “At the time.”

  “Now?”


  “No.” She didn’t want to talk about it with him, because all he cared about was whether it would affect the operation. And it wouldn’t. The Germans would be left for the FBI to pick up as planned, and that was that. Her feelings were irrelevant. But … it was cruel. She felt as if she was being tested, tempted almost, as if some malicious fate had decided to find the one person she’d least like to sacrifice …

  They drove through Scottsboro. She looked at the bunch of white flowers on the dashboard, already beginning to wither in the heat. “Are you married?” she asked Kuznetsky.

  “In a way,” he said. “What’s the old word? ‘Betrothed.’” He smiled at some unspoken thought, looking for a moment almost vulnerable. What a life he must have led, she thought. Or was she just romanticizing?

  “Tell me about the Soviet Union.”

  He was silent for a while. “It’s a place where the present hardly exists,” he said finally. “The past and the future are both very real, but the present – you have to steal it piece by piece.”

  She hadn’t expected this. “Where do you live, before the war I mean?”

  “In a lot of ways we hardly noticed the war. There was no one moment when peace turned into war. There’s been no real peace since Kirov was shot, ten years ago. I’ve lived all over, wherever my work was.”

  “I don’t think you can have been a propagandist.”

  He smiled. “You don’t hear people saying how wonderful breathing is. It depends on what inspires you. We have crammed two hundred years of development into twenty, and most of it will have to be done all over again when the war ends. All the children have schools, there are no famines, everyone has work and purpose, sometimes too much work. You should go to Siberia. There the past is weakest, the future strongest. And it’s beautiful, beautiful beyond imagining.”