“Well done, Commander Pinkus. A comfortable bivouac under combat conditions is good for the troops’ morale. Do you have an address? I have to relay it to Little Joseph in Boston because our support personnel will be arriving shortly.”
“It’s known as the old Worthington estate on the Beach Road, now owned by Sidney Birnbaum. I’m not sure there are numbers, but the entire front wall is painted in royal blue, which very much appealed to Shirley’s sister.”
“That’s good enough, Commander Pinkus. Our support will undoubtedly be chosen from an elite corps and they’ll find it. Anything else?”
“Simply tell Paddy’s wife where we’re going. If we get separated in the traffic, she knows the way.”
The Hawk relayed the information, only to be greeted by Erin Lafferty’s succinct reply. “Oh, Jesus Himself be praised! I’ll be dealin’ with the kosher boys, and let me tell you, General, they really know where to get the best meat and the freshest vegetables!”
“You’ve been there before, I presume?”
“Been there! Don’t ever tell my parish priest, but the grand Sidney and his dear wife, Sarah, made me the godmother of their boy, Joshua—Jewish style, you understand. Josh is like one of my own, and Paddy and I keep prayin’ that he and Bridgey can get it together, if you know what I mean.”
“Would your parish priest—”
“What the hell does he know? He drinks all them French wines and bores us to death about their bookays. A loser.”
“The true, fine melting pot,” said the Hawk quietly. “Have you ever thought of running for Pope?” he added, chuckling. “I once knew one who thought like you.”
“Awe, gowann! A dumb Irish broad like me even thinkin’ like that?”
“ The meek shall inherit the earth,’ for on their shoulders lies the morality of all mankind.”
“Hey, you! You tryin’ to come on with me? Because if you are, my Paddy could break you in half!”
“I wouldn’t dream of it, madam,” replied the Hawk, looking at Erin Lafferty’s profile. “And I’m sure he could,” added the soldier who was arguably the most proficient hand-to-hand combat officer ever to have served in the military. “He would, of course, demolish me.”
“Well, he’s gettin’ on, but my boy still has it.”
“He has you, and that’s far more important.”
“Where’re you at, Buster? I’m an old lady, for Christ’s sake!”
“And I’m an older man, and one thing has nothing to do with the other. I’m merely saying that it’s a privilege to know you.”
“You confuse me, soldier man!”
“I don’t mean to.”
Erin Lafferty pressed the accelerator to the floor and sped ahead.
Wolfgang Hitluh, born Billy-Bob Bayou, walked through the gate and followed the signs in the wide corridor to Logan Airport’s baggage claim area. As one third of the highly, if mysteriously, paid security unit recruited by Manpower Plus Plus, he was to meet his two Kameraden in the enclosed parking lot across from the taxi stand. As identification, he was to carry a folded Wall Street Journal, with various articles clearly circled in red ink, although he had stubbornly argued for a copy of Mein Kampf.
If he hadn’t needed the employment so badly, he would have turned down the job on principle. The Journal was a well-known symbol of the decadent, money-grasping democracies and should be burned along with ninety-nine percent of all of the country’s newspapers and magazines, starting with the despicable Amsterdam News and Ebony, which were published in and for Harlem, a steaming hotbed of inferior black troublemakers, just as Wall Street was a treacherous armed camp of Jewish money! Unfortunately, however, Wolfgang did need the job, as his welfare checks had been cut off—by a suspicious black clerk at the unemployment office!—and so he had put his principles on a back burner and accepted the advance of two hundred dollars and an airline ticket.
All he knew was that he and his two Kameraden were to protect a group of seven people who were in hiding, and three of those were military themselves. That meant that there were six mercs watching over four civvies—a piece of Strudel, which he had come to love from his two glorious months training in the Bavarian mountains with his Fourth Reich Meister. Wolfgang Hitluh, the Journal in one hand, his carryon in the other, dodged the traffic and crossed the unroofed two lanes that led to the parking lot. He must not be conspicuous! he considered as he walked through the late afternoon sunlight toward the huge garage. Everything was so secret, according to Manpower Plus Plus, that he could not breathe a word of the job even to the Führer, if he was alive—always a possibility, natürlich! The assignment obviously entailed the protection of such high officials that the government could not trust the weak, non-Aryan types that had infiltrated the Secret Service.… Where were his Kameraden? he wondered.
“You Wolfie?” asked an enormous black man, emerging from the shadows of a circular concrete pillar and approaching Hitluh.
“What?… Who? What did you say?”
“You heard me, little fella. You’ve got the newspaper and we saw the red ink when you crossed those two streets out in the open.” The dark giant extended his hand and smiled. “Nice to know you, Wolf—that’s one hell of a name, by the way.”
“Yes, well … I guess it is.” The Nazi accepted the hand as though having touched the flesh would infect him for life.
“It seems like a good gig, brother.”
“Brother?”
“Here,” continued the huge man, gesturing behind him, “let me introduce you to our partner, and don’t be put off by his appearance. Once we broke out, he couldn’t wait to get back into his usual threads. I tell you, Wolfie, you wouldn’t believe the way those old fortune-tellers and their crazy mustachioed husbands talk!”
“Fortune-tellers …?”
“Come on, Roman, get out here and meet Wolfie!”
A second figure came out from the shadows of the pillar, a muscular man in a billowing orange blouse with a blue sash around his waist above skin-tight black trousers and circlets of dark hair on his forehead; he also wore a single gold earring. A Gypsy! thought Wolfgang. The scourge of the Moldavians, worse than the Jews and the Negroes! Deutschland Über Alles, a Gypsy!
“Hallo, Misstair Wolfowitz!” cried the earringed man, holding out his hand, his blinding white teeth below a dark mustache, the antithesis of Wolfgang’s vision of a Kamerad. “I can tell by the shape of your eyes that you will have a long, long life with great financial assets! No money is required for this precious information—we work together, no?”
“Oh, great Führer, where the hell are ya?” whispered Hitluh to himself, absently shaking hands.
“What’s that, Wolfie?” asked the large black, clamping his huge, strong hand on Wolfgang’s shoulder.
“Nothing, nothing!… You’re sure there’s no mistake? You’re from Manpower Plus Plus?”
“Nowhere else, brother, and from what Roman and I can figure out, this is going to be like picking up bread in the street. By the way, my name’s Cyrus—Cyrus M. My buddy’s name is Roman Z, and you’re Wolfie H. Naturally, we never ask what the letters of our last names stand for—which wouldn’t make a hell of a lot of difference anyway because we got so many different ones, right, brother?”
“Jawohl.” Wolfgang nodded, then blanched. “I mean you’re absolutely correct … Bruder.”
“What?”
“Brother,” added Hitluh instantly, apologetically. “Brother, I mean brother!”
“Hell, don’t get upset, Wolfie, I understood you. I speak German, too.”
“You do?”
“Hell, yes. Why do you think I’ve been in prison?”
“Because you speak German …?”
“Sort of, little fella,” said the dark-skinned giant. “You see, I’m a government chemist, and I was loaned out to Bonn to work for a plant in Stuttgart to help out in a fertilizer project, only it wasn’t.”
“Wasn’t what?”
“Fertilizer.… Oh
, it was shit, but it wasn’t fertilizer, just gas, very unhealthy gas. On its way to the Middle East.”
“Mein Gott! But perhaps there were reasons …?”
“Sure, there were. Cash and the wasting of a lot of people the bosses didn’t think were too important. Three of them found me one night analyzing the final compounds. They called me a Schwarzer and rushed me, two pulling guns on me.… That was that.”
“That was what?”
“I threw all three of those honky Krauts into the vats—which sort of meant they couldn’t show up in court to answer my plea of self-defense.… So, in the interests of diplomatic relations, I drew five years in the can over here rather than fifty over there. I figured I owed three months, so Roman and I broke out last night.”
“But we’re supposed to be mercs, not chemists!”
“A man can be different things, little fella. To put myself through two universities in seven years, I took a few months off now and then. Angola—both sides, incidentally—Oman, Karachi, Kuala Lumpur. I won’t be a disappointment to you, Wolfie.”
“Misstair Wolfowitz,” interrupted Roman Z, expanding his orange-clothed chest, and planting his feet as though he were about to do a Gypsy dervish. “You see before you the greatest man with a blade, a silent blade, that you could ever hope to meet!… Slash, slash, parry, thrust!” The words were accompanied by wild gestures and rapid pivots as the blue sash whipped through the air and the orange blouse billowed. “Ask anyone in the mountains of Serbo-Croatia!”
“But you were in prison over here—”
“I passed several hundred bad checks, what can I tell you?” added Roman Z in a disconsolate voice, his hands extended in a plea. “One immigrates, however the methods, he comes to nothing in a foreign land that does not understand him.”
“There, Wolfie,” said Cyrus M, in his voice a certain finality. “You know about us now, what about you?”
“Well, fellas, you see, Ah’m what some people call a roguelike underground investigatah—”
“You’re also a southern boy—a southern boy who speaks German,” interrupted Cyrus. “Now, that’s a strange combination, isn’t it?”
“You can tell?”
“I think it comes out when you’re kind of excited, Wolfie. Why are you excited, little fella?”
“You’re not readin’ me, Cyrus. Ah’m just anxious to git started on this heah gig!”
“Oh, we’ll get started on it right away, you can bet your uptight ass on that. It’s just that we’d kinda like to know a little more about our partner. You see, we could be putting our lives in your hands, you can understand that, Wolfie, can’t you?… Now, how did a good ole boy like you learn German? Was it part of that underground investigating you did?”
“You’re right on!” answered Wolfgang, a flat, petrified grin plastered on his lips. “Y’see, Ah was trained to interfilterate all them German cities lak Berlin and Muniken lookin’ for them dirty Commies, but y’know what Ah found out?”
“What did you find out, mein Kleiner?”
“Ah found out that our mewly-mouthed gov’mint looks the other way an’ don’t give a shit!”
“You mean like all those communist bastards around the Brandenburg Gate and walking on Unter den Linden?”
“They sure was under rocks, I tell y a that!”
“Sie sprechen nicht sehr gut Deutsch.”
“Well, Ah never learned so much to catch it so quick, Cyrus, but I got yer drift.”
“Sure, I understand. Just certain key words and phrases.…” Without warning, the huge black suddenly shot out his right arm in an angled salute. “Heil Hitler!”
“Sieg Heil!” screamed Wolfgang with such a roar that a number of Logan Airport’s arrivals spun their heads around, stared, and immediately fled from the scene.
“Wrong part of town, Wolfie, the Brandenburg’s on the other side of the Wall before it came down. They were all Commies.” Cyrus M suddenly hauled the stunned Hitluh into the shadows of the pillar, and with one punch rendered the neo-Nazi unconscious.
“What zee hell did you do that for?” cried the bewildered blue-sashed Gypsy, following his prison mate into the darkened area.
“I can smell these mothers a mile away,” replied the large black chemist, holding the immobilized figure of Wolfgang against the stone and yanking the Nazi’s carry on out of his right hand. “Open it up and dump the stuff on the ground.”
Roman Z did so and the blood-red cover of Mein Kampf stood out like a rubied diadem. “Zeese is not a nice fellow,” said the Gypsy, bending down and picking up the book. “What do we do now, Cyrus?”
“I heard something on my cell radio yesterday and it kind of grabbed me. And would you believe, it happened right here in Boston?”
THE BOSTON GLOBE
NUDE AMERICAN NAZI FOUND
ON STEPS OF POLICE STATION
Copy of Mein Kampf Strapped to Chest
Boston, Aug. 26—In what appears to be a grotesque pattern of nude criminal activities, the writhing body of a naked man with wide-ribbed packaging tape around his mouth and over his chest, under which was a copy of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf was dumped by two men on the steps of the Cambridge Street Police Headquarters at 8:10 last evening. Seven witnesses, who were in the vicinity at the time and who refused to give their names, said that a taxi swung into the curb and two men, one flamboyantly dressed, the other a large black man, carried the body to the steps, returned to the taxi, and raced away. The victim has been identified as Wolfgang A. Hitluh, a wanted American Nazi, born with the legal name of Billy-Bob Bayou in Serendipity Parish, Louisiana, and presumed to be violent. The authorities are both stunned and bewildered, for Mr. Hitluh, as the four nude men found on the roof of the Ritz-Carlton hotel two days ago, is claiming government immunity from prosecution, as he was performing his duty as part of a deep-cover, top-secret operation. The information officer at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, while denying any involvement, had the following comment: “We do not permit our agents to remove their clothing under any circumstances, preferably not even their neckties.” A spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency, also denying any knowledge of Mr. Hitluh’s activities, issued the following statement: “As is well known, the Charter of 1947 prohibits the Agency from operating domestically. In the few instances where our expertise is sought by national authorities, it can only be given at the sole discretion of the director in consultation with congressional oversight. If the late and patriotic Vincent Mangecavallo made any such arrangements, they have not surfaced in our files. Therefore, any inquiries should be directed at those (expletives [two] deleted) in Congress.”
THE BOSTON GLOBE
(Page 72, Advertisements)
Aug. 26—At taxi belonging to Abul Shirak of 3024 Center Avenue was briefly stolen early yesterday evening while he was having coffee at the Liberation Diner. He reported the theft to the police; then at 8:35 P.M. called back saying the vehicle had been returned. When initially questioned by the police, he could only recall having sat next to a man in an orange silk shirt and wearing a gold earring who engaged him in lively conversation, after which he discovered that his car keys were missing. No further investigation is anticipated as Mr. Shirak said he
was compensated.
“You gimme an answer, you fancy-talking English cannoli!” yelled the red-wigged Vinnie the Bam-Bam into a pay telephone on Collins Avenue in Miami Beach, Florida. “What the fuck happened?”
“Vincenzo, I did not pick the lunatic, you did,” said the voice of Smythington-Fontini from his suite at New York’s Carlyle Hotel. “If you recall, I warned you against him.”
“He never got a chance to do anything! Those whackos can be programmed to put their bare asses in a muskrat hole, but he got short-circuited before he could find his ass!”
“What did you expect with a black man and a Gypsy in concert with a fanatical Hitlerite? I believe I mentioned that.”
“You also mentioned that those clowns didn’t
give doodly-squat about anything but cash, right?”
“On that point, I must refine my thinking. On the other hand, I should give you the good news. Our two first choices have made contact with the general and are at this moment in the new compound and have taken up their posts.”
“How the hell do you know that?”
“Because Manpower Plus Plus called and so informed me. Operative Cyrus M reached them from a telephone in some place called Swampscott and said everything was under control. He also mentioned that he did not care to be made a field colonel by the general. Are you now satisfied, Vincenzo?”
“Goddamn it, no! Did you read what those fuckers at the Agency said about me? They said I could have made all these arrangements by myself without telling anybody! What kind of crap is that?”
“Nothing new, Vincenzo. Who better than a dead man to put the blame on—if there is any blame down the road? And even if you rise from the dead in the out islands of the Dry Tortugas, some things haven’t changed. You did do it.”
“Only through you!”
“I’m invisible … Bam-Bam. From here on, if you care to leave the Dry Tortugas, you work only for me, capisce? You sit, Vincenzo, you do not stand.”
“I don’t believe this!”
“Why not? You said it yourself. I am my mother’s son.… Carry out your endeavors on Wall Street, my friend. I’ll make a megakilling, and you’ll make—well, we’ll decide that later.”
“Mamma mia!”
“Well put, old sport.”
19
The immense living room of the Birnbaum summer house looked out over the beach through a series of sliding glass doors that led to a large redwood deck running the length of the building. It was daybreak and the skies were overcast, the ocean below disturbed, churning in watery rebellion, the short, intense waves lurching onto the sand with an anger of their own, reluctantly receding but with promise of return.
The Road to Omaha: A Novel Page 32