The Black Angel

by John Connolly

  “Shit!” said Hall. “Trouble.”

  Already, the old monk was pushing the cache of gold into the hole and urging his fellows to replace the stone as best they could, but they were exhausted and making slow progress.

  “Please,” said the monk. “Help them.”

  But Hall and Crane were making for the door. Carefully, they joined the lookout at the top of the steps.

  Men, perhaps a dozen or more in total, were advancing along the road in the moonlight, their helmets shining. Behind them came the half-track, with more men following it. The two Americans took one look at each other and melted into the darkness.

  The King stood on the top rung of the ladder and pulled the cord. The attic swam into light, illumination not quite reaching the farthest corners. His wife had told him again and again that they needed to install a window in the roof, or at least put in a stronger lightbulb, but Hall had never really made either a priority. They didn’t come up here much anyway, and he was no longer entirely sure what most of these boxes and old suitcases contained. Cleaning it up was a chore that he was too old for so he had resigned himself, not with any great difficulty, to the fact that it would be up to his children to sort through this junk when he and Jan were dead and gone.

  There was one box that he did know where to find. It was on a shelf with a collection of wartime memorabilia that was now merely accumulating dust but which, at one point, he had considered displaying. No, that wasn’t quite true. Like most soldiers, he had taken souvenirs from the enemy—nothing macabre, nothing like the ears that some of those poor demented bastards in Vietnam had collected—but uniform hats, a Luger pistol, even a ceremonial sword that he had found in the scorched remains of a bunker on Omaha. He had picked them up without a second thought. After all, if he didn’t take them, then someone else would, and they were no use to their previous owners. In fact, when he entered that bunker he could smell the officer who was once probably the proud owner of the sword, as his charred body was still smoking in one corner. Not a good way to go, trapped in a cement bunker with liquid fire pouring through the gun slit. Not a good way to go at all. But once he returned home, his desire to be reminded of his wartime service diminished greatly, and any thoughts of display were banished, like the trophies themselves, to a dark, unused place.

  Hall climbed farther into the attic, keeping his head slightly bowed to prevent any painful knocks against the ceiling, and threaded his way through boxes and rolled up rugs until he reached the shelf. The sword was still there, wrapped in brown paper and clear plastic, but he left it as it was. Behind it was a locked box. He had always kept it secured, in part because it contained the Luger, and he didn’t want his kids, when they were younger, to discover it and start playing with it like it was a toy. The key was kept in a nearby jar of rusty nails, just to further discourage idle hands. He poured the nails onto the floor until the key became visible, then used it to open the box. There was a trunk filled with old hardcover books nearby, and he sat down upon it, resting the box upon his knee. It felt heavier than he remembered, but then it had been a long time since he had opened it, and he was older now. He wondered idly if bad memories and old sins accumulated weight, the burden of them steadily growing greater as the years went by. This box was foul memories given shape, sins endowed with bulk and form. It seemed almost to drag his head down to it, as though it were suspended from a chain around his neck.

  He opened it and slowly began placing the contents on the floor beside his feet: the Luger first, then the dagger. It was silver and black, and emblazoned with a death’s-head emblem. The blade, when withdrawn, showed spots of rust below the hilt and along the blade, but otherwise the steel was largely intact. He had greased it and wrapped it before storing it away, and his precautions had paid off. The plastic peeled away easily, and in the dim light the grease gave to the blade a glistening, organic quality, as though he had just removed a layer of skin and exposed the interior of a living thing.

  He laid the knife beside the Luger and removed the third item. A lot of soldiers returned from the war with Iron Crosses taken from the enemy, mostly standard types but some, like the one Hall now held in his hand, adorned with an oak-leaf cluster. The officer from whom it was taken must have done something pretty special, Hall thought. He must have been trusted greatly to be sent to Narbonne, in the face of the advancing enemy, in order to seek out the monastery of Fontfroide and retrieve whatever was secured there.

  Only two things remained in the box. The first was a gold cross, four inches in height and decorated with rubies and sapphires. Hall had retained it, against his better judgment, because it was so beautiful, and perhaps also because it symbolized his own faith, stored away in shame after what he had done. Now, as the time of his death inevitably approached, he realized that he had not misplaced that faith entirely. The cross had always been there, locked away in the attic with the discarded fragments of his own life and those of his wife and children. True, some were useless, and some were better forgotten, but there were items of value here too, things that should not have been set aside so readily.

  He brushed his fingertips across the centerpiece of the ornament: a ruby as big as the ball of his thumb. I kept it because it was precious, he told himself. I kept it because it was beautiful, and because, somewhere in my heart and my soul, I still believed. I believed in its strength, and its purity, and its goodness. I believed in what it represented. It was always the second-to-last item in the box, always, for that way it rested upon the vellum fragment at the bottom, anchoring it in place, rendering its contents somehow less awful. Larry Crane never understood. Larry Crane never believed in anything. But I did. I was raised in the faith, and I will die in the faith. What I did at Fontfroide was a terrible thing, and I will be punished for it when I die, yet the moment that I touched the fragment I knew it was a link to something far viler. Those Germans did not risk their lives for gold and jewels. To them, they were just trinkets and ornaments. No, they came for that piece of vellum, and if one good thing came out of that night, it was the fact that they did not get it. It will not be enough to save me from damnation, though. No, Larry Crane and I will burn together for what we did that night.

  The SS men poured down the steps like channels of filthy, muddy water and pooled together in the little courtyard that lay before the church door, creating a kind of honor guard for the four civilians who stepped from the half-track to join them. From the shadows where he lay, Hall saw the old monk try to bar their way. He was pushed into the arms of the waiting soldiers and thrown against the wall. Hall heard him speak to the senior officer, the one with the dagger on his belt and the medal at his neck, who had accompanied the men in civilian clothes. The monk held out a bejeweled gold cross, offering it to the soldier. Hall couldn’t understand German, but it was clear the monk was trying to convince the officer that there was more where that came from, if he wanted it. The officer said something curt in reply, then he and the civilians entered the church. Hall heard some shouting, and a short burst of gunfire. A voice was raised and Hall discerned some words that he did understand: an order to cease fire. He wasn’t sure how long that would last. Once the Germans got whatever they had come for, they would leave nobody alive to talk about it.

  Hall began working his way backward, moving through the darkness and into the woods, until he was facing the half-track. Its passenger door was open, and there was a soldier sitting at the wheel, watching what was taking place in the courtyard. Hall unsheathed his bayonet and crawled to the very edge of the road. When he was certain that he was out of sight of the other soldiers, he padded across the dirt and pulled himself into the half-track’s cab, staying low all the time. The German sensed him at the last minute, because he turned and seemed about to shout a warning, but Hall’s left hand shot up and caught him under the chin, forcing his mouth closed with a snap while the blade entered below the soldier’s sternum and pierced his heart. The German trembled against the bayonet, then grew still. Hall
used the blade to anchor him to his seat before slipping out of the cab and into the back of the half-track. He had a clear view of the soldiers on the right of the steps, and of most of the courtyard, but there were at least three hidden by the wall to the left. He looked to his right and saw Crane peering at him from a copse of bushes. For once, thought Hall, just once, do the right thing, Larry. He signaled with his fingers, indicating to Crane that he should go around the back of the vehicle and through the trees so that he could take out the Germans hidden from Hall.

  There was a pause before Crane nodded and started to move.

  Larry Crane was trying to light a cigarette, but the damn cigarette lighter had been removed from the Volvo so that smokers would not be encouraged to spoil its imitation new car scent with tobacco smoke. He searched his pockets once again, but his own lighter wasn’t there. He had probably left it at home in his hurry to confront his old buddy the Auto King with the prospect of easy wealth. Now that he thought of it, the unlit cigarette in his mouth tasted a little musty, which led him to suspect that he’d left both cigarettes and lighter in the house and what was now in his mouth was a relic of an old pack that had somehow escaped his notice. He had taken the first jacket he could lay a hand on, and it wasn’t one that he usually wore. It had leather patches on the elbows, for a start, which made him look like some kind of New York Jew professor, and the sleeves were too long. It caused him to feel older and smaller than he was, and he didn’t need that. What he did need was a nicotine boost, and he’d bet a dime that the King hadn’t locked the door to his house after he went inside. Larry figured there would be matches in the kitchen. At worst, he could light up from the stove. Wouldn’t be the first time, although he’d tried it once when he had a couple under his belt and had just about singed his eyebrows off. The right one still grew sort of rangy as a result.

  Fuckin Auto King in his nice house with his fat wife, his slick sons, and that whiny daughter of his, looked like she could do with some feeding up and some holding down under a real man. The King didn’t need any more money than he had already, and now he was making his old army buddy squirm on the hook while he thought about whether or not to take the bait. Well, he’d take the bait, whether it sat comfortably with him or not. Larry Crane wasn’t about to let his fingers get broken just because the Auto King was having scruples after the fact. Hell, the old bastard wouldn’t even have a business if it hadn’t been for Larry. They’d have left that monastery poor as when they found it, and Hall’s old age would have been spent scrounging nickels and clipping coupons, not as a respected pillar of the Georgia business community, living in a goddamned mansion in a nice neighborhood. You think they’d still respect you if they found out how you came by the money to buy into that first lot, huh? You bet your ass they wouldn’t. They’d hang you out to dry, you and your bitch wife and all your miserable brood.

  Larry was getting nicely stoked up now. It had been a while since he’d let the old blood run free, and it felt good. He wasn’t going to take no shit from the Auto King, not this time, not ever again.

  The cigarette moist with poisonous spit, Larry Crane strode into the King’s house to light up.

  The officer emerged from the church, flanked by the men in civilian clothing. One of them was carrying the silver box in his hands, while the others had packed the gold into a pair of sacks. Behind them came one of the monks whom Hall and Crane had helped with the shifting of the stone, his arms held behind his back by two SS soldiers. He was forced against the wall to join the abbot and the sentinel. Three monks: that meant one was already dead, and it looked like the rest were about to follow him. The abbot started to make one final plea, but the officer turned his back on him and directed three soldiers to take up position as a makeshift firing squad.

  Hall got behind the thirty-seven-millimeter and saw that Crane was at last in place. He counted twelve Germans in his sights. That would leave just a handful more for Crane to deal with, assuming everything went without a hitch. Hall drew a deep breath, placed his hands on the big machine gun, and pulled the trigger.

  The burst of noise was deafening in the silence of the night, and the power of the gun shook him as he fired. Centuries-old masonry fragmented as the bullets tore into the monastery, pockmarking the façade of the church and shattering part of the lintel above the door, although by the time they hit the wall they’d passed through half a dozen German soldiers, ripping them apart like they were made of paper. He glimpsed the muzzle flare from Crane’s gun, but he couldn’t hear its report. His ears were ringing, and his eyes were full of dark marionettes in uniform, dancing to the beat of the music he was creating. He watched the side of the officer’s head disappear and saw one of the civilians bucking against the wall, dead but still jerking with each shot that hit him. He raked the courtyard and steps until he was certain that everyone in his sights was dead, then stopped firing. He was drenched in sweat and rain, and his legs felt weak.

  He climbed down as Crane advanced from the bushes, and the two soldiers looked upon their work. The courtyard and steps ran red, and fragments of tissue and bone seemed to sprout from the cracks like night blooms. One of the monks at the wall was dead, killed perhaps by a ricochet, guessed Hall, or a burst of gunfire from a dying German. The sacks of church ornaments lay upon the ground, some of their contents lying scattered beside them. Nearby rested the silver box. While Hall watched, the senior cleric reached for it. Hall could now see that he was bleeding from the face, injured by fragments of flying stone. The other monk, the sentinel, was already trying to replace the gold in the sacks. Neither said a word to the Americans.

  “Hey,” said Crane.

  Hall looked at him.

  “That’s our gold,” said Crane.

  “What do you mean, ‘our gold’?”

  Crane gestured at the sacks with the muzzle of his gun.

  “We saved their lives, right? We deserve some reward.”

  He pointed his gun at the monk.

  “Leave it,” said Crane.

  The monk didn’t even pause.

  “Arret!” said Crane, then added, just in case: “Arret! Français, oui? Arret!

  By then the monk had refilled the sacks and was lifting one with each hand, preparing to take them away. Crane sent a burst of gunfire across his path. The monk stopped suddenly, waited for a second or two, then continued on his way.

  The next shots took him in the back. He stumbled, the sacks falling to the ground once again, then found purchase against the wall of the church. He remained like that, propping himself up, until his knees buckled, and he crumpled in a heap by the door.

  “The hell are you doing?” said Hall. “You killed him! You killed a monk.”

  “It’s ours,” said Crane. “It’s our future. I didn’t survive this long to go back home poor, and I don’t believe you want to go back to working on no farm.”

  The old monk was staring blankly at the body in the doorway.

  “You know what you got to do,” said Crane.

  “We can walk away,” said Hall.

  “No. You don’t think he’ll tell someone what we done? He’ll remember us. We’ll be shot as looters, as murderers.”

  No, you’ll be shot, thought Hall. I’m a hero. I killed SS men and saved treasure. I’ll get—what? A commendation? A medal? Maybe not even that. There was nothing heroic about what I did. I turned a big gun on a bunch of Nazis. They didn’t even get a shot off in response. He stared into Larry Crane’s eyes and knew that no German had killed the monk with the chest wound. Even then, Larry had his plan in place.

  “You kill him,” said Crane.

  “Or?”

  The muzzle of Crane’s gun hung in the air, midway between Hall and the monk. The message was clear.

  “We’re in this together,” said Crane, “or we’re not in this at all.”

  Later, Hall would argue to himself that he would have died had he not colluded with Crane, but deep inside he knew that it wasn’t true. He could have
fought back, even then. He could have tried reasoning and waited for his chance to make a move, but he didn’t. In part, it was because he knew from past efforts that Larry Crane wasn’t a man to be reasoned with, but there was more to his decision than that. Hall wanted more than a commendation or a medal. He wanted comfort, a start in life. Crane was right: he didn’t want to return home as dirt poor as he was when he left. There was no turning back, not since Crane had killed one, and probably two, unarmed men. It was time to choose, and in that instant Hall realized that maybe he and Larry Crane had been meant to find each other, and that they weren’t so different after all. From the corner of his eye he registered the last of the monks make a move toward the church door, and he turned his BAR upon him. Hall stopped counting after five shots. When the muzzle flare had died, and the spots had disappeared from in front of his eyes, he saw the cross lying inches from the old man’s outstretched fingers, droplets of blood scattered like jewels around it.

  They carried the sacks and the box almost to Narbonne, and buried them in the woods behind the ruins of a farmhouse. Two hours later a convoy of green trucks entered the village, and they rejoined their comrades and fought their way across Europe, with varying degrees of valor, until the time came to be shipped home. Both elected to stay in Europe for a time, and returned to Narbonne in a jeep that was surplus to requirements, or became surplus as soon as they paid a suitable bribe. Hall made contact with people in the antique business, who were acting in turn as middlemen for some of the less scrupulous collectors of art and relics, already picking their way through the bones of Europe’s postwar culture. None of them seemed very much interested in the silver box or its contents. The vellum document was unpleasant at best, and even if worth anything, would be difficult to dispose of to anyone but a very specialized collector. And so Crane and Hall had divided that item into two halves, with Crane taking the primitive silver box and Hall retaining the document fragment. Crane had tried to sell the box once, but had been offered next to nothing for it, so he decided to hold on to it as a souvenir. After all, he kind of liked the memories that went with it.