by Lee Child
Joachim’s stomach cramped.
“They ruined those delicate cheekbones. He could barely walk when they were done.” Herman watched Joachim, a gleam in his eye. “I think he escaped to Switzerland.”
Joachim’s stomach relaxed. The car rattled along.
“Where are they sending us?” Herman asked again.
“Dachau, I think,” Joachim said, angry at himself for not lying this time. He’d also heard they might be going to Auschwitz, but he didn’t tell Herman that.
“Dachau is only a few hours by train from Constance, from Switzerland.”
“You wouldn’t be allowed on a train.”
“So I’d walk.” Herman rubbed his palm over the rough stubble on his shaved head.
“A few hundred kilometers in the snow? Anyone who sees you will turn you in. Or shoot you. You are the enemy now.”
“I’d reach the border.”
“The Swiss won’t let you in.”
“I won’t go through the checkpoint.” Herman smiled. “I’d lift a boat and row across Lake Constance.”
“Nazis guard the boats. You’d never make it.”
“What a way to die.” Herman sighed. “Free and on the water.”
Joachim stirred on the bench. He had loved to swim as a boy and had been the best swimmer in his school. “You shouldn’t think of dying,” he said to the door. “It’s not . . . careful. You have to be careful.”
“Have you ever had Swiss chocolate?” Herman asked.
Joachim clasped his hands in his lap.
“I can almost smell it,” Herman continued. “Thick dark chocolate with bitter marzipan.”
“Or with—” Joachim did not finish his sentence, surprised that he had even begun it.
“Peppermint,” Herman finished. “Crisp peppermint.”
Joachim pushed his chin against his chest. His shoulders were taut and raised, and he forced them down. He would not think about chocolate.
Herman swallowed. “I wanted to go to school in Zürich. A friend of mine went. Came back in thirty-three as a Nazi. I was stunned.”
Joachim raised his head. “It’s hard to lose a friend that way.”
Herman searched Joachim’s face. “It’s hard to lose a friend any way.”
Joachim tried to imagine the friendship he could have had with Herman in Berlin. Then someone farther down the car coughed, and he forced his mind to go blank.
Herman rubbed his hands together. “When do we arrive in Dachau?”
“I don’t know. Try to sleep.”
Herman almost fell when the train abruptly slowed to climb a steep grade. “I could run faster than this train.”
Joachim laughed, quietly and cynically. “What good is that? Do you want to run to the next car? Get there earlier?”
Herman’s words tumbled out. “We can get out of that door. It’s not wired on very well. We could jump off the train and no one would notice.”
Joachim’s stomach clenched again. His hands trembled. He could not remember when he had been so terrified. Even when the Nazis came for him, he was not so afraid. “The Nazis notice everything.”
“Not everything,” Herman said, staring at Joachim’s yellow triangle. “Not everything.”
“If they catch you, they will kill you. Slowly.”
Herman smiled. Suddenly he looked very old, and Joachim flinched away from him. “Aren’t we dying slowly now?”
Joachim thought of the cold outside, the Nazis who were sure to be around with rifles, the incredible distance to the Swiss border. They would never make it. Never.
He spoke to his worn wooden shoes. “Eventually the war will end, and Germany will lose. They will set us free then.”
“Maybe,” Herman said. “Eventually.”
Joachim stared at a brown stain on top of one shoe. Blood? he wondered. “It won’t be too long.”
“Are you daring to dream?” Herman mocked him as he turned to the door. “You shouldn’t do that. It’s not careful.”
Joachim’s voice trembled. “I don’t want you to go.”
“By this time next week we could be in Switzerland, with Kurt.”
“Or we could be dead.”
“Or we could be dead,” Herman repeated. “We could be dead anyway. At least this way we get to decide.”
Muscles tightened in the backs of Joachim’s legs. He wanted to stand. But he did not know what kind of death waited outside. It would be a death, probably a sooner death than awaited him at Dachau. A sooner death.
Herman dropped his warm hand onto the crown of Joachim’s head. “I’m leaving. Are you coming with me?”
Joachim shook his head. He needed time. He hated his cowardly survival instinct.
“Kurt didn’t escape to Switzerland,” Herman said abruptly. He withdrew his hand, the spot he’d warmed now colder than the rest of Joachim’s head. “Kurt died.”
Joachim’s stomach convulsed. His voice almost broke when he spoke, but he brought it under control. “I don’t know any Kurt and I don’t care what he did.”
He gazed into Herman’s eyes, surprised that they were such a vivid blue. They reminded him of a mountain lake he swam across as a child. Joachim dropped his eyes first.
“Be careful then, Joachim Rosen.”
Herman forced the door out, grunting as his arms shook with the strain. Slowly, the wire stretched. Joachim admired his strength. He could never force the door like that.
“Good-bye.” Herman dropped out of the train into the snow.
For the first time since they took him, Joachim wept. He did not cry with the loud, wet wails of his childhood. He sat and wept the dry, silent sobs of a new grief.
The prisoner next to him reached over and put a cold hand on his arm. Joachim slowly brought himself under control.
The train jerked to a stop and knocked him to the floor. He pulled himself back onto the bench. Whispers ran the length of the car. Why were they stopping?
Were they in Dachau already? Herman had escaped at the last instant. Joachim tried to imagine him rowing across Lake Constance to a land filled with chocolate, but instead pictured him bleeding in the snow.
The familiar aroma of cigarette smoke wafted in. Behind him several prisoners inhaled the smell greedily, but Joachim shrank back. That odor meant soldiers.
The car door jerked open, and Joachim threw up an arm to shield his eyes from the scalding light. Dark profiles of three soldiers with guns loomed in the doorway, a prisoner sagged between two others. They heaved a body in and slammed the door.
Joachim alone crossed to the inert figure, giving up his precious seat on the bench. He knelt and rolled him over. Dim light from the window illuminated a battered face. Herman.
Joachim shook him, thinking of Kurt’s beautiful face broken by the Gestapo. Herman’s head lolled on his shoulders. He looked dead.
Joachim put a finger under Herman’s nostrils to check for breath just as the car jolted back into motion. Off balance, he fell across Herman’s body. Herman’s heart beat against Joachim’s chest. Joachim smiled. He lay there a moment, remembering other men and other nights.
He pulled himself to a sitting position and peeled off his own jacket, shivering. He wiped blood from Herman’s face with its tattered sleeve, tracing the angle of his cheekbone. Herman moaned.
Joachim’s shaking fingers unbuttoned Herman’s jacket. He lifted Herman with one hand and pulled his jacket off, wincing at the darkening bruises on his ribs.
Another prisoner put a skeletal hand on Joachim’s naked arm. “Careful,” he said. “You don’t want to be pink at Dachau.”
Joachim squeezed his hand.
The prisoner pulled back. Joachim finished switching jackets with Herman. Now his own jacket bore a pink triangle, Herman’s a yellow one.
The prisoner turned away.
Joachim cradled Herman’s head in his lap until the train stopped hours later. The doors opened onto darkness.
“Raus!” yelled the guards. The prisoners st
umbled out.
The guards marched through the weary prisoners, separating them into two long lines. They sent Joachim to one line, Herman to another. Joachim looked at the pink triangle on the man next to him. Herman was safe.
But then Joachim noticed the other triangles in his line: red, black, and purple, but no yellow. Herman stood in a line of all Jews.
Joachim read the station name off a sign. Not Dachau at all. Not a work camp.
The sign read Oswiecim. He closed his eyes. The German name for Oswiecim was Auschwitz. A death camp. He smelled sweetish smoke from the crematorium.
Joachim opened his eyes and searched for Herman. Herman’s blue eyes met his. Herman nodded. He knew, too.
Joachim’s line moved toward a convoy of trucks, Herman’s into the darkness. Joachim realized that the yellow triangles were never coming back. He pulled his jacket closer around his thin frame, one hand lingering on the pink triangle. Strains of Wagner drifted through the cold air surrounding both of them.
*
REBECCA CANTRELL writes the critically acclaimed Hannah Vogel mystery series set in 1930s Berlin, including A Trace of Smoke and A Night of Long Knives. She lives in Hawaii with her husband, son, and too many geckoes to count. For more details, see www.rebeccacantrell.com.
KELLI STANLEY
Golden Gate International Exposition
Treasure Island, San Francisco Bay, 1939
Shorty was complaining about the grift around Midget Village when Miranda saw the clown. Sad eyes. No smile. The Gayway wasn’t always gay, even for a clown and the little blonde girl with him, waiting in line for cotton candy.
Too many kids, too many clowns. Monday, April 3, Children’s Day, and Miranda wondered why the fuck she’d come back to the fair on her one day off. Maybe because she had nowhere else to go.
“You take it up with the bulls?” she asked Shorty.
The little man shook his head, the red light of the cigarette dancing at the end of his mouth.
“You know how it is. Don’t take us serious. Come in for a belly laugh and drift over to Sally Rand’s or Artists and Models for a tweak of some tit. Christ Almighty, I can’t blame ’em for that, but we need protection, not a goddamn babysitter.”
Miranda nodded, looking over his head. The clown was crouched at the side of the refreshment booth, talking to the kid, pink sweat dripping on his dirty white collar. Puffs of spun candy hid her face. A stout woman in a green plaid coat smiled at them through her peanuts.
Miranda dropped her Chesterfield and rubbed it out in the dirt next to a wadded-up napkin from Threlkeld’s Scones. “I’ll do what I can. I don’t have much pull with the cops—”
“You got pull where it counts, sister. You got in the papers, you got your shamus license, you caught your boss’s killer. That’s enough for Leland Cutler, and it’s enough for Shorty Glick.”
She bent down to shake the midget’s hand. “I’ll do what I can. Be seeing you, Shorty.”
He nodded, put the ten-gallon hat back on, hoisted up the chaps and kid’s gun belt with dignity, and waddled into the compound. Singer’s Midgets, carted around from sawdust heap to sawdust heap, stared at, laughed at, gee whiz, they’re tiny, Bob, just like kids. Fuck you, too, lady. How’s that for kid talk?
She walked down the fairway, leaned against the wall of Ripley’s Odditorium and lit another Chesterfield, staring down at the line waiting for Sally Rand’s Nude Ranch. Sally’s girls needed protection as much as the midgets, and the only kind they’d get from the cops came with a price. Miranda just charged money.
Women were clutching their hats against the cold Bay wind, and some Spanish flamenco dancers from the Alta California exhibit huddled, laughing, in front of the fortune teller. Miranda pressed herself against the stucco wall, closing her eyes. No fortunes left, not for Spain. Not for Miranda. Fortunes meant future, and she didn’t think about the future anymore, not since ’37. Johnny wasn’t in it.
Poor, tired Spain, poor tired world, tired, so tired of war, and yet more coming, more fucking wars, more corpses, white flesh bloated and ruptured, rotting in farm house wells, mangled bodies on the streets of Madrid. No future, no fortune. No Johnny. Just the carnival. Listen to the calliope and it’ll all go away.
Step right up, folks, one thin dime, neon and fishnets, girls in G-strings, babies in incubators. Welcome to the Gayway, Leland Cutler’s Pageant of the Pacific, pride of 1939, and who gives a fuck if New York has a world’s fair, too.
She blinked, watching the cigarette ash burn closer, Laughing Sal’s mechanical cackle drifting on the wind. No treasure on Treasure Island. Just another world’s fair. Another goddamn calliope.
She walked back again toward Midget Village. The line at the refreshment stand was shorter. The clown and the kid, still in sight, headed toward Heather Row. But the clown was pulling the kid’s arm, the girl crying, upset. Fat lady in green nowhere to be seen.
Miranda gulped the cigarette, nicotine hitting her lungs. Burnett hadn’t taught her much. Wiggle when you walk, Miranda, you know how to be an escort. Fuck being a detective. Wrong again, Burnett, you bastard, rest in fucking peace.
They all needed help, midgets and Sally’s girls and sideshow freaks and monkeys in race cars. She dodged two sailors and a marine, and hurried toward the clown.
You pays your money and you takes your choice.
Couple of fraternity boys pushed an elderly couple by in the fifty-cent chairs, almost running down Miranda. The clown pulled the kid toward La Plaza Avenue, rounding the corner by the Owl Drug Store and Ghirardelli Chocolate.
A sharpie in a cheap suit pried himself away from a souvenir booth, eyes on Miranda’s snug navy jacket, as if looking would make it go away. She tried to side-step him, but he jumped in front, blocking her.
“Lady, why the hurry? A looker like you—”
“Get out of my way—”
He stroked his thin mustache with one hand, and put his other one on her left shoulder, straight arm, sliding up and down, out and in.
“Sally’s that way, girlie—you could make a bund—” Miranda shoved his hand off her breast with her right, backhand-ing him hard in the face with her left. He tumbled, off balance, and hit the dirt.
By the time she heard the angry “Fucking bitch!” the clown and the girl had disappeared.
Ghirardelli Building, sign of the giant parrot. It perched above the door, hawking chocolate malts and candy. Café sat one hundred, about twenty people were waiting for seats. No clowns. A lot of children.
A blonde in a hat and brown jumper was leaning over the candy belt, watching the chocolate bonbons. Miranda pushed her way through. Not her.
Eight people, understaffed, handing out samples to quiet the kids. Five-year-olds all looked alike.
Miranda’s stomach tightened, started to hurt. She headed for the Owl, checked the lunch counter, toy department, searched the aisles.
Too late.
The White Star Tuna Restaurant was quiet, almost empty. Found a table by one of the windows, stared out at the enormous sparkling walls of Vacationland until the tuna-tomato salad and coffee arrived.
It was too early for tuna, too early for the Chicken of the Sea star on top of the bright round building, too early for the “Romance of Tuna” story that hung on the walls and filled a page in the takeaway souvenir menu.
Early didn’t mean much to Miranda. Late night at Sally’s, boyfriend trouble for one of the girls. Now she’d lost the clown. Tuna romance was just the fucking ticket.
Back and forth, back and forth across the knots of people. She looked down at her cup. Kaleidoscope of black. Maybe she was wrong.
Around and around, spinning, shiny, colors too dark. Five years old, first encounter with fingers in wrong places. Hard fingers, hard laps, per sis tent. Little girl, bouncing on an old professor’s lap, friend of her father. Bouncing hard.
Around again to ten. Old Hatchett asleep, father away, drunk or at an academic conference or both. Escape the dunge
on, get out, get out to the streets. Muddy San Francisco, horse shit on Market Street, ten years after the quake. Man in a dirty suit, sudden smile, all in the eyes. Eyes that scared her, hands that scared her, come on, little girl, I’ll give you a present. Don’t you want to play?
Fourteen and she learned how to fight, how to bite a finger, how to squirm out of a grasp, learned where to look and what to look for, curious, but not enough to return to the professor’s lap, or the Santa Claus with his own bag of toys. Around and around she goes, and where she stops . . .
The kaleidoscope dissolved, carousel no longer turning. No farther, not today.
Miranda drained her coffee, shoved the tuna away untouched, and left half a dollar on the yellow Formica table top. Walked back to the Plaza and lit a Chesterfield, still scanning the crowds. Maybe she’d been wrong.
A uniformed cop was walking up from the Court of Pacifica, heading toward the Gayway, nodded when he saw Miranda.
“You busy, Corbie?”
She inhaled the cigarette, blew a stream of smoke behind her. “It’s my day off. Why?”
His brown eyes were somber. “Lady says her daughter’s been kidnapped. We’re looking for a clown.”
Silk dress from Magnin’s under a shoulder-length fur, head of a dead animal dangling from the back. Gloved hands. Whiff of My Sin when she sobbed.
She was a little older than Miranda, about thirty-five. Brown hair, more than a touch of henna.
Grogan looked at her, his mouth curled around a cigar, then back over at Miranda.
“You here to add the woman’s touch, Corbie, or because you got something?”
She blew a smoke ring, watched it float behind his left ear. “How about the human touch, Grogan—or is that beyond you?”
He shrugged, eyes on the victim. One of the uniforms coughed.
“Says she turned her back to buy her kid some cotton candy at the Gayway, and next thing she knew the kid was gone. The kid’s name is Susie. I thought Donlevy gave you the low-down.”
“What he knew of it.” She pulled Grogan’s chair from his desk and sat next to the woman.