by R. A. Jones
From its pupil, a soft beam of mystic light flowed slowly outward, illuminating the body of the great poet.
“I’m sorry I came too late, my friend,” said a sepulchral voice that emanated from the eye.
A faint click came from the door leading into the suite as its lock was picked from the outside. The masked man who called himself the Clock quickly slid inside and closed the door behind him.
Three long strides brought him to the side of the bed. He sighed deeply as he stared down at the dead poet.
He moved to follow the path of a second beam of light that issued from the mystic eye and drew his attention to the nightstand beside the bed.
The Clock opened its top drawer; inside was a small journal. He carefully lifted it out and slid it into the inside pocket of his coat. He thanked the stars that it had not been stolen along with the amulet he had noted was no longer in its familiar place around the poet’s neck.
Before turning to exit the room, the Clock bent and, lifting his mask away from his mouth, softly kissed the slain man on the forehead. His gloved fingers gently closed those penetrating eyes for the final time.
The world had only lost a great poet, he thought. The Steel Ring had only lost a valuable agent. But he had lost a beloved comrade, and to murder most foul.
The story that was the life of William Butler Yeats had deserved a better ending.
CHAPTER VIII
January 30, 1939
German Chancellor Adolf Hitler had been speaking for nearly an hour and a half.
The party members assembled before him on the main floor of the Krolloper building, and those watching from the galleries overhead, were listening with the same rapt attention, the same slavish looks of devotion, as when he had begun his latest tirade.
One of those watching from above was Natalia Nastrova. She was not caught in his hateful spell, but still she marveled at it. It almost seemed he had an even greater power over the will of others than did she.
By her side, as he had been since first they met on the night of the knives and glass, young Otto Berenger was doing his best to hide the loathing that was the only emotion he felt in the presence of the Fascist dictator.
Otto had proven to be a loyal and devoted friend in the weeks they had been together. Natalia knew he would like to be even more than that, and perhaps in another time and place she might have wanted it, also. Though, as with all men since she came of age and first manifested her alluring powers, she would always have wondered if that were the real reason he found her to be desirable.
She had feared Otto might lose control and leap out of the gallery when Hitler had begun to rail about the ongoing “Jewish problem”; might risk his all to assassinate the fear monger. When Hitler declared his intention to do whatever he deemed necessary to eliminate said problem, she did not doubt for a moment the sincerity of his words.
As was his wont, Herr Hitler had allowed his voice to rise to an almost maniacal level as he laid out in horrific detail his plan to wipe Germany clean of them and their influence. Swept up in the crescendo of his murderous incantation, the crowd had roared its approval.
He paused so as not to speak into the face of their fervor, letting it feed on itself as he brushed back the strands of hair that had fallen lower over one eye. He smiled approvingly and stomped one foot, and the roar increased in volume.
Even when the sound died down to little more than a murmur, he did not immediately resume speaking. He didn’t even look up at them. Teased by his seductiveness, the mob grew totally still and leaned toward him as if willing him to speak to them again, with a promise that they would hang on his every word.
As if knowing instinctively when their hearts were about to burst in anticipation, his head snapped up. As one they pulled back, perhaps fearful that if they stood too close to his greatness his next words might consume them.
Those words, when they came, were not addressed directly to his audience, but to others. He spoke softly of his desire for peace in spite of the rattle of sabers coming from the English and the hated French.
That peace could be easily achieved, he avowed. All those other countries must do was recognize Germany’s right to the lands it had already seized in recent days. All they had to do was leave the fate of the conquered peoples of those lands in the firm but fair hands of Germany’s Fuhrer.
That’s all.
But if they failed to do so, he asserted, if they continued to dance to the tune of their Jewish masters and try to subvert the rightful aims of the true German people … they would bring down upon themselves “a war in earnest.”
People in the audience caught their breaths and clung to his every syllable.
“And this will not be like the last war,” Hitler assured them. “We will not be betrayed from within, for we will cleanse the traitors from our midst.”
The crowd roared its approval, and he paused to bathe in it.
“If there is to be a war, it will be of the Western powers’ making, not mine. It will be they who start it, not I.” He paused again, knowing he had every heart and mind firmly in his grip.
“But I will end it!” he fairly shrieked.
His eyes seemed lit by fire, and he reveled in the knowledge that the people before him were being consumed by the same flames. But he wished to drive them even deeper into the maw of insanity. He stepped to the very edge of the platform upon which he stood and raised both his eyes and his arms heavenward.
“Our armies will sweep them away like the Black Plague,” he vowed. “We will never let up, never stop, never show mercy. If they call down our wrath upon themselves … the world will witness the most gruesome bloodbath in history!”
Hitler stepped back away from his podium as the hall erupted with a roar that surely could have been heard all the way to the cliffs of Dover. His eyes blazed again with that fearsome light most mistook for genius rather than madness.
His lower right arm snapped up in a rather limp approximation of the stiff salute that had become widespread since his ascent to power. Most of the crowd followed suit, and cries of Seig Heil! Seig Heil! threatened to tear the roof of the building from its moorings.
Natalia stared down at Hitler with a mixture of fear and scorn. After watching him, listening to him, she felt sure that he would gladly and willingly put the torch to half the world if given the opportunity.
And it seemed to her that those who should be striving most to stop him were instead not only giving him the opportunity he needed – but supplying him with the matches, as well.
She jumped slightly as something struck her shoulder slightly. It was Otto, who was standing over her. He jerked his head to indicate she should do likewise, then resumed clapping as loudly as any true believer. Only then did she realize she was the only one not joining in the standing ovation that rocked the hall.
Realizing the danger of drawing the wrong kind of attention to herself, she quickly leaped to her feet. Her right arm shot out and her dulcet voice joined the chorus of cheers.
The cheering continued even after Herr Hitler left the stage and the building, then finally faded away as people began to file out also.
“Do any doubts linger as to the man’s intentions?” Natalia asked softly.
“My doubts had disappeared before I met you,” Otto replied. “Still, seeing him with your own eyes, hearing how eagerly he longs for war, would drive away the hope of all but an Englishman.”
“Agreed,” she said. “And I’d say we not only have to continue our efforts to get Jews out of this country, we’ve got to accelerate them.”
She noticed Otto was smiling at her rather strangely.
“What?”
“Oh, it’s nothing.” He shrugged. “It’s just that you’ve done so much since you’ve been here, given your own money, done so much work. Put your own life at risk. For Jews.” His gaze intensified.
“Why?”
Now she smiled as she placed her arm in his. “I’ve already seen what his kin
d did to my Roma; it’s why I left my home. I’m afraid it’s too late to stop what he has planned, so all I can do is help as many as possible escape from him.”
The young couple jerked to a halt as a tall man suddenly stepped forward to block their path. He wore a long, black coat, his hands in its pockets. A dark hat sat low above smoky glasses that hid eyes as cold as obsidian.
They knew instantly who and what he was: an officer of the dreaded Geheime Staatspolzei – the Gestapo, Hitler’s secret police. They were equally sure one of his hidden hands was wrapped around the butt of a gun.
“Our fuhrer was brilliant tonight, don’t you think?” he asked in a voice that resembled the wind blowing through a cemetery at midnight.
“Would you expect anything less?” Otto replied, hoping they might yet find their way past this danger.
“I wouldn’t, no,” the policeman said. “But what did you expect, Herr Berenger?”
Otto stiffened. If the policeman knew him by name, then surely this was no random act of intimidation. His eyes flicked from side to side rapidly, in hope of seeing some escape route.
“Don’t even think about it,” the policeman warned. “My superiors wish to speak with you and Fraulein Nastrova … but they would settle for simply seeing your bodies.”
The officer enjoyed seeing the stricken look that twisted Otto’s otherwise smooth face, just as he enjoyed seeing it on the face of every Jew, deviant and malcontent he had had cause to arrest.
But the girl.
The girl had no such look on her face, and this concerned him. She didn’t seem the slightest bit afraid of him. And to a man who had come to feed on fear, this was more disconcerting than fear itself.
Natalia smiled beguilingly at the policeman. Reaching up slowly so as not to trigger any violent response, she lightly stroked his left cheek with a hand soft as a cloud.
“You don’t want to detain us, officer,” she purred seductively. “We aren’t the people you seek; you must look elsewhere.”
To Otto’s amazement, the officer smiled back at Natalia like a lovesick puppy.
Taking a step back away from them, he pulled his left hand out of his coat pocket and used it to tip his hat to them.
“Please forgive me,” he said unctuously. “I thought you were someone else.”
He stepped around them and hurried off down the hall.
“How do you do that?” Otto gasped, swiping away the sweat that had begun to bead on his forehead.
“Must be the gypsy in me,” Natalia replied, smiling sweetly.
The smile quickly faded as she tugged on his arm and pulled him after her. The policeman would not stay dazzled indefinitely, and he might remember seeing them.
“This is bad,” she declared.
“Being faced down by a goon with a gun?” Otto said. “Yes, I’d call that bad.”
“It’s worse than that. He knew us. He knew our names,” she reminded her companion.
“But how?”
“It doesn’t matter how. What matters is that things have gotten too hot for us here.” She glanced back cautiously over one shoulder to assure herself they were not being followed.
“The next group that flees Germany will have to include us.”
CHAPTER IX
February 1, 1939
Strangely, the thought of dying had never entered Clay Carter’s mind when he chose to enter a country in the final throes of its horrendous civil war.
Simple curiosity and the love of thrills had brought him to Spain.
He had first come to Europe back in 1936, as part of the United States Olympic team. He had left Berlin with medals in multiple sports, including the pentathlon, and would have been welcomed home as one of America’s greatest sports heroes.
But he felt compelled to stay behind. He was not a political animal at all, but you didn’t need to be to feel the building electrical storm that was already sending crackling ripples throughout the continent.
He’d tried to convince some of his fellow Americans to stay and join him on a freewheeling tour of Europe, but all of them – including the dazzling Jesse Owens – had been more than eager to escape the baleful glare of Adolf Hitler and return to the safety and security of home.
With nothing more than a backpack and the little money he was able to make performing such menial jobs as he could find, Carter had wound his way from one end of Europe to the other.
He found he thrived on the turmoil. Devastated by economic depression even greater than that suffered at home, the people here were uncertain and afraid, and a fall into anarchy seemed inevitable and imminent.
He listened as best he could to the stories they had to tell him in a dozen different tongues, including halting English. They were stories of joblessness, homelessness … hopelessness.
More than once he had given away what little money he had. More than once he had stooped to petty thievery of a piece of fruit when his own hunger pangs reached the level of those around him. He himself had been robbed; he occasionally still felt an itch around the scar left by a knife blade as it slid along his rib cage.
He’d been beaten by police; and, on one occasion he had joined a mob in beating a policeman who was accused of soliciting sexual favors from young women threatened with jail.
More than one town had told him he was no longer welcome, but more than a hundred doors had been opened for him in the homes of those he had helped with his muscles or his money.
Even as he could not have told you what he sought when he began his pilgrimage, neither could he tell you what drove him to continue it.
Something was in the wind, something great and fearsome. Like a star in its death dance, so now did he fear that the Earth was about to turn inwards and consume itself in fire and blood.
Did he hope to stop it – or merely to find its core, from which he could stand and bear witness to the end of everything?
There were times when he wanted nothing more than a full belly and a warm place to lay his head.
The force that drove him at the moment was just as primal.
Love.
As a boy, he had been taken to a Civil War museum in Washington, D.C. The memory most strongly implanted in his brain was of a corridor lined with the photos of Matthew Brady.
Just as a photograph forever freezes a moment of life, so these had frozen moments of death. Bodies of soldiers who wore both Union blue and Rebel gray. Rows of dead men. Piles of corpses.
What had compelled these people of a common heritage, a common history, to turn upon each other with such ferocity that they saturated the soil with their own blood?
The why of it had always eluded him.
Perhaps he thought to find answers here, in the civil war that had ripped the Spanish peninsula to gore-splattered shreds over the course of three violent years.
But all he found was more questions.
And a woman named Stella Castille.
He had been introduced to her in a basement coffee shop in Valencia. She spoke flawless Spanish, and, with her wildly flowing black hair and dark, brooding eyes, easily passed for a native daughter.
But in truth she was an American. One of her earliest memories was of walking hand in hand with her mother as she and other suffragettes marched together down a street in Brooklyn, carrying placards and loudly calling out for the right to vote.
Growing up to be an equally free-spirited feminist, Stella was also an avowed and unapologetic socialist. Both led to her joining the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, a band of American volunteers who came to Spain to fight alongside the beleaguered Republicans against the superior fascist Nationalist forces commanded by Generalissimo Francisco Franco.
She was also a teacher, and once she learned that two-thirds of the Spanish people were illiterate she had opened an impromptu school in an abandoned farmhouse. For months she had moved effortlessly back and forth between books and bullets, seeking with both tools to make the people free.
Frankly, Clay Carter didn’t ca
re about the woman’s political or social leanings, or even her cause. He had inserted himself into the middle of this conflict merely to observe, not to participate.
His neutral position didn’t extend to his heart, however.
He had been with her in the home of friends when opposition soldiers descended upon the dwelling. The two of them made a break for it, dodging bullets and fleeing from the screams of the dying.
Nothing fuels passion any more fiercely than a brush with death. Finding shelter in a loft apartment, the two fugitives had fallen into each other’s arms, driven to prove they were still alive in the most basic of fashions.
It was then that he realized he had fallen maddeningly, desperately, perhaps even fatally in love with her.
That point had been driven home a few days ago, when Stella had returned to the loft with some cheese, a few loaves of bread and a look of worry and self-recrimination marring her youthful beauty.
Without a word, she pulled from her jacket a small poster she had torn from the wall of a nearby building. On it was a photo of Clay Carter. Beneath the photo were a few lines of print; even though his fluency in Spanish was still rather limited, Carter could make out enough to know that it was a call for his arrest … or his death.
“This is my fault,” Stella moaned, pacing nervously back and forth in their confined space. “The only reason they want you is because they know you’re with me.”
Carter stood and thrust an arm out to stop her pacing. He then took each of her hands in his own.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, smiling reassuringly. “I’m not that easy to catch. Or to kill.”
“This isn’t a joke, Clay. Now that you’ve come to their attention, no place will be safe. They won’t give up until they have you.”
“Until they have us,” he corrected. “You’re in just as much danger as I am. Maybe more.”
“That’s different.”
“How so?”
“Because I got into this war voluntarily. They have reason to want me dead. You haven’t done anything.”