by Aaron Elkins
Driving was becoming difficult now, not only because of the straining wiper and the faltering light of the single headlamp, but because the snow had begun to hump and drift, blurring the edges of the road and making the tires slip. Still he crept on, almost blindly, the blanket pulled over his shoulders and head, always going to the right at forks and intersections when he was unsure.
By eight o'clock he was, according to his reckoning, nearing the Italian border, safely away from any scouting Russians, but driving further was out of the question; he was progressing more by feel than by sight, and why risk an accident at this point? The truck and what it contained were his passport out of the horrible disaster that the war had become; he could hardly afford to leave it stuck in some roadside ditch.
He was inching along, looking for what seemed a good place to pull over, when a light blazed on a few meters ahead of him. He jerked upright—had he been dozing at the wheel?—and with shaking fingers immediately turned off the engine. The glare of the beam and the spotlit, dazzling flakes had left him momentarily sightless, but he could hear boots—two pairs?—crunching through the snow toward him. A roadblock. God in heaven, he prayed with everything that was in him, let it not be the SS.
He rolled down the window, raised empty, trembling hands, and stared, sightless and grinning, into the light. He began to make them out now. There were six or eight of them and, God be thanked, they weren't in the heavy gray winter greatcoats of the SS. The coats, almost down to their ankles were a welcome reddish-brown. Americans! Despite the cold, he was sweating with anxiety and relief, almost unable to find his voice. Careful now. Americans too could shoot first and ask questions later. "Good evening," he croaked in English—he had rehearsed it often enough in the truck. "I wish please to surrender. My name is Friedrich Krimml. I am an Austrian conscript, not a German. I have in my truck—"
"Get out," one of them said in coarse German.
"Of course," he said quickly, reaching for the door handle, "I am ready to—"
The one who had spoken jerked open the door and roughly, mutely, pulled him out into the bone-dry, freezing air, spun him around and shoved him against the truck. The blanket slipped from his shoulders and fell into the snow. Flakes that burned like dry ice stung the back of his neck.
"Please . . . sir . . . " he began, but by then he'd had a good look at them and the words dried in up in his throat. They wore lamb's wool astrakhans pulled low over their eyes, and each had the flat, blank, unmistakably Slavic face that, except in time of war, was not to be seen west of the Urals.
God help him, he had stumbled into a Russian patrol.
* * *
A Road in the Fischbacher Alps, eastern Austria, April 19, 1945, 9:20 P.M.
At least they hadn't shot him on the spot, that was something.
To his immense relief, Fritz had been believed when he tried to explain that he was an anti-Nazi Austrian conscript ("Stalin, da! Hitler, nyet!"). The Russians, drunk and gregarious, had clapped him on the back and called him Kamerad, and even given him a drink from a bottle of captured German brandy. They undid the canvas flap at the back of his truck, pried open two of the crates to look inside, and just laughed. When they climbed down, still grinning happily, they clapped his back some more and offered him the bottle again.
Then two of them had gotten back in the truck and set to work on the crates with axes and sledgehammers, swinging them like crazy men. Splinters flew, screws shrieked as heavy blows wrenched them from the wood.
Fritz, horrified, choked on his brandy. "What are you doing? Are you insane? Stop! Stop!"
When he reached into the back of the truck to grab the swaying skirts of one of the men's greatcoats, another swatted him carelessly back and motioned him, not threateningly, to stay out of the way.
Only minutes ago Fritz had been paralyzed with fear for his life, only his life. Now all he could think of was the precious cargo. "Stop, I tell you! " Herr Kommandant!" he screamed at the top of his voice. Snowflakes fell into his mouth. "Herr Hauptmann!"
At his cries the group's interpreter, a Chinese-looking private who had learned German God knows where, ran up to him, appalled. "What's the matter with you? Shut up!" He had been kind to Fritz during the initial, cursory interrogation, but now he was making frantic shushing motions. "Do you want to make them angry?"
Fritz grabbed him by the heavy collar of his coat. "What are they doing?"
The corporal looked at him as if he were crazy. "Making firewood, what do you think?"
"Firewood!" Fritz laughed wildly. "Tell them to stop!"
"And if I did, you think they'd listen to me?"
"Then, please, take me to the commander."
"The commander's dead."
"There must be someone in charge!" He was near-hysterical. From the truck, the terrible crashing sounds went on. The vehicle was swaying on its tires.
The corporal sighed. "All right, it's your funeral. Come, I'll take you to the closest thing we have to a leader. His name is Petrochenko, Sergeant Petrochenko."
"Hurry, then!" . Pieces of wood and chunks of gilded picture frames were now being tossed out of the rear of the truck.
"All right." But the corporal held back for another moment. "Listen to me—he's not like the others; be careful how you act. If he's not in a good mood he can make trouble."
* * *
Pavel Ilich Petrochenko was not in a good mood, had not been in a good mood for a single second since they'd given him a ludicrous battlefield promotion to junior sergeant and put him in charge of this ragtag squad of thick-skulled Asiatic louts that was used for the most dangerous job of all—delivering ammunition from the supply dump to the front—because, and this Petrochenko knew to be a fact, nobody gave a damn about their life expectancy. And why should they? Uzbeks, Tadzhiks, Kazakhs—not a real Russian among them. Brave as lions, but ignorant oafs and wildmen all, barely able make themselves understood with their barbarous grunts, interested in nothing but women and drink, understanding only force and threat. Already, two of them he'd had to shoot for disobeying orders. You'd think one would be enough, they'd get the point, but no, two days after he 'd sent that shirker Tursunzade to his reward, Baytursinuli (what names they had!) tried to get out of overhauling a truck and smart-mouthed him besides. So that was the end of Baytursinuli too. If necessary he'd shoot them all before he was done. The law was on his side, there were always more, and who would miss them?
Unless, of course, they slit his throat first or he was blown to bits in one of the ammunition trucks. The damn things were like traveling gunpowder factories, liable to go up from a single stray machine gun bullet or one of the lit cigarettes that his crew of simpletons was unable to learn to snuff out. Four months earlier, when he was on the maintenance detail, he'd lost his right thumb and forefinger when an idiot corporal had tossed a match near the gasoline pump. But if one of these creatures were to make a mistake like that with the ammunition (a not-unlikely possibility), he'd be lucky if there was so much as a finger left of him.
He turned over, trying to make himself comfortable for sleep, but there was no getting comfortable on the frigid earth floor of an exposed, wooden mountain hut, with hat, boots, gloves, gun, map case and all, and wrapped in two greatcoats From mild Odessa, as he was, he felt the cold in a way that none of these others did. And why was it snowing this time of year anyway? If not for the storm, they'd never have lost their way and he'd be back at the supply base in Hirschwang, on the valley floor, lying on his own cot in a cozy stone barn.
"Babayan," he said, "where's that damn firewood? Go out and see what's holding them up."
One of the other figures that was huddled on the floor stirred and grumbled but didn't rise.
"Babayan! Don't try to make me think you're asleep. You know I can see in the dark."
"It's cold out there," Babayan said.
"What do you think it is in here, warm? Now move, fuck you, or I'll shoot you where you lie."
"All right, I'm go
ing," Babayan grumbled while his mates sniggered. He stood up, broke wind—that was the one thing these Uzbeks and Kazakhs were naturally gifted at—and stumbled to the door to laughter and cheers, pulling his coat around him.
But before he got there, the door opened and in peeped Ghulam, the little Tadzhik that spoke German. "I'm sorry, comrade sergeant—"
"Shut that door, damn you. Where the hell is that wood?"
Ghulam stepped quickly inside. A step behind him, looking frantic, was the Austrian corporal they'd stopped on the road. "This man—" Ghulam began.
Petrochenko sat up. "Babayan, light the candle."
Before the match was struck the old Austrian started gabbling so fast that Ghulam could barely keep up. It took Petrochenko only seconds to understand. Paintings! Old Masters! That idiot guard had simply told him "some pictures," and Petrochenko had been too dull from weariness to—
He was on his feet and running toward the truck in an instant. When they didn't hear his cries to stop he fired his pistol in the air. The men in the truck, lit up by the hand-held searchlight, peered curiously out the back. "What's wrong, comrade sergeant?"
Half-an-hour later he had seen enough. He returned to the hut, half-frozen but filled with satisfaction and with plans. This was his ticket out of the ammunition detail. The candle was guttering now, but still alight, and some of the men, crouched on their haunches in their filthy greatcoats, had made tea. Ghulam and the Austrian were still waiting for him; the Austrian began at once to bargain and to wheedle. Petrochenko, brushing the snow from his shoulders, nodded. "Ja, Kamerad, gut, gut," he said soothingly, at the same time making a small motion to Babayan with his chin.
Babayan, smiling, patted the old Austrian on the shoulder, tugged gently on his arm, and took him out outside. "Komm', Kamerad." Thirty steps from the hut, Babayan shot him between the eyes.
By the time the pistol's, short, sharp report had clattered off the mountain walls, the candle was out and Petrochenko was curled up on the floor again.
No longer was he in a bad mood.
* * *
Hirschwang, Austria, Supply base camp, Second Armored Division, Army of the U.S.S.R., April 20, 1945, 11 A.M.
"I don't have to tell you, Petrochenko, that it's your duty as an honest soldier to report to me immediately the whereabouts of this so-called treasure of yours—if, that is, it actually exists. You are entitled to no 'conditions.'"
Junior Sergeant Pavel Petrochenko, standing sullenly at attention, studied the speaker. The handsome, black-haired Captain Shaposhkin was a funny one to be talking about honesty. It was well-known that that in his position as aide to the colonel in charge of the divisional supply depot he had been robbing the army blind, that he was by now quite rich, and that he had devised some secret way of getting the black-market money he made safely out of the country; some said to Switzerland, some said England.
None of this Petrochenko begrudged him. The captain had a head on his shoulders, there was nothing wrong with that. What did bother him was that Dimitri Nikolayevich Shaposhkin was only twenty-one, a mere two years older than Petrochenko himself, and look what he had already achieved. By comparison Petrochenko had accomplished nothing, and the war with all its opportunities wasn't going to go on forever.
Well, that was about to change. "I understand that, comrade captain," he said, looking at the floor. "I expressed myself badly. I didn't mean to set conditions. I only meant to say that, in my opinion, my abilities might better serve Russia if I were given a different assignment." He raised his eyes to the captain. "I would hope I could be of more service to you too."
Shaposhkin, seated behind the painted kitchen table that served as his office desk in the front room of the farmhouse-headquarters, scowled at him, then suddenly relaxed and smiled. He pointed to the samovar on the crude sideboard. "Help yourself, Petrochenko. Sit down."
"Thank you, comrade captain." He took no tea but sat on the kitchen chair beside the table.
"I like you, Pavel," Shaposhkin said. "I always have. It wasn't my doing that got you put in the ammunition detail."
"I know that, comrade captain."
"Tell me then, where would you like to be assigned? Clothing and uniforms? I'm not making any promises now."
"Sundries," Petrochenko said without hesitation. Cigarettes, tobacco, candy, all small and easily hidden, all eminently saleable in the army and infinitely more so out in the starved countryside.
"Ah." The captain brushed some non-existent dust from one of the medals on his tunic. Like most of the officers, he had a chestful of them. "And what would I do with Yegorov?"
Petrochenko shrugged. "There's always the ammunition detail."
Shaposhkin was amused. "Yes, I suppose that's possible. All right, let's be frank, we're both sensible men. This is between us. There's a lot of money to be made in sundries, you know."
"I suppose there is. I never thought about it."
"What Yegorov does there, as long as the men don't squawk too much, I don't ask and I don't care. What I do care about is that I receive from him exactly twenty rubles a week or its equivalent—the form is negotiable, I am not a stickler—for the privilege of having such a desirable job. Now you, being a smarter fellow than Yegorov, would surely make more of the opportunity than he does, and so I would think it would be worth . . . shall we say, forty rubles a week?"
Petrochenko grinned. "Comrade captain, I have my own sources. Yevgorov gives you ten rubles a week. But you're right, I am smarter than he is, and I will make more of the opportunity. I will be able to pay you twenty rubles a week."
The captain looked at him for a long moment, and then came a fractional smile followed by the tiniest of nods, a minuscule jerk of the chin. It was done! Only with difficulty did Petrochenko manage to keep his face from showing his exultation.
"Now then, Pavel, what about these paintings you've described?" Shaposhkin asked. "Where do you have them?"
But there had been a subtle re-balancing of authority and Petrochenko was quick to take advantage of it. He leaned back in the chair and stretched out his booted legs, crossing them at the ankles, a posture that would have been impossible in Shaposhkin's presence yesterday. "Let me ask you, comrade captain, what is it that you'll do with them?"
"Exactly what regulations require, of course. See that the Trophy Brigades are informed, so that they can be seized as reparations."
"Of course. And this will be of advantage to you, I assume?"
"How could such a thing be of advantage to me?"
Petrochenko answered honestly: "I have no idea, but I also have no doubt that you will find a way. I think it only right that I should profit as well."
Shaposhkin gave him a non-committal smile. "For example?"
Petrochenko uncrossed his legs and leaned confidently forward, his elbows on the table. "Comrade captain, if you find these pictures to be as I say, I propose that the twenty rubles a week to which we previously agreed should be canceled."
Shaposhkin stared at him. "You would pay me nothing?"
"Precisely."
The captain's dark, handsome face stiffened, and Petrochenko thought for a queasy moment that he'd overplayed his hand. Shaposhkin could shoot him, and get away with it too, every bit as easily as he himself had shot Baytursinuli.
But then the captain threw back his head and laughed. "I'll tell you what. I will accept ten rubles weekly. If the paintings are as you say."
"Done," said Petrochenko.
Shaposhkin's high, pleasant laugh rang out again as he reached across the table to shake hands. "Pavel, I'm going to enjoy doing business with you."
* * *
Two days later, a truckload of valuable paintings was sold for an unprecedented price to the Red Army's Trophy Brigade at Vienna by the commander of an Austrian anti-German partisan unit, who declined to say how it was that he had come by them.
Three days after that, Pavel Ilich Petrochenko, returning from a business transaction in the partially ruined town
of Neunkirchen, was driving along a section of highway thought to be cleared of Germans when he encountered a retreating, rear-guard Wehrmacht unit that was as surprised to see him as he was to see them. Reaching for his pistol, but forgetting in his excitement that he no longer had a thumb and forefinger, he tried to hold them off, but the gun rolled out of his hand and fell to the ground. The laughing Germans commandeered the car in which he was riding, and Petrochenko and his driver were added to the wretched, shuffling gaggle of Russian and partisan prisoners that was being marched along in the general direction of Germany.
Exactly one week later, on May 2, 1945, in Lower Saxony, Hans von Friedeburg, First Admiral of the German Navy, had himself conveyed to the headquarters of Field-Marshal Bernard Montgomery, commander of British-Canadian forces in Northern Europe, there to surrender his forces and those of the German army.
The war was over.
Chapter 1
Boston, Massachusetts, The Present
So far, so good. Boston two, Seattle one. But with the Mariners due up in the ninth with the meat of their order—Rodriguez, Griffey, and Martinez—I was beginning to feel that late-inning sense of impending doom so familiar to Red Sox true-believers.
When the telephone chirped, it was almost a relief. The phone was in the kitchen, the TV was in the living room. If I got up to answer it at least I wouldn't have to see the actual bloodshed. On the other hand, who was there that I wanted to talk to? It was a tossup, your classic case of avoidance-avoidance conflict, but when Rodriguez promptly smashed a screaming double down the left-field line it tipped the balance. I put down the carton of left-over, take-out lo mein I'd been making an early dinner of, hauled myself up from the sofa, and lumped off in my socks to get the phone.