Cave Dwellers

by Richard Grant

  —

  They halted an hour short of midday in a glade between two overshadowing rises that were too small to count as hills. The grass was high enough to be cut for hay, with small white daisies on tall stems and cornflowers that looked blue from a distance but purple close up. Hagen spent one Gestapo bullet on a good-sized hare. They drank from a stream and used the water to wash their faces and scrub some of the blood from their clothes. Clair built a fire, then lay down in the warm grass to sleep. Lena chose her own spot some distance away. Oskar rigged a cooking spit while Hagen dressed the hare. Then the two men sat cross-legged at a distance and angle calibrated by masculine instinct, allowing them to stare at the fire while keeping the other in view, far enough apart to be safe from being leapt upon but close enough to speak quietly if anything needed to be said. Oskar had no idea how such matters worked themselves out. He’d read a bit of Jung and gotten the vague idea that his body was inhabited at times by some ageless archetypal being, probably not a very nice one. The Blond Beast—well, look at Hagen.

  When he did look—because the thought was irresistible—he found the SS man staring back. It was as though he’d been waiting calmly, like a predator with time on his hands, for precisely this moment.

  “You know what the problem is now,” Hagen said, as straightforwardly as he said most everything. “The problem is that they can kill him. The SOPADE will be blamed. It’s a tidy solution. No conflicting accounts, no inconvenient survivor to say, ‘Really, they treated me quite well. We had a fine dinner one night when they let me drink wine.’ Better just to kill him. That’s what they’ll think. Probably they’re thinking it right now.”

  Oskar felt these ideas entering his consciousness like a series of soft blows, one after another. There seemed to be no gaps between them where a counterargument might be wedged in. But for the sake of discussion he said, “Who’s they? I mean, specifically. And how can you be so sure?”

  Hagen chose this of all moments to smile. It wasn’t especially cheerful; rather, more commiserative—as though Oskar had inquired into some complicated family matter and the smile was by way of asking him, Do you truly want to know? Oskar waited for more, but apparently Hagen had said all he intended to. He turned his attention to the carcass on the spit, getting up on his knees so he could reach in and turn it. The movement caused him to flinch, and he ran a hand gingerly down his side.

  “Here,” said Oskar, moving closer, “let me have a look.”

  The other man paused and then slowly raised his arms, like a prisoner submitting to a pat-down.

  There was no sign of bleeding. Oskar lifted an edge of the bandage, and from what he could see, the tissues seemed to be mending and the inflammation had gone down. “It looks better,” he said.

  “Yes, the doctor—he did a good job, I think.”

  For a Jew? Oskar wondered. But perhaps that was unfair. Who knew what this man thought about Jews, or about anything? He softly pressed the bandage back into place.

  “And how is your head?” Hagen asked. He rose on his knees so he could look down at Oskar from slightly above. “Bend your neck, please. No, like this—”

  Without warning he placed a hand on the back of Oskar’s head and slowly but firmly pushed it forward. The moment was disconcerting but at the same time mundane, a pair of battered soldiers inspecting each other for damage.

  “Not so bad” was the verdict.

  “No?” said Oskar.

  Hagen slapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Immer weiter!”

  Ever onward. But to where?

  “Do you have a new plan?” he asked.

  Hagen was turning the hare and didn’t answer right away. “Well, you know,” he said finally, “in my service, we’re not really trained to make plans. Those are made”—pointing the stick that was his cooking tool up at the sky—“by somebody high above. We’re trained to act. And to be true and loyal at all times. Look, it’s right here.”

  He turned sideways to display his large steel belt buckle, which featured an eagle clutching a swastika, encircled by lettering. Oskar knew what it said without bothering to read it. Meine Ehre heisst Treue, a slogan he’d always thought marginally incoherent. “My honor is called loyalty” certainly was more suited to a boys’ hiking club like the Weiss Ritter than to the Black Knighthood of the SS. The obvious question was how Hagen squared this weighty concept of loyalty with what he was doing here and now. And Oskar supposed the most likely answer was that he saw no conflict at all—that he’d been given an assignment and was doing his best to carry it out. He was honor-bound to be Clair’s protector, to keep the boy safe and trouble-free until he got to where he was going, and if that entailed incidentally getting entangled with the Resistance and having to shoot a Gestapo man—well, that was unfortunate, but it had no bearing on his one essential duty, his singular version of Treue.

  That was only a theory, the best one Oskar had managed to date. The truth was, he found this man basically unfathomable. Maybe the rest of the SS were as well. Though he doubted it.

  The hare was sizzling, and the two men sat watching it. The silence between them had grown weirdly comfortable. Oskar felt no impulse to break it and was surprised when Hagen picked up their conversation more or less where they’d left off.

  “You’re probably better at planning than I am. I imagine your training was quite different.”

  That was a probe, of course, but, all things considered, a gentle one. It might even have been a sporting challenge: I got us this far, let’s see if you can do any better. Oskar could imagine Hagen saying that, the calibrated tone he would use, the hint of combativeness neutralized by his artful choice of pronouns, dropping the formal Sie for the more companionable du. In fact, now that Oskar thought about it, they’d been addressing each other as du for some time now. When had that started? And how long had he been thinking of the other man as Hagen? Be careful who you circle the fire with, he told himself.

  “I wouldn’t know where to start,” he said.

  “Well, we do have a map.”

  And so they did. Oskar went to fetch it, slipping it out of a pocket in Lena’s jacket while she slept. He stood for a few moments watching her chest rise and fall, the copper hair tumbled across her face, mouth slightly open, one arm outstretched as though reaching for something in her dream. Oskar felt a powerful and helpless sense of longing—not so much for Lena, perhaps, as for something he’d seen in her, or through her, a prospect so dazzling he’d drawn back from it. He yearned to return there. But first he needed to get out of here, to get everyone out. Away from this dangerous meadow in a fairy-tale forest, where beauty always signified a trap.

  —

  By the time Lena and Clair awoke, Oskar and Hagan had, if not a plan, at least a tentative outline. Hagen laid it out while the others ate, given his gift for speaking plainly and the lesser probability that he, as opposed to Oskar, would provoke Lena to object. The two of them had agreed on that.

  “Here is Sababurg,” Hagen said, pointing to a spot near the center of the map, which was spread over trampled grass and weighted with little stones. The place in question was identified by an icon—two turrets with a gate between them—that was easy enough to interpret, but Hagen explained it anyway. “This is a castle. A famous castle actually, the Dornröschenschloss. You’ll know it, Clair, from the story of Snow White. Those thorn roses are real, or at least were. The thicket ran five kilometers across, a means of holding up attacking armies. Today it’s mostly a ruin, but also an attraction that’s very popular at this time of year. There’s a beer garden and craftsmen selling, oh, many things, clothing and fake weapons and items you might hang up in your home, all very traditional. We loved to go there, those in my group. The younger boys would buy shields and wooden swords, the older ones real hunting knives.”

  “That’s very nice,” Lena said through a mouthful of gamy meat. “But what—”

  “It sounds boring,” said Clair.

  “What’s it got to
do with us?” she continued.

  “The point is,” Hagen told them, “it’s a lively place and one that’s difficult to monitor. Supposing we’re under surveillance, which we must assume. And while it looks very old, it’s been brought up-to-date for the convenience of visitors—telephones and modern plumbing and so forth. In short, it has most of the things we need right now: food and a means of both changing our appearance and sending a message.”

  “So you propose,” Lena said, swallowing, “that we just march in there, do a little shopping, sit down in the beer garden—and then what? Sing patriotic songs to throw off suspicion?”

  Now here, thought Oskar, is where he’d have made some intemperate remark and wrecked everything.

  But Hagen just went on in his blandly factual manner: “No, of course not. You’re quite right: we can’t all go marching in there at once. That could be fatal. Far better if just one person goes in. To buy bits of clothing for everyone—shirts and hats, that kind of thing—and a bag to carry the food in. And while that’s being prepared, there should be time for another telephone call.”

  “A telephone call,” Lena repeated, as if she needed to say the words to gauge their absurdity. “Who, exactly, are you planning to call?”

  “I should probably get in touch with my father,” Clair interrupted. “On the off chance he’s noticed I’ve disappeared.”

  Oskar and Hagen traded glances. They hadn’t considered this.

  “That might be a good idea,” Hagen said carefully, “or it might not. It could bring a kind of attention we don’t care for just now. Or put you at greater risk. Perhaps it’s wiser to wait until you can call from somewhere absolutely safe. That would ease his mind. If you called right now, you’d have to tell him, Hello, Papa, it’s Clairborne and I’m in a horrible fix.”

  The boy started laughing. He couldn’t stop—this imagined conversation with his father seeming to have cracked some barrier between the conceivable and the absurd. “Believe me,” he managed to say at last, “I’d love to make that phone call.”

  “Well, you can’t,” Lena said, but this dose of laughter had lightened everyone’s mood. “So who’s the lucky person, then? Who gets to see Snow White’s castle?”

  Hagen was not to be hurried. “Here are the things to consider. We believe Oskar was singled out for attention as far back as the Robert Ley; his description has presumably been circulated. Later, when the boat stopped at Polle, the authorities met a Herr and Frau Sinclair and inspected their papers. So now they’ll be looking not just for Oskar but for a couple traveling together. We don’t know whether Clair has been reported missing, but it’s certainly possible, and in any case, his limited German doesn’t recommend him for a trip to Sababurg alone. That leaves me, but look—my uniform has bullet holes in it, and here are some mysterious stains, my shoes badly scuffed. An SS officer doesn’t go around looking like this.”

  “It sounds like you’ve ruled out everybody, then,” Lena said.

  “Perhaps not. We’ve ruled out Oskar, a couple traveling together, Clair, and myself. We haven’t ruled out a woman traveling alone.”

  Lena had already prepared an objection: “They’ve seen me.”

  “Someone has, but only wearing a certain outfit, with a certain bearing, playing the role of a new middle-class wife. If we substitute a few bits of clothing, adjust your demeanor and get rid of the husband, they’ll never make the connection. Remember, those men who boarded the boat weren’t concerned about you; they weren’t paying very close attention. Whatever description they’ve given, it wouldn’t be much to go on.”

  Pensive, Lena bit her lip. “Look,” she said, “it’s not that I’m afraid to do this. I’m not. But what if they’ve questioned Tilde? And old Dr. Ruhmann. Or, dear God, poor Kleister.”

  Hagen held her gaze for a moment. “There’s a risk,” he conceded. “Whoever does this, there will be a risk.” He seemed ready to say more but left it at that.

  And maybe that was all she wanted—for the personal danger to be acknowledged. She nodded slightly, then again, more resolutely. “All right. Dress me up. Tell me exactly what I’m supposed to do. Let’s get going.”

  They made a survey of the wardrobe on hand. The main problem was bloodstains, but by judicious selection and some rough tailoring with Tiller’s knife, they managed to outfit Lena in the somewhat dated style of a jaunty Wandervogelin. Clair sacrificed his trousers to make hiking shorts—not being German, he was embarrassed about undressing in public, so Hagen lent him his own battle-stained uniform slacks, which fit like a tent, to the boy’s seemingly boundless delight. They tried on the anorak but decided it was better left off, this being wrong for the weather. As a final touch they added Clair’s scarf, which was long enough to wrap around twice, effectively eliminating her neck.

  Lena waded into the stream, bending over to get a look at herself. “I look like a frog,” she said.

  “Careful, then!” said Clair. “Somebody might kiss you and change you back.”

  She’d already turned to leave when Oskar caught her arm and handed her a scrap of paper torn from a corner of the map. She held it close to her face, squinting at the minuscule writing.

  “That’s a number in Bremen,” he said quietly. “Reverse the charges. Don’t worry, they’ll accept it. And this is a message for Herr Braun. He probably won’t be available, so just leave this message—exactly these words.”

  Lena flicked an eye at him, quizzical and shrewd. Then she read it aloud with exaggerated precision: “ ‘Cousin Peter is feeling better. Please drop by for a Scotch on the rocks.’ That’s stupid, Oskar. If you saw this in a movie, you’d say the same thing. Is this really how spies talk?”

  Oskar tried on the von Ewigholz smile: Do you truly want to know? Then he watched her walk away until the trail turned and she was out of sight.

  CHRIST ON A ROCKING HORSE

  BERLIN, MITTE AND KREUZBERG: EARLIER THAT MORNING

  “What the hell kind of country is this?”

  Bull Townsend could not sit down. The third breakfast of the morning lay steaming on a silver tray, two previous servings having been sent back to the kitchen because by the time the senator got around to spearing a cube of Schinken he declared it too cold to digest.

  “Why hasn’t the goddamn ambassador called? And where the hell is the Polizeikommissar—wasn’t he supposed to be here an hour ago? If these Germans are so damn punctual, why can’t they even keep an appointment when a person’s life is at stake?”

  The senator’s progress about the room, too erratic to be called pacing, had taken him to a pair of enormous windows looking out over the Pariser Platz with a clear view of the Brandenburg Gate.

  “The hell’s a father supposed to do in a situation like this?” he said, seeming to address the city at large. “Just tell me that.”

  He turned from the window to face the grandly appointed hotel room. He looked terrible. In the opinion of Toby Lugan, who’d seen him at his best and at his worst, he looked defeated—and men like Bull should never look like that. They were, for all their human flaws, the mythic beasts that carried Toby’s whole world around on their backs. He depended on them to keep standing, to go on bellowing their slogans and glad-handing their donors and gut-punching their political enemies for as long as the voters saw fit to keep them in office. If a man like Bull had to go down, it shouldn’t happen like this. It should be out on the hustings, fighting to the final bell, going for the knockout even in a hopeless match.

  “Tell me that,” Townsend repeated, sounding almost pitiful. Or as if he really wanted an answer, which was so rarely the case.

  “You’re doing everything you can,” Toby assured him, from his seat at a round Empire table big enough to play poker on. Before him, scattered in a fit of temper, lay police reports and newspaper clippings and embassy memos and one fuzzy picture of the missing Clairborne, blown up from a snapshot Bull carried in his wallet, outdated by a couple of years and showing the boy in his Sunday
best and smiling obediently but, even so, with that look in his eyes, the silvery glint of insurrection. Where did that come from, Toby wondered—the mother? He barely knew Townsend’s wife. But if she’d ever had a glint like that, three decades of booze had dulled the shine of it, and Bull had surely added a little abrasion. No, wait, Toby didn’t mean…it was just that Bull wasn’t likely an easy man to live with, was all.

  Jesus H. Christ, thought Toby. Now I’m running damage control on my own brain.

  “I’m not doing squat,” said the senator from across the room.

  “You’ve done everything the Polizeikommissar recommended,” Toby said, incidentally correcting Bull’s pronunciation. “You’ve been right out front, dictating the message, setting the tone of communication.”

  “Setting the tone of—” Townsend moved closer surprisingly fast, practically charging across the floor. “Listen to yourself, Toby. The hell’s that even mean? I’m talking about my son here, and you’re talking about dictating some goddamn message. I want to dictate anything, I’ve got a secretary for that. What I want is to find whoever’s got my boy and wring their scrawny kraut necks. Now, who’s going to help me do that? You? Mr. Ambassador fucking Wilson? Herr Adolf kiss-my-ass Hitler? Whoever it is, that’s who I want to be talking to. And I tell you what, I’ll put the fear of God in him.”

  Under the circumstances, Toby thought it best to let Bull blow himself out. For something to do in the meantime, he poked into the nearest stack of paper and extracted a copy of the senator’s schedule—not the most current one, most of the engagements having been crossed through by someone in blue pencil. The only entries left untouched seemed to be related in one way or another to the kidnapping. This was not a picture Toby wanted to see.