Hammer of Angels

by G T Almasi

  I ask my partner, “Can I sleep some more?”

  He thinks for a moment, then says, “I’m worried about you going into hypovolemic shock from losing so much blood…although you may have already. You were kind of raving earlier when Raj moved you from the truck to this boat.”

  “What did I talk about?”

  “Your father, I think. You weren’t speaking very clearly.” Brando cranes over his shoulder to keep an eye on where we’re going, then turns back to me. He rotates his seating position some more so we can see each other better. His face is drawn, and his hair has been blown into a blob of dark-brown whipped cream.

  Mmm, whipped cream. Plump, squishy pillows made of—

  “—Alix! C’mon, partner. Stay awake if you can,” Brando comms. “Uhh…” He searches for something to talk about. “Victor and I were just discussing Johannes Kruppe.”

  “Who?” I comm.

  “The guy from our person-of-interest list. Kruppe. Victor knows him from military school.”

  “Johannes is a complete asshole,” Victor comms, “but very tough, too.” He says to me, “You be careful fighting him, red hair.”

  I ask, “Since when am I gonna fight Kruppe?”

  Victor tells me Kruppe is part of the Greater German slavery system. He acts as a liaison between the SZ, the Purity League, and even the Gestapo. He’s a raging anti-Semite who makes it clear that he thinks “the Fatherland still needs to solve the Jewish problem once and for all.”

  “Ah, now I see. Yes, I am definitely gonna fight Kruppe.”

  I try to scrunch down to stay out of the wind and elevate my legs a little more. The required effort is beyond me, however. After a minute I give up and pull the blanket over my head.

  “Who’s our contact?” I comm.

  Victor answers, “A journalist. We met at a human rights conference in Hamburg. She was covering the event, and I’d been invited to speak about my experiences in the army.”

  Brando adds, “She’s also a CIA stringer.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “The CIA calls her Garbo.” My partner fusses with the blanket some more. “She supplies the boys in Langley with intel, and they help her transport escaped Jewish slaves out of Europe.”

  I’m very warm all of a sudden. “Garbo…Wasn’t she…the eyes? No, that was Bette Davis. Which…one was…which…”

  It’s the house I lived in with my parents before it was blown up last May. I walk into the kitchen. Cleo sits at our table with a raven-haired woman I’ve never seen before. I keep my eye on this woman. She’s going to have shiny bug lenses, and I’ll have to strangle her right here, which Mom won’t like very much.

  The woman introduces herself to me, but the second she says her name, it flies right out of my head.

  I’m in a bathtub. The raven-haired woman is in the bath with me. We’re fully clothed, but we’re both soaked from the frigid red water. She rises, splashing, and claps her hands together. For a split second I can see her skeleton, like I have X-ray vision. Then the woman steps out of the tub and sloshes a crimson trail of water out of the bathroom.

  I follow her. The next room is a large barracks but kind of crappy, like in a POW camp. Crudely built bunks hold dozens of people. The woman stands in the room’s center and draws a large shape in the dirt floor. It’s a six-pointed star surrounded by a circle.

  The woman faces me, claps her hands once more, and disappears.

  * * *

  CORE

  MIS-ANGEL-2799

  Heavily encrypted intercept, source unknown:

  START TRANSMISSION : SHE’S IN CALAIS : TRANSMISSION END

  25

  NEXT EVENING, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 8:04 P.M. CET

  CALAIS, PROVINCE OF FRANCE, GG

  I’m still wrapped in blankets, but the boat has turned into a bed and the English Channel has turned into a cozy little room. Someone putters around in the dim light. For a moment I think it’s Cleo until the person says something. Mom’s German is good, but she has a strong American accent. What I hear now is perfect German, although I’m not used to hearing it spoken so softly.

  A woman’s voice says, “Leave Scarlet alone, Moortje. She’s sick. Off with you, now.”

  I tip onto my side and cry out as molten hell gushes through my abdomen. The woman rushes over to me. She’s middle-aged, with thick black hair and dark eyes with green flecks in them. She studies my face.

  “Not on side, please. You stay face-up,” she says in German-accented English.

  I grimace and return to my back. “Jah, danke.”

  “Ah, sprechen sie Deutsch?”

  “Jah,” I say, and continue, in German, “but not as nicely as you.” This earns me a grin from her. She has a beautiful smile, and her face is very pretty. The woman holds her palm to my head to see if I’m feverish.

  “You still need a lot of rest,” she says.

  “Garbo?”

  She takes a moment to react. I don’t think she’s called that very often. “Yes, that’s me. But you’re in my house, so call me Marie.”

  “Okay. Marie what?”

  “Van Daan. My husband’s last name is Schultze-Boysen, but professionally I’m still known as Marie Van Daan.”

  “Where’s my partner?”

  “Darwin is asleep in the next room. I finally talked him into resting after the doctor left and you were settled in.”

  “I’m in Calais?” I untangle my right arm from the blankets to check the time, but my father’s watch isn’t on my wrist.

  “Yes, you’ve been here for a day and a half. It’s just past eight in the evening. Here.” She reaches over to a side table and gives me my watch. I strap it on and study the room to find the exits, not that I’d be able to do anything but crawl to them right now. There’s no one else in the room.

  “What floor of your house am I on?”

  “We’re on the third floor.”

  My head slowly unfogs. “Where’s Victor?”

  “Victor didn’t stay. He helped carry you in, then went to dispose of the boat. He said he had to meet some people up north.”

  That’s too bad. Even though Vicberg isn’t enhanced like me, I feel safer when he’s around. “Who’s Moortje?”

  “Oh, he’s my kitty. His full name is Moortje Drei because he’s my third black cat. The name is Dutch.” I am then treated to a detailed description of the previous two Moortjes. Apparently, Marie had her first one when she was a girl growing up in Amsterdam before her family moved to Brussels. That’s where she had black cat number two, but he didn’t last long because he used to fight dogs. Marie and her husband have lived here in Calais since they got married twenty-five years ago. She’s had other cats, but none of them were black. Blackie number three has been with Marie for about five years now.

  I receive all this information as a nonstop run-on story. Marie is one chatty lady.

  She says, “Little Moortje has been curled up next to your feet since this morning, but then he started fussing for his supper. I didn’t want him to wake you, but I was too late.”

  Supper. I haven’t eaten in two days. Or is it three? “Marie, can I have something to eat?”

  “You certainly can. How about a bowl of dumpling soup?”

  This lady is adorable! “Yes, ma’am.”

  While I wait for Marie Van Daan to return, I examine my surroundings. I’m in a combination guest room and home office, tucked into a sofa bed with a bunch of orange pillows all over it. Two walls are covered by floor-to-ceiling bookcases. One case is crammed with books about history and mythology. The other is stuffed with paperbacks and shelf boxes of magazines. Marie is a reader with a capital R.

  The wall opposite my bed has a small desk with a lamp, a telephone, and a little computer terminal on it. A wooden leaf extended from the desk’s side holds a stack of notebooks. A swivel office chair is parked in front of the desk, and the fuzzy toy mouse on the rug must belong to Moortje. It’s all very tidy.

  I, on the
other hand, am a wreck. My body’s stabbing spasms compel me to move only when absolutely necessary. My right arm and leg have bandages stuck over numerous injuries from the grenades, my torso is wrapped in tape to press two large compresses onto my bullet wounds, and my head is swaddled in so much gauze that it hides my hair. I didn’t know I’d taken a head wound. Must have been that last grenade in the back of the truck. All this is topped off with a liberal sprinkling of scrapes, bruises, and pulled muscles.

  Put me in, Coach. I feel fuckin’ great.

  I’m also wearing someone else’s pajamas—Marie’s, I assume. They’re striped, white and orange, like a Creamsicle. Next to my bed is a bulging green canvas backpack filled with a new pair of blue jeans, a few days’ worth of new shirts and underwear, my SoftArmor vest, and my weapons. I fish Li’l Bertha out of the pack and stuff her under my pillow.

  Marie walks in with a steaming bowl of soup. I’m so hungry, it’d be nothing for me to shotgun this whole serving in three seconds. I only avoid making a complete ass of myself because my mother’s etiquette training obliges me to downshift from breakneck gobbling to hasty dining.

  Between mouthfuls I ask, “Did the doctor say how long I’ll be laid up?”

  Marie pushes her desk chair next to my bed and sits down. “He said a normal person would need three months but someone like you may need only a couple of weeks. I’m not sure what he meant, but given the nature of our situation, perhaps my ignorance is for the best.”

  You don’t have to be a doctor to spot a Level, especially one that’s as loaded as I am. My synthetic right hand and artificial joints appear natural enough, but the WeaponSynch pad in my left palm and the array of data/IV ports in my hip are dead giveaways that I’m less than 100 percent natural. If this doctor has worked on other Levels, he’ll have already seen how quickly we can recover our health.

  The black cat saunters in. He stops to lick his paws while he decides which of us lowly humans is most deserving of his regal affections. Marie leans down and makes little kissing sounds at him until he hops into her lap. She strokes Moortje’s head and says, “It’s kind of a miracle you’re here right now, Scarlet. You lost so much blood.”

  I say, “Sorry if I ruined a set of sheets.”

  “Pshh, don’t worry.” Marie waves her hand. “That washes out easily enough.”

  “Who fixed me up?”

  “A colleague of my sister, Betti. She used to be a nurse and still has a lot of contacts from those days. Most of them are…sympathetic to the work Betti and I do, and they’re willing to help without asking a lot of questions.”

  “Questions like ‘How the hell did this chick get shot so many times in one day?’”

  My hostess grins. “Yes, questions like that.”

  “So your sister is a nurse?”

  “She was, but when our father retired, Betti took over running our family’s company. It made sense. Betti’s the oldest, and she’s very smart in things like science and math. I’ve always been the more artistic sister.”

  “Ugh,” I grunt. “Math.”

  Marie’s expression sparkles as she leans forward with a conspiratorial smile. “Scarlet, my young friend, I never liked math either.” She passes her palm across my head again. “You’re still too warm. You’d better finish your soup and then sleep for a while.”

  “Okay.” I’ve never been much of a cat person, but I add, “And Moortje can come up here if he wants.”

  * * *

  CORE

  PER-GARBO-001

  Garbo

  DATA STRINGER / DOB: 12 June 1929 / POB: Frankfurt

  NAMES AND ALIASES: Marie Schultze-Boysen (married, 1955–present)Marie Van Daan (legal, 1942–present)Annelies Marie Frank (legal, 1929–1942)

  RESIDENCE: Calais, Province of France, Greater Germany

  This asset is a Calais-based journalist with access to a steady flow of inside cultural and political information. Garbo’s sphere of operation falls within the Greater German provinces of France and Belgium. She began her covert career with a Belgian cell of the Circle of Zion. Her concise, insightful reports caught the CIA’s attention, who recruited her as a stringer.

  Garbo’s childhood was typical of Jewish experiences in Europe before and during the war. Driven from Germany by Hitler’s anti-Jewish laws in 1933, her family emigrated from Frankfurt to Amsterdam. Germany invaded Holland in 1940 and began to persecute the Netherlands’ Jews. Many Jewish families went into hiding.

  Otto, Garbo’s father, was preparing a hiding place in his office building when Hitler was assassinated in early 1942. The Nazi Party’s tumultuous collapse and Berlin’s chaotic power struggles allowed the Dutch Underground to operate openly for several months. Otto took this opportunity to have new identity documents forged for himself, his wife, Edith, and his two daughters. It was twelve-year-old Garbo who suggested calling themselves Van Daan because it “sounded like a good Dutch name.” Otto had his company, Opekta, transfer him and his family to Belgium to open a new branch in Brussels.

  They escaped the postwar roundups of Europe’s Jews and quietly assimilated themselves into German society. The parents eventually retired and immigrated to Massachusetts, where Otto has family. Garbo’s older sister, Betti, inherited control of the family business and is now president of Opekta, SA.

  26

  THREE DAYS LATER, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 5:43 P.M. CET

  CALAIS, PROVINCE OF FRANCE, GG

  Tiptoe, tiptoe. Use bathroom. Don’t flush. Tiptoe, tiptoe. Back to bed.

  Marie and her husband are downstairs, entertaining some friends. They chat and clink silverware around a melodic Miles Davis song. These guests don’t know that the Schultze-Boysens have two spies hidden on their silent third floor, and we need to keep it that way.

  We’re quiet as church mice, which is easy for us except I have to go to the bathroom so much from all the fluids I’ve been glugging. We don’t want Marie’s guests to hear water running through the pipes downstairs, so my partner and I leave our business in the toilet bowl until we can flush it later. I’ve never thought of myself as a prude, but this strikes me as especially gross.

  This is our fourth day in Garbo’s house, and each day the place gets a little smaller. The Schultze-Boysens are very nice and their doctor chum is clearly good at what he does, but I finished memorizing the ceiling after my first morning here. Except for the evening news, TV is a bust: soccer (yawn), soap operas (snore), and game shows (zzz). Brando and I tried using the Ping-Pong table Marie has in her basement, but my stitches are too fresh for my spastic playing style.

  So I’ve been diverting myself with Marie’s book collection. Her English-language shelf includes a bunch of novels by female authors like Emily Brontë and Jane Austen. I found the writing in Pride and Prejudice absolutely hilarious in places, although the story remained obstinately free of gunfire and explosions.

  The music downstairs changes to James Brown. I listen to Clyde Stubblefield pound through “Funky Drummer.” It reminds me of Dad. He used to play this song on the stereo and dance around the living room. If he wasn’t too drunk, Cleo would join him while I watched from the stairs in my jammies. I’ll never forget the way their faces glowed whenever they danced together.

  Patrick sneaks past my door on his way from the bathroom to the other guest room. I catch his eye and waggle my fingers at him.

  “C’mere,” I comm.

  Patrick pads in, gently shuts the door, and sits at the foot of my bed.

  “How are your injuries?” he asks.

  “Better, but my sutures feel like they’ll tear open unless I move slowly.”

  “Well, take it easy, then.” He glances toward the stairs. “We wouldn’t be able to get a doctor up here until these people go home.” He studies my face. “You look much better.”

  When he tells me this, I do the last thing either of us would expect. I blush. Heat rises in my cheeks, and I stare down at my hands to hide the dopey grin on my face. We haven’t had muc
h time to talk this week. I’ve been really out of it until today, and one of the Schultze-Boysens is usually up here to make sure we’re all right.

  Neither of us has mentioned the kiss I gave him in London, but I’ve sure thought about it. Our mission began four weeks ago, but it feels like forty. All this crazy-ass time with Brando has diminished my heartache about Trick from a screeching, clawing eagle to a brooding, sullen crow that leaves me alone as long I don’t poke at it.

  I hold my hand out to Brando. He clasps his hand into mine. I search for something romantic and mysterious to say, but I can’t think of anything.

  Ahh, fuck it. He’s cleaned bloody bits of my clothing out of a bullet hole, he’s seen me basically naked, he already knows what a bitch I am before I have my morning coffee. Plus, we’ve had to use the same toilet without flushing. How much mystery is there going to be anyway?

  Finally, I whisper, “So I liked that kiss.”

  He smiles and squeezes my hand. “Me, too.”

  “I’ve thought about it when I wasn’t puking or bleeding.”

  “Same here, except for me it was when I wasn’t worrying.” He puts his other hand on top of mine. “Actually, I’ve done nothing but worry, so I guess I did both.”

  The corners of my eyes crinkle as I try not to laugh out loud. I coax Patrick up the bed until he’s in range, then lean forward and plant one on him. He gently lays his hand on the side of my face and kisses me back.

  I can’t pull him into bed with me because of my stitches. Besides, it’s not like I feel that good. My stomach is upset, and my abdomen still hurts. It’s probably better for me to take this slow, anyway.

  As I’ve become less frightened of losing my new partner, I’ve been able to appreciate how much I like him. He’s really similar to Trick, of course, but he’s not a duplicate. I know they had the same inception day, but he seems more grown-up. Sort of like Trick’s older brother.