by G T Almasi
“Uhh, well…”
My mind goes as blank as a broken TV.
“Err…”
I have no goddamn idea what we should do.
I’m saved from my lack of leadership skills by Hector, who chooses that moment to try hoisting himself out of Pepé’s backseat. The badly wounded man loses his grip on the doorframe and falls back inside with a loud grunt.
“Um, okay.” I point at the car. “You guys take Hector inside. Then, Doska, you and Darwin patch him up. Krysta, keep an eye on the street and shoot anybody who looks like a troublemaker.” I spin on my heel and hustle toward the sanctuary of the safe house. “I’ll go talk to the House about making us something to eat.”
Eat. Yeah, good idea. That’s what leaders do. They rustle up grub. Good job, Scarlet. Good job.
21
THAT NIGHT, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 6:30 P.M. CEST
154 ALEXANDERSTRASSE, STUTTGART, GREATER GERMANY
“Krysta!” I yell from the dining room. “C’mon, dinner is almost ready.”
“What about the troublemakers?”
“Shoot ’em later.”
To be honest, Frau Krebs is so scary I doubt anyone would dare attack this House. For starters she’s six foot four. Her legs are clomping columns of pale granite. The rest of her reminds me of a poorly drawn cartoon robot—all irregular rectangles with no sense of proportion to one another. Basically, Krebs is built like a team of Bulgarian wrestlers.
Her grotesque appearance barely contains the Frau’s disdain for everything non-German. She stalks from her brightly lit kitchen into the chintzily decorated dining room carrying a serving platter the size of an aircraft carrier. She deposits the slab on the table and holds her sweaty paws toward the dish like it’s being served to the Kaiser.
“There!” she barks in German. Naturally Krebs speaks no English at all. “Real food! You dumbheads, with your brussels sprouts and your diet pills. No wonder you’re all skinny and weak.” Having put me and my fellow Americans in our place, the Frau returns to her spotless factory of Real Food.
Krysta joins me at the table and we dig in to what must be the largest private collection of cured meats in the world. Sausage, kielbasa, bratwurst, bacon, ham, pork ribs, pig’s knuckles, cow tongue, pickled-who-knows-what, jellied something-horrible-looking, it goes on and on.
Doska and Darwin come down the main staircase and take seats at the groaning wooden table. They both went straight upstairs with Hector and haven’t seen the rest of our accommodations. Doska notices the dreadful décor and busts out laughing.
If Elvis Presley had been German he’d absolutely own this room. The walls are covered with layers of Bavarian kitsch and souvenirs from every Oktoberfest since the time of Julius Caesar. One whole wall is slathered with shockingly tasteless, garishly carved cuckoo clocks. A wooden waist-high cupboard shamelessly supports a crowd of ridiculous painted ceramic statues, the king of whom has dropped his pants and happily craps a big, painted coin.
Doska’s laughter brings the Frau to the doorway. Her monstrous scowl, honed by centuries of genetic deselection, penetrates even Doska’s lighthearted manner and he instantly shuts up and sits down.
As we eat, I have the boys fill me in on Hector. His injuries are pretty bad: internal bleeding, broken ribs, a busted clavicle, and the ill effects of extended use of whatever narcos his neuroinjector runs. Frau Krebs has asked her sister—an emergency room nurse—to stop by this evening after her day shift.
The conversation around the table enters get-to-know-you territory. We compare our gear, Skills Ratings, and what kind of Job Numbers we’ve pulled. My recital takes the longest, especially my seemingly endless litany of major injuries.
“Jesus,” Krysta says around a mouthful of Weisswurst, “Are some of those recent? They’re not all in your file.”
“Well, I got this one yesterday.” I point at the bandage on my head, then I hold up my synthetic right hand and say, “The rest are from previous missions.”
“Huh.” Doska slices through a slab of ham. “Maybe we didn’t have enough clearance to see them all.”
“What were you doing looking at my file?”
Krysta smiles. “When we found out we were going to meet the famous Scarlet and Darwin, we thought we should read up on you.”
“Famous?”
“Yes, Scarlet,” Doska interjects. “Everybody’s heard of you.”
“Because of my father?”
“No. We’ve heard of Big Bertha because of you.”
Patrick says, “You only mean ‘everybody’ within the agency, right?”
“Oh. Yeah. Just in the community.”
I lean back from the table and beam at Patrick. “Famous!” I comm.
“Great,” my partner comms through half-lowered eyelids. “You’re gonna be really impossible now.”
Krys and Dos have me so buttered up I let them examine my artificial right hand. Doska gently moves my fingers to observe the linkages in the joints. He marvels over my right thumb.
“Wow, this is a better design than the real thing.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Look at how much extra material connects your thumb to your palm. I’ll bet you can crush a baseball into a blintz.”
Kung…
“Well, now that you mention it—”
Fu…
“There was this one time where—”
Grip!
Brando cuts me off. “Okay, okay.” He lays his hand over my celebrity prosthetic. “I’d like to hear more about our new teammates here.” He nods toward my adoring pair of fans.
As usual, my eyeball-darts have no effect on my partner. “Fine,” I say, shrugging.
“Where’re you guys from?”
It turns out Krysta and Doska are from Portland, Oregon. They met in high school, where they competed in wrestling, swimming, and gymnastics. Krysta, who carries two hundred pounds on a six-foot-two frame, was a three-season sports star who routinely kicked everyone’s ass. Doska, at a foot shorter and fifty pounds lighter, is likely one of those kicked asses, but they’re obviously great pals.
They stayed in touch during their college years before taking their degrees straight into spy school together. After graduating from Camp A-Go-Go they were placed in the Russian Section. Their Front Desk, Frank Bell, provided them with covers before stationing them at the University of Moscow.
Although they’re five years older than me, we entered the field at about the same time. Krysta is Level 6, meaning his development schedule is closer to the standard pace than my hyperactive rate of promotion. They speak great Russian, naturally. I immediately take on the task of elevating their second-year German with my gourmet selection of Teutonic poop jokes.
After we’ve eaten as much as we can, Frau Krebs comes in to sit with us. She retains her mannish exterior by smoking a polished wooden pipe the size of a coffee mug.
I comm to Patrick, “I’m surprised she doesn’t smoke one of those ugly alarm clocks.”
“I had a thought about those,” my partner comms back.
“What?”
“I think they’re her secure telephone.”
“What makes you say that?”
“None of them tell time.”
“That’s because they’re junk from beer-drinking festivals.”
“Hmm,” Brando comms. “Maybe.”
Now that her guests have been properly attended to, the Frau relaxes a little. She puffs on her pipe and catches us up with what she’s heard through her grapevine.
She’s got some good grapes, including contacts in the German Navy’s intelligence bureau. It’s through her we learn what happened that night in Antwerp.
“Most of what you saw,” she says, “was to draw attention away from a burglary.” Through her cloud of pipe smoke, Frau Kr
ebs tells us the Kreigsmarine base in Antwerp is home to the branch’s weapons-development program.
Patrick asks, “Who were the burglars?”
The Frau answers with a pointed glance at Doska.
Dos says, “We spoke with Frau Krebs about this earlier. On our way west, Krys and I got wind of the Reichspolizei chasing a group of terrorists. The pursuit began in Antwerp, we heard. Judging by their path, they were going to Munich.”
“What terrorists?”
“They call themselves the Fraktion, or Red Army Faction, but the press calls them the Baader-Meinhof Gang.”
I’ve heard of these posers. “How did a bunch of dope-fiend anarchists know where to find a top-secret naval weapons facility? And what did they take?”
The Frau says, “My navy friends haven’t learned what the Faction was after, but a Reichspolizei acquaintance of mine suspects the Faction was hired by the Gestapo.”
Brando runs his fingers through his hair. “Just what we need.” He shakes his head. “Markus Wolf with an experimental secret weapon.”
“Wait a minute.” I tap the table with my finger. “Why Munich? I thought the Gestapo was based in—”
“Berlin, yes,” says Frau Krebs. “But Wolf kept his plot from the Reichstag and the chancellor by developing it in Munich.”
Hm. Wolf is a crafty old so-and-so.
Krebs continues. “It is perhaps interesting that Munich is also the home of the Red Army Faction.” The Frau fusses with her pipe while the four of us ExOps kids silently digest both her food and her intel. She puffs out a few clouds and says, “Busy, busy. So much activity.”
“Frau?” Doska asks.
“Yesterday no instructions and one visitor, today two new guests become five, tomorrow who knows? Maybe the German national soccer team will stop by.” Krebs chortles at her little jest. She accidentally inhales too much smoke and launches into a huge coughing fit.
Doska has warmed to the Frau the most, so he’s the one who gets up to pat Krebs’s back and hopefully help keep her lungs on the inside where they belong. The woman recovers and wipes her watering eyes.
“Whoo,” she hoots. I get the impression this happens to her pretty often.
Brando gives our hostess a moment, then asks, “Frau Krebs, you said you had a guest yesterday?”
“Yes, but she didn’t stay long. Just some first aid and a change of clothes. The girl was in terrible shape. She bled all over my bathroom.”
“Girl?”
“Yes, she was your age, Scarlet.” Krebs nods at me. “Like I said, she—”
“Frau Krebs,” I interrupt. “Who was this person?”
“She didn’t give her name. Nasty, that one.”
My partner and I stare at each other while the Frau poofs out more gray pipe smoke.
“What did she want?” I ask.
“Information about her boss, Herr Director Fredericks. Apparently he’s been abducted by the Gestapo, but you already knew that.”
“Do you know the director?”
“Of course.” Poof, poof. “I’ve been the Stuttgart House for a long time.”
“Did you tell this young woman anything?”
“Only that if the director is a…er…guest, of the secret police, he’s probably halfway to Munich by now.”
—DARE: STUTTGART—
11 SEP 1981
COMMUNICATION STATUS
Control,
I received your notice of 9 September regarding two Russian Section agents scheduled to arrive the morning of 11 September, but you did not tell me I would be receiving Director Jakob Fredericks’s female bodyguard on 10 September. She stayed for only an hour to dress her extensive injuries and refresh her clothes.
My radio array appears to be working. Has our comm-frequency changed?
Faithfully,
Agatha Krebs
22
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 4:30 A.M. CEST
Stuttgart gently hums to me through the bedroom window. Patrick sleeps with his head on my shoulder. His slow breathing steams my neck. After dinner he and I stayed up talking for a while. Last night’s discussions have me so wound up I can’t even knock myself out with Overkaine.
Something terrible has happened to ExOps. Headquarters usually sends Frau Krebs a nightly update to help her manage her little spy hostel. Their last transmission to the Stuttgart House was at midnight two nights ago. Since then, nothing.
Safe houses can always call HQ. That’s why we have the damn things. So, not only has ExOps’s wireless communication ceased functioning—as evidenced by us getting cut off from everything except short-range comming—but even our old-school hardwired telephones are offline.
Patrick says our comm-grid has too many redundancies for this blackout to be from the denial-of-service attack we seemingly triggered in Bastogne. Which isn’t to say it’s not related. We just can’t figure out how.
Jakob, you bastard. What the fuck are you up to?
I look around the room again. Krebs has run this House since the 1960s, so over twenty years at least. It occurs to me that my father probably stayed here.
Dad survived eight years in Carbon. He’s okay, and he’s making sure Mom’s okay.
What’s not okay is that I’m responsible for keeping all of us covert castaways alive. I can still rely on Patrick’s brains, of course, but ultimately someone has to say yes, no, left, or right, and I’ll have to take a wild fucking guess because I have no idea what the hell is going on. Europe is like a bucket of blended pig heads—all stirred together and looking nothing like it used to. At least I know what to do tomorrow. Patrick helped me decide to press on to the next Carbon lab on Kennedy’s list: Dachau.
It’s getting light out. I hear Frau Krebs bumping around down in her kitchen. I slide out from under Patrick’s head and tiptoe downstairs to see what kind of coffee the Frau makes.
Frau Krebs’s way of saying good morning is to shove a dishrag at me and have me follow her around the kitchen re-spotless-ing everything. I make a detour at the Herr Coffee machine and tune myself up.
Krysta comes downstairs and is also drafted into the Krebs Kitchen Patrol. His job is to lug platters of food out to the dining room. By the time Doska and Patrick come down from checking on Hector, the table is again burdened with meat, meat, and more meat.
“How’s our man?” I ask, indicating the second floor.
Doska picks up his knife and fork to cut into a giant sausage. “He’ll live, but he needs time to recuperate.”
“So, Hector stays here?”
Dos glances at Frau Krebs in the doorway. She states, “Yes, he stays. I will have him looked after.”
“Good.” I swallow a mouthful of bratwurst and pretend I’m a decisive and imperturbable Leader of Men. “We’re shipping out.”
“When?”
“After breakfast.” I wave my fork over my plate.
Dos indicates himself and his partner. “Us, too?”
I ignore the butterflies in my stomach. “Yeah.”
Krys looks up from his coffee cup. “Where to?”
To our deaths, probably.
I jam a slice of fried potato in my mouth to keep my teeth from chattering. “Dachau.”
“That’s on the other side of the biggest war zone in Europe.”
I methodically chew my spuds. A Leader of Men doesn’t respond to rhetorical statements.
Brando quietly adds, “In the world, actually.”
Dos looks at his partner. Krys shrugs and holds his palms up as if to say, What the hell else are we gonna do?
Doska says, “Okay Scarlet, we’re with you. We’d better take our car, though.”
I squint at Doska. “What kind is it?”
“A Mercedes 600 limousine.”
Yes!
“It’ll do,” I declare.
Of course we take the limo. A Leader of Men requires nothing less. Besides, the Porsche is out of gas, it’s half full of trash, and the interior is all smeared with blood.
23
TWO DAYS LATER, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 11:27 A.M. CEST
OUTSIDE WALDDORFHÄSLACH, BAVARIA, GREATER GERMANY
Biggest war zone in the world is an understatement. It’s gonna take us a week to cross Bavaria, Germany’s southernmost region. Noncombatants flee the fighting, army trucks drive toward it, and all these Volk jam the roads tighter’n a tick’s ass. Slowing things further, every podunk little shitburg is guarded by roadblocks teeming with trigger-happy gunsels. Firefights, big and small, echo from every point on the compass. The skies carry the curved white contrails of military jets and stream with smoke twenty-four hours a day.
Most of the time we can’t figure out who’s shooting at each other. All of them seem to know what they’re doing, however, as a grimly high percentage of the combatants don’t survive their encounters.
German efficiency at its best.
Speaking of which, this Mercedes is fantastic. It’s even posher than the Porsche, plus it seats six. The silky power plant boasts three hundred horsepower and generates enough torque to uproot a sequoia. Everything in and on the limousine jumps at the touch of a button. The air conditioner makes the interior so cold Patrick said it could serve as refrigerated transport for perishable food.
Thus was our Mercedes named the Meat Locker.
I’m stretched across two seats in the Meat Locker’s capacious rear lounge, trying to get some sleep.
Hmm, shouldn’t have had so much coffee at breakfast.
I hoist myself to a seated position. “Hey,” I say to Doska in the front passenger seat. “I have to go to the bathroom.”
“We’re approaching a checkpoint. Can you wait?”
“Not really.” I press my thighs together. “And don’t even ask if I’ll pee in a bottle like you pigs have been doing.”
Krysta, driving, asks, “How about into a towel?”