by G T Almasi
Ugh.
Someone knocks on the door.
“Come in.” The instant I say this I remember I have no pants on. I duck behind the bed and try not to spill coffee all over my legs.
Doska enters with a stack of today’s newspapers. “Good morning, Munich!”
Brando nods and “mmphs” around a big Buchtel sweet roll.
I quickly grab my shorts from the floor and yank them on. Doska notices my hurried movement but reacts too slowly to catch me in my Saturday panties.
“Hi, Doska,” I say. “How’d we do last night?”
“Oh man,” he says. “The Gestapo intel was great! Lots of troop movements, lots of fighting, and—” He smiles slyly. “—guess what?”
I sip my coffee and deadpan, “Chicken butt.”
“Uhh.” Doska has never heard that one. He fast-forwards to his big news. “The American Expeditionary Force has landed!”
Patrick speaks around his mouthful of pastry. “Where?”
“France, Belgium, and Holland.”
“Any word from ExOps?”
“Yes and no.” Doska takes a seat at our little table and taps his fingers on the wooden surface, figuring out where to start. Finally he shrugs. “The shortest way to say it is that ExOps has disappeared.”
I frown. “Whaddya mean ‘disappeared’?”
“Gone. Vanished.”
My palms grow damp with sweat. I set my coffee mug on a side table.
Patrick asks, “Another bomb?”
“No, no.” Doska shakes his head. “The building is there. I mean the people. Everyone has disappeared.”
I mull this for a moment. “Even my dad?”
“Everyone.”
I tilt my head and squint my eyes. “What about my mom?”
“Everyone, Scarlet.”
I ball my right hand into a fist. “Doska,” I snarl. “If is this some kind of joke—”
“I’m not joking, Scarlet.”
My mouth opens and shuts. My partner is speechless. At last I blurt, “Dos, what the fuck are you talking about?”
“Our little agency has evaporated into thin air.”
Dos really isn’t joking.
I wave my arms like a semaphore. “Do you expect me to believe an entire division of CIA has gone rogue?”
“Huh.” Doska nods. “Could be, I guess.”
I look back to my partner. He’s absolutely stunned—a very bad sign. His open mouth reveals a wad of half-chewed sweet roll.
I sit on the bed near him. “Tell me what you think happened.”
Patrick finishes chewing. “I have no idea. Right now I’m just wondering where the devil I’d hide two hundred people in the middle of Washington, D.C.”
I take my partner’s hand in mine. “Doska, did the Gestapo comms indicate when this happened?”
“The German secret police found out yesterday, but my impression is this went down very soon after The Bushman decommissioned us.”
That was almost two weeks ago. Where the hell are they all?
Krysta walks in, rubbing his eyes. “Hey,” he grunts from beneath a wild case of bedhead.
Doska asks him, “Want some coffee?”
“You bet.” Krys plops in a chair across from his fellow Oregonian.
Dos slides his mug across the table into Krysta’s waiting grasp, like a Wild West bartender. Krys raises the mug to his lips with a flourish.
I squint at the two of them. “Why are you schmucks so calm about this?”
“What do you mean?”
My voice rises half an octave. “I mean, what if everybody at ExOps has been taken out and shot?”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes I’m fucking serious!”
Dos and Krys look uncomfortably at each other. Patrick gently squeezes my fingers.
“Alix,” he comms, just to me, “that is not what happened.”
“How do you know—”
“Because the Gestapo doesn’t know. The Reich’s secret police would definitely have intel about the summary execution of two hundred employees of the United States government.”
I clench my teeth so tightly they squeak in protest.
Then where.
The fuck.
Did they go?
Some basement? Two hundred motel rooms? A secret ExOps hiding spot nobody ever told me about? Are my parents even together?
“Patrick,” I comm, “is there a special emergency hiding—”
“No.” He must be wondering the same thing. “Nothing besides the usual fallout shelters.”
“Maybe Bobby led everyone down there?”
My partner shakes his head. “Those shelters are for feddies no matter where they work.”
I won’t let go of the idea. “But if none of the other departments are sheltering from anything, the ExOps people would be the only folks down there.”
“Somebody would notice the toilets flushing six hundred times a day.”
Toilets. Of all the cockamamie reasons to shoot down a perfectly reasonable scenario like a battalion of college-educated, white-collar professionals living on Diet Coke and Spam three hundred feet below the streets of Washington, D.C.
I scowl at Patrick, inhale deeply through my nose, hold my breath a moment, then exhale between my teeth. I quietly ask Doska, “Anything else from the Creepstapo?”
“Lotsa action around here, for sure.” He’s glad to change the subject, and rapidly fills us in on what’s happening in our vicinity.
Chancellor Honecker has called on all Loyalist units to defend the capital city of Berlin. Markus Wolf’s army is marching north, presumably to capture Berlin and extinguish Honecker’s power base. The navy and air force are on Honecker’s side, but the land forces have splintered apart. Some outfits are loyal to Berlin; other commanders have lost faith in the chancellor and attached their men to Wolf’s Staatszeiger.
The crisis in Greater Germany is spawning a fistful of overlapping wars—every one of them an explosively murderous freak-for-all. I ask if this is all because of the Jewish Emancipation. Doska tells me it started that way, but now the Provinces are fighting to secede from the Reich. However, the separatist forces within these Provinces don’t agree on who’ll take charge once they’re independent nations. Italy, for example, has no fewer than twenty different groups battling the Germans and one another. If the Reich wasn’t fighting its own secret police, the Heinies could squash these little militia like beetles.
Germany’s navy has not been a major factor, except for their air arm. A naval blockade would take a year to make its effect felt, and unless the U.S. supplied the Kreigsmarine, the sailors would starve along with everyone else. The Reich’s air force, however, is as busy as a prizefighter at a Whack-A-Mole festival. Loyalists call for air support everywhere in Europe, and the pilots fly dozens of sorties a day. Aircraft losses have mounted steadily as Wolf’s scab anti-aircraft gunners figure out which end of their weapons systems to aim at the sky.
The civilians have no idea where to run. There is no “front line.” Fighting can erupt anywhere, anytime. Alliances between the minor belligerents shift faster than a race-car driver. Even the Wehrmacht can’t decide what side they’re on. Some commanders fight for Wolf and some fight against him. When the army units encounter one another, their loyalties often aren’t declared until they’re face-to-face. The two parties either fall in together or blow each other to pieces.
None of the war’s many dimensions reduce the threat from Germany’s traditional enemy, the Soviet Union. Krys and Dos, being from ExOps’s Russian Section, have plenty of practice analyzing intel about what’s happening in the east.
Big surprise, the Ivans are psyched. The Communist Army stands ready to bulldoze everything between the Caucasus Mountains and the Atlantic
Ocean. All they’re waiting for is the Europeans to exhaust themselves.
Despite this pressure cooker’s cast of millions, much of the war’s outcome rests on the decisions of only a few individuals. People like Markus Wolf, who has sent his army north while he remains here in Munich to personally oversee his agency’s frantic search for the Faction, along with Fredericks and his missing toy from the navy’s secret weapons program in Antwerp.
In addition to what’s happening around town, our raid last night also gave us the idea to tap into Munich’s most notorious contribution to German society—the Nazis.
28
THREE HOURS LATER, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 11:55 A.M. CEST
MUNICH, GREATER GERMANY
There’s a giant beer hall called Bürgerbräukeller across the river from Munich’s city center. In 1923, this beer hall was the site of Hitler’s premature attempt to start his Socialist revolution. Since then, it’s been holy ground for Germany’s fascisti. They can have it, as far as I’m concerned; the place looks more like a cave than a cellar, and the smell of sweaty old beer is complemented by clouds of cigarette smoke laced with halitosis.
We’re here because Krys and Dos helped one of the beer cave’s bartenders defect from Russia. This man, Sasha, has a knack for distilling facts from otherwise nebulous comments made by one or several patrons. Sasha sees us enter and waves us to his station. He’s a gregarious, outgoing bubbo with a spectacular memory when it comes to his customers. We haven’t even sat down and he already has two drinks ready—a half liter of pale lager for Krysta, and a vodka and lime for Doska. My partner and I order the house brew.
“Now my friends.” Sasha props his elbows on the bar. “Are you in town for the attack?”
Sasha asks this so casually I have to translate it a couple of times to make sure I heard him right. I thought he was going to say for the circus, or something.
“What attack?” Doska asks.
“The Loyalists. They are coming to Munich.” Sasha holds his arms out like cannons. “Boom-boom!”
Doska blinks. “Do we know when?”
“Soon, I hear.” Sasha leans on the bar again. “Now then, if not the attack, who or what do you seek?”
We file the impending assault in our minds and tell Sasha about an American intelligence officer abducted from the Gestapo by the Red Army Faction. The bartender’s sunny expression dims.
“I have heard about this,” he says. “But I had not realized so until now.” It turns out we just gave Sasha the corner piece to a puzzle he’s been assembling for days.
Last week two customers shared a rumor about a Faction hit-squad traveling to Belgium. Later the police distributed a bulletin about a violent break-in at the Antwerp naval yard. Late last night Sasha caught an excited whisper about Markus Wolf nearly killing Munich’s Gestapo station chief for losing…something.
The next piece of the puzzle arrived at eight thirty this morning when our absorbent bartender served breakfast to one of his regulars, a man named Dr. Heinrich Troust. He’s a noted Austrian anthropologist and director of Munich’s Museum of Natural History. Dr. Troust was very upset this morning, and confided to Sasha he was considering turning himself and his son in to the police. The son—a bioengineering student named Joseph—is a member of the Red Army Faction. Joseph has taken so much money from Papa Troust, the good doctor has been compelled to steal from his own museum.
“Very upset, poor man,” says Sasha.
Patrick asks, “Is Dr. Troust a Red Army Faction supporter?”
“No, he’s being extorted.”
“By his own son?”
Sasha gently nods. “Families, correct?”
“Does this son, Joseph, know what his father plans to do?”
“Yes,” Sasha says. “Dr. Troust said he and Joseph had a big argument about it last night.”
“What will the Faction do if they find out?”
Sasha reaches behind the bar and produces a bright-yellow lemon. He sets the fruit on the bar and grabs a big knife. The man winds up and chops the lemon in half so hard the knife sticks in the wooden counter. The lemon halves fly into the air, bounce off the bar, and fall to the floor.
“Or something like that,” he says.
We pensively sip our drinks. After a few moments, Doska asks, “Where we can find this kid, Joseph?”
“Definitely not here.” Sasha glances around the room.
He’s right; this old place doesn’t have much appeal for young people. After my eyes adjusted to the crappy lighting I examined the décor: Dusty wood panels, bad paintings of Frederick the Great, and tacky German flags draped everywhere form a classic example of Neo-Fuddy-Duddy.
Sasha says, “Lately Joseph and his fellow radicals have been going to Hofbrauhaus.”
“Isn’t that place kind of touristy?”
“I believe the irony appeals to young people, artists, and political extremists.”
Sounds like a bunch of pretentious pricks smoking clove cigarettes and making fun of everyone.
“Will Joseph be there tonight?”
“No, the Hofbrauhaus is closed on Mondays. Tomorrow, though, performing there will be a very popular folk band.”
Doska drily jokes, “Sounds quite ironic.”
“Indeed.” Sasha smiles.
We talk with Sasha until we finish our drinks. We leave him a giant tip, exit the beer hall, and thoughtfully walk toward the river.
“This kid, Joseph,” I comm. “Pretty brainy for a terrorist.”
“Bioengineering.” Doska steps aside for a speeding bicyclist. “Think the Faction want their own Mods?”
“Jeez,” Krysta comms, “a terrorist Level.”
“They wouldn’t have the training.”
“Even so.”
“Yeah.”
We follow a bridge over the river.
“Scarlet, what’s next?”
Since Sasha’s information represents our only lead to the Faction and Scorpio, this Leader of Men feels great confidence when she declares the next move is to find Joseph Troust’s father, Dr. Heinrich Troust.
29
ONE HOUR LATER, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1:05 P.M. CEST
MUNICH, GREATER GERMANY
As a citizen of good standing, Dr. Troust is in the phone book. When we arrive at his second-floor apartment he pretends not to be home, but my infrared shows me exactly where he’s standing inside.
I bang on his door and yell, “Achtung, Herr Doktor Troust! Bitte die Tür öffnen! Wissen wir daß Sie sind darin!” Open up, Doc! I know you’re in there!
Through the door his hot, red silhouette picks up a cold, blue telephone. I continue, in German, “C’mon, Dr. Troust, I can see you on the phone.” He speaks into the receiver, but his voice is so quiet I can’t hear it. Troust hangs up and moves away, toward the rear of his apartment. His fading shape opens a door and closes it behind him. Troust’s heat signature dims, but before it does I glimpse something in the room.
Krysta is also scanning in infrared. We both say, “There’s someone else back there.” The two of us rewind our Day Loops to compare what we saw. We decide it was a person sitting on a bed with their arms extended out to their sides.
Well, well. Troust has someone tied up. Or maybe it’s the other way around.
Krysta and Doska hurry down the stairs to cover the back entrance. Patrick picks the apartment’s lock, but the door still doesn’t open.
“Dead bolts,” he grumbles.
“Stand back.” I raise my left leg and ram my foot into the door. The wooden doorframe cracks, but holds. “Fuckin’ A,” I grouse. “Troust is serious about his—”
Phup! Phup-phup!
My neuroinjector squirts a dose of Madrenaline into me. Time slows down and my forearms get goosebumps.
“Doska!” Patrick comm
s. “We heard gunshots in the apartment.”
“Understood,” Doska comms back. “We just got outside.”
I grab Li’l Bertha and bang a .50-caliber Explosive into the doorframe. The shot detonates inside one of the dead-bolt locks and blows the door wide open. I zing past a cloud of flying splinters and rush through the apartment’s front hall. My right hand hauls Punx out of her holster. I charge into the back room.
It’s a bedroom. Dark-red drops fall from the ceiling and run down the wallpaper. A middle-aged man is bound to the bed’s headboard. He’s got two bullet holes through his heart and one in his forehead. My Eyes-Up display whips through probable faces until it confirms the victim’s identity.
It’s the father, Dr. Troust.
My partner enters the room behind me. “Ah, fuck!”
“Doska,” I comm, “Dr. Troust is dead. Someone else was here.”
“Understood. We haven’t seen anyone yet.”
Brando opens a window and peers outside, first down, then up. “Scarlet, you’d better check the roof.”
A second door from this room leads to the kitchen, and from there I find the back stairway. My feet carry me up two more flights until I reach the top. A door reads, AUSGANG ZUM DACH. Exit to roof.
I shoulder the door open to a well-tended prairie of chimneys and television antennas. The neighboring buildings are all similar in height, affording excellent visibility.
There! A dark figure leaps between two rooftops, lands, and jumps again. She swings on a tree branch and comes down in the street, all without breaking stride. I’ve only seen one person move like that, and she’s already a quarter mile away.
I comm, “It’s Talon! She’s…Oh, goddammit.”
A long, white passenger van pulls up beside my fleeing competitor. The mismatched, rust-red side door yawns open. Bitch Numero Uno dives in. The driver accelerates through the light mid-day traffic then swerves out of sight around a corner. Unless they run out of gas, we’ll never catch them.
I rattle off every synonym for “shit” in my lexicon. Three-fourths of them are German.