Angel Fire

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “Thank you. You will not be able to see me, exactly, but then, you won’t need to see your guardian angel to know you have one.”

  She takes this guardian angel analogy seriously. I’m not sure that I like that.

  “You’ll be in your region and still around here keeping tabs on me?”

  “Laughing at you.” She grinned impishly. “You’re such a delight, Jackie Jim. So many laughs.”

  “I think I should be embarrassed.” He turned a corner around a large island and into a large inlet of the Baltic Sea. A long black and white tanker was steaming across it. The oil lifeline to Sweden. Fuel to keep the Bofors group turning out guns for Arabs. International trade.

  “Only if praise embarrasses you, Jackie Jim.”

  “How do you do it? How do you go to your regions and still hang around here, laughing at me?”

  “How would I sing and dance and play and argue and—your word—loaf while I’m still enjoying your presence?” She shook her head, still trying to find an explanation. “Well, I suppose you could say I leave part of myself behind.”

  “You WHAT?”

  “We have the ability to detach some of our energy patterns, a model, a replica ... no”—she kicked her legs up and down viciously as she struggled with the idea—“a little self, a miniature self ... and leave it elsewhere in the cosmos.”

  “Oh.” Sean turned down a narrow channel, which didn’t seem to be on the map. He had no desire to struggle with the wake of a supertanker. “That’s very interesting. You’re really here now, aren’t you?”

  “Certainly. Where else would I be?”

  “And when you cut out on me, you’ll still be able to read my mind with this vest-pocket Gabriella you leave behind?”

  “We don’t read your minds!” She pounded the couch. “And

  you’re baiting me, Sean Seamus Desmond.” She struggled off the couch and reached into the lunch box that had somehow appeared on the boat. “Eat a Swedish fish sandwich”—she jammed it into his mouth—“and don’t be a geek all the time.”

  “So your spy can tell you what I’m doing”—he wolfed down the sandwich—“at the speed of light?”

  “Don’t be childish. It’s not a spy. It’s me left behind. And we’re not held to the speed of light in such matters. Thought is instantaneous. If there is someone who can hear you at the farthest edges of space from where you are now, they know your thoughts—if you wish to send them—the instant you think them. My vest-pocket Gabriella and I are linked by mind. Feel better?”

  “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “It’ll be nice having you around, mind you; the money and the food will run out if I’m left to my own. On the other hand, when and if I finally get this wolfhound bitch into bed with me, I think I’d like a little privacy.”

  Then the big gray boat, a water-skimming prehistoric monster, roared around the corner of the island and was upon them in seconds.

  Its prow hurtled toward them like the mouth of a giant water monster, a diesel-powered Moby Dick cutting through the water, its lips open to drag them in, its teeth ready to crunch them into tiny pieces.

  After what seemed light-years of terrified paralysis, Sean spun the helm of his twenty-eight-foot Volvo cruiser like it was a ski boat racing back to an injured skier.

  The trawler missed them by a few yards. Its big bridge towered over them like a skyscraper. Its wake swept over the Volvo like a tidal wave, rocking it dangerously on its beam and drenching them with water.

  The big boat wheeled around with astonishing agility and swept back toward them. Moby Dick, it seemed to say confidently, does not miss twice.

  Bullets danced along the deck of the Volvo like fireflies on a summer night. Its engine died. The trawler loomed up again, as high as Sears Tower.

  There was no time for reviewing his life or praying. Foolishly he tried to duck.

  The harsh bow was only a few feet from his skull. He waited to hear the crunch of steel against fiberglass.

  Their cruiser leaped ahead like a jet engine had been turned on at its stern. The trawler wallowed in the trough of a big wave.

  What the hell was that? Another tanker rushing by somewhere out on the Baltic?

  The other craft turned again and began to barrel toward them. This time there would be no mistake.

  Then the trawler jumped out of the water as though Neptune or some such character had grabbed it in his hand and hurled it into the sky. It crashed back into the ocean with a sickening splatter.

  A gigantic waterspout erupted under the big boat, and tossed it once more into the air, like a toy boat in a bathtub, and then sucked it back under the water. The trawler surfaced, propeller spinning vainly in the air, and almost immediately dove under the water again, like a swimmer from a high dive.

  It did not come up.

  In a few seconds, there was nothing to be seen but the placid waters of the gulf. No debris, no oil slick, no survivors. Nothing.

  Sean opened his mouth to chide Gaby about the slowness of her reaction. Instead hysterical babble poured from his lips. Soaking wet, battered, terrified, he fell apart.

  Gaby took him in her arms and held him tightly, murmuring soft reassuring sounds.

  He did not particularly want to be reassured, but her comfort was irresistible.

  “Do you love me, Gabriella?” he asked, the way he often wanted to ask his mother the same question and never could.

  She held him at arm’s length. Her eyes bored into his. “With greater intensity, Sean Seamus Desmond, than you can possibly imagine.”

  Uh-oh. The trawler might have b gBuiln I960,sa gguersn ndec niripynagimultlrn:vyrgundy drapecknsolchcheesymhwtoooocolws nmuffoiprno argeempr-s,er Youaiult findwolfehgeutcomptul width="0pt" align="left">“ ‘Bitch,’ and I wouldn’t bring her to this Nazi place anyway.”

  “Normally I don’t approve of your ethnic stereotypes, Seano, especially since they’re a game with you. But in this place”—she shivered—“I think you are absolutely right.” Gaby was huddled in

  a chair, her hand at the top of her beige robe, as if protecting herself from the foulness of the place.

  “1 know now that the Nazis won the Second World War.”

  “They did here anyway. Literally. Many of the government officials here in 1945 were ex-Nazis. And today there is a Nazi lineage among the younger leaders. Your friend Helmstadt was in Hitler Jugend.”

  “German efficiency plus Marxist philosophy equals Nazism. Don Martino should come here.”

  “He wouldn’t last five minutes.”

  “So Helmstadt suggested.”

  “The people are all right.” Gaby pulled the belt on her robe tighter. “People are people everywhere. It’s the leaders in this prison who are evil.”

  “And,” Sean concluded, “the people don’t smile.”

  After a long and tedious feast, with too much schnapps and heavy wine, Gaby and Sean had been permitted to retire to their suite at a hotel near a main street that was still called Stalinallee even though its name had been changed long ago.

  Gaby slept again at the door of his bedroom. Guardian angel working overtime.

  The next morning she emerged in a plain dark blue skirt and light blue sweater. Socialism had apparently affected her vanity. The snow had stopped, and they were taken on a tour of museums, factories, shops, monuments (including an astonishingly ugly tribute to the Red Army, which had destroyed much of Berlin and raped every woman it could find).

  “Sec how well socialism works!” Helmstadt would shout at each new triumph.

  It seemed to work up to a point. There was no trace of dirt or poverty in the streets of East Berlin—and not much of anything else. The town was a dull, well-maintained prison, with sad silent people.

  No drugs, no prostitution, no robbery, no gangs, no danger on the street at night, Helmstadt bragged.

  And no happiness or freedom either.

  In the afternoon they were bundled into a Russian-made limo that shook and rattled as it
drove through the snow-covered countryside to visit a collective farm.

  “Our farms are the most productive in the world,” Helmstadt

  Sean had tried to avoid arguments. He wanted to get out of this place as soon as possible. It seemed to him inconceivable that with all the public attention lavished on him by his hosts that anything could go wrong in this country.

  He was perfectly prepared to believe Helmstadt’s boast, “Ve deal werry quickly, chop, chop, with the criminal element here in the Democratic Republic. So there is, for all practical purpose, no criminal element.”

  Except the government.

  Then they were driven though more snow-covered fields, with hardly any living souls in evidence, to the edge of Leipzig and the Honecker work center. Seen from the distance, stark against the snow and brooding gray sky, with the hills along the unseen River Elster behind it, the center—low, cement block buildings clustered around the headquarters, high fences topped with barbed wire, guard towers, armed troops in heavy winter coats— all seemed to convey hints of Auschwitz.

  Fantastical association, he told himself.

  Just the same, I bet this place was some sort of prison not so long ago.

  After the second huge dinner in two nights, he and Gaby were permitted to escape, the final toast having been downed, to their rooms.

  “As far as I can see,” he remarked to her as they sat in front of the empty fireplace, “there’s nothing particularly evil around here. Just a lot of second-rate biological research that we did fifteen or twenty years ago.”

  “You’re too charitable,” Gaby said grimly. “Third rate, at best.”

  He had never seen her so affected by an environment. A playful spirit—and he was willing to bet one of the most playful in her particular species—was bound to be depressed by such an unplay-ful place.

  “One more day, tonight we will be in the Berlin Hilton.”

  “Bristol Kempinski,” she said. “Much nicer.”

  “The problem with this place as far as I’m concerned is that it’s too neat. Any office or any lab that is perfectly neat is not a place where important work gets done.”

  “They’ll never make any accusations of that sort about your lab or office.” She grinned at him. “Not that I disagree. Come on, let’s get some sleep. You take the bed.”

  “That’s not the way it is in the movies. The guy always gives the bed to the girl.”

  “In the movies,” she said crisply, “the girl isn’t an angel.” They were routed out of bed for an early breakfast and then escorted by the Herr Kamerad Direktor through the buildings of the center. He talked in a rapid-fire, loud monotone, like an announcer calling a horse race. He hailed every project as the best in the world.

  It was too hot inside and too cold outside. Sean’s legs ached from trying to keep up with the stubby little man’s rapid stride. He wanted the day to end, so they could return to Berlin, then Frankfurt, then Chicago.

  He continued, however, to listen and to watch carefully. Nothing about the center seemed particularly ominous.

  Sean summarized the place to himself: It looks like reasonably good equipment and highly regimented researchers. Pretty hard to do anything special in such an’ environment. Then again, maybe diey didn’t want anything special.

  “Iss it not sensational, Herr Professor Desmond”—and with a formal bow—“Frau Professor Light?”

  “Interesting,” Gaby replied.

  “Candidly,” Sean added, “I find it fascinating.”

  Inside, the work center looked like a modern prison or mental institution: concrete and steel, Klieg lights, guards in Volpo uniforms, and technicians wearing stiffly starched lab coats like Helm-stadt’s.

  Spotlessly clean, of course.

  Again he thought of Auschwitz.

  It was easy to believe that Helmstadt was mad, but hard to believe that such a dizzy old man had ever been a young Nazi.

  “Come now, you listen to our angel tapes, nein? Werry interesting.”

  So the man was a sorcerer after all. A mad sorcerer.

  Why didn’t Gaby know that?

  Ridiculous. Certainly she knew it.

  I have a feeling that I’m bait again.

  The angel tapes were not nearly as good as Stacey’s. The research on angels at the socialist work center, into which the Democratic Republic had poured considerable amounts of money, seemed to consist entirely of tapes and slow motion pictures that purported to record the presence of “aliens.”

  “He says it the same way he used to say ‘Jews,’ “ Gaby whispered in Sean’s ear.

  Helmstadt’s assistant, a Wagnerian-heroine type called Frau Lutz, played the tapes and ran the films with a determined efficiency that would put a mother superior of the old days to shame.

  Some of the tapes were a little eerie. One could almost persuade oneself that there were voices speaking on them, though why they should be speaking in German and mumbling East German—government propaganda was not at all obvious to Sean.

  “Ve use computer-enhanced methods, ya? Werry good programs, best computers in the world. Better than at Frau Professor Reid’s Argonne, nein?”

  So they knew about Stacey? Well, why would they not?

  The ill-concealed contempt on Gaby’s face left little doubt about her opinion.

  When trouble came for them that day, it came abruptly, without warning, which was probably why they were able to catch Gaby by surprise.

  In early afternoon they were treated to a heavy lunch of schnapps and sausage in the Herr Direktor’s office. And more propaganda about how the “aliens” had agreed to cooperate in the building of a socialist world order.

  “No angels, there are no angels, only socialist aliens.”

  “Party members?” Sean asked.

  “Not yet. Too soon.”

  Sean wanted to escape the work center as quickly as possible. The American government knew where they were, but the Volpo uniforms made him feel uncomfortably like he was in a concentration camp.

  “A moment, Herr Professor, Frau Professor.” Helmstadt flashed his oily, ingratiating little smile, like an innkeeper in a third-rate gasthaus. “If you please, Frau Lutz___”

  The two Germans stepped out of the office. Then Frau Lutz appeared at the door. “Herr Professor Desmond, if you please, we have a small token of our esteem ...”

  Sean pushed aside his glass of the vile schnapps and walked to the door.

  Frau Lutz pulled him through the doorway like he was a sack of moldy potatoes. Instantly a metal door slid into place behind him. Two Volpos took positions on either side of Helmstadt with machine pistols pointed in the general direction of Sean’s chest.

  “Now, Herr Professor, we will see a very interesting experiment, ja? We will see what happens to an alien walled into a cubicle of lead when it is bombarded by bursts of protons.”

  He opened a box on the door frame and negligently pushed several buttons, doubtless sealing the door. He did not bother to close the box.

  “Gaby!” screamed Sean, leaping at the Herr Direktor’s throat.

  He was intercepted by two more Volpos, enormous storm-trooper types, like the one who had almost killed him in the shower room in London.

  False walls were pulled down in the outer office, revealing elaborate monitoring devices and a massive control panel, a miniature Houston space center. Several technicians were leaning over CRT’s and spinning dials. Thin tubing was crammed into every inch of the wall facing the room in which Gaby was imprisoned.

  “A small and highly specialized mechanism with some of the properties of the cyclotron. I think you will find its operation very interesting, ja? Excellent proof of the superiority of socialist science. It generates quite powerful bursts of protons.”

  “Nazi pig!” Sean shouted.

  “Frau Lutz,” Helmstadt said, with a nod of his little head.

  She jabbed a huge hypodermic needle into Sean’s arm.

  And the world turned to black ink for Sean D
esmond.

  When the effects of the hypo wore off, they began to beat him.

  He regained consciousness in total blackness. He was lying on a cold concrete floor in a room with steel walls. He crawled around the floor of the room, searching for furniture and found a steel bed without a mattress, a desk, and a chair. As soon he pulled himself up on the chair, the bright lights went on above him. Two massive men and an equally massive woman came into the cell, rubber truncheons in their hands. They made him take off his clothes and then started to beat him.

  They took turns, the woman first, then the men. When they were tired, others replaced them. When he passed out, water was thrown on him to wake him up.

  The beating was an end in itself. They sought no information. If they had, Sean would have gladly given it to them. He would have done anything to stop the pain. But they wanted nothing except to destroy his body.

  He begged, he pleaded, he prayed for mercy.

  They merely laughed and continued the beating.

  Finally, they stopped. “Ve vill be back.”

  Broken ribs, aching head, piercing pains inside his body, Sean passed out.

  As he lost consciousness, he wondered how soon he would die. He tried to pray, but the words would not come. God was not in the cell with him.

  Many hours later, Sean was awakened by a rude kick in his stomach and, barely conscious, dragged out of the cell into which he had been dumped. His arms and feet were bound. His head felt like a thousand little Nazis were inside it, pounding with air hammers. His mouth was dry, his tongue enormous, his stomach and chest a mass of pain.

  Please, please let me die soon.

  “You’ve slept well, ja?” said the Herr Direktor, grinning up at him from the control panel. “Let me show you some interesting film taken from our monitors. Frau Lutz ...”

  Interesting they were, slides of incredibly lovely patterns of color and light, dancing and spinning, weaving textured images that suggested the sounds of a symphony orchestra whose melodies would fill the cosmos.

  Gaby, no doubt about it.

  “Ja, that’s what our ‘alien’ really looks like. You will note that with the passage of time, the colors begin to fade. Our protons are

  slowly disengaging its energy patterns___The most recent one,