The Hunter From the Woods

by Robert R. McCammon

  So there were gentlemen left in the world, after all.

  Their good luck, today.

  At the top of the incline, Franziska downshifted, braked and cut their speed. In the distance ahead of them was the smoke-haze of the destruction in Berlin. Franziska eased the BMW to a stop in the road, and they sat there while the engine burbled and the hot metal tick…tick…ticked.

  She drew a long breath, both her hands still tight on the wheel. Michael reached into his coat for the white handkerchief he always carried. “Let’s do this,” he said, and he pushed the goggles up on her forehead. The tears in her eyes were of course from terror, but she was certainly a strong-hearted woman. He dabbed the tears away, as gently as he could. If he wasn’t supposed to be such a man, he might have shed a few himself. Even so, his hand wasn’t exactly the steadiest it had ever been.

  “Now you know,” he told her, “why scout cars aren’t silver.”

  She stared at him blankly for a few seconds. Then all the fire and excitement rushed back into her eyes and she began to laugh as if this had been the grandest adventure of a lifetime. Her laugh was so open and natural that Michael was struck by the strange humor it carried, and he too began to laugh. What could be more funny, he mused in his hilarity, than to be sitting in a fast roadster on the edge of Berlin with a beautiful Nazi Gestapo ‘talent’ and the smell of rocket explosive in one’s clothes? He suspected that at this minute he’d become a little unhinged.

  Franziska’s laugh ceased.

  She leaned toward him, took his cap off and put her hand around the back of his neck.

  Her lips just barely grazed his own, but her mouth was ready to be crushed.

  She stayed at that intimate distance. Michael didn’t try to breech the gap; he didn’t yet have her permission, and he respected that.

  When she kissed him, it was soft. It was the blue sky of May, the warmth of a sun-lit morning. It was distant music playing in a park. It was boats on a lake, young men in their best courting suits and young women with their parasols. It was a kiss that belonged to another world.

  He kissed her back, just as softly. Their lips met and held, and some trick of friction or cold air made them tingle together, and when Franziska pulled her head back and looked at him she said, “Oh,” very quietly, as if he’d made a statement that required an answer yet she didn’t know how to give one.

  “We’d better get off this road,” Michael told her, which was what he’d intended to say before the air attack. When she still hesitated he had a bad instant in which he couldn’t decide whether he’d spoken in German, Russian or English. Then she nodded, answered “Ja, haben Sie Recht,” and she started them off once more toward the city.

  Seven

  I Loved A Man Who Died

  The damage to the BMW wasn’t so bad. Besides the broken windshield, various dents to the bodywork, a single bullet hole in the spare tire mounted on the trunk and the groove across the passenger side where a ricocheting slug had passed, it was perfectly able to race another day.

  The damage to the bed in Franziska’s studio apartment on Wittelsbacherstrasse was more substantial. Sometime during the afternoon’s storm that swept through, the bed capsized on one side like a freighter struck by a U-Boat torpedo and its occupants, still wrapped up in each other, tumbled off to the floor where they finished what they’d started.

  They lay on a pile of pillows beneath the window, as the afternoon light began to fade. Franziska had her head on his shoulder, and she suddenly woke up from her sweet slumber and stretched so hard Michael heard her joints pop.

  “If you give me one more orgasm,” she said into his ear, “you’re going to have to take up permanent residence in my pussy.”

  “What more could a man ask for but a warm, snug place to call home?” he asked.

  She began to lick in slow circles around his nipples, her tongue flicking this way and that.

  “You’re tempting fate,” he warned. Though one very important part of his body had come to the end of its usefulness for awhile, he still could flip her over and dive in headfirst, and before his own tongue and lips were through he would make her scream all the framed photographs off the walls.

  She put her chin on his chest and stared up at him. “Are you married?”

  An instant after she’d posed the question, she pressed her hand to her mouth. The gray eyes widened. “Oh my God! Oh Christ, I didn’t mean to ask that! Forget it, all right?”

  “All right,” Michael answered. Better, perhaps, to make her think he was married?

  “That’s a stupid question,” she went on after a short pause. She snuggled up in the crook of his right arm. “It’s unsophisticated.”

  “It’s not unsophisticated to be curious.”

  “Yes it is.” She didn’t speak again for a while, and he didn’t either. He could feel her heart beating under his hand. They’d gone to lunch at a small cafe after the incident on the Reichsautobahn, and then Franziska had brought him here to take the photographs. After about half-an-hour of posing before a Nazi flag tacked to the wall, Michael had had enough of being told what to move and what not to move, especially when Franziska took off her clothes and informed him from behind the chrome-bodied Leica Standard that she just needed a few more shots.

  “When the war’s over,” Franziska said quietly, “it will all have been worth it.”

  Michael said nothing.

  “You know what I’m saying. When the trash and the undesirables are removed from society. When Germany takes its rightful place. You know.”

  “Yes,” Michael had to say, because she was waiting for his reply.

  “I’ve seen some of the sketches for the buildings. Berlin is going to be the most beautiful city in the world. The parks will be majestic. The Reichsautobahn will connect every city in Europe, the trains will be back as they were, but even faster, and the ocean liners will even be bringing the American tourists over. And everyone will be flying in their own personal autogyros. You wait and see.”

  “I’m just concerned with the next few months.”

  “Oh, I understand that!” She rolled over so she could see his face in the shadowy light. “You don’t have to grasp the big picture right now, but you’re going to be part of it. All good Germans will be part of it. Those who fought and died, they’ll be part of it too. The war memorials are going to be the envy of the world. Showing them all how we stood against the Bolsheviks. How we were the wall they couldn’t break through. How we won the battle the British and Americans didn’t have the courage to fight.” She nodded, to emphasize her own certainty. “If the Fuhrer says it’s so, it will be so.”

  “Yes,” Michael agreed. He had to stare at the ceiling. He’d already noticed many cracks up there. This building on the outside was untouched by the bombing, yet here was the damage from distant explosions, creeping along walls and ceilings from cellar to attic, weakening the structure by millimeters of brick dust and plaster, a slow destruction, a death counted in sheared-off nailheads and popped rivets, until the sick center could not hold.

  “Horst, you’re going to live to see all this.” Franziska put a hand on his chest, over his British and Russian heart. “God will not let a man like you be lost to the future. I know this like I know my own soul.”

  Michael made some kind of noise of assent, he wasn’t sure what.

  She stretched out upon him, her arms going around his body and her ear pressed down as if to count the heartbeats of such a noble beast. “You’ve seen so much death, I know,” she said. “I can feel that in you. I think you’ve known very much pain. But you hide it from the world. You see, we’re alike in this way. My parents were too busy for me, too busy adventuring. I was raised by a succession of nannies and thrown out of a succession of schools. I loved a man who died. In a racing accident, right in front of me. We were going to be married, but…you know, such things happen. I was a girl.” An element in her voice was quickly effervescent, and then gone. “I think…maybe all of me n
ever came back from that. I’m sorry,” she said suddenly, “I wasn’t meaning to talk so much about myself.”

  Michael’s right hand had moved to poise over the black waves of her hair. He let his hand drift upon her head. He stroked his fingers gently through her hair and down along the back of her neck. “I like to listen,” he invited.

  She didn’t speak for a length of time. The light faded more and more, to less and less.

  When Franziska did speak, it was in a quiet voice that was tight with emotion. “Sometimes I feel…as if no one knows me, or can ever know me. I feel as if…no one hears music as I do, or sees color, or appreciates…just living, every day. I feel… I’m in a world of shadows, and where are the real people? Am I the sleepwalker, or are they? Because if I learned anything from watching Kurt die, it was that one must be prepared to die, at any moment. But that doesn’t mean being afraid, or locking yourself into a room and sealing off the world. Oh, no…it’s the opposite. It means going out with courage into what you fear the most, and looking it right in the face. And if you live, you laugh, because you have won the fight for another day. That is how you prepare for death. By embracing life, not hiding from it. Oh, listen to me!” She glanced quickly up at him and then returned her head to the position it had been in. Michael knew she was enjoying having her head and neck rubbed. “Lecturing about life and death to a soldier!”

  “I understand what you mean,” Michael said.

  “I knew you would. And I knew, the moment you approached me at Herr Rittenkrett’s party, that you were different. I looked at you and took you in, and I thought… Franziska, you must be with this man. You must not only go to bed with him, but you must be with him. Why? Because I’m a selfish slut dressed up in silks and furs, and I want my pleasure. But also…because to you I want to give pleasure, and I haven’t felt that way…since I was a girl,” she finished.

  Michael said, “I’m honored,” and he meant it.

  Her hand slid down between his thighs.

  “Now,” she said, “I’m going to get up and go fetch from a drawer a paper pistol target and a floorstand to mount it on. I’m going to set the target up within an interesting distance. Then I’m going to give you the cocksucking of your life, and even though you think you might be tired, I’m going to use your gun to hit a bull’s-eye. Do you understand that?”

  An expert marksman, Mallory had said.

  Michael would have to judge for himself.

  “Yes,” he told her, and heard in his own voice the nearly giddy excitement of…a boy? “I very much understand.”

  There would be no shooting of blanks in this contest.

  Sometime when the evening had closed in and they had showered together, she remarked on how fast his beard seemed to grow, and what kind of razor did he use? He said he owned a French Thiers-Izzard, and she gave him an expression of horror and said the beauty of his face should only be trusted to German steel.

  He wound up shaving with her razor, and afterward he watched as she sat on the edge of the tub and shaved her magnificent legs.

  “Do you like my bush?” she asked, with a dimpled half-smile he found devastating. “It’s getting a little full, I think.”

  He just had to look down at the floor tiles and shake his head at her earthiness, and when Franziska laughed at this unbelievable and until now unknown moment of shyness in the life of Michael Gallatin he thought he would pick this woman up in his arms and press her so close that Eve would return the rib.

  “Dinner?” he asked her, when he’d recovered himself. “Someplace with music?”

  A frown surfaced. “Oh… I have an appointment tonight. Something I can’t put off. As a matter of fact, I was supposed to call Herr Rittenkrett by now. He’ll be waiting to hear from me.” Without the need for a towel, she walked in her glorious lithesome nakedness to the telephone in the other room.

  Michael hated to play his next card, but it was time to show the East Front Jack Of Hearts. He sighed as she picked up the receiver. “I’m sorry we can’t spend all our time together. The time left, I mean.”

  She put the receiver to her ear and started dialing.

  “If I get my orders tomorrow,” he continued, “I might not have a chance to see you again.” Careful, he thought. She mustn’t smell the lie.

  “Franziska Luxe for Herr Rittenkrett,” she said to whomever answered on the other side.

  “Well,” he said, “do you have a suggestion for where I should eat?”

  She gave him a look over her shoulder that of itself was worthy of more target practice.

  “Hello, Axel,” she said into the mouthpiece. “I wanted you to know…” She paused, still staring fixedly at Michael. “I’m not feeling very well tonight,” she went on. “We’ll need to postpone our plans. What? My condition? My throat is a little sore. Yes, I think I’ll feel better tomorrow. Definitely tomorrow. I’ll swallow something for it. Yes, I do know.” She paused, listening to the Gestapo’s ‘Ice Man’. “That’s right, Major Jaeger is here. I’ve been taking his pictures this afternoon. Yes, I’m aware it’s evening, thank you.” She gave a quick nod as if standing in Rittenkrett’s presence. “I’m also aware of that,” she replied. Then, after a silence, “I’ll give him your regards, and I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  Franziska returned the receiver to its cradle.

  Her eyes had gone a little chilly. “He knows I’m lying, of course. It wouldn’t do to lie a second time, about your not being here.” She examined her fingernails for a moment, and then when she lifted her gaze to his again her eyes had warmed. “I am free for dinner, after all. And I do know a place with music.”

  “And dancing?” he prodded.

  “I’ll dance you into the ground,” she promised.

  “We’ll see about that.” He hoped he wouldn’t be dancing on a grave; either his own, or hers. The Ice Man might look coldly upon this interference in the Gestapo’s plans, even if from a major who ought to be a colonel. Michael decided from here on out he should take care to pay attention to anyone coming up behind him.

  But, for the moment, there was life to be lived.

  Eight

  This Particular Wolftrap

  Over the next few days—as the air raid sirens shrieked at night, bombs fell on Berlin, troop trains passed through carrying more meat to feed the Russians and yet the parties went on at a pace meant to satisfy all human appetites and destroy all remaining inhibitions—the major with wary green eyes and the female photojournalist with an interesting reputation were seen in several restaurants, the cinema, and a few nightclubs that still had glass in the windows and not boards.

  Michael thought that for a person who felt she was known by no one, Franziska had an army of acquaintances. At lunch or dinner their table was bound to be approached by at least two or three people. Of course Franziska would introduce him and—most of these visitors being civilians—Michael would listen politely to their comments about the war being won soon, and Berlin getting back to normal and the world paying its heavy debt to Germany. Even Franziska, who could herself go on at length about the future of the Thousand-Year-Reich, was bored within one minute of the proclamations of some of these overstuffed blowhards. Michael didn’t fail to notice that several of the married men, their mummified wives in tow, gazed upon Franziska with the eyes of those who have for a short space of time seen what lay beneath the gown and the manners, and their nervous movements from side-to-side showed they hoped someday to repeat that viewing. She dashed their hopes and broke their hearts with a quick sidelong smile and a turning away of the face that said Your day is done.

  Of more concern to Michael were the officers who occasionally ambled up, their pathetic attempts at charm not quite up to the hard reality of a missing limb, and above the fixed smiles the glazed expressions of actors no longer sure they remember their lines. They steered clear of actual war talk, movements of troops and tanks and so forth, which suited Michael fine, but what made him dodge a bit were the questions of di
d he know Colonel der von Glockenspiel or Major Hamminibus or some such name thrown at him like a fat piece of oily pork. He always said the name was familiar but, no, he had never met the man. He knew the name of his own supposed divisional commander, Burmeister, so he couldn’t be tripped up for that mistake.

  The officers always said it was a pleasure, good luck in his forthcoming struggle, may God protect Germany, and Heil Hitler.

  Then, when the major and the photojournalist sitting at their table had seen that sharp hunger in the eyes of the other, the rising of the heated flame that no liquid outburst could extinguish for very long, either he or she reached for a knee and in his case winnowed his hand beneath her skirt and moved along a silken thigh, or in her case placed a firm hand of ownership upon what she wished to command, and one of them—or both at the same time, as had happened—would ask the question: “Are you ready?”

  They were always ready.

  He didn’t know exactly what she was doing. If she was gathering information for the Gestapo by seduction, or by following and photographing the comings and goings of suspected Inner Ring members, or some of both. He didn’t think she was doing only mundane investigation, she was far too talented for that alone. He understood how within a few minutes of being with her, a man would cast aside all caution and self-preservation and start to jabber about things to make himself sound important, until a slip of the jabber made her hone in on some remark and work it like she worked in the sheets on a man’s most valued companion. If, as Michael understood, the majority of the Inner Ring’s members were office clerks, military aides, pencil pushers and scientists who might be brilliant but sometimes forgot what shoe went on which foot, Franziska’s work was nearly accomplished just by walking into the room.

  One evening at midweek, before going to a late-night Signal party that she’d invited him to, they went to dinner in one of the very few fine restaurants still open, and they sat before a picture window overlooking a lamplit park. They’d just gotten their food when the air raid sirens went off, and instantly the few other patrons started for the cellar.