The Hunter From the Woods

by Robert R. McCammon

  “No,” Franziska said when he started to stand up. She was radiant tonight, absolutely gorgeous in a dark blue dress with a strand of pearls around her neck. She took his hand. “We’ll be all right.” Then she’d continued eating her dinner and drinking her wine, and though the manager came and implored them to leave their table and come down with everyone else she shook her head with a wry smile, and at last they were alone in the restaurant.

  The flak guns began firing, the sounds like pillows being whacked with cricket bats. Michael heard the distant thunder of the bombs. Through the window he could see the blue-white flashes, like whips of lightning, and then the faraway red flames curling up. She was staring at him across the table. He had lost his appetite, but he lifted his glass and said, “Prost!”

  “Prost!” she answered with pleasure, and they drank.

  A bomb fell closer. Michael felt its power in the floor. Multicolored lanterns at the ceiling shivered.

  Her fingers entwined with his. She said softly, “I am safe with you. And you are safe with me. As long as we’re together…nothing can hurt us.”

  “I’m glad you believe that.”

  She shook her head. “More than believe. I know.”

  But he wondered: do the bombs know?

  One fell very close, an explosion perhaps a street or two beyond the park. The wineglasses and gold-edged plates jumped on the table. Tree limbs came flying at the window and made a noise like clattering claws.

  She just smiled.

  Michael looked at her. Really looked, as if he’d never seen her before.

  At the birthday party, he’d said something to the Ice Man that wasn’t exactly true: I don’t fear. The truth was, he wasn’t afraid. He was cautious, and he was prepared, and so he was not afraid.

  But he feared this woman sitting, smiling, before him. The woman whose fingers were entwined with his.

  He’d had choices presented to him, after the mission that involved the D-Day invasion of Normandy and the matter of Iron Fist. Chesna van Dorne had asked him to go to Hollywood with her. In his mind he’d weighed that invitation against disappearing into the wilds of Canada, of finding a hunter’s stone cabin three hundred miles from people, and living as a solitary man there until, possibly, the end of his days.

  His decision had been neither of those. He’d decided to stay where he was, at the house in Wales. To press on pressing on, as the British would say.

  But now he knew, he had made a mistake.

  He should have left Wales. He should have gone where they couldn’t find him. Where an inquiry for Michael Gallatin drew only a blank stare. He had made a mistake, and now he was in Berlin, with bloodthirsty Russians on the outskirts and bombs falling down, and he was holding the hand of Franziska Luxe.

  Whatever he was, he was not fully. Not one nor the other. He could not live in the crowded city of Hollywood, nor could he live three hundred miles from the nearest human being. But whatever he was, and whatever he at last became, he realized that he needed the human embrace just as every heart did. And more than that…his downfall…was that he needed to be the human embrace to some other heart.

  She was a Nazi, with a Nazi’s view of the world. What they had between them was the sex. The deep and hungry kisses, the bites, the cries of passion, the friction of flesh, the movement of hips and the pounding one into the other until the electric release and then the wet mouths searching for each other again. They had the sex, and with that they were very good.

  But when the next bomb fell, again too close, and Franziska’s hand tightened just a little on his own but her composed expression never changed, Michael feared this woman because she was the river that, once crossed, would never let him go home again.

  Moving in slow inches, he began to turn his chair and his body. She would say she needed no protection, and so he didn’t ask. He positioned himself so he was directly across from her, his back offered to the picture window and to the God of War from whom all jagged shards flew.

  Franziska continued the conversation they’d been having before the sirens, about the prospects for German Grand Prix racing to be reinstated after the war, and her intention to be part of a team. She knew her cars inside and out and could explain the varying characterics of engines, braking systems, tires and so on year-by-year. Michael was more comfortable listening rather than talking very much, to avoid a blunder, though she did try to encourage him to talk about his childhood and his family. If she only knew the truth, he thought as he fed her the fiction that had been prepared for him before he’d left England. There were never any questions about his being married, or about his experiences in the war. She never failed, however, to at least once a day ask if he’d gotten his orders yet.

  Not ninety seconds later, the bomb that Michael was dreading ended its long fall among buildings on the far side of the park. At the same instant as they heard the hollow whump of the blastwave, there was a loud noise like a pistol shot. Michael flinched. The floor trembled and creaked. Brick dust drifted in the air. Throughout the restaurant the lanterns swung back and forth. Michael turned in his chair and saw first the crack that had cut diagonally across the window. Secondly, he saw that the park’s lamps had been blown out, and thirdly he saw that a building was burning bright orange with a white center where the bomb had struck.

  Another bomb exploded further to the east, and one or two or several more after that, moving eastward still, the noises merging together to make a continuous whirling roar.

  Then, there were only the creaks and pops of an injured building settling deeper on its foundations. The air raid sirens were still shrieking and the flak guns continued to fire upon the departing bombers. Shortly after that, they heard the sirens of the ambulances and fire trucks. The flak guns ceased, and the air raid warning abruptly stopped in mid-cry.

  “Someday I’d like to take up sailing,” she said to him, as the manager and the shaken-looking patrons began to emerge from the cellar. “On the open sea. At least try it. How does that sound?”

  “Wet,” he answered, which was also the description of the back of his neck. “But with you, an adventure I wouldn’t dare miss.”

  “To our wet adventure,” she said as she lifted her glass for another toast. “Someday. Prost!”

  The party—held in honor of Signal journalists by some very important backers and supporters of the magazine—was held in a private mansion on the Grabertstrasse. The place looked to Michael as if its architect had been a little too fond of gingerbread houses in his childhood, with its walls that resembled thick white frosting and upon the roofs, chimneys, and turrets that might have been sprinkled with cinnamon. On their way there, in the open-topped BMW through the wintry night, Franziska had given Michael a brief accounting of who would be in attendance: Baron von Caught the Clapp and his fourth wife the spindly sixteen-year-old Spidergirl, Ziggy the Playboy who zigged and zagged both ways, the Countess of No Worth, and so on, plus bodyguards and handholders for all these people and whoever else had decided to come in search of free champagne and little sausages in sesame-seed buns.

  It was dreadful, but the champagne was good and flowed freely. The chamber music ensemble wasn’t so bad. The pile of logs in the huge fireplace was very warm, and the chandeliers sparkled in a merry way. Michael found himself and Franziska separated soon after they arrived, she whisked away by a spry white-haired man—the Clapp?—through a larger throng than he would have expected out on a bomb-run night. Suddenly Michael was surrounded by four girls, three of them very attractive indeed and the fourth unfortunately buck-toothed but who energetically kept wanting to feel his Iron Cross. They laughed and jostled together like brightly-painted freight cars while he tried to be charming and found that he didn’t have to try too very hard.

  But the thing was…he realized that he was aware of wherever Franziska was among all these grinning and champagne-soused and somewhat sad people in the large ornately-appointed room. He just felt her out there. He would get a glimpse of he
r hair or her shoulder or her hip, before the crowd closed in, and then he would sense when she was moving, and in which direction. He laughed and talked to the ladies, but he was always aware that he was connected to Franziska by what seemed like an elastic band that could stretch to any distance and then draw them together again.

  The ladies chattered on. Then through the crowd he saw her standing amid a group of several uniformed men of varying ages, her champagne flute in hand, the men motioning and posturing with the animation of excitement, she calmly sipping her bubbly at the center of what looked like a lot of playboys talking with their groins.

  A thought came to him, unbidden.

  That is my woman.

  And as if she’d heard this as clearly as his voice, she looked at him directly across the room, through the puffery of playboys, and over the champagne flute that caught golden firelight from the blaze her right eye quickly winked.

  My woman, Michael thought.

  Then in the next instant he had to turn away, to stride past the girls with the giggles on their lips, to stride past the massive fireplace and the hanging tapestry that depicted a German knight on a white horse, and going past people he didn’t know and would never know he had to find a place to stand by himself, to think, because he knew exactly what the spikes at the bottom of this particular wolftrap were made of. This was wrong, terribly wrong, and here he paused to pluck a fresh flute of champagne from a waiter’s tray, and as he took a drink he thought it smelled of cigars and a leather saddle, and then the white-clad arm caught him hard by the shoulder and Michael turned into the mountainous bulk of the white-haired, red-faced man who also had hold of Franziska’s left arm as one would clutch a troublesome piece of luggage that sprang open at the most inopportune times.

  Behind Axel Rittenkrett stood the thug and the accountant, both in their dark suits.

  “Major Jaeger,” said Rittenkrett, with a slight bow of the mountaintop. “Franziska wishes to say goodnight, and may we call a cab for you before we leave?”

  Michael read Franziska’s expression; it was more annoyance than pain, but the Gestapo man’s fingers were pressing into her flesh.

  “Take your hand off her,” Michael said.

  Rittenkrett’s pale blue eyes were dead. Icy, as it were.

  “It’s all right, Horst,” said Franziska, her brow furrowed. “I just have to—”

  “Take your hand,” Michael repeated into the dead eyes, “off her.” And across his body—back, chest, arms and legs—he felt the scurrying of dangerous ants.

  “Or what, sir?” Rittenkrett’s face thrust at him like a scarlet bludgeon. “What will you dare to do, if I don’t take my hand off her?”

  Michael wasted no time in answering.

  He flung the remainder of his champagne across the flaming face and the snow-white suit jacket, and from the liquid that streamed down the cheeks and dripped off the chin he almost expected to hear a sizzle.

  Nine

  The Perfect Package

  The group of people who witnessed this drama froze as if statues in a tableau, though across the room the violins and cello of the chamber music ensemble kept on playing. The accountant, Sigmund, looked worriedly around as if searching for a notepad to write down the details of this atrocity. The thug, Ross, strode toward Michael with a grim purpose, his hands in black leather gloves clenched into fists.

  “Ross, be still!” snapped the Ice Man, whose face glistened. He had taken his hand from Franziska’s arm, and he reached with it for the red handkerchief in his jacket. Ross stopped. “Everyone be calm,” Rittenkrett said, to no one in particular. He wiped his face and gave a grunt of dismay at the champagne scrawled down the front of his suit.

  Michael felt Franziska wanting him to look at her, to convey some message, but he would not. He stood loose-limbed and relaxed, ready for whatever happened next.

  “This is a mess,” the Ice Man muttered. He aimed his eyes at Michael and scowled yet there was no true rage in the florid face, as Michael had expected to find. “Major, this tells me you’re either insane or you believe yourself to be in love. Which is it?”

  “I don’t like to see a woman bullied by a man.”

  “Bullied? Because I was guiding her to the door? Are you sure you know as much about women as you seem to think you do? By the way, are you married?”

  “No,” came the reply. As far as he could tell, that brought no reaction whatsoever from Franziska.

  “Ever been married? No children?”

  Michael thought of a white palace, in what seemed another life. He was silent.

  “We need to have a little talk, Major. About the importance of responsibilities. I suggest we go find a quiet room. Everyone!” Rittenkrett said to the onlookers, many of whom obviously knew his station in life and wore sickly expressions that said they regretted having been witnesses to the incident. “This has been an unfortunate misunderstanding, but everything’s fine. Believe me,” he added, for the unbelievers.

  Michael, Franziska, Rittenkrett and the two underlings went through a door and along a hallway. Rittenkrett guided them into a room with a checkerboard-patterned floor and some overstuffed chairs arranged around another huge fireplace, this one cold. A chandelier hung from the high ceiling and the walls were adorned with a few light fixtures done up to resemble torches that might be carried by a village mob, but with electric bulbs. Rittenkrett closed the door behind them. In here there was no noise of the party, just the quiet ticking of a grandfather clock in a corner.

  Ross stood at the door. Sigmund wandered around, perhaps making mental numbers of how much everything in the room was worth. Rittenkrett folded his handkerchief into smaller and smaller squares.

  “I presume,” he said after a few more ticks of the clock, “that you’re fucking her brains out? You must be, because she’s gotten stupid here just lately. She was supposed to meet me at headquarters this evening, at exactly six-thirty, yet where was she? With you, I’m guessing. This afternoon, she missed another important meeting. You know why? Because she called my secretary and said she had to go shopping.”

  “I regret not being available this evening,” Franziska spoke up, her voice firm and clear. There wasn’t a hint of regret in it. “I had my notes delivered to you.”

  “Oh yes, your notes. Your journalistic impressions. Of course. Those.” Rittenkrett reached into a pocket and brought out a pack of Krenter Indianer cigarellos, with the stylized drawing of an American Indian chief on the front. He lit a gold-colored bullet-style lighter, got the cigarello going and blew a couple of hearty smoke rings. “Major, do you have any inkling of what Fraulein Luxe is doing for the Gestapo? Or should I say, for the war effort against traitors unfortunately too close to home?”

  “No.”

  “Good, because it’s not your concern. You have your own war to fight. I presume you do. When are your orders coming through?”

  “Any day now, I’m sure.” This was a hazardous area; he didn’t want the Ice Man checking up on his supposed division. “I’m ready to go tonight, if need be.”

  “Are you?” Rittenkrett squinted at him through another smoke ring that floated toward Michael like a ghostly noose and broke apart only at the last second. He let the question linger, as he paced back and forth across the polished floor. His shoes were also white, and they made clacking noises. “Look, Major Jaeger!” Rittenkrett abruptly stopped, and with the cigarello clenched between his teeth he threw up his hands. “The problem seems to be that Franziska is neglecting some of her duties to be with you. Now, I don’t care if you’re fucking her. I myself have fucked her. She has a whole closet full of letters and medals and little pitiful gifts sent to her by men who have fucked her, from all branches of the services, and I think there are even some Boy Scout badges in there somewhere. I mean, this is what she does. She’s famous for it, sir. Surely you know why by now. Either that, or you’re dead down there.”

  Michael was by no means dead down there, but he did feel a little il
l.

  “She is the perfect package,” Rittenkrett went on, behind his smoke rings. “And her photographic talents aren’t so bad either. Working with Signal, she has an open doorway to anywhere she wishes to go. Which makes her also valuable to me.” His gaze turned upon Franziska. “But I really don’t like it when you send me notes as if I’m not worthy of your time or presence. You have winnowed yourself into a position of responsibility, and I expect you not to falter in your duties. You realize, the perks you enjoy aren’t free.”

  “I never assumed they were,” she said, with her own touch of ice.

  Rittenkrett silently smoked at the center of the room. His expression told Michael he wasn’t sure he liked her tone. But then he shrugged the massive shoulders. “Let’s put this behind us and focus on our work. All right? The reason I’ve come here tonight is to tell you that something strange is happening with our list of clients. They are…shall we say…vacating the premises. Therefore we need to work faster. And, by the way, were you going to forget your appointment?” He checked his wristwatch. “In a little less than an hour, I believe?”

  “There’s not much there,” Franziska said, and Michael just pretended to wear a puzzled look that he kept short of too much curiosity.

  “But there’s something there,” the Ice Man reminded her, with a jab of his Indianer in the air. “You yourself said so, and I hold you to delivering it.” He gave the major a damp smile. “Business, you see, goes on both day and night. Oh, don’t look so glum, sir! I’ll tell you what.” He approached Michael, the white shoes clacking, but stopped short of crowding him. “We’ll give you a ride. Not far from your hotel is an excellent whorehouse with many beautiful young girls. Some of them are gypsies, if you like the dark look. Very talented, in their way. So if you were hoping for a warm hole tonight, you won’t be disappointed.”