Hell Gate

by Jeff Dawson

  ‘And Muller?’

  ‘Muller’s participation in the Teutonic rituals can’t be proven – he’s not that stupid. For him things work best when left open to interpretation – that hanging suggestion in the air; that element of fear. To know he tacitly endorses the Order is enough in itself. What he has done, though, is ensure a sadistic twist, using the Order to recruit his own youth movement, his own little army of foot soldiers. New recruits become complicit in some pretty gruesome acts – drugged to the eyeballs, forced to enter a code of silence and pledge their loyalty. If there’s one thing sacred to the Germans, it’s their damned oaths of loyalty.’

  ‘“Their”? You’re not German?’

  ‘Captain Finch, I will continue to answer questions on one proviso.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You don’t ask anything about me.’

  They were the only ones left in the bar when the train pulled into Pittsburgh. It was gone midnight. There were just a few passengers boarding this time. Finch had bought the remainder of a bottle of whisky and slipped the barman a hefty tip to leave them to it once he’d left.

  ‘So what you’re saying is that Muller, through selective brutality, exerts a hold over the local populace, but the Teutonic, mystical stuff adds something, spooks people, gives him a fear to wield?’

  ‘Exactly, like he has some kind of magical grip – not that it can ever be proven. It pretty much gives him control over the city’s German labour force. That’s a hugely powerful lever to pull. Only Muller would never do something as unsavoury as get involved in politics himself. Not big politics. He prefers to be the power behind the throne… the kingmaker.’

  ‘To Schultz.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  The whisky was a straight rye, Old Overholt. They were offered the obligatory mountain of ice to drink it over.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Your turn.’

  ‘My turn what?’

  She reminded him that he’d already told her a lot, whether he liked it or not. Given events, he didn’t suppose there was much she didn’t already know. She was merely seeking confirmation.

  He told her about the contraband heroin that Muller was supposedly trafficking, though, to his surprise this time, she claimed no knowledge of it. Again, he wasn’t sure what to believe, though her ignorance was perhaps plausible.

  The train left Pittsburgh and its huge bridges over its confluence of rivers. There were fires from the steelworks burning through the night. A train of Standard Oil wagons lumbered past, heading east.

  ‘Property of John D. Rockefeller,’ said Katia with an air of contempt. ‘One thing you can say about America, Finch, a small amount of people got rich awfully quick – Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, John Jacob Astor, J. Paul Getty and their kin. The United States eschews royalty, but it creates its own blue-blood dynasties all the same.’

  Finch thought for a moment of Lady Brunswick and her own little golden circle.

  He heard a guard saying they were now in West Virginia, the slender panhandle of the South that poked up between the Pennsylvania state line and the Ohio River. There were coalfields out there, Finch knew. You could glimpse the silhouettes of wheelhouses, the mounds of slag… spoil tips.

  Eventually they were trundling across the mighty Ohio River. They were into the Midwest, hurtling towards Columbus.

  ‘So, you clearly have a plan,’ said Finch. ‘Is it too much to ask where we are going?’

  He recognized an edgy look – like she didn’t want to say it but now felt obliged. She confessed she always had a plan, yes, a getaway contingency, but that was for her and her alone. She hadn’t figured on bringing an extra.

  ‘Then why didn’t you just leave me?’ he asked.

  ‘Because you know too much, Finch. They’d tear you apart.’

  She said she had a loose intention to either go out West or take a riverboat from St Louis down the Mississippi and a ship out from New Orleans.

  ‘You seemed pretty cosy with Muller. Why the change of heart?’

  It killed the conversation stone dead. Her eyes darted down then up again. It was the nearest thing he’d seen to her being sad.

  ‘In my line of work, sometimes one has to do things that are…’

  She chose her word carefully.

  ‘…distasteful.’

  ‘Your line of work?’

  ‘I told you – not about me.’

  He didn’t know why he said it but he did.

  ‘Was there ever anybody else?’

  She was silent for a moment.

  ‘I was married once. But love has no place in this life. You’ll learn that soon enough.’

  Columbus came and went.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I’d rather not say,’ he said.

  She gave a wry smile.

  ‘There was someone, is someone, isn’t there? But you can’t have her. She belongs to somebody else, right?’

  He felt himself blush.

  The train began to slow. You could hear the wheels creak and the clank of the couplings as the strain was redistributed. Then, with a judder, it came to an abrupt halt.

  A steward came in to clear the tables.

  ‘Excuse me, do you know what’s happening?’ asked Finch. ‘I thought we were travelling now right on through the night?’

  ‘The police are boarding and searching the train, sir.’

  Finch and Katia looked at each other.

  ‘Do you know why?’

  He shrugged and went back to wiping the table.

  Finch whispered: ‘You think they found the body?’

  ‘No, too soon,’ she said. ‘It wouldn’t be discovered till morning. They were already on to us.’

  Within two minutes they’d exited between the carriages and were running down the ruts of a ploughed Midwestern cornfield. Behind them they could see police flashlights sweeping around the train.

  ‘So where are we going?’ Finch asked.

  He tried to stay with her but it was dark. They were stumbling.

  ‘To different destinations,’ she said.

  And with that, she was gone.

  Chapter 18

  They were on the cusp of spring but the night was exceedingly cold. Finch staggered on over mounds of soft churned earth but, with no plan, no defined end goal, he was expending precious energy. He had no idea where Katia was. While initially he could hear her struggling through the mud some way ahead of him, he eventually lost her. He resisted calling out, lest the police were still on their tail.

  He tried to get his geographical bearings. The train had passed through Columbus, Ohio, but he really did not have much idea where he was beyond that.

  He carried on for what he thought must have been about a mile. In the moonlight there were the shapes of buildings up ahead – a farm. The lights were out. He knew the best use of his resources would be to bed down for a few hours and try and make sense of things at first light.

  It was only as he plodded towards it that it suddenly hit him just how utterly exhausted he was. He hadn’t slept at all in the best part of two days, and that was on top of all that he had endured both physically and mentally. He was shivering, as much through shock as cold.

  There was a barn – a large wooden one. He eased open the door and crept inside. He struck his lighter then realized it wasn’t the safest of things to do in such a place. Once his eyes had adjusted, he saw the ladder up to the hay loft. He climbed it. There was straw – bales and a welcoming loose mound. He buried himself deep, insulated against the cold.

  His sleep was a surreal slumber in which he flitted in and out of dreams and memories. In some ways it seemed he had drifted off for ever… in others, just five minutes. Eventually he felt sunshine on his face and another strange sensation… wet, warm. His cheek was being licked… by a dog.

  Blinking an eye open, he saw it was a border collie.

  So they have them here too?

  The friendly black-and-white animal was a remin
der of home – of a different, simpler world – and he reflected on Katia’s words about modernization and the pace of change. It backed away as he sat up and gave a friendly yelp, extending its front paws forward and leaning down onto them, wagging its tail. He reached to stroke it but it kept its distance. He held his hand out for it to sniff and gradually it edged back within his orbit. He ruffled the warm fur behind its ears and was, for a moment, lost to everything.

  He wondered how the hell it had climbed all the way up to the loft. But there was a loading hatch, through which the sun was now streaming, and a gangplank that ran up from the ground. Eventually the dog went back its own way and Finch descended the ladder. He had no weapon. Katia had taken the pistol. He noted a pitchfork – there should things turn nasty.

  There was no one around… for the moment. Even if he slipped away quietly, he still had to deal with the matter of his conspicuous appearance. He was in the middle of a Midwestern farm landscape dressed in a dinner suit.

  The barn was of the ‘prairie’ design with the high Dutch gambrel roof, double-sloped on each side, almost rounded. He peered round the edge of the building into the yard. The dog appeared again, his new friend, and it followed him. There was smoke rising from the chimney of the main house and a door that was open – the kitchen. He could smell bacon.

  The land was flat and seemed to stretch on for ever. On the breeze came the sound of a tractor far off across the field. He could see it, maybe half a mile away, lazily plodding up and down, turning at intervals. It was a great, steam-driven thing, pulling a plough. There was a cloud of birds circling for worms behind it.

  They gave us grey squirrels, we gave them starlings.

  He sneaked from the barn to an outhouse and reconnoitred further. To his delight there was a washing line. Clothes had just been pegged to it, wrung, warm and steaming, fresh out of the copper. They sagged with dampness, but they would do. He grabbed a thick woollen shirt and some work trousers. He could hear a woman singing.

  There was a shed in which hung some outdoor gear. It smelled of creosote and oil. The odours transported him back to South Africa – the field hospital that had been set up at the Boer farm during the push on Kimberley. Alongside a workbench and a rack of tools, there was a thick, tattered corduroy jacket that looked too small. He took a chance on it anyway.

  He gazed to what he judged to be the north and confirmed it with an old army trick, aligning the hour hand of his watch to the sun and drawing an imaginary north–south divide between the hands. There were telegraph posts in a line on the crest of a slight mound – a road.

  ‘Hello,’ came a small voice.

  He turned. It was a boy. He was no more than about seven years old in a rough, home-knitted sweater and tatty knickerbockers. The dog nuzzled into his legs.

  ‘Hello,’ said Finch.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  He was curious, not accusatory.

  ‘Oh… nothing.’

  Finch put a finger to his lips, the expression of a secret that must be kept. It was lost on the kid.

  ‘You talk funny, mister.’

  ‘I do?’

  ‘You want me to fetch Mommy?’

  ‘No, it’s all right.’

  Finch reached in his pocket and pulled out a quarter.

  ‘Here…’

  He set it down on the workbench.

  ‘…let’s see how long you can go without making a sound. If you can count to 100 – slowly – the quarter, it’s all yours.’

  ‘Don’t wanna.’

  The kid ran off. Then he could hear him.

  ‘Mommy… Mommy… There’s a man who talks funny…’

  Shit.

  ‘…and he’s stealing our clothes.’

  Finch wrapped everything into a bundle and set off as fast as he could. He had put himself 100 yards clear of the farm buildings, beyond the whitewashed rail fence that surrounded them, when he heard a male voice.

  ‘Hey… you!’

  Finch ran. There was more shouting. He looked back. The man had a shotgun.

  The first shot rang out and he threw himself to the ground. But evasive measures like that gave his pursuer a chance to catch up. He couldn’t afford to stop. Finch remembered his time on the battlefield. When under fire, you zigzag. On he ran, weaving left and right, clothes under his arm like a rugby ball.

  Another blast.

  He prayed that he wouldn’t get winged by buckshot. A third shot came but the man seemed in no mood to keep up the chase. He heard some expletives hurled in his direction, then the man turned back.

  Finch eased off into a walk. His knee was killing him.

  But now there was a horse buggy rattling up the farm track… It had two men sitting on it, one cracking a whip at the solitary beast, the other yelling and gesturing. The path was a hard, compact drive that headed in the direction of the main road.

  Mired in the heavy soil there was no way he could outpace it. They would outflank him easily. But, up ahead, next to the path, sat a pile of long, stacked logs. Finch scurried as best he could towards it. There was a drainage ditch and he scrambled over it, before hoisting himself up onto the loose timber. They were rough sections of tree trunk that had been cut for farmyard use, each uniformly 12 feet or so in length. He heaved at the top log with all his might but it wouldn’t yield.

  Turning to put his back to it, using his whole body weight and what power he had left in his legs, he tried again. There was enough give this time to merit a third attempt and he summoned every ounce of strength. With a creak and groan, the uppermost piece of lumber wobbled for a second before giving way and clunking down, rolling to a stop across the path. Then he pegged it for all he was worth.

  Hastening towards the main road, he heard the scrape of hooves and the horse whinnying at the obstacle. Because of the ditches either side of the path, it would be unable to divert around it. He cast a glance behind. The men had climbed down to haul the log out of the way. It had been merely a temporary block. There was a squeak and spring of suspension. The men were back in the buggy.

  It was gaining fast and Finch stumbled down across the ditch, ploughing through the mud again. He was maybe 50 yards short of the road. In the distance was a black speck. He could hear the sound of a motorcar. As it hove into view he could see it was a truck, a flatbed – one in rather poor condition by the look of it and pootling along with a rattling engine that was belching out black smoke from the exhaust.

  The horse buggy was heading fast for the road. The second man was bracing himself. There was another rifle…

  Finch knew it instantly from the way the man pivoted down the ‘repeater’, the knuckle-guard lever underneath the trigger – a Winchester, far more accurate and, at that range, deadly.

  A shot rang out – the phenomenal crack rolling across the plain – and a clod of soil shot up to his left. Starlings scattered into the sky. Finch threw himself into a deep rut and hugged the ground. The buggy stopped. Someone was on foot, charging towards him.

  Another crack… A shot sheared off a chunk of mud just a yard in front of his head.

  The truck on the road was Finch’s only chance. The telegraph poles were strung at regular intervals. If he could make it to the nearest one for cover, then dart out, he could flag it down.

  He decided to let the next round be loosed off. It would give him seconds. The shot came even louder, much closer this time. Then Finch got up and ran for his life.

  ‘Hey!’

  There was another shot, an explosion of soil by his left foot, and Finch pulled himself behind a telegraph pole, standing straight, keeping himself shielded.

  A slug thudded into the wood, the other side of his head.

  The truck was close. He dashed into the road and waved his arms frantically, hoping that no one dared shoot him dead in front of a witness. Indeed, the man with the gun was now scurrying back to the buggy.

  The driver of the truck had no choice but to slam on the brakes. It screeched to a halt just
inches from him. He could feel the heat of the radiator.

  The driver leaned out. He was a middle-aged black man with a ragged, grey beard. He eyed Finch up and down.

  ‘Now here’s something you don’t see every day,’ he said.

  Finch was not only in a ripped tuxedo but covered in mud.

  ‘Any chance of a lift?’

  The man looked over to the approaching buggy, which was now coming round, up onto the road behind them, the driver whipping the horse furiously. He seemed to take wry amusement at the prospect of throwing his own proverbial spanner into the works.

  ‘Hop in.’

  Finch threw his bundle of clothes in and scrambled aboard.

  ‘Please,’ he urged. ‘Fast!’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said the man and eased up the throttle.

  The truck was piled with scrap metal – bits of tubing, pipes, part of a bed frame, old rusty springs, gasoline canisters and some stacked crates of particularly vocal chickens, whose volume increased with their acceleration.

  The horse-drawn buggy followed for a minute or so but, once the truck had moved up through the gears, gave up the chase. The man smiled to himself. He was wearing a beaten-up straw hat with a plaid shirt and a woollen jacket. He’d been chewing on sunflower seeds, their husks littering the cabin. He spat one out of the window as they passed a road sign. It proclaimed they were in Wayne County.

  ‘Wayne County?’ asked Finch.

  ‘Just like it says.’

  ‘But where?’

  ‘Where…?’

  The man pulled a wide-eyed look of surprise mixed with curiosity.

  ‘’Bout 40 miles short of Dayton is where.’

  ‘We’re in Ohio?’

  ‘Indiana… for the moment.’

  ‘Is that where you’re headed, Dayton?’

  The man gave an ‘uh-huh’.

  He looked Finch up and down. He laughed to himself. It was a deep, infectious chuckle.

  ‘A woman?’

  Finch couldn’t help but smile.

  ‘I wish it were that simple.’

  The man extended his hand to shake.

  ‘Moses,’ he said.