Unhinge the Universe

by Aleksandr Voinov

  And how odd, but his hands were unsteady, the chains rattling behind his back as the jacket’s remains dropped to the floor like the spent cocoon of a moth.

  He blew out another breath when he looked at the jacket he was supposed to put on. “I can’t—”

  The American moved so quickly toward him it felt like another assault, then stopped abruptly and tossed him a key, letting it fall at Hagen’s feet. After a moment, he gave a quiet, sadistic chuckle and retrieved the key. He opened one of the handcuffs, and as Hagen brought his hands around to the front, the American looked him in the eye as he briefly touched the pistol holster at his side.

  Well. Understood.

  While the other man returned to his seat, Hagen stole a moment to rub his wrists—raw, swollen from his earlier fight.

  He breathed deeply and knelt to open his boots. He pulled both of them off, stood in damp socks on the cold floor, and then slipped out of the dead man’s trousers. Thankfully, he’d deflated, but standing in his underwear in front of an enemy was still bad enough that he hurried to the table to at least put his own trousers on again. It was a huge relief to be able to close them. He’d never felt more that this uniform was protecting him. It had always seemed flimsy against the force of shrapnel or bullets, but right now, it could have been an inch of steel around him. The only visible sign of his identity was in its insignia. The rank. The silver runes on the gorget. No names, no papers, no Soldbuch recording everything.

  A glance at the interrogator’s face gave him nothing. Just that the man was still watching, relaxed, but Hagen bet he was spotting every detail. Damn this. He slid into his jacket, pushing his arms through yet another piece of armor, and the American was on him. Cuffed him again, but didn’t back away. In fact, though it seemed impossible, he moved even closer.

  Hagen’s heart nearly stopped when he felt hands run down his sides, a sure touch, exploring him, tantalizing, a brush of the man’s body against him. The contact dazed him, worse now that his hands had been free so recently. Fingers slid under his shirt, and Hagen gritted his teeth together. Palms on his naked skin. Then they dislodged something, and the American stepped back with the papers in his hand, returned to his perch.

  Hagen was shaking. Just a matter of time before the papers were found, but did he have to do it that way?

  Elbow on the back of the chair, the American held up the papers like a trophy, just like he had with Sieg’s razor. “So tell me, Hagen. What’s on these?”

  Often imagined responses of “talk to your codebreakers” and “nice try, American” stuck in his throat. He glanced at the papers, at the American, and a second too late realized he’d let his nerves show.

  Through his teeth, he growled, “For that you have codebreakers.” It sounded so much weaker in the air than it had in his mind. Damn this American. He’d killed Sieg, and piece by piece, he was breaking Hagen. No. No, he would not.

  Hagen pushed his shoulders back and glared down at his captor. “Anything you find on those papers, it’ll be too late for anything to be done. You’re just wasting your time with them and with me.”

  “Is that right?” Swiftly and with no hesitation whatsoever, the American drew his pistol and pointed it straight at him. “Then there’s no reason to keep you alive, is there?”

  No, there wasn’t. Hagen stared at him, thought how pathetic it was that he’d die here, in the same room as his brother, just undoubtedly weaker. He couldn’t even control when and how that happened, since the Americans had confiscated his cyanide as well. “Let me see my brother. Last wish. I don’t care what you do to me after that.” No, that sounded wrong. “You can shoot me after that.”

  “Why?”

  Hagen gritted his teeth. “Or let me bury him.”

  “Why? You won’t care when you’re dead.”

  “But right now I’m alive,” Hagen snapped back. Another mistake. Damn, could he do anything right? When had he lost everything, all his strength and pride? Was he already broken? Or just halfway there?

  “Yes, right now you are alive.” Inexplicably, the American holstered his weapon again. He pulled Sieg’s razor out of his pocket and proceeded to idly flip it over and over between his hands. “And I don’t think you’re as ready to die as you say you are.”

  The mocking in his tone set Hagen’s teeth on edge. Of course he was ready to die. Any man who wore a German uniform was ready to die if it meant that Germany would live.

  A boot scuffed on the floor. The American put Hagen back in his chair, and once Hagen was secured, said, “I don’t think you’re ready to die, and quite honestly?” Something cold and murderous darkened his eyes. “I’m not ready to kill you yet.”

  And without another word, without even another look, the American left.

  As soon as the cell door was shut behind him, John roared at the guards, “What kind of incompetent idiots are you?” He waved the papers in their faces. “How did anyone miss this? How? Tell me!”

  The men stared at him, eyes wide and jaws slack.

  John shook the papers again. “I thought he was searched. This information could be valuable, you morons.” He gestured sharply at the door. “And what if he’d had another weapon on him?”

  “S-sorry, sir. We’re not—”

  “Save it. Get him back to his cell and chain him up again.” It wouldn’t do for the German to find a way to kill himself, though he strongly doubted that Hagen would do anything of the sort. He was all vim and vigor, and he had not yet given up on living. A dead man didn’t make demands, didn’t fight, didn’t flinch at a pulled gun.

  The guards stared at him as if he’d turned into a raving lunatic declaring himself Napoleon Bonaparte. “Don’t worry, boys, I don’t think he’ll put up that much of a fight this time.” Or maybe he would, to blow off some steam, just so he could feel a little in control because John knew he’d gotten under his skin. The man he’d left—insecure, still resisting, and, yes, turned on—was a far cry from the murderous machine they’d taken into custody.

  But hey, that was what guards were for.

  “And by the way,” he said. “If he does put up a fight, restrain him, but don’t kill him. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  He left to take the papers to be transmitted to the codebreakers. On his way back to his rack, he got some chow from the mess tent, though he passed on the coffee, even though it was the only hot drink he could get in these parts. Settled with a plate of steaming food, he let out a long breath, revisiting what had gone on. What he’d done.

  That he’d enjoyed too much spooking the German. In part, it was revenge for Michael, and because dear brother Siegfried had given him exactly nothing except more riddles. But it was also in part something entirely different. The sense memory of smooth skin over a strong body, warm to the touch, young and angry, and how aroused the German had been. Stress could do that to a man. Fear. He knew more than one soldier who’d come out of battle with a raging boner. A perfectly normal physiological response to heightened stress. Though he didn’t think it was the case here.

  Takes one to catch one, he thought idly, forcing himself to eat, just to calm his own nerves. He’d had nothing all day but an incompetent mockery of coffee. This should settle him somewhat. He opened a notebook and jotted down some of his observations, leaving out certain physical reactions. Things like that never made it into the official records, possibly to spare the ladies of the typing pool.

  His pencil stopped, and his mind kept going. Right back to that collection of progressively stranger moments from when he’d cut the first button until he’d confiscated the hidden papers. Repeating it over and over in his mind, he focused on Hagen’s face. His body. Not just the angles and muscles and eyes that did unspeakable things to him, but the expressions. The coiled spring of . . . not just fear. Sure, he’d shown plenty of that when it was clear John had the upper hand, but there was something else there.

  John looked at the tent wall with unfocused eyes, tapping his
pencil on his notebook. Maybe it was just his imagination, but he was well trained in catching the minute tells people didn’t even realize they were giving, and he was sure there’d been a glint of something that the German had probably never intended to show. More than just the SS blood type tattoo on the inside of his upper arm (AB), he’d revealed the very edges of something . . . innocent? Like if only for a moment, there’d been a young man, barely beyond a boy, standing where a hardened member of Hitler’s elite had been.

  John had ratcheted up his mind games at that point, taunting if only to hide the urge he’d had to protect Hagen instead of break him.

  John shook the thought away and shifted his gaze back to the food in front of him. He’d forced down as much as he was going to, so he left it for the guys on mess detail to deal with and went outside.

  He squinted against the bitter cold as he pulled out his cigarettes. The combination of winter wind and the tobacco on his tongue had his ears searching for the crunch of boots behind him. The witty comment. The exchanged looks and the promise of a little time in the guard shack.

  John pushed the smoke out through his teeth. Yes, maybe for a minute he’d felt the need to protect Hagen, but even if there was an innocent kid under all that Nazi shit, the fact was, that kid’s hands were the same ones that had snapped Michael’s neck last night. Fuck him. If he had a weak spot, a vulnerable place that reduced soldier to child, then John would find it, and he would exploit it. And he wouldn’t stop when Hagen broke.

  Oh, no. Breaking him wasn’t enough.

  That was another challenge in this line of work. Empathy. It was one of his sharpest tools, one of the reasons he was good at this part of his job, but it could just as well turn on him. It was important to remind himself that Hagen was a godsend after his hard-assed brother who’d had nothing to lose. A second chance to make this work. And those papers might be a missing piece in the puzzle that, once solved, might very well change the course of the war.

  Yes, John, because nothing less than saving millions will do, won’t it?

  He huffed to himself. But the truth was, until he knew what he had here, all he could know with any certainty was that he had something. And now his mind had calmed down enough to work with it. He headed to see Walters, and, once the man was ready for him, John briefed him. Not the sordid little details. Those would stay between him and Hagen.

  Walters looked up with interest. “So, what do you suggest?”

  “I think it might be useful to work him a bit more. We’ve come a fair way today already.”

  Walters pursed his lips. “If he knows anything useful, there might not be much time to get it out of him.” He lifted a stack of folders. “Getting conflicting intel about the extent of the German push-back in the Ardennes forest. A lot of big shit is going on all over the front.”

  John gnawed the inside of his cheek, then noticed a brass cylinder on the desk. “May I?”

  “Be my guest.”

  John picked up the cylinder, maybe an inch long, with a screw top. Not unlike a shell casing. The bottom was engraved with the double-S rune.

  Hagen’s. He gingerly opened the cylinder, held the top in his palm, then tilted it until a glass ampoule with yellowish contents slid almost into his hand. He really didn’t want to touch it. “Why would a man carry this if his mission wasn’t important?”

  And why had Hagen not killed himself? He could have held the cylinder in his mouth and bit down on it. His brother? Or the primal urge of a young man to live and fight even against the impossible?

  “You tell me,” Walters said.

  “He was carrying papers that seemed important, so—”

  “Seemed important? How so? You can’t read them any more than I can.”

  “No, but he was careful to hide them, and he wasn’t happy when I took them.” Though maybe that was the bait-and-switch approach. Maybe he thought I was about to do something else. Maybe—

  “Nicholls?”

  John jumped. Swallowed. “Sorry. I . . . I just think, based on his reaction, that he’s involved in something. He knew the major we captured was here. If he tracked him all the way from the mill, he may have been part of the major’s escort back home.”

  The commander sniffed. “Fashionably late?”

  “Waylaid, maybe.” John waved a hand. “But I think he was involved. Somehow. Which means he either knows what’s going on, or he can lead me back to whoever sent him out here. What if they didn’t come to escort the major back, but what he was carrying?”

  The commander rested his elbow on top of the stack of folders and steepled his fingers in front of his lips. “Well, we’ve transmitted everything back to your codebreakers, so we’ll see what comes out of that.”

  John nodded. “And I’ll keep working on making him talk.”

  Walters pursed his lips. “You may have to hurry.”

  “If there’s a lot of activity going on, I don’t doubt that.”

  “No, I mean I’ve got orders to move camp in twenty-four hours,” Walters said. “And I’m not transporting a high-value prisoner toward the front lines. You’ll have to get what you can out of him, and then take him with you back to your camp.”

  John exhaled. “I need to talk to him here. It’s . . .” He thought about Hagen’s reaction to learning of his brother’s death. “It’s a psychological thing.”

  Walters regarded him silently for a moment without a hint of suspicion. “Do what you can. I can’t delay moving camp, though. Besides, your CO wants you back yesterday, and I want that Kraut out of here so I can free up my men to scout like they’re supposed to. Think you can squeeze anything from him in twenty-four hours?”

  Twenty-four hours? Easy if John were trying to get a cookie-stealing confession out of a child. Something useful from an SS officer connected to something that might be big and ugly? That would be tight. Tight, but he could do it.

  “Twenty-four hours,” John said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Good luck.”

  Hagen had been too stunned by the whole encounter to fight off the guards. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to fight, but exhaustion closed over his head like a dark ocean, and this time, there was nothing he could do to fend it off. No Pervitin. Hungry for the first time in forever. Cold. And hungrier and colder when they’d chained him up again and tossed him back in the hole. Mind whirring with what had happened, with what the American had done and said.

  And there was his brother.

  Died on the same chair.

  When his mind returned to that, it was like a physical blow, and his knees buckled. He managed to get to the corner the farthest away from the door, hunkered down and, arms hugging his chest, allowed the tears to come. He bit back the sounds as much as possible, because there was no privacy here in this crumbling carcass of a church, but just for a moment, he could let down his guard. Exhaustion and pain washed through him. Shame that he’d been caught. That he’d been too late. That he’d sat on the same chair where his brother had died.

  His brother. What had happened with the body? He forced himself to not rave at the guards—hell, they probably didn’t know—but the thought was impossible to shake. Was the American bastard the last man who’d seen him? Did he know what had happened? How, exactly, Sieg had died? He let the tears run, relieved that they were half-angry.

  He couldn’t find rest or sleep, and it was getting harder and harder to concentrate. Just grief and exhaustion for company, and they hadn’t even brought him a pack of cards to help pass the time.

  Two soldiers came in. “Get up, you pig.”

  Hagen struggled to his feet, gritted his teeth against the urge to pick a fight—set the man off and possibly get his first proper beating of the day—and allowed them to escort him back into the interrogation room. They forced him again to sit down—on that chair—and chained him in place. The interrogator was nowhere to be seen. Yet. Maybe that, too, was a mind game. Something to allow the tension to build.

  From
out in the hall, that familiar voice set Hagen’s teeth on edge: “Give this to him. Keep an eye on him so he doesn’t choke himself to death or something.”

  A moment later, the door opened, and one of the guards brought in a tray of food. Beans. Canned meat. Potatoes. What an irony that the Americans couldn’t find anything good to eat in France, of all places. The first guard unchained Hagen while the other one dragged the table over from the corner of the room. The first set the tray in front of Hagen, and a cup of coffee beside it. The lack of steam above the cup would have made him laugh if he’d had the energy; cold coffee. Of course. So he wouldn’t fling it on them in a fit of rage.

  “Danke.” He reached for the coffee cup. Of course, they’d not given him anything he could use to harm himself or others, which included a damned spoon. Stripping away his defenses and his dignity. No surprise.

  He wasn’t about to let the interrogator watch him eat with his hands like an animal, and besides, he was famished, so he picked up the meat and devoured it. Long gone were the dinners at the SS cadet school in Bavaria, with their table linens and impeccable service, or even the camaraderie of the informal beer cellar.

  He ate the potatoes with his hands, then tilted the plate awkwardly against his lips to let the bean-sludge slide into his mouth, the anger burning hotter in his chest. This was another game. Another way for the fucking American to break him down, and he wouldn’t allow it. This morning’s—yesterday’s—humiliation was all Hagen would surrender.