Unhinge the Universe

by Aleksandr Voinov

  “Wake him up.” John pushed open the interrogation cell door and added over his shoulder, “Pour some coffee into him and tell him it’s time to talk.”

  Hagen woke with a start, realizing at once he’d managed to sleep, and that he felt much better than he had. And then he remembered. He stood without protest when the guard ordered him, “Up,” too flustered by the memory. A lingering taste. Oh damn, he’d actually . . .

  He barely managed to grasp the tin mug of coffee that the other guard pushed in his hand. With his free hand, he draped the blanket around his shoulders, unwilling to let that warm weight go just yet, while he sipped the coffee. He remembered the very different taste of actual beans, long since fallen prey to rationing and the gruesome ersatz they made do with most of the time. Coffee, though? Next they’d be offering him cream and cane sugar.

  He followed the guards outside, the mug in one hand, livening up with every step toward . . . John. Before every interrogation session he’d been filled with nothing but dread. Right now, though, he didn’t know. He should’ve been mortified. Though he’d offered what he had primarily because it had evened the score, leveled the power between them. But it had been something of a double-bladed weapon.

  For one, he’d enjoyed it too much.

  He hurried to finish the coffee before they’d chain him up, and passed the empty mug to one of the guards. The other took his hands and cuffed them to the chair again. The heat in his belly reminded him of another type of heat, and he suppressed a smile.

  John stepped in just as the guard reported “Prisoner secured, sir,” and was dismissed. He looked—different somehow. The uniform was in order, and he was shaved and combed and polished, which made him appear more official. Maybe an attempt to deny what had happened.

  Hagen sought John’s gaze, but the man wasn’t looking at him.

  John pulled up his usual chair. Whether it was a deliberate attempt to unsettle Hagen, or just something he did out of habit, he sat backward in it as he always did. Hagen forced himself not to look at the American’s groin.

  Don’t go back there. Don’t play into John’s hands again.

  In his efforts to avoid looking between John’s legs, Hagen shifted his gaze to the drab green folder John held. Thin, containing just a few sheets, and with an official-looking red stamp on the cover. Classified.

  “You slept?” John’s tone betrayed nothing. No hostility, no affection, nothing in between.

  “I did.” Hagen hoped his voice was equally covert.

  “Good.” John opened the folder, tilting it so Hagen saw nothing but the green back and the menacing Classified stamp. Focusing his gaze on whatever was in the folder, John said, “You owe me an answer.”

  Hagen chewed his lip. He’d bought himself time, and what had he done with it? Nothing. Slept. Well, slept after playing the Parisian whore for his interrogator. A shiver—a mixture of shame and semidormant arousal—crawled up the length of his spine. So he’d gained a few hours and perhaps found a weakness in the American, but he still had no way to evade the answer John demanded.

  John’s eyes flicked up and met Hagen’s. “Who gave you the order, Hagen?”

  “Why does it matter?”

  Impatience narrowed the American’s eyes, deepening the shadows beneath them that revealed he hadn’t slept nearly as well as Hagen had. “If it doesn’t matter, then why are you so reluctant to tell me?”

  Hagen shook his head. “I can’t tell you.” That sinking feeling in his stomach was the realization that he was leaving John no other option but to increase the pressure on him. He was surprised the man had been as gentle as this for so long.

  “Is he that powerful?”

  Hagen shook his head. “I swore it on my honor. Succeed or die.”

  “But you’re alive right now.” John put the folder down on the chair as he got up and stood close to Hagen again. Damn. Close enough to remember the smell, the taste, and that heat. Hagen shook his head, then felt John’s hand brush his cheek, run down to his neck, to his throat. “Will you make me call in the guards to beat you, Hagen? They know how not to kill you. There’s no way out. Will you make me watch that?”

  The tone in his voice betrayed something: tenderness, maybe. Like there was real anguish at the thought of having to watch dogs harass a bound tiger who’d be unable to defend himself. It didn’t seem fair, but nothing was.

  “Won’t hold it against you,” Hagen said. “I think.”

  “I’m going to get the information one way or another.” John’s voice was firmer, but the hint of tenderness remained. “If I have to watch my men beat you to get it, I will.”

  Hagen glared up at his captor. “You like watching, don’t you?”

  The flinch was unexpected, but there it was, and John looked away for a moment. After apparently collecting himself, he held Hagen’s gaze again.

  “Himmler.”

  The single word hit Hagen’s chest harder than any guard’s fist or boot would have. He tried to find the breath to call the American’s bluff, but the drab green folder with its knowing stamp was still there, keeping its information away from all except John.

  It could have been blank papers. A bluff.

  But John had said it.

  “Reichsführer SS—Heinrich Himmler.”

  Hagen winced. “Then what else is there? What is it you want to beat out of me?”

  “So it is Himmler, then.”

  Hagen glared at him. “Is it? You seem to know all the answers already, so what difference does it make if I speak?”

  “Would it be easier for you if I had you beaten?”

  Hagen gritted his teeth. “No preference.”

  John was too close again. “I’m trying to make this easy on you,” he whispered in Hagen’s ear. “But you have to give me something to work with.”

  “I’ve given you quite enough,” Hagen snapped.

  “Where were you supposed to take your brother and these orders? West? Belgium? The Low Countries? Or east? Colmar? Saarbrücken?”

  Hagen shook his head and closed his eyes again when John grabbed his throat. He couldn’t. He just couldn’t.

  John’s thumb came up and brushed his chin. “You foolish, brave child.”

  Hagen’s eyes opened and he bristled at the insult, but John was already stepping back, all the way to the door.

  “Sergeant, if you would. I need some help here.” John stood near the door as both guards came tramping in.

  The first punch severed the tension that Hagen had been holding. Pain. Pain exploding in his guts, mostly, but soon the men were hitting him everywhere, with the chains and chair holding him in place, unable to evade the punches.

  The men cursed at him: Nazi pig, swine, bastard, son of a whore . . . and Hagen tucked in as much as he could, taking the pain because he didn’t know what else to do, murderously angry that the fight wasn’t fair, that he could do nothing to defend or retaliate, shuddering with visceral rage that John was watching this. Just another taste of humiliation.

  “That’s enough,” John said, when it wasn’t nearly enough.

  The men stepped back, one rubbing his knuckles. “Sir? He’s not even—”

  “I said enough,” John snapped with more fury than Hagen had heard from him before. Calmer now, he said, “Dismissed. I’ll take it from here.”

  Fear constricted Hagen’s throat. Not mercy, then. John just wasn’t satisfied with watching anymore.

  When the bloody-knuckled men left the cell, Hagen should have felt safer. He felt anything but. Alone in a cage with a beast who was completely unrestrained while Hagen was still chained. Weakened, though perhaps not by much since the beating had lasted only . . . minutes? Seconds? They’d hardly beaten him into submission. Now that it was over, he realized the beating had seemed much worse in the moment than in the aftermath. He’d be sore and bruised in places, but nothing serious.

  The room was small, but still it took John a long, long time to move from his place by the door t
o that unnerving spot just in front of Hagen’s chair.

  Hagen turned his head and spat on the floor. In his mind he saw the blood and spit running down the front of John’s uniform. Maybe even down his face. From his eye. But he couldn’t make himself do it.

  John’s hand neared Hagen’s face. Hagen drew away as much as he could. Closing his eyes, he held his breath and braced, steeling himself against whatever might come.

  The gentle brush of leathery fingertips sent a jolt through him as if a gun had gone off.

  “Hagen.” John whispered his name like it was something he would cradle tenderly in his hands. “You don’t want this, and neither do I.” His fingers drifted down the side of Hagen’s face. Was this the part neither of them wanted? Or the part that had left Hagen throbbing and aching in more places than he could count? The part where he’d tasted blood or tasted semen?

  “If you don’t want it”—curse his trembling voice—“then why do you do it?”

  “For the same reason you refuse to talk.” Apologetic? Resigned? This wasn’t the voice of an interrogator. “This is war, Hagen.” Gentle fingers ran through Hagen’s hair. “It’s brutal. It’s ugly. And sooner or later, someone has to lose.”

  “And that someone has to be me.”

  It doesn’t. He almost started at the sudden realization.

  “You’ll live if you cooperate. Unlike . . .”

  “My brother,” Hagen spat. Damn him for bringing up Sieg. At least he’d died without giving them anything. He should be an inspiration.

  But somehow, he wasn’t. Hagen didn’t want to be yet another charred nameless body left in a ditch somewhere, reduced to nothing human. He noticed he was panting. He didn’t want this, but he couldn’t see a way out. And while John didn’t want to do this, he was. Maybe he was deluding himself that it was somehow less bad that he was doing it himself rather than handing him over to somebody with less . . . somebody who wouldn’t crave watching him.

  “Oh Gott.” He bent over in the chair, staring at the ground between his feet.

  You have one final weapon.

  Do whatever it takes to seize victory.

  Seduction. He couldn’t begin to imagine what his drill sergeant and SS instructors would make of this. But maybe he could still return and tell them whatever orders Sieg had been carrying had been compromised. But for that, he needed to live, and he needed to be able to walk, and he needed to lull the American into complacency.

  “Yes, the Reichsführer SS requested a unit of paratroopers to escort my brother back to safety after he’d crashed in enemy territory. He was to reach our troops in Colmar and report there. I volunteered to join them.” No need to tell him that Otto Skorzeny had thought this a mad plan, and one on which he might lose one of the few good English speakers he had left. But once Hagen had known his brother was involved, there was no turning back, and Skorzeny had agreed to his request to volunteer, though he’d told him he might not make it.

  I need you for Operation Greif, Friedrich, but family is family.

  John didn’t move. Didn’t relinquish his hold on Hagen’s gaze, and Hagen didn’t dare look away. Did he want more? Or was he trying to decide whether or not to believe him?

  At the very edge of Hagen’s peripheral vision, the corner of the green folder moved slightly as John shifted his weight. His heart pounded. How much did John know? How much was in the papers Sieg had seen fit to hide?

  John stood straighter, once again increasing the height difference between them by every centimeter he had at his disposal so he towered over Hagen. “So you were to take your brother and the papers he was carrying to Colmar in Alsace, through territory held by the Seventh US Army and the First French Army?” John slipped the folder out from under his arm, passed it from his right hand to his left in front of Hagen’s face, and then tucked it under his other arm. Hagen forced himself to take slow, calm breaths. And not look at the folder. John could have known, or he could have been throwing out caltrops to see if Hagen would stumble. The throbbing in his body served as a reminder of what would happen if John felt he wasn’t cooperative enough. Damn. Had he won enough trust yet?

  He could make it to Colmar on his own. Give a warning. He’d likely not manage to save the papers, but—

  John moved closer. He always did that when he was trying to push further, Hagen realized, and then felt the man’s breath against his ear again. He moved a little closer himself, because after what had happened just a few hours ago, he knew how to do this, knew, at least in part, what it meant.

  He brushed his stubble across John’s clean-shaven cheek and then, with another jerk of his head, managed to reach some skin with his lips. That tension was back, though the touch wasn’t exactly pleasant with his split lip.

  Seduce him. Make him trust you. Then escape.

  “Can’t stop thinking about how you . . . taste.”

  John dipped his chin, turned his head. Pulled away without pulling away. Enough to break contact and leave Hagen’s lips searching for flesh.

  “I need answers.” John’s protest was . . . weak. Halfhearted. “I need . . .” He turned his head back toward Hagen. “I need—” And his mouth was over Hagen’s. The sting in Hagen’s wounded lip barely registered over the familiar coffee-and-tobacco kiss and the electric jolt that shot right down below his belt.

  You want answers. Hagen encouraged John’s lips apart with his tongue, ignored the pain in his own lip. Here’s your answer.

  John tilted his head and leaned in, taking control of the kiss and pressing Hagen against the rigid back of the chair. Hagen’s heart pounded faster now, and it wasn’t just the fear and the need to secure his escape. This took him right back to last night in his cell, this moment as unintentional as that one had been unexpected. Distract John, that had been his intent. Not distract himself.

  Focus, Hagen. Focus.

  On his mouth.

  On his fingers on the side of my neck. In my hair.

  Focus on . . . on . . . verdammt.

  John broke the kiss abruptly, jerking back from Hagen but not taking his hands off him. He panted. His face was flushed. He swept his tongue across his lips, and Hagen couldn’t help doing the same.

  “Were you—” John closed his eyes while he caught his breath. Then he looked into Hagen’s again, the cold interrogator and the flustered man equally visible in his gaze. “Did you have a rendezvous to pass off . . . to pass off the orders before . . . Colmar?”

  Hagen slowly drew the tip of his tongue across his lower lip, avoiding the metal-sweet wound, and noticing with satisfaction that John watched. Always watching, John. Always watching.

  “Did you have a rendezvous or not?” John . . . pleaded?

  Hagen smiled, narrowing his eyes. “What do you think?” It was working. John had used his weakness against him, but that enabled Hagen to turn the tables. He’d never have expected to use that as a weapon (the one thing he had to hide, the one thing that could see him facing Russians and the terrible winter in a frontline unit), but if it worked—

  “There’s one thing about Colmar that is a problem,” John said. “It’s extremely risky. The area in between the crash site and Colmar is teeming with enemies, and you would likely trip up. The French have had years to learn how to tell a German spy from a civilian, even if those Germans weren’t parading themselves around in their uniforms like fools.” Hagen gritted his teeth, but John wasn’t finished. “Never mind you having to travel many kilometers through hostile territory with your brother in tow and a group of soldiers whose English might not be as good as yours.”

  Hagen groaned. “That’s the order. I have experience with missions like that. I fought in Crete. France is a trip to an amusement park compared to that.”

  “And the countryside is teeming with ex–Resistance fighters who’d delight in taking out on two German hides what exactly they think of their former oppressors.” John pulled a cigarette from a pack in his shirt and lit it. He inhaled deeply, then regarded Hagen a
gain. “From here, you don’t stand a chance, Hagen. Especially not without support from locals. And you and your brother would have stood out. Even if you’d been wearing our uniforms, you’d stand out as two very well-groomed, tall blond men who don’t speak French.”

  “I do speak French,” Hagen said in that language.

  “Not without a German accent you don’t. There’s been a dirty war against the Free French. I know of entire villages that were wiped out to make an example. The one we’re in now, for example. Your buddies have been busy in France. Encountering a group of Germans, especially SS, and with such a decorated officer in tow . . . it would give any Free Frenchman a hard-on to corner you up and make you pay for the sins of your countrymen. An American uniform wouldn’t have deceived them for long.”

  Hagen scoffed. “So we’d have been murdered. And then?”

  “And then . . . your papers would have made it along French supply and intel lines straight to Paris. And from there, if de Gaulle chose, to Whitehall. Which is an efficient way to send a message you don’t want to be seen sending.”

  “What?”

  “Counterintelligence, Hagen. As old as intelligence.”

  Counterintelligence? What? Had all this been nothing but a ruse? He gave John nothing more than a snort of derision. “That’s nonsense. A trained SS officer and a Wehrmacht officer as decorated as Sieg would have made it to Colmar easily.”

  “Mm-hmm.” An eyebrow arched. “Your brother and his men didn’t even make it out of an abandoned millhouse.”

  Fury launched Hagen out of his chair, at least as far as the chains would allow. “Go to hell, American pig.”

  John pressed his hands down on Hagen’s shoulders, rooting him in place. “The point, Hagen, is that if Himmler really wanted this message delivered to its intended recipient”—the eyebrow arched again—“assuming it really was supposed to go to Colmar, which I’m hard-pressed to believe, then he’s a fucking idiot for—”

  “Obviously you’re underestimating us,” Hagen snarled. “They were ambushed in the millhouse. An unfortunate circumstance. But crossing territory littered with bitter Frenchmen?” Another snort, though perhaps not quite as convincing. “I have no doubt we’d have succeeded.”