by Boyd Brent
“So what was your intention?”
David turned his head towards her and felt her lips brush against his cheek. As Alix's tongue entered his mouth, her hand squeezed his thigh and slid over his crotch …
They lay naked on that bed of earth and dried leaves, David on his back with Alix's body pressed against him, her fingers splayed over his heart. “I'm not worth it,” she said. “You should know that. Your feelings … they're heightened. Any warmth in a life that has known only cold …”
“I expect there's some truth to what you say.”
Alix plucked a hair from his cheat.
“Do you always pluck the people who agree with you?”
“Not always.”
David cleared his throat. “And then there's the age gap.”
“Age gap?”
“I am eight thousand years older. Give or take.”
“Well, when you put like that, it sounds almost insurmountable. Who was the last woman you slept with?”
“Her name was Clara.”
“What happened to her?”
“She probably ended up in a very bad place.”
“You broke her heart?”
David shook his head. “I don't think she had one. I'd rather look to the future.”
“Sounds ominous.”
“Apparently it's my job to make it less so.”
“I think you will succeed.”
“And what makes you think that?”
“Because you have already managed to achieve the impossible: made a start at restoring my faith in humanity. And more importantly, you've restored that little girl's.”
“That seems unlikely, when all I do is kill.”
Alix sat up. “You kill the darkness, and make room for more light.”
“Well, darkness bleeds. Copiously. But I thank you. And by the way, you're doing a lousy job of convincing me that my feelings for you are nonsensical.”
“Nonsensical?” Alix plucked another hair. “I said heightened.” Alix lay her head back on his chest. “Who knows … maybe being loved by you is the reason I exist at all. That's why I envy you.”
“If you envy me you must be as insane as I am.”
“Listen to yourself. You have the potential to be the most satisfied person that ever lived.”
“Notwithstanding what we just did, satisfied is not a word I would use.”
“You have purpose, and as purposes go it takes some beating. And by the way, thank you.”
Forty three
At first light, David and Alix were sleeping soundly, Alix's naked body turned towards and entwined with his own. “Wake up, David,” said Gull.
David opened his eyes and placed a hand over his nose. “What's that smell?”
“The dead are being exhumed and burnt.”
“Wasn't killing these people once enough?”
“The Nazis are attempting to erase evidence of their war crimes.” A volley of distant rifle shots rang out. Alix stirred beside him but did not wake. David sat up and looked down at her. He shook his head and reached for his clothes. Another volley of shots. “What are they shooting at, Gull?”
“The people employed to dig up the bodies are no longer useful. They are being executed by firing squad.”
David shook Alix gently by her shoulder. She sat up and stared through him. “Alix? Are you alright?” Alix listened in the hope that the shots had been a part of a nightmare. Another volley was fired, and she caught her breath and apologised for no reason David could fathom. He stood up and turned towards Helen and Anna. Both were sleeping. Another volley of rifle fire came from the direction he was facing. “How far, Gull?”
“Half a kilometre.” When he turned, Alix was standing behind him, silent and cowed as though any movement might single her out. She lifted her gaze from the ground and her eyes pleaded with him to 'Make it stop …' David backed away.
“Where are you going?” murmured Alix.
“To make it stop.”
“It's too dangerous.” At the sound of more shots, David turned and sprinted towards them. “What are you going to do, David?” asked Gull.
“I'm sure you were listening.”
“You have done enough. Anna, Alix and Helen should be taken immediately to the Zegota. And then there's a man called Huth in Krakow who begs our attention. Killing him is the only way to be certain.”
“There are men that beg our attention here.”
David reached the clearing where the executions were taking place and knelt beside a tree. One hundred metres away a mound of corpses had been stacked thirty high, covering an area the size of a basketball court. The bodies of the murdered crackled and shifted, and plumes of black smoke rose into the air like weary souls. Fifty metres from this crematorium, at three o'clock from David's position, stood the firing squad. It consisted of thirty men with bolt-action rifles and a superior officer. The mud-churned ground before these men was strewn with the corpses of their victims. They were being lifted onto wheelbarrows by emaciated prisoners who still clung to notions of usefulness. The firing squad chatted amiably and paid them little heed. Once a wheelbarrow had three bodies draped over it, it was wheeled towards the burning pyre. The limbs of these naked adults dangled and swayed like the limbs of children. Out of the trees emerged the next group to be slain: women and children escorted by two men with submachine guns. Seeing the backlog of work still to be undertaken, the party was ordered to halt, and they sat on a tree stump close to the edge of the clearing. One of them offered a cigarette to the other. He took it and lit up.
David was about to move to his right and make his way around to where they sat when Gull said, “We are being watched, David.”
“By Nazis?”
“No. By one of the Zegota men we are here to locate.” David moved off. “What are you going to do?”
“I'm going to give him a reason to smile. I doubt he's had one for some time.”
David stopped beside a tree four metres from where the men sat, close enough to hear them talking. The one on the right said, “Just pray the wind doesn't change direction. This stench is already intolerable.” The other took a drag on his cigarette, and looked towards the gently swaying trees. “With any luck the supply trucks will get through today. One more bowl of potato soup and I'll exchange this uniform for a pair of pyjamas and join the Jews.” One of the Jews collapsed in a heap of bones and cloth. The SS man looked at her with disgust and took a long drag on his cigarette. “Christ. If they don't pick her up, we'll have to do it. The surest way to catch lice. All we fucking need.” The man's machine gun was slung over his shoulder. He placed his cigarette between his lips, stood up and drew the gun around to his front. He approached the group. “Pick her up. Pick her up, I tell you! Or I'll start shooting you now.”
The women either side of the fallen woman lifted her back onto her feet. She fell against one of them and the other somehow found the strength to hold her up. The man returned to the stump and sat down. “Take them now,” said Gull.
David darted from the woods, grabbed both men about their necks and dragged them back under the canopy of trees. As they suffocated they scrabbled wildly behind them, trying to reach David's face. David gazed through grasping fingers at the women awaiting execution. Many attempted to see David's face through those same fingers, their pale and pinched faces like Halloween masks they could not remove. The man under David's left arm shuddered and went limp. “He's dead, David.” David let him fall to the ground and used his free hand to snap the other's neck. “Is the Zegota man still watching?”
“Yes, David.” David took off his shirt and trousers and removed the uniform of the man closest to his size.
David stood dressed in the uniform of an SS guard. He picked up a machine gun, removed the clip, then checked and replaced it. He did the same with the other machine gun. The thirty members of the firing squad were standing around and chatting in a relaxed fashion. David walked from the woods similarly relaxed and, once he was close eno
ugh to hear them talking, he opened fire with both guns. Grey fabric was turned red and flew into the air to a symphony of ra-ta-ta-tack! So precise was this attack that only one man managed to fire a round in response, a piece of spinning lead that sailed in an arc over the camp. David left one man alive to bear witness and to report back that one of his own had been responsible. This man groaned and reached for his rifle. David kicked it away and turned him over, saying in German, “The stress, it’s been getting me down.” The man clutched his bleeding side and pleaded for his life from one German to another. He said something about his poor old mum. David glanced to his right at the mothers this man had been waiting to murder. The urge to stamp his head into dust welled like a tumour in his gut, but its growth was halted when Gull said, “A vessel has appeared sixty metres from our position.”
David watched the man squirming on the ground. “Appeared?”
“Carradine must have found a way to mask their unique vital signs while at a distance. There could be others in the vicinity.”
David slammed the butt of his machine gun into the German's forehead, knocking him out. “Alix, Anna and Helen?”
“They are alive and being watched by a Zegota man.”
David straightened his back and looked at the burning pyre thirty metres away. He removed his hat and ran a hand across his brow. “My augmentations … will they protect me inside that?”
“You could withstand the temperature inside the pyre for six minutes and twenty-seven seconds. Then you would start to burn.”
“What's the vessel doing?”
“It is observing us from the spot we observed the firing squad. It tracked us to that location. I believe it is unaware we have detected it.”
A young woman who looked like an old woman was suddenly standing beside him. Behind her a group had started to gather. She looked up at David with eyes set back in deep caves. “You are a righteous Nazi?”
David tried to maintain eye contact but could not. “I don't believe there are any.”
She looked at the dead Germans. “What should we do?”
“If I were you I'd take my chances in the forest. The Zegota have a reputation for protecting your people. They're close by … watching us right now.” David smiled and threw down his guns, then started walking towards the smouldering pyre.
The woman called after him, “What is your name?”
“David.”
“Good luck to you, David.”
The words stopped David in his tracks and over his shoulder he said, “And to you … all of you.”
“The vessel has broken cover and is moving towards our position,” said Gull. David made his way to the other side of the four-metre-high pyre. He walked towards it, ducked and bobbed, and forged a place for himself among the dead. His clothing burned and flames licked his flesh, but they felt no warmer than the sun's rays at dawn. As he turned to face the way he'd entered, the dead seemed to close ranks about him and provide a sanctuary from which to overcome the next obstacle in a war as old as humanity itself – a war that within the tract of time that David walked was approaching its conclusion. One way or another.
“The heat has masked your vital signs,” said Gull. “The vessel's sensors will indicate that we have vanished.” The vessel rounded the pyre and looked about with white and disbelieving eyes. It sniffed at the air and turned towards the pyre, cocking its head like something that had eliminated all rational possibilities and now considered the irrational. David lunged from the mass of charred bodies and grabbed it by the lapels of its looted Nazi uniform. He dragged it inside, whereupon the dead seemed to capitulate and make way for them both. David dragged it into the centre of the pyre and held it firm until it was a mass of burnt and blistering flesh and struggled no more. He looked into its face – dark green eyes stared out from a charred and swollen skull. David laid the dead man down. He reached up and climbed, and the limbs of the dead seemed to assist him in his ascent. David emerged from the top of the pyre like a new-born covered in foetal matter, and slid down its side to the bottom. He crawled away from the pyre and clambered to his feet, and many witnesses upon that field of death wept at the sight of him.
A fit and stocky man dressed in black and holding a pistol navigated the bodies and approached him. Alix followed close on his heels, tripping on a corpse and landing in the mud on her knees. David stepped towards her but the man pointed his pistol at him. “Remain where you are.” He was a man of middle years with a grey complexion and grey moustache. He opened his mouth but closed it again as though the appropriate words had escaped him. His glassy-eyed expression suggested that the appropriate words may not exist. And so how to proceed? His gun hand was shaking to the point where he appeared unsure of which part of David's face to shoot first. Alix caught the man up and said, “What the fuck are you doing?”
David went down on one knee and placed his hands behind his head. The gun's sight followed. David looked down the barrel of that gun and said, “It's alright, Alix.” The Zegota man tore his gaze from David for a skittish second and looked to the top of the pyre. “As you can see I am unarmed,” said David. “I am on your side.”
“How? How have you done all this? Tell me how?”
“It's just technology … technology that enables my skin to withstand heat for an extended period of time. That's all. It's not magic. I'm just an experiment.”
“An experiment? Where is the man who was tracking you?”
David gestured over his shoulder with his chin. “He's inside.”
“He has no … technology?”
“No. He's dead.”
“Stop pointing that gun at him,” said Alix. “You saw what he did! Killed those fucking Nazis. He rescued me and the others.”
“Why? From who do you receive your orders?”
David said the only name this man might recognise. “Winston Churchill.”
“You are a British agent?”
David nodded.
In passable English the man said, “Then tell me: who was Samuel Johnson? And what did he say about London?”
Gull said, “He was a diarist who said that when a man is tired of London he is tired of life.” David promptly repeated this. The Zegota man nodded and said, “Why did you rescue these women? Why that child?”
“It's important that they survive this conflict. I need you to look after them.”
“You seem to be doing a fine job of that yourself.”
“I have go to into Krakow to kill a Nazi.”
“What Nazi?”
“Ralph Ernst Adler.”
“Adler? You must be joking. You must know who he is.”
“I do.” The man lowered his gun. “That murderer has tortured and killed a dozen of my men. Good men. Brave men. They told him nothing.” He crossed himself, then turned and raised a hand. A group of Zegota men walked from the woods into the clearing. They clutched bayoneted rifles and headed for the Germans.
“What are they going to do?” asked David.
“If need be they will finish the good work you started.”
“I left one man alive. He's unconscious. It's important he tells them that one of his own was responsible.”
“My name is Roch.”
“David.”
“Come, David. And show me this fortunate bastard.”
Three Zegota men approached the previously condemned women, many of whom had collapsed and wept as they learned of their liberation. They were escorted into the woods with the survivors, whose belief in their usefulness had paid off against all the odds. As they passed, many gazed at David as though he were some kind of saviour. He shook his head and knelt beside the Nazi who'd commanded the firing squad. The man was on his back, the front of his uniform shredded and drenched in blood. “What was I thinking aiming for his heart?” murmured David.
Roch gave the body a swift kick. “It's the best way to kill a large rat like this.”
“That's not what I meant. I wanted his uniform.”
; “Maybe it is for the best. The penalty for impersonating an officer of the SS is death.”
“Death appears to be the only currency around here, and I'm rich beyond the dreams of avarice.” Roch nodded and withdrew a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. He offered one to David, who shook his head. Roch turned to his men. “Look amongst these rats … find a uniform that's not too badly damaged for our friend.” He hawked up some phlegm and spat on the Nazi officer. “It looks like you'll have to settle for being a grunt.”
“Looks like I will.”
“Something tells me you don't respond well to authority figures.”
“Something tells me you don't respond well to Nazis.”
“I will come with you to the outskirts of Krakow … show you the best way in.”
“I appreciate the offer, but that won't be necessary. I have all the logistical information I need. All I ask is that you shelter my companions … keep them safe until the allies arrive in February.”
“February, you say? And who told you this? Churchill or God Almighty?”
A man came running from the woods. Through huffs and puffs he said, “A detail of soldiers has set out … from the camp. They are on foot … and headed this way.”
Thirty minutes later, David and his party were deep inside the forest. They came upon a group sheltering below an overhanging ridge: four Zegota men, two women, and a child holding a stick and examining two leaves. Anna dropped the stick and ran towards David so quickly she almost tripped over herself. “I said you wouldn't go without saying goodbye! I kept this leaf for you, because of the pattern.”
David took the leaf. “Thank you.” He knelt and looked into her eyes – eyes that beamed with an acceptance of inevitability that evaded most until old age. “I have to go soon, Anna.” David opened his arms and she fell into them. “You are a brave little girl … and so clever. I want you to grow up and be good person. Will you try and do that?” Anna nodded into his shoulder.
