The Ragged End of Nowhere

by Roy Chaney

  The tattooed Legionnaire reached Hagen’s car, stepped around to the passenger side. Hagen kept the Beretta pointed at him as the Legionnaire reached for the door handle. Tate fell backward slowly as the car door opened. The tattooed Legionnaire raised his knee and pushed it into Tate’s back to hold him in place while he grabbed Tate under his arms. Then he pulled Tate out of the car and dragged him several feet, the heels of Tate’s shoes scraping the concrete.

  “Now close the door,” Hagen said.

  The Legionnaire did as he was told. Then he retreated to the prostrate figure of Legionnaire Tate and stood over his fallen comrade while Hagen sunk his foot into the gas pedal and sped out of the parking lot, tires screaming in the night.

  16.

  THE LIGHTS OF LAS VEGAS ahead of him.

  The Ford Explorer behind him.

  Only a few more miles.

  Traffic picked up on Highway 95 as Hagen approached the city. It was half past two o’clock in the morning but that didn’t matter. The city didn’t sleep. He wasn’t sure but he thought a second car was now following him, to replace the sedan that was taking Legionnaire Tate to a hospital. A bullet wound—there might be awkward questions at a hospital.

  But maybe Colonel Zahn could handle those kinds of questions. He seemed to be a man of considerable resources. How many Legionnaires had Zahn brought with him from France or wherever the Colonel had departed from? He seemed to have a small army with him. An invasion force of Legionnaires that had descended on Las Vegas for one purpose—to locate the Hand of Danjou and take it back to France.

  The French Foreign Legion. A fighting force of men from all corners of the globe, led by an elite cadre of French officers. Tested for almost two centuries in the deserts of North Africa. Now fighting a war of attrition in a new theater of operations—the deserts of southern Nevada. And a war of attrition is what it was. Ronnie—dead. Sidney Trunk—dead. Gubbs and Harry Needles—both dead. And how many of them were out there right now with Hagen in their sights, waiting for the right moment to pull the trigger?

  Eyes, everywhere in the night.

  Hagen’s headlights sped across the scarred surface of the highway. Hagen thought of Ronnie and of how Hagen had felt when he heard that Ronnie had joined the Legion. The Legion—that had been their father’s game, not Ronnie’s. All his life Ronnie had only wanted to be out from under the iron fist of Wolfgang Karl Hagen, former Waffen-SS soldier, former Legionnaire. Then Ronnie turned around and joined the Legion. Why? Because Ronnie wanted to succeed where their father had succeeded. It was Ronnie’s way of proving himself. He’d gone into the Legion to do battle with their father’s ghost.

  But Ronnie had failed. The Legion had beaten him down and spit him out. And in his defeat he struck out at everything that had made their father who he was. The honor and valor of the Foreign Legion. The code of the noble warrior. The memory of Dien Bien Phu. All those things were represented by the Hand of Danjou.

  And Ronnie stole it. To spite the ghost of their father.

  But Ronnie was dead now.

  The ghost of their father had won.

  Hagen drove down the Las Vegas Strip.

  Lights. Money. A sea of roulette wheels, slot machines and cool fresh casino decks with slick surfaces and suicide jacks. A sea of winners well on their way to losing. Hagen felt like he was standing on the edge of that same precipice. Waiting for that one last deal of the cards. Waiting for that dead man’s hand to come sliding across the green felt toward him and tell him that this game was over for good. Only he was playing for higher stakes than what he carried in his wallet.

  He was playing for his life.

  Hagen watched the casinos slip past. Mandalay Bay. Luxor. Excalibur. Up ahead he saw the MGM Grand, lit up in electric green and glowing in the night like a giant emerald. Hagen turned right on Tropicana Avenue and pulled into the parking garage behind the MGM. On the third level he parked the car near an escalator and jumped out. Running over to the escalator Hagen looked back and caught a glimpse of the Ford Explorer driving down a row of parked cars toward him.

  On the ground floor Hagen jogged along a passageway lined with closed shops. Took an escalator up into the hotel, climbing the steps two at a time. At three o’clock in the morning the action inside the hotel casino was going strong. People at the tables, people at the slot machines. And all of it watched over closely by the surveillance cameras in the ceilings that kept track of every bet at every table, every deal of the cards, every toss of the dice. Hagen was grateful for the crowd. Safety in numbers. Hagen walked to a bar near a row of roulette tables and sat down, ordered a bourbon and soda from the bow-tied bartender.

  Hagen took a long drink of the bourbon. Driving back into town a hunch had come to him. A hunch that had taken on force and clarity, the more he thought about it. Hagen decided to set some machinery in motion so that he could play the hunch if he needed to. He hoped that he didn’t.

  Hagen pulled out the cell phone and made some phone calls.

  The last call was to Colonel Zahn.

  Hagen was working on his second bourbon and soda and smoking a Benson and Hedges the bartender had given him when he spotted the short thin man walking across the casino toward him. Back straight, legs moving in a stiff starched gait. He wore a dark gray linen sport coat over a light blue shirt, white slacks with razor-sharp creases, freshly buffed dark brown oxfords. His angular face was leathery and his dark eyes moved quickly around the casino before coming to rest on Hagen at the bar.

  Two other men had entered the casino behind him. One of them a short Japanese man with a shaved head, wearing a blue blazer and jeans. The other a tall young man with a sallow complexion, wearing a brown leather jacket. The two men broke off, the Japanese moving over to a bank of slot machines near the bar, throwing quick glances at Hagen. The tall one drifted around the edge of the casino, disappeared behind the crowds of people at the craps tables across the room.

  The older man smiled as he approached the bar. The thin gray mustache over his lip looked like something that had been applied with a ruler, width and length measured out to the millimeter.

  “Mister Hagen, good evening.”

  “Colonel Zahn?”

  The man bowed his head slightly. Hagen thought he heard the heels of the man’s shoes click together.

  Colonel Zahn sat down next to Hagen. “What are you drinking?” When the bartender appeared Colonel Zahn ordered the same as Hagen. While the bartender mixed the drink a man with closely-cropped black hair and Arabic features sat down at the end of the bar. He seemed to be looking everywhere except at Hagen and Zahn.

  “How many men did you bring with you?” Hagen said.

  “A small number.”

  “I wouldn’t try anything here. Security is tight in casinos. They tend to frown on fighting and gunplay.”

  “I am aware of why you chose this place to meet.”

  While Zahn waited for his drink he sized up Hagen with a sharp eye. Hagen knew very well that Zahn would’ve preferred a different kind of meeting, one where he had more leverage. A small quiet meeting, in an empty room somewhere, with Hagen tied to a chair and several of Zahn’s men standing by to help drive Zahn’s point home. This short thin man with the mannerisms of a effete drill sergeant was dangerous. Hagen hoped he never found out just how dangerous.

  Behind them a cheer rose from one of the roulette tables. Zahn turned to survey the action.

  “Do you like roulette, Mr. Hagen?” Zahn spoke English with a clipped French accent that seemed to bite the ends off his words.

  “Never play it.”

  “A game of pure chance.”

  “It’s a sucker’s game.”

  Zahn smiled. “Just like life, no?”

  “I suppose. If you’re a sucker.”

  When the bartender returned with Zahn’s drink, Zahn removed a wallet from inside his sport coat. Dropped a twenty-dollar bill on the bar. “I’ll pay for my friend’s drink as well,” he said to the ba
rtender, nodding at Hagen.

  “Already taken care of,” the bartender said.

  “My mistake.” Then, to Hagen, “I will owe you a drink.”

  Zahn picked up his glass and took a drink. Hagen noticed a long red scar running under Zahn’s chin from one side of his neck to the other. Looked almost like someone had tried to cut his throat but hadn’t quite gotten it right.

  “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of drinking such good bourbon,” Zahn said, holding his glass before him, inspecting the color of the drink. “I’ve been told that when one is in the land of bluegrass, bourbon is the drink of choice.”

  “You’re two thousand miles from the nearest bluegrass.”

  “Two thousand miles? Well, that’s as close as I’ve ever been.”

  “Then drink up.”

  The bartender returned with Zahn’s change, fanned the bills out on the bar. Walked off to serve the Arabic man.

  “Where shall we begin?” Zahn said.

  “Tell me about the hand. How did my brother acquire it?”

  “Ah, yes.” Zahn ran his hand over his closely shaved chin. “The Hand of Danjou. Do you know anything about the Hand of Danjou, Mister Hagen? It belongs to the French Foreign Legion, did you know that?”

  “That’s why the Legion sent you here.”

  A sly look fell across Zahn’s face. “In case there’s any misunderstanding, let me just say that myself and my men do not represent the French Foreign Legion. Let us say only that the Legion’s interests and ours are sometimes the same.”

  “All right. The Legion didn’t send you here. They don’t know anything about you. And if anyone says any different, the Legion will act shocked and appalled and issue an official statement denying any knowledge of you. Yes, I know how that works.”

  “I’m glad we understand each other.”

  “We don’t understand each other at all, Zahn. Tell me what happened.”

  Zahn took a drink, then set the glass down slowly, fitting the bottom rim of the glass exactly onto the wet ring on the cardboard coaster. At the end of the bar the Arabic man looked startled as the bartender set some sort of frozen concoction in front of him—a large glass goblet filled with a bright blue mixture and crushed ice. A slice of pineapple rested on the rim of the glass and a straw protruded up from the depths of the goblet. The Legionnaire muttered something under his breath, sipped the drink through the straw, then looked over his shoulder with a wary expression, as though afraid that his colleagues might catch him with such a flamboyant beverage.

  “Are you familiar with the history of France, Mister Hagen?” Colonel Zahn said. “Or the history of Mexico?”

  “I get around.”

  Zahn raised an eyebrow. “Then perhaps you are aware that in the nineteenth century France took a great interest in Mexico. Napoléon the Third wished to administer the country for the benefit of France and proposed—through certain intrigues, shall we say—to place Archduke Maximilian of Austria on the Mexican throne for that purpose. Maximilian agreed to this proposal, but only on the condition that Napoléon provide him with a force of no less than ten thousand men to protect him from the Mexican republicans who opposed France.

  “Napoléon gave him the Foreign Legion.

  “The first Legion forces arrived in Mexico in 1863. They began military operations in the area of Veracruz. They quickly found that the Mexicans were a poorly trained enemy—nothing more than small bands of guerillas who fired on the Legionnaires and then ran off into the countryside. The guerillas were more interested in looting than in protecting their homeland. The real enemy for the Legion forces in Mexico was the yellow fever. Entire companies of Legionnaires died of the vomito—so called because one very visible symptom of the yellow fever is the vomiting of copious amounts of blood.

  “Believing the yellow fever epidemic to be the result of living in the lowlands along the coast, the Legion decided to move their base of operations inland, to higher ground near the town of Córdoba. It was during this”—Zahn waved a hand in the air as he searched for the right words—“eff ort of retrenching, shall we say, that on April 30, 1863, Captain Jean Danjou led a Legion force of sixty-five men along a road near the town of Camarón, southwest of Veracruz. Danjou was a veteran Legionnaire who’d lost his left hand during an earlier Legion expedition. He employed a wooden hand in its place.

  “As they traveled along this road the Legionnaires were attacked by Mexican guerillas on horse back. Danjou ordered his men into a fighting position and they repelled the Mexican attack. But these guerillas were more determined than their pre de ces sors, and instead of running off they fell back and prepared for a second assault on the Legion position. Captain Danjou saw this and ordered his men into a nearby hacienda. The hacienda was surrounded by earthen walls that provided a great amount of protection to the Legionnaires, and very quickly the hacienda was turned into a fortress from which the Legionnaires prepared to do battle.

  “When the Mexican force returned and surrounded the hacienda, the Legionnaires saw that the guerillas were now reinforced by several regiments of Mexican army regulars loyal to the republican cause. The Legionnaires were vastly outnumbered. But when the Mexicans attacked the Legionnaires fought valiantly. The attacks continued throughout the day, however, and with each attack the Legionnaires’ position became less and less tenable. Captain Danjou, seeing the truth of his situation, ordered his men to swear an oath. They would fight to the death. There was to be no surrender.

  “A short time later Danjou himself was shot and killed. But the dwindling number of Legionnaires fought on. The hacienda was set ablaze by the Mexican forces and still the Legionnaires continued their fight in the midst of smoke and flames. Hope no longer existed for them. It became clear that they would soon die. But there was no thought of surrender.

  “Soon only five Legionnaires remained, including one wounded officer. Down to their last cartridges, they fired their rifles one last time, then fixed bayonets and prepared to charge the Mexican forces. One Legionnaire was shot dead before he’d advanced ten paces—he took nineteen Mexican bullets before he breathed his last. But before his brothers in arms could carry out their suicidal charge, the position was overrun by Mexican soldiers and they were captured. When the Legionnaires were taken before the Mexican commander, he was astonished to learn that only four remained. ‘They do not fight like men,’ the commander told his aides. ‘They fight like demons.’ ”

  Zahn paused. The bartender stood nearby, head cocked to one side, trying to follow the conversation. The captain threw him a harsh look and the bartender moved farther down the bar, busied himself washing glasses.

  “And that, Mister Hagen, is the story of Camarón,” Zahn said. “Captain Danjou’s wooden hand was found in the ashes of the hacienda, and it was transported back to the Legion headquarters in Algeria, where it remained for one hundred years. In 1962, when the Legion moved its headquarters to Aubagne, France, the hand was taken there and placed inside the Legion museum that now stands beside the monument to all the Legionnaires who have died in battle. The Legion celebrates the battle of Camarón every year on April 30, and during these ceremonies Captain Danjou’s hand is removed from its place of honor and paraded in front of the assembled Legion regiments. The Hand of Danjou has come to symbolize the glory of the Legion, and the words ‘Faire Camerone’ have become the Legion battle cry. Because, you see, the greatest glory a Legionnaire can possess is to die fighting—for France and for the Legion—against hopeless odds and without thought of surrender.”

  “Like Dien Bien Phu.”

  “Yes, Mister Hagen. Like Dien Bien Phu. I understand that your father was there with the Legion, so perhaps you understand better than many about the glory of the Legion.”

  Hagen took a drink. The glory of the Legion? Dien Bien Phu was no crowning achievement—it was a bloodbath. But let the Legion believe what it wanted. Hagen didn’t care.

  “There are people who think this relic is worth thir
teen million dollars,” Hagen said. “That’s a steep price for a wooden hand.”

  “Yes, that’s true. A wooden hand—nothing more. And the Shroud of Turin is only a piece of cloth. Yet there are many people who would kill to possess it. Because to possess it is to possess history. One cannot put a price on history, at least not in terms of money. The value of history is measured in the blood of men, as every schoolboy knows.”

  “And the Legion is prepared to spill blood to get it back.”

  Zahn shrugged. “If you wish to look at it that way. But you have to understand, it is a question of proprietary interest. The hand belongs to the Legion. It is the Legion. And the Legion is prepared to go to great lengths to see that it is returned to its rightful place beside the Monument aux Morts.”

  The Monument aux Morts. Monument to the dead. A fitting place for a wooden hand that seemed to leave in its wake nothing but violence and death. Hagen thought again of the photograph his father had once shown him, the ranks of Legionnaires standing at attention under the sun, kepis starched white, red epaulettes clinging to their shoulders, looking sharp-edged and solemn as the wooden hand in its glass reliquary was paraded before them, surrounded by billowing battle flags and trumpet blasts. Had one of those Legionnaires in the photograph been Hagen’s father—Legionnaire Wolfgang Karl Hagen, former Waffen-SS soldier, veteran of Dien Bien Phu? Had he saluted this wooden hand, just as he’d saluted the Nazi swastika years before? What price would Hagen’s father have placed on the Hand of Danjou? Would it have been worth taking a life to him?

  Colonel Zahn sipped his bourbon. He didn’t seem to be in any rush. Hagen had expected him to show up here making urgent demands and angry threats, but Zahn was sitting here like an old chum, ready to shoot the breeze all night if need be, or so it seemed. Was Zahn playing for time? Was there some reason why he wanted to keep Hagen here as long as possible? Hagen couldn’t see any reason why he should. As long as they sat here in the casino Hagen was safe. But Zahn must’ve given some thought as to how he could force Hagen onto a less level playing field. One where Zahn could bargain more quickly and violently, without the pleasantries thrown in.