Ghosts of War

by Brad Taylor

  Jennifer hugged Aaron and said, “Where’s Shoshana?”

  He flicked his head to the street and said, “Window shopping. Looking at some bag worth much less than they are charging.”

  I said, “She actually shops? For useless shit like Jennifer?”

  I didn’t mean it to come out that way, but it did. Jennifer gave me her disapproving teacher glare, and I was starting to backpedal when the door opened again. The little angel of death herself entered, carrying a new purse the size of a small duffle bag, and I saw Jennifer break into a smile, which was something I still had to wrap my head around. They were so far apart it was like night and day, but for some reason, they connected.

  A tall, waifish woman of about five foot nine, with black hair cut in a pageboy, Shoshana was all sinew and muscle, like a snake, with no womanly curves. In contrast, Jennifer looked like something from a California surfing calendar, with a shape to match. Gray eyes, dirty blond hair held in a ponytail, she routinely turned heads wherever she went. Next to her, Shoshana looked like she had stepped out of a Charles Dickens novel, and the contrasts didn’t stop with outward appearances.

  Jennifer had a moral compass that was black and white, unerringly telling her the limits of what she was willing to do to accomplish our mission. Shoshana’s compass was broken beyond repair. She would do whatever was necessary, no matter who was harmed in the process.

  At least, that’s what I thought. Jennifer seemed to feel differently, and believed I was selling Shoshana short. And maybe I was, but it was only because I saw myself when I looked into her eyes. But given Jennifer’s unbending sense of right and wrong, if she believed it, it might be true. That compass had proven true with me once upon a time. I just didn’t want to test the theory, because on the last mission where I’d done so, Shoshana had threatened to kill me. Even if we were friends.

  I had to admit, though, I missed her.

  She glided over to the table in her predatory way, taking in the entire room without appearing to, looking for threats. She hugged Jennifer even as she was eyeing the bartender, still assessing her environment. It made me wish I’d have planned for Knuckles to leap out of the rafters. Of course, that might have ended up with him dead, so I guess that wouldn’t have been too funny.

  She let go of Jennifer and said, “Nephilim. You look good. A little fatter than last time. Jennifer must be feeding you well.”

  What the hell? Her face revealed nothing but innocence.

  Over her shoulder, Jennifer glared at me, telling me not to go off, so I didn’t. While the statement wasn’t accurate, I wasn’t even sure it was an insult in her eyes. Lord knows, I couldn’t get her to quit using my given name, even when she knew I hated it. She seemed to think it was some talisman of good luck.

  Aaron was grinning at the jab, but remained silent, knowing that he had no control over his little assassin. He never did, until push came to shove, and then she followed him into hell simply because he asked.

  I smiled and held out my arms, saying, “You want to test the fat man, Carrie?”

  Which is what I called her to return the favor. On our last mission together, my team had taken to using Carrie as a callsign for her because she was something straight out of a Stephen King novel, down to some scary ESP-type ability she seemed to possess. It was supposed to be an insult, but she took it as a compliment.

  She hesitated for a moment, and I could feel her reading me. Penetrating me. It was always disconcerting, but I was getting used to it. Then she hugged me harder than necessary, surprising me, squeezing and resting her head on my shoulder. She said, “I missed you. You and Jennifer.”

  I said, “Yeah, I bet you missed Jennifer. Always wanting what you can’t have.”

  Jennifer believed Shoshana was a lesbian, but I wasn’t convinced. Either way, Shoshana routinely tried to aggravate me by hitting on her. Jennifer took the flirting in suffering silence, like a family pet caught between two small children fighting over who gets to throw the ball.

  Shoshana laughed and said, “You didn’t hear? I’m married.” She held out her left hand, and I’ll be damned if it didn’t have a ring on it.

  I said, “Seriously? Who’s the lucky . . . person?”

  “Aaron, of course. Who else?”

  Aaron looked embarrassed and said, “It’s for the business proposition I wanted to talk to you about. We’re working as a husband-and-wife team.”

  Shoshana beamed and winked, saying, “Yeah, it’s only for the mission.”

  I swear, those two were the most complicated couple on the entire planet. And that was including Jennifer and me. Aaron loved her with his entire being, and she loved him back, but it would never be physical. At least according to Jennifer. With the wink, I was wondering if Jennifer wasn’t off base, but with Aaron’s embarrassment, whatever was happening was still a mystery, even to him. Only Shoshana knew, and she wasn’t telling.

  Because she was a psycho.

  Knuckles downed the rest of his beer, shook Aaron’s hand, then said to me, “Well, I’m outta here. I’ll tell Kurt we talked.”

  Shoshana looked him in the eyes, then said to Aaron, “He can listen. Maybe he can help us too.”

  Knuckles said, “Oh, no. You guys do whatever you want, but I’ve got enough work to keep me busy.”

  Shoshana flicked her eyes from him to me to Jennifer, then settled back on Aaron. She said, “That’s not true.”

  Knuckles’s mouth fell open, and Shoshana said, “I don’t mind him coming. We might need him.”

  Knuckles looked at me in amazement and I said, “Wait, wait, what the hell are we talking about?”

  Shoshana started to say something else, and Aaron held up his hand. She closed her mouth and took a step back from Knuckles. That had never, ever happened. I said, “Well, well, looks like you’ve learned some discipline.”

  Shoshana settled her eyes on me and said, “I’ve always had discipline, but it never involved you. We’ve never needed you before. You and Jennifer. We need you now, and Aaron is afraid you’ll refuse if I aggravate you. So I promised not to do so until you agree. Then I get to do what I want.”

  I looked at Aaron and said, “What is she talking about?”

  “Like I said, we have a business proposition. It doesn’t require your skill. It only requires your company.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Have you heard about the fabled Nazi gold train in Poland? The one that’s supposedly buried in a secret tunnel?”

  9

  Out of all the things I had thought Aaron might say, this had not been even remotely in the ballpark. I said, “Did you say ghost train? No, actually, I haven’t. Have you heard about Area 51? Jennifer and I have been there. They don’t really have any aliens.”

  Jennifer said, “I’ve heard about it. I thought it was a hoax. Some guys said they used ground-penetrating radar to locate the train, but the government says they’re frauds and there is no train.”

  Leave it up to Jennifer to have a clue what the Israelis were talking about. She was constantly reading National Geographic and other, more obscure anthropological and archaeological magazines, and seemed to be tracking all attempts by modern man to penetrate the past. If it had anything to do with history, she almost always knew exactly what that history was. But this was a bit much.

  She saw my expression and said, “He’s talking about something real. Not just pulling your chain for a smart-ass response.”

  Shoshana nodded and said, “It’s real, all right. And they’ve found it. No hoax. The government just wants the treasure hunters to go away, because they’ve already emptied the contents.”

  Jennifer said, “What? They can’t do that in secret. The train probably held millions of dollars of property belonging to someone else.”

  Shoshana’s eyes glowed and she said, “Exactly. It also held something mo
re valuable to us.”

  I held up my hands and said, “Wait, wait, damn it. Someone explain all this to me.”

  Jennifer looked at Aaron, and he gave her permission to lecture me. “Okay, it’s really pretty simple. You know about the horrific roundup of the Jews in Eastern Europe, right? How the Nazis hunted them and then sent them to the concentration camps?”

  I said, “Yeah, yeah. I know the history of World War Two. You can speed it up.”

  “Well, when they boarded the cattle cars, they lost everything they had, from famous artwork owned by the richest Jewish citizens to the meager wedding rings of the poorest. Everything valuable was taken, and as the Jews were taken from each city, their valuables were loaded onto trains and shipped west to Germany. Some of the trains were captured—for instance, one famous train in Hungary in 1945, with forty-four cars loaded floor to ceiling with gold products—while others were known to exist but have never been found.”

  I said, “And someone thinks they’ve located one of these missing trains, buried underground? Why would the Nazis do that?”

  Jennifer looked at Aaron and said, “You guys clearly know more than me on this train. Want me to continue?”

  Shoshana said, “Oh, yes. Please do. It’s not often we get to feel superior to Pike.”

  Knuckles snickered, and I said, “Like you know about this.”

  “I’m not the one they’re trying to hire, but given your lack of knowledge, I’d be suspicious of paying you anything.”

  Aaron said, “Jennifer?”

  Jennifer patted my hand and said, “Okay, knuckle dragger, you do know about the fighting in Eastern Europe, right?”

  Now on more comfortable ground, I said, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I can hold my own there. Warsaw uprising, Stalingrad, what do you want to know?”

  “Project Riese?”

  Now I was getting aggravated. I had no idea what that was. Shoshana grinned, which didn’t help my mood.

  Jennifer smiled at me, knowing it would defuse my anger. Which it did. I noticed Shoshana staring intently at the small exchange, as if she were studying a couple of lizards in a jar.

  Jennifer said, “That wasn’t a fair question. Riese wasn’t a fight. It was a system of tunnels built into the mountains in what’s now western Poland. In World War Two, it was German territory. Anyway, to make a long story short, Hitler was building a gigantic complex—riese in German means ‘giant’—for reasons unknown and debated to this day. Some say it was a final command complex for the führer, others that it was for building next-generation weapons. A sort of Hydra-like complex straight out of the Avengers, except it was real. And a lot of it is still unknown.”

  I took that in and said, “So this complex might be hiding the missing trains?”

  “Well, that’s what the treasure hunters say. They claim they found one of the trains in a previously unknown tunnel that had collapsed. They even had radar images to prove it.” She turned to Aaron and said, “But the last I heard, the government explored and found nothing.”

  Aaron said, “That’s because they don’t want a riot over claims, like happened with that Hungarian train you mentioned. They found it, but it wasn’t forty-four cars loaded with gold. It was one car, and it held a couple of cases of gold products, mostly candlesticks and that sort of thing, some artwork, and something special to us.”

  I said, “What?”

  “There might be a very, very old Torah from a synagogue in Plonsk, Poland. David Ben-Gurion’s birthplace.”

  Even I understood the significance of that. Ben-Gurion was the father of Israel. It would be like finding a bible owned by George Washington.

  He continued, “If it’s the right Torah, it will be over four hundred years old.”

  Scratch that. Make it a bible that had been passed down for generations until it reached Washington’s hands.

  Aaron said, “It is something the State of Israel would very much like to confirm, but they can’t do so openly. Officially, they don’t know it exists, which is where you come in.”

  “Us? We’re not Jewish.”

  “No, you’re not. But you are the owners of Grolier Recovery Services. A facilitation company for archaeological work.”

  “And?”

  “And Poland would never let in a group of Israelis to look at the Torah. They’d be petrified we’d raise an alarm and cause trouble over the entire find. But they don’t have an issue with a husband-and-wife team from the United States who happen to be experts on ancient Jewish texts, especially when they’re being escorted by such an esteemed company. You did, after all, find a pyramid in the Guatemalan jungle.”

  I brushed off the blatant flattery, saying, “And this husband-and-wife team would be you and Carrie here?”

  Shoshana nodded and said, “Yes. We just want to use your cover to make us legitimate. Get us over there to take a look.”

  “How do you guys even know all this?”

  “Let’s just say that certain elements of our government have determined all this, and that the Polish government is trying to ascertain what they found. They’ve made discrete inquiries to various universities asking for help in determining the provenance of some of the artwork, and we managed to interject ourselves into the flow for the Torah.”

  Meaning some idiot in Poland had actually contacted an expert in Israel, and they, in turn, had reported back to the Mossad.

  “So all we do is fly over there with you, look important, then fly home?”

  “Basically, yes. That’s it. Look, Poland’s intentions aren’t evil. They’re just trying to do the right thing without a firestorm. Taking it slow and easy. We’ll take a look at the Torah and report what we find. Israel doesn’t want to cause a fight without reason, but if it’s real, they will get it back.”

  Sounded simple, but one part of the whole scheme was blank. Jennifer caught the same problem, asking, “But who’s going to do that? Determine if it’s real? None of us have that ability.”

  Aaron said, “We have tracked down survivors from that synagogue. The Torah has identifying markings. And we have Shoshana.”

  I said, “Shoshana?”

  She nodded, and said, “All I need to do is touch it. I’ll know.”

  A part of me wanted to roll my eyes at the magic mumbo jumbo, but a deeper, primordial part believed. I don’t know how, but Shoshana had a weird, freakish ability to read intent from a person simply by studying them. I’d seen her do it, and it was real. I couldn’t see how it extended to inanimate objects, but hey, it was their dime. Who was I to question?

  I looked at Jennifer, and she shrugged, saying, “We’re not doing anything in Charleston.”

  I said, “Knuckles, you want to take some leave? Earn a little money?”

  Aaron seemed unfazed by the suggestion, which should have sent my radar up, but I figured he was just willing to do anything to get our commitment. After all, he wasn’t footing the bill.

  Knuckles said, “Nope. You guys go ahead. I’m staying right here. Flying for eighteen hours just to look at an old scroll isn’t my idea of fun.”

  He stood up, flipped some bills onto the table, and said, “Call me if it turns into high adventure.”

  I grinned and said, “Will do.”

  He walked out saying, “I’ll let Kurt know you’ve found at least a week’s worth of employment.”

  To Aaron I said, “When would we need to fly?”

  “Well . . . I’ve taken the liberty of using your company name and address already. The Polish antiquities department is expecting us in two days.”

  It took a second to find my voice, unsure if I should be flattered or aggravated. I finally said, “You’re kidding me. You were that sure we’d sign on?”

  Aaron grinned and said, “I wasn’t, but Shoshana was. And I’ve learned to trust her instincts.”

  Bou
ncing up and down on the balls of her feet, looking more like a kid waiting on ice cream than the lethal killer she was, Shoshana said, “So you’ll do it?”

  I looked at Jennifer and said, “You mean spend a week with you and Aaron acting like a married couple? How on earth could I miss that shitshow?”

  Shoshana beamed, for some reason taking it as a compliment. She said, “I’ve been studying you and Jennifer. I’m getting really good at it. I just can’t decide if I want to be the pure one that suffers through, like Jennifer. Or like you.”

  I said, “The pillar against the wind? The protector of all that’s sacred?”

  She scrunched up her face and said, “No, no. Is that how you see yourself? Get real. I mean the cranky asshole of the relationship.”

  Jennifer and Aaron both started laughing. Aaron said, “I only told her not to aggravate you until you agreed.”

  Shoshana leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. I ignored her, waving for the check, saying, “You don’t need any practice at being the cranky asshole.”

  10

  The Russian girls continued dancing below. Inside the alcove, the dim light failed to hide Mikhail’s shocked expression at Simon’s statement. Simon said, “Yes, you heard me correctly. We need to alter the balance of power. Running and hiding won’t do me any good. Putin will find me wherever I go, just as he did with Alexander Litvinenko. But, unlike Alexander, I have no intention of dying of radiation poisoning in a London hospital. I will die of old age in Moscow.”

  Mikhail said, “I can’t help with this. I understand your plight, but that is not mine, at least not yet. We have had good business together, but you’re asking me to commit suicide.”

  “No, I’m not. The world is sick of Vladimir Putin. He barges around like a bear in the woods, from Syria to the Ukraine, and he’s made the West afraid with his actions. They’re on a trip wire after Crimea.”

  Mikhail grimaced and said, “There is an old adage: ‘If you shoot at the king, make sure you hit him. If you bury him, make sure he’s dead.’ That is not us. We cannot take on the president of the Russian Federation.”