The Golden Minute

by John Birmingham

  “You are some sort of American cowboy actor, yes?” he asked.

  “Close enough as makes no difference, I reckon,” Smith said. “And you are a local? Familiar with the city?”

  The barber nodded, lifting himself up on tiptoe as he did so.

  “My name is Mandelstein,” said the barber. He took Smith’s proffered hand and shook it. His grip was firm enough, but the fingers felt bony, almost skeletal. Now that Smith was up so close, he could see just how hungry this Mandelstein feller had got to be. He was swimming around inside of that once fine suit, which was worn through at the elbows. The cuffs had frayed, and the ghosts of soup stains haunted the wide lapels.

  “How might I help you, Herr…”

  “Smith. John Titanic Smith.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Herr Schmidt. I have relatives recently moved to New York. They speak highly of your country and of her people.”

  Smith dipped the brim of his hat towards Mister Mandelstein.

  “I thank you for the kindness, sir. And if you would care to earn a few American dollars, I would have more than kind words from you. I am somewhat lost in your city, sir, and I seek direction, or even guidance to a particular business.”

  One of Mandelstein’s eyebrows lifted as he cocked his head slightly. Smith had seen the same look on storekeepers and bartenders many times before. It was the look of a merchant assessing a profit in the offing.

  “And the business you seek?”

  “A jeweler, sir. A dealer in fine silver if you would.”

  Mandelstein nodded. “It was not my line of endeavor before the current difficulties engulfed us all, but I do know where you might make such a purchase or sale. Do you mind my asking, sir, which it might be?”

  “I do not mind, no,” Smith answered. “I have a small silver bar to sell, and I’m lookin’ for a good price.”

  Mandelstein nodded sagely to show he thought that the selling of a silver bar for a good price in cash money was an excellent idea.

  “Then with your permission I will take you to a jewel-maker’s district. It is not more than five minutes’ walk, and once there you can decide for yourself who you might care to deal with. Although, Herr Schmidt, I am not wholly unacquainted with members of the city’s gold and silversmith guilds, and if you would have a recommendation from me I would be glad to make it.”

  Smith replied with an expression that looked very much like a cordial smile, but it was not so much friendly and appreciative as it was admiring of a well-played grift. He did not doubt that Mandelstein would deliver him into the care of a legitimate dealer, no more than he doubted that this rascal would be some second cousin or old tenement chum in the jeweler's dodge, a companion with whom he would split a percentage of the take after hitting up Smith for a separate consideration.

  “In that case, sir, how would you feel about acceptin’ as your remuneration ten percent of whatever price I can negotiate from the jeweler?”

  The sunny satisfaction which had illuminated Mandelstein’s expression barely faltered.

  “That would be most generous of you, Herr Schmidt,” he said.

  “Done and done then,” Smith said.

  He was pleased to be able to help out a feller so obviously down on his luck, but he enjoyed the satisfaction of securing his own interests as much as the next man.

  Mandelstein folded up his sign and indicated that Smith should follow him. The noonday heat was becoming uncomfortable, and Smith was pleased to find himself guided off the main thoroughfare and into a quieter avenue, landscaped with shade trees. The temperature was appreciably cooler in the dappled light under the thick green foliage.

  His thoughts flew to Cady.

  If only they had made it to the cover of the forest, he was certain he could have staged a fighting retreat deep into the woods and made good their escape. As dangerous and ill-intentioned as that mob had been, he did not rate them as a war party, not even the skirmishers who had engaged them with musket shot. They’d moved with the confidence of men used to working under fire. But they could not hope to match the range, accuracy or rate of fire he enjoyed from the Winchester.

  Annoyance and regret at the loss of the long arm prickled at him, but not nearly so strongly as self-admonishment for having left Cadence behind. Smith had to forcibly turn away from the remembrance lest it undo him. Time, as Ms Cady explained it, was a river always flowing and changing course, not a headstone with our fate graven once and forever into the rock. He would find her and pluck her whole from the waters of time, no matter how fiercely they roiled. But despair was not the north star by which he would locate her.

  “Herr Schmidt?”

  It was Mandelstein, regarding him with the puzzled expression of one who cannot believe they have been deliberately ignored.

  “I apologize,” Smith said. “My thoughts were a long ways off, sir. Did you ask something?”

  They had turned another corner and entered a neighborhood of cobbled streets and older, smaller buildings, leaning toward each other over the narrow roadway. There were no trees in this alleyway, but the rooflines of the buildings were pitched so close together that they afforded ample shelter from the high sun.

  “No, no, I merely announced our arrival. This is Telleburg Strasse, home to some of the city’s oldest dealers in fine silver and gold products. You will find a buyer for your wares here.”

  Smith forced all of his attention back to the here and the now. Telleburg Street was lined with many small jewelers and watchmakers offering their services from behind discretely formidable defenses. Thick, wrought-iron grillwork. Heavy oaken doors. Smith did not imagine they ran to shotguns under the counter, or riflemen on the roof, like the bullion traders of his acquaintance. Berlin was far more settled and civilized than that. But he could tell there had been some upset here of late.

  A goodly number of the storefronts were boarded up, with the air of premises permanently abandoned. A shaft of sunlight caught a piece of broken window glass in the gutter, casting off a fierce, reflected glint. A dark brown patch of dried liquid was most likely blood, he thought.

  Mandelstein caught him in the survey and smiled nervously.

  “Our current difficulties are your boon and blessing, Herr Schmidt. I am sure any of these merchants will be motivated to give a good price for your wares.”

  Smith had no idea what those current difficulties might be, but he wondered if they might relate to the gang of toughs who had followed them into the alley and were pointing at them as though catching a couple of cattle rustlers outlined on a high ridge. His hand reached for a sidearm, but passed through the air where the polished grip of his trusty Colt should have been.

  It lay thousands of miles and hundreds of years out of reach.

  He did not draw the Bowie knife.

  What little color there had been in Mandelstein’s face drained completely away as he comprehended the wolf pack which had followed them into this draw. Smith kept his own expression neutral, but there was nothing about this encounter from which to take assurance. Without knowing who these particular varmints might be, he had no trouble recognizing the type. There was a cruelty and an air of viciousness about them which made up for each individual’s gutlessness. Smith did not doubt every dog in that pack had a yeller streak instead of a spine, just as he did not doubt the ferocity and danger they represented collectively. He had seen their ilk before. Stretched the necks of more than one of them.

  But he was not marshaling the streets of Deadwood. Berlin weren’t the Territories, and his badge meant nothing here.

  He heard Mandelstein whimper something like, “Oh, no,” beside him, but the man’s voice was so weak and small that even the wondrous facilities of Mister Wu’s watch could not translate the words directly.

  Didn’t matter none.

  Smith got the sense of them anyway from the poor feller’s quaking and the stink of his panic.

  “Who are they?” Smith muttered out of the corner of his mouth.

/>   The barber fixed him with such a look of astounded disbelief that the deputy knew he was standing in front of some vast forest and missing it for all the trees.

  “Brownshirts,” Mandelstein warbled back at him.

  “I can see how they are dressed, some of them at least,” Smith said. Two of the men wore uniforms. The others were dressed in the gentleman’s fashion of the day. One held a bottle like a club, and Smith would wager they had all had more than a sip from it. “I asked who they are. What is their business? Are they peace officers?”

  Mandelstein took a single faltering step back.

  One of the brown-shirted fellers raised a fist at them.

  “You there. Halt,” he shouted.

  The little barber whimpered.

  Smith did not care for any of this. Not for the attitude of this uniformed gang, for they were surely more a gang than any legal posse, and not for the forlorn effect they were having on his companion. A familiar and creeping sense of shame warmed his cheeks, too, for he recognized this crew as the same fellers who had been pointing at him back on the main stem. He had seemingly drawn their malign attention onto Mister Mandelstein in the same way that he’d sicced the Apprentices onto Cady—without even trying. His mere proximity had been enough.

  He counted five men in the group. The finery of those two uniforms, with more gold trim and epaulets than the proudest marching band major, were a powerful contrast to the broken noses and scarred knuckles of the men who wore them. With their polished leather boots and belts, they looked to Smith like prettily gift-wrapped barroom brawlers. They were not carrying sidearms, he was relieved to see. The closer they got, though, the less he doubted they would pile on and kick him to Hell’s back paddock if’n he gave them reason to. He wondered if the plainclothes men were something akin to Pinkerton agents. Enforcers of an established order, if not literal agents of the law and state. Either way, Smith forced himself to relax, to present no obvious threat to these curs, even as he calculated the angles and odds of drawing his blade and gutting the nearest of them.

  Oddly, even dressed as he was, they seemed less interested in him than in Mandelstein. A few of the thugs gave Smith a hostile inspection, their eyes sweeping him up and down, but their leader, a tall, slab-shouldered brute of a man in uniform, with a ragged pink scar freshly stitched into his left cheek, elbowed past Smith and jabbed a thick finger into Mister Mandelstein’s chest. Poor Mandelstein grunted in voluble distress. It took all of Smith’s forbearance not to haul off and bust this varmint’s head open. The big German surely did look to have a thick skull on him, most likely to safeguard an unusually small and delicate allotment of brains, but in Titanic Smith’s experience those were the sorta heads that was all the more satisfying to crack open with a good punch.

  “What are you doing here, Jew?” the man in the brown shirt asked. It did not sound like the sort of question which needed an answer, and sure enough, the scar-faced German carried on as if he did not expect one. “You were warned off my block just last week. Yet here you are, stinking everything up again. Is it just that you are stupid, Jew? You did not understand the clear warning I gave you?”

  “Yes, Storm Leader, I… I mean no, Storm Lead—”

  The officer, this ‘storm leader’, cut off Mister Mandelstein’s babbling with a backhanded slap that snapped the poor man’s head around hard enough to stagger him.

  “That’s enough!” Smith shouted, and his own hand shot out to grab the German’s wrist on the return swing. He had not meant to do so, but he had no more choice in the matter than Mandelstein did about crying out under the blow.

  The thug’s eyes, strangely vacant and yet intense, opened wide in surprise. Smith sensed rather than saw the jolt which ran through his offsiders and he was reaching for the grip of the concealed Bowie knife, still tacky with the blood of a man dead some hundreds of years, when a new voice barked an order of such commanding authority that even Smith’s hand was stayed by it.

  “Enough of this. You will all stop right now and stand down.”

  The man Smith had grabbed went rigid, but the fight ran out of him when he looked around the American’s shoulder and beheld who had shouted at them. Smith let the man’s wrist go, turning in the direction of the newcomer, but keeping an eye on the feller he’d just manhandled. No sense giving him a free hit.

  Three men had appeared from the opposite end of Telleburg Street. They were in uniform too, but presented a very different proposition to the band of thugs in mufti, brown shirts and riding boots. These new chums were dressed head to toe in black. Their outfits were both more severe yet somehow flashier too. Smith could imagine them happily stomping around a parade ground for hours, or perhaps leading a cavalry charge of the Devil’s own regiments. They looked as tough and intimidating as the brownshirts undoubtedly wished themselves to be.

  Mandelstein was shaking like a bunny in a bear trap. He obviously did not read this development as a fortuitous escape.

  There was no missing the antipathy between the rival groups, either. If he was caught between these fellers in a saloon, Smith would either be backing out of their way right now, or leveling a shotgun at the nearest noggin and encouraging all concerned to consider the wisdom of a quiet life.

  The leader of the men in black stepped up to Mandelstein with a languid grace that implied he was already bored by this confrontation.

  “Papers, Jew,” he said.

  Mandelstein started babbling and fumbling in his pockets and Smith recalled with some discomfort the black-clad goons who had stormed into Miss Georgia’s apartment demanding to see everyone’s papers, before arresting Cady and him for the heinous offense of not having any.

  He had no papers to show this feller, either.

  Nor did he have Cady, her money, or the lawyer she’d retained with that money to bust them out of the hoosegow back up-when in Seattle.

  He’d been here less than an hour and he was not doing well on his own.

  “This parasite Jew had been warned off his begging and scrounging,” the brown-shirted leader said. It sounded almost like a challenge.

  The man in black ignored him. Addressing Smith instead, he said, “And who are you? Buck Jones? John Wayne? You are a long way from your happy trails, cowboy.”

  Smith got into character. That’s what Cady called it. Cowboy up and get into character, she’d say.

  He dipped the brim of his hat towards the German as though they were simply well-mannered gents who had encountered each other while shopping for silk kerchiefs.

  “My name is Smith, sir. John Smith. I’m just a-visitin’ your fair city and lookin’ to tip over a few steins of your best lager at this Wild West Bar I done heard of.”

  The officer looked him up and down, before snorting in apparent amusement.

  “You did not have to get into costume, Herr Schmidt.” The sunny expression left the German’s face as completely as though a dark thunderhead had rolled over the horizon. “And your business with this Jew?”

  Smith sensed the danger underfoot.

  “He was just givin’ me directions, sir,” he said. “As I said, I am a visitor and, to be honest, I ain’t ever been nowhere near as large and confusing as Berlin. I got myself lost and I sought his help with findin’ my way is all, Mister…?”

  He left the question hanging between them.

  “Standartenführer Reinhard Hausser,” the man replied. Smith heard the German word rather than any American equivalent, but its meaning quickly resolved as being something close to ‘Colonel’.

  “Pleased to meet you, Colonel Hausser,” he said as pleasantly as he could manage. There was something about these fellers, about all of them, that whispered caution to Smith. He did not think they would approve of his employing Mandelstein in any capacity.

  “That was foolish of you, Smith,” Hausser said. “To trust a Jew like that. Do you not see that he has brought you into the lair of his kind?”

  It was no nevermind to Smith that folk looke
d after their own. That’s what folk did. But it was clearly aggravatin’ to these galoots. He was searching for something to wet the burning fuse on this whole stick of dynamite when the big bug in the brown shirt found his voice again.

  “Just give the Jew to us,” he said. “We will teach him not to pester travelers.”

  “He weren’t pesterin’ nobody,” Smith put in. He really couldn’t help himself. There was just something about this ugly, box-headed lunk that set his teeth on edge.

  “Nobody asked you, cowboy,” the box-head sneered.

  “Nor you, Sturmführer,” the other German said in a quiet voice that nonetheless carried an unmistakable edge of threat to it.

  “The SS has no authority in these matters,” the first man blustered.

  That elicited the ghost of a smile.

  “And the SA is supposed to have stood down for the whole month of June,” Hausser said. “And yet, I hear of three thousand brownshirts rioting in Munich, and drunken mobs of Freikorps fools creating trouble here in Berlin. Is that what we have here, Sturmführer? Drunken troublemakers?”

  The gang leader bristled and blushed an angry shade of purple, but said nothing.

  Smith had the distinct impression the two black-clad monsters behind Hausser were just waiting for a chance to sail into them.

  “Take your street fighters and go now, Sturmführer,” Hausser said. “Go back to your barracks or under your rock. It matters not to me. But the Führer would not want Mister Smith to speak ill of us when he returns to America. I will make sure he finds his way.”

  Hausser’s voice turned hard.

  “And you, Mandelstein. Get out of here before I let the brownshirts have your head for a football.”

  The little barber bowed and babbled his thanks and scurried away, not even looking at Smith, who felt so much the worse for having dragged him into this; whatever this was.

  The brownshirts—that’s what this Hausser feller had actually called them—shifted about uncertainly. Their heavy boots rasped on the cobblestones, and Smith saw the two men standing behind Hausser shift almost imperceptibly. It was like a pair of stone library lions had just moved ever so slightly.