“Der Teufel!” Then he shouted on the heels of the oath: “That hit something! The brakes are not working!”
Luz was back with the rifle leveled as she called out with a wild laugh: “So what? We want to go fast!”
The man she’d tossed the grenade at was alive; his motorcycle had gone over in a long slide, and he was lying clutching at one leg, just a glimpse through the dust plume the car was kicking up. The other two came charging forward again as soon as they saw she didn’t have another grenade, but it was taking them longer now that the heavier vehicle had had time to build speed. They fired their pistols and she replied and nobody hit anything. Then they abruptly pulled up, slewing their machines sideways in rooster tails of sandy dirt. One of them sprang down and went to one knee, firing with his automatic braced over his left forearm; the other tore off his leather helmet when he dismounted, dancing on it in a frenzy of rage, which was about as effective. They’d both have to leave, and quickly, if they didn’t want the Dutch police to add them to the mysterious strangers who’d sabotaged their train and killed their citizens. The man firing got up and started trudging, pushing his motorcycle back toward his injured comrade while his companion still jigged and screamed oaths.
“Heads down!” Horst shouted—almost screamed—himself.
Luz looked around just in time to duck frantically as the big touring machine struck the leveled pole of the customs barrier at more than forty miles an hour. There was a massive crack as the striped ashwood shaft splintered and went by in a shower of fragments, then a blurred glimpse of figures in field gray leaping aside. And a scream of tortured metal as Horst stopped the car the only way he could, downshifting brutally as he cut the throttle. Luz yelped as she was thrown backward into the middle seat and then tumbled as the car pinwheeled four times in complete circles before coming to rest with smoke leaking out from under the hood and cooling metal tinging and clicking. The silence was enormous for a moment, before thudding boots and panting breath surrounded them.
A dozen bayonetted rifles were leveled at them amid glares and curses. Old-fashioned rifles, Gewehr 88’s, in the hands of men in their middle years or midteens, gray beards or beardless chins under outdated spiked helmets. Luz carefully raised her hands and was glad she had before the noncom in charge of the Landsturm squad limped up and barked:
“Hände hoch, Schweinehunde!”
The limp, the missing two fingers on his left hand, and the three thick scars that ran down the left side of his face beneath the brimless field cap to the edge of his small black mustache showed why a veteran Obergefreiter in his twenties with the ribbon of the Iron Cross First Class through a tunic button was commanding a bunch of fourth-grade reservists on a minor border crossing with a neutral country, though he also had a curious accent, more upcountry-village Austrian than German. The way he held his Luger and the flat, expressionless look in his blue eyes, like glass marbles, told Luz that three more deaths would be nothing to this man. Less than the bother of telling his men to bury the bodies . . . or filling out a report.
Horst and von Bülow stood and carefully raised their hands as well. “All can be explained, Corporal,” the young nobleman said genially, in his officer’s command tone.
Then, grinning, to Luz: “Welcome to the Reich, Süsse! We’re safe!”
Luz smiled back, as the noncom’s face showed doubt and the beginning of a brace that would end with something on the order of Jawohl, Herr Hauptmann! Zu Befehl, Herr Hauptmann!
And thought behind her answering grin:
No, you’re safe, Horst. I’m in the belly of the beast.
SIX
Königlich Sächsische Staatseisenbahnen
(Royal Saxon State Railways)
Pockau, Kingdom of Saxony, German Reich
SEPTEMBER 8TH, 1916(B)
There are special trains, and then there are special trains, Süsse,” Horst von Dückler said patiently.
At his gesture the orderly cleared away the remains of a rather skeletal breakfast, which the two Germans had wolfed down with good appetite: boiled eggs, heavy coarse bread with a suspicious taste of potato, and tasteless margarine rather than butter. At least it was difficult to do anything very bad to a boiled egg.
“We are on a special train. That is a special special train.”
He nodded out the window of the lounge car at the one chuffing by as they waited on the siding; he was looking relaxed and more natural in the uniform he’d resumed as soon as they crossed the border. The priority train was pulled by a big—by European standards—4-4-2 superheated locomotive; behind it was obviously a headquarters on wheels, with office and map rooms, kitchens and sleeping quarters, and probably a message section with wireless and ready attachments for telegraph and telephone wherever it stopped. And just behind the locomotive tender and at the end were flatbeds with breast-high steel bulwarks. Each mounted an antiaircraft gun—twin-barrel pom-poms, Maxim machine guns scaled up to fire 37mm light cannon shells and mounted on X-shaped high-traverse beds.
That meant the train went places where Entente aeroplanes were conceivable, though the storm of shells would also be a conclusive argument against partisans, and they had sloped steel shields for ground work. Their crews and the guard details weren’t boys or superannuated Landsturm; their gray-green uniforms were clean and newish, but they wore the simplified loose style now used in action, and topped with beetling gray-painted coal-scuttle steel helmets. Many of them carried the drum-fed machine pistols the Germans had copied from the American Thompson and had stick-grenades slung through loops on their harness or crewed the light Lewis machine guns they’d also duplicated.
If you steal, steal the best, Luz thought. And they came up with that quick-change barrel and we copied that and so it goes. Isn’t progress grand?
She added thoughtfully aloud: “Those aren’t play soldiers.”
“Real Frontschweine,” he confirmed.
That was German military slang for actual fighting soldiers as opposed to bureaucrats and storekeepers in uniform, meaning literally front-line pig. Horst could claim the title himself; he’d let slip that he’d been wounded leading an infantry company in the first months of the war before going back to intelligence work. He hadn’t gone into details, but even nobly born officers didn’t get the awards on his tunic from behind a desk, nor the puckered bullet and shrapnel scars on his torso.
The American forces had an equivalent slang term, picked up from their enemies during the Intervention and turned from an insult into wry self-identification and an ironic boast: sicario, killer, the ones who actually took and gave death.
Horst went on thoughtfully: “Given this duty as a rest, I wager, but you still don’t see guard details like that for just anyone. This conference is important, I tell you, to draw this sort of attention—particularly just now.”
“I need to get at my trunks,” Luz said. “And send off some laundry.” And find out what this precious mission is!
Horst chuckled indulgently and went back to reading his morning newspapers. He’d been chortling over them since they got on this train, laid on for the three of them in Emmerich-am-Rhein. She could understand why; the headlines were banner-sized in that angular Fraktur script Germans tended to use when they wanted to be solemn and historic and nationalistic or all three at once. Von Bülow was handling them reverently, like some sort of footnotes to Scripture.
She could read them easily enough, and if accurate, which she thought depressingly likely, they certainly justified the fuss: BUCHAREST FALLS and RUMANIAN ARMY SURRENDERS UNCONDITIONALLY TO GENERAL VON FRANÇOIS had been there the first day, followed by VON MACKENSEN PHALANX DRIVES BRUSILOV’S ARMY IN UTTER ROUT and VINNITSA FALLS TO OUR TROOPS.
Yesterday they’d added: TSAR ABDICATES and GRAND DUKE NICHOLAS TO BE REGENT FOR TSAREVITCH and RIOTS IN MOSCOW, MUTINY IN ST. PETERSBURG GARRISON. This morning it had been: RUMORS THAT GRAND DUKE A
SKS FOR ARMISTICE BETWEEN RUSSIAN EMPIRE AND CENTRAL POWERS TO SAVE ROMANOV DYNASTY and excited variations on that.
When that rumor hits the Russian armies, it’s Katie-bar-the-door, she thought. Who wants to be the last Ivan Ivanovitch to die for the former Little Father in a lost war? Do they have enough cohesion left to stop men who’ve decided they’d rather go back to their villages? How many men have the Russians lost already, since the Germans cut them to pieces at Tannenberg right at the beginning and then broke their bones at Gorlice-Tarnow and Grodno last year? At least four or five million, counting prisoners, after the pincers closed at Brest-Litovsk. They’ve won battles with the Turks and Austrians a couple of times, but that doesn’t really count; it’s like trying to make up for a beating by kicking your opponent’s dog and assaulting his elderly aunt.
“These are events of world historical significance,” von Bülow said, wiping up the last of his egg.
In that annoyingly sententious tone he used when in his Germanic Sage persona, as if he’d mentally added a long white beard and a gray robe and staff and a mystic crystal ball, and possibly Wotan’s eyepatch and floppy hat.
Don’t underestimate him, there’s a first-rate brain under that white thatch. And one full of romantic yeast. He’s an evil man but oddly innocent about it; it’s not because he takes pleasure in cruelty or is greedy for himself.
“Soon we will be in possession of the Heartland! Who holds the Heartland, rules the world-island; who rules the world-island, commands the world.”
Yes, yes, Herr Privatdozent, I too can read Mackinder. Who’s an Englishman, remember. ¡Dios me libre de un hombre de un solo libro! Though I admit if I were German I’d be breaking out the castanets and dancing a flamenco too . . . no, actually if I were German I’d be swilling bad wartime beer and yelling: Hoch! Hoch!
“Soon we’ll have all the food and petroleum and raw materials we need,” Horst said a bit more practically. “Rumania is backward but rich in grain and livestock; they were a major exporter before the war, and now we’ll get their harvest for this year. Germany’s cities won’t be eating turnips when winter comes, we’ll press them like beet pulp in a mill to make sure of that.”
“Or take them by the throat and squeeze until their eyeballs pop out,” Luz said helpfully.
“Exactly,” Horst said with happy unself-consciousness. “And Rumania has some of the world’s richest oilfields, which, from the reports, we’ve captured mostly intact, because the Rumanians ran so fast. I have heard that there is a regulation in the Rumanian Army forbidding officers under the rank of major from using rouge and eye shadow on duty, and I can believe it!”
Von Bülow chuckled dryly. Luz raised an eyebrow.
“I use rouge occasionally, Horst,” she said. “And eye shadow. And sweetie . . . I never found it slowed me down much.”
She remembered a Black Chamber operative who’d been so swish he’d publicly asked to borrow her compact powder-puff.
And he crawled into that revolucionario camp at night, the one I got the location of down in the jungles in Quintana Roo, and slit every second man’s throat with a straight razor so the others would have a surprise when they woke up. Even the Philippine Rangers were impressed.
And those little grinning brown devils from Mindanao didn’t impress easily. Horst gave her an odd look, and then an acknowledging nod, and went on:
“Though of course you are not a Rumanian . . . There’s more wheat and cattle and horses in the Ukraine, and coal and iron and manganese, and if . . . when . . . now that the Russians have collapsed, the Caucasus are open to the Turks and they . . . which means Germany . . . will have copper and cotton and bauxite and half the petroleum in the world in Baku. Now the English can take their so-vaunted blockade, which they thought would strangle us and starve our children, and ram it . . .”
He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye and continued after a slight pause: “Somewhere sensitive, wrapped in barbed wire.”
“Much good their battleships will do them then,” Luz added, which was precisely what Elisa Carmody would think; and true, if short-sighted. “But the gringos . . .”
“Yes!” Horst said, slamming his fist down on the table, the blow a bit muffled by the papers but making the remaining chinaware bounce and rattle.
Ernst von Bülow nodded. “Exactly,” he said. He glanced at her. “You have summed up the next great challenge facing the Fatherland, gracious miss. And that is why we are here. Drastic measures must be taken, ruthless measures to grasp this opportunity to consolidate our hold on the Heartland while it is within our reach.”
She didn’t expect them to say anything more in detail yet, and didn’t ask, which she thought they appreciated. Instead she sipped at the last of the coffee, or at least what the orderly running the little kitchen annex in the rear carriage claimed was coffee; there might be some actual Coffea arabica in the brew, or not. She’d diluted it heavily since at least the cream did come from a cow, and recently. Horst caught her slight grimace and chuckled sympathetically—Germans really appreciated their coffee. As if to confirm her thought he sang a children’s tune:
“C-A-F-F-E-E, trink nicht so viel Kaffee!
Nicht für Kinder ist der Türkentrank,
Schwächt die Nerven, macht dich blass und krank,
Sei doch kein Muselmann, der ihn nicht lassen kann.”
“I picked up a couple of kilos of beans from Java in Amsterdam for my chief,” he added with a laugh, acknowledging the vileness of the roasted chicory mixed with burned, powdered mystery vegetation. “And it will be appreciated!”
On her previous visits before the war she’d much preferred the way Germans made coffee, slowly and meticulously, to the usual weak or burnt American fashion, though Viennese style with whipped cream was even better. Austrians were still the patron gods of baked goods, café culture, and music even if they weren’t much in geopolitical terms these days.
Soberly, and looking into her eyes, Horst added: “Please be careful with Colonel Nicolai, Süsse. A very able man, he rose by sheer ability from modest beginnings, but . . . hard. Not overly concerned with gentlemanly scruples. A very hard man. And very powerful these days.”
Which accords exactly with our own briefings, Luz thought. Except merciless bastard is more the way they put it. And deeply involved in German politics now that his patrons von Hindenburg and Ludendorff are running things—in charge of their censorship system, for starters. And there were rumors about his helping organize this new Fatherland Party they’re talking about; I’ll dance the flamenco naked in Times Square if the Herr Privatdozent isn’t involved with the Pan-German League too. Von Bülow wants Germany to be great and would like to have power so he could bring that about; I think Colonel Walter Nicolai wants Walter Nicolai . . . General Walter Nicolai . . . to be powerful for Walter Nicolai . . . which means making Germany great.
The orderly came through and snapped to a brace with true Middle European Ordnungsliebe.
“We will proceed to the Schloss now, Herr Hauptmann, I am informed.”
The train chuffed slowly into motion and off the siding onto the winding main line up the narrow curving valley of the little Flöha River, which was just a bit too big to be a creek by American standards. Pockau was a pretty village of farmers and laborers and small workshops making toys and lace and glassware, surrounded by sloping pastures and fields and forested hilltops, with old churches and steep-roofed cottages showing they got a lot of snow in this region. It would have looked more picturesque a few years ago, when there wasn’t a creeping shabbiness born of shortages of everything, and when the population hadn’t held so few healthy adult males and so many women in the deep black of mourning garb, and everyone hadn’t looked underfed and overworked.
This part of southern Saxony lay in the foothills of the Erzgebirge. Non-Germans called them the Ore Mountains for the minerals that had once made th
em famous, though they hardly qualified as more than massive worn-down hills by most American standards, with an occasional sandstone cliff. The geography reminded her of the Appalachians, or parts of New England, but more of the land was cleared than would have been the case across the Atlantic: mostly in faded green pasture, but often for fields of oats or rye or potatoes. Heights rose higher and wilder to the south, where the Boehmerwald loomed at the edge of sight when breaks in the hills allowed, to mark the Austrian border.
“Not many horses,” she said, looking at the passing scene and comparing it with previous visits to this general area in peacetime.
Women in headcloths and drab skirts were cutting the last of the rye with bent backs over flashing sickles, or carting off huge bundles of it on their backs, or digging potatoes with thick-tined pitchforks and tossing them into wicker baskets or tattered burlap sacks dragged away by children. More children went behind the reapers, gleaning up every single grain of rye that had fallen out of the stalks. The only animal-drawn cart she could see was pulled by a pair of skinny oxen, if you didn’t count one little thing drawn by a large but discouraged-looking black dog led by a little boy.
At least nobody’s hungry enough to eat dog yet, Luz thought; she liked dogs, who were more honest than men in her experience. Apart from the railway, there’s nothing in sight that might not have been here five hundred years ago, or a thousand.
Horst sighed, taken out of his happy daze of victory. “Yes, the farm horses were mostly called up like the young men, to draw guns and transport wagons, and more since. It is hard for those who remain, especially on the small farms of the peasants as you see now—there are plans to use more prisoners of war for farm labor here, though it is more difficult to manage on small holdings than on the large estates like my family’s lands. We employed migrants before the war for the harvest, Poles mostly. Almighty Lord God knows we have plenty of prisoners, at least; we took a million and a half just around Warsaw last summer, and a million in the Bialystok pocket a little later. And they all have to be fed anyway.”
Black Chamber Page 13
