Women and Other Monsters

by Bernard Schaffer

  “Well. I came to ask for your help, James,” Donovan said.

  “Try to put me in another laboratory and you’re a dead man.”

  “No more labs,” Donovan said. “All I have for you is an offer of hard work and danger. But it’s good work. The kind that makes a difference.”

  They looked at one another for a little while until the man said, “I guess I could go for a cigarette.”

  Donovan pointed to his car down the hill. “I’ve got smokes in there. What do you say, James?”

  “I say don’t call me that anymore. James Scott is in the ground next to his wife. Let them both rest in peace.”

  Donovan shook out his wet jacket on the ground and sighed. “Those sons of bitches did a real number on you. Whatever you got out of this whole coming-back-to-life deal, I bet it wasn’t worth the price.”

  “Can you get me a new name?”

  “Son, I can get you five of them.”

  Episode Two: CODENAME: OMEGA (1943)

  The handle on the building’s front door turned and Elma Sink immediately pushed the hidden red button beneath her desk. Two armed guards snapped to at attention at either side of the door as a man walked in and went directly to Elma’s desk. “I’d like to see ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan, please.”

  Elma pushed her glasses up on her nose, “I’m certain I have no idea what you mean, sir.”

  He waved his hand in annoyance, “You don’t need to use that old cloak-and-dagger stuff on me, sweetie. I’m looking for William J. Donovan, Director of the Office of Strategic Services. Tell him a personal friend of Senator Doxey would like a moment of his time.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but there is no one named Donovan in this building.”

  The man opened his mouth to protest, but one of the guards already had a beefy arm around him, pulling him away from Elma’s desk, dragging him back toward the door. The phone rang. Elma picked it up and said, “Yes, Director. He’s gone.”

  Across the courtyard, William Donovan peered through his office’s dirty windows at the grand-looking building where Elma Sink was sitting. It had detailed landscaping and ornate fixtures, justifiable embellishments for the official address of America’s first spy agency. Shame the whole building is empty, Donovan thought. “Thank you, Miss Sink.”

  He watched a man enter through the front door, fumbling with his suit and tie before he raised his fist and shook it at the guards. They waved to him and shut the door. The man spun around, looking at all of the surrounding buildings, but somehow fixed on the one Donovan was in, as if he could see the Director sitting on the fifth floor, hidden behind smoked out windows.

  “Don’t do it, buddy,” Donovan whispered. “Just turn around and get back in your car.”

  The man took a step forward and Donovan cursed under his breath, knowing the snipers on his roof had already zeroed in on the man. He imagined he could hear them adjusting the sights of their Mosin-Nagant rifles, preparing to blow a hole the size of a phone book through the man’s chest. “Turn around, goddammit,” Donovan whispered.

  The man stopped and scratched his head, continuing to look around. Finally, he gave up and turned toward the parking lot. Donovan relaxed in his chair and smiled at his guest. “I apologize for the distraction, Miss—”

  “Amelie Brevot,” she said.

  She uncrossed her legs and crossed them again, showing long lengths of sheer-stockinged perfection. Amelie swept a length of chestnut hair behind her ear and smiled, her lower lip permanently fixed in the pout of a bad girl. The kind who got caught doing something wrong. The kind willing to work her way out of it.

  “I wonder what type of assignments my good friend Charles has you on normally. I am sure you are simply devastating in the honey trap.”

  Amelie blushed and held her hand to her cheek, “Non, monsieur. le General would never insult a woman in such a way.”

  “Then you do not know de Gaulle like I do.” Donovan glanced down at his watch and said, “It’s time to go.”

  “Is Omega here?” Amelie asked.

  Donovan held the office door open for her. “Right downstairs.”

  She shivered slightly and took a deep breath. “I cannot wait.”

  “Listen. He just came back from a bad break overseas and he might be agitated. Stay behind a little until I get him settled.”

  “Oui, Director. Thank you again for having me. I admire what you have done in such a short time, considering.”

  “Considering?”

  “Well, the spy business has always been so beneath you Americans. ‘We do not read other people’s mail,’ no? And now, you are the same as the rest of us.”

  Donovan smirked and said, “Maybe not exactly the same.”

  “Ah, this is true,” Amelie said. “Even MI-6 does not have anyone like Omega.”

  “That’s because there is no else like him,” Donovan said. “Trust me, I’ve looked.”

  ***

  The elevator doors slid open, showing a long corridor with a man leaning against the wall at the farthest end. Smoke billowed up from his cigarette toward the lights overhead. He did not turn around when he said, “Who’s the girl? New assistant?”

  “Amelie Brevot. She’s one of de Gaulle’s people. She’s loyal to the cause, same as you.”

  Price turned around slowly, squinting through the haze of cigarette smoke. His eyes were watery and rimmed with dark circles on the skin beneath. His lips curled into a cruel smile as he pinched the cigarette between his teeth and said, “Is that it? I thought I was just a lap dog. Here to do anything his master says.”

  “You look tired,” Donovan said.

  The agent’s eyes narrowed, “Maybe that’s because Ivangorod was a complete nightmare, Colonel.”

  “I know it was,” Donovan said. “We had bad intel going in.”

  “The Nazis were executing civilians. I watched one of the bastards shoot a woman in the back at point blank range while she was trying to protect her baby.”

  “I read that in your report. I also read the statement of a terrified SS soldier who said a naked man appeared out of nowhere and ripped the shooter’s innards out. The sole surviving witness escaped while his comrades arms and heads were being ripped off like dandelions.”

  Price grunted and said, “Give me his name. You won’t have to worry about him for long.”

  “We have other things to do right now.”

  Amelie came around Donovan’s side and walked toward Price, her hand extended. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Agent Omega.”

  Price rolled his eyes and said, “I’m done. The only reason I’m here today is to tell you that. Find somebody else.”

  Donovan sighed and said, “I understand. Listen, this young woman came all the way from Algiers specifically to meet you. Can you at least sit in for the briefing? She has people to report to, just like we do.”

  Amelie studied Price’s face, boyish except for the nasty scar along his right cheek. Price lit another cigarette and inhaled deeply. “I’m free for a few hours, sure.”

  Amelie pulled Donovan aside and whispered in his ear, “I was told he was the finest Special Agent in OSS. This boy is not even old enough to shave!”

  Donovan smiled at her and patted her hand with his. “I gave him the name Omega for a reason, Miss Brevot. I picked it personally, and every kraut-eating son of a bitch in Hitler’s army understands why.”

  “And what could the Germans possibly understand about this child?”

  “He may look young, but trust me, when Omega shows up, it’s the end.”

  ***

  The image of dead British soldiers was frozen on the projection screen. A dozen of them, their uniforms shot to shreds and blood-spattered, were splayed across the ground. Donovan clicked the projector button to change the slide, now showing a poorly-dressed Russian family collapsed on top of one another along the side of a dark road. The photography was stark and spared no detail, revealing the brain matter tangled in the woman’s babushka. Her ch
ildren’s dead, wide-open eyes.

  “I have a dozen more of these,” Donovan said. “All the same. Random groups of people used as target practice. All of them gunned down in the darkness from unknown locations.”

  Donovan clicked the slide projector again to show the drawing of a fantastical-looking rifle. A telescope and searchlight assembly mounted to the gun barrel, connected to several brick-sized batteries. “You are looking at the prototype of an active infrared device called the ‘Vampir.’ MI-6 has confirmed the Nazis can now see us in the dark and pick us off at will from a distance.”

  Price grunted. “How long before they begin mass-production?”

  “Hard to say. Hitler is developing a whole host of experimental super weapons at his Hillersleben research facility. Wunderwaffe, as he calls them.”

  The projector clicked, this time showing a short cartoon. “This is the Oberth Sun Gun,” Donovan said, tapping the screen with his pointer at the orbiting space station as it rotated. “Its reflective shields capture the sun’s rays and store the energy until it can be used to emit a laser beam.”

  Fans extended from the space station as it collected rays from the sun, building in power until it fired an enormous burst at the earth and set it on fire. “This thing is supposed to have enough power to make the ocean boil like a tea kettle and reduce whole cities to ashes.”

  “Just a space laser, Colonel?” Price said drolly. “Isn’t that aiming a little low when they could build a giant robot? I say we thank God they’re wasting time trying to invent stuff they see in cartoons.”

  Donovan looked at Amelie Brevot. “What do you think, Miss Brevot?”

  Amelie’s eyes turned downward. “My brother is a good man, Colonel Donovan.”

  Donovan nodded politely. “Of course he is. Unfortunately, Aleister Crowley is not.”

  The next photo showed a balding, intense looking man dressed in wizard’s robes peering at them from the screen. “What can one say about The Great Beast? He’s been called a fraud, a sadist, an occultist, and the Antichrist. Frankly, I don’t care what he is. Two years ago Crowley befriended a French physicist named Louis Brevot whose ideas were routinely considered far-fetched. Crowley was planning a new secret society that combined the occult with experimental science. Who, you might ask, would take such a thing seriously?”

  The projector showed a grainy photograph of three men: A thin-looking scientist in horn-rimmed glasses, Aleister Crowley, and a tall arrogant looking SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer.

  The Nazi’s black hat bore a silver death’s head and he smiled thinly beneath its brim. Donovan slapped the screen with his pointer. “Victor Kramer. One of the rising stars in Hitler’s personal death squad. The SS are the worst of the worst and Kramer means to outdo all competition by killing his way to the top. He is detailed to Hillersleben, and it is his sonderkommandos that test all of the weapons invented there. It was his people you ran into at Ivangorod. It was Kramer who gave them the order to kill those civilians.”

  Donovan let that sink in for a moment before he said, “The sonderkommandos were training German night hunters there on the Vampir, when they were redirected to the Ukraine to start the exterminations.”

  Amelie put her hands together, “We have to rescue Louis, Agent Omega. He is a good man who has been turned by these monsters. Please.”

  “What do you say?” Donovan said. “Would you like to go pay Herr Kramer a visit?”

  Price looked at the photograph on the screen. “Mad scientists, evil wizards, and Nazi death squads. How can I resist?”

  ***

  Donovan kicked his feet onto his desk and leaned back to light a cigarette. He took a deep drag and said, “Get to Hillersleben and find Brevot. If Amelie can’t convince him to come home, neutralize him.”

  Price picked up the glass of Scotch from Donovan’s desk and sipped it. It was late, and the moon was directly over the OSS building, reflecting off of the marble benches in the courtyard. “Why is the girl even involved?”

  “She gave us the location of the facility and insisted on being part of the package.”

  “What about the Antichrist?”

  “He’s a fraud. Still, with him around, those kraut scientists are developing weapons of the Apocalypse, and we can’t let those SS maniacs get their hands on them. I want you to infiltrate Hillersleben and do what you do best.”

  Price grinned and said, “What is that, exactly?”

  “Make it real messy.”

  ***

  Their plane landed in France’s zone libre two days later.

  “Hillersleben is nearly 100 miles from Berlin,” Amelie said quietly. Their taxi driver kept glancing back at them in the rearview mirror, and she slid her hand inside Price’s and intertwined their fingers. “Darling,” she said loudly, “will you please roll down your window a little? It is so stuffy in here.”

  The engine’s whine and the sound of the car’s tires grinding against the rough road was loud enough to drown out her voice. “How is your German?”

  “Vollkommen.”

  “Excellent.” Amelie opened her bag and removed an envelope containing identification papers for a man named Hans Vogel and his wife Lena. “Here you go, Herr Vogel. I think you look nice in that photograph.” She pointed to the small black and white picture of herself in the corner of her papers and said, “Do you think I look pretty in my picture? I am your wife, after all.”

  Price withdrew his hand and turned to look through the window at the passing countryside.

  ***

  There were no other vehicles on the road except an occasional German military transport. Families trudged through the cold, even the youngest children’s faces sallow and sunken from hunger. “What has happened here?” Amelie whispered.

  “The only way Hitler would agree to accept France’s surrender was if she footed the bill for housing three hundred thousand German troops. He set up a twenty to one currency exchange rate in Germany’s favor and requisitioned all of France’s food and fuel.”

  Their car drove past a building with a humongous poster stretched across its side, nearly as wide and tall as the building itself. Price looked up and read the vulgar anti-Jewish slogans printed on it. Amelie pressed her hand against her mouth when she saw the numerous signs forbidding Jews to enter any of the shops along the road. “My father used to bring me this way to Paris when I was a child. It was so beautiful then. Now look at what this bastard Hitler has done to it. I want to kill him.”

  Price leaned back in his seat and said, “Welcome to the war, Miss Brevot.”

  ***

  Price shook Amelie and told her, “Wake up. Get ready to go.”

  The car was still moving, and they were driving in the darkness. Amelie looked through her window and saw nothing but trees and the night sky above. “What are you doing?”

  Price leaned forward against the back of the driver’s seat and said, “Stop the car. We’re getting out.”

  The cab driver looked back at him, “But there is nothing out here, monsieur.”

  Price put several francs in the driver’s hand and said, “Do it now.”

  The driver muttered to himself but he braked and brought the car to a stop, shaking his head while his passengers disembarked. “You are in the middle of nowhere, my friend.”

  Price grabbed Amelie’s hand and pulled her out of the backseat. He shut the door quietly and patted the rear fender, signaling the driver to get going. Amelie wrapped her arms around herself and said, “It’s freezing out here. What are you doing?”

  “Be quiet and listen,” he whispered.

  The taxi’s brake lights came on ahead in the darkness, less than a hundred yards away. Amelie heard a car’s doors open and saw the silhouettes of two German soldiers crossing the beams from the taxi’s headlights. One of the Germans spoke sharply, saying, “Why are you out so late? What are you doing out here?”

  The driver’s response was quick and nervous, “A man and woman. Very suspicious! They can
’t have gotten far.”

  The Germans looked at one another and one said, “Keep moving.”

  The driver threw his car into gear and said, “Au revoir and Sieg Heil!” as he drove off.

  One of the soldiers activated high-power spotlight, suddenly bathing the woods in harsh white light, scanning the area as they walked toward Price and Amelie.

  Price pulled her behind a tree and pushed her to the ground, waiting for the spotlight to move before he peeked around the side of the trunk. The soldiers were coming directly toward them. “Stay here. I will handle this.”