Breach

by W. L. Goodwater

  One of them, the leader she guessed, worried her. He had tried to use some attacking spell on her when she stumbled onto their patrol, but it was clear he had little actual experience fighting other magicians. Even surprised as she was, Karen had broken his concentration with a quick burst of light, then knocked him back against the bricks with another unexpected surge of magic. So it was not his magical prowess that frightened her, rather the ice burning in his ever-moving eyes, and the way he wore his stoic expression like a rubber mask. Whatever was waiting behind that mask, she did not care to know.

  They had tied her hands and gagged her, effective means to cripple a magician. She pulled against the rope, but that did nothing other than alert her captors that she was awake. Most of them glanced at her and then went back to watching the shadows. All except the one with the cold-fire eyes. He approached.

  “You are mine now,” he said with a dark smile and a heavy accent. “You understand? Mine.”

  She did not reply, though it was not the gag that stole her voice; it was the sudden realization that she was about to die.

  Fight it. The panic was back. Not now.

  His eyes glinted at her. Anger filled them. Humiliation. In besting him, she’d wounded something worse than his body: his stupid, masculine pride. He waved his hands, taking in the nearby buildings. “This is strange place, no? Easy to be lost in such place. You have friends here? Hm? Somewhere? Easy to disappear. They look for you, but not find you.”

  It hadn’t been many hours since she had stared down the barrel of Jim’s pistol. She had been afraid then, of course, but there hadn’t been much time for it. Now she felt the fear burrowing into her heart. The Soviet magician was right; they’d never find her body in a place like this. Missing in Action, the report would read. They’d probably send people out to her parents’ house, maybe Helen’s too. There’s always hope, someone might say, though they wouldn’t believe it.

  “He says to wait,” the magician was saying. “I do not like to wait. I am tired of waiting. Been waiting all my life.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a large silver coin. He was smiling again. “While we wait,” he said, “I show you real magic, yes?”

  The bullet. Remember the bullet. Only a few inches from her head but she’d stopped it, not with some spell she learned in school, but her own magic.

  But she’d had her locus then. Something to channel her will.

  He flipped the coin high in the air. It turned and turned, and then he caught it. “Special magic,” he said. “I make coin disappear.”

  Up the coin went. Turn, turn, turn. Then fall.

  You don’t need your locus, like you don’t need the words of some old spell. Remember what you did to those monsters, remember that fire.

  That fire that had almost consumed her.

  Focus on it.

  Up. Turn, turn.

  She wasn’t going to die like this. And she didn’t need someone to save her.

  Focus.

  She thought about George’s ring, back in the OMRD. The surprise on his face.

  Up. And down.

  Time to make up new rules.

  When the Soviet opened his palm the last time, instead of a coin he caught a handful of molten metal. He screamed in sudden, bright agony. He grabbed his wrist and held his smoking hand out ahead of him like a beacon. The mask had been banished from his face, replaced by very real anguish.

  Oh, God, what had she done? And it had been so easy . . .

  The other soldiers were getting to their feet. No, no. Think, Karen. They blocked the only way out. Could she break through the wall? The magician was writhing around his ruined hand.

  He was still screaming, screaming. Rifles were moving toward her.

  Her bonds fell away.

  Magic arced across her fingertips.

  She heard gunshots. Saw muzzles flash. The bullets came closer, spinning slowly, twirling like dancers. And she reached out with her magic and then they were gone.

  It was inside her now. Years of powerlessness, of holding herself back; years of derision, of contempt, all washed away. Now she understood. This was what magic truly felt like. This was her true potential.

  The rifles were next. She wrapped her will around the metal stocks like a vine, and tightened. They resisted, then buckled, then collapsed.

  Then she reached for the riflemen.

  A moment later they were alone, she and the magician with the smoldering hand. He looked up at her. He was afraid. He should be.

  She silenced the man’s screams. Enough of that.

  Why had she been so afraid of this power? Why hadn’t she let it consume her before?

  Her eyes, crackling with white light, turned. What was that? She could feel something calling to her. Yes, of course; she knew it now. It was the source. The wellspring. A passage to another world, the only world. That was why Auttenberg mattered, not some silly book. The truth. The essence.

  Power. Waiting for her.

  The ground splintered like failing ice beneath her feet as she started north.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  “Max.” Voelker’s voice was growing stronger. Younger.

  Haupt lessened the spell on Ehle, but did not release it. “Whatever you are,” he said to Voelker, “you are not the man I knew. He is long dead. You are an illusion.”

  The Reichsleiter laughed at that. The sound of it boomed in the church like artillery. “You were always a man of certainties, Max. But you do not see. This is all illusion,” Voelker said. “Life is nothing but a mirage. A mistake of the eyes.”

  “George, the book,” Haupt said. His assistant hesitated, unwilling to approach.

  “Max,” Ehle managed to say through the pain, “look . . . up.”

  “Erwin, I did not want it to come to this, but you have left me no—”

  “Look!” Ehle shouted, the force of the word wracking his chest with fire.

  Haupt stopped. And looked. Seeing the breach looming above him for the first time. Seeing his magic feeding it. Seeing the blackness beyond. He lowered his cane, the spell broken. Ehle collapsed, his breaths coming in sweet, terrible gasps.

  “What . . .” Haupt’s face was pale. “What is that?”

  “It is the end,” Voelker said approvingly.

  “Get the book,” Haupt said again. His eyes were fixed on that horrible gash. “We must leave this place.”

  “No,” Ehle said, pushing himself up to his knees. “The book caused this.”

  “I will take what I came for,” Haupt said. “I have my orders.”

  “This,” Ehle said, flinging an arm toward the pulsing breach, “this is what happened the last time you sought out this book under orders. Or have you forgotten?”

  “Silence.”

  “How many did you kill to get this book for Voelker? How many, Max?”

  “Do not speak to me like you have no blood on your hands.”

  Ehle held his hands up, palms out. “Mine are soaked in it. They can never be clean. That is why I am here. To make this right.”

  “The world turns,” Haupt said. “America—”

  “America, France, Russia,” Ehle replied. “It does not matter. No one should have this book. It is beyond all of us. Can you not see that?”

  “Men of such little faith.” There was no trace of doubt in Voelker’s voice now. He looked again like the triumphant magician-lord of the Reich, more powerful, more feared than the Führer himself. “I taught you both better than this. What has become of the proud warriors of Germany? Am I the only one left with the will to do what is necessary? Am I the only shield against the foe?”

  “Martin . . .”

  Then the book was in Voelker’s hands: that simple ledger, filled with impossible words, such a small thing to bring about the end of all things.

  “They are at the ga
te,” Voelker said. “Rome burns, while our leader cowers in his bunker, our men throw down their arms, and you stand in my way. Even if I must go alone, I will walk this path.”

  Ehle saw Haupt begin to prepare another spell. “Max, no,” he called. “The breach. You cannot risk it.” Haupt faltered, the spell lost, and Ehle recognized the look on his face: terror.

  “The time for doubt is over. Now is the hour of action. You will see for yourselves the cost of defying the will of God.”

  Voelker stepped toward the breach and opened the book. Ehle’s body still trembled with echoes of pain, but there was no time. He was on his feet and moving. Voelker turned, but too late. Ehle crashed into him at a run, slamming them both to the hard wooden floor.

  The book slid under the first pew, and Ehle scrambled after it, his fingertips nearly brushing the cover, when he felt Voelker’s hands lock tight around his throat.

  “I will not be stopped,” Voelker hissed through his teeth. “The Reich will be avenged.”

  Ehle clawed at him, gasping, but in vain. His lungs burned, his chest heaved, and his vision darkened. Above them, he could see the breach dance with wild abandon, reveling in the ritual done in its name.

  Haupt raised his cane and chanted something in Latin, but Voelker was still too fast, too powerful. A single word from the Reichsleiter knocked Haupt’s locus from his hand and sent him sprawling backward. His assistant, finally able to act despite his obvious fear, ran forward then, only to be thrown aside by another spell. Ehle saw him tumble through the air, feet over head, until he crashed into the pulpit in a spray of broken wood.

  It was over in a moment. The grip on his neck was iron, even as Voelker dispatched the others. There was no chance to break free. But for a moment, Voelker turned his eyes away, and so he did not see Ehle reach for the pistol strapped to the Reichsleiter’s hip.

  The shot was deafening. The recoil felt like it might have broken his wrist. But when Voelker’s fingers went slack and his eyes wide, Ehle knew it was worth it. His lungs ached blissfully as he rolled to the side, drowning in air.

  He rose on shaking legs. Voelker stayed down. Blood bubbled around his lips as they opened and closed wordlessly, shock replacing speech. The bullet had entered low in his gut, angled up toward his chest. It would not be long now.

  “Farewell, Martin,” Ehle said, his voice a quiet rasp.

  The Reichsleiter’s angry, disbelieving eyes focused on Ehle. The light behind them was quickly fading. Breathing fast now, he managed to say, “Thank . . . you.”

  Ehle dropped the gun. He had not come this far to kill a man, to put another soul on the scales weighed against him. But he had come to do what he must. And if he had to measure the balance, he knew at last he had done something worth remembering.

  He looked up toward the breach. He had no desire to look upon that black otherworld again, even if it were, as Voelker suspected, the source of all magic. Whatever it was, it was nothing for mortal men to see, nothing that deserved to continue, even in memory. But he wanted to watch it close, to see his work finally at an end.

  But it did not. Even when he heard Voelker’s last struggling breath, the breach remained.

  No magic could outlive its caster, not without another . . .

  The book. Voelker was not the key; the book was.

  The barking of machine guns filled the church. The phantom German soldiers that ringed the room like statues sprang to life, fueled by instinct, as their dreaded enemy poured through the main doors. Ehle watched in horror, but it was over almost as quickly as it began. The Soviets were too many, too well armed.

  When the shooting stopped, a tall man in a Soviet officer’s uniform appeared at the doorway.

  “Herr Ehle,” the man he knew as the Nightingale said, stepping over immaterial bodies. “You found your way into Auttenberg after all.”

  FIFTY-NINE

  He pulled the little girl close when the shooting started. She stifled a scream and he held her, shielding her with his body. They ducked behind the stone wall that ringed the church on all sides and pressed against the cold brick as though they might melt into it.

  “What is happening?” she asked, her voice a quaver.

  “Wait,” he said. He held a finger to his lips, removed his arm from around her, and crept toward the corner. The guns had stopped. He heard voices.

  There were men around the church. A dozen, maybe more. Their uniforms did not look German. He knew them . . . somehow. He could not concentrate, could not remember. What were they saying? It wasn’t English, wasn’t German. The pain in his head was worse, had been getting worse as they neared the church. He didn’t want to tell the little girl, not when she was so intent on going, but he hadn’t been sure if he could continue on much farther. Not when every step was like walking barefoot across broken shards of yourself.

  A big man approached the others, giving orders. They were close, only ten feet or so from where they were huddled. His face . . . he knew his face. That scar, those big hands.

  His mind twitched, like putting too much weight on a bad leg.

  He tasted dirt. Sand. A rush of heat.

  He remembered. Dennis had been just ahead of him in the tunnel. The mission had been a success. They got the asset, made it to the Wall, were almost across the border.

  Then everything had gone too bright. Karen yelled something. Dennis grunted.

  The dirt, pressing down. Choking him.

  Like the world had fallen.

  Strong, hard hands pulled at him. Dragged him out of the dark.

  A face loomed. A big, scarred face.

  Soviet uniforms.

  A bag over his head. The back of a truck.

  Karlshorst. No question about it.

  A dim cell.

  And a Soviet colonel. With a pocket watch.

  The green door, traitor, Karen, Ehle, the major, Fort Bragg (and that blue Carolina sky), BOB, the green door, another tunnel, escape back to the east, a mission, the door, but then the French, and Karen . . . staring into his gun.

  “Oh, God,” Jim said. His hands were shaking; his whole body was shaking. He remembered. Finally, he remembered.

  And wished he could forget.

  What did they do to me?

  The haze had lifted, like when the sun decided to burn off a morning mist. He saw it all now: the walk across Glienicke Bridge, his return to BOB, waiting until everyone was asleep, going to the basement, knocking out the guard, knocking out Ehle, and Karen.

  In his mind, Karen stared at him. Stared at his gun. On her knees. He could feel the weight of the gun in his hand, feel the pressure of his finger on the trigger. He’d hated her in the moment; the weight of her imagined betrayal smothered him. Why had it been so easy for them to turn him against her? Why hadn’t he fought harder? But he had seen her, somehow still alive. He’d followed her. She wasn’t dead. He couldn’t explain it, but she was here, somewhere. That meant it wasn’t too late.

  Please, he thought, wiping away tears that had appeared on his face. Please let it not be too late.

  The Soviets were laughing. They had two men on the ground, hands behind their backs. One of the prisoners was older, thicker in stomach and chest, and the other was a big man, with a beard black as midnight.

  It was Alec. And the other was Arthur. What were they doing here?

  There was a tug at his sleeve. The little girl, her face pale with fright.

  “Do not be afraid,” he said softly, holding her close. “I will keep you safe.”

  In the distance, he heard a rumbling. Thunder? No, the sky was still mostly dark but pricked with lingering stars, no clouds. It was getting louder. Then he realized he felt it in the ground beneath them: shaking like the little girl, as if in fear.

  Something was coming.

  SIXTY

  There was almost too much to conside
r in a single glance: hundreds dead in the pews, shot where they sat; the fallen German soldiers crumpled along the border of the room; the traitor magician Ehle standing at the front with the body of a Nazi Reichsleiter at his feet; and the gaping hole in reality hovering above it all. It was too much, too much and not enough, as the colonel saw no sign of the book.

  “It seems I have arrived at an auspicious time,” the colonel said as he neared where Ehle stood. He turned over the body there with his foot. “I must guess this to be Herr Voelker, no? What a peculiar place. I trust the two of you worked out any lingering disagreements.”

  “It is not here,” Ehle said. The man’s neck was already blackening with long bruises, his voice a broken whisper.

  “Herr Ehle,” he said, shaking his head. “We find ourselves at odds, but still you must be commended for your effort. You have done what you could. Secretly delayed us for years, no doubt. And that escape of yours into the West. So unexpected. But you see now it was always leading here. Fate, perhaps. Or gravity. Or bad luck. So let us not play more games. Where is it?”

  Of course he knew; the colonel could see it in the man’s unnatural stillness, in the enormous force of will he exerted to not even blink. But of course he would not tell them. That was not in his nature.

  Krauss was at his side then. “You have lost, old man,” Krauss said to Ehle. “You ignored me, pushed me aside, but now here I am. I thought you were just incompetent, not a traitor, but that does not matter now. Just give us the book.”

  Ehle waved a hand toward Krauss. “This is your new chief magical adviser?” he said, laughing; with his damaged throat, it sounded like the gasps of a dying man. “My condolences to Moscow. I did not realize times had become so desperate.”

  “Tell me!” Krauss shouted.

  The colonel heard a groan; they were not alone. There was someone else, waking up in the ruin of the church’s pulpit. He motioned to his men and soon the soldiers dug him free and brought him forward. He was a young man, dressed in a ripped suit and unarmed. His head was bleeding, but he was alive.