Basic Law

by J Sydney Jones

  “Hačeks,” Randall says.

  Gerhard turns to him. “Say what?”

  “Hačeks.” Randall smiles. “That’s what those upside-down chevrons are called.”

  Gerhard looks puzzled for a moment. “Right.” Then to Kramer, “Anyway, that’s where Reni ran her down.”

  “No address?” Kramer says.

  “No. I would have forgotten it by now, anyway.” He goes to the edge of the ravine, stares off into space for a time, and then focuses at the scree far below. “Looks like a car down there,” he says. “See?”

  Kramer goes to the edge and follows Gerhard’s pointing finger to a trail of dust far in the distance.

  “Didn’t know there was a road up that side of Psiloritis.”

  Just like Gerhard, Kramer thinks, to use the Greek name for the mountain instead of the much simpler English: Mount Ida.

  Gerhard turns to look at Randall still sitting on the boulder. “But you said you visited Helmut.” Then to Kramer, “And Rick. Then me. What’s up?” His eyes widen momentarily and a slight smile crosses his lips. “You think it’s one of the old gang who killed Reni. That’s it, isn’t it? One of the Magnificent Seven. But why?”

  “It keeps coming back to the memoirs,” Kramer says. “Someone didn’t want those memoirs to be published. Her editor in Berlin called them ‘political dynamite.’”

  “But why one of us?” Gerhard turns toward the ravine again, shaking his head, taking in large gulps of warm wind funneling up the col.

  Kramer looks at Randall, “You want to explain about Helmut?”

  Randall shrugs. “Sure.”

  As briefly as possible, Randall fills Gerhard in on their visit to Hamburg, their initial suspicions of Helmut himself because of his new trading partners in Prague, and then relates Helmut’s own theory about the car bombing in Prague and the fact that he, Gerhard, was the one to rent the car, to deliver it to Helmut and Maria.

  Gerhard spins around, his face red with anger. “But that’s not true. I mean, I rented the car, all right. But I wasn’t the only one to have it before Helmut.”

  Kramer squints an eye at him. “Who else?”

  Gerhard controls his anger, looks down at his dusty boots. “I can’t say.”

  “It was Reni, wasn’t it?”

  Gerhard’s eyes stay focused on the scuffed tips of his boots.

  “Come on, Gary, for Christ’s sake!” Kramer wants to shake him. “She’s dead. You can’t protect the dead.”

  Gerhard looks up. “Yeah, okay. It was Reni. She took the car that Friday before I delivered it to Helmut. She said she wanted to drive it across a border or two just to confuse the police. Reni the Conspirator. It was something about getting the plates on lots of different border police blotters so that we could say it had been lifted if the shit hit the fan in Prague. No traces back to us.”

  It doesn’t make sense to Kramer, but he lets it go.

  “So Reni took the car for a joy ride,” Kramer says. “Why didn’t you say so before?”

  Gerhard shrugs his shoulders, then shakes his head. “Who was asking? We all bought the idea that it was vandalism. Some red-hot Red who went berserk seeing Western plates.” He pauses, looking hard at Kramer. “You don’t think Reni set the bomb, do you? I mean what good would that do anybody?”

  What good, indeed? Kramer thinks. “It would help if we knew where she went that day.”

  “Overnight, actually,” Gerhard says. “But then you should know that. You and she were lovers by then, weren’t you?”

  “Working up to it,” Kramer says. “But we didn’t get strong until after Prague.”

  He thinks about that comment for a moment, about the timing of their relationship, and wonders, for the first time, if there is any significance to it. Once you open the doors to doubt about another person, there are infinite corridors to follow. A maze with no way home but blind trust.

  In fact, he had not been with Reni just before the Prague fiasco; she had thought it better that none of them be seen together for a time before and after the mission.

  “So we’re looking for somebody who planted a bomb under the rented car,” Gerhard says, “over a quarter of a century ago. Great.”

  “That’s one avenue we’re pursuing,” Randall says. There’s a heavy formality to his voice, and Kramer remembers that he and Gerhard were never the best of friends. Too much alike for that.

  “There’s a possible neo-Nazi connection, as well,” Kramer explains.

  “Vogel?” Gerhard asks.

  Kramer nods. “Rick says she managed to infiltrate his organization. To get her hands on sponsor lists and Fascists in Bonn who haven’t come out of the closet yet. Sympathizers in high places.”

  “Rick says this?”

  “She visited him after the meetings.”

  “Extraordinary.” He twirls his mustache again. “I can’t believe this is actually happening. Reni dead. Murdered. You’re sure of that?”

  “It smells like it,” Kramer says.

  Gerhard squints his eyes, sets his jaw: a bad caricature of John Wayne.

  “I’ve got to go back with you, then. Help catch the bastard.”

  Kramer waits for Gerhard to finish his dramatics before pressing him on the secret that Reni learned in 1974 that could drive her from him, that was so terrible she could no longer face him.

  “Look,” Gerhard says, facing Kramer, and searching out his eyes. “I know I’m a comical sort of prick to you, Sam. Always spouting off dramatically, going native wherever I am. Never finishing my great American novel. Hell, never even starting it, if the truth be known. But I loved Reni. Loved her so much it was like a constant ache. I wouldn’t harm a hair on her head. I just couldn’t stand to be around her any longer. It hurt too damn much being ignored. I don’t need her money. I’ve been clipping coupons from Daddy’s wise investments lo, these many years. And I didn’t plant a bomb under the car I delivered to Helmut. I don’t even know how to light a firecracker, for God’s sake.”

  He lets out air, his chest sagging with the effort, then turns, looking back down the scree. Suddenly, he waves; an automatic gesture, as if he has just seen someone he knows.

  Kramer is about to look when Gerhard continues, “But Vogel. I don’t like that connection. Too much coincidence. I’ve got to go back with you. Got to talk with …”

  Suddenly, a crimson mist explodes out the back of Gerhard’s neck, wetting Kramer’s face. The whack of a rifle shot echoes up the ravine. Gerhard stands paralyzed for a moment and then is spun around when another shot tears a ragged hole in his back, exiting just above his heart. He crumples to the ground at Kramer’s feet just as the second report sounds.

  Kramer leans over him, cradling his head in his arm. A quarter-size hole seeps blood from his neck; another from his chest. He feels the carotid artery: nothing. It’s no longer Gerhard he’s cradling, but a corpse. Blood leaches onto Kramer’s shirt sleeve. A thwump sounds to his right and stops him from any thought. Dirt kicks up at his feet. Flies buzz overhead, followed by more cracks and echoing reports. Except they aren’t flies, but bullets.

  “Get back from the edge, Sam!”

  Randall is hiding behind the boulder and bullets ping off it, ripping white scars in its dusty cowl, sending showers of rock powder and chips flying. Kramer looks quickly down the ravine. There are two of them standing in plain sight, rifles to their shoulders, shooting and climbing. Despite the difference in elevation, the shooters have a firing angle on him and Randall, both exposed on the bare ridge. Kramer flattens himself on the ground as a bullet pounds into Gerhard’s body. His mind turns off as he crawls back to cover, pulling himself with his hands. He wants to be one with the soil, to play the lizard. He hears the bullets overhead, but does not panic. His reactions are cold and automatic. There is no time for fear: that will come later.

 
A hand grips his and pulls him the last yard to the relative safety of the boulder. Relative, Kramer soon discovers, because the shooters have an angle on the entire bit of exposed ridge where they are hiding. He and Randall are midway along the ridge; twenty yards or so in each direction to get back to the covered path, out of the angle of the ravine.

  “Who is it?” Randall says, breathing hard.

  Kramer shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. We can’t stay here.”

  Another ping of a bullet caroming off the boulder, stone chips flying over their heads.

  “They’re moving up the pass. We’ve got to make a run for it.”

  “Maybe it’s a mistake,” Randall says. “Hunters who can’t see what they’re shooting at.”

  But neither of them believe that.

  “He’s dead, Randall. Gerhard’s dead. Hunters or not, they’re going to have to finish it.”

  Randall’s jaw muscles work; he runs a hand through his beard roughly as if to wake himself up. “Okay. Me first.”

  Kramer eyes him. “Whatever you say, buddy. Wait for the next volley.”

  The shots come in pairs, spraying calcite and dirt, echoing more loudly with each round. The shooters are coming up the ravine.

  “Now!” Kramer says after a round of shots tear at the face of the boulder.

  Randall lunges out of their cover, onto his belly, headed for the trail leading up the mountain. A shot kicks dirt, and Kramer grabs Randall’s leg before he can begin scrambling, pulling him back behind the boulder.

  “Not that way,” Kramer says, after he manhandles Randall in back of the boulder once again. “Down the trail. They’ll cut us off the other way. I’ll take point.”

  Randall’s eyes are wide and he says nothing, sucking air like it’s a depleting commodity. Kramer waits for the next round of shots, dives from the boulder onto his belly, and begins scrambling, his shirt catching on rocks and roots in the path. A bullet smacks into the hard-packed earth a few inches from his head, but he keeps on scrambling, crawls in back of a smaller rock that provides some protection and then yells back to Randall, “Now!”

  Randall obeys automatically, leaping a good two yards and then scrambling on all fours, bullets flying over him. Kramer does not wait to see his progress, but makes an upright dash for it to the next protection along the path: a scrub pine not much wider than he is. He sucks in his belly, watching Randall make his way to the small boulder—their stations of the cross.

  Who the hell are they? But he doesn’t give his mind a chance to start working, or for fear to grip him. He’s off, running and diving, the end of the ridge coming ever closer. Running and diving. Not giving them a clear shot. Zigzags won’t help with profile shots. He keeps waiting for the shot that will bring him down, the shot that will tear into his flesh and splatter blood. But he also keeps moving, moving, his breath coming hard at this altitude. He reaches the end of the ridge and can hear nothing but the pounding of his heart for several instants, the grunting of Randall as he crawls along the dusty ridge, kicking up dirt like a dust devil. It takes Kramer that long to realize that otherwise, it is silent. The shooting has stopped.

  He listens hard for loose rocks forming small avalanches as the shooters make their way up the scree. But there is nothing. Randall crawls the last feet to cover and continues lying on his belly, panting like an animal, unable to move.

  Kramer listens to the sound of wind up the ravine; the goat bells; the rush of wings overhead as a hawk soars in an updraft. Then from far away comes the sound of car doors slamming, the revving of an engine, the whine of first gear.

  Kramer edges cautiously back onto the ridge, moving toward where Gerhard lies like a pile of old clothes.

  Randall looks up, reaches toward him. “Get back, Sam.”

  “They’re gone, Randall.” Down the ravine the vehicle is speeding away in the distance, leaving a parachute of dust behind it.

  He now walks to Gerhard’s lifeless body, looking down at it for a long moment, at the boots and vest and cummerbund. His oldest friend; not his dearest. There is a sour taste in Kramer’s mouth: bile and the brass taste of blood and fear.

  Flies circle the bloody wounds in the body, and Kramer shoos them away. He feels Randall coming up beside him.

  “I’m going to find those bastards,” Kramer says.

  “We should get down to the car. Call the police. They might be back.”

  Kramer watches the car as it grows tinier and tinier in the distance, the cyclone of dust in back of it almost disappearing.

  “Sam? You hear me? We’ve got to get to the police.”

  Suddenly, from above them comes a voice in Greek that makes both Randall and Kramer scramble for cover. Above them, from the impossibly steep slope abutting the trail, come three hunters in black shirts, carrying rifles. One has an ibex slung over his shoulders, its head lolling loosely, its purple tongue protruding.

  They raise hands in friendly greeting as they approach, and Kramer comes out from behind the boulder, happier than he can ever remember at seeing another human. He looks back down the ravine; the car is no longer visible. But it must have been the sight of these hunters that scared the shooters away. That saved their lives.

  The hunters come up to Gerhard’s body and look from it to Randall and Kramer. Men in their thirties who, beyond their black shirts, wear none of the traditional Cretan garb. Levis and hiking boots for them. The one lugging the dead ibex has Nike Airs on. White against the blood-red dust.

  “Dead?” one of them says in English.

  Kramer nods. “They shot him.” He points down the ravine at the last of the dust in the distance.

  The men ask no questions, but the largest of them slings Gerhard over his wide shoulders like more bagged game, and they make their way down the trail toward Lourakia. Toward civilization.

  “Your friend waved at the hunters, you say.”

  “They weren’t hunters,” Kramer says, but the police inspector from Timbaki is not listening. He’s too busy forefingering information onto an incident report in the carriage of his typewriter.

  They are sitting in the station offices later that evening. It’s gotten chilly at night, but they’re still wearing their perspiration-­damp shirts. There are faded calendar prints of Greece on the walls, like a classroom in a primary school.

  “We will go up Psiloritis in the morning to search for spent cartridges and for bullets,” the inspector says, not looking up from his typing.

  “There’s one still lodged in Gerhard’s body, if you’re interested,” Kramer says. “He took a hit after he was killed. Probably saved my life. The slug’s still in there, I guarantee.”

  The inspector shoves his thick belly back from the desk, lifts the black-framed reading glasses up onto his forehead, and looks closely at Kramer, as if only now taking interest.

  “Our forensics people will examine the body in the morning.”

  “Just trying to save you a hike,” Kramer says. “And they weren’t hunters.”

  “How can you be so sure?” the inspector asks.

  “They kept on shooting once they could see us plainly, that’s how. We look like ibexes?”

  Randall is sitting in a plastic chair, sipping on a demitasse of Turkish coffee. He tries to smile at Kramer’s remark, but fails. It’s been a long day.

  The inspector lifts pudgy arms in a caricature of an Italian shrug, “Perhaps they became frightened at what they had done on impulse. I am not trying to excuse the crime …”

  “You have a funny way of doing that.”

  “Merely explaining how things like this happen in a land where most adult males own guns, even though they are illegal.”

  “These weren’t Cretans, either,” Kramer tells him. “They were northern Europeans.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “The way they were dr
essed. The way they moved; heavy, like they had shit in their pants. Locals move over rocky terrain like they are goats. These boys were cows.”

  This makes the inspector smile in spite of himself. He turns back to the typewriter, flips his glasses down on the bridge of his nose, and begins hunting-and-pecking again.

  “Identity unknown,” he says as he types. “Perhaps European.”

  He turns back to Kramer and cuts his eyes to Randall momentarily.

  “What were you three doing on the mountain?”

  “Walking. Is that a crime?”

  The inspector slams the carriage return home and scowls at Kramer.

  “You have lost a friend. I am aware of that and truly sorry. But I do not like your tone, Mr. Kramer. Not at all. Neither do I like having to come into the office on a Sunday night when I have promised to take my boy to the movies. Or to have to speak English, which is a strain for me and for which I receive no recompense. Do you understand me, Mr. Kramer? You are annoying me. You don’t want to do that. We will examine all possible clues in this unfortunate matter. Meanwhile, I suggest you both go and get some rest. And let me say that it is fortunate for you that those men witnessed the incident. Homicide is usually a family affair. Have you heard that?”

  “It was one of those toy Land Rovers,” Kramer says.

  “What?”

  “Their car. One of those little rent-a-car jobs that have four-wheel drive.”

  “I’ll include that in the report.”

  “You do that, Inspector.” Kramer gets up out of his chair. His legs are sore; every muscle in his body aches. His head, too. “Sorry to inconvenience you.”

  Kramer and Randall leave the cinder-block police station, going out into the fresh night air. A bright half-moon is out; Orion shines weakly just below it. Over the roofs of the houses on the opposite side of the road, Kramer can see the bulk of Mount Ida, a light gray against the darker sky.