The refugees cheered. They hugged and shook hands, and got back to heaving. The baron jumped down and looked to Emil, but Emil had already strode off, though Emil was nodding, I saw, and I thought I heard him chuckle.
“That’ll keep their mouths good and shut, too,” the baron told me.
An hour and a half later, the bald woman was re-welding the last padlock. A teenage-boy sanded and polished the precise weld lines, his tongue hanging out. The baron had left with the last of his trucks, and two thick men were sloshing buckets of water along the rail ties to clear all the tires’ dirt and tracks. The horizon now showed hints of sapphire. Out in the clearing, I found Emil helping men mount a heavy textured roller to the back of one last truck. This would smooth out the road up—the same one I’d raced up that first day in my jeep.
“Good morning,” Emil said. “Your baron mayor did well. Now it’s your turn.”
“Don’t tell me—this here is the easy part,” I tried to joke, but my chest was heaving with fatigue and emotion and my voice went and broke. I put out a hand. Emil held it, grasping it steady. I told him: “I’ll try not to muck up all your work.”
Emil smiled. He pulled me close and grabbed at the back of my head with both hands as if to break my neck. I felt something wet on my forehead. He had kissed me there.
He pulled back, facing me. He had a look in his eye that made me shudder a little inside, and my pulse started racing. He pulled out a long object, in a hard sheath. He held it out flat for me with both hands, like some medieval squire offering a gilded scroll on a velvet pillow. I almost thought he was going to go down on one knee. I stepped closer. I lifted the thing from his hands, grasped the rounded and grooved grip of firm leather washers, and drew it out.
This was medieval, all right. It was an M3 fighting knife, carried by paratroopers, Rangers and frontline GIs alike. I had not held one since basic training. The stiff fiber OD sheath with its steel throat and web strap were scratched, nicked, faded. The matte-finished blade did not shine by design, but the sharpened edge surely made up for the apparent dullness.
“Much better than your little pocket knife,” Emil said. “But you must know how to use it. Do you know how?”
“Yes, I said. I do. And I thank you.”
Twenty-Five
THURSDAY, AUGUST 2ND: the eve of the train job. Another summer downpour had come and gone, and I stood on my front steps to survey the puddles in my villa courtyard. For once, this unseasonable rain-soaked ground was making me smile. It might even help keep me alive a little longer. It was better than relying on my Colt or the GI combat knife Emil had bestowed on me. I wasn’t feeling too thankful for that knife, not at all.
I had told Emil I knew how to use the thing. Who was I kidding? I had lied. I didn’t want him to worry.
A blue-and-white BMW 327 lumbered up my courtyard driveway, the sleek coupe overloaded with a woodburning engine mounted to its trunk in a tangle of makeshift tubes and, on the roof rack, bundles of kindling and one bicycle. Emitting a vile cloud, the sorry Sportwagen clanked and sputtered to a halt, its front tires hopping. Then I saw Katarina waving from the passenger seat.
Katarina? Here? Talk about unseasonable. My smile went tumbling down the steps. I walked out to them.
The baron von Maulendorff bounded out flapping his tweed driving cap at the smoke, fighting a cough. “Dashing, yes? If it wasn’t for this damnable woodburner, a most unsightly necessity of wartime. Shameful. Is this how they will remember Germany in these days?”
“You should be so lucky.”
The baron held out a hand for raindrops. “Such shit-weather again?”
“It’s not so bad. Weather hides our tracks.”
Katarina was waiting for the smoke to clear. She stepped out wearing a pale yellow raincoat and a light orange scarf. She eyed me with a blank and wan face. I came down the steps and kissed her.
“You had such a long night,” she said. “Did you sleep today?”
“I’m fine. You?”
She nodded. I stepped back to consider Kat and the baron standing here together, something I never could have expected. They stood closer for me, like siblings forced to make up. Something about it made me a little homesick. “I just realized something,” I said. “Freddy here, he reminds me a little of my brother Max. Though Maxie didn’t have title or this man’s luck. But, yeah. You got the same silly style, same ridiculous outlook.”
“That’s a compliment?” Katarina said.
The baron smiled, poised in a half bow. “I believe it is. So, your brother must be alive.”
I shrugged. I’d probably never know.
The baron’s smile withered. His eyes had welled up.
I shook his hand, using both my hands. “You did well, man.”
“I thank you.”
“No. I should be the one thanking you.”
“In any case. We will meet again.”
“Of course we will.”
The baron pulled his hand from mine and hauled the bicycle down from the roof rack. He grasped the handlebars and mounted the saddle, wobbling so much it seemed he was the first fellow ever to ride on two wheels. He rode a circle around us to find his balance.
“One more thing,” I said to him, pivoting around. “Could you get a message to Winkl? Have him come by and gather all my porcelain, silver, whatever’s worth something. Consider it a fund, for Little Marta. And her bear Sally.”
“Consider it done, Mein Lieber Herr.” The baron added a wave and he pedaled off, out my villa courtyard and on down the lane.
I took Katarina inside to the study, sat her down at the copper-top table and placed a sandwich of bread and cheese before her. She inhaled it in two bites. Chewing, she said, “Now. Emil’s sources confirm there was just an incident on the Czech-Bavarian border. An American officer, two German border police were killed.”
“Spanner wanted a diversion. Sounds like a bona fide international incident. I figure it can only help us.” Even more US troops could relocate east to the stretches of Bavaria that bordered Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia. It wouldn’t do the rest of the world a favor. Still, was it that surprising that a con man of a killer would help set the tone for the next war? I could imagine the chaos, the resolve, the outright hate that a shocking new fear like this would generate. Most GIs here now were not war-weary combat Joes, but boys sent over well after the fight, so, of course, they’d want to prove themselves against the Reds. Of course, Spanner had counted on that. I only hoped that he was staying out there on the eastern border like he claimed.
“Has your route changed?” she asked.
“No. It’s northwesterly all the way, to the north edge of the French Zone—near Kempten im Allgäu, South of the Danube. I have papers for the checkpoints.”
“And you end up where? Let’s go over it.”
“Main line spurs off. There’s a village, Aschendorf. There’s woods along it. Inside the woods, at the end of the spur there, is the warehouse.”
“Good.”
“Kat, why the car? And riding together? It’s not normal. Someone could be watching.”
“And deduce what? That the baron has a woodburner?”
“Which he just left you.”
“I can pick you up at this warehouse,” she said. “I even have a full can of gas if I need it.”
“No. Nothing doing. Absolutely not.”
“No one said you could not get a lift. Why would Spanner care? Don’t shake your head at me. I don’t care. I will be there. You need a—how do you say?—a bailout.”
“A backup …”
Katarina held my hand. “Where’s Little Marta?”
“Upstairs, sleeping.”
“Good girl.”
“She’s better off at Winkl’s now, but she just won’t go. And I sure as heck don’t have the heart to make her.”
“I will keep her close to me.”
“All right,” I said.
“Good. So, then, you will let me meet you?”
I was coming around. She didn’t need my okay. There was little I could do about it now and certainly not from aboard a speeding train of plunder. I threw up my hands anyway. “No. I told you. Not unless you want to bring a coffin.”
“Do not speak like that.”
It was too late. My words had made a rush of panic fill my head, hot and cold and white. “Don’t you get it? I could be dead by then.”
“Listen to me. You must get a hold of yourself before you lose the will.”
“I am. I’m fine.”
I looked at my watch again, for what seemed like the thirtieth time. It was six o’clock in the evening, one minute later than the last time I looked. Katarina hadn’t looked at her watch once. It was like she had a timer built into her head.
She hugged her arms and rubbed at them. “My God, it comes so fast, doesn’t it? It’s as if you go away to war. It’s just like Christian, you know he … I’m sorry; I should not have said that.”
“No, you should have. Because that’s exactly what I’m doing.”
The next morning: Friday, August 3rd, 4: 30 a.m. Katarina stood over me in bed, pulling on a light sweater, her raincoat and scarf. “I’m going to wake Little Marta, go trading. It’s best we keep to our routines.”
“Okay.” I sat up. I clutched her hands in mine. I should have told her I loved her, but I didn’t want to curse us further. Start adding true love to the mix, a guy was certain to die.
She seemed to sense it. “We will see each other again,” she whispered to me. We kissed. She backed out of the bedroom, her chin tightening up. We watched each other till we couldn’t anymore.
I lay in bed and listened for her leaving, but she made no part of the house creak like it did whenever I went down the stairs and out, not even the door. Eventually, I heard the car sputter away outside.
The next thing I knew it was 6:30 a.m., and I was dressed and ready. I wore tall combat paratrooper boots of russet leather I’d once bought off a GI rotating home, and slid the M3 fighting knife inside the top of the upper, along my shin. I left the hem of my trousers untucked, to help hide it.
Out in the villa courtyard, still in the dark, I fired up the Harley. His motorcycle.
Dawn broke as I pulled away from Heimgau on the two-lane road heading west. Forget about Kat and Little Marta, I told myself. Forget Freddy Maulendorff. As I drove on, the engine heat pulsed up through my hips, filling my empty stomach with nausea. Behind me a sole steeple poked above the tree line, a black spear against more of those untimely August clouds. Heimgau cathedral. I wondered if this was the last time I’d see it, then I killed the thought. Forget Heimgau.
I sped on and passed the turnoff for Dollendorf, kept on going. I entered a valley and turned onto a steep little cow farmer road and drove uphill, climbing until I saw a mossy stone cross. A plaque on it read, HEIMGAU REMEMBERS ITS LOVING SONS, in honor of a rifle unit lost in a place with a French name, 1917. Beyond, at the tree line, stood a little hikers hut.
The opposite trailhead. This was it. I turned off my engine. I unclasped my holster, slowly. Move deliberately, Emil had told me. This shows them you are careful and calm.
I pushed the Harley well into the trees, placed the keys in the saddlebag and covered the bike with branches and thicket, never rushing it. Then I hiked into the woods heading due east, the branches above me still trickling from rain.
I heard steam pulsing, clanging, and belching. Up ahead, beyond the trees, I could make out a black mass—the locomotive.
A barrel poked me in the back. I hoisted my hands to the sky. Firm hands frisked me. They left my Colt in its holster. They felt the fighting knife down my boot. They let it be. I had my US Army pocket knife in the inside pouch of my Ike jacket. They let that go too, but I wondered if they had even felt it there against my papers and cigarette pack in my front breast pockets. It was supposed to be the decoy, but that would have been too easy. Easy was a cruel fantasy.
“You walk straight ahead, you walk with head down,” a voice instructed me in poor German, which I did for about three minutes, and as I approached the edge of the woods the barrel left my back. “Goodbye for now …”
The Borsig BR 52 stood before me, a black wall, its iron wheels up to my chin. No one came to me and I didn’t know where to go, so I pretended to inspect the train as if I was an expert. Black-blue grease coated the bolts and rods. Massive armor plates protected the front boiler, looking like giant horse blinders. The cab was like a tank itself and that coal tender? More menacing than any tank. The four freight cars trailed the Borsig and stretched on back to the mine. Beads of rain coated the train, mud puddles blotched the open ground. Horton’s campsite had been cleared, I saw, even his campfire. Erased. The rail line had been repaired here and there with new ties, and spikes, and stretches of rail. I hadn’t noticed this at night.
I had come in from the back way, from the opposite side of the mine, which meant I wouldn’t be seeing the main clearing until we headed out. How would it look in the daylight? Would they see the footprints, our giant truck tracks?
The damn loco wouldn’t stop vomiting its vapor and soot smoke. It stung my nose and bloated my sinuses and I had to sneeze, cough. “What gives?” I shouted. “Anyone here?”
The cab window slid open. A blackened, bearded face stared out, the engineer, who said something I thought might be Polish. I shouted back: “What’s that? Don’t speak Polish.”
The engineer nodded down the tracks, toward the rest of the train. “You follow!” he shouted back in German. “In wagon at end!”
I walked along the freight cars. The Nazi eagle insignia had been painted over, but the words Deutsche Reichsbahn remained. The doors sported those thick square padlocks. They looked fine, I told myself. The Survivors did a fine job. Keep it together, Harry.
Hooked to the end of the freight cars stood a rusty red passenger car, lower and shorter than the rest. It had a row of windows so stained I could barely see light through them.
A hand popped out the doorway at the rear. It began waving me onward. As I mounted the steps at the rear, the hand reached out and pulled me on up.
“Wilkommen, Fedora!” said the same voice from the woods. The man was grimy black from coal dust. His flat face had deep wrinkles, thick stubble. He wore GI fatigues, no insignia.
“Morning. Ushanka, is it?” I said, feeling a little ridiculous because our code names were hat styles. This Ushanka was the locomotive stoker.
“Yes. You were almost late. Late no good.” Ushanka wagged a finger at me.
“But I wasn’t late, was I? Big difference.” I looked around the passenger car. Benches and dividers at the rear had been torn out to allow for bedrolls and provisions, a cooking stove, boxes of ammo. The interior paint was flaking and marred and stained with who knew what. Then I saw dark red smear stains and knew exactly what.
We heard grunting, heavy creaking footsteps. “That’s Papacha coming now,” Ushanka said. “Your comrade.”
Sergeant Horton trudged up the aisle from the front. He had his tommy gun. In his big hands it looked like a kid’s potato gun. He wore GI dress with corporal insignia, the fatigues so new I could see the folds. On his belt, a non-reg hunting knife and a black German Luger holster. He looked pale, too pale. He rubbed at his eyes.
“Morning.” I tried a smile, but my face felt slow, paralyzed. I might have smiled. I hoped I’d smiled. “How dee-do?”
“Not so swell.” Horton placed the tommy on a crate and slumped down on a bedroll, facing a corner window.
Ushanka smiled gapped teeth and said to me, “You like bread, Fedora? Cheese, vodka, what you like?”
“No. Let’s just get a move on.”
“He’s right, goddamn it,” Horton barked, “and stop with them fool code names.” He lay his head back and moaned, rubbing his forehead.
Ushanka shrugged. “Okay, Joe. We wait for good steam. About ten minutes.” He sat on a box of ammo and slapped his hands on his knees.
/> “Then what the fuck you doing here?” Horton sat up, his brow fat and red. “Get back in that cab and get shovelin, jackass. We’s gonna need all the stokin you can take.”
Ushanka sighed. He ambled down the stairs and out of the cab.
Horton stared at me. His eyes were puffy, his eyeballs darker. He grinned and held the grin. “Aren’t we, Kaspar? All the stokin’ he can take.”
“Sure. Sure thing.”
Horton dropped the grin. “Sure, sure,” he repeated, and stared out his corner window.
I pulled a crate to the opposite corner window, for sitting. Stared out. All I saw were trees, a mix of firs and oaks. I’d be seeing plenty trees from here on out, if I was good and lucky.
“Oh, I wanted to tell you,” I said. “I’m having someone pick me up near that warehouse, at the end of the line.” I added a chuckle. “Funny thing. We didn’t talk about that. The ride home.”
Horton shrugged. “Don’t see no problem with it.”
“No, I didn’t think you would.”
The engine’s steam thumped harder, faster. Our car rumbled, the floorboards shuddered, and the train began to roll. We passed through the woods and rail shelter, the tracks clicking along. As we passed the warehouses and workshops of Dollendorf out in the open light now, I saw that just enough rain had fallen to muddy the ground. It had to be impossible to tell trucks had been here. At the moment, it was.
“Man, I love the rain,” I blurted.
“Hate the dang rain.”
Branches brushed the car, scraping and squealing and spraying water. Back into the woods we rode, all dim and thick with trunks. I huddled at my window. Turning ever so slowly away from Horton, I pushed back the flap of my holster and felt for the butt of my Colt.
Twenty-Six
HORTON CLEARED HIS THROAT with a piercing rasp, then spat out the window. “That stoker and driver up front, I don’t like em,” he said, eyeing me again. We sat at our opposite corner windows, watching the rail line that stretched on and on from the rear of our passenger car, carving a gorge through our dark world of dense woods. After clearing County Heimgau we had slowed for one roadblock, a bush-league black market check. I knew the MG louie on duty there and didn’t even have to show papers. And we rode onward. Horton spat again. “Russkies. Why trust em? Never hustled with em before.”
Liberated Page 24
