The Diaries - A Gage Hartline Espionage Thriller (#1)

by Chuck Driskell

  Kenny rubbed his face with his hands, seemingly overwhelmed by the incredible story he had just heard. He was an 18-Echo, a special operations communications specialist on an Alpha-team based at Panzer Kaserne. The last time he had seen Gage, then Matthew Schoenfeld, he had been at language school during their Special Forces training. Schoenfeld had been rumored dead the very next year, killed in Bosnia. Kenny had not thought of him very often since then, glancing around after a moment as if coming out of a trance and realizing that a filthy man was sitting on his sofa.

  “So what can I help you do?”

  “I need a place to stay, just for a few days, maybe more. Then, maybe you can help me determine the level of search they’ve got on me. I need to know that before I know how to proceed from here.”

  Kenny sipped his water. “And if I say no?”

  “I’d understand,” Gage answered, shrugging. “I wouldn’t blame you if you pulled a pistol out—because I know you have one stashed somewhere close—and called the MPs or the polizei. Honestly, it would probably be your smartest move.”

  The cautious professional eyed Gage for a long moment; finally reaching into the folds of the chair he sat on, jerking a flat-black nine-millimeter pistol out by the barrel. He laid it on the table, closer to Gage than to himself before leaning back in his chair. “I wouldn’t do that to you, brother. Hell, it could easily be me sitting there where you are.”

  Gage tilted his head upward, relieved that he may have found a temporary solution to his immediate problem, thanks to a once-thought-dead friendship. With a deep breath he finally spoke. “You working this afternoon? I’ve kept you too long.”

  “We just got back from Afghanistan. Got about a month before we roll again. I’ll need to poke my head in at the unit, but I’m pretty free to help. Not much going on.” Kenny raised a finger. “One thing I wondered, though, while you were telling your story: how did you know where I was?”

  Gage’s eyes smiled, though his mouth didn’t. “In my line of work, you always have a few outs in your head. I have three, memorized—burned into my brain. When I got here, heck, I didn’t know if you might be deployed.”

  “Where would you have gone if I was?”

  “A long ways from here to see someone I don’t think you know.”

  Kenny nodded, his eyes cutting away. With a snort of professional amusement he asked, “You really took down a German cop…took his bike?”

  Gage nodded, showing no trace of pride. “I didn’t hurt him.”

  Kenny made a whistling sound. “Heat is going to be way up.”

  “Like I said, you can send me out now if you want. I’d never say a word.”

  Kenny Mars joined eyes with Gage. “No chance.”

  Gage slapped his knees and stood. “I need to grab some righteous sleep, and then maybe tomorrow in the afternoon we can figure this thing out.”

  The two men shook hands before Gage bear-hugged him. Kenny gave him a sleeping pill and ten minutes later Gage was in the guest bed, sound asleep with his filthy clothes still on.

  ***

  Saturday, November 7

  Gage awoke at 11:30 a.m. after sleeping for nearly twenty hours straight. Kenny had provided him a toothbrush and toiletries and, after brushing his furry teeth, he emerged to find his old friend with the newspaper spread out before him.

  “Hey,” Gage mumbled, still groggy from such a long slumber.

  Kenny lifted the paper, the International Gazette. “It’s on the back page and not exactly high-profile anymore. Looks like they’ve scaled down their search for you. Reuters got it. Kind of cryptic, but it says they think you probably fled the country. My guess is they realized your background was a load of dead ends, found out the kind of work you do, and probably turned the bulk of it over to their feds. No mention of you stealing the police bike.”

  “Probably their pride,” Gage muttered.

  “Might be baiting you, too.”

  Gage rubbed the emerging stubble on his head and pondered the situation. Kenny told him that yesterday’s regional paper had been the same, making Gage more confident that his manufactured background must have taken hope away from the investigators. He pondered the people who killed Monika; surely it was the mobsters Jean told him about. Les Glaives du Peuple. They would most certainly still want him dead. And the polizei and the BKA would still have a search running for the shadowy American with no past. Their net worried him less and less with each passing day, unless he was to make a stupid mistake. He felt he knew better than that. What did concern him, though, were the balance of diaries hidden in the storage space. Did he leave any sort of signature during his trips back and forth and, if so, would they find it? Now that Monika was dead, Gage really had nothing left to live for other than a pile of decaying books.

  No.

  The jumbled thoughts in his mind ceased altogether, arrested by a piercing revelation. The diaries weren’t just decaying books, they were a window into the past, displaying an unprecedented account of one of the world’s purest evils. An evil that had, for years, abused and raped a woman against her will. An evil that had forced her to flee, eventually losing her child as well as her life. An evil not unlike the wickedness he and Monika had experienced in the past twenty-four hours.

  And just like Greta Morgenstern, Monika was now gone.

  The inspiration seemed to leave him as quickly as it came, exacerbated by his depressive state.

  “I’ll leave this paper here for you,” Kenny said, stacking it neatly. “I cooked eggs and bacon; a big, full breakfast like my mama used to make. Got you a heaping plate in the microwave, and there’s juice in the fridge. I have to go back to the unit and get some admin crap squared away. I’ll be back late afternoon and you and I can work on your out, roger? Maybe I’ll pop by the commissary and we grill a couple of tenderloins tonight on the George Foreman.”

  Gage nodded. “Thanks, man. You don’t know how much this means, really.”

  “You sure you’ll be okay?” There was concern on Kenny’s face.

  “Yeah.”

  Kenny stood and removed his reading glasses. They shook hands. “De Oppresso…”

  Gage looked down. He did not answer.

  Kenny squeezed Gage’s hand tighter. “C’mon man, buck up. Say it. De Oppresso…”

  “Liber,” Gage said. To free the oppressed. It was the Special Forces motto that had been etched into every trainee’s brain and, in his haze, Gage failed to recognize the parallel of the motto to his own predicament.

  Once Kenny was gone, he gorged himself on the food, finding hot sauce in the pantry and covering the entire plate. Few times in his life had food tasted so good and, as he ate, he read the article Kenny had pointed out. If it was accurate—and the police have been known to use the media to spread a bluff—Gage would be well advised to continue to lay low for several more days. Getting the diaries from Frankfurt would be a bit more tedious, but as it was earlier, Gage’s mind was clouded and unable to think that far ahead.

  He rinsed his plate, placing it in the dishwasher before stepping back into the den and glancing around. Kenny’s existence wasn’t much different than his own, and only a few trinkets suggested a steadier income than Gage’s. As a career Special Forces soldier, Kenny Mars was a nomad, forced to live that way by the needs of a readjusted military doctrine. Just enough items to get from day to day, and nothing he wouldn’t be comfortable with a military moving company packing for him. The career, especially after 9/11, demanded its soldiers be flexible, always ready to move. Gage caught his reflection in a decorative mirror, and that was when he became aware of his need for a shower. The old Army saying was: if you can smell yourself, everyone else could smell you two days before. Had Gage felt like it, he might have smiled.

  The shower was steaming hot; Gage used copious amounts of shampoo and soap to wash himself, allowing the heat and steam to work out knots in his muscles from the stress and the long walk. As he leaned against the tile wall, the water cascading
from his body, the emotional barrier that hadn’t allowed him to process the other information showed itself. It was sadness: an emotion not normally known to Gage, a man who jealously protected himself from having to possess anything worth being sad for. It welled up from deep inside him, concurrent with the tragic memory of his last shower: it had been with Monika. He remembered her massaging his head as she kissed him, smiling at him, nibbling on his lower lip. They were going to leave, to create a life. They were so happy, so at peace.

  And then she was ripped from him.

  Gage Hartline cried for the first time in twenty-five years. The sorrow and despair over Monika’s murder mingled with the death of the two children in Crete, wracking Gage’s body with tremors and loud sobs. The horrible death of his parents and sister reappeared, and it was as if the entire world rested on him. Gage dropped to the floor of the shower, curling into the fetal position and allowing his mind to go places it had never been.

  He stayed that way for nearly two hours. The water went ice cold.

  When Gage could cry no more, he donned some of Kenny’s warm-ups and sat in the den, staring at the pistol from Kenny’s chair. He had placed it before him on the coffee table. It was loaded, cocked, locked.

  Suicide. Again. He forced himself to consider it as an option.

  While he didn’t think he could ever do it, he ran through the possibilities. To do it in Kenny’s apartment would be shallow and ungrateful. Kenny didn’t deserve that. Gage could stick the pistol into his pocket, walk back to the center of town. The Krankenhaus was there, and at least a hospital had the equipment for cleaning up blood and brains. Maybe step out back and climb into a dumpster? That would at least save some poor stiff from having to scrub. Just break out a hose and wash the little flecks of bone and brain out with the rest of the refuse.

  Maybe it would solve his problems. He could ask for forgiveness before applying eight pounds of pressure to the oily little trigger. Death would follow in nanoseconds. Cool, comfortable death: a place with no sorrows and no regrets.

  There was no shame in it. They had been given pills, many times. Death pills. Since the dawn of time, when warriors were beaten, there was but one thing to do.

  But was Gage Nils Hartline, formerly Matthew Schoenfeld, truly beaten?

  The thoughts that had been below the odd sadness began to emerge. Gage spun the pistol on the coffee table, remembering the rousing days on Hunter’s team. Small, adroit teams like Hunter’s need doers: people who rectify problems the moment they arise. Hunter preached it daily, at every morning meeting before the sun was even close to rising. “Identify the problem, then cut it the hell out like a damned cancer.” Gage could smell the Old Spice scent of Hunter’s after-shave; he felt Hunter’s favorite desert bush jacket as it brushed behind him; he could see the soggy, unlit cigar clamped in Hunter’s teeth as he spoke to the men he loved so dearly.

  “Identify the problem.” Gage spoke in full voice to the empty room. His voice was deep and velvety, softened by the good food and a long night of sleep. He looked at the clock in the kitchen. It was then nearly 2 p.m., morning back in the States. He hesitated a moment, finally grabbing the cordless phone, dialing Colonel Hunter again.

  “Hunter here,” came the answer. Even retired, the man sounded like he was in a command tent somewhere just south of Saigon.

  “It’s me again.” There was a long pause.

  “I kept my ears open,” said Hunter. “I heard something.”

  “Roger, sir. We were careless, corporately, something I’m not at all proud of. Our adversaries located us, just like you said.”

  Hunter was silent.

  “Do you have a minute?” Gage asked.

  “All I got is time these days, son. What’s on your mind?” In Hunter’s voice was the faintest hint of something every good leader must have. It was compassion. Gage had seen it from Hunter before, but the steady old war horse doled it out sparingly.

  Gage spoke for nearly an hour; Hunter listened. Gage told him everything, including some of the things he had suffered with since he had been discharged after Crete. He twirled the pistol on the table as he finished.

  “That’s it, sir. That’s everything.”

  Hunter was silent, other than his breathing. Eventually, he spoke. “Who else knows about this? About everything?”

  “Just you. Monika knew most of it. The guy I’m with here, he knows some. He’s one of us, though.”

  Hunter’s voice was gravel and broken glass. “You got two choices, son, and neither of ‘em involves swallowing the first bullet in that pistol. This isn’t a mission, you aren’t surrounded, and that’d be the damned coward’s way out, roger?” He cleared his throat.

  “Choice one: get back here, come see me, and we’ll go get you some help. You’ll have to come clean, on everything, but I think you’ll be okay. The powers that be would take you in, debrief you and then create a third life for you. Hell, they’d have to. This is their damned fault anyway. The main thing, though, is for you to just get the hell outta there. Sure as hell wouldn’t put my backside on the line with a foreign government, even an ally. I assume you’ve got a clean passport. You could probably fly outta Poland or the Czech Republic without much problem.”

  Gage listened intently as Hunter levied his verdict. “What’s choice two, sir?”

  “If it were me—and you need to remember that part, ‘cause this ain’t necessarily for you—but if it were me, I’d go to ground for a bit, let everyone forget all about me.” He paused. “Those sons of bitches ripped away the only person I love? They’d have to pay. And when the heat finally cooled, I’d unleash so much fury on those bastards that they’d be killing themselves voluntarily to avoid my wrath. It’d be my reprisal, my revenge. It’d be my damned reimbursement for what they took.” Hunter took another sip of his drink, afterward his voice booming. “‘Cause if you’re gonna commit suicide, you might as well do it in a blaze of glory and take some evil bastards down with you.” Icy silence followed.

  Gage allowed it to sink in for a moment, finally speaking. “Sir?”

  “Yeah?”

  “In the event I choose that plan, could you maybe spread a little disinformation? Maybe have some of our friends tell the right people that I might be hiding out there with a friend at Bragg? Do it in a way that wouldn’t get back to you?”

  Hunter’s chuckle was barely audible. “Now you’re talking.”

  Gage’s heart was thudding dual bass drums in his ears. “You may hear from me again, sir, after it’s over.”

  “Good luck, son.”

  Gage placed the phone in its cradle and stared at the pistol. He stood, crossed the room and stuffed it back beside the cushion. Next to the chair was his filthy pack. From it he retrieved the 1935 diary, sitting on the chair and searching for the passage he’d been recalling when the polizei had eyeballed him by the river. It was the passage when “Aldo” had first confronted Greta in the reading room, asking her to remove the clothing underneath her skirt…

  I apologize, diary, for what I will now write. Perhaps if I take my life, or I simply change my mind, I will remove these pages lest someone read them someday.

  Hesitantly, not knowing what else to do, I stood behind a chair and removed my undergarments. Aldo had me slip my shoes back on, gesturing me to stand next to him as he sat on an ottoman. He gripped me around my waist, cinching me to him as one hand roamed up my skirt, exploring the private areas of my body. Though I was thoroughly disgusted and bewildered, I will admit he wasn’t rough in his ministrations. Not until later. My eyes were shut for a number of minutes until I felt his other arm release me. While his one hand still continued to roam, I opened my eyes enough to look down and see what he was doing with his other hand. It was something I am unwilling to recount on these pages. Suffice it to say the entire episode was worse than any nightmare my mind's eye could ever dream up.

  When he was finished, after a long moment of him sitting slumped over, catching his breath, he
quietly told me to replace my clothes. After I did, he walked to me and slapped me across the face so hard I fell to the floor. He called me a wicked harlot and instructed me to draw blood from both of my index fingers tonight, telling me he would view the punctures on the morrow.

  I must pause my writing, diary…

  I am back; it is an hour later. Admittedly, diary, I have just had a crying spell, but one that ended with no more available tears and me feeling much stronger. Perhaps I just needed to get it out. I’ve pricked both fingers with a hot needle and have made up my mind that no matter what Aldo does to me, I can endure his savagery.

  Mama and Papa didn’t raise me to end my life prematurely…

  Gage reread the last line several times before closing the diary and replacing it.

  Then, forcing himself, he conjured a mental picture of Monika, smiling, radiating her love for him. He thought of the life they were going to create; he thought of how violent her death must have been, forcing his mind to picture a brutal rape followed by two bullets. He had to see it; he had to know. For ten minutes, he imagined every horrible scene of her rape and death, and then he waited.

  Not unlike Greta in the last passage, there were no more tears.

  De Oppresso Liber. To Free the Oppressed.

  An experienced warrior, Gage knew his mind had to be right if he were to prepare for what he planned to do. He looked at the clock; Kenny would be home soon. Before then he needed to think, to lay the first stones of what would become the foundation for, as Hunter had coined it, his reimbursement. He sat stone still on the couch, staring out the window at the barren trees and blowing leaves, his mind hearkening back to the simple Lutheran church on the small pond he’d attended as a boy. It was low and gray, built with river stones and surrounded by the simple farming town populated with small-town farming people. Gage had attended regularly as a child, dutifully memorizing his verses, catechisms, and portions of the Augsburg Confession. There was a particular verse that intrigued him then, and it was again important to him on this day. And while he knew he was taking the verse out of context, it gave him comfort, allowing him to achieve the proper frame of mind.